Hondruan Department of Transportation

In Honduras road repairs is a concept that often seems like a foreign concept. In fact many of the road repairs are foreign. The Millennium Challenge Account and other international projects, organizations or even companies  spear point most road repairs or new road construction. The few Honduran Government road projects seem to get stuck in the mire of political appointees and red tape. The road from El Progreso to Tela is just such an example of a project that seems to have gotten stuck in the planning stage. The area has been surveyed multiple times by various companies as different political groups each have their own study done of the area.

In some cities and states in the United States, there are websites or radio shows to call in your reports of bad potholes. If you talk to locals in the area of Copan, they will tell you that the government waits until after a major storm or hurricane to repair the roads so that all of the old potholes and mudslides can be blamed on the most recent storm. Most of the time those big storms are followed by international aide to repair "vital" infrastructure in the country.  In Honduras potholes can easily eat car tires by the dozens. Some areas are so bad, that tire repair stands have set up along the worst roads to gain from the misfortune of some drivers. Others take a different approach to make a profit off of the lack of road repair.

The real Honduran Department of Transportation most likely does to some form of work, but they are not who ones sees most out on the streets making repairs. In wealthy neighborhoods or on busy roads potholes can mean lots of traffic or damaged cars. To avoid that problem people are often willing to pay a price to get it fixed. That is where the poor (ingenious) Honduran steps into the picture. Armed with a shovel and a wheelbarrow load of dirt one can become a one or two man road repair squad. Unlike many workers, they do not know if they will get paid before starting. Instead the plan usually consists of someone standing in the middle of the road with a shovel full of dirt. When a car goes by they will occasionally tip the worker for repairing the pothole. When the worker receives the "tip," he will add another the shovel full of dirt into the pothole. The more the worker gets tipped, the more the pothole is repaired.

The summer of 2009 brought a lot of work for anyone wanting work as a road repair man. Mainly it took being in the right place at the right time. Firstly the earthquake left one of the most important bridges in shambles. The democracy bridge collapsed and the Japanese bridge in El Progreso was damaged. The gap between the bridge and the pavement widened created a gap that created heavy traffic and blew out more than a few car tires. Teams stepped in to man both sides of the bridge.They would fill the gap and the cars would glide over the gap. Miraculously the dirt would vanish in the middle of the night, keeping the two groups of men supplied with jobs for a month or two until repairs were officially commissioned to weld heavy metal plates into the gap to fix the problem. Recently though, the problem has returned. Either the metals plates were stolen or the have sunken down into the gap; regardless the men are back to work. Ever two weeks or so they appear for a few days to gain some extra money by filling the gap.

After the earthquake, the political situation had a big impact on road conditions. Many international organizations canceled their infrastructure aid or froze it until the crisis had been resolved. This left roads in a state of disrepair that went beyond the norm. This meant more work for anyone willing to stand next to the road for hours and gather "tips." Political protests provided even more opportunities for such individuals to make some extra money. As main roads were blocked off, people started using dirt or mountain roads to get around the protesters who had a tendency to "take" the most important bridges. Those dirt and mountain roads ended up with two or three lanes of traffic on them (including buses and dump trucks) when they were meant to have only one lane driven by pick-up trucks. Gangs of children and men gathered together to fill in holes in the road, open up paths in fields for cars to travel through or to aid someone when their car failed the test of endurance on the back roads of Honduras. Some even created rope or people chains to block traffic until each car paid for the road repairs.

When the Honduran government fails to provide for its people, the people take matters into their own hands. Some say that they prefer to pay for repairs in such a manner as they know their money is going directly to the repairs instead of into the pockets of politicians. Dirt and rocks though will never be able to take the place of a newly asphalted road. Now that Zelaya has returned and Pepe is tip toeing through the international system, money should hopefully begin to reappear for important infrastructure projects.

The Real Tropical Smoothie

In Honduras, few food and business regulations exist allowing a diverse range of small restaurants to flourish. Their are restaurants under tents, on the back of trucks and even attached to a bicycle.  Miguel is the proud owner of a "restaurant" on wheels. With the abundance of tropical fruit, several chain smoothie stores have sprung up in Honduras such as "Super Jugos." Miguel is working to cut into their market.

To start out, Miguel converted his bicycle into a three wheeled smoothie business. He started by adding a refrigerator section from an old ice cream cart, something commonly sold by bicyclists. He wanted to be different. He installed a car battery to the bike frame and attached three blenders to a small counter top. With a selection of various fruits and juice water and soda to use as mixers, he was set to launch his business. Miguel peddles his now tricycle around the center of town, stopping wherever there are a group of people to mix smoothies.

As a traveling salesman, Miguel pays no rent. He pays very little each week to have the car battery recharged. The same ice that he uses for the smoothies keeps his fruit cold in the well insulated freezer chest. The best thing of all is that he is constantly getting new customers who might live to far from an actual smoothie business or who would not have walked into a store to buy a similar product. Instead Miguel goes to the people. Bringing them a fresh smoothie to beat the tropical heat. Best of all they are delicious and cost less than a dollar. Miguel has spent years selling from his smoothie cart, it has helped sustain he, his wife and his five kids.

How would you support your family in Honduras? Could you be creative enough to survive?

Why Buy a Gun When You Can Make One for $5?

Gang violence in Honduras is a monthly (and sometimes weekly) headline. Guns are almost always a big focus of the story. Guns are fear spreading machines, which means they hold a godlike power in the eyes of the gangs. In recent years, drug cartels and the large Central American gangs have been buying up weapons as fast as they can, preparing for World War III. Many people have said that if you can dry up the gang's funds, then you can stop the flow of guns, which will in turn stop the violence. That is a false causality. The premise is that guns are expensive (and that the only gang violence is gun related). Unfortunately in Honduras, a gun can be built from scratch for all of $5, by a 14 year old. They might not be able to produce anything that could be reloaded quickly, but if you get shot by it you would be just as dead as if it had been an expensive weapon.

What Do You Do In a Country With No Tow Trucks?

Let me start off by saying that there is at least one tow truck in Honduras. In two years of living here, I have seen it once. It was being towed.

Imagine yourself 10 miles outside of the nearest town. Your cell phone is dead and you have just blown a head gasket. In Honduras there is no AAA service or 1-800 number to get someone to come help you. So what do you do when you break down, since Murphy's law states that it will happen in the most inopportune time and place? Trust the Hondurans to take care of you.

Honduran Construction Companies

The three main jobs for a Honduran are working as a Security Guard, a farm field hand or as a construction worker. While their are various wealthy construction companies there are also many neighborhood construction companies. These small time "companies" usually consist of at least 3 to 5 albaniles (construction workers) who have very little access to capital to invest into their business. Instead they must do with what is easily at hand. The results are varied, but my favorite example of Honduran ingenuity is the two wheeled, energy efficient work vehicle.

Hondurans do everything on a bicycle. They will pick up their two kids from school. They will modify them to create various business opportunities. Best of all they use them to deliver construction equipment and supplies to various job sites. On several occasions I have seen someone dragging 3 or 4 fourteen foot long segments of metal rebar on their bicycles. On one occasion the individual must have been nearly 6 miles from the nearest construction supply store.