Some observations from Honduras

1. I used to think that man´s place in the Universe was secure at the top of the food chain. There are now many parts of me that would disagree. I have been bitten so many times, by so many different insects, each one of which finds a way to itch permanently, that I believe that one of my main purposes in the Universe is insect food. Gringo meat, to vary the diet of the native bees, flies, mosquitos, and spiders (to name a few).

2. I have been placed in a unique position to compare 2 very different ways of life - the Malawian way of life and the Honduran way of life. In 2005, when I came here to Honduras, I thought that these people were among the poorest that I had ever seen. Now, I look at them as being low-income but not all that poor. The people have not changed, but my perception of them has, because of seeing Malawian life. The people here live relatively normal life expectancy. Medical care, though sometimes difficult to find, is available to most everyone. The children are all reasonably well-dressed, the houses are castles compared to the average Malawian houses. The schools are all publicly funded, and most children attend school all the way to high school, most all wear uniforms for the entire school experience. Colleges are available and, with some sponsorship, within reach for good students. There are no real obstacles to climbing the ladder of success, and you can see on the faces of most of the school children the hope of a decent future. All of this is not true in Malawi. Schools are not well-staffed or well-attended, much less colleges, and that look of hope in the eyes of school children here is largely missing, except for the private schools in Malawi that are fairly expensive and out of the reach of most all Malawians.

3. Comparing the police systems, however, is a different story. This is a sad commentary on modern life, but, in Malawi, there are very few prisoners´rights. The police system, then, works pretty well, assuming that the police are fair. If your neighbor steals from you and is caught, he will end up in a prison for 5-10 years. Right away, with no muss or fuss. If there is no evidence, the prisoner is released. In Honduras, on the other hand, the prison system has been americanized. You have rights as a prisoner, and, even if totally guilty, you must be released from the local prison within 24 hours, or be taken to a central police station which basically does not believe that the local police know what they are doing, and assume that the prisoner is not guilty. This starts a process of inane paperwork production and reworking of the charges, all designed to protect the prisoner. Our case was just a bungled metalwork robbery; what if it was something more serious? Somehow, in spite of the system being much more backward in Malawi, I felt safer there, having seen the police at work, without all the rigamarole, doing the best they can to uphold the law.

4. There are a certain number of similarities, however. Honduras has had more than a century of dedicated help from foreign mission agencies, whereas the Malawian situation is much more recent. Both have produced a situation where there is a dependency on the helpers rather than a move toward independent self-sufficiency. I see many of the agencies here trying to reverse this process, but it is slow. When there is a gringo here, people come to them with colds, looking for antibiotics. When there is not a white person here, they rest at home and do what they can, and get better anyway. Home building through Mission on the Move or Habitat or whichever group amounts to a handout, which is exactly wht the majority of people here do not need. It seems like it is past time to get beyond this to helping where the help is really needed, trying to raise a generation of kids free from this mentality.

5. On a much different note, an object lesson learned the hard way. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, if a tabaño appears, it commands my entire attention (you may recall that a tabaño is that little yellow fly whose bite is no amazingly long-lasting and painful). If I am sitting at a table and a tabaño appears, I can think of nothing else but to avoid that little scum. I watch it until it lands, I try to kill it, if I don´t see it, I can get nothing else done until either it is dead or I leave the area and go inside. It is not possible to enjoy a meal, do any class work, have a conversation. The tabaño rules, because I have been bitten by them, and I know the territory. I was thinking yesterday about how much like satan that fly is, and should be to us. Many of us have experienced the sting and the long-lasting results, but do we feel about him the way that I feel about that tabaño? I think we should. When he is in the room, we need to think about either killing the fly or running. I think that, for the most part, we have become comfortable with the tabaños of our lives, and forge an uneasy peaceful coexistence with them, in the meantime giving them plenty of biting opportunities. Then we complain because God is not rescuing us. Hmmm.

6. Finally, a very bright note. In one more full day, Wanda will be joining me here. I am very happy to be able to type this, my next blog will be with Wanda here. We have been struggling with no communication, no ability to get phone calls through, but finally will have an opportunity to communicate IN PERSON! We are not going to separate like this in the future, unless commanded by the Lord. It is too difficult. Hopefully, I will be able to send pictures of some of the children, with names attached, in the next few days. These will be busy days, preparing for the Springfield team, getting supplies, and developing life rhythms with Wanda here. Next blog may be Sunday.

Rick