honey and strawberries

Am now in a grimy beach town which is trying to be a tourist destination, but failing miserably. La Ceiba is its name. The weather is agreeable though and the local food tasty and cheap, which is all I really require. There is even 100 channels on the tv to go through, which I am finding to be seductive. For those of you who didnt' get the latest update, disfrutes...


$.33/pound strawberries was the highlight last week. I was in a small town (15,000) called Comalapa, about 2 hours away from Guatemala City at about 4500 feet. The town was 99% indigenous less me and a hand full of missionaries that occupied the only hotel in town. The hotel was brilliant as I upgraded from $5/night to $8/night with my own bathroom with real hot water (not a suicide shower) and a tv, which allowed me to watch more soccer. Decent sheets and a real mattress was the proverbial icing on the cake. I ate most of my meals in the center of town, about two blocks down. There, everyday gathered a small little market and during breakfast and dinner hours food venders. Breakfast was usually half a cup of hot milk with the other half being hot chocolate and then a couple of sweet breads to dunk in the mixture. Dinner consisted of Guatemalan taco which is a variation of the Mexican variety, but a little larger and for some reason they like to season their meat with soy sauce.

Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays are their market days and I caught the best one, a Tuesday. About two football fields were packed with people who brought something to sell from the typical fruit and vegetable stand (but laid out on a tarp on the ground) to the chili lady to the medicinal herb/bark man with all kinds of exotic looking remedies. Everyone is a capitalist here, trading and selling something.

I visited the town for three days while evaluating a Trickle Up partner. The NGO, named ASOGUADI, is a small outfit of only about 5 people, which recently had its main project reduced because its larger partner, SHARE, lost its USAID funding. Lots of acronyms. They are doing some great work with women's weaving cooperatives, some farmers trying to take advantage of the new free trade agreement. A highlight was being ferried around one morning on the back of a dirt bike. Can't say it was very comfortable and found it quite the work out for my groin muscles as I had them constantly tensed so I wouldn't fall off the back of the motor bike as we went up hills. I think it would've been better if I was driving. It didn't help either that it was a day with "gastro intestinal" issues. The doctor told me to lay off the dairy products, which I finally did and seemed to solve the problem.

The other highlight was visiting a honey business that ASOGUADI was supporting. This included me being decked out in a bee keeper's outfit. We visited the bees which of course weren't too excited about us breaking into their house. I was informed that the bees were actually being very calm as there wasn't any honey as it was the off season. When there is honey, they go crazy and fly directly into your face. There were three legit bee suits between the five of us. The other two honey entrepreneurs wore extra pants, a sweat shirt or wind breaker, and make shift masks made from grain sacks and some plastic mesh as their viewing window. All of the bees swirling around you is a bit discerning, but after a while it becomes normal. They supposedly can smell you and if they recognize you, refrain from stinging you.

My last day with ASOGUADI, I went to a business training being held by a local NGO being funded by Oxfam Holland. The training was decent, but in typical manner dominated by one or two more outspoken attendees. All of the attendees work as leaders of their agriculture associations or cooperatives and are trying to learn how to play the export game now that the free trade agreement is in place. There is definitely plenty of help being offered to them, but you have many of the members of the organizations that don't want to change how they farm or make the necessary investments, thus they aren't taking advantage of the new market. At the training, they showed a cartoon based on the book "Who Moved My Cheese", but in Spanish of course. It did a great job of getting across the message that they have to change the way they do business or will be left behind and miss the benefits that are coming to the country from the new business. Now the just have to sell the 50 members of their own organizations on it.

Friday I crossed into Honduras. Honduras reminds me of Panama. The food is similar with stewed meats, rice, and fried plantains. Tomorrow the roads are to be blocked as the locals are very happy with the mining countries. Supposedly they don't pay taxes and are contaminating water supplies, which is producing large amount of deformities amongst newborns. US companies aren't to blame though, it's the Canadians who are running the culpable mines. Hondurans are very hospitable and laid back. We went to a carnival on Sunday night. Typical carnival with rides, carnival games, a couple of bars, carnival food, and plenty of families and little kids. For $.05/game, I played foosball against some Honduran kids. A game included 5 balls and a slanted table, which gave a distinct advantage to one side.

The organization I am evaluating here at the moment is partnering Trickle Up seed capital with cows from Heifer International. I have heard much about Heifer as they have an office in Ellensburg and they are my mother's favorite xmas gift now. This was the first time I have run across one of their projects though. People received pregnant cows, which they then passed on the birthed calf to someone else and kept the cow. Everyone still has their cow 2-years later and either drinks the 5-7 liters of milk the cow produces or sells it to others in the community. The Trickle Up funds are being used as rotating credits which some groups have used either to invest in more cows or their crops such as corn or beans. Corn prices in Honduras have almost doubled from last year's prices. Thank you ethanol and the lobbying skills of the Iowan corn farmers. This produces a dilemma for many poorer countries though as it pushes up prices for the urban poor and population (tortilla prices), but is a bounty for the rural poor who are the poor farmers that produce it.

Now it is off to the North coast of Honduras to the town of Tela. This is supposedly the Cancun of Honduras. I will be writing some of the evaluations there before heading to La Ceiba to do more evaluations and profiles on projects with the local afro-antillian community or Garifuna people. I am looking forward to eating some decent and cheap sea food. Need to gain back the 10 pounds I lost while in Guatemala.