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Newsletter
No 10
March 2003
Steve
and Jude in Honduras
Kristmas Yamni
First of all – many many thanks
for all your Christmas cards, letters & gifts. We really enjoyed our second
Christmas ‘Belén-style’ and, being that bit more tuned-in to the language and
culture than last year, we were able to involve ourselves much more fully in the
local celebrations this time round.
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Visitors
galore
In early January we
headed out to the island of Roatan, just off the North coast of Honduras, to
meet up with Jude’s family and our friend Wendy. It was fantastic to see
everyone again and meet our newest niece, Abigail, for the first time. We
then had a further week in the SW of the country exploring the ancient Mayan
ruins and hills of Copán.
In February we thoroughly
enjoyed receiving two groups of Tearfund supporters from Scotland, here to
find out a bit more about MOPAWI, the Reserve and what life is like in la
Mosquitia. |
Tearfund (or is that Tennents?) comes to Belén |
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Garífuna dance |
Later in the month we had
a great weekend with Gill (seconded by Tearfund to work with MOPAWI in
Puerto Lempira) and our mutual friend Roberto from the States whom we met
when we were all studying Spanish in Guatemala.
THANK YOU
ALL for coming to see us, and for bringing us
out so much stuff!
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Capacity building |
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One of the main aims of
MOPAWI is to strengthen the capacity of local community organizations to
identify, establish and manage their own projects. The Belén team
consequently spend a lot of time providing training in needs identification,
strategic planning, administration, monitoring and evaluation, preparing
funding proposals and writing reports, among other things.
Groups that we are
currently working with include Sea Turtle and Iguana conservation
committees, community water boards, women’s groups, communal banks and
community forestry
organizations.
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Group work during a participatory training session |
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Unfortunately MOPAWI’s own
funding situation is not looking too good at the moment. Since we arrived in
Belén nearly two years ago we have seen the team dwindle in numbers down to only
three permanent members of staff in the Reserve (with an area of 815,000
hectares!), plus the two of us and a volunteer from Japan. A funding proposal
for a large grant from the EU has recently been turned down and other donors,
after working with MOPAWI for many years, are gradually withdrawing from the
region to work in other parts of Central America.
However, all is not lost by any
means. Although the work will have to be more strategic and focussed this year,
MOPAWI have some excellent staff who will go out of their way to make the most
of the limited resources available.
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Hot
Topic: illegal colonists
Due to rapid national
population growth, an increasing number of landless farmers from all over
Honduras are arriving in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve each year to
settle, fell the forest and plant their crops. The fragile forest soils are
quickly exhausted and the land is then often sold to livestock farmers whose
land use patterns further degrade the soil resulting in erosion in the water
catchment areas and sedimentation downstream.
Traditionally the
forest and natural resources of the reserve were managed by the indigenous
communities who were able to control the influx of immigrants to a large
extent. However, in 1997 a new law was passed that gave control of the
reserve to the Government forestry service. At the same time the influx of
new settlers was banned but this ban has not been applied, partly due to
lack of government funds but also due to some government employees pursuing
their own personal interests. The local indigenous communities have been
left powerless to stop the arrival of new illegal colonists and with the
help of MOPAWI have been campaigning strongly for a just resolution. The
government has shown little will to tackle the problem, though, and there is
increasing tension between the colonists and local leaders.
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The problem with Steve…
The problem with ‘Steve’ is that no words in Spanish start with ‘st’ – they
always have an ‘e’ before the ‘st’ (for example Esteban or Estrategia).
Furthermore, both ‘b’ and ‘v’ are pronounced pretty much the same way. This
means that few of our colleagues, friends and neighbours have been able to
successfully master the pronunciation of Steve’s name. Verbal and written
attempts have included: Estib, Esteefy, Stid, Stib, Tib, Teeb, Stif and
Cheep (!)
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Still plenty of forest left – but for how long? |
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Just one slip… |
Quotes of
the month:
“My
cousin died going over this bridge”
Context:
in the process of crossing a ravine in a pick-up truck using an extremely
dodgy bridge in the Sico-Paulaya valley. Just what we needed to hear!
“And now
we will take off our pants”
Context:
statement made by a local guide in Las Marías before wading across a river
with a group of (female) tourists. He promptly took off his trousers but,
not unsurprisingly, the tourists decided not to follow suit! |
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Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding... Proverbs 3:5 |
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