Titles seem to mean everything and nothing at the same time.  Their job titles define them and take great pride in this, but any of the actual job responsibilities became meaningless once they obtain the role.  In a place where everything can be bought; from driver’s licenses, higher education to practicing medicine, I have come to lose trust in everything. 

The wealthy classes who appear to want to help the less fortunate of their nation really want nothing more than the credit of doing it.  They do not care to actually experience the work or the people first hand.

People use defamation of character freely.  That seems to be the tactic of choice for self promotion for the illusionists.  We ourselves have been slyly accused of trying to steal funds from the project; they are looking to make that hint to instill just a shadow of a doubt in regards to our intentions.

We have spent so much of our time going around in circles dealing with the conflicting personalities.  These wars that occur among the rich and powerful have managed to do little more than delay the progress of the project by months and as usual it is the poor who have suffered.  At this point, the poor have no faith in anyone or any promise that is made.  Unfortunately, I don’t feel that our efforts have proven to be any different.  We have made promises that we were unable to keep, by external forces but our promises were broken just the same. 

My illusionist apprenticeship has been a failure.  It is increasingly difficult to get through a meeting pretending that our words matter.  The illusionists are also masters at resurrection.  They skillfully revive issues and concerns that have been long dead.  We continuously have the same conversations just phrased slightly differently.  I can’t sit there anymore and pretend like it is all as new and important as they seem to believe it is. 

Possibly the act was amusing the first time but it has quickly grown old and it is long overdue to come to an end.  The world would be better off if all the charades would end but with such traditions well engrained in the population I am sure the illusionists will continue to practice for many years to come. 

I always thought they would jump at the chance to get filters.  This is definitely not the case.  How do you convince somebody the water they have been consuming all their lives is bad when they are still alive?  This is literally the response I get, “we drink this water and we’re still alive”.  Well, yes, they are still alive but they are putting themselves and their children at a risk.  About 70% of the people here in Honduras have worms or amoebas.  This is extremely detrimental to the development of children and curbs their learning abilities, so even if they are still alive, they are not getting a fair shot at a better future.

Unfortunately, giving a person a filter does not improve their health if they do not use it.  If the filters are just given away people will always accept them just because nobody walks away from something free!  We have encountered time and time again the problems with giving things away.  It creates a reliance on handouts and the expectation that if you are poor people will just give you things.  It is especially dangerous with kids.  “Why should I study hard at school if these foreigners come by and I can just ask them for money or candy?”  Charity is wonderful in its idea but it is extremely detrimental in practice.  I always think of the old adage; “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he eats for life”.

We have improved greatly in the fact that we are no longer just handing out filters to people, they need to make a payment of about $6 to get one.  But then we are SO heavily reliant on grants for these projects that they really don’t seem very sustainable.  If we used a regular business model we would constantly be forced to improve our quality, efficiency and total package.  We make small changes here and there, but still nothing not the drastic change that would occur if it were a for-profit enterprise. 

For profit, whats so wrong with that?  It seems that everybody is so determined to give charity and handouts.  It is instant gratification.  You feel good about it.  Wow, I helped that person get a filter and clean water for life.  When the reality is they think the water was ok in the first place so they don’t use it.  Once their municipality comes through and wants to put in water infrastructure and needs to collect payments they won’t be able to collect the payments because the communities expect it for free.  If there were a for-profit set up, the people who want filters could purchase them and help themselves instead of just waiting for a handout.  We also wouldn’t be forcing these 300 lb filters on people who don’t want them and then can’t lift them to get rid of them.

A for-profit organization would sure take out the feel-good-factor for other people but it is still achieving the same goal.  A business would not have an expiration date, so they would be able to ensure quality service for a much longer time.  Our project in Atlantida will have grant funds supporting it for a total run of 3 years. That means we will have paid staff only up until that point.  If something goes wrong with the filter, they might not be able to get it replaced because there will be no project anymore.

The overall problem of water and sanitation worldwide is daunting.  I think things are trudging along and the development community is starting to learn from their mistakes but we can still not get over this cycle of giving.  What we should be giving is the technology transfer not material things so the recipients can then indeed eat for life.

We were already accustomed to “Filipino Time” where you can cancel anything due to rain, diarrhea, or a curse.  ”Honduran Time” is slightly different, here people take one month holidays for Christmas and it takes about 2 full weeks after the already generous holiday to get back into full swing.  Since we have been in country, the biggest challenge has also been balancing an American mentality in regards to deadlines and correspondence while following the local pace of life as well.  We are not fully immersed in one culture or another.  At least in the Philippines we had the chance to let go of the idea of punctuality all together!

Surprisingly enough, language barriers have not been as challenging as cultural barriers.  As our friend Tania once said, “It isn’t that they don’t understand what you are saying,  they don’t get why you are saying it”.  They may understand the words well enough but don’t understand the concept.  This is something that we run into time and time again.  These past 6 months in Honduras have absolutely been the most challenging in my life, I have had more nervous breakdowns than I care to mention.  But the breakdowns are less and less, we are adapting and once it all becomes easy I am sure it will be time to leave.  But until then, I will try to document our emotions, our failures and our successes.