Without a Trace

Max and I have become good friends with a few of the US military guys that are currently in the north coast doing civil affairs work. Last week I joined a small group of them for a trip to Cayos Cochinos, where we went on a tour of the islands and then snorkeling. While snorkeling, a few of them found beautiful shells and took them with them as souvenirs. We’ve all done that so many times, take the shell home, toss it in a drawer and forget about it. We never stopped to think about the people that would visit the place after us; and would not get to enjoy it intact. Its not that we don’t care, it’s just that we don’t know, or we don’t remember.
With the Cayos Cochinos Foundation I’ve been working on a campaign of Tourism without trace. Posters, brochures, and other informational material will be provided to tourists as they come into the national park. We’ll be setting up an information center that tourist will visit before going about their activities where the concept will be explained and where they will be given all the information they need to visit the place and take nothing but their memories.

Culture, Nature, and Tradition

Hidden in the biggest island within Cayos Cochinos lies East End; a Garífuna community of about 17 families that live the traditional lifestyles of Garífuna fishing villages. Their houses are small and poor, their kids wear no shoes, but they live in paradise. As a volunteer working with the peoples of Cayos Cochinos, I’ve been presented with the task of helping them find alternative sources of income to complement their, now languishing, fishing economy. Since the first day I met them, they talked about the idea of making their community a tourist destination and using the proceedings to improve the quality of life of the community members. The problem is I’ve seen many projects in Honduras where an organization donates community tourist accommodations, builds it and leaves. I have never seen any of those projects succeed and the remains of the infrastructure built are left abandoned, a constant reminder to people of yet another project that didn’t work. On the other side, being a Peace Corps volunteer means being a facilitator of what the community wants to do, not a force that goes against the current. The challenge has been, how can we make it work when we’ve seen it fail so frequently?

The first thing we’ve done is analyze why it has failed everywhere else. Max and I have visited places where similar projects were implemented and talked to the people that participated. From them, we’ve learned several things: projects have failed because the community was not involved in the implementation (management of the project and building the infrastructure itself), the materials used were low quality and everything deteriorated before the community had any income to maintain it, there were no defined roles left to the groups (who’s the manager?), nobody taught them how to run a business, how to market it, how to access clients, most of the groups were so big that any income was diluted into amounts so insignificant that it wasn’t worth the effort, and finally most of the places lacked a real tourist appeal. Yes, there was culture, but there was no organized effort to portrait it to a potential visitor.

With this information in hand, I’ve set out to design a project that addresses all these issues while still giving the community what it wants. Of course there’s also the issue of money, how are we going to pay for everything we want? The last two months have been an intense effort to design and document a good project that we can submit to potential funders. In the project team we have a community team leader, an architect, several community members, Cayos Cochinos Foundation staff and me. We’ve analyzed the market in Cayos (8,000 tourist last year alone) and the current offerings (only high-end hotel or low-end back-packer options). We’ve analyzed the customer (a lot of Honduran nationals and foreigners that visit for a day, have lunch and leave. Most say they would like to stay longer) and the strength of the community (their culture, beautiful secluded Caribbean paradise next to pristine coral reef, and delicious typical cuisine) and designed a project around all that.

Finally, we submitted a proposal in the last week of March to build a small tourist center in East End. The idea is to fill the niche of mid-range customers that visit Cayos, giving them the option to spend the day or extend their visit for a few days. It includes a restaurant that will be a wooden deck over the water where people can enjoy their meals with a view of the sea, two cabins, training on business management, finance, marketing, maintenance of the facilities, customer service, and the implementation of the concept of tourism without a trace. Within the scope, is the implementation of a working management structure where people earn a salary for their work, instead of it being a cooperative where everybody splits earnings equally, independent of what they’ve contributed. Several community members will be taken to a few tourist destinations (good and bad) so they can experience what being a tourist really is. A master contractor will be hired, but most of the construction work will be done by the community so they are prepared to maintain it in the future. We won’t know until June if the project is approved, and assuming it is, will not see any money until September. We are also looking at other funding options (plan B).
Max and I are super excited about this project, so far it has been a great learning experience and there is so much learning ahead. There are no guarantees that this project will be any better than the others we’ve seen, but we are trying our dammed best.

A Different Ballpark

We signed up to teach basic computer lessons to kids in a local vocational school. I’ve taught computer before and was confident that this would be a fun and easy task. I was wrong. The school where we teach has 8 ‘working’ computers and we have to teach all the students in the whole school over the next year and a half. Five of the computers are Mac’s from the 1970s (I think) and three are PCs. I’ve never used a Mac before. None of the 8 computers works fine. Sometimes they won’t boot. Sometimes the monitors blur. The mice are a joke.

To add to the situation of the bad computers, most of the kids have never even touched a computer before, and a lot of them don’t know how to read (they are 15 or older). Worst of all, they don’t know how to learn. In Honduras, schools teach you to memorize, not to think. They don’t know how to follow directions or how to work on their own. All and all this is one of the hardest things we’ve done. We divided the school into groups of 8 to10. It takes both Max and I to teach one of those groups and at the end of the day we are exhausted. We teach every Friday two groups, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We planned 7 lessons, once a week for each group to learn basic Word and Excel. What I had planned to teach in lesson 1 of Word has taken us 5 weeks (5 lessons). The saddest thing is that I haven’t really seen a lot of progress. They know how to turn on the computer, but they don’t remember how to open Word or how to Copy and Paste without us reminding them in every class. We’ve tried different techniques, different exercises, but haven’t figured out the best way yet. This is one project where we’ll have to re-evaluate how we’re doing things.
Teaching aside, we’ve been working on getting newer, better computers for the school and should have some for May. We got a deal with a Spanish NGO to build a well for the school (they don’t have water) and have been working with the principal to teach him how to get help. We’ve contacted the local Rotary club, presented in front of the richest businessmen in La Ceiba to have them sponsor the school, and even made a video to present a grant program to different organizations. We’ve also secured a contract with the US Armed Forces to help us finish a classroom that was started by a previous PC volunteer.

Production Update

Max has spent the last few months analyzing the production process and cost structure of his counterpart Madera Verde. This meant multiple trips to each of their locations (6 in total) where he documented and timed each step in the process of making several of their furniture items. It also included documenting every item (materials and equipment) used in the process and allocating a cost to it. The study demonstrated that the furniture they sell is under priced by 15%. That explained why the artisans were not being able to build their inventory of wood, maintain their equipment or support their families from the work they do for the foundation.
His recommendation was that prices be increased by 30% (15% to break even and 15% for profit) and the foundation quickly implemented it. There was some original concern that the market would not bare the increased prices, but that hasn’t been the case at all. The orders have continued to come, a lot even from previous customers that paid lower prices in the past, and the artisans couldn’t be happier with their salary increase. Success!!

What’s Been Going On

It’s been a while since our last blog posting - not because we haven’t had anything to write about, but because so much has been going on that we haven’t had time to write about it. I guess that’s a good thing. Another one of our big Peace Corps surprises is that we are actually REALY busy. It’s funny to remember that during training we planned to have three day weekends every week. Busy is good, though, and we are enjoying every minute of it. The next few posting are a recap of what’s been going on at ‘work’.

By the way, I am writing this in the veranda of a wooden cabin while looking at the beautiful crystal clear waters and listening to the soothing sound of the waves in Cayos Cochinos, mixed with the sound of Max’s chatter and laughter with one of our new great friends. They are both lying in hammocks under a three by the ocean. Can we be any more fortunate?