Connecting to the World

(Note: This posting was written over a month ago, but has not been posted until now.)

Santa Maria del Carbón is one of the communities that MaderaVerde works with, and is one of the few communities where the remaining Pech Indians live. There has never been electricity or telephone service there, and hurricanes Alpha, Beta and Gamma washed away their water system, which was constructed only early last year. Like many such communities here in Honduras, they looked to the government to help them rise above their current circumstances. So, about six months ago, in somewhat of a strange move, the Honduran government decided to build a computer learning center there. Seeing the offer as better than nothing, MaderaVerde volunteered to be the parent organization for the project. This meant that they would help the community members fill out the proper paperwork, and provide planning and training a needed. Sure enough, in November, four laptops, a PC, a printer, a scanner, a digital camera, a 32” TV, a DVD player, furniture, and full network cabling arrived. All of this equipment, I might add, is top-of-the-line and brand new. Since, as I mentioned before, the community never has had electricity, they also installed seven solar panels, 21 batteries, low-power electric lights throughout the building, and other solar power equipment in order to run the machines. The hurricanes and elections temporarily postponed the final phase of the project, which is to install high-speed satellite internet. The dish is already installed, and all that remains to do is bring the router from Tegucigalpa. Also, as an unexpected bonus, the national phone company has installed a radio-based telephone in the center as well.

Since I know something about computers, MaderaVerde took me out to the community (a three hour trip in a four-wheel drive vehicle) to check out the new equipment. I helped them unpack the equipment and plug it in. They asked me hundreds of questions about what each device was for, and how to use it. I showed them that with the press of a button, they could use their scanner and printer to make photo-copies (thanks to nifty integration of Hewlett-Packard’s equipment). I explained to them that if they set the administrator password on the laptops to something new and then forget the password, then the laptop is useless, which came up because they had already done that with one machine (I’ll be re-installing Windows on my next trip). I showed them that they can use Excel to keep track of calls made on their new phone and how much each customer pays.

They also showed me what they had been up to. Their telephone was a huge success. Since it is the only one within a two hour bus ride, there was always a line to use it. The price is 3 Lempira (15 cents) per minute for national calls, and 9 Lempira (45 cents) to call the U.S., which might seem a bit steep but is not so bad for calls made through Honduras’ national phone company (a monopoly). Besides the phone, they had already put the TV and DVD player to use. They had begun screening movies that a community member had bought in the city on one of his trips, and they were charging admission. Titles include, Willow, Million Dollar Baby, Windtalkers, Doom, Zorro, a Bruce Lee flick, three Jean Claude Van Dam films, three Steven Segal films, a DVD containing 50 reggaeton videos, and my favorite: Downfall, a biopic about the final days of Hitler.

If you put all of this in perspective, within a period of three months, El Carbón has turned on their first electric light, made their first telephone call, turned on their first television set (leading to opening their first movie theatre), used their first computer, and soon will send their first email and browse their first webpage. Of course, they still drink water from and bathe in dirty streams that run through town. That aside, it will be interesting to see what happens to this previously isolated ethnic community now that they can communicate with the outside world.