| Honduras
Newsletter Sixteen October 28, 2005 Dear Friends, Several weeks ago, I met with a group of thirty youth leaders in la Ceiba, a city on the northern Caribbean coast to talk about the natural environment. We were, of course, giddy to be together in la Ceiba, city of Reggaeton, baleadas and homemade flour tortillas, the Caribbean, and endless dancing. We practically danced off the bus. For many of the youth, although they live within 75 miles of the sea, it was their first time to see or touch the ocean. We paraded to the beach the first morning outside of the retreat center for our morning devotion and upon opening the door, were confronted with the glorious white sand and turquoise waters littered with trash. And I mean garbage. People throw the trash into the ravines in communities like the San Judas and everything floats down into the sea. The sea throws what she doesn’t want back onto the beach: pop bottles, cans, old shoes, diapers, rusted kitchen appliances and glass. It was like standing in this huge, infected scab on the earth’s surface. We fell silent for a minute and then sprung into action clearing a place for our worship. We managed to clear a small half circle of sand and there in the midst of the garbage and the polluted turquoise water, called the God that heals into our midst. We talked a lot about civic pride among the youth. Perhaps I take it for granted that it was pounded into my head that I was never to throw my pop can out the car window or my candy wrapper in the river. We were talking with 20 year olds that had never had any formal environmental education in their lives. Many parts of this type of environmental education directly conflict with cultural norms. “A tin can that you throw to the ground,” we said, “takes 200-500 years to decompose.” They eyed us suspiciously. “Erosion. Has anyone ever heard this word before? You know when a farmer clears a little piece of the forest and plants beans or coffee, right?” They’re nodding their heads. “Well, what happens,” my friend Miguel, the presenter, asks, “a few years down the road? Does the farmer keep using this land over and over for many years?” “No,” says Keyra. “After a few years, the land has nothing left to give.” “And what does that farmer do,” Miguel prods. “He moves up the mountain. What I mean is that he clears more land.” After talking about erosion for a while and the problem of slash and burn farming techniques, Hector raises his hand and says, “But, my dad, he does that. He clears land because he plants coffee up on the mountain. And what is he supposed to do because he has to earn a living?” Undoubtedly, the issues are complicated and emotional. In this same community where Hector lives, they were almost entirely without water for four months of the year. The farmers need to earn a living and the people need to eat, but as the communities destroy the cloud forests, they are also destroying their watersheds. Every year, Honduras loses thousands of acres of forest. Conservatively, this translates to about a tree a second. Timber: mahogany, cedar and pine are harvested by international corporations, illegally harvested, or stolen. Later in the afternoon, we gathered together as a group, and after talking seriously about who had stolen Panchita’s teddy bear and who had lost the keys to the girls room last night, we grabbed over fifty trees and hit the beach, the same beach we had cleared that morning for the devotional. We set off in a crazy parade with the trees walking down the beach west out of the city. We set off; compelled by Christ, to care for the earth we’ve been given. We passed heaps of black trash bags covered with flies, an old rusted taxi and rusting refrigerators. We walked by the city sewage treatment and then climbed over some very suspicious looking pipes leaving the same treatment plant. I weakly asked Miguel what was flowing out of the pipes into the sea. He smiled grimly, “don’t worry,” he said, “at least they treat it before they dump it.” After walking for a good half hour, we arrived at a small burned piece of land off the beach. We walked in and began planting. We left our blessing with the fifty new trees and the local youth promised to return and care for the seedlings we had sown. The trash and the beach and the stench were almost completely hopeless. But not completely. The God of Life just will not give up. Certainly, the only promising things were the thirty youth, laughing and talking softly walking down the beach. Out of the darkness shines a light… Please remember in your prayers those that fight for the healing of the natural environment here in Honduras, and pray that the youth might learn to care about and take ownership of this environmental crisis. With hope, Lindsay Lindsay Mack Iglesia Cristiana Luterana de Honduras Apartado Postal 2861 Tegucigalpa M.D.C. Honduras, C.A. |