Island Paradise Day 12

Things really are different in the developing world. From a distance, we do not understand why things are the way they are, but when you spend time in the developing world, you hear many stories, and see how life is lived here, and after a while you totally begin to understand why certain things happen the way they do. Take violent crime, for example. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. It is very poor, and violent crime is quite high. Well I am beginning to understand why…

In Honduras, if someone commits a crime against you, and you want to prosecute, it is YOUR responsibility to pay for the culprit’s lawyer, pay for his food and accommodation in jail, and pay for the trial. All of this could cost thousands of dollars, and has, in fact, bankrupted many people who wanted to see justice. On the other hand, you can hire someone to wack the culprits for $1000! Now I am not in favour of vigilante justice, however, in a country that is so poor that the government cannot (or will not) pay for public prosecution, you can almost understand why so many people are getting wacked!

In fact, when we see how many criminals there are in Canada that are living better on the government coffers in prison than many low income seniors, you start to think that maybe they are on to something in Honduras. (I don’t really mean that, murder is not the answer) but, it does put the “violent crime” statistic into perspective. What are these poor people to do? They either let criminals get away with everything because they cannot afford to prosecute, or they hire a vigilante. I get it.

Education is very limited in Honduras. Children are only required to attend through the fifth grade. The caretaker of this property, Mario, has a daughter named Cindy. Cindy is a teenager, and has not been in school in years. She spends all day here on the beach, wandering around, helping her parents, staring at her cell phone. It is very sad. Apparently the owner of the property here offered to pay to send Cindy to school, because she is quite bright, but her parents refused.

Today we went by boat with our neighbours to go snorkel at another location (more on that later) and we then stopped off at Pigeon Cay to buy some fish and eat lunch.

There we talked to an old timer name Mr. Herman. Mr. Herman is 71, and spent an hour telling us his story…married a 14 year old girl, and two days later went off to serve on a shipping freighter for 14 months, came home for 2 days, then left for 16 months. He also served in the Honduran army during the war with El Salvador. . .(I know – I did not know there was a war between them either. Apparently it was short lived and tipped off by a soccer match – go figure!) Anyway, he said he was offered to go train at West Point in the U.S. but turned it down because he hardly knew his wife and wanted to go home. When he was young, her said his father and he would row over to Cayos Cochinos (20 kilometers away!) to fish for lobster then turn around and row back. It took 20 hours to get there! Can you imagine 20 hours of non stop rowing?

It is a tough life these people live. Ethel, the woman who sold us the fish, could barely walk and wore a back brace, yet she carried our fish and a bucket of water to the cleaning table and expertly filleted our fish: six big eyed long tails – and man, did they have big eyes! Finally, fresh fish, caught this morning. I am so happy. Who knew it would be so hard to get fish on an island?