highway of gold

Last week i found an interesting article in the newspaper. The headline reads: "The highway of gold is in Western Honduras."

Ha! I almost laughed out loud. If you have ever been to Santa Rosa by way of San Pedro (or from any direction for that matter) you know that the road is terrible. I put it in the top 5 worst highways in Honduras for most potholes and lowest average speed (due to terrible holes and curves).  It is part of the Pan-American highway that connects El Salvador to Honduras and thousands of trucks use it each day to transport goods.

According to this article, a social audit revealed that in the last 6 years, the state has invested around 490.2 million Lempiras in "maintaining" (and I use that word loosely) this destroyed artery of Honduras. That is a staggering 24.5 million dollars from a government that is "broke"-- and for a highway that is STILL horrendous. The audit states that 57.1% was for routine maintenance, 28.5% for emergency maintenance, 12.3% in emergency attention (whatever that is?), 0.6% in signage (usually to say “warning: failures in the road”) and 0.5% in studies and designs.

What I find interesting is that this article quotes someone talking about how all these repairs to the highway are like painting a wall without first patching the holes. They are not addressing the root problems of all the potholes and so it’s a continual “surface treatment” to deeper problems in the underlying road structure.

As far as I'm concerned, that’s an analogy for an overall problem that the article won’t even touch—the underlying corruption that probably diverted a huge amount of these funds to the pockets of politicians and left very little for actual repairs. And this article was just like that money: not addressing the root causes of such a problem and glossing over the issue of corruption that weakens the structure of the whole house.

It is frustrating to see such numbers and see so few results in the actual highway itself. Unfortunately, this is not the only issue that is affected by corruption. It's part of every project, in every government ministry, and in every local municipality too. How sad when even the journalists are too afraid to speak out against it. Articles like this should be voicing the frustration and outrage of such a terrible highway that should be "lined with gold." Instead, it offers little more than another layer of paint to cover the crumbling house.

rain, rain, go away...

I'm guessing not to much news from Latin America makes it's way up north...well, let's be honest, I don't even have good access to regional news where I am either!

The past few weeks have been rather scary as heavy rains caused by a tropical depression have been hammering Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. There are a lot of roads and bridges that are out of commission, mudslides and flooding. Transportation is becoming increasingly complicated, and many areas are under a state of emergency as the rains continue.

For Honduras, and I think most of this region, it is rainy season right now, but the persistent rains and cold front  of the past several weeks has been more intense than what is normal for October.

CNN.com reports that at least 60 people (though I would guess it may actually be higher than that) have died due to flooding of rivers and the collapse of their homes.

Here is a brief article I found if you you want to read a little bit more.

Being that I am good friends with MCC's Regional Disaster Coordinators for Latin America, I know that they are discussing next steps for helping with the situation, mostly in El Salvador and Guatemala. This could include material resource aid (like health kits or canned meat) but will likely be more long-term projects to help with the rebuilding of homes when the flooding recedes and mud can dry up.

Thankfully where I live it hasn't been too bad. We are always having rain, and some roads to rural communities where we go for work aren't the best, but we have been blessed to not have problems so far. The southern part of Honduras has been hardest hit, and we are concerned about an MCC Honduras partner in Choluteca that has experienced a lot of loss and damage.

Please remember to pray for the people in these countries and that the rains would soon move on. You can also be praying for MCC and wisdom in how we help respond to the ever increasing needs in these 3 countries.