Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Rainy Day Good News

The Rainy Day Good News

As I'm fond of hearing John Lennon say around this time of year, another year is over and a new one just begun. Aside from being a fan of the man’s music, I like the song because it reminds me to begin the new year with a sense of optimism. This time around it is particularly nice to hear those words – new year. While I am going to talk politics for a brief moment, don’t worry, this isn’t destined to be another exposé on the political goings on of Honduras. Suffice it to say that last year was a pretty miserable year for almost all of Honduras (a perfect storm of political and economic upheaval that went a long way toward paralyzing the country) and the prospect of starting over again, albeit largely in a symbolic sense, is encouraging.

Better yet, there are also practical gains to be made in the near future. First of all, a new president will take office by the end of January, helping reestablish many economic and diplomatic ties that were severed between Honduras and other nations in the wake of the June 28th coup. The year 2010 will also bring Honduras its first birth in the World Cup since 1982. For a country this soccer crazed, qualifying for the World Cup is always a big deal, but this year’s Cup promises to be an event of national importance with few parallels in the nation’s history given the timing; soccer is the common man’s politics, leaving no room for empty public posturing, back room reciprocity, reneging on promises or any of the other man-inflicted plagues Honduras knows with such painful intimacy. Nope, in soccer you just go out and play, and if you’re corrupt, foolish or lazy and happen to be on Honduras’ national team, tens of thousands of your peers will let you know of their disapproval, immediately. So there you have it – 2010 will be a better year for Honduras, and hopefully one in which the common man’s politics will rule the roost. It'd be about time.

Today, however, is not a good day for soccer as it has already rained quite a bit. Not the deluge, life silencing by relentlessly pounding the tin roof sort of storm we often get here, but rather a drawn out, yet gentle storm. Yesterday was much the same. In fact, we decided it prudent to pull out our botas de goma (gum boots, anyone?) to head to the local outdoor market where we purchased fruits and vegetables for the week ahead. Prior to yesterday the last time we’d donned our gum boots, or for that matter had any reason to, was about a year ago at the close of the last rainy season. This year’s rainy season has not been particularly rainy. In fact, being an el niño year, the rain fall has been so sparse that during the past few months national and local leaders alike have begun to worry about an impending and potentially devastating drought.

The last prediction I read in one of Honduras’ national papers was that as of March a drought could be gripping large swaths of the country and that as of, well, now (January), some of the more marginalized neighborhoods in the capital city of Tegucigalpa could have such limited access to water so as to make them uninhabitable, which is a grim omen considering how little water they often get by with. It's always healthy to take the news here with a grain of salt (sensationalistic headlines that are refuted days, if not hours later, are not uncommon) but I do think there’s great cause for concern. One journalist recently compared the drought’s potential impact with that of Hurricane Mitch, claiming this drought could be the greatest natural hazard to affect the country since ´98 when Mitch ravaged all of Honduras and set some areas back on the order of decades. Other than being judicious with our personal water consumption (the norm in most households), there’s not much more to do on this front other than to do what humans have done for eons when they need rain – crane our necks to the sky and hope that clouds appear and that those clouds carry rain. There’s been some talk about the UN chipping in with aid (and let’s hope it's fruitful), but in less they’re proposing the start of a revolutionary cloud seeding program, I'll mostly just keep my neck craned and hope that the coming days bring more rainy day good news.