This reading week I went to a sunny destination. Well, sort of.
Honduras is situated around fifteen degrees latitude north, between Guatemala and El Salvador to the west and Nicaragua to the south and east, so the average high for February is a pretty nice 27 degrees Celsius. But that is not why I visited the village of San Rafael along with twelve other students from U of T and York. We spent our reading week in this rural community in southwestern Honduras of about 2000 residents as part of a week long volunteer program called Alternative Breaks, co-organized by Hillel, the organization for Jewish campus life, and the American Jewish World Service. The AJWS is a New York-based non-profit organization which helps alleviate poverty, hunger, and disease around the world regardless of the race, religion, or nationality of those in need.
Although we had done our homework prior to the trip by researching and discussing the situation in the country, which is lapped by the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea, nothing had really prepared us for the reality we encountered when we arrived in Tegucigalpa, the capital. Reading about poverty and unequal wealth distribution is one thing; seeing it first hand is completely different.
Enormous mansions have as their neighbours horrible slums whose residents solicit pennies in the streets. This bizarre scene arises largely because of growing urbanization creating a new class of “city-slaves”: constrained to their sweatshops, yet not making enough to qualify as a living.
What was really different from my expectations was the fact that we are not that different from the people of San Rafael at all. Yes, we might be concerned with essays, exams, and paying off our OSAP debts, and their worries, on the other hand, consist of providing for their next meal. But on a deeper level, I saw that these differences do not negate the values that we have in common: we all dream of a better future for our children, we all value education and the support that family members provide to each other, and we all understand the universal language of a smile.
Our task, as citizens of the developed world, is to make sure that the commonalities that we share with the people of San Rafael, and all people of the developing world, never change. But as long as people are forced to struggle without running water or electricity, human values that people hold dear cannot help but break down and deteriorate.
Soon, small farmers all across Honduras will have to face the harsh reality of competing with US subsidized corps under the recently ratified Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. The implications that stem from this agreement are dangerous as the small farmer will probably get less and less for his crops as a result, leading, in turn, to more poverty and hunger.
We at U of T have the opportunity to make human values and life worth more. Being more aware of our consumption patterns and choosing fair-trade products are a couple of examples of how our daily choices will affect the lives of people all around the globe. The new Sustainability Office at this university is a great place to start making changes. We must make sure that the mandate of the new office will eventually expand to be able to make choices on the institutional level to bring the issue of fair trade to the fore.
You may think that the origin of the next cup of coffee you buy does not matter that much, but it could actually bring a great amount of change to the children of the farmers of San Rafael. Hopefully, somewhere in between studying grammar and math in the new school that we helped build for them, one of the future leaders of Honduras will ponder the importance of giving back to one’s community, and how her actions can influence people worldwide.
