La Vida Idealist

Refreshed by a rare rain, Tegucigalpa felt bright and peaceful yesterday morning.  The peace was shattered, though, when a coworker walked through the door and announced that she had been robbed at knifepoint. As she retold the story I marveled at her courage, at her luck in getting away unscathed, and at the unperturbed reactions of everyone else in the office.  Turns out, most of them have also been held up by assailants wielding knives or guns or even acid.  This is the reality in most Honduran cities.  To dwell on the dangers would be morbidly dramatic, but it would be unwise to ignore the very real security threats.

Tegucigalpa

My strategy to stay safe without becoming paranoid has been to follow the example of street-smart locals.  I leave the house carrying only the necessities, and minimal amounts of cash.  When I go to visit clients in particularly dangerous neighborhoods, I contact them beforehand and ask to meet in a more neutral zone.  When I’m scoping out a new bus route I have someone accompany me until I get to know the driver and a few other passengers.  Unless in a car I do not leave the house after dark, and I do not walk around alone.

As a woman accustomed to roaming around by herself, surrendering my liberty of movement has been difficult.  Lacking independence, I have urged myself to create strong relationships here, and found that these relationships are also a great safeguard.  It’s at first unintuitive that the society that hides behind double-bolted doors is made up of individuals who throw open their lives to me during our interviews.  But I make my visits with loan officers, who spend years developing relationships with their clients.  I feel lucky to be intimately trusted-by-association, and also greeted at the door with cheek kisses, and bid goodbye with bear hugs and blessings.

These encounters inspire my belief that small-scale development initiatives, by tapping into the strength of personal relationships, are necessary catalysts of change in countries like Honduras, where nobody trusts the government to initiate responsive and representative reform.  I keep telling myself that change, like building trust, happens slowly.  But I am shocked that Hondurans live their lives at a constant state of red-alert, and the consensus here is that something definitive needs to happen ya to relieve this burden.  As the tension builds, we wait to see what that “something” is …

Kati Mayfield is currently a Kiva Fellow with Prism Honduras. For more about other Kiva Fellow’s experiences, check out entries by La Vida Idealist bloggers Meg Gray, Rob Packer, Sheethal Shobowale and Suzy Marinkovich.

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