Here’s former foundation intern extraordinaire, Ashley Fessler, in Honduras.
Today, we have our first guest blogger: Ashley Fessler, a dynamite young woman, who worked with us at the foundation in 2010. Ashley spent the year with us leading much of our local work surrounding America’s First Fair Trade Town, Media, PA. We shared the ups and downs of her year as she waited – sometimes patiently! – for her placement with the Peace Corps. We had our sad goodbyes as she headed off for 27 months in Honduras, but alas, she just returned 15 months early. The Peace Corps closed her program, due to increased violence including the shooting of one of her colleagues. Ashley is regrouping on all levels and job searching. We are here to give her a 5 star recommendation, if you have a social justice job you need filled! Enjoy her post!
Here’s Ashley with Waleska, a friend from her host village.
Well, I would like to start by saying that I am honored to be writing for the official Untours Blog! While beginning the tedious application process for the Peace Corps, I had the pleasure of meeting Hal Taussig and hearing his story. I was so inspired and bursting at the seams with a desire to do something. Without his knowing, Hal concretized my sureness that the Peace Corps was what I wanted to do. But what was I to do in the meantime? Work with Hal and Elizabeth, of course!
My time spent at the Untours Foundation and with Media’s Fair Trade Committee gave me a broad outlook and clear perspective on an array of topics ranging from human and animal rights to the Fair Trade Certification process. I found in my time with these amazing people that everyone has a light and everyone shines in some way or another. The way we can band together for an ultimate goal by using our light was and is something to amaze and inspire. Hal and Elizabeth, of Untours, are two especially “shiny” people. Those two could change the world! And they do! This is inspiration at its finest and I am honored, and consider myself lucky, to have had the opportunity to work with them.
With all of this inspiration and a shiny reflection in my eye, I traveled to the very small community of Corquin, Copan, Honduras in February 2011 to do clean water and sanitation projects. Scared and hesitant at first, it wasn’t easy. And it changed me. I saw people and animals, alike, suffering in ways I had not before experienced. I kept thinking about the fact that I was just in one small geographic area in one very small country. I couldn’t get my mind around ALL of the suffering that was affecting so many worldwide.
I learned quickly in Honduras that getting anything accomplished was going to take a new kind of patience. I arrived with an open mind and soon realized that an open mind wasn’t going to cut it. I needed more. I also learned that what I thought the community would want and need was very different from what it actually wanted or thought it needed. After 3 months of intensive language and technical training, I was under the impression that I would get to my site, assess the situation, acknowledge the problems facing the community, and fix those issues. Ha!
The Peace Corps training taught us the many issues facing the local communities of Honduras concerning clean water and life in general. There are a few surprises here:
- Few communities have any type of water system or purification process.
- Most people use the local water sources to bathe, wash clothes and dishes, and drink thus causing sicknesses and further contamination.
- The water is severely contaminated from coffee pulp run-off and human and animal waste.
It was then that I realized that Fair Trade is and can be such a huge relief and solution for people in societies and communities, where suffering is compounded by the Global North’s demand for coffee and other cash crops. With Fair Trade Certification, farmers are paid to take care of and improve the environment. This is accomplished through education, technical assistance, and fair prices.
Instead, most Honduran coffee farmers experience un-fair trade. They receive low prices, if they can sell their coffee at all. The environmental aspects of their farming are dire. I saw some of these farmers in action, and seeing the practices firsthand will stop you dead in your tracks. The farmers are completely unaware of what they are doing and the effects their actions have on the environment, simply due to lack of education. Without question, they spray their coffee plants with pesticides and – not even the worst part….just wait – after they finish spraying their plants, they walk to the local water sources and rinse out their chemical containers. Yes, you read correctly. They actually put chemicals IN their water sources!
An even more common result of un-fair trade coffee production is the coffee pulp run-off. Coffee is a little red berry and inside lays the coffee bean that needs to be dried and roasted. Before the drying and roasting happens, the red, pulpy, and fruity part on the outside is removed. If you are part of a Fair trade Certified coffee cooperative, you must employ an environmentally friendly pulp disposal system. For ALL of those farmers that aren’t certified, disposal of the pulp means dumping it in the local water sources. This is HORRIBLE on so many levels. This method of disposal not only highly and dangerously contaminates the water; it also gives it a dreadful smell and taste. They call this “aguas negras” meaning “black waters.”
A large percentage of Honduran land is devoted to coffee farms, which equals lots of water contamination. The value of educated consumers in the Global North is critical. We need consumers, who know that their purchases of Fair Trade Certified coffee and other products equal no water contamination and thus fewer sicknesses and deaths. Everyone wins with Fair Trade, including the earth.
Without Fair Trade or self-reliant alternatives to cash cropping throughout most of Honduras, people are understandably desperate. It is no wonder that the drug war that stretches from Colombia to Mexico is attracting many Hondurans since it is quick money – if you stay alive. Gangs and drugs are everywhere along with rising levels of violence that resulted in the shooting of a colleague of mine and the driving out of the Peace Corps.
Having to leave Honduras for these reasons with only 36 hours notice wasn’t easy. I feel as though my time was cut far too short and the work that I wanted to continue was abruptly ended. Although my time there has, sadly, ended, I know that I can continue to support the people there and all over the world with my purchases here.
I’ve worked and lived with Hondurans and have made lasting relationships. I was able to see how directly we affect the lives of others with our purchases. Surprisingly, we affect those who live on the darker roasted side of the coffee bean the most. By supporting Fair Trade Farmers all over the world, we directly help those people find their light and shine. That’s what’s great about us as a people; we all shine in our own way and if we use our light to shine together we can actually make a change and make the world a brighter place for all.
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” Henry Miller