MCC hosts Honduras ride for hope
HONDURAS—On a recent Learning Tour hosted by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), three of us from Kitchener, Ontario and one woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania flew to Honduras to listen, learn, and pray. We toured the work of some of MCC's local partners and joined with 40 or so Hondurans to cycle across the country from the Caribbean Sea in the North to the Pacific Ocean in the south.
The purpose of the "Costa a Costa" ride, which was organized by a Honduran non-profit called Transformemos Honduras (Let's Transform Honduras), was to raise awareness about the need to improve public education.
Each day we rode between 40 and 100 kilometres and stopped in a town square to recognize the city's top elementary school student along with his or her parents and teacher. Youth performed songs and dances from their regions and local politicians spoke about how they were improving education.
Public education is in bad shape in Honduras. To be sure, there are good teachers trying their best to educate students. Then there are others who don't show up or send an unqualified replacement to teach their classes. It doesn't help that governments often delay paying teachers for months on end—sometimes because they don't have the money or because funds have been misappropriated.
Corruption among government officials, police officers, and other citizens is a huge problem—as are gangs, violence, and an active drug trade.
Many business owners in Honduras strive to keep a low profile so that they don't attract the attention of gangs. A fellow cyclist in the Costa a Costa event is a dentist. She took down the signs on her clinic so that organized criminals wouldn't harass her. She gets business by word of mouth. Other Honduran friends own a private school and must pay monthly "war tax" to a gang for protection.
In each city, Carlos Hernandez, the director of Transformemos Honduras, prayed and declared that there was hope. He compared difficulties in the country to the challenges the cyclists were facing and overcoming as they rode 500-plus kilometres up and down the mountains from coast to coast. Hernandez encouraged citizens to work for change despite the hardships.
After the eight-day cycling and awareness-raising event, our group of four from North America visited with MCC partners. We met Xiomara Paz, a worker with an organization that helps impoverished rural people living in squatter villages along the river banks of some larger Honduran cities. She said, "Tell the elders of your church that the work of Christ is being done." Amen to that. I was inspired to meet and cycle alongside Christians working to transform their country in the name of Jesus. With God there is always hope.
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