The guns are scary, but it's the roads that'll kill you

Jody Paterson

A Closer Look

Before we left Canada in January, Cuso International asked us to watch a 90-minute video presentation on health concerns put together by Dr. Mark Wise, Cuso's doctor in residence.

I'll walk this stretch, thanks

He listed what seemed like a hundred different health problems to watch out for in our international placements, from malaria and dengue fever to chagas and rabid dogs.

He ended it with a humorous little lecture noting that even if we couldn't be bothered to wear mosquito repellent - even if we insisted on patting stray dogs -  at the very least we should always use a seatbelt when riding in a vehicle, because car accidents are by far the most common bad things to happen to Cuso volunteers.

I think back on his advice with a rueful smile whenever I'm jouncing along any of the truly terrible roads in Honduras. If only it were that easy, Dr. Wise.

Sure, I do up my seatbelt if I happen to be sitting in the front seat of somebody's vehicle. But I don't think I've been in a back seat yet that had a functioning seatbelt. Nor are there seatbelts in the back of a pickup truck, which is where I've ended up sitting a striking number of times when heading off on some adventure with my co-workers at the Comision de Accion Social Menonita.

And a few days ago as we crept over an alarmingly fragile sliver of road, undercut to the point of imminent collapse by the vast quantities of rainwater that had been eating away at it for what must have been a dozen rainy seasons, I wondered whether a seatbelt would actually be a help or a hindrance were the road to give way right at that moment and send us tumbling into the ravine below.

Seatbelts are a good thing in a Canada/U.S. kind of  country, where the most likely thing to happen to you on the road is that you smash into another car.

Ah, but there are many more things besides collisions to worry about on a Honduras road - from car-eating potholes flipping you sideways to giant sinkholes opening under your wheels. There are skinny mountain roads so steep that even a 4x4's tires spin helplessly in the mud when the rains come, and roads that are really just river beds that surge to life in a single downpour.

The dirt roads of Honduras aren't just rutted, they're gouged, two feet deep in places and impossible to negotiate. And it's not like you can just make a point of avoiding the dirt roads: 80 per cent of the country's 13,600 kilometres of roads are unpaved, and for the most part profoundly neglected.

Read more here.