Taking Apples To The Bank in San Pedro Sula

One day I joined a few of the fine folks from the Yo Quiero Ser orphanage on one of their occasional excursions to what is known as "the bank" in San Pedro Sula. Unlike the expensive riverfront homes on the Elbow River in Calgary, in this part of the world the slums are often located along a river bank. This way, the river provides a source of water, a laundry facility, and a toilet for those without plumbing.

We loaded up Patricia's pickup truck with green-bags full of second-hand clothing, packages of rice and beans, and four cases of Washington State apples. Apples are rare and expensive in Central America since they come from so far away. They are often only seen at Christmas time and usually only by those with the means to purchase them.

After a short drive to this, the poorest part of the city, we began to cruise through the shacks and makeshift buildings that line the bank's quiet, hot, dusty road. Once we had slowed to a crawl and I had begun to wonder who we were there to help, the street erupted in a flurry of running kids chasing our little truck. My rough estimate was that each 'house' contributed 6-8 children to this crazy street scene.

We handed out a couple of hundred apples in no time, often noting that the more entrepreneurial of the pleading kids had managed to already stuff a couple of them in their pockets. At that point they began to explain that further apples were for their mothers, fathers, grandparents, baby sisters, cousins, etc. We in the back of the truck lightheartedly teased them that they seemed to have many mothers before handing over another apple to their laughter.

We also handed out the clothing, trying to match the gender and size of the articles to those whose hands were outstretched as best as we could in the hot, sweaty chaos. More often than not we tried to hand the clothing, rice, and beans to the mothers who approached us.

The school

The church

New home construction

A short drive away, outside of San Pedro Sula in a rural area, we visited the home of someone who was building a new home of mud and bamboo. Patricia was assisting with the construction of the roof. These mud homes have a life expectancy of approximately eight years, at which point a new one needs to be constructed.

Homes and whole neighbourhoods of this type of construction are common in Honduras.

The original one-room house housing a family of four, now eight years old

The kitchen

The toilet

Laundry facilities

One of two beds

The new house, almost ready for its roof

The mud pit that the family's two children were ferrying the wall material from

Electrical 'system'

Wall detail

Yo quiero ser .....

Of all the things I have experienced in Honduras so far, by far the most touching have been my three visits to "Yo quiero ser ..." What a wonderful place with a great mission.

Five years ago, a Swiss teacher named Patricia moved to Honduras because she wanted to spend her life making an impact in children's lives. Honduras, sadly, provided the biggest opportunity for her to do this. Almost 80% of Hondurans live below the international poverty line with 43% of those living in extreme poverty. In the end, malnourished children total about one million.

Now, with the help of a few Hondurans and the support of some friends back home, she is at once a mother, teacher, provider, protector and friend to 35 kids from infants to 15 years old in an orphanage for street kids. And she's currently building one more cinder-block room to accommodate another three abandoned infants who arrive next month.

Patricia's halo is slightly off-camera, and you
can't see her wings from this angle.

As Patricia explains on her website, "The name "Yo quiero ser ..." (I want to be ...) has a direct relationship with the central guiding principle of the project: children have dreams. They hope that their dreams will be fulfilled one day. Children also have ideals, and idols who they like to imitate. With this in mind they say, "I want to be, I want to be ...". Many children here have lost their opportunity to be anything because of their past, but still hope for the fulfillment of their dreams. "Yo quiero ser ..." wants to give them hope, faith in life again, and an opportunity to be whatever they want to be." (a heads-up: the website is in Swiss-German, but a quick cut-and-paste in Google Translate will fix that right up for you)

All have come from dismal beginnings. Parent-less and living on the streets, malnourished, sick, diseased, abused, full of worms, near death, one with symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome including a curved spine .... take your pick. The only option open to them previously was likely an early death, early prostitution leading to kids of their own, or to join the estimated 100,000 other violent gang members living in a country of only 8 million.


Flash forward to the best part of "Yo quiero ser ..." 

Carlos

When you arrive as a stranger in their walled compound in a not-so-nice part of town, the kids surround the car. When you get out, they line up with huge smiles to hug you, kiss you, say "ola!", and grab your hands. Oh the hands. They always grab your hands. If you spend an hour there, rare is it that you don't have a little hand in each of your hands dragging you around to show you things, one hugging your leg, maybe carrying one in your arms. One in particular will naturally adopt you. It's a different one for every visitor but one will pick you. Carlos picked me.

 
















From terrible beginnings they have become the nicest, most polite, friendliest children I've ever met. Patricia and her staff have poured love into them, and at least double that pours out of them. Somehow, considering their recent circumstances, there is no fear or shyness, just confidence and playful kid-ness.

They spend their days more or less like Canadian kids - learning to survive in the world. Their rooms and closets are spotless. They have chores - washing clothes, washing dishes, manning the razor-wired gate and directing traffic when visitors arrive, setting and cleaning tables at meal times. All of this they do with the same enthusiasm and sense of responsibility as they show in the classroom and when doing their homework. It's beautiful to see them care and look out for each other.

Sometimes Patricia piles them into a van to go on excursions, some of which are to help other kids less fortunate than themselves. Sometimes they just go to the waterpark to play. On Sundays, some parents come by to visit the kids they can no longer care for.


If you ever want to renew your hope in what seems like a bleak world some days, this would be the place to start. You walk away changed, eager to help, and with the ability to see what kind of a community it is possible to create with very little else but love and looking out for each other.

That's a great lesson to (re)learn.

The Canada flag tattoo line-up

Gecko

My host, Désirée, was telling me that everyone working at the Copantl Hotel has a nickname and that the nicknames are decided very quickly .... sometimes within minutes of a new employee arriving. 

This, of course, led me to wonder what mine was. So, at a supervisor meeting/training session that we set up this week, I asked them. They didn't want to tell me but, it turns out, I am "Gecko".

The gecko isn't native to these parts, but in 1978 it was introduced to Honduras as a natural pesticide in the banana plantations. They can eat a lot of bugs. So, calling me Gecko was the staff's way of saying that, while I am not native to Honduras, they see my working here as a benefit.

I like that.

First, let's stop calling it the "3rd world"

Wikipedia tells us (so you can be damn sure it's true!) that the term "third-world" was created during the cold war to classify countries not aligned with capitalism or NATO.
Somehow, someway, in the interim it has taken on a more pejorative, distasteful connotation beyond simply describing a developing nation. Be honest ... what do you think of when you hear the term?

Sure, we can rank countries by NASDAQ Index, GDP, poverty levels, drug addiction, murders, or how many people are left handed or can touch their nose with their tongue for that matter. Any quantitative data will do. But by ranking something third when there are only three categories, there is the impression that a terminal, hopeless situation exists.

(And for the record, similarly, if I ever hear someone call something "classy", my inner dialogue is already asking whether said thing is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th class. This applies to the self-conscious Canadian habit of labeling Canadian things "world-class". Stop it. Just know yourself that it is good, ok?)

I love spending time in places such as Cuba, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the like - places that richer nations typically rank 3rd out of 3. One of the best reasons is that it multiplies my level of appreciation for my life in Canada and the astronomical riches that my middle class life brings. Middle class riches that a lot of folks here cannot even begin to imagine let alone aspire to.

But a better reason is because I am reminded far more often of the things that Canada's progression into a 1st-world country has left behind. What can Canadians, myself included, learn from Honduras?

Family values
Typically, Sunday is family day in Honduras. Many I have spoken to give me a puzzled look when I ask if they plan anything else on Sundays instead of packing up the family and going to their parents' house. What is the retirement plan of the elderly? It's that the kids will provide. Shove them in an old folks' home? Not on your life.



Food
Maybe the selection is more limited here than back home, but maybe our selection back home is too large. Foods are eaten in-season here. (admission: the growing season is 365 days long) Fruits and vegetables are picked ripe and served ripe, right away. If it wasn't frowned upon in the hotel's La Posada Restaurante, I'd take my shirt off to eat my breakfast papaya and pineapple  they're so damn soft, juicy and sweet. Mostly things are farmed on small landholdings with more manure and less chemicals. My first inspection of the refrigerators of the Copantl Hotel had me drooling as I saw box after box of produce that, in the rare case they didn't say Honduras on them, said Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Costa Rica. All are within several hours of Honduras by road. Everything shipped ripe. Nothing shipped green and underdeveloped.

The Grin Factor
My research is loose and subjective on this one, but Hondurans smile more. (and Cubans smile more than anyone) Why? I think it's less stress, more family, and a less-fiercely competitive social environment. Are they less competitive and ambitious than Canadians? Perhaps, that's not for me to say. But even if they are, isn't smiling a damned good measure of a life in the process of being well-lived?


MacGyverism
If something breaks in Honduras, they do like we do in Canada - they replace it. The difference is that the replacement here is the repaired original item. The Copantl has a small, nearby 'boneyard' of furniture, kitchen equipment, and odds and ends from the hotel that no longer function. A handful of tradesmen bring these things back to life and bring them back into the hotel instead of consuming a new replacement product. Yesterday I had a discussion with Executive Chef Wilmer while standing over a busted-down, ancient convection oven that looked ready for the crusher. He's going to turn it into a banquet warming oven or possibly a smoker. Hondurans are famous for this resourcefulness. They have to be.


So let's stop ranking countries with the derogatory term "3rd-world". We do them a disservice, and we do even less for their self-esteem. The terms "better" and "worse" are opinions, nothing more or less, and we each have one of those. Life is far more qualitative than quantitative. This goes for calling richer nations 1st-world too. I'm told many Hondurans have been moving back from the United States of late due to life being too tough there.

Maybe I'll start my own index called the Papaya Index. While of course I am looking forward to being back in my home and native land in a couple of weeks, I'm not looking forward to being back in a Papaya Index 3rd-world country.

San Pedro Sula, Honduras

For the past week I've been in Honduras. This is my second CESO assignment in as many years and the second one to Honduras. A year ago I spent a couple of weeks in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

The plan this time? To spend three weeks working with the food & beverage department at Copantl Hotel & Suites in the city of San Pedro Sula in the northern part of the country. This 190 room hotel sits close-by the international brands of Intercontinental, Hilton and Holiday Inn in a town of 700,000 people, but is decidedly Honduran in flavour and ownership. San Pedro's international airport is the jumping off point for the nearby Caribbean coast and Hondura's Bay Islands including the most famous, Roatan. It is also a thriving centre of the textile and other industries and the nearest city to the stupendous Mayan ruins at Copan (more about that later).

My host here, Food & Beverage Manager Désirée Ammann, already has the place running like a fine watch from her native Switzerland. With a solid hospitality management background from the Schweizerische Hotelfachschule in Luzern, she has guided the two restaurants, one bar, and considerable catering operation through three ownerships in nine years. And, while there is always something to work on in this biz of ours, the standard response to my many questions is always along the lines of "yeah ..... we do that already" or "yeah ..... we tried that and it didn't work too well". Very often it is "that doesn't work in Honduras because ...... ". My contribution will be with the quality of front-of-house service and I will likely spend some time in their kitchen offering-up some suggestions and ideas there.

If I think back far enough, I believe I got into this CESO gig thinking that I could help fix broken things. That has neither been the case here so far, nor with Aparthotel Guijarros in Tegucigalpa last year. 

It's more a case of justifying my existence.

Time to roll up the sleeves ..........

Charlie

I met Charlie in late 1995 in Barcelona. 

We were attending the annual Relais & Châteaux Congress for that year - me as General Manager of Hastings House Country Inn on Saltspring Island and Charlie as a new Relais Gourmand inductee that year with his eight year old Chicago restaurant. At the opening reception I introduced myself to he and his wife Lynn, telling him how much I admired his philosophy, his approach and his book. He invited me to hang out with them as they were finding it challenging that virtually nobody at the Congress spoke English. That offer didn't require much thought on my part. Had I been a young hockey player at the time and Gretzky had asked me to hang with him, I 'm sure the feeling would have been comparable.

This is where my exposure to the professional drive, talent and generosity of Charlie Trotter began. Over the subsequent five days we spent a great deal of time together eating, drinking, talking and enjoying conference seminars and excursions. On day-three he asked me to join him on a trip to Codorníu winery just outside of Barcelona. I explained that the excursion was for Relais Gourmand members only, not Relais & Châteaux properties. Once he had pulled few strings we were on the bus to the well-known cava producer. 

Lunch at Codorníu that day was memorable. The framed menu is the only menu hanging in my office at SAIT. Other than reading from that menu I can't begin to tell you about the many dishes we ate and wines that we drank that afternoon. What I can recall is that our table of eight included Charlie, friend/ex-boss Michel Troisgros, Georges Blanc, Michel Roux, Roger Vergé, Paul Bocuse and Dominique Loiseau, wife of chef Bernard Loiseau. My time was split between eavesdropping and translating the musings of legendary chefs for Charlie.

A few months later I was honoured to be the first Canadian chef invited to prepare a dinner at the James Beard House in New York. Charlie, being deeply involved in all things James Beard stepped forward and offered his assistance. He provided valuable information as to the pros, cons and limitations of cooking for 74 guests in the small home-kitchen of a converted brownstone in Greenwich Village. He called a friend of his with a restaurant nearby so my tiny team of wide-eyed Canadian chefs and I would arrive in the Big Apple to friendly kitchen space and a supply of kitchen staples to complement the styro-foam cases of British Columbia food and wine we had traveled with. The event would not have been half as successful as it was without Charlie's assistance.

And Charlie absolutely insisted my wife and I spend a few days in Chicago on the way back to Vancouver; again, an invitation foolish to refuse. I believe the one-way conversation went something like, "You will spend a couple of days in my restaurant kitchen and stay at our house".

My experience at Charlie Trotters on a cold February night is one I regularly share with my students at SAIT when speaking about the heights of what is possible in regard to restaurant guest service. 

Our flight arrived a few hours late on a dark, snowy night in an unfamiliar city. For those who remember those pre-internet, pre-cell phone days, it wasn't always easy to contact people when plans changed. Not knowing what else to do, we told the cab to take us to Charlie Trotter's. They would not be expecting us, but we figured we'd sort things out when we got there.

Upon arrival at the front door of the restaurant, suitcases in tow, we were welcomed not as strangers, but with friendly formality. We told our brief story to Charlie's welcoming team who surmised that we must be hungry and that we should have dinner. We said we didn't have a reservation and they said that wouldn't be a problem. (did I mention it was February 13th, the day before Valentine's Day, in the most celebrated restaurant in the US?) We accepted the invitation and asked what we should do with our suitcases. They smiled because our suitcases and coats had already silently disappeared from sight. Only when we were seated in the dining room was Charlie informed of our arrival. The intuitive, empowered, seamless service to that point still gives me shivers as a hospitality professional who has seen much over the years. It set my bar of expectations, both as a consumer and with my many hospitality teams since, extraordinarily high.

Charlie and his team sent out a seven course dinner, plus at least another seven courses of whatever he wanted us to see and experience that evening. Each was more exquisite in appearance, smell, taste, texture and originality than the next. One of his team of prized sommeliers matched wines perfectly on-the-fly. When it was time to leave, we asked our server if he might call us a cab. He replied immediately that there was a car available anytime we wished, to take us to Charlie's house. There was no bill.

I spent the next day and night in Charlie's kitchen watching the quiet, disciplined symphony that was his brigade, serve another sold-out house. With an average of ten courses per person, 120 diners per service, I watched their nightly 1,200 plates leave the kitchen with an urgent calmness. Charlie examined every one of them. I remember observing the first in-kitchen chef's table I had ever heard about or seen. I also remember seeing his team strip and clean that kitchen, exactly as they did every night, until it appeared brand new. For this to impress someone like me, who had spent several years as a part of modern day slavery in European kitchens, where we too shined screaming hot stoves with sandpaper, is something special.

We all know Charlie Trotter for his cuisine, the first vegetarian tasting menus any of us had seen, and the remarkable cookbooks. (he bought the building next door, partially to purchase and age mountains of the world's great wines in the basement, but also to have one talented chef working solely on new ideas and cookbooks). Whether it was cleaning a kitchen, writing a menu, welcoming guests, buying and aging wines, selecting bathroom tissue, or offering to assist a fellow chef far beyond what is reasonable, Charlie had long ago decided to do everything better than anyone else, start to finish.

The Charlie I know I consider to be the shining example of a 'complete' chef; culinarily experimental, innovative and honest; a great supporter of local purveyors long before any of us thought that might be a good thing to get back to; financially savvy and successful; charitable to a fault; a hard-on-work, soft-on-people leader and chef-builder; personally driven, passionate and focused more than anyone I have ever met in any line of work. His personal motto at that time was "sleep is cheap". 

Now, he has decided to take a break 25 years after bravely launching his eponymous restaurant. He plans to both further his education and travel. Maybe he'll do a restaurant again, maybe not. This sensibility, change of direction and personal need to, as Stephen Covey once wrote in The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, "sharpen the saw", only makes him more complete.