Hot, dusty, sweaty, smelly Tegucigalpa is a city of 1.8 million. Its name means “hill of silver” in the local indigenous language, and it is indeed extremely hilly – which means many people are in danger from regular landslides.
Some of the hills can move up to one metre a year – for example, we saw [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘land’
February 25, 2009
Honduras: A country we thought we knew
October 15, 2008
Brazil: Taming the urban beast
São Paulo’s metropolitan area is estimated now at over 23 million people. Until 2002, the Master Plan of the city had been gathering dust for thirty years.
During that time, slum populations swelled. The rich moved into enclaves out of the city centre. The poor also were driven out of the centre, forced to occupy precarious [...]
September 19, 2008
Bolivia: Massacre, but not passive victims
Last week’s estimated 30 deaths in the Pando department in lowland Bolivia are not a result of so-called clashes between supporters of the Evo Morales government and opposition groups.
What we are talking about here is a well-planned ambush and massacre of people who dare to hold views that are different to those who hold all power [...]
August 19, 2008
Bolivia: Lessons in living simply
People in the province of Ayopaya in the Bolivian Andes, have shown me what it really means to “live simply, sustainably and in solidarity”.
In the interests of the collective well-being of their 60,000 neighbours, and that of future generations, the Quechua people of Ayopaya have decided to hand over their individual land title deeds in [...]
August 15, 2008
Cambodia: History in hearts not museums
Before we left the village, we invited the Phnong people if they had any questions for us. “Do you have forests in England?” was their enquiry.
All night I have been pondering this question – we even had a little competition to see how many forests we could name in England! Many are now protected national parks.
Forests [...]
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