Sickness and CAFTA

Well I had my first experience at a Honduran hospital today. I picked up a little something and had been pretty sick all weekend. A lot of the students from our group have been getting pretty sick, there has been about one person gone per day from class. It might be some sort of flu/virus going around. There are not usually this many students sick, the last two years no one had stayed home from class at all. We got rid of that record nice and quick. I spent my Saturday laying on my bed trying not to move, and making frequent trips to the bathroom. Lovely day. Sunday was a little better, but I woke up this morning quite dizzy and without energy. I decided I should probably go see the doctor. Hondurans love to go to the doctor, they are usually there the first day they show symptoms. The doctor I saw was the doctor that the Calvin students try to see when they are sick. He speaks excellent English, which is great since the last thing I want to do when describing my symptoms is try to translate in my sub-par Spanish. He concluded that I was quite dehydrated, so I got an IV drip. All in all it was pretty easy. I am hoping that this will be my last visit to the hospital as a patient. It all ended up costing about $30. A lot less paperwork than I am used to as well. I am feeling better, and should be able to go to school tomorrow. Ironically enough we will be going to visit a hospital.

Since I was bedridden all weekend I do not have anything incredibly interesting to report on that. On Friday night some of the students were craving American pizza, so I went to Pizza Hut with the girls from my neighborhood and a few of their host sisters. That was fun, but might have been the cause of my sickness. Who knows. Regardless, I don’t think I will be returning to Pizza Hut anytime soon.

I think I had mentioned in a previous blog post how I was surprised at how many American goods were being sold in the stores, as well as how many American food chains, tv channels, etc. there are in Honduras. I found out that most of this is a direct result of the Central America Free Trade Agreement. This agreement, passed in 2005, allowed free trade between The United States and Central America, with the exception of Costa Rica, who did join. The US wanted to open CA up to US services, especially banking, insurance, and telecommunications. Under CAFTA these formerly Honduran companies can be totally owned by US companies. For example, the grocery store I shop at, Pais, is owned by Wal-Mart. I could not for the life of me figure out why this store had the Wal-Mart brand items there, but I have now solved that puzzle. Under this agreement, the US will also receive more intellectual property rights, agriculture, and equal treatment to US companies. The Honduran government wanted to sell more textiles and agriculture to the US, and wanted a decrease in subsidies for US farmers. The US have benefitted greatly off of this agreement, getting everything they wanted, thus basically the same selection of candy, gum, and magazines at the checkout counters of my grocery store as I would find at any Meijer. Honduras has not quite benefitted so much from this agreement. They do export textiles to the US, but it is a bit more expensive than getting the clothes from somewhere in Asia, so a lot of the time their clothes orders come when the US needs clothing quickly. It has raised GDP here in Honduras by about .6%, but then some argue that that money is just going to the few elite here in Honduras. I don’t really know where I stand on all of this. To be honest I was only vaguely away that CAFTA even existed before now.

Well off to work on homework!