Ready to Start Day 2

Yesterday was a long day for everybody in this international team, working for the first time together. The ice was quickly broken: the UK team had been curious to meet Alexa McDonough, and everyone was wondering how the team dynamic would work. Alexa put everyone at ease right away, chatting with the British team as if she had known them for years. She introduced over breakfast the current debate in Canada on Corporate Social Responsibility and cited Nova Scotia’s history of mining, referring to the Westray disaster in Springhill, NS, that killed 26 coal miners in 1992.

‘There is a lesson to be learned by Canada from this,’ Alexa said, expressing disappointment that former foreign affairs Minister, Peter Mackay, who as a native of Nova Scotia is well aware of the implications of Westray, did not take action to ensure the adoption of the recommendations of the National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility.

The team quickly discovered a certain complementarity of skills and personalities.

Steven Pound is the joker of the group, who had everybody doubled over at his improvisations at Spanish despite a very basic vocabulary. A former recruit to the British Navy who had to leave for joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Steven comes from a large Irish family with priests and nuns in the family, he is a Eucharistic minister and a strong Catholic. As a Catholic organization promoting social justice in mining, we often encounter overly pious individuals who claim a deep faith but whose actions go against Catholic Social Teaching. We expect to come across several over the next couple of days. Steven threatened to test the Catholic credentials of such individuals by grilling them on the sorrowful mysteries of Our Lady.

Keith Hill is very much the incisive, straight to the point astute politician who quietly absorbs and quickly processes large amounts of complex information. A former parliamentary private secretary to Tony Blair, and a former Minister of Transport and Housing, Keith showed his political experience yesterday when dealing with a media scrum that happened as the delegation left the office of the Special Prosecutor for the Environment. As the journalists honed in on Alexa, trying to press her for further and deeper commentary, as we approached just midday of our first full day in the country, Keith authoritatively told them, ‘That will be all for now, thank you very much,’ and led a dignified exit from a media scrum that would have gone on two hours.

Yesterday evening, Alexa and I had dinner with Mark Strasser, the Canadian trade attaché who works from the embassy in Costa Rica. He had come to Tegucigalpa to meet us and will be at the meeting with mining company Entremares officials today. Mark is informed about the Roundtables, and is ready and willing to inform Canadian companies operating here how they should act in a socially responsible manner. They rarely ask him, though, he says.

George Gelber’s suitcase finally turned up on another flight last night. Only it is still being held in customs, and when he got to the airport last night, the customs office was closed. If he is lucky, he may get his case before we leave on Thursday.