In fact a year and a half after Mitch, we see many environmentally bad habits on replay.

• People are moving back into high-risk zones,
• farming practices degrade upper watersheds,
• illegal logging damages forests,
• trash dumping stops up storm drains (which caused the flood in the ministry building),
• new buildings weaken river channels;
• lack of educational campaigns,
• poor emergency readiness,
• forest burning....

"It certainly brings to head the need to have a theory of conservation and a watershed management program nationwide. That would help reduce damages," notes a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) official in Honduras. "A lot of human loss of life [after Mitch] could have been avoided with disaster preparedness."

The continuance of these practices only leaves Honduras more vulnerable to another application of pedagogic discipline. The Choluteca, perhaps the worst mercenary of destruction employed by Mitch, sits seven feet higher now than before Mitch due to siltation, notes Tracy, also a hydrologist. That's seven feet of lost water retention capacity. There are more than 1.5 million Hondurans in risk zones, 700,000 around the capital (57% of the population). The spokesman for the national fire department, Oscar Triminio, was quoted in La Prensa on 22 May as saying, "The people should have already been trained for evacuations, know where to go in case of a flood or landslide and what measures to take with the family, with children, but nothing has been done." And the rains are coming.

Why doesn't the government simply do its homework like a good student?

Transparency International has been touting one reason. It has ranked Honduras for two consecutive years now among the top three most corrupt governments in the world, though corruption is not new. After Fifi the military government stole a lot of the USAID that came into the country. Whether or not the government has learned lessons from that epoch, certainly international donors have. They have pressured the current administration into some levels of transparency to make sure that USAID gets to its intended destination.

But is there enough transparency to go around? The ills of Honduras can be recounted through the 70% of its bridges destroyed by Mitch. Perhaps the most embarrassing and ironic example of bridge failure was the Juan Ramon Molina Bridge. This bridge over the Choluteca came down right in the center of Tegucigalpa. But it was not the river's fault. Molina fell only last February. It was a temporary Bailey bridge that collapsed, according to most accounts, because the public works ministry never posted a sign indicating maximum weight and the repeated passage of big trucks caused the bridge one day to bow down into the chocolate river.

The news media frenzied over the silliness of this loss. But one can only ask if there was not enough supervision to avoid such an obvious flaw in an obvious location, what chance is there that international supervisors will detect corrupt constructors skimming off cement and dumping more sand instead in the concrete mixtures used to build bridges. Writer Lorenzo Dee Belveal argues that 70% of the bridges could not have fallen down, even during Mitch, unless they were made below proper engineering specs. He argues that corruption and political kickbacks drove skimping on materials that weakened their integrity.

Few Hondurans would dissent that road and bridge construction prove one of the biggest prizes of corruption, and many people are nervous that the new generation of bridges will be any sturdier than their fallen kin.

Honduras cannot simply blame corruption. It must admit to inefficiency as well. Even now, the government grapples with obstacles that just should not be. The president had to issue an order to his minister of public works (the same one who forgot the maximum load sign) to open new roads and bridges and NOT wait for ribbon-cutting inaugurations.

COHDEFOR, the Honduran forestry agency, has been one of the most corrupt and ineffective in government. Responsible for managing forests and watersheds, COHDEFOR was so crippled by corruption that after the hurricane many international donors such as USAID stopped funding it. The special prosecutor for the environment had been investigating many of the top brass until they finally withdrew from office. Similarly necessary for environmental protection, the Honduran judiciary lies in shambles. The Honduran president of the Republic has just called together a commission of social elites to evaluate its "irregularities." That is a sign of hope.

There is more hope, too. While the government may be too apathetic to get a good grade, other more willing students in class just might. Although absent for the Fifi case study, municipal government and non-profits certainly benefited from Hurricane Mitch. "The government had no capacity to get to places and clear roads so that traffic could flow again. For three months, this country was run by local municipalities," says 25-year resident of Honduras, Chester Thomas, founder and director of a major Non-governmental organization (NGO) involved in reconstruction and relief in central Honduras, and himself a veteran of Fifi cleanup.

The trend towards decentralization of power in Central America was already underway before Mitch, which only sped up that process. In fact, the government realized it had too little gumption to manage protected areas, so crucial for water management, and has been doling out administration of protected areas to almost any NGO that can flash its legal constitution. Similarly a law was passed a couple years ago allowing municipalities to manage their own watersheds.

Jim Barborak, a leading conservationist in Central America who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, says that the future of conservation will be fought at the municipality level and urges working with them more. Indeed USAID is channeling some reconstruction monies through municipalities rather than the central government. The class offers a comparative watershed management study of the two major cities. In Tegucigalpa, the hills are bare and the water is managed by a national public utility. In San Pedro Sula, the second largest city, it fairs better as the hills enjoy some real protection by the city. Local authorities, moreover, now commonly call the US Geological Survey at the American Embassy and ask how dangerous certain zones are, as they must now draw up contingency plans and evacuation procedures.

Similarly, NGOs played active roles in relief and reconstruction, with great amounts of money, food, and materials being passed through their hands. Bypassing the central government, NGOs avoided losses and worked directly with communities. The director of the NGO that manages Pico Bonito National Park reports that as a result of many relief activities including the rebuilding of houses and schools, he enjoys better relations with its neighbors.

Perhaps it is unfair to blame the Teacher for punishing Honduras, albeit a strict sentence though it was. Nonetheless, the Teacher will test Honduras again, as hurricanes become more frequent, but hopefully the next time Honduras will have done its homework on time.