Blue Christmas

This week has been hard. Hard because I still have a cold that keeps me coughing and phlemy the minute I stop taking the meds the doctor gave me on Monday. Hard because the tail of yet another hurricane is whipping across the north coast and it’s raining non-stop again. Hard because I don’t understand what’s going on at the SANAA office though I keep trying to advance the one water project I’m working on. Hard because Hernán and I are not getting along and so I don’t feel comfortable working at the Biblioteca Digital this week (dating coworkers is not always the best idea). But most of all, hard because this is the first year that I am not with my family during the holidays. I haven’t lived at my parents’ house for over 10 years, but I have always made it home for Christmas. My family isn’t big and we never throw a huge party or go on vacation somewhere exotic together. We don’t drink or go dancing together. Nor do we cook elegant food or give each other expensive gifts. But we are always together, eating the same pumpkin pie that my dad makes from the can and making snide remarks at the monstrous Christmas lights that our neighbors hang on their houses. We always go to the same 9 pm church service and sing the same Christmas carols. My brother and I always fight over who has to distribute the gifts from underneath the Christmas tree. My father always gives my mother one of those fruitcakes that has a disturbing resemblance to a brick in both shape and weight (and in taste, I would say). My mom always gives me used books she buys for a dollar at the second-hand bookstore, and gives my father economy packs of 75-watt lightbulbs and double-D batteries.

This year everything seems wrong knowing that I won’t have that. Other than “Feliz Navidad,” no one is playing Christmas songs and all I still hear is reggaeton blasting from every stereo in town. I see the Christmas trees in other family’s houses and they aren’t decorated like my family’s tree. Nobody else has electric candles in their front windows like the ones that greet me the first night I come home for the holidays every December. And of course, it’s not cold. Even though it’s raining, the low has been about 65 degrees.

But if I don’t have family here, I do have a few good friends. I went to Sandra’s house on Tuesday afternoon just to say hi, and ended up staying through dinner and then getting invited to go over to a family friend’s house afterwards. What I had been told was just a visit to eat some cake turned out to be a full-on quinceañera (15th birthday) party, complete with several dozen guests, bocadillos (appetizers) accompanying a 10 pm dinner of Mexican tacos, a piñata and dozen teenagers schizophrenically flipping through their paltry ripped-CD collection in a night-long attempt to find a song that everyone wanted to dance to. Just as we were about to leave a little before 1 am, Sandra’s older brother and party-invigorator Will (who studies in San Pedro Sula but is in town for the holidays) showed up and we all proceeded to dance for yet another hour. I didn’t get home until almost 2 am. And that was just the beginning of the week.

Wednesday night I went to Ceiba with my sitemate Lauren to hang out on her last night in Honduras in 2005 since she’s vacationing with her family for the holidays. We went to the mall to see the Harry Potter movie, ate at the Pizza Hut next to the hotel and stayed up until 1 am watching Conan O’Brien despite a brief city-wide power outage, during which we took a break to have a nightcap at the hotel bar. (Even wanna-be hippies miss American pop culture.) I saw her off to the airport early the next morning and headed back to Olanchito. That afternoon, Sandra’s family invited me over to make nacatamales, a traditional Christmas food in much of Latin America. I didn’t get there until early evening, but Sandra, her mother Doña Sandra, her grandmother Doña Lola and our French friend Stephanie had been at it since mid-afternoon, stirring two different types of cornmeal masa nonstop for hours so they wouldn’t burn, boiling pieces of pork on the bone and spicing ground beef and rice to stuff inside the cornmeal, and cleaning the banana leaves used to wrap the tamales so they can be boiled. I was put to work cleaning a second mountain of banana leaves. That one task was long and tedious enough that by the time it was my turn to start wrapping the tamales, I had no patience left and made more complaints than actual tamales. But at some point we stopped wrapping and started eating, and boy are tamales good. I laughed inside, remembering that a certain Colombian told me last Christmas that nacatamales are a latino’s favorite holiday food to eat and their least favorite to make.

This afternoon Stephanie invited me to go with her and her best Honduran friend Paula to see the most Christmas-y house in Olanchito. We waited until nightfall, and then Paula drove us along with her son, twin toddlers and nephew to see the house with the most impressive display of lights in town. The entire yard and house were indeed lit up with the typical flashing, singing, blinking lights and horrid inflatable snowmen and Mary and Jesus figures I have seen in the States. More interesting was a small town, rather like the kind that toy railroad fans arrange, set up on an elevated platform under an extended eave of the house. What I didn’t expect was the inside of the house. An entire wall of the living room was set up with small porcelain Christmas figurines. Another high-ceilinged room was filled with shelves of life-like moving Christmas dolls and stuffed animals. Every corner of the four rooms of the house that we saw (which were obviously only used for the decorations because there was absolutely no space remaining to do anything but look) was occupied by yet another poinsettia-embroidered pillow or holly-wreath rug. All the rooms combined had no less than three different Christmas trees, all decorated differently. The sheer number of trite ornaments and decorations somehow cancelled out their individual cheesiness factors and converted the entire assemblage into a veritable Christmas museum. Not surprising was learning that the owner of the house has two children living in the States. I have heard that dollars sent from the U.S. are the biggest single form of income for Hondurans, and I am beginning to believe it.

After being overwhelmed by the house of tchotchkes, we returned to Paula’s house to make an eggnog drink and headed to another party at around 9 pm, this time to see Paula’s niece Tonia. Once again I didn’t realize that we were going to a big family birthday party until we got to Tonia’s house, where a dozen women were belting out ranchera ballads to the tune of a computerized karaoke program and another two dozen young and old family members were running (younger) or milling (older) around the house, popping ballons (younger) or smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes (older). Tonia’s mother and ex-vice mayor Doña Ester immediately served us each an enormous plate of pork ribs and birthday cake with a sandy, too-sweet icing, neither of which I could stomach. Before long we were in front of the computer with the others, pretending to sing along to the ranchera music before Stephanie and I co-opted the karaoke program and started playing U2 and Bob Marley songs. It was only OK because Tonia knew all the songs we chose and could sing along with us in English, too. We ended the night at 1 am dancing along to the video of Guns ‘N Roses’ “Paradise City.”

Returning home tonight, I feel a lot better about being away from my family this Christmas. Before Honduras, I had never considered bad birthday cake and bad karaoke to be blessings. But somehow right here, tonight, they are.

Happy Birthday Suzanne

I feel awful today with the flu and pink eye. I’ve only been awake for four hours so far today and I doubt I’ll make it to six. I missed three work commitments, and the fourth that I chose to leave my bed to attend was cancelled. The only thing I’ve had the energy to eat all day has been one Cup O’Noodles, and I poured boiling water on my hand (again) while making it.

At least my party this weekend was fun. Because today I really don’t want to be in Honduras.

Futbol

I’ve lived in Olanchito for over half a year now, and every week (and sometimes every day) brings discovery, usually of something that is fascinatingly new to me but utterly commonplace to the people who have lived here their entire lives. Of the many things that I didn’t realize I didn’t know, I recently found out that Olanchito hosts a semi-professional soccer team. Given that Hondurans are so absolutely crazy about soccer that almost every single member of the population sides with a particular team, I feel rather clueless for not learning this earlier. This discovery came about now that my sitemate Lauren and I both find ourselves dating members of the same local team. Of course if we’re dating players, we have to go to a game, which we did this afternoon for the first time.

Since I had agreed to spend the early part of the afternoon helping some community women host a bingo tournament fundraiser for poor children, we arrived at the game near the end of the first half. We easily walked to the stadium since it’s less than a mile from the center of town, and bought tickets for the shaded section (we’re not trigueñas yet) at $3 a pop. We walked in to find the stands packed with perhaps 300 people, all of which appeared to be men. Hence many piropos and hisses followed us as we made our way through the crowd to sit in the front row of the covered concrete bleachers. With everyone watching us, we proceeded to watch the game. The home team, Sol (Sun, appropriate for a team based in sweltering north coast), was wearing green and yellow, and we quickly picked out Lauren’s muchacho, nicknamed El Travieso, playing number 8 offense. I didn’t see mine, but I didn’t expect to see him since he told me that he mostly sits the bench. Luckily Hondurans are much more fond of soccer than of gringas, and the testosterone-heavy crowd quickly forgot us, especially since Sol scored within minutes of our arrival. Roaring with all its small-town pride, the crowd jumped to its feet as the team’s theme song played over the loudspeakers. We screamed and clapped along as well as we could, Lauren with bronchitis and me with a bad cold. It was then that Lauren noticed that there was no scoreboard, and we had no idea who was winning. I turned to the little girl sitting next to me and asked the score, and she told me that we had just seen the first goal of the game. Good thing we came when we did, because it turned out to be the only one of the entire afternoon. Even so, watching the game was exciting, though as a former goalie herself, Lauren had a much better idea of what was going on than I did. Because of this, Lauren immediately recognized that my muchacho, Hernán, was the replacement goalie when he appeared in a red and black uniform, walking down the sidelines with a short string of other substitutes all in orange vests. I waved at him as he perused the crowd before entering the dugout, but he didn’t see me. I didn’t see much more of him, either, since he was never subbed in and sat out the second half with the other replacements.

I admit that even though I very much enjoy watching live soccer, checking out the stadium and the crowd at my first Honduran soccer game was just as riveting as the game itself. Though the stands were crude and there were no trash cans anywhere, the field itself was very well-kempt. Bicycles belonging to the fans, mostly without chains or locks to secure them, were cluttered in front of the stands. I noticed that there were more women and children in attendance than I had originally thought. I saw the stray dogs with mange and tattered ears, ubiquitous in Olanchito, sniffing among the discarded plastic soda bottles and food wrappers tossed into the grassy patch between the stands and the field. I gave a few of the crackers I was eating to a dirty shoeless child who sat down next to me and stared at me, obviously hungry, and then fended off three more just like him who suddenly appeared, demanding the rest of my crackers like petulant vultures. I winced every time a group of boys set off red strips of small but deafening firecrackers just in front of us, eagerly and fearfully jumping in and out of the popping sparks to grab at their small prizes. And once everyone had stopped looking at we gringas, I felt comfortable enough to do my own looking. I searched the crowd for familiar faces and found one in the back row, a student in one of the classes at the computer lab where I now work. We gave each other a friendly wave, and it felt good thinking that I now know enough people here that I can run into acquaintances without planning it.

After the game, Lauren waited with me in the small crowd milling around the locker room (a small unpainted cinderblock building on one side of the field) as I waited for Hernán to come out. While we waited, we chatted with another acquaintance, an expelled member of the team whom we had seen at the bar the previous two nights in a row (perhaps that’s why he was expelled). After a final team prayer in the locker room with the local priest, Hernán emerged and we left the stadium together with Lauren, who didn’t want to wait any longer for El Travieso. We walked up the dirt road toward the center of town, chatting a bit before Hernán realized that El Travieso was not in fact walking with us but was instead walking in small group of teammates only a few hundred feet behind us. He jokingly chastised Lauren for not waiting for her caballero and stopped in the middle of the road, forcing us to wait while El Travieso caught up. Once he did, we continued up the road as two pairs. Lauren and I half-smiled and half-grimaced in amusement and embarrassment as a pickup truck filled with most of the rest of the team raced past us, cheering at their teammates with the gringas.

El Travieso says he’s going mojado (literally “wet,” meaning going illegal to the States) at the end of January, and Hernán and I aren’t getting along very well right now for various reasons, so neither Lauren nor I may have many more moments like these. But when it’s all over, at least we will be able say that for a little while, we dated some of the most noticeable guys in town. Or maybe Hernán and El Travieso will say that about us.

Bring on the parties

After a long November of hurricane after hurricane, non-stop depression-inducing rain and a few more bouts with Honduran illnesses, at last it is December. The month of celebration. Of Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and my birthday. Bring it on.

The first party of the month was yesterday, though it was somewhat unexpected. Since Thanksgiving, I have been planning a joint birthday party with Ely, one of my best volunteer friends who lives a 3-hour bus ride away from me. Our birthdays are within 10 days of each other and for three weeks we have been discussing amongst ourselves a full day of celebration, starting with a day hike and ending with a dinner party. Since Salsa Dave from the south is planning to visit me next weekend, we tentatively planned the party to be in Olanchito on the 17th.

It turns out that our north coast friend Michael was organizing faster than us. Last Saturday, he announced a surprise birthday lunch for Ely at a seafood restaurant near La Ceiba on the 10th. Not telling Ely about this arrangement, I continued to plan our joint party with him and finally sent out our email invitation to other volunteers late this week.

Late yesterday morning, my sitemate Lauren and I left O’chito on the bus for what should have been a less-than-two-hour ride to Sambo Creek, a Garífuna (a distinct Honduran ethnic group with a strong African heritage) town on the Atlantic coast where the restaurant is located. Of course the ride was longer, maybe because of the Christmas-time Telethón volunteers standing in the middle of the road every dozen miles and stopping passing traffic to collect money for charity. The bus ayudante was particularly obnoxious, too, spending an inordinate amount of time not collecting bus fare, as is his job, but rather standing behind Lauren’s seat trying to get a glimpse down her shirt. In any case, it was nice to have her company since I almost always take the bus alone. She lent me one earphone of her Ipod and we discussed music all the way up to Sambo Creek.

When we finally slipped past the salivating ayudante and off the bus, we walked about a mile down the main cobblestone and cement road through Sambo Creek to the restaurant, greeting the relaxed gazes of the dark-skinned Garífuna women in colored head wraps sitting on their front porches with “Buenos días” as we passed, and ignoring the teenage boys who too obviously wanted our attention. When I spent a night in the Cayos Cochinos at the beginning of October, I was given the unusual privilege of being taught some of the Garífuna language by the islands´ residents, including “Bwiti binafi,” which is equivalent to the Spanish greeting we were using in Sambo Creek. I was too shy to use it at that moment, though, because it was already afternoon and I wasn’t quite sure if it is only a morning greeting. The Garífuna are open, friendly people but are also well-known for guarding their culture and language proudly, and well, the only reaction I would have wanted from the porch-sitting women would have been “That gringa can speak Garífuna!” rather than “That gringa can’t even speak Garífuna!”

I noticed the breaking of ocean waves before I noticed that we had arrived at the restaurant, which was perched on pilings one storey above the sand that suddenly spread itself not 20 meters from our feet. Lauren and I walked up the stairs to find four other north coast volunteers already enjoying fresh lemonade together. After the requisite round of hugs, I immediately gravitated toward the view. I saw pelicans soaring and diving, soaring and diving over the sea. Like elephants, their movements were unexpectedly effortless and graceful for being so awkward-looking. I saw long battered canoes pulled up on the shore, and Garífuna men arriving and leaving in more of the same. At a distance over the smooth blue water, I saw the Cayos Cochinos that I visited back in October, Cayo Menor’s lower peak superimposed on the hulk of Cayo Mayor. I strained to see the tiny white-sand islets that I know only host clusters of man-planted coconut palms, but my eyes couldn’t reach them.

More volunteers and expat friends arrived until there were about fifteen of us. Michael finally showed up with Ely and we all sang “Happy Birthday” upon his entrance. (He was surprised.) It turned out that the party was for me, too, and everyone sang once again when Ely and I blew out our respective candles on our respective cakes, which were actually two small round pans of different-flavored brownies made from American (i.e. good) boxed mixes that had arrived in someone’s care package from home. We all ate lime-cilantro ceviche, king crab with claws as big as my hand, garlic shrimp, immense bowls of seafood soup.

Maybe it would be trite to say that my first birthday in Honduras was spent sipping a cocktail and slurping conch-coconut milk soup, surrounded by friends at a restaurant overlooking the Caribbean Sea. But that’s how it was. Beautiful.