Day of the Woman

Today was el Día de la Mujer. Woman’s Day. It was also the day of the inauguration of the new mayor of Olanchito, who does not happen to be a woman. Nor is the new vice-mayor. In fact, only one of the ten new municipal cabinet members under the mayor and vice-mayor is a woman. But women were not forgotten at the packed inauguration, held on the outdoor stage and patio in the Casa de la Cultura. Four notable olanchitas, one of them the outgoing vice-mayor, were pinned with huge corsages while romantic music played. The new mayor offered a “hug and kiss” to all the women of the municipality. A local poet read his ode to women, to their kindness and humility and closeness to nature, and to the duty of strong men to protect their virtue. When he finished reading, the romantic music came back on and all the Honduran women present gave thunderous applause. Including Doña Sandra (17-year-old Sandra’s mother), whom I was standing next to. Then a woman with a high ponytail and a tight black blouse came onstage to present a flamenco dance in honor of the day. She did turns and swirled her red skirt and twirled her fingers through the curlicue hand movements and smiled. She did not stomp her feet. She did not pound her thighs and chest to the rhythm of the music. Her head was not held high. Everyone applauded her grace. I grieved for her absent power.

The inauguration ended and I waded through the crowd to get out. Women kissed each other on the cheeks and congratulated each other. Maybe the men kissed the women and congratulated them, too, but I didn’t see it. I went home thinking about my recently aborted relationship with a Honduran, and his expectation of me to be available to him at any given moment but who was never similarly available to me. I thought of how Lauren’s boyfriend makes up stories about where he’s going when he leaves her house at night, just so that she can’t keep track of him. I thought of how many Honduran men I have met who have abandoned women and children in their past simply because they were ready to move on; they usually start a family later on with another woman. I thought of an unmarried Honduran friend here who has twin daughters with the husband of her neighbor. The girls live with her and he often eats dinner and watches television at her house. I thought about how many men flirt incessantly with me at the bar, men who I later find out have wives and children at home.

Before leaving the inauguration, Doña Sandra invited me to dinner tonight. I had assumed it was because she was feeling lonely, since Sandrita is traveling in western Honduras with Stephanie and her family visiting from France, and Sandrita’s younger brothers Samuel and Daniel are in La Ceiba with their aunt’s family. But once I showed up at her house, she told me we were first going to church. After arriving late and sitting through the last half of the service, Doña Sandra snagged half a dozen mostly middle-aged friends from the small crowd streaming out of the church and we all headed to a restaurant to eat together.

It wasn’t until we sat down at our table that I realized that we were a group made exclusively of women and that we were celebrating Women’s Day. The women were in high spirits, joking boisterously about our ages (from 6 to 55) and flirting animatedly with the waiter. They ordered Jamaica-flower iced tea and the surf-n-turf special for all of us. They all curiously questioned me in order to get to know me, teasing me into their good mood. Other families passed our table as they entered and left the restaurant, smiling at our laughter and congratulating us for celebrating together. We were the only all-female table in the entire place.

I spent most of the night talking to the 6-year-old, who was seated to my right. She told me about how she used to climb mango trees with a cousin her age who just died this week from a donkey-kick to the chest. I don’t know if 6-year-olds are capable of being nostalgic, but if they are, she was. Nor do I know if a day in honor of women is really an honor if it is dedicated to celebrating a stereotype that reinforces the narrowness rather than the expansiveness of the role that women play in society. But at least I could spend the evening with the group that is best able to appreciate the individuality and uniqueness of each of us: other women.