Every day, every night on the streets of Olanchito

Tonight my sitemate Lauren and I ate at Comidas Rapidas on the plaza, our first dinner together since I returned from the States. We left sated with enchiladas, but with our ears wincing at the strident singing of the bells announcing evening mass at the Catholic church across the street. As chaotic as it sounded, the calls punctuating our conversation were methodical and predictable after the first time: five seconds of loud frenetic clanging on the high bell, then five seconds of equally crazed bonging on the low bell, then on the high bell again, and so on for thirty seconds at a time. All through this, a third, lower bell tolled patiently, as if waiting for the others to quiet down in order to have its turn. Each episode always ended theatrically with several uninterpretable bangs on a final not-high-nor-low bell, spaced just far enough apart that each strike startled us back to the beginning of the conversation we had just tried to re-start. Finally we got far enough away from the church to converse normally as we walked to the Internet café closest to my apartment. At 7:30 pm it’s still light out since Honduras is on daylight savings time for the first time in history (well, half the country is, but that’s another story). So there were still plenty of people on the street. First we ran into my guitar teacher, who I haven’t played with since April but I keep telling him I’ll come back to visit him soon. I really mean it but I just haven’t had the time since I’ve been out of town so much, nor the motivation. I guess I’m finally adopting the Honduran way of saying no. After I told him once again that I’d come to see him next week, Lauren and I continued walking and talking, getting stared at by this pair of women with babies gossiping on the sidewalk and that gang of boys dangling their legs off their bicycles in a circle on the street corner. I recognized a woman in a red print blouse that walked past us with her friend, or sister, or cousin, but she outright ignored me and I couldn’t remember exactly how or if I knew her so I didn’t say anything. A block later, Lauren recognized a curly-haired teenager in a yellow shirt talking with two girls, but she couldn’t remember his name either and so we remained in conversation so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with him. A man leaning against the wall outside the pharmacy softly hissed at us as we passed, and we both sarcastically agreed that he was not only cool but also extremely attractive. As we rounded the last corner before arriving at the Internet café, we greeted the six members of the family that habituallly drag their furniture out onto the sidewalk every evening, because their living room is much more hot and boring than being in the middle of the action of the street.

The best part of walking down the street with Lauren is that we usually maintain a running commentary in English of everything we see and think. Someday we’ll probably get horribly embarrassed when we pass someone who actually understands rapid colloquial English, but the probability of doing so in this town is so low that we don’t hold anything back. Even if a Honduran could understand our words, he probably would be completely confused by our comments, since we both know that we interpret the various stares, glares, dubious greetings and come-ons very differently from the way Honduran women would receive them.

Once we arrived at the Internet café, I tried to make a phone call and Lauren checked her email. My call didn’t go through so I left her there to finish her business. The slow sunset sky had such a languid glow that I decided to take a more relaxed stroll before heading back to the house, this time alone. I had forgotten that evening strolls alone are never relaxing. Almost exclusively men walk and bike the streets at night, and a single gringa catches the attention of every one of them. I constantly get warned and reprimanded by my Honduran friends for being out at night unaccompanied, although nothing has ever happened to me. It is true that this town is more dangerous than the average American town at night, especially after 10 pm and on weekends when mostly drunks roam the streets. But I think Olanchito could really benefit from a Take Back the Night event, just so that women themselves could see that a lot of the danger is imagined. Perhaps night crime is even facilitated by the fact that half the population refuses to leave the house after dark and the streets, empty of law-abiding citizens, become an easier place for the bad to happen. Or perhaps I don’t see the point of worrying too much about being out after dark in a town where crimes that Americans only associate with the night have occurred here in broad daylight.

The best time to be out on the streets is Saturday morning. I still don’t know what’s different about Saturday, but everyone gets dressed up, especially the teenagers and the recently married who often still are teenagers. They strut around, the girls with their best girl friends and guys with their guy friends, eyeing each other but pretending not to as they pass on the street. Or they sit on the wide hot concrete benches in the park with ice cream cones, watching the newly established pairs who walk hand-in-hand. The young married couples unhurriedly drag their stumbling toddlers, probably the reason they got married so young. The men who are older and probably married but are still allowed to act like teenagers sometimes sit in the park too, but more often they sit in shaded doorways along the street so they can vocally and shamelessly admire all the single women that pass by. Saturdays are usually when I hear the most creative comments, called piropos, that are an art form used fundamentally to get a woman’s attention either by entertaining her or making her feel good about the way she looks. Unfortunately most piropos still make me uncomfortable because public comment on my body, positive as it may be, is still an invasion of my well-developed North American privacy.

Never before have I paid so much attention to such miniscule social habits anywhere else I have been. Usually I am drawn more to the landscape and affected more by the weather. Those still influence me, but what continues to test and provoke me most here are the people.