Possibly the best description yet of how I spend my days in Olanchito

Another unplanned day, and therefore another difficult day to get out of bed. The winter morning rain didn’t help, nor did the thought of confronting my landlady again about the mysterious $100 fine that appeared on my electric bill in October and which we have been arguing over ever since. Tomorrow the rent is due, I thought to myself while holding onto the last molecules of warmth in the sheets. Time to talk to her about deducting the fine from the rent. My blood pressure rose at the thought of another one of our near-yelling matches that we tend to get into over things that I consider a landlord’s responsibility and that she considers not worth bothering with. Such things include replacing missing windowpanes and repairing major plumbing leaks. They also include paying electric meter maintenance fees in a timely fashion so her renters don’t get their lights cut off, as mine were last October after she repeatedly “forgot” to pay the charges.

I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep so as not to think about it for another few hours.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself all day, anyway. I had work to do, finishing translating into Spanish the proposal I wrote to NOAA for the Fundación Cuero y Salado (FUCSA) last month. But with more sleep still on the horizon of my hazy mind, I didn’t think too hard before coming to the conclusion that I could put it off another day since I wasn’t going to Ceiba until Thursday. And what about Alfalit? I thought guiltily to myself. Supposedly I’m working full-time with them now, instead of with SANAA. Which generally is a major source of relief, but is also currently one of frustration since the head of the office, Luis, cancelled his first appointment with me in three months last Friday. Granted, he has been out of the office due to back surgery and the subsequent physical therapy. I should give him a break. But he cancelled our meeting the Honduran way: by not really ever canceling, just leaving a message with his secretary that he was “coming in later.” That always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially because at some point in the past month I was asked to get involved in a construction project with a Canadian group on Sunday, and I was waiting on him to give me the details since the secretary didn’t know much and, it being Friday, no one else was in the office.

Forget Alfalit, I thought, and pulled the covers over my head.

Sometime mid-morning, I realized that I could see blue sky out my bedroom window and that I was bored of pretending to sleep. Suddenly awake, I set myself to sweeping and mopping my entire apartment. With all the dust that enters from the dirt road passing my apartment complex and the constant construction my landlady is having done on seemingly all sides of me, this is no small feat. Further distracting myself from more pressing tasks, I took a long shower and dressed myself in much nicer clothes than a Monday afternoon with nowhere to go warrants (Hondurans are perpetually overdressed and I have picked up the habit). By early afternoon I was making myself an uninspired peanut butter with peanut butter sandwich. And that’s when the day really picked up.

First, my companion in música de recuerdo, 70-year-old Don Israel, showed up ringing his bike bell at my window. As our now-infrequent routine goes, I lent him my guitar and he played me boleros on my front patio while I ate my lunch. I even tried to sing a few, but my voice hasn’t quite recovered from that throat infection that lasted almost the entire month of October. Even so, he complimented me and offhandedly remarked that there was going to be a singing contest in the Casa de la Cultura this coming Saturday. When you get back from working in Ceiba, he instructed, let me know so that we can rip apart all those other contestants! Then he left to give a guitar lesson to some doctor’s son over by the hospital, and I accosted my landlady as I saw her leaving her apartment. Determined not to get in an argument like the last time we discussed the light bill, I asked her about her family, and her business. She complimented me on my earrings. Things were going well. And they continued that way, as I let her exclaim on for awhile about how poor she is since she has to manage her business debt, and the debt she has accrued in building a new tourist-oriented restaurant right outside of town, and the debt she owes for the construction of her new, very nice apartment right above mine. I nodded and sympathized with her dire situation of being the most responsibility-laden lady in the entire town, and said so little that eventually she talked herself right into paying the oversize light bill, though she first insisted vehemently that she has no connection to the $100 fine. Of course you don’t, I asserted indignantly, and kindly added, and I am happy to help you pay it by deducting just a quarter of it from my rent for the next four months. She didn’t look happy but didn’t get any more upset, and that was that. Until tomorrow when she will say she doesn’t remember a thing about what we discussed today.

Now breathing much easier and in a good mood from the music, I set off on a walk. I wasn’t sweating by the time I reached the front gate to the apartment complex, so I decided on a longer loop than usual, one that passed by the post office where I checked to see if a long overdue package had arrived from my parents. Nope, still no package, the post office ladies said, looking up from their romance novels. But then the mail didn’t come today, either. Why not? I asked, and they just looked at me blankly, and so I answered my own question with, I guess sometimes it just doesn’t come, huh? They nodded agreeably. Have you gotten the cold that’s going around yet? they asked me, sniffling and coughing demonstratively. I had it the whole month of October, I said. Ah yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it, cough, cough? they replied.

From the post office I headed toward the center of town, not knowing where I was going next but sure to run into some reason to be walking. I passed my ex-sitemate’s ex-neighbor Rosa’s brother’s carpentry workshop, and shook the brother’s hand as he idled in his front doorway. Nice to see you, we said to each other. How’s Rosa doing in La Ceiba? I inquired. She’s there, he replied, the Honduran way of saying she’s fine, nothing’s new, or I don’t know. I still am not a good judge of when that expression has which meaning, so I let it drop. How’s the workshop? I politely tried to extend the conversation. Great, he said. Now that everyone’s getting their holiday bonuses, I have a lot of orders. I noticed for the first time how tall and well-built he was, and how muscular his exposed upper arms were, and how much more my age he looked since the last time I saw him. And what about your work? he interrupted my inadvertent perusal of his body. I briefly mentioned FUCSA, feeling my voice wavering as he looked at me with that innocent-inquiring, raised-eyebrow, pupil-burning very-purposeful stare that Latino men use when looking intently at women. Especially married Latino men with small children (and ex-cons and ex-boyfriends). I said goodbye just to get away, demurely shaking his hand again, and continued down the street.

By then I decided I was headed for the Casa de la Cultura to ask about the Saturday singing contest that Don Israel had mentioned. The CdC is not known for its event publicity, so I figured I was going to have to ask if I wanted to find out anything about it before Friday afternoon. I walked into the director’s office to find the reluctantly appointed new director at his desk, diligently reading a proposal opportunity. Heber Sorto is a local poet who introduced himself to me at an Internet café awhile ago. We were not fast friends, as some of the things he has said to me have tried my patience with their pessimism. But now that he is being forced to manage the CdC by himself, without funding nor employees, he is doing a much better job than the previous elderly (now dead) absentee director that was his uncle. Still, I know that he feels very alone in his work, and so I quickly adjusted the mission of my visit to be to buck him up as well as to get information about Saturday.

In fact, my visit ended up lasting almost two hours. Our conversation ran the gamut of his experiences with trying to accomplish anything of consequence in his town over the years: insufficient organization, political pressure and backstabbing; lack of money, lack of equipment, lack of community support. An overwhelming spread of difficulties for anyone, but what he was saying to me wasn’t new. I have experienced it, in trying to get a water system built and a computer lab to function. And since I have experienced it, I expected him to say all of it, and I listened. I didn’t anticipate changing Heber’s mind about anything, but my one goal of the conversation was to not let it degenerate into a 2-hour bitchfest. It didn’t. We ended laughing, both of us feeling reinjected with a dose of positivity just from having talked. I had suggested some ways to start a process of getting more community support for the CdC to take some pressure off Heber, and he had responded with interest if not exactly faith. When I finally asked about Saturday’s event, he looked at me strangely and said there was no event planned for Saturday. I let it drop and headed on my way again.

Now it was 5 pm and the sun was setting. I walked halfway around the central park from the CdC and entered the old Catholic church for a moment of meditation after my discussion with Heber. I sat on the back bench next to the portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe who reminds me of New Mexico, and thought, I am really living here. I was once told that you can’t help another person with their problems until you feel those problems yourself. And if I am doing anything here at all, I am feeling the problems. I had thought that my frustration with trying to work here in Honduras had more to do with the shortcomings of my own institution in placing me with a nonfunctional counterpart, or with my own North American rapid-paced over-ambitiousness that is completely out of sync with the lifestyle here. Instead, what I am experiencing as an average professional gringa here is exactly the same as what the average professional Honduran experiences his entire life.

I left the church wondering where to go next, settling on the Internet café since it was only a block away. Without expecting it, I saw a sign outside the café, saying “The Best Singers of Honduras, this Saturday, Hotel Olanchito.” Keeping that in mind, I checked my email, posted yesterday’s blog entry, and decided to drop by the Hotel Olanchito a block away. When I got there, the woman at the front desk had no idea who was supposed to be singing on Saturday, nor if it was an open competition or simply a concert. Come back tomorrow at 7 pm, she sluggishly told me with her eyes on the ceiling mounted TV in the lobby. The guy you need to talk to will be here then. Which guy was I to look for? I asked, unsuccessfully making contact with her eyes glued to the set. The guy in charge, she said in monotone. I got the hint, with those two questions I had squeezed out every last drop of information she had. So I left.

It just so happens that the Hotel Olanchito is only half a block from Alfalit, and as I went down the hotel steps I saw that even now, at 6 pm, their office lights were still on. Ha HA, perhaps now I would finally run into the man who stood me up on Friday. I walked a little more quickly, toward the office. Yes, Luis’ car was parked out front. Score. I approached the front gate. It was locked. No one was visible inside, though the door behind the gate was wide open. Good evening, I said loudly but well below a yell. No answer. GOOD EVENING I just about shouted this time. Still no response. I looked around for the loudest noise-making material handy. The metal gate itself. I banged it raucously with my fist. Elina the secretary appeared from the back room to let me in. I had arrived near the end of the bi-monthly all-hands meeting, and was happy to see Luis in person for the first time in months, sitting normally in a chair with his small team around him. Upon my taking a seat, Luis dedicated nearly the following hour to talking about my pending (now pushed off to January) projects with Alfalit and about what a wonderful addition I am to the team and how the whole staff should work with me. Which made me feel great, but also guilty, because I could see that everyone else was bored stiff when I got there, and my presence had subjected them to another 45 torturous minutes of lectures from the boss. In any case, everyone put up with it valiantly, and they all smiled with me when Luis invited me to the staff dinner later this month.

After the meeting ended, I could have gone to Sandra’s, since her house is only two down from Alfalit. But I knew she had already left for her evening classes at the Uni, and besides, I was tired. It had been a productive afternoon.