Once again it is Christmas time in Olanchito and, just like last year, I’m still here. Just like in the States, for most of the past month people have been going to work but haven’t really been working, instead passing their time in the office gossiping and dropping hints about what they want from their Secret Santa. Of course the Christmas bonus is discussed, as is the number of times you were almost assaulted in broad daylight by petty thieves trying to steal it from you as you walked home from the bank. The number of 100-lb bags of flour your aunt bought to make holiday cakes to sell to all of her friends, and the quantity and types of livestock to be brought into town from your cousin’s farm to be slaughtered for the holiday dinner also pass as Christmastime office talk.
And holiday cheer is surely in effect on the streets of Olanchito. “Feliz Navidad” has been playing on the radio since, well, late October. Christmas lights are up in the central park and on the houses around town. Cattle destined for dinner struggle hog-tied in the backs of pickups on the highway into town, their resigned tails drooping over tailgates.
Remembering how fun it was to spend last Christmas with Sandra’s family, and knowing that I will see my mom and brother in just three days when they come to visit, it feels good to be here. I accidentally missed the nacatamale-making-fest last night with Sandra’s mom, aunts and grandmothers, but that’s OK because always rip the banana leaves anyway. The rest of the festivities start tonight at Sandra’s house with members of her family visiting from all over the country, and I’m armed with more than 50 tissue-paper wrapped little bags of candy I spent all of yesterday preparing. I took a nap to brace myself for staying out until nearly dawn. I even know to have a pre-dinner at my own house so I can hold out until midnight when dinner will really be served.
Somehow I have already been gifted a fruit cake, yes, that dense, questionably edible brick-like American tradition that even comes in a brick-colored Claxton wrapper. I can’t choke the stuff down, but one is always skulking malevolently around my family’s house in the States this time of year and I almost shed a few tears of familiarity upon receiving it. The tears almost came again while walking down the street today as I was suffering the sticky streams of sweat running off my face in the 85-degree heat. I sweat like that every day here, but it’s Christmas, for god’s sake! But even so, for Christmas this year Olanchito is home.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
My 15 minutes of fame
Today I was interviewed by telephone here in Honduras to be on the radio program "Intersection", to be broadcast on WETA 90.9 FM (Washington DC area) between 11am and 12 pm EST tomorrow, Thursday Dec. 21st. Intersection will be featuring the new Peace Corps director as well as me and several other volunteers from around the world. I hope those of you in the DC area will tune in and listen! The show will also be available on the Internet in both Windows Media Player and Podcast formats after the broadcast is over.
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Update 12/22/06: Thanks to all of you who listened in! For those of you who are still trying, here´s the mp3 file. I come in at about minute 23, but of course the whole show is worth a listen.
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Update 12/22/06: Thanks to all of you who listened in! For those of you who are still trying, here´s the mp3 file. I come in at about minute 23, but of course the whole show is worth a listen.
Monday, December 04, 2006
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.
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.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Love Thy Neighbor
It was raining when I woke up for the first time this morning. Which for me is an automatic, almost biological downer and excuse to go back to sleep. So I slept for two more hours until 9 am and finally forced myself out of bed. For no reason, really, except that I was overcome with a suffocating loneliness that strangles not at the throat but in the heart, and I knew I needed to get out of the house before it got intolerable.
Once I dressed and breakfasted, it had stopped raining and the sun jumped into the sky from straight above. The dirt road leading from my apartment to the center of town luminesced the way only dirt roads can after a rain, gently steaming and puddles aglitter. I wandered about without a mission but tried to give myself one: first to the supermarket to buy a liter of milk, then to the street market to buy two melons, and finally to the park to just sit. But thinking of yesterday, I was too restless to stay in the park, and I was also too restless to meditate in the church in my usual spot on the back bench near the Virgin of Guadalupe. I headed for home, dreading the emptiness but not thinking of anyplace I could go in the whole town where I would feel better. The situation was getting desperate: today was going to be one of those days that I wouldn’t be able to distract myself out of the cruelty of solitude.
But without really thinking, instead of turning downhill toward my apartment when I got to my street, I turned uphill, headed to my friend Rosa’s. I consider Rosa one of my best friends here, even though she can be ridiculously hard to track down and never initiates contact with me. She is middle-aged, divorced, and lives alone in small but compelling house that she artistically decorates with tchotchkes sent to her from the States, driftwood, long colored scarves and shells picked up on Roatán. The best part about her is that she always welcomes my visits as if I were her best friend since childhood, even though I have only succeeded in catching her at home four times in the past year and a half.
Rosa and I can talk about anything and everything. And even though we do, I really don’t know that much about her. She is too good of a conversationalist for that. But I have known since I met her that she is a master of propagating the friend-making tradition I will call the Honduran lovefest.
The lovefest starts small. It begins with a simple gift, usually given while visiting. Today, for example, I brought Rosa a melon. Before I knew it, I was eating an entire lunch of rice and meat and vegetables, with melon juice. And melon licuados (milkshakes) two hours later. And dinner, still at her house, two hours after that. Somewhere during that time I made a quick trip to my apartment just to pick up some cookies to give her in a meager attempt to settle the score.
I think the lovefest tradition is wonderful. The problem is that I always lose.
Another example from this weekend: Friday night I baked chocolate cake in my sitemate Leah’s oven (convenient now that she lives two apartments down from me). I made two. Leah thought this was excessive until I explained to her that each of us would use a cake as collateral in the required weekend lovefesting. Saturday came and I gave my neighbor Azucena some cake in the afternoon. Except that, being neighbors since April and Azucena also being an expert in the Honduran lovefest, she and I are way beyond exchanging single pieces of cake. Now the lovefest has escalated to the point where I not only gave cake to Azucena but also fed her husband, her laundry lady and her laundry lady’s daughter. So today, I came home from Rosa’s house and was presented with a large bunch of ripe bananas AND a nice set of Christmas lights for my front window. Azucena and her husband even put the lights up for me. So I whipped out the score-settling cookies again. (I hope Hondurans like gingersnaps as much as I do.)
Over the past few months Azucena’s other gifts to me have included a bag of 20 off-her-parents’-tree oranges, several immense bowls of seafood soup (a north coast specialty that I will never be able to reproduce once I return to the States), surprise plato típico dinners at just the right lonely moments and all kinds of unrecognizable sweetened fruit desserts. Of course she continues to gift me things because I do the same to her, such as tupperware containers full of hot oatmeal raisin cookies or frozen banana pie, pitchers of fresh-squeezed lemonade and guacamole. But still I know that I am not keeping up.
It’s not a matter of being made to feel guilty. It’s the opposite. It’s knowing that Hondurans are getting more pleasure out of seeing my delight at receiving than I am in seeing theirs. I don’t think that I have ever been to a place where I have seen people more genuinely pleased to be able to give something away, be it a small piece of cheese or a bucket full of mangos. Shameless, open-hearted giving is something either lost or unknown to most of American culture, where gifts are almost exclusively given on a particular few days of the year and their worth is carefully calculated to be less than or equal to what one expects to receive. In the States a gift reflects one’s ability to spend money, one’s supposed intimacy with the recipient, and one’s personal taste, all of which turn gift-giving a way to make or break one’s pride. Here in Honduras, no gift here is too small, nor too big. Gifts are not expected to answer a particular need or desire of the recipient; it is the simple act of giving without expectation of reward that is important.
While we were waiting for the cakes to cool on Friday night so we could frost them, Leah told me that the true measure of generosity is when it hurts. That reinforced my suspicion that I am losing the lovefesting because it seems too easy. But in general, though I don’t always know exactly what I’m giving here in Honduras, I do know that it hurts.
Once I dressed and breakfasted, it had stopped raining and the sun jumped into the sky from straight above. The dirt road leading from my apartment to the center of town luminesced the way only dirt roads can after a rain, gently steaming and puddles aglitter. I wandered about without a mission but tried to give myself one: first to the supermarket to buy a liter of milk, then to the street market to buy two melons, and finally to the park to just sit. But thinking of yesterday, I was too restless to stay in the park, and I was also too restless to meditate in the church in my usual spot on the back bench near the Virgin of Guadalupe. I headed for home, dreading the emptiness but not thinking of anyplace I could go in the whole town where I would feel better. The situation was getting desperate: today was going to be one of those days that I wouldn’t be able to distract myself out of the cruelty of solitude.
But without really thinking, instead of turning downhill toward my apartment when I got to my street, I turned uphill, headed to my friend Rosa’s. I consider Rosa one of my best friends here, even though she can be ridiculously hard to track down and never initiates contact with me. She is middle-aged, divorced, and lives alone in small but compelling house that she artistically decorates with tchotchkes sent to her from the States, driftwood, long colored scarves and shells picked up on Roatán. The best part about her is that she always welcomes my visits as if I were her best friend since childhood, even though I have only succeeded in catching her at home four times in the past year and a half.
Rosa and I can talk about anything and everything. And even though we do, I really don’t know that much about her. She is too good of a conversationalist for that. But I have known since I met her that she is a master of propagating the friend-making tradition I will call the Honduran lovefest.
The lovefest starts small. It begins with a simple gift, usually given while visiting. Today, for example, I brought Rosa a melon. Before I knew it, I was eating an entire lunch of rice and meat and vegetables, with melon juice. And melon licuados (milkshakes) two hours later. And dinner, still at her house, two hours after that. Somewhere during that time I made a quick trip to my apartment just to pick up some cookies to give her in a meager attempt to settle the score.
I think the lovefest tradition is wonderful. The problem is that I always lose.
Another example from this weekend: Friday night I baked chocolate cake in my sitemate Leah’s oven (convenient now that she lives two apartments down from me). I made two. Leah thought this was excessive until I explained to her that each of us would use a cake as collateral in the required weekend lovefesting. Saturday came and I gave my neighbor Azucena some cake in the afternoon. Except that, being neighbors since April and Azucena also being an expert in the Honduran lovefest, she and I are way beyond exchanging single pieces of cake. Now the lovefest has escalated to the point where I not only gave cake to Azucena but also fed her husband, her laundry lady and her laundry lady’s daughter. So today, I came home from Rosa’s house and was presented with a large bunch of ripe bananas AND a nice set of Christmas lights for my front window. Azucena and her husband even put the lights up for me. So I whipped out the score-settling cookies again. (I hope Hondurans like gingersnaps as much as I do.)
Over the past few months Azucena’s other gifts to me have included a bag of 20 off-her-parents’-tree oranges, several immense bowls of seafood soup (a north coast specialty that I will never be able to reproduce once I return to the States), surprise plato típico dinners at just the right lonely moments and all kinds of unrecognizable sweetened fruit desserts. Of course she continues to gift me things because I do the same to her, such as tupperware containers full of hot oatmeal raisin cookies or frozen banana pie, pitchers of fresh-squeezed lemonade and guacamole. But still I know that I am not keeping up.
It’s not a matter of being made to feel guilty. It’s the opposite. It’s knowing that Hondurans are getting more pleasure out of seeing my delight at receiving than I am in seeing theirs. I don’t think that I have ever been to a place where I have seen people more genuinely pleased to be able to give something away, be it a small piece of cheese or a bucket full of mangos. Shameless, open-hearted giving is something either lost or unknown to most of American culture, where gifts are almost exclusively given on a particular few days of the year and their worth is carefully calculated to be less than or equal to what one expects to receive. In the States a gift reflects one’s ability to spend money, one’s supposed intimacy with the recipient, and one’s personal taste, all of which turn gift-giving a way to make or break one’s pride. Here in Honduras, no gift here is too small, nor too big. Gifts are not expected to answer a particular need or desire of the recipient; it is the simple act of giving without expectation of reward that is important.
While we were waiting for the cakes to cool on Friday night so we could frost them, Leah told me that the true measure of generosity is when it hurts. That reinforced my suspicion that I am losing the lovefesting because it seems too easy. But in general, though I don’t always know exactly what I’m giving here in Honduras, I do know that it hurts.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Another Typical Saturday
Not much changes around here.
I had set my alarm early and heard it go off this morning, but didn’t get up until 2 hours later. I set dirty laundry to soak and did a half hour of half-hearted yoga. I ate a bowl of cereal and went out to wash the soaking clothes, though from the darkening sky I was sure it was going to be raining by midday and there was no way they would dry. I tried to hold up my end of a conversation with the older woman who washes clothes for my neighbor, at least pretending to listen while she told me about one of her sons who is in the hospital in San Pedro Sula with a broken arm, her friend who just died of cancer and the 24-year-old girl in her neighborhood with nine children.
At 11:30 am, the laundry dripping from the lines and the sky clearing, I dressed in my Saturday best and walked to the park to enjoy the milder-than-usual weather. I bought a few ripe mandarins along the way. When I got to the park I staked out an empty bench, less close to drunks and staring single men, on the far corner near the church (plus) and facing the street where my ex lives (minus). From where I was sitting, spitting seeds onto the ground as I pulled apart the orange sections, I couldn’t make out his name on the sign hanging in front of his family’s business, but I knew what it said: Merendero y Videojuegos Nan. The Snacks and Videoarcade (and general store/bakery/electronics repair) Shop named after him, the eldest son. And I felt sad. Despite the fact that as recently as last week he sent me text messages first of groveling apologies for his rudeness in September, which when not answered to his liking were angrily followed by teasing and offensive requests for explicit acts, I still felt sad anyway.
I don’t have a history of remaining friends with my exes. I can count two I still talk to. But it’s a lot easier to shut the door on someone when I (or he) move to a different town, or country. And seeing as we’re both still here, and have to awkwardly pass each other on the street with eyes averted on various occasions, I can’t help but still think of him.
I used to believe that I fell for him because of the fact that he’s intelligent, motivated, athletic and attractive. Sure, I admired him for all that, but really I became attached to him out of gratitude. He was the one who welcomed me into the Biblioteca Digital last October when I had no work and was bored out of my mind. With him I visited the local elementary and high schools while doing publicity for the BD. He took me to both universities where he studies, in Olanchito and in La Ceiba, to introduce me to people who might work with me on various projects. He even tried to get me a job at his favorite of his three workplaces, a high school with what he described as a great work environment. In a way, he played the role of community liaison that none of my PC-assigned counterparts ever have.
Sandra and her family have certainly provided me with the backbone of my social network in Olanchito, and that has affected my experience here profoundly. But it was really Hernán, though only 21, who has been my best professional contact in the area. Though I haven’t had the most professional success with opportunities presented to me through him, I have definitely met the most people.
So even though we have never succeeded in being on the same wavelength personally, and have often hurt each other out of pride and desperation, I dedicate this entry to him. Because the time has long past in which we trusted the compliments we gave each other face-to-face.
I had set my alarm early and heard it go off this morning, but didn’t get up until 2 hours later. I set dirty laundry to soak and did a half hour of half-hearted yoga. I ate a bowl of cereal and went out to wash the soaking clothes, though from the darkening sky I was sure it was going to be raining by midday and there was no way they would dry. I tried to hold up my end of a conversation with the older woman who washes clothes for my neighbor, at least pretending to listen while she told me about one of her sons who is in the hospital in San Pedro Sula with a broken arm, her friend who just died of cancer and the 24-year-old girl in her neighborhood with nine children.
At 11:30 am, the laundry dripping from the lines and the sky clearing, I dressed in my Saturday best and walked to the park to enjoy the milder-than-usual weather. I bought a few ripe mandarins along the way. When I got to the park I staked out an empty bench, less close to drunks and staring single men, on the far corner near the church (plus) and facing the street where my ex lives (minus). From where I was sitting, spitting seeds onto the ground as I pulled apart the orange sections, I couldn’t make out his name on the sign hanging in front of his family’s business, but I knew what it said: Merendero y Videojuegos Nan. The Snacks and Videoarcade (and general store/bakery/electronics repair) Shop named after him, the eldest son. And I felt sad. Despite the fact that as recently as last week he sent me text messages first of groveling apologies for his rudeness in September, which when not answered to his liking were angrily followed by teasing and offensive requests for explicit acts, I still felt sad anyway.
I don’t have a history of remaining friends with my exes. I can count two I still talk to. But it’s a lot easier to shut the door on someone when I (or he) move to a different town, or country. And seeing as we’re both still here, and have to awkwardly pass each other on the street with eyes averted on various occasions, I can’t help but still think of him.
I used to believe that I fell for him because of the fact that he’s intelligent, motivated, athletic and attractive. Sure, I admired him for all that, but really I became attached to him out of gratitude. He was the one who welcomed me into the Biblioteca Digital last October when I had no work and was bored out of my mind. With him I visited the local elementary and high schools while doing publicity for the BD. He took me to both universities where he studies, in Olanchito and in La Ceiba, to introduce me to people who might work with me on various projects. He even tried to get me a job at his favorite of his three workplaces, a high school with what he described as a great work environment. In a way, he played the role of community liaison that none of my PC-assigned counterparts ever have.
Sandra and her family have certainly provided me with the backbone of my social network in Olanchito, and that has affected my experience here profoundly. But it was really Hernán, though only 21, who has been my best professional contact in the area. Though I haven’t had the most professional success with opportunities presented to me through him, I have definitely met the most people.
So even though we have never succeeded in being on the same wavelength personally, and have often hurt each other out of pride and desperation, I dedicate this entry to him. Because the time has long past in which we trusted the compliments we gave each other face-to-face.
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