Peter in Honduras

My mom and I left for Honduras at 12:40 AM the Wednesday before last, August 2. We returned August 12, so it’s now been a few days since our return, days which for me have been filled with moving into a new apartment. I’ll have to relegate the latter to another post. For now: Honduras!

Our itinerary landed us in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second largest city and a connection away through Houston on Continental. Having left at 12:40 AM, we arrived around 12 in the afternoon and after an hour in line for immigration, the first of many vexing confrontations with Honduran inefficiency, we walked into the main terminal to discover a tan, skinny, smiling Peter. We rented a car and drove to Copan, the site of the best Mayan-era civilization ruins in Honduras. My initial impressions: an almost harsh verdancy to the landscape; dark-skinned cowboys on horses along the road; the taut skin over ribs of cattle; people in baseball caps sitting on the edge of the pavement. The ruins were imposing reminders of history’s harsh lessons — stark testimony to a life of conflict and superstition: butterflies of death, psychedelic animo-human warriors with spears and snakes, a gigantic serpent symbolizing sacrifice and blood presiding over the ball court.

After three days in Copan, we drove to Peter’s home in San Marcos de Octotopeque. Our trek across perilous roads became more exciting by oceanic downpours, but we made it there by dark and in time for delicious pupusas, quesadilla-like snacks topped with pickled cabbage, carrots, onions, and peppers. The next morning we woke to the not-so-distant murmurs at the market, bird calls, footsteps on the muddy road outside, dog barks and rooster crows. SM was vastly different from Copan’s tidiness: all dirt roads, smells of sewers, rangy and dodgy dogs everywhere. From the pacific river in Copan’s American-built Parque de Avises (”Bird Park”) to San Marcos’s happy squalor felt like many more miles than it was.

In SM we enjoyed more baleadas, my favorite Honduran snack: fresh corn tortillas embracing frijoles (black beans), huevos (eggs), a soft and mild queso (like Asada maybe?), drizzled with mantequilla (buttercream). Lather this with some salsa fresca and hot sauce and prepare yourself for messy deliciousness. Peter and I also played soccer with local kids in his side patio, met fellow PCVs, and enjoyed cooking in his Spartan but well-equipped kitchen.

The highlight of San Marcos was, however, a trip to a finca (farm) owned by friends of Peter. A ride up in the back of a pick-up truck past cinderblock and brick houses, cows, chickens, dogs, and goats; the smell of gasoline and dust; cedars, cypresses, sugar cane, banana trees and pine trees shadow coffee plans. People in the dirt road whistle or wave, pursuing us with bicycles or quickly falling behind with armloads of maize, children, milk or firewood. Once arrived at the farm, we explore the grounds, admiring livestock and ponds of talapia, trying unknown and acidic fruits whose peel alone piques the nose, all the while swatting away biting flies and mosquitoes. After a sweaty soccer tournament we feast on tender chicken slow-cooked with spices and peppers, rice, cabbage and potatoes and radishes, and fresh corn tortillas made with maize ground before our eyes. Later we enjoy dry sweet bread and home-grown, home-ground fresh cafe.

The family, led by Don Juan, was impressively gracious and humble. Their house on a comparatively large acreage was modest: bare cement walls with a few faded diplomas and family photos (including Juan’s wedding photo from when he was 16 in the dining room) — a house where dogs and cats go in and out freely, as do pleasant drafts when the calor outside is insupportable. Outside the sound of a machete or the lowing of cows mixes with the women’s songs or the girls’ cries (DJ’s grand-daughters) as they climb trees or chase the plentiful dogs. All the roads are rutted and muddy but hardy four-wheel drive Toyotas vanquish these without struggle as the occasional lonely vulture glides overhead.

I wondered then as I do know if there is peaceful simplicity in such an otherwise arduous life. The proud wrinkles around Don Juan’s eyes tell many stories — stories of droughts as well as prosperous coffee harvests when the whole town gets rich, of the joys as well as the sorrows of raising ten children, and of a deep love for his often afflicted fatherland. Don Juan seems to live appropriately, which is perhaps the most important lesson — taking responsibility for his place and vocation in the world, as Don Juan told us, detailing his vision of a world where people were educated enough to know themselves, all described while he proudly stroked the muzzle of his new cow.

The day after our visit to the farm, we drove back to San Pedro Sula and caught a flight to Roatan Island, one of the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras. The flight was spectacular: the verdure beneath, accented with the undulations of rivers and the tendrils of rocky mountains seemed to press up against us, its green luminosity almost pulling the plane down as it pulled on my eyes. Not just trees but plains and fields and roads and the roofs of houses — all an intense green, vital and reaching skyward. All else faded beneath it, even the roar of our two-prop engine.

Roatan proved equally seductive and beautiful, snorkeling during the day and enjoying Salva Vida, the Honduran national beer, in the afternoon. Among the waves I re-experienced the joy of swimming, of simply finding one’s body in water, combined with marvelous sea life: brain coral, tropical fish, and the wavy tendrils of plants. In town there was a different sentiment: dirt roads littered with failed crab crossings; dread-locked garifunas, the descendants of Africans brought by the Spanish who inhabit the islands and have their own language; beaten wooden houses; and the omnipresent smell of fish.

Unfortunately, after a week in Honduras, my health began to fail me, and with it my Updikean powers of benevolent observation. On our second night in Roatan, I ate something I shouldn’t have, and a few hours later I was in the bathroom losing liquid in different directions. Saltines and Gatorade became all that was palatable. Even once I had returned to Durham my appetite still suffered for a while.

But let this not be a deterrent! Honduras is beautiful and incredibly affordable. The people are friendly, and Peter is a regular denizen: arguing with cab drivers in Spanish, playing soccer with Honduran children (who all call him “PAE-ter”), happily consuming baleadas and pupusas with the rest of them. Salva Vida is delicious. Go ye southward!

An entire month has passed since my last blog entry! Wow. The speed of time down here has really started to pick up. Everyone tells me that once you pass one year in country the time just disappears. Well, I’m at 6 ½ months- amazing to think I’ve been gone so long.

The main reason that the last month has flown by is that it has seen quite a bit of international traveling by the family. It started on July 24^th when I met up with Don, Andrew, and Brendan in Copan and came to an end with the visit by Mom and Joel, which lasted until the 12^th of August. I enjoyed both of these visits immensely, but I think I’ll spare the details for now, and you can always check out the pictures on YahooPhotos. 

But another reason I’m not talking about the trips is because coming back to site after seeing friends and family is hard. Really hard. I believe I’ve discussed this phenomenon before, as it’s been my experience that the week following a visitor usually is a hard period and marked by a lot of frustration. Nothing has changed.

Projects that I’ve been working on have changed, new ones have sprung up, and of course the old routine just doesn’t seem as exciting as the vacation routine (breakfast, snorkeling, and lounging around with the New York Review of Books). But more than anything else, I think the return to normal life down here makes me confront the cultural and language barriers again, and reminds me that they’re still firmly in place. 

Being around people who understand my every word, and, more importantly, can predict and interpret my behavior is something we hardly even have to consider in the United States. So after spending 10 days with Mom and Joel, it was frustrating to come back to a place where I have to be someone else. And I really am a different person here: I’m the foreigner. I’m handcuffed by how I can express myself. I can’t easily tell a joke, or, for that matter, always recognize when someone has made on to me. I can’t explain the irony in a situation to a coworker. I have to walk away from situations I don’t understand, not being able to translate the language or the cultural significance. And it’s not just the language I speak of. Sometimes culture itself simply can’t translate. It’s the experiences you had every day in elementary school. It’s the social habits you grew up with. It’s even the cartoons you watched every day after school, or the cereal you ate, or the chores you did. These things simply don’t translate across cultures and therefore I’m left with this divide between me and a Honduran.

I’ll give you an example.

Last night I went up to my neighbors’ farm in the mountain. They were making sugar out of sugar cane, a process I’ve never seen. I’ve told them how much I like learning these things (who wouldn’t?) and they’re so nice to go out of their way to make sure I get to see them, even trying to explain the process to me. Here, of course, I’m playing the “Gringo interested in your culture” card, which is fine with me because it’s true. But it’s difficult too because it only shows further how different our lives have been up to this point. (Side note: this picture here shows the type of mold they use to harden the boiling sugar solution) 

Later on, we’re sitting in the kitchen, it is dark out and there isn’t electric power, so we’re all sitting around the wood burning stove, and the women are passing around food. I’m staring at the fire, just spacing out, looking at the flames as Nedi puts a tortilla in the open flame to heat it up. It must have been the look on my face or something, because all the women start laughing, and I look around to see what’s so funny (already knowing the answer) and they’re laughing because they think I don’t know why he’s putting the tortilla in the open fire. So they’re laughing, and explaining to me what he’s doing, and I’m say that yes, I understand, he’s heating the tortilla, but all they can talk about is how funny it is that people don’t do this in the United States, and so on. Of course, I’m thinking: Well, actually, we do this too. In fact, I credit Sean Kaddura with first teaching me the art of throwing the Pita bread straight on the flame to heat it up. But you CAN’T explain this. First of all, they don’t know what Pita bread is. They haven’t ever seen a non-homogenous culture like the United States where I would even be friends with someone of Syrian decent. There are so many non-translatable parts to that simple memory that I just can’t explain, so I end up having to sit there and smile, lest I be perceived as being humorless, all the time thinking of the million ways I could play this off in English, and how handcuffed I am.

Now, I share this experience with you, assuming you are a dedicated blog reader and therefore have read all my glowing entries of how wonderful intercultural experiences are (If you aren’t, start from the top in February). But I think it’s also important to talk about the lonely and isolating aspects of cultural exchange, because there is so much value in learning through the tough experiences, not just the positive ones. It gives me a real appreciation and understanding of any and all cross cultural experiences- the difficulties involved, but mostly the worth of the experience, which I don’t believe can be over-valued. I think of foreign exchange students studying in American universities, my cousin Tim beginning his Teach For America career in predominantly Latino classrooms in intercity Los Angeles, and of the animosity that seems so prevalent in the world today between cultures. 

So, if it isn’t obvious already, what I want you take away from this post is the motivation to open yourself up a little more and not let that learning process come to a halt. Go find that situation where you feel powerless (and in my case stupid), but from which you will always learn. And the great part about the United States is that you surely don’t have to leave the country or do something as rash as joining the Peace Corps to find this experience. Put yourself in a new place, talk to people on the street; it can be as simple as that. Hell, learn a new language, why not?

** A bit of a side note to this post, which I wrote days ago. I just got back from taking my own advice, spending the night up on the mountain with my neighbors. This morning I learned how to milk a cow (interesting) and we cooked bread in this outdoor over made of adobe. Now if that isn’t sharing cross cultural experiences, I don’t know what is.