Here I Am Again

It would be an exceptionally cruel trick to mismatch the socks of someone who is obsessive compulsive, and it would be even worse to then hide some of the pairs so that he can’t put them back together. Equally merciless would be to take away a “Type A” person’s means to write numerous organizational lists, and yet worse, to deny her the pleasure of checking off each box with a satisfying red mark. Such is the experience of organizing an event in Honduras: to even the normal, un-obsessive compulsive North American—who is usually well-accustomed to organizing at least minor get-togethers—the weeks of planning leading up to an event lead one to prefer to sit through a ten-hour overnight flight next to a shrieking baby with noxious gas rather than witness the infuriating chaos and squalid lack of progress that characterize the preparatory stages of a Honduran event. I’ll be the first to admit that I am among the most compulsive and greedy of list-makers, but my gluttony for superior organization and schedule was massacred within the first few months of moving here when I was promptly placed on several planning committees.

Hence, the sheer bafflement I continually experience when it actually works out. The Independence Day Parade in the nearby town of Talanga is one such example of distracted organization that unexpectedly births into a lovely presentation. It was to be our second year marching through the dusty streets alongside eight other local schools. I was still wiping the sleep crusties from the corners of my eyes when the whole Ranch had to assemble at 6:30 am to get on the buses for Talanga. Of course, we didn’t end up leaving for another hour and a half, but those kinds of nuisances are only a footnote passing through my culturally fluent mind nowadays. I walked around, camera in hand, scanning the groups of kids dressed up in various traditional folk wear, marching band uniforms, short glittery skirts and sparkling top hats. Others were costumed as historical Honduran heroes, like the native indigenous chief Lempira, who died fighting for liberty from the Spanish conquistadors, and Honduras’ president and first lady (wait, which president?). Still another handful of kids represented the flora and fauna of Honduras. You know you got the short end of the stick when you get stuck as a pile of leaves if the kid next to you is outfitted as a painted Indian with a bow and arrow.

We started marching as soon as we arrived in Talanga, since we had of course arrived late after one of the buses broke down on the way. The troops assembled with surprising alacrity, and the drum squad—our simplified version of a marching band— pounded out the rhythm for the two baton twirling groups and two color guard teams. I evaded marching for running around relentlessly snapping pictures for my shiny new job as Home Correspondent. After what must have seemed like miles of marching, the kids arrived at the finish where the judges’ stand was positioned, most passing by with cheesy smiles and well-practiced waves, though a few of the younger kids were apprehensive in front of so many people. This is understandable since few ever leave the Ranch until they turn 11 and get to go Pizza Hut once a year for their birthday. The parade in truth was a success, and the bus ride back to the Ranch was a silent copy of the ride earlier that day with the majority of the children collapsed onto one another, mouths open “catching flies” as they say here, passed out asleep for the ride home.

Since I’ve been back here after my short-lived sabbatical from the Ranch, life seems more and more normal, and I am increasingly attuned to the inner workings of the professional culture of Honduras. My new position as Home Correspondent never demands that I manage a group of 37 unruly 7th graders or decide how to grade four identical homework assignments, but it does try my patience in an entirely new way. Honduran professional culture is the living embodiment of the type of inefficiency and procrastination known distastefully in the business world as paper-pushing. One would think that with the birth of E-mail in the last century, most in the professional world would have developed some type of code of conduct regarding its usage, or would at least have figured out how to send an email by now. Apparently this country is sorely lagging in this area. Oftentimes I find that I’ve walked a mile or two by the end of the day in search of the information which I’ve been requested to gather. What would normally take an afternoon to accomplish by first world standards is drawn out over a few days until so-and-so can be caught in his office, or until the internet has been restored in a certain neighborhood in Tegucigalpa, or until someone decides to devote five minutes to the few semi-time-sensitive tasks at hand. This type of “relaxed” work ethic can make for some rather frustrating moments for we endearing list-makers, who may be forced to wait days, tormented until being able to check off the to-do box.

One facet of the new job that I am especially enjoying is self-management and flexibility, manifested in freedom to relate most “errands” that might catch my fancy to “work”. Last week, for example, our Ranch family grew by five: Pablo, Jayme, Nathanael, Isaac, and Genesis arrived from a town not too far north of the Ranch, toting both suitcases and impressive manners. New arrivals usually must stay a week in the clinic while all the diagnostic tests and assessments are done before they can move into the hogares (the homes), and one can certainly imagine the boredom that inevitably results after days on end cooped up in one building while a whole new world awaits outside. One afternoon last week, I took the five of them for an exploratory tour of the Ranch. Seeing my home of the last fifteen months from virgin eyes struck me as hard as an evil stepmother: with close to 500 kids, three full meals a day, farm animals, swimming ponds, and weekend karaoke, this place is Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island (minus cigars, plus daily machete chores) in comparison to the poverty that these kids would otherwise become intimate with. Little Isaac, voicing what I am sure the rest of the new family was thinking, could say little more than “qué grande!” and “qué bonito!” during our walk.

As much as I share the sentiments of Isaac’s family, it is always nice to spend some time away, even if just an evening. One recent Friday night my roommate Lauren and I were invited for pizza and wine (!!!!) to the home of a long-time Ranch couple in nearby Monte Redondo. It was a long, muddy walk from where the bus dropped us off back to their house; luckily, I was accompanied by many of my former students on their way home from school who live in a housing compound that was constructed after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. As we navigated the muddy trenches and strolled by Hondurans passing time on their porches and staring at the gringas surrounded by gaggling teenage girls, I had a flash of my life were I to have chosen to volunteer with the Peace Corps instead. I yelled promises to come visit as they girls ducked into the gates of the compound and continued down the road. Up ahead of us a brown cow tied to a fence was making a voracious fuss. Lauren, reading my irritated confusion, pointed across the road to where three men in cowboy hats stood sharpening shimmery knives. Saturdays in Monte Redondo are Soup Day, Lauren explained, because every Saturday morning they slaughter a cow. I guess I would be making a fuss, too.

Early Saturday morning, I had an assignment in the city at Casa de los Angeles, our home for severely disabled children. I’m at the point now where the differences between Honduran and American culture mostly escape my conscious registry, but as I watched out the window from the piece of crap taxi van down the hill to the city center, I witnessed one of the most disturbing images I think I’ve ever seen. It was a man, shirtless and yellow from several hours already dead, his head invisible for being firmly planted in the ground while the rest of his crouched body stuck out at an impossible angle, his feet and toes unmoving in the air. Twisted near him on the ground was his destroyed motorcycle. As if guarding nothing more shocking than the entrance to a neighborhood pub, five or six police officers stood with their guns off to the side, making room for a small crowd of photographers to close in on the body and snap photos for Sunday’s front page. The reaction from my fellow travelers in the van was none more forcible than a single murmur— “un muerto” (a dead body)–and conversation continued. I could feel the bile rise up the back of my throat while the cold yellow rubber of his skin flashed through my mind.

The casualty towards death in this culture and the hunger for gruesome news shouldn’t surprise me now: I’ve seen numerous newspapers whose bright red headlines and full-page color photos detail the deaths of yet another five youths in gang-related shootings (“see page 2 for information about three killed in car accident”). Honduran culture not only permits but encourages this type of grotesque, macabre news reporting. The normalcy of featuring snapshots of los muertos in the newspaper to me reveals a lack of respect and an invasion of dignity for the dead that sadly speaks to how the whole culture is incredibly desensitized to events that happen perhaps with more normalcy than they do in the United States. When we look at our traffic safety regulations and a social system that upholds severe punitive consequences for unacceptable behavior, whether it be driving a motorcycle without a helmet or participating in a gang, accidents ensuing because of such behavior are not received without at least some level of public shock simply if because we don’t read about them every day, even though they certainly happen. In Honduras, everyone is related to someone who participates in this behavior which is not regarded as “not normal”; many even partake in it themselves. It is a shame, then, that “el muerto” that we saw from the taxi had died, but it is also something that many have seen before on their commute to the city.

Shaken from the unexpected sighting but intent on my assignment, I arrived at Casa de los Angeles right in time for breakfast. There are twelve children living at this site, all with such severe handicaps that they need individualized attention every hour of the day. Some of them have absolutely tragic histories—one boy, for example, had been born normal but was so abused by his mother that he lost all ability to speak; his misshapen head hints at his terrible past before coming to Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos.

I took a plate of rice pudding from the kitchen and wheeled Darlin over to the table to start feeding her. At first every scoop seemed to end up on her bib more that in her mouth, the milky liquid running down her chin; but as we advanced into the meal we became a much better team. Her toothy smile grew bigger after every bite until she could no longer contain her excitement at the delicious tastes inside her mouth, and she let out repeated high-pitched shrieks, expelling bits of rice with each gleeful yelp. Even though some of those rice bits landed on my shirt, I could care less for being completely wrapped up in the innocent happiness that breakfast gave her. Darlin came to us with her older sister only last year and is five years old, the baby of our Tegucigalpa home. She suffers from MS but had also been abused during her two years at the public children’s home, where many of our children have spent some amount of time. Looking at Darlin, I was more relieved that she will always look forward to this happiness in the morning than I was sad for her reduced physical state or the fact that she has no other family but Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos. She has a home and a future, and that is something to say in a country that shows little concern for its people with physical and mental disabilities.

I won’t write more since this entry has already stretched out to over three weeks of events. I’ll try to keep this as updated as I can, but now you can also read my stories on the www.nph.org website under the Honduras section. You can also see more pictures there. For now, thank you for staying with me this long! Que les vaya bien.