A Man Called Christmas

Rodrigo and I are tired out from a week of sweating through t-shirts surveying Las Brisas. I can only imagine having to perform actual labor in this heat. Or you can just see the wear on the bodies of the people we interview. Again, Natividad (the man called Christmas) comes to mind like a Motorcycle Diaries montage. But mostly for us, I think Rodrigo is on to something, being so out of place and helpless takes a psychological toll. I have not started dreaming in Spanish, yet, but I realized today that my dreams are eerily in the washed-out colors of this sun-bleached country.

The great disparities between rich and poor has become a way of life for us as well. By day we go through the shanty towns in the back of the colonias. At night our friends come over for parties by the pool. Rodrigo and I have a new favorite eatery, Autopollo, next door. The open-air roadside bar only serves chicken (halved or whole) with a side of sliced bread out of a bag. A massive dinner and two beers for $4. We gorge ourselves with food and drink, head to the pool, and fire up our laptops to reflect on what might be wrong with that.

Sadly, Jose Santos, the man who stands outside our door at night with a pump-action shotgun, exposed the false rumor that a couple dozen contestants for an international beauty contest were staying in our compound. Just more Baptist missionaries.

Last night Rodrigo and I went to the big nightclub in town, 504, with some friends from Students Helping Honduras (Shin, Samantha, Michelle, Christian, and Walker). No sooner than we were in the heavily-guarded door than the game of "which one is the woman of ill repute" began. Fortunately I lucked out at first with a friendly soft-spoken young woman who awkwardly taught me the Bachata. The next time I guessed wrong to a particularly aggressive reggaeton song (complete with discordant tractor-trailer horns), and when she started talking about money and leaving, I suddenly pretended not to understand a word of Spanish, and sought out the rest of the gringos.

Rodrigo, however, was a sight to behold. Literally for the entire nightclub. In the truckbed on the ride home, he explained that he quickly realized that the timid Honduran men had not even his modest salsa confidence. For the better part of an hour he and Michelle (who also gets the credit of being a good dancer) were virtually the only ones on a dancefloor ringed by awed Progreseños (and me).

We had to get up for another work day today, compiling survey data and meeting with officials from another village, Las Minas. Rodrigo sat next to a MS-13 gangbanger on the bus to Santarita who showed him his gunshot wounds (one in the back of his head), L.A. County jail and deportation papers, gang tatoos, heroin needle scars, and the drugs in his pockets. He recounted unrepeatable stories in unintelligible ganglish. Rodrigo was happy to get off at the bus.

There one of the community leaders, Don Hermelindo, insistently told us five college students on an internet connectivity project in this place that, "The United States is a practical country!" Actual irony, at last.