The Breeze of Liberty

Today was our third day of conducting surveys in the town of Las Brisas de la Libertad (The Breeze of Liberty). As our fearless leader, El Boludo, likes to explain: " Estamos conduciendo encuestas." This translates to "we are driving surveys."

The first two days were pretty rough, partly because we were still experimenting with the format of the surveys, but mostly due my inability to hide my dry personality and awkwardness for the whole situation. It's not easy to walk in to a wooden shack and ask a work-hardened, middle-aged woman about her children's education, her financial status, and how familiar she is with computers. The humility and melancholy in the villager's eyes can be contagious. By the end of the day, my shame and frustration at being so ignorant to these people's situation was clearly evident and was begging to sink into a depressive mood.

Today, I knew I had to take a different approach or I wasn't going to make it through another day. Our group's goal became less going from 1 to question 2 but rather engaging the people in conversation. And it seemed to work: we were more friendly, we cracked jokes, we talked to the children and the people replied by being more open and sharing more of their personal lives. We actually got a couple of pretty cool stories.

One man was a US citizen on vacation staying with his wife. He is a metal worker in Baltimore and he explained to us the history behind the word "gringo." According to him, around the time of Cold War, the communist states bred distrust in Honduras of Americans out of fear of US control of Central America. Thus, when the Americans came down and handed the impoverished Hondurans dollars as a sign of charity the people disliked the green currency and said: "green, go!" From here rose the word "gringo."

Another woman asked us to examine a sheet of paper that she had been keeping since her retirement from one of the local sweatshops. It was in english, so she had no idea what it was but she knew it was important. After looking over it, Rob and I realized that it was a stock title for 2 shares of the Gildan Athletic Wear company, which we later found to have a value of about $34. In very simple terms, I tried to explain to the woman what she had in her hand (mostly because even I didn't know how talk about stocks in Spanish). As the newly appointed stock brokers for this community, we promised her that we would return with the price of that mysterious piece of paper.

As we continued our interviews, we began to be amazed by the number people still suffering from the effects of Hurrican Mitch in the late '90s. One group of 9 adults and 4 children were sharing a property consisting of mud and stick house with wood oven outside. One old man complained about how the flooding had forced them to sell everything and move to this infertile higher ground. "You find work where you can," he said, "it's too hard to farm here." Yet even in these words I found a hidden enthusiasm that encouraged me to keep going and find out more about the interesting stories behind the lives of these people.

I Know It's Not Precisely "Irony"

I realize that five sweaty Americans riding around in the back of a pickup in Honduras isn't exactly called "irony", but you would know what I meant. That's what we spend a lot of our time doing. Last night we went ape back there with a case of the cerveza nacional on the way to the El Salvador-Honduras qualifying match in San Pedro Sula. The atmosphere of a Central American grudge match (keep in mind a major war was fought over this exact match forty years ago) is pretty memorable. First you have a 20ft trench running around the field, the inner wall of which rises into a 15ft fence inclined towards the stand, barbed wire running along its length. Should the mob break through, you have the cordon of riot police and soldiers around the entire circumference of the field. They also had to add a second line of riot police on either side of the Salvadorian section, after a major fight broke out. Lest you think the law has the upper hand anywhere in Honduras, the stadium packs 50,000 and beers are 75 cents. And we couldn't resist buying a round every time the guy in the Virginia Cavaliers shirt passed by selling his.

Honduras won the match 1-0, which means free drinks tonight at all the bars. We survived the human tide squeezing itself through the little gates back into the (chaotic) parking lot after the game. You can actually feel the crowd surging back and forth, as if the entire mass of people wants to get through the two-person-wide gate all at once. Dan and I also survived the irresistible turtle eggs one of the vendors was peddling. It just tastes like washing something of a strange consistency down your throat with hot sauce.

We have begun surveying one village, Las Brisas, to determine what kind of media access and education levels exist there. For such an awkward scenario, they have been going pretty well. The villagers, although politely confused, are for the most part enthusiastic to participate. Their children (curious and out of school because the teachers have gone unpaid) trail us through the streets so that by the end of the day we have a massive following of shirtless kids parading behind us. Our clipboards and American accents grant us some legitimacy, even if I walk around all afternoon with a tired toddler on my shoulders explaining in rambling four-year-old Spanish how best to be a burro. It's cute.

The sum of all the little things here push it beyond reality. Dan shimmies up a palm tree to get a coconut when we're thirsty. No flushing the toilet paper. The giant wad of L.500 you shell out for two soccer tickets, a relatively enormous expense, is actually $25. The shower shocks you because live wires run to the electric showerhead water-heater. A young girl shows Dan and Rodrigo proper machete technique. A tethered monkey climbs on the roof next door. And there are still no traffic laws.

I know its not exactly irony, but nothing here really syncs with any reality I am familiar with.

Rabbit, King of the Murcielagos

We've settled into a nice habit of sipping gin and tonics in the poolside courtyard garden next to the ice machine, Rodrigo and I.

Day Two in Copan, the Mayan ruins three hours away on the Guatemalan border, and its lovely little town with its cobblestone streets, three-wheeled taxis, and more hippie-gringos with Macbooks than I would have thought possible in Honduras after my experience in grittier Progreso. Unfortunately we missed Secretary of State Clinton on the chicken bus, she was whisked in and out by helicopter yesterday. Copan is the most intact example of an old Mayan city-state, once called the Bat-City/Ciudad de los Murcielagos (A second compelling reason, Dennis and Tim, to visit). The king who built the massive stone temple and ball courts was named Rabbit, further convincing me that I am his reincarnation. Turns out to be a more epic nickname than Joe Jablonski might have expected, I'm pleased to discover. Except for the part about the king having to pierce his tongue and genitals in front of the people as part of a religious ceremony.

Maybe worse, imagine what kind of hell it was carrying stones on one's back to make these altars of human sacrifice in the middle of a jungle. Appropriately, our guide was one Virgilio. He was pot-bellied with an outie as enormous as his smile. The city of the mucielagos was eventually brought down by a rebellion of the lower class in the 800s, for those who would claim that Honduras is the only Central American republic without a major leftist revolution. When the Spanish arrived, they found only ruins; archaeologists like Virgilio have been trying to put it together for about a century. Except for the Americans who stole Eighteen Rabbit's stone (all the kings have hieroglyphs that run up the huge staircase of the pyramid-temple) and brought it to the Peabody in Boston. Where he is living without a visa, a smiling Virgilio added.

We took some good pictures climbing around the temples (and you will spot more than the occasional macaw) that I will share as soon as I find a way to upload them.

Huge ceiba (silk cotton) trees grow out of the temples and their gigantic roots (think Tarzan-scale) crumble the ruins. For the Mayans, they were a symbol of life, stretching down into the underworld and up into the heavens. Rodrigo commented that its a great image of nature outlasting and overpowering passing human civilization. But you can also see it as a dramatic symbol of the great life of this civilization. So I enjoyed the vibrant two-hour Mass, the only white person in the Church of San Jose, conspicuously standing two heads taller than everyone else and fumbling with the Spanish. The Mayans still do human sacrifice right.

Tomorrow we start our surveys. God bless.

Horseback Diaries

It turns out that Rob and I skipped the night club last night for no reason. We got up at 4:30 AM to catch the 7 AM bus at San Pedro Sula only to find out that it didn't leave until 11 AM. Disappointed, we made ourselves comfortable at the bus station; 7 hours later we were standing on the cobblestone streets of the City of Copan, home to the most famous Mayan Ruins in Honduras. It is picaresque city surrounded by a sprawling mountain range, this country's version of an old European mountaintop village. The air is crisp, the people friendly, and, contrary to most of Honduras, the streets are safe at night. Our late arrival made it impossible to visit the ruins, so we left it for Monday. Instead, a couple of SHH folks and I decided to take some horses to the top of a local mountain.

I can't quite describe how epic this was. The journey began with a pleasant walk through the city streets as we struggled to steer our horses around the incoming moto-taxis that zip about Copan. We continued over the Copan river and through the local farms, in which our horses normally toil. Being my usual self, I tried to turn our expedition into a race and repeatedly attempted to urge my trusty mare Princesa into a gallop, but she refused to go beyond a quick trot.

Once at the top of the mountain we dismounted to take in our destination, the Hacienda San Lucas. I could not help but be entranced by the breathtaking serenity of this place. On one side, a curtained gazebo covered in cushions overlooked the postcard-worthy view of the Copan valley. A Hippie couple followed us in as we immersed ourselves in the Zen-like atmosphere amid the aroma of cocoa, coffee, and banana. Following in the tradition of the place, we performed a Yoga sun salutation as the Honduran sun began to sink behind the mountains. We then proceeded to quietly sip wine while observing the fantastic view once more.

As moving as this was, I don't think anything got close to my conversation with our humble but very knowledgeable guide Ruben, a local campesino struggling to find work farming corn and beans. He explained how many of the rich families were usurping the fertile lands and refusing to use them for cultivation. As I looked at this earnest, hard-working man fitting so well into this landscape, I couldn't help but picture this as a black and white flashback from the Motorcyle Diaries.

On the ride back down, I was estatic with joy at the fact that I succeeded in urging Princesa into a canter for a total of five seconds. Just for the record, I also won the race.

The night culminated in the "Lun Club", a local gringo bar with a ping pong table that I soon took over. As the night drew to close, our group was approached by and gang of Honduran machos and their girls looking to avenge their soccer loss the US. Their starting man was struggling, so he handed the paddle over the Honduran National Table Tennis Champion. After Bobby was narrowly dispatched, it was my turn to carry the American/Argentinian torch. Despite severe disadvantages, including a heavily Honduran crowd, severe inebriation, and a 5.6 earthquake, I mounted a valiant comeback to win the match 23-21.

Epic day, if you ask me.