"...porque Ustedes son sencillos"

I recently read a UNDP report that included this statistic. 65% of city-dwelling Hondurans are too intimidated by gang violence to go anywhere on foot. Out of necessity, we walk everywhere in Progreso, and people notice. Surprised we had not yet been robbed, murdered, or even threatened, Reina surmised it must be "because you two are simple".

In the context of the extreme effort conversational fluency in Spanish takes me, I understood the pretty Comidas Rapidas waitress as saying "because you too are such pathetically stupid simpletons, even hardened killers would feel bad robbing you." To my great relief, Rodrigo later re-translated: "because you are obviously well-meaning penniless foreigners."

Tian says he wants to learn Spanish (as if this is obvious) because, "you know, when you learn a new language, [pregnant pause] you get a new soul." Tian's Chinese proverb and Reina's flirtatious soundbyte get at what I like most about Honduras. This is an easy place to be a simple kind of man. We wake up early, and earnestly do unambiguously good things, as best we know how, in a world of unambiguous evils we can scarcely imagine.

It's a black-and-white world of shotguns, dirty-jeans, wide-brimmed hats, and good vs. evil. And at some point you realize that this isn't some TCM Western you're projecting in your mind, but actually the real world. Expressions of love and hate are right up in-your-face. It's the guards all around the city and riding on trucks with duct-tape wrapped shotguns, instead of a B2 flying over the All-Star game. It's the mother breast-feeding her children in the middle of the construction worksite rather than paying for good-quality daycare. The skeletal ordering principles underneath society, fear and love, are just visible here. We are the ones able to forget that this is the way human beings are. When you take the Honduran perspective, America is the fantasy world. And for that reason, all of them ask me to help them hatch their plans; "well where are there more jobs, where you live around New York, or in Virginia?"

Potsdam [from left]. Stalin. Truman. Atlee.

Director Cano, the principal that Tian astutely remarks bears a striking resemblance to Stalin, approaches us like we come from this fantasy world. Dan's vision for the computer lab clashes with his gritty cynicism and notions of the way things in this country must be done. The old bastard came to his school several years ago, fired all of the teachers there, hired new ones, and explains "I have no friends, only acquaintances". He runs the school with an iron fist, ignoring the corrupt superintendent (a 'faggot'), and he gets his teachers to work every day despite a nationwide teacher's strike in support of Zelaya (a 'Hitler'). Somewhere along the line we stepped back in time to Stalingrad, 1942. A simpler world where men conceal their emotional complexity and not their hardened opinions. Or simpler maybe, but equally terrifying, my world is almost exclusively comprised by men. Of all the things to prepare me for, Regis.

In short, the sustainability of this project has a Stalinclad guarantee. We know about machines, he knows about men. And in the afternoon we try to toughen ourselves up a little bit by doing plumbing work with tough Honduran slum-dwelling untouchables who freely offer how many men they've killed (I once heard a somber, deadpan 25), not to mention illegal immigration and cocaine-related deportation experiences.

In a few months, a couple hundred people in Las Brisas will be both shitting indoors and surfing the internet for the first time. The combination of these is a huge change in someone's life, and I guess I like very simply to have been allowed be a little part of that.

If anyone sees Mel Zelaya, he has gone missing and has threatened to sneak into the country with Nicaraguan and Venezuelan support and launch an insurrection. Please let me know.

Virtualization

Vir tu a li za tion : 1. (computing) to run a program in virtual storage 2. (travel) to experience a foreign country as if it were virtual reality.


The first definition is all Brandon and Tian, who are installing some fancy shortcut to run a Linux operating system "virtually" from Windows so that we can use free, open-source educational software. You can see it in action above, which should be proof that we actually work here. Sometimes. The second definition approaches an idea that I often have. Honduras is simultaneously too fantastic and horrific to be a real place. The straight rows of palm trees in the palmeras go by our bus every day like a movie reel. The places we stop are either the stuff of charity infomercials or tantalizing commercials set in tropical paradises.

My prediction proved correct, except Sra. Cano invited us to lunch, not dinner. This is an all afternoon affair of fresh corn tortillas, chicken and rice, and pancakes with honey for dessert. And a guava tree in the backyard. Our entire hotel room smells like guava, now. So instead of smelling like five sweaty men every day, it smells like five sweaty gay men.

We escaped this thought today to Pulhapanzak, an impressive waterfall. Because of Mass and because Rodrigo and Dan are not immune to the endemic SuperMario craze we introduced to the city, we got a late start. Worried we would not be back at any safe hour, I voiced my doubts. No sooner did I conjecture we would end up dead in San Pedro Sula, the old Atlanta Public Schools bus we were on started pulling out of the El Progreso bus station. The sensation (at least for me) was like being a little kid on a roller coaster. You know it's supposed to be fun, but you're uncertain and very nervous, and then there's nothing you can do about it.

And what a ride it was. Chicken bus to San Pedro, all the while I couldn't lean back because the one-armed campesino behind me insisted on putting his stump behind my head. Crazy minibus through the San Pedro market to the other bus terminal, with some clown in a yellow soccer jersey hanging out trying to hustle people in to ride with us until this glorified minivan held no less than nineteen smushed $0.30 fares. Chicken bus to Rio Lindo. Hike through Nowheresville to the cataract we doubted the whole time was actually in this unassuming little mountain town.

Pulhapanzak is not the largest or most breathtaking, but in typical Honduran fashion you can pay a guide $5 to brave the currents with you, show you where you can safely cliff-jump, and crawl through the spray at the middle of the falls. Past twenty points you could ever take a camera. You can swim underneath and see the little caves and crawlspaces under the waterfall where Americans would only see potential lawsuits. You are buffeted by spray that is so strong you need to stay on all fours. When the only way down was a 25ft jump down a little waterfall into a tiny pool (the guide needed to throw a rock to show us where to aim our landing) Rodrigo and I gave it a "Wahoowa" for all our friends back in Hoo'ville. In the adrenaline rush directly under the plunge, we remembered to scream thanks to our JPC benefactors, though the ensuing laughter was lost in the crash of water around us.

Everything worked out well on the trip back, with the help of the same manic yellow-jerseyed minibus pimp we caught the last chicken bus to El Progreso, which had the same beggar lady with her same mentally-ill seven-year-old "baby" in the same grotesque poofy pink dress.

Pulhapanzak and monster babies. Virtually the best Honduran day imaginable.