Honduras: Part TWO! In Which American Teens Learn About Culture!
After the first night in Honduras, things got a LOT better. The food, tragically, got worse, but that was because of how our camp was set up-- we had no permanent refrigeration, so what we could eat was limited to things that, of course, needed no cooling. We also got meet the local people who sort of looked after us at the camp. Mario was the sort of guard/ night watchman, and looked almost exactly like Alphonso Reibeiro. He was really handsome, as far as I was concerned. ;) He was there because of what would be our first eye-opening experience in Trujillo: most of the local people made so little money per annum that the funds we had brought with us could seriously have supported families for some time. Some people would be driven by poverty to try and take it, and I cannot blame them a bit; I would have done the same. So to help, we agreed to spend as much as we all could in town, to support local shop keepers and artisans. I got some REALLY neat souvenirs there that I still use every day!
We also met Maria who (I think?) was Mario's mom. She was our head cook, and though she spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, she would still crack me up. Occasionally we would go to a local resort to swim at their beach (and not buy their pop, because holy shit was it expensive), and a little girl would come around selling pan de coca, or coconut bread. This stuff was. So. Good. It was sweet, and fluffy, and that little girl was so cute that we'd always buy her out while we were there. Her parents must have loved to see us coming. ;) Well I was washing dishes on one of the days when I had kitchen duty, and was chattering at Maria in my broken Spanish (I can't help it; I MUST TALK.) and told her that "Pan de coca is muey delicioso", or something similar. She got a sly look on her face and said "Pan de boca?" (I think it was boca, can't remember the exact word now.) I knew what that meant. That meant booger bread, and dammit, that's just gross! I hollared "EEEEEEEWWWW!!" which apparently is universal in any language, and she busted up. For the rest of the day if she saw me she'd start laughing, and everytime afterwards she'd ask me "Pan de boca?" just to see my reaction. ;)
But that second day was full of all sorts of interesting experiences, many of them hilarious now. For starters, our camp had three little pick up trucks that were camp property. Two we used regularly, one I never saw do anything other than hemmorage oil on the grass. We would travel from place to place by herding as many of us as possible into the back of each truck, and one of the councellors would drive us to where ever we needed to go. We wanted to be as friendly as possible, so where ever we went we would wave at people, and shout "Hola!" at folks. Part of the reason for this aggressive friendliness was because we were there on mission; we were going to be building roofs, laying foundations, and going around to local schools to teach about hepititus prevention. We wanted to come off as eager to work, not as Paternalistic McGringo. (Amusingly, we had several black kids as well as white kids; we were all gringos, and in at least one instance from a cranky old woman, 'locos americanos'. Maybe we were TOO friendly.)
We also wanted to be nice, because Trujillo at the time had an infant tourist trade coming to life, and from what we saw, almost ALL of the tourists were fucking RUDE to the locals. For some reason all of the tourists we met (and were sneered at) were German. I have no idea why it was so popular with Germany as a destination site, but there you go. There was also a lot of scuba diving done in the area, and we met some AMAZINGLY rude Americans that way, as well. So there we are, driving like a bat straight out of hell and with no intention of going back, yelling "Hola!" at anything that moves, and waving and grinning like only idiotic teenagers can do. We stopped in Trujillo at one of the shops, and met the shop keeper who had been an exchange student in America (I think), and spoke really good English. He asked us all where we were from, talking to each of us in turn. He was an interesting guy named Emanuele, and had the most gentle spirit I have ever meet. He very kindly told us that it was great that we were trying to be friendly, but we needed to be saying "Bueno" in greeting, isntead of "Hola". Now, we were a pack of teenagers; is there a group on the planet that could know more than we did? We thought not! "But Emanuele," we argued, "'Bueno' means 'good', not hello! 'Hola' means 'hello'!" He smiled sweetly at our naivite, and whispered that prostitutes locally would call out hola to let men know they were available for business.
Now, let's take a step back here, and look at this spectacle through local eyes. Can you imagine how STRANGE we looked, a million giant American teens, dressed in bizarre colors (more on that in a minute), jammed in the back of a pick up truck, bacically screaming that they were available, male and female alike? Really, us? Really? The bizarre color scheme came courtesy of our churches at home; many of the congregation had made sun dresses for the girls to wear over there, since shorts and tank tops really didn't fly with local culture, and we weren't there to shock folks. While we spent the year earning our funds to get to Honduras, a lot of the older women in my congregation had been making as many sundresses as possible, which we would then leave behind for poorer families to use as they wished. We usually threw them on over shorts and tank tops, which we wore around the camp. It was SO kind of them to make these dresses, from their own fabric reserves, and for nothing, to boot. Cost us not a thing. But there were some WILD prints in there. Half of my dresses had Christmas print, and another had neon frogs, all lines up in never ending rows. What I had that wasn't Christmas WAS obnoxious in color (I did this on purpose; I was mad that I had to wear dresses, since at that time I think I had a grand total of three dresses to my name, and decided that if I had to suffer so did everyone else! I was a spoiled brat, what can I say? So of the really strange fabrics I would chose the strangest.). Can you imagine the truly bizarre show we must have presented? Several of our dresses were made in neon hued camoflauge print, which seems to have defeated the purpose of camo, but whatever. Any time we passed something bright, those of us in the camp would press against it and declare that no one could see us because we were camoflauged. Haha, funny.
Sadly, almost immediately into this trip, my digestive tract headed south, straight to hell. I think it was in large part because of the heat, the water situation, and the fact that we ate a lot of fiber with each meal. Me and most of the camp (with the exception of the counsellors) got Montezuma's revenge in a BIG way. I'm sure stress didnt help matters any, either. For all of us this was our first trip outside of the American sphere, and it was a good one to have, because man did we learn that what we had was a LOT. We learned that not everyone was like us, and that there were much, MUCH worse things in the world than being pissed off at your parents for not letting you buy that slutty blouse or date that asshole. This was an enormous culture shock to us, and the first time you do it, it's really, really scary being in a place where most of the population speaks a language that differs from your own. What if we got lost? What if we got sick? What if someone got bit by a snake, a very real fear to have? What if the fighting came tothis area of Honduras? Did we leave? Did we stay and help? After getting to know so many kind people, could we leave, under our own standards of ethics? We were scared a lot of the time, because this was our first entry into a world much bigger than ourselves, and that's terrifying the first time it occurs. So it was no surprise we all had the squirts.
Now, I was a particularly nervous teenager, for reasons I've gone into in the past, and tended to carry all of my stress in my gut, anyway. I spent hours in the bathroom, in pain, on the toilet. Hilariously now, I was able to poop in front of people with minimal concern; the bathrooms were gender specific but communal, and none of the toilet stalls had doors. No one was in the least concerned with what the other's bowels were doing; it was just a fat of life. There is no way in hell I could do that now. The bathroom was interesting all in its self. It reminded me of the locker room in a pool, showers on one side, toilets on the other, and benches that were perminently attached to the floor in the center, sinks were off on the end by the door. For some reason scorpions and spiders LOVED that bathroom. The first time I ever saw a scorpion in the wild was on the wall in that bathroom, and the spiders had declared the shower stalls their own. We fianlly conceeded to the Arachnid Over Lords and just bathed in the creek that ran behind the mess hall. That same creek fed the showers anyway. They were also home to some amazingly delicate and beautiful tropical freshwaterfish. It was neat, bathing with these little fish that were worth some exhorbant fee to exotic fish keepers, and having them dart forward and nibble on your skin. They were cute, and pretty, and it was a sort of magical feel to it.
One of my favorite things to look at in Honduras was the fireflies. Those and the food were the only things I missed about Louisiana, and it was so nice to see them again. I would sit, either on the steps of my cabin, or in the pavilion in the middle of camp, and just watch them ghost on and off. It was really pretty against the tropical plants that grew naturally around us. That was the only place I ever picked an orange and ate it, or picked lemons to eat with sugar on them. That was also the first place I had a green coconut, and it was delicious.
Next time: Ghosts from Louisiana, The Meanest Boy Band Ever, and Butchering Spansih!
We also met Maria who (I think?) was Mario's mom. She was our head cook, and though she spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, she would still crack me up. Occasionally we would go to a local resort to swim at their beach (and not buy their pop, because holy shit was it expensive), and a little girl would come around selling pan de coca, or coconut bread. This stuff was. So. Good. It was sweet, and fluffy, and that little girl was so cute that we'd always buy her out while we were there. Her parents must have loved to see us coming. ;) Well I was washing dishes on one of the days when I had kitchen duty, and was chattering at Maria in my broken Spanish (I can't help it; I MUST TALK.) and told her that "Pan de coca is muey delicioso", or something similar. She got a sly look on her face and said "Pan de boca?" (I think it was boca, can't remember the exact word now.) I knew what that meant. That meant booger bread, and dammit, that's just gross! I hollared "EEEEEEEWWWW!!" which apparently is universal in any language, and she busted up. For the rest of the day if she saw me she'd start laughing, and everytime afterwards she'd ask me "Pan de boca?" just to see my reaction. ;)
But that second day was full of all sorts of interesting experiences, many of them hilarious now. For starters, our camp had three little pick up trucks that were camp property. Two we used regularly, one I never saw do anything other than hemmorage oil on the grass. We would travel from place to place by herding as many of us as possible into the back of each truck, and one of the councellors would drive us to where ever we needed to go. We wanted to be as friendly as possible, so where ever we went we would wave at people, and shout "Hola!" at folks. Part of the reason for this aggressive friendliness was because we were there on mission; we were going to be building roofs, laying foundations, and going around to local schools to teach about hepititus prevention. We wanted to come off as eager to work, not as Paternalistic McGringo. (Amusingly, we had several black kids as well as white kids; we were all gringos, and in at least one instance from a cranky old woman, 'locos americanos'. Maybe we were TOO friendly.)
We also wanted to be nice, because Trujillo at the time had an infant tourist trade coming to life, and from what we saw, almost ALL of the tourists were fucking RUDE to the locals. For some reason all of the tourists we met (and were sneered at) were German. I have no idea why it was so popular with Germany as a destination site, but there you go. There was also a lot of scuba diving done in the area, and we met some AMAZINGLY rude Americans that way, as well. So there we are, driving like a bat straight out of hell and with no intention of going back, yelling "Hola!" at anything that moves, and waving and grinning like only idiotic teenagers can do. We stopped in Trujillo at one of the shops, and met the shop keeper who had been an exchange student in America (I think), and spoke really good English. He asked us all where we were from, talking to each of us in turn. He was an interesting guy named Emanuele, and had the most gentle spirit I have ever meet. He very kindly told us that it was great that we were trying to be friendly, but we needed to be saying "Bueno" in greeting, isntead of "Hola". Now, we were a pack of teenagers; is there a group on the planet that could know more than we did? We thought not! "But Emanuele," we argued, "'Bueno' means 'good', not hello! 'Hola' means 'hello'!" He smiled sweetly at our naivite, and whispered that prostitutes locally would call out hola to let men know they were available for business.
Now, let's take a step back here, and look at this spectacle through local eyes. Can you imagine how STRANGE we looked, a million giant American teens, dressed in bizarre colors (more on that in a minute), jammed in the back of a pick up truck, bacically screaming that they were available, male and female alike? Really, us? Really? The bizarre color scheme came courtesy of our churches at home; many of the congregation had made sun dresses for the girls to wear over there, since shorts and tank tops really didn't fly with local culture, and we weren't there to shock folks. While we spent the year earning our funds to get to Honduras, a lot of the older women in my congregation had been making as many sundresses as possible, which we would then leave behind for poorer families to use as they wished. We usually threw them on over shorts and tank tops, which we wore around the camp. It was SO kind of them to make these dresses, from their own fabric reserves, and for nothing, to boot. Cost us not a thing. But there were some WILD prints in there. Half of my dresses had Christmas print, and another had neon frogs, all lines up in never ending rows. What I had that wasn't Christmas WAS obnoxious in color (I did this on purpose; I was mad that I had to wear dresses, since at that time I think I had a grand total of three dresses to my name, and decided that if I had to suffer so did everyone else! I was a spoiled brat, what can I say? So of the really strange fabrics I would chose the strangest.). Can you imagine the truly bizarre show we must have presented? Several of our dresses were made in neon hued camoflauge print, which seems to have defeated the purpose of camo, but whatever. Any time we passed something bright, those of us in the camp would press against it and declare that no one could see us because we were camoflauged. Haha, funny.
Sadly, almost immediately into this trip, my digestive tract headed south, straight to hell. I think it was in large part because of the heat, the water situation, and the fact that we ate a lot of fiber with each meal. Me and most of the camp (with the exception of the counsellors) got Montezuma's revenge in a BIG way. I'm sure stress didnt help matters any, either. For all of us this was our first trip outside of the American sphere, and it was a good one to have, because man did we learn that what we had was a LOT. We learned that not everyone was like us, and that there were much, MUCH worse things in the world than being pissed off at your parents for not letting you buy that slutty blouse or date that asshole. This was an enormous culture shock to us, and the first time you do it, it's really, really scary being in a place where most of the population speaks a language that differs from your own. What if we got lost? What if we got sick? What if someone got bit by a snake, a very real fear to have? What if the fighting came tothis area of Honduras? Did we leave? Did we stay and help? After getting to know so many kind people, could we leave, under our own standards of ethics? We were scared a lot of the time, because this was our first entry into a world much bigger than ourselves, and that's terrifying the first time it occurs. So it was no surprise we all had the squirts.
Now, I was a particularly nervous teenager, for reasons I've gone into in the past, and tended to carry all of my stress in my gut, anyway. I spent hours in the bathroom, in pain, on the toilet. Hilariously now, I was able to poop in front of people with minimal concern; the bathrooms were gender specific but communal, and none of the toilet stalls had doors. No one was in the least concerned with what the other's bowels were doing; it was just a fat of life. There is no way in hell I could do that now. The bathroom was interesting all in its self. It reminded me of the locker room in a pool, showers on one side, toilets on the other, and benches that were perminently attached to the floor in the center, sinks were off on the end by the door. For some reason scorpions and spiders LOVED that bathroom. The first time I ever saw a scorpion in the wild was on the wall in that bathroom, and the spiders had declared the shower stalls their own. We fianlly conceeded to the Arachnid Over Lords and just bathed in the creek that ran behind the mess hall. That same creek fed the showers anyway. They were also home to some amazingly delicate and beautiful tropical freshwaterfish. It was neat, bathing with these little fish that were worth some exhorbant fee to exotic fish keepers, and having them dart forward and nibble on your skin. They were cute, and pretty, and it was a sort of magical feel to it.
One of my favorite things to look at in Honduras was the fireflies. Those and the food were the only things I missed about Louisiana, and it was so nice to see them again. I would sit, either on the steps of my cabin, or in the pavilion in the middle of camp, and just watch them ghost on and off. It was really pretty against the tropical plants that grew naturally around us. That was the only place I ever picked an orange and ate it, or picked lemons to eat with sugar on them. That was also the first place I had a green coconut, and it was delicious.
Next time: Ghosts from Louisiana, The Meanest Boy Band Ever, and Butchering Spansih!