i almost ate 10 tamales

25 December 2008
Merry Christmas, chochachos! Dang I guess I got all “busy” and stuff and stopped blogging for a bit. Not that it really matters, since internet doesn’t exist in the Lubes. But anyway. Merry Christmas! Today, Christmas Day, wasn’t anything special—I just got up, washed my clothes for a couple hours, rode my bike around, and ate several tamales. Yesterday was the big tamale (pun intended…is that a pun?), and most folks were up at 5:00am, boiling masa (corn meal stuff), killing chickens and pigs, gathering banana leaves, and boiling beans for the big Tamale Feast. I helped Sandra slice up potatoes and stuff, and then watched as Paula, her mom (and my counterpart), laid a piece of banana leaf on the counter, dolloped corny-goo in the middle, then beans, then potato, then red stuff, then dead animal bits (mmm delicious). Then Paula would wrap it all up and her mom, who looks like she’s 200 years old and can’t hear, would tie them up with a little piece of fiber. Once they were all done, we loaded them into a huge pot with a bit of water and boiled ‘em for hours. Other families also make torejas, which is sort of like what French toast would be if it decided to go to college and really make something of itself—it’s so hot and gooey and drenched in honey. Celebrating Christmas away from my parents, not to mention my culture, was a little weird. Back in the America-land Christmas is basically the biggest thing that happens to a kid all year—no doubt due to the presents. Here, presents aren’t really exchanged like we do—parents buy their kids clothes, but that’s about it. No tree, no Santa, no stockings. Here, all the focus is on the food. Christmas doesn’t hold the same frenzied joy that it does back home—I ran into several kids who weren’t even aware it was Christmas. Except for the excess of firecrackers (HELL YES FIRECRACKERS), the violent increase in drunk men passed out in the dirt (I awoke Christmas Eve to the sound of a bolo (drunk) barfing at the top of his lungs in the street outside my house), and the communal feasting of tamales, it’s basically like any other day. I didn’t even stay up till midnight! (Officially an old campo woman.)

This past weekend, though, was such a blasty-blast it makes up for the fact I didn’t get any Christmas presents. On Friday, I was hanging out in Reitoca (nearby municipality) for a two-day Fondo Cristiano meeting, which including a Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious, and I amused myself and others by trying to dance to traditional “cuerdo” music (string band, basically). It was sort of like a high school dance, only with booze. (Or maybe there always was booze at the high school dances and I just didn’t know.) The men were getting drunk as quickly as possible (even the band would stop every could of songs and, with decreasing discreetness, dump guaro into their cokes), and the women would send the local strumpet to fix herself a mixed drink, then return and very surreptitiously tip it into empty cups outstretched underneath the table. (Only skank-wad ladies drink here, or so says the culture.) I danced meringue with my boss and this very frightened-looking 20-year-old kid who works in another town. I stepped on his toes like eight times. So that was all Thursday night, and on Friday the main-boss dude was headed to Tegus, so I hopped in his car with him and caught a free lift to the city. My host mom and her sister and kids happened to be there too, so I crashed at their house and had a great time going to the mall and eating two Cinnabons, just like an American. Saturday night I met up with my friend Andy, a fellow volunteer, and we went to an awesome Honduran house party with some friends of his. It was so fun, a dog barks. People were hanging around, drinking beers and smoking, listening to crazy music and talking—no guaro, no reggaeton, no creepy men. It felt like I was back in the states—the crazy hippie Hondurans at this party weren’t anything like the humble folks waiting for me back in the campo. It reminded me of being in Chile. To be honest, I think the party has widened my mental representation of what it means to be a Honduran—until now, I’d pretty much only interacted with the country mice, which are arguably quite different from the city mice. In fact, I met one dude, who suddenly struck me as familiar. After chatting with him for a minute, I realized why it felt like I knew him—he was from a small pueblo in the south, too, and just happened to be visiting. This was also an interesting discovery; that I’ve been here enough that I can get a vibe about where people are from in the country. A bunch of people asked me for my phone number and promised camping excursions and adventures, so we’ll see if any real friendships come out of this. Either way, though, it was the most fun I’ve had after 9:30pm in a very long time.

I’d better go to bed…tomorrow I have my Pregnant Women’s Club (the theme is about the actual birthing process, what goes on and what the danger signs are). Then I’m going to move into my new house! I’ve had some of my stuff there for the past couple weeks, and now I’m finally gonna finish the job. On Saturday, I leave for El Salvador a week of surfing (I’m gonna learn!) and chilling on the beach with about 10 gringo friends. When I get back, I’ll be living in my new little house, aka the Tarantula Oven. Come visit! I have two hammocks, and the latrine has some plants around it. Real cozy like.

Love,
Hayley

12 December 2008
Hey, chochachos! Dang I’m sleepy. I’ve turned into a mega-old woman these days…9:30pm rolls around and I’m just huge exaggerated yawns and stretching. I’ve turned into my father. I can’t even sleep in anymore, either!! If I wake up and the clock says 8:00am, that means that either a) someone has kidnapped my hella-screamy host sister, or b) it must be Saturday. Which, coincidentally, is tomorrow. Currently, Carlita (3-year-old sister) and Said (9-year-old host cousin) are screaming and thundering up and down the slippery tile hallway, collapsing in a pile at my doorway and screaming some more. Oh, good. Now she’s shrieking in anger. Dang I wish I had a door…I would name him Doory (Dori?!) and he would be my friend. Not that I don’t adore the little kid, she’s really grown on me…but jesus god does she love to scream. Sometimes when she’s in a I’m-three-and-can’t-accurately-express-with-words-the-frustration-I-feel-right-now moods she does this lion-bark thing where she screams at you in short, throaty bursts of rage. It’s kind of scary. Today I received an awesome box of art supplies from my delightful Aunt Lisa, which also had a big bag of trail mix. I brought it into my host mom’s room to share with her and Carla, who were lying in bed giggling, and they thought it was AWESOME (which it is). Carlita then proceeded to pull a “Wendy Kercher,” which, for those of you who’ve never seen the dame eat trail mix, involves carefully picked out all the M&Ms and ignoring any non-chocolate product. I was chatting with Sandra and turned to see Carlita with a HUGE heap of candies in her lap, which she promptly shoved into her mouth with astonishing speed, breaking all kinds of oral-volume records (think tiny brown hamster?).

I made some pretty big mistakes today. Basically, someone (John, maybe?) sent a huge bag of baseball shoes for my baseball team, like 40 pairs. So I dragged this bag to my house from Tegus the other day, and had plans to divvy em up at practice today. On my way home from lunch, though, I passed three of my baseball kids, so I told them to come to my house and I’d give them their shoes now, thinking it would make things easier in the afternoon with less kids waiting for shoes. So they come, and get all outfitted. Now here, when someone is “regalando” (giving out) something, it must release some kind of scent into the air, because before I knew it, all kinds of neighbors and more baseball kids were shoving onto my porch with their hands outstretched. Why not, I figured, might as well get some more baseball kids out of the way…even though a lot of the kids who’d shown up were the “once and while” players, instead of the “every day” players…we had like 40 pairs so I figured it would be fine. Then, some neighborhood moms starting arriving, requesting pairs for their little boys or nephews or whatever. I explained they were donated with the intention of giving them to my baseball players, and that it would be dishonest to hand them out to other people. The moms got mad and called me a cheapskate, and left somewhat huffily. I know the rule here is that if you have something good, you share it, but obviously it’s not cool to take people’s donations from the states and misuse them (even though a kid with a new pair of shoes isn’t exactly misuse…). Anyway, now the problem was that I’d given out an awful lot of shoes to baseball players, many of whom don’t come all the time, and now I was out of shoes for several of my older players, who come every day (the issue being we had a ton of smaller shoes and only a few pairs of bigger shoes). But it was too late, I can’t very well wrench the cleats out of the kids’ hands, especially since a lot of them had already washed them and had walked home staring at the ground, admiring every single shiny, clackity step. So, crap. I called my boss and she said there are three pairs of larger-sized cleats in the office that she’ll save for me, so at least Cristian, Robin, and Junior won’t be hella pissed at me anymore. But the truth is, I really messed up—I should have brought the cleats to practice to give them to the kids who were there, instead of accidentally screwing over the kids who didn’t know I was handing out cleats and, at the same time, accidentally tripling our daily attendance. So today, 38 kids arrived at the campo, armed with new cleats, except for the few who couldn’t find a pair who fit (such as my older, bigger kids). Needless to say, tensions were running high—the older kids were pissed that our numbers had suddenly tripled and they had no cleats, and the younger, smaller kids were fighting. I had to send two kids home for cusses and for telling one of the girls to go to bed with him. I tried to have a baseball game, but the teams were so big the majority spent time waiting to bat or waiting for the ball to come their way. I also let the kids pitch for the first time, so we barely got any hits; it was mostly just a bunch of walks. Then, of course, all these grown men showed up to play soccer and were all pissed we had taken over the field. When the practice ended, I kind of wanted to cry (but I can’t because we all know about the rules regarding crying and baseball). So I went to Cristian’s house and hung out with his mom Toña, ate eggs and beans and then spent a cathartic evening in the hammock watching Titanic in Spanish with her three-year-old kid Elvis (PS, Hondurans are hells of obsessed with Titanic). Then Toña, the mother, asked me if the ocean really exists, and when I said yes, she asked, “But where?,” which ignited a conversation regarding the Earth’s spherical properties and how land-and-water works.

So, I went to Tegus this past week, Monday through Thursday. Monday I went to the doctor—after a couple days of splatter-foot (diarrhea) I thought maybe I should go poop in a cup for them, which I did, and it was discovered I have some kind of crazy intestinal bacteria infection thing. So now I have these little plastic vials (think teeny Squeeze-Its) filled with something, as well as antibiotic pills, which I take twice daily. My favorite part is drinking whatever it is that inside the vials and pretending I’m a giant enjoying a Squeeze-It. On Tuesday, I hopped on a bus and traveled to Santa Lucia, a cute little town right next to Valle de Angeles, where I used to live. We were having our Safety and Security meeting, for all the volunteers who live in the department of Francisco Morazan. It was super great, because the hotel was awesome, the food was delicious, the showers were HOT!!, and my friends were there. The next morning, I caught another bus to Santa Rita, to visit my old host family!! Just like old times, as I descended down the hill my two little sisters Melani and Madeline came screaming up the road, and dragged me home to a weeping-with-joy (literally) Suyapa and a beaming Javier, who can now toddle a few steps and is a poster child for Adorableness. We ate lunch, and then hiked up a nearby mountain to enjoy the view of the valley with all the neighborhood kids (including little Javier, who sat like a prince in his crappy stroller, which Suyapa and I took turns shoving up the mountain, stopping every two feet to remove a pinecone from the wheels). When we “summited,” we just relaxed on the soft pine-needley ground, chucked pinecones down the hill, and breathed in the sweet mountain air. It was so wonderful to be back in the cool, piney woods like that, especially with my first family…if Bob Ross had been there he would painted the hell out of us.

Oh heavens, it’s 10:15pm. It’s bedtime so hard right now.
Love,
Hayley
p.s. I love you guys.