toad turds and pollywogs

crazy sunset cloud formations...doesnt that look like Snoopy, peering off a cliff during a full moon? I KNOW RIGHT?!

Yes Igor you DO look awesome bathed in late afternoon sunlight.

the hill david and i (and igor) scrambled up.

ambulatory bovine alert!!

the only photo of us together, ever.

lubey lubes on a humid afternoon.

Gary, my pet garrobo that lives in the random rock heap I have outside my home. He sits and suns himself all day long.

Las Panteras, after our championship.

dog pile of joy...despite losing. thats right children, pound out your misery.

Fernando on first!

Nely and her birthday donuts.

Little Geyli and her grandpappy.

My backyard on an early misty morning

my extremely pregnant landlady Mirian, who actually just had her baby the day before yesterday...a little baby boy named Eli! yay!

Rony and Mirian. Landlords of the future.

Little Elvin, practicing good oral hygiene.

My friend Aida's younger sister, Xiomara, with her new husband Marlon and their puppy, Tuta, in their new home.

Doesn't little Carlos sit like a king? He looks ever so benevolent, yet wise...

the little types of El Jicaro, scrubbin away.

Semana santa sunset.

permanent waves.

cotton candy evening

23 April 2010

Hey, chochachos! Guess what? IT’S FAKE WINTER!!!!! A little old man told me on the bus like two months ago that we would experience an “invierno falso” in April, and he’s totally right (real winter begins in the middle of May). If it ain’t fake winter right now, then I’ll eat my mittens and hat (though not really, ‘cause I need those puppies!). Actually, that’s a lie. When Hondurans refer to “winter” they mean the rainy season, which if anything is actually HOTTER than summer because of the moisture-induced humidity. However, the rain storms cool everything off and so it’s totally worth it, 100 times, 1,000 times. So anyway, a month ago I was bitchin’ about how hot and dry it is, how there’s no water, how all the plants are dead…please consider such insignificant groanings null and void. Beginning about two weeks ago, we’ve had late-afternoon thunderstorms maybe every three or four days, with deliciously squishy results, foliage-wise. My basil is completely on steroids, and all the trees have suddenly exploded with leaves and new twigglies. The grass and weeds are growing like they’re 13-year-old boys, only without the painful self-awareness and wet dreams. My pila is filled with water regularly every other day, and the swimmin’ holes have swelled marvelously (here I could make another puberty-esque metaphor, but I’ll refrain as there might be children reading this). However, the rainy season isn’t just all rainbows and tambourines—there are evils afoot, too, which I shall list below in no significant order:

1. The beetles. The rains make all these huge, crunchy beetles emerge from somewhere, and they congregate in the evenings around the light. This means that while lying in my hammock, eating or reading or whatever, I am constantly plucking this plastic-enforced monsters off my shirt, my hair, my food, my skin, etc., though it’s a rather fruitless battle because no sooner do I yank one off and hurl his little scarab ass across the room does another dive-bomb me—they seem to love it. Also, the hammock lounge position (feet together, knees bent like a frog) means that there are gaping caves between my shorts and thighs, which is the perfect target for such kamikaze pilots…which is why I spend maybe a fourth of my evening fishing donut-hole sized insects out of my crotch.

2. The amphibians. Now, don’t get me wrong. Unlike every single Honduran ever, I am not deathly afraid of toads and their slightly less grotesque cousins, the frog. I actually like them. The rains, however, have encouraged them to emerge from their secret lairs carved into the sides of remote mountain ranges and they are taking over the damn place. At night, the toads hop into my house and lazily hunt the beetles that have turtled-over and wobble on their backs, tiny sticker legs waving around hopefully. That’s all fine and good. The frogs, aided by sticky feet, spider-man-frog it around the walls and ceiling, hanging out by the light and slurping down any and all flying insects. Fine by me. They also fill the night air with an incredible cacophony of different chirps, squawks, and croaks—it sounds like an intergalactic laser gun fight. Also great—if you think there is better falling asleep music, then you’re a liar, ‘cause there isn’t. Wonderful. What I DON’T approve of, however, is the frogs’ collective decision to turn my bathing barrel and pila into an all-night bath-house…and here I am referring to the infamous bathhouses of ill repute. You can also imagine my pila as a shadowy truck stop along a lone highway in the 1980s. Either way, there is a lot of mixing of bodily fluids and I often go out for a late-night pee, only to find various slimy green couples playing two-frog twister. One Friday, I left to go to Tegus for the day to do errands at the Peace Corps office. My neighbor Tina called me, very distressed, at about 10:00am, to inform me that I had “thousands of frog eggs floating in my pila.” She said she scooped out what she could but that there was still a lot in there. I returned home Saturday to find a thick blanket of tiny black tadpoles carpeting the bottom of my concrete pila, wriggling around like spermies. The shower barrel was spawn-free, but had two toad turds floating in it, which look just like mini dog turds. DAMN YOU, ANPHIBIANS. I called the kids over and we carefully filled 10 baggies with tadpoles, which we carried to the creek and released in a very Free Willy-esque moment. The rest I drained out and scrubbed down with soap…same with Turd Island. I’m touched these young lovers are sneaking out of their burrows to come tangle at my house, but if it happens again I’m gonna have to take serious measures. Like filling my pila with ginger-ale…boiling hot, Texas-style ginger ale!!!

I guess that’s it, complaint-wise. I love the thunderstorms…the anticipation as the gray-purple mass forms on the horizon and heads toward us, usually from the north-east. I love the flash of light followed by sharp crackles and booms, all the crazy pageantry of nature that we Californians can’t understand (no summer rain!). I love the sheets of water pouring off my zinc roof, and the roar it creates, so loud I can’t even carry a conversation with myself (“Another peanut M&M, Hayley?” “WHAT. EMINEM SUCKS. WHAT?" And I love the sudden greenification of my house and the hills around it. So even if this is a fake winter…I’m diggin’ it. Just don’t plant your corn yet.

I won’t say much about Semana Santa except that it was awesome. I slightly overdid it the first day and spend every waking moment in the ocean, which resulted in a) a ridiculous sunburn, b) painful, blistered lips, and c) an inner AND outer ear infection, in BOTH ears. Totally worth it, though. The waves were 6-feet-high every day and my buddies and I spent our days rolling and riding around on them, eating toasty sandwiches and drinking icy beverages of fruity origins. Sand castles were also made, and I may or may not have pissed off an entire bar full of people by abusing my water-gun privileges and exercising my shoddy aiming skills. Fortunately, I averted the mob by blending into the crowd, something I do naturally in Central America.

Our baseball “championship” (April 17) went about as expected, which is to say we lost. Reitoca hosted it this year, but it sucked because unlike previous years, the Peace Corps has no baseball funds, or they seem to have it tied up in a mysterious “coaches training” that was supposed to happen in February and has yet to be mentioned. Either way, no dough for championships, regional or otherwise, and certainly none for the National Championship. In previous years it’s been held in Tegucigalpa in a real stadium, all expenses paid for the kids—they got hotel rooms, food, medals, even a trip to a children’s museum. Not no more…now we don’t even have funds to pay for a real umpire to come to the regional championships. Which, I suppose, would be pointless, considering there aren’t trophies or a National competition. Either way, with my buddy David’s departure date looming (this Monday! Tear.), we decided to have one anyway, so the kids could have some closure (since Reitoca is the only other community nearby with a baseball team, once he leaves, we’ll have no one to play against until they get another volunteer, which isn’t until September). However, it was essentially like any other scrimmage, except David marked the field with ashes and we made the kids sing the national anthem before they played (horrific disaster…one of my kids Kenssy conducted it, and none of the kids followed her…they finished the song six different times). I only brought 14 kids this time, because I’ve been having lower numbers (no one wants to be a loser, I guess). One of my best pitcher’s moms refused to let him come, because she was “sick of watching him lose.” Not that she’s ever been to a game. So poor Enner had to pitch the whole time. As it was, they played pretty good, and we even scored a run! Reitoca got three, thus beating us with a resounding 3-1 final score, and Las Panteras seemed no worse for the wear, as I suspect they now go into games assuming they will lose. It was fun on the way over, though…I taught them all Spanish versions of those dorky call-and-repeat spirit songs we used to sing in T-ball, as well as the ever popular “GIMME A P! (P!) GIMME AN A! (A!)…” etc. They belted them out all the way to Reitoca and begged to sing them on the way home, too, even though we’d lost. So at least they’re good losers…though when we entered Alubarén proper they all started screaming and cheering and shouting “WE WON! WE WON!” to the people outside, which we most certainly had not. I didn’t stop them, though. A little self-deception never hurt anyone, that’s what I always say.

As I mentioned, David, my “pretend site-mate” and one-man adventure cohort, is on his way out; his two-year alarm clock is finally going off. Since he doesn’t live in my town, my day-to-day life won’t change much, but I’ll miss him coming over on the weekends once a month, to scramble around in the hills behind my house, cool off in the swimmin’ hole, lie in the hammocks and stuff our faces with candy and trail mix sent from the states, all the while greasing the gossip chains of my neighborhood as folks stand around and whisper about how “that other gringo” spends the night and therefore must be my boyfriend. It’s hard to explain that actually, American culture permits that a lady and a dude can be platonic friends and spend our evenings alone together, not boning but playing Hangman on my wall with sidewalk chalk while eating buckets of homemade pesto and drinking two liters of Coke, each. Ah, the differences of culture. Anyway, David and I decided we should have one final fling, and he came over last week to celebrate our Closing of Ceremonies. We made a picnic (rice crispy treats, sandwiches (tuna and cheese on wheat bread; god bless you Tegus supermarket) and a big thermos of ice cold homemade lemonade) and we set off into the jungley hills behind my house, Igor racing around our heels. Determined to make it a genuine Adventure, we scanned the horizon and declared it time to finally climb the abrupt peak that juts out of the mountain but which we’d never scaled. We circled around behind it and, lacking a path, just bushwacked our way to the top. There we ate our lunch (Igor had dog biscuits sent down from gramma and grampa Kercher), peered down at Alubarén, and reflected on life. Getting down was, for some unexplainable reason, extremely treacherous and I led us down several VERY wrong paths (all ended in some abrupt abyss) until we finally stumbled upon the way we’d come up, which turned out to be the only way that didn’t involve “that god-damn gully AGAIN!”. Stupid gully. Then we tramped up and over and down and through the woods, along the cow paths, until we got to the swimmin’ hole, where we splashed around and ate the last of our ‘crispies and drank more lemonade. Finally, we headed up to my favorite sittin’ hill and watched the sun set, slurping down the last tangy drops of god’s gift to beverages. A remarkable Closing of Ceremonies, indeed. Then we headed back to the Tarantula Oven for a pesto, soda, and candy. So long, pal.

Such is life. My time to peace out is fast approaching (I only have 5 months left) and after that I have no idea where I’ll go or what I’ll do. Any ideas?

Bed tiiiiiiime………just me and Fanny the Fan.

Love,

Hayley