Wednesday, July 07, 2010

What’s to love about Honduras

“Don’t disappoint Honduras!” quips Don Obidio whenever he pressures me to visit his integrated farm. As we wind our way down to his isolated farmhouse through his beans, corn, coffee, and fruit trees, he points out a flowering tree that has, he says, mysteriously fallen over several times and miraculously resurrected itself. He’s most proud of his bees, and teases me about being scared of getting stung. “Come over and we’ll get rid of your arthritis!” he chuckles, referring to the curative properties of the bee sting. He’s got 3 types of bee colonies, two of which are stingless, therefore he calls them “your friends”. The highest quality honey is a runny blond serum known for its medicinal properties, said to be good for internal bleeding and eye problems (when dropped directly into the eye). It sells for 6 times the price of regular honey. He tells us about the problem of bee diarrhea, which can shorten a bee’s brief 15-day lifespan significantly. He jokes about taking just enough honey from the bees' storehouse so they won’t get offended and move away. He wants to serve me a dish of pure honey, a delicacy for Hondurans. I just can’t do it, but the Honduran I’m with digs in. Then Don Obidio’s face lights up as he remembers that he was going to show me two certificates he has received from trainings in tourism and bee-keeping, which he has framed and hung on the wall. These dusty prizes are typically treasured here, and often a job applicant will simply take a folder-full of certificates to an interview. The latest of them was from 5 years ago, but his pride is as fresh as if it were yesterday. The light breeze, the warm summer day, and the simple, easy-going humor of this farmer and his family are exactly what I love about Honduras.

You know you’re starting to set down roots into Honduras when:

1. You wouldn’t dream of writing an agenda for a meeting that didn’t start with “open the meeting”, then “pray to god,” and end with “close meeting.”

2. You feel a weird emptiness when a bus isn’t decked out with at least three of the following: silhouettes of impossibly busty women, bitchy instructions to passengers (“ask for security not speed” and “if you miss the bus it’s not the driver’s fault”), stickers of sinister-looking punk kids or Calvin peeing on something, soccer paraphernalia, the Honduran and American flags, signs deferring blame for accidents to religious figures (“This bus is protected by the blood of Jesus”), stuffed animals, or, my favorite, a sign that says “don’t vomit on the floor.”

3. To avoid getting sick you refuse to bathe after exercising or eating.

4. You chalk all illnesses up to “changes in climate.”

5. A meal without tortillas is like jam without bread.

6. Your bottom lip has taken the place of your index finger as the body part of choice for indicating location.

7. If you’re female, you decide you must look awful today if you pass more than 5 men and don’t get a single catcall.

8. You understand the dirty doble entendres in many of Honduras’s most favorite songs, such as El Gusano (The worm) and Arriba y Abajo (Above and Below).

9. Within seconds, you can identify a song as merenge, salsa, bachata, cumbia, or punta and know how to dance it.

10. You refer to a person with a bachelor’s degree as “el licenciado” (the licensed one.)

11. You carry an umbrella in every season, using it as a parasol for shade on sunny days (I’m never giving this one up!).

12. Upon meeting older women you know, you put your hand on her upper arm and kind of pat her a little.

13. When your tummy aches or you twisted your ankle, you go to someone who can “sobar” you. It’s a special type of massage for the affected area that sometimes requires the use of lard.

14.You can distinguish between the “ch!” noise used to shoo away dogs and the “ch!” noise used to get a pretty girl’s attention and make her fall in love with you.

15. You say things in English like “We realized a capacitation on Friday and it passed tranquilly.”

16. The remedy for a bad smell is to spit on the ground.

17. You have learned to do the dead fish handshake, and no longer crush unsuspecting Honduran mens’ hands when you greet them.