A Few Days in the Life

So last weekend, I had the chance to take advantage of Labor Day here to visit an interna's (boarding student's) family. We left on Thursday afternoon after class to go to Lepaera, a town about 45 minuts from Santa Rosa (or more like two hours on a bus). After riding the bus, taking a rapidito (taxi-type vans that take 30 people when there's only technically space for 15), and then bumping along in the back of a pickup, we arrived at Rudys's family's house. It's just a three room building, with a bathroom, shower, and "laundry well" in the outhouse out back and a seperated kitchen. I got one of the rooms all to myself, and the rest of the family (there were 6 of them) slept in the other two, with curtains separated the two living room sized spaces into separate bedrooms.

The roof was basically tiles placed on top of beams, and when it rained (which it did, and very hard), the tiles on the edge of the roof flew off with the wind, and the dirt and bugs living in the clay tiles all rained down on top of us inside. Since it rarely rains that hard, people just place the tiles on the roof without securing them, or just put a sheet of tin across the tops of the walls and puts stones are the edge to keep it from blowing away. So when we had the thuderstorm with strong winds, lots of people lost their roofs and were putting up new ones the next morning. Fortunately, and unfortunately, it was pretty easy for them to do, once they figured out which one of their neighbors had rescued their piece of tin/roof. Even though it looked like a tornado had ripped through the town, judging by the damage, it really wasn't all that strong.

Here in Honduras, the custom for receiving guests into your house is to offer them coffee and sweet bread, a fruit, a glass of juice or whatever they have. But it's always food and something to drink. Rudys is number seven of eight brothers and sisters. All of her family lives in the greater Lepaera area, except for two brothers who live in Washington DC and some city in Canada. Only she and her younger sister are not married, and still live in the house. While I was there (about four days), we visited all of their houses, plus three other internas' houses, Alejandra (one of my English students), Rosa Ayde, and Lourdes.

Rosa Ayde's house was two stories tall. It was by far the nicest house in the area, from the outside. But the light bulbs were hanging by wires. There was only plastic furnirture and only a few decorations. They didn't turn on the lights in the house until it was too dark to see by the light of the two windows in each room. The only decorations on the wall were plaques and awards from when her father won the best cup of coffee in the world contest in 200-something. He'd used the prize money to improve his fields and his house. He says he only got that far on the money and then had to stop. Now now he has a giant empty house, with unfinished walls, and sketchy electricity. But they're working on it. The stove, however, was my favorite part was the stove in the kitchen. It's a gas stove, and the gas comes from a machine in their backyard that converts the pulp from coffee beans into fuel for the stove. I don't know, I was impressed.

Lourdes's house was by far the poorest. There were 8 people in her house and it's tiny, at the bottom of a road in terrible condition, basically in a mud pit. Since it's at the bottom of the hill, all the water washes down and settles in her "yard" and it just turns to mud. When I walked into her house, it was dark and stuffy and pretty much full of bugs. There was only one window in the kitchen, to let the smoke out since the stove didn't have a chimney. No wonder so many people around her suffer from asthma and other lung problems. They let their houses fill up with smoke from the stove and wave it out the windows.

Throughout the weekend, I ended up visiting eight people's houses, not counting Rudys's parents. I ate at all of them, and by the time we left on Sunday morning, I was sure I wouldn't eat again until the next Sunday. But I wasn't just eating all weekend long. It was so cool to see how these people live, but it was also cool to be able to give something back. Rudys's brother had just sent enough money for his family to buy a computer. He has four sons, and all of them are studying (very rare - out of all her brothers and sisters, Rudys is the only one with more than a sixth grade education). Anyway, I showed them the basics of Microsoft Office so they could actually use it for school projects. I also happened to be the only one who knew how to drive the car that the family owned. Before, Rudys's brothers were the only ones who drove it, but since they're not home, I got to give driving lessons (for one hour, and she will now be entrusted to drive on Honduran roads? Yikes.) and be the chauffer for the weekend as well. I also had the chance to attempt to explain the concept of gravity when Rudys's dad asked me if it was true that the Earth revolved around the sun. I wasn't expecting that one, and I'm pretty sure my two-minute explanation went right over his head, but apparently it's not necessary to know that in order to survive and live to be 60-something years old. Both Rudys's parents have up to a third grade education.

The contest that Rosa Ayde's dad won on the international level is a contested one in Lepaera. Apparently, on the national level, Rudys's dad won fifth place and Rosa Ayde's in sixteenth. Then, Rudys's grandfather died and her father couldn't go to the next round of the contest, which is the one Rosa Ayde's father won. So logically, instead of Rosa Ayde's father winning, Rudys's father would've won. For me, the most impressive thing was that I was staying in the house of the disputed world's best cup of coffee, and I ate dinner in the house of the official world's best cup of coffee. Lepaera, therefore, has the best of the best coffee in the entire world. AKA heaven.

This Friday we celebrated Mothers Day at the school. Like Fathers Day in March, the teachers had a party after class ended, and we ate Chinese food. All the guys treated the women to lunch and then they sang for us. They awkwardly gave me a "Te Quiero Mama" mug, because of my status as a potential mother. But it was sweet anyway.

This was a nice treat at the end of the week, mostly because it was the last day of the grading period, which means my official English classes are done! I can't believe it's already been 12 weeks. Oh wait, I'm not done? Right. Nobody told me we were having an early release day, so the class I would've had to give the final exam was cancelled, and I have to wait until Monday to give it, spoiling other travel plans I'd made for the coming week. Stupid being out of the loop!

To make up for forgetting to tell me about cancelling my classes, Sor Eduviges took me with her to pick up "provisions" from La Esperanza, in Intibuca. We have a lot of internas here from that area, the poorest in Honduras. The parents bring sacks of food to the church one day and we go to pick it up. This is a form of payment, since a lot of them can't pay in cash. We pick up a record load of food, sacks of potatoes, rice, corn, beans, cabbage, some weird giant fruit that looked like a watermelon but tasted nothing like watermelons. So full that I had to sit in the middle of the front seat and it took us two hours longer to get home than it took to get there. Our driver, Don Cristian, was really scared that if we went too fast, we'd hit a bump and the bed of the pick-up would break off and separate from the cab. Tha back tires were practically flat from the weight, but we made it home fine. A mixed blessing, indeed.

We got home last night just in time for the welcome celebration for Sor Sandra, the provincial mother. The girls had prepared dances, songs, skits, poems, everything. Today, all the sisters left, so they could have a community retreat with Sor Sandra, leaving me in charge of all 65 girls all by myself. What a babysitting job! They weren't too bad, and the school secretary showed up to finish some work, and she decided to stay and help me out (which was very nice of her).

We're starting to get ready for the giant Mary, Help of Christians festival later this month, and I'm getting excited about another visitor coming!

I hope you all have a great end of the school year and start of the summer!

PS- The summer month here (April) is already gone and the rain is back. It was nice while it lasted.