Year of the Tigre

The other day one of my friends asked for my address, so they can see where I live on google earth, the following is my reality check (reply) Honduran style.
Ahh, Google maps, addresses, oh what happy heady days they were, days those were, our internet (electricity and water supply) are erratic at best. So, I tell him "No we don't have an address, I live in the yellow house in Colonia Borhause, up the road from Casa Asado (which is a restaurant on the corner of our street). Our street is a dirt road, there is usually either a cow with a crumpled horn and it's calf or a couple of horses tied up in the paddock opposite my bedroom window, there is an empty lot as neighbors on both sides of our house (our house though is a semi detached and our actual neighbors are religious nuts who like to have friends over to chant and speaks in tongues or just sing random praises to God at random hours of the early (and I mean 4am early) morning, they also have a teenage son who is learning saxophone, and did I mention their penchant for fireworks and chorus' of tuneless singers turning up on their (our) doorstep before dawn whenever someone has a birthday (which seems to us to be a regular occurrence!).
Try looking up Casa Asado in Gracias" I helpfully add, "And head up the dirt road past the house with a yard full of yellow buses and there is the yellow house, I will have a look next time I'm on line, but I'm not holding my breath for you success rate, I looked up google earth when I had an actual address in Thailand and Google earth has not mapped most of the areas of Phuket (or Bangkok for that matter) Or my Mum's place in New Zealand either, apparently if I have lived there no-one cares, I guess (contrary to opinions of my more conspiracy theorist inclined friends) satellites are just not that interested in me.

Right, so that said, back from Christmas vacation, Gracias was a brutal reality check, it was cold and grey, yes, cold, who would have thought, I was wearing my Bolivian wooly hat, gloves and jumper. But a week later the winter seems to have passed… Just in time for the celebration of St Sebastian's (20th January) feast day (you know the guy who they usually represent looking like a pin cushion). Anyway Saint Sebastian apparently can't just have a day to celebrate no, no, no, here in Gracias he needs a week, a week with a fair which gradually expanded further and further from it's epicenter (the church). it included a ferris wheel, a rocking pirate ship and two other dodgy third world rides, yes, of course I went on them, with the kids from school, who love to take their lives frivolously in their hands.
One day we were treated to a parade through the streets in order to walk the virgin to and from her church (virgin street walkers a unique idea?), I guess she doesn't get the chance for much air cloistered as she is the rest of the year round.
One evening when we were there the boat generator wasn't working so they had employed two guys just to stand on either side of the boat and throw the thing, with wild abandon, into the air as it swung precariously on it's pendulum like journey past them. The church was bedecked with a few miles of tulle, flowers and a beautiful rastafarian (red, gold and green) cinema style curtain behind the statue of the saint himself. Why this colour scheme I have no idea but it did make the warm evenings feel very caribbean. Last night when we were there, being the 20th it was the big night, they had a massive firework display, shower bursts of beautiful colours, the sky blossomed with fizzing sparkling light. Then when it was over a guy came out of the yard wearing a wooden bull frame encrusted with explosives of course they ignited him, catherine wheels spinning, snorting rockets, incendiary fragments flying in all directions he ran wildly after children, who of course ran every which way, in his wake the children swarmed back around to pick up still smoldering pieces of pyrotechnic product and fling them back at the careening bull, I'm not sure who was terrified more (well actually it was probably me). Not once but twice did this holocaust of sanity appear from the house behind the church to chase any spectator foolish enough to get in their way. The central American version of the "running of the bulls?".

Exams next week, I have become very adept at writing a weeks lesson plans in a couple of hours and the exams were done in 4 or 5 hours. Great, this teaching gig ain't so tough!

Inauguration day has come and gone, the new president Pepe Lobo, has been sworn in, at the end of the day it was a fairly low key affair, Zelaya has been enticed out from under the desk at the Brazilian embassy (I was beginning to think the Brazillian ambassador was going to have to pack him in a discreet suitcase and take him home at the end of his tenure). But no they finally managed to lure him out with promises of safe passage out of the country and possibly an extra cowboy hat thrown in for good measure.

Ahhh school, an adventure in contrasts, one week a serene experience, the next feels like an exercise in futility, its the perfect job for the aspiring offspring of the bi-polar, it has been tense with another round of exams and me, head stuffed full of cotton, it's great to put yourself through the emotional wringer sometimes, the edges of human experience remind me what it feels like to be alive. Still living like a twenty something backpacker, however that said I love it, everything is magnified and at the same time compacted, it's the edges of human experience that remind me what it's like to feel alive (and sometimes ironically dead).

Driving through town this week, the vehicle that struck me as the most disturbing, and lets face it, surreal, even by Honduran standards was the guy with the "real hood ornament". Yes, in deed this guy had a real (live) Jaguar strapped to the hodd of his car, slowly dying in the heat I am sure, weird world aye?

Yesterday, My friends and I climbed Puka (it's a mountain, one that is apparently still growing). It was lucky Carlos had managed to borrow his Dad's car, as the hike would have been twice as long and infinitely more grueling if we had, had to walk from the last drop of point on the bus. The car wound higher and higher up the slippery muddy track and the grey clouds blew in and out. It is always beautiful, being out of Gracias and especially so as we were in the cloud forest. On finally parking the car with some local chaps we walked through a coffee plantation to get to the base of the mountain proper, we chatted to friendly locals on the way and saw where the coffee beans are ground, the piles of husks laying around the machinery smelling both sweet and acrid as they lay rotting in the sun. The pineapple plants and wild orchids are beautiful and I only fell on my ass twice in the mud. Though my knock off combat boots went straight into the garbage as I peeled them off my feet in the aftermath of my return to Gracias. The view from the top was great, we glimpsed it as the clouds boiled in and out past the tip of the mountain.
After lunch on the top and a well deserved rest we skidded and slid our way over the pine needles and mud back to base, then the car shimmied and slithered it's way down the side of the mountain on the way seeing one of the saddest things I have seen since I have been here.

There was a man walking down the road with a small, (very small) coffin on his shoulder, he had an arm wrapped around it and a determined look on his face, one small boy with eyes like saucers had a beautifully carved and constructed wooden cross in his hands hurried to remain in front of him and two small boys, (also with eyes the size of saucers) followed in his wake each carrying a huge basket of flowers that appeared to be far to big for the size of the small boy. Very sad.
I hate to end on a sad note so instead I will wish you all a beautiful, happy healthy Year of the Tiger.
Besos y Abrasos. N.J.