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Published: January 8th 2009
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Plants grow on phone lines. Christmas and New Years was filled with each form of surprise one can find. For someone in my situation, the celebrations were all completely new and obscure. To say that I found a close similarity to what I have known Christmas to be, would be a lie. Honduras expresses it's joy in a way that is not too uncommon from the roots of North American family ideals, however what is manifested from those roots is something different; borrowing from each flavor, color and smell existing in it's own atmosphere.
Christmas is hot, dry and dusty. The wind floats through the streets, picking up emptied bags of snacks and displaces them into the air as if they were some forsaken type of decoration, forgotten by a bleak faced child with streaks of dried mud clinging underneath her nose. Gunpowder packed into rolled newspaper reports in the distance and throughout the streets squeals of children fill the lapse of time between passing buses on the main road. The pops of each firecracker form a pattern so regular that it leaves one thinking there must be a stubborn and archaic man somewhere determined to mark the passing of each minute in order to
Ninos
Kids playing in the street keep time. You can hear a street vendor call out the contents of his makeshift cart or you walk by a caballero and you hear the thin patter of water as he relieves himself onto the ground.
People shopping. People asking you what you are looking for. The market is full. It is Christmas day and it seems as though everyone wants nothing more than to buy and consume. Everyone looking for that special "it" or at least the first "it" they find within their price range. There seems to be no stress as to the last minute shopping. In a country where last minute is right on time and late is accepted as well, how could there be? How can there be pressure to buy something for everyone on your list when your list was written in the second poorest country in Central America? For that matter, how can there be a list at all? Maybe these people aren't shopping for others, maybe they are shopping for themselves.
It is an encouraged practice in the new year to buy new clothes. It is the norm. Why wouldn't a man buy new clothes for himself? You need to
Casas
Honduran houses look you best when the new year comes to take you away for the next 365 day affair. Your done with the last year, maybe it didn't treat you the way you had hoped. So you move on. You dig up what little she left you in your pockets and you go out to get yourself a new pair of pants. Start off the next one right and try to hold on to that sense of beauty for as long as possible.
In my case, I bought new clothes for Karina. Spending money on yourself around Christmas isn't bled into my roots like it is with her. I have no trouble buying for someone else, but purchasing for myself feels more than strange. I did end up buying a new pair of shoes and watch after some very persuasive encouragement from Karina. There is an ability that Latin women have to persuade Caucasian males to think differently. I don't know how to describe it, because I never know it when i see it. It is only until after the fact that I realize I just bought a new watch after promising myself I wouldn't buy something I don't absolutely
Calle
Karina's street need.
"It is a nice watch," She said, "Bueno para ladrones..."
The day passes as if there were something stirring behind an invisible border. Something is waking beneath the packed and dry dirt road and it is part of another world. A place that, when gone, remains connected with these people in a quiet way so as not to overstay it's welcome. It comes to visit often. It it always loud and typically leaves a mess, but as an unwritten and widely accepted rule, it is always invited back. People tend to speak of it with a certain joy that is diluted with typical patterns of speech. Nothing is ever explained how it really is. Everything is given a word that has already been used a hundred times before.
Perhaps it is better that way. As a new set of eyes one feels the need to learn as much about it before it actually happens. However, information in such a high detail in never divulged. Maybe it can't be told in a way that will ever be understood. I have experienced it and I can tell it, but will you understand it? Even if I tell it
Mama Alba
My new Mother In Law on the far left well will you see it the way it happened? Will you smell the gunpowder? Can you feel the thump in your chest? Can you understand the sound of hundreds of candies spilling out of a freshly cracked pinata?
To truly understand a sensation like Christmas and new years (in any place) you must be there. You need to take a bus ride into Niceragua and fall asleep on the shoulder of a pretty young Honduran. You need to be constantly molested by each shop keeper, asking you what you want, telling you they don't have it, and then offering you something completely different. You need to feel the paint on each concrete wall, warm from the sun and thick and dried. Suspended in fat drops as if it were still wet, but frozen in time and safe to the touch. You need to sit on the curb and watch the same Yamaha engines roll by and never hear the same sound twice.
Honduras is a place that will open your senses to new feeling. The nights are warm and Christmas is celebrated outside. A pinata is hung on the end of a rope. A family gathers around and
Sisters
Karina and Fanny provoking Candida on the far left. tells stories that take them years into the past. And three sisters, all in the early stages of adulthood, are turned into teenage girls again as they wrestle on the couch together.
It is all fun and games until Candida breaks a glass, which she later points out was the fault of Karina and Fanny. "You saw them, Clint. You saw how they provoked me. I would still have a glass if they hadn't provoked me."
My experience in Paraiso taught me that one thing remains true, no matter where you are. Families will always maintain the same mentality when brought back together. I guess you don't learn that until you are brought into a new family. Seeing my family in the actions of Karina's made me realize that we never change. Regardless of our circumstances or beliefs, families will always be the same.
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