Solitary Soccer

And there we are again! The World Cup is in full swing with tons of goals, many surprises and my favourite team qualified for the next round. I couldn’t be happier! I transformed my office / studio into a multimedia control centre so now I can paint, post on Facebook and watch the games at the same time! Ha! I sing the Honduran national anthem out loud (position 1, hand on heart) and mumble along with the Dutch one (yes, seventeen years in Honduras has left its imprints). I yell, swear, scream trilingual and upset my pets. Brazil 2014, I’m all for it!

I do miss my football buddies. I’m pretty much settled since I moved from Copán, Honduras, to Antigua Guatemala three months ago. I’ve met a lot of amazing people and of course there are plenty of terrific bars and restaurants here to watch the games, but I haven’t found “my” scene yet. I also miss getting congratulated on the street for one of Holland’s achievements (as if I had anything to do with Van Persie’s dive) and the group of fellow supporters that root for Orange or at least pretend to do so when I’m around. Yes, watching football with friends in a bar is a lot more fun. But then again, it is also much more expensive. And I get a lot more work done watching the games at home, drinking tea instead of beer.

Watching the Cup in Guatemala is quite a different experience from living it in Honduras. Not that the Guatemalans don’t live for football, they absolutely do. Even out on the street you don’t have to miss a beat. Every restaurant, bar store or market stall has a TV turned on, and if not, peoples’ cheers or swearing will keep you informed. But Guatemala is not one of the happy 32, and thus there’s not one team to nationally root for. Instead, people’s favourite teams are as diverse as the number of countries, with a slight and understandable preference for Central American countries such as Costa Rica and Honduras. That preference will shift soon depending on the outcome of the next few rounds, but staying home as close as possible is the norm. People might hate Brazil now, but if Brazil will have to face, let’s say, Holland, in the finals, then Latin America goes first. Understandable.

I support Honduras, of course, because I feel so connected to the country after living there for so long. I never expected Honduras to win the Cup (or even the first round, but that would be a mean thing to say), but “my” team is, of course, Holland. Amazing, as little patriotic as I am, watching those Dutchmen fly over the field gives me goosebumps. Even sitting here all by myself at home surrounded by nothing but cats and dogs.

Gotta go…Game is starting….

Thirty Years of Companionship

I’m writing this while looking at my old, battered copy of One Hundred years of Solitude. Old and battered because we’ve been on quite a trip, that book and I, since I bought it in 1994 in Antigua Guatemala.

But that was not the first time I read the book. That memorable event happened about ten years earlier when I was fourteen and on vacation in France with my parents. A terribly boring vacation (of course, when you’re fourteen and traveling with your family), so I found my escape in an equally battered and borrowed copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, although this one in Dutch. I remember sitting on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean when I finished it and a wave of panic came over me. What to do next? I’d been so absorbed in the terrific tale of flying carpets, brilliant descriptions on how ice burns at a touch and babies being born with pig’s tails… I didn’t experience the magical realism as strange or foreign. On the contrary, the whole story seemed oddly familiar, a magical world in which I felt inexplicably but completely at home. The biggest regret was that I had just finished reading it. The other the fact I couldn’t read the book in its original language and probably never would. I mean, I didn’t speak a word of Spanish, I had no connection with Latin American culture whatsoever and had never even visited Spain! But the first problem could be solved: ten minutes after finishing the book, I started reading it again until high tide ran me off my rock.

Years went by and somehow I got to work in the fashion industry. I was making decent money working long hours and I got to a point I really needed a break. A break in a sunny place, preferably with palm trees and nice beaches. Portugal seemed interesting, but not warm enough to my taste that time of the year. I couldn’t care less about the destination, as long as there was sun… So I went to a travel agency (the thing we used to do before booking online) and asked for any destination available within my scheduled vacation time, as long as it was exotic and tropical.

So that’s how I ended up in Cancún, Mexico.

My first thought was that I’d made a terrible mistake. Egyptian pyramids, huge high-rise hotels, big-bellied noisy herds of tourists… What the heck was this place?

Within 24 hours after arriving I took a bus to Mérida and some magical happened right there and then when I was walking around the cobble stoned streets of this colonial town: I felt at home! Seriously, it was such a strange and unexpected feeling, to arrive in a entirely unfamiliar environment and sense a complete and intense feeling of belonging. How odd!

And of course One Hundred years of Solitude came to mind… There was the Buendía family’s home …the almond tree… the scruffy dog… the sweltering heat… Merida is not Macondo or Aracataca of course, but the element were there all the same and I felt suck back into that wonderful but tragic history…

Needless to say; I very much enjoyed that first vacation in Mexico, mostly spent in a tiny village at the Gulf of Mexico called Progreso. See, I’m not much of a traveler, I just like to be in places. And the place got me hooked.

So year after year I traveled back to Mexico, each time going a bit further south, but not advancing much. Until I came to the realization that working my butt off for eleven months a year to be delightfully happy for four weeks out of a year seemed absurd. So after one more trip I decided to give up my job, travel back to Mexico and stay there as long as my money lasted.

This time I made it as far south as Antigua Guatemala. That had been sort of the plan, because I’d heard that there were some excellent Spanish schools and indeed there were. I spent a few delightful months in Antigua, picking up Spanish fast and within less time than I expected I felt I was ready to read One Hundred years of Solitude again, but this time in Spanish.

My Spanish was far from fluent at the time, but what amazed me was the simplicity of that newly purchased novel in its original language. Not only was it a completely different book now that I knew a little more about Latin American culture, it was also the language that struck me: simplistic is not the word, it’s just that the vocabulary used in Spanish seemed to be so much more basic and to the core than the elaborate translation I had read in Dutch. I loved every sentence of it and kept on repeating whole phrases as if they were mantras.

Unfortunately I ran out of money, as I tend to do, and I had to go back to Holland. But not back to the fashion industry. I had decided I wanted to study Latin American literature, and Gabriel García Márquez was to blame for that.

Starting at university in the middle of my twenties wasn’t easy, because I wasn’t any longer entitled to a scholarship, but what the heck, I enjoyed it tremendously. Besides the whole oeuvre of García Márquez I got to know many more terrific writers. But still, García Márquez was my all time hero.

A drawback to my new life was that financially I wasn’t doing that great, being a student and all. Despite my three odd jobs I could no longer afford yearly visits to Latin America. When I got a fax (Indeed! A fax! We’re talking middle nineties here!) from friends of mine who had started a restaurant in a small town of Honduras, asking me to take care of the business while they had to go back to Holland, I jumped at the opportunity. Two months of free room and board in the tropics? Oh yeah!

So off I went and of course I packed my copy of One Hundred years of Solitude in my backpack. The only tiny change in my travel plans was that I didn’t return to Holland after two months, but stayed on for two more. And then till the end of the year. And then till…

Actually, until I’d spent seventeen years eight days and one hour in the mountainous border town of Copán Ruinas.

By then of course I realized that magic realism doesn’t exist, it’s realism instead. I had experienced weirder things than I’d read in One Hundred years of Solitude and that made me love the book –and Latin America- all the more.

Despite a wonderful, amazing, inspiring and challenging seventeen years, eight days and one hour in Copán Ruinas, I decided it was time to move on somewhere else. So that’s how I ended up back in Antigua Guatemala, where one of the first things I did was building bookshelves for my García Märquez collection, One Hundred years of Solitude of course leading the row.

I had not even been living here for a month when I heard the sad news about García Márquez’ passing. Not totally unexpected, but sad nonetheless. A giant has left us, but thankfully his writings will be with us for ever more.

Sitting here at my desk, my copy of One Hundred years of Solitude as an icon next to the monitor, my mind is wondering about the unexpected turns life takes and where I’ll be in ten or twenty years from now. At least one part of my life has come full circle now that the book and I are both back in Antigua.

I guess it’s time to start reading it again.

Mission Accomplished!

Argi, Teresa and me

A week ago we were on our way to the doctor in Guatemala without a clue about what could possibly await us after that split-second decision to leave Teresa (a 56-year old woman from a small village in Copán with a terrible infection in her face) behind for emergency surgery.

This whole week has been about Teresa. Each morning started with excited yells back and forward as my roommate Argi  and I happily exchanged how many more donations we received overnight in our Paypal accounts. The next thing would be a call to Teresa to see how she was doing and how many times she went to the bathroom. Yes, life turns surreal when your first thought on a Sunday morning is: I hope Teresa peed well! Not that the danger was anything surreal, because the medication is very hard on the kidneys and at the first sign of kidney failure, we were to take her of those specific antibiotics. Which could lead to yet another problem, since Teresa already turned out to be resistant to the first antibiotics prescribed. But all well, she had a blood analysis yesterday and there’re no problems on the kidney front.

Next I’d start writing people thank you notes, update the blog, inform people how to donate and so on while Argi would call the doctor in Guate for a daily update and make sure the right medications were taken on the right time. It was not so much time consuming as attention absorbing. And besides Teresa’s health, it was also the uncertainty whether we would be able to raise enough money that was quite stressfull.

Yesterday we went to visit Teresa who’s staying at her colleague’s house, just outside Copán. Logistically it’s much easier to stay there, with of all the nurses’ and doctors’ visits, but also because Helda’s home is, though tiny, well built, meticulously clean and much easier to maintain that way than Teresa’s own house where it’s a coming and going of neighbours, kids, dogs, cats and chickens. I think she’s secretly also happy to be away from the family and village hubbub for a bit. After all, a lot of people in her village, including some family members, believe that the maggots that were crawling out of her face were a result of witchcraft, which doesn’t do much good for relationships within the community.

Anyway, Teresa was doing great when we saw her, talkative and joking around. I think she only half understands the effort it has been on behalf of so many people to get her were she is now, which is fine, because she’s the last person to worry about that. She told us how friendly the people in the hospital had been and that it wasn’t half as bad as she had expected (Little does she know that she stayed in a private hospital, because the surgery was anything but regular, and yes, that’s why she didn’t have to share the bed with two other patients!) and how great people have been in general. She is very grateful for all help received. And it’s just about the money, it’s knowing she was not alone when she most needed help. 

On Thursday she’s going back to the clinic for a check-up and from there probably back to her mountain. Unless there are some major changes or complications, I guess this will be my last post on Teresa. Weird. Sad somehow too. Of course we’ll continue to visit and monitor Teresa in the following weeks, but all the excitement of last week will leave a strange hole behind.

On behalf of Teresa, her family, Argi and me, there are really no words that can thank you enough, all those wonderful people who stepped up and generously donated to help out a poor women many of you have never met. It has been an amazing experience, starting in great anguish, ending in a jubilant success, making Teresa’s health a small victory, if not for entire mankind, then at least for Teresa and for all of us involved, learning yet again that there are so many people full of compassion and generosity among us, and that makes all the difference.

Well, that leaves us here. Mission accomplished! We have raised more than enough money, a whooping total of $3,611! Please don’t send us any more money (but if you do, we’ll make sure it gets to Teresa anyway).

Thanks so much to the following people:

Agueda Interiano, Al Steele, Alejandro Ferraro, Alice Dearden, Alice Wilbur, Amanda Mopeth, Anna Smith, Annemie van Nieuwenhove & Geert van Vaeck, Argi Diez, Beatriz & Aura Martínez, Bill Corba, Bill Sain, Café San Rafael, Carlos Alvarado, Cesar Borregón, Darlene Carlton & Gary, Diana Pineda, Elisa Orsburn, Elizabeth Butler, Elsa Rubin & Lizzette Soto, Fito Alvarado, Flavia Cueva, Frida Larios, Hacienda San Lucas, Heather Butler, Helena Ihamuotila, Hilda Santos, Jennifer Casolo &; Pedro, Jessica Fashun, Jody Patterson & Paul Willcocks, John & Marianne Bodrug, Josue, Karen Leiva & Bill Hare, Katie Miller & Marc Wolf, Kristin Landau, Mark Zipperer, Michelle Fitz, Michelle Vandepas, Miguel Raymundo, Missy Kluth, Nina du Mée & Ingrid Schreuder, Open Edge, Paola Carías, Personnel Hacienda San Lucas, Oneida Rivera, Radiant Health Institute, Rina Peña, Robyn & Geoff Affleck, Ronald Speer, Señor X, Shannon Kring, Suzette Cardona, Wendy Russell and Yvonne Santiago. 

Teresa in the hospital with one of her sons

Operation: Teresa

Teresa is back home! (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, see my previous post first.)

Amazing how the healthcare of one person in a remote village in a far corner of Honduras can mobilize so many people from all over the world. We have received donations from as far as Chile! But beside our friends; friends of our friends; and friends of friends of friends who have so generously donated to this cause, there are many others involved.

Counting the cash we received and adding up the donations through Paypal and bank deposits was a lot of fun and a huge relief, although a bit complicated because of the various accounts we used and donations in no les than five different currencies (American dollars, Canadian dollars, Euros, Lempiras and Quetzales). A friend who’s in the in & export business offered us to use her bank account to deposit the Lempiras and take it out straight away in dollars (or was it the other way around?), just to save a few bucks there. She also set us up with a trusted money exchanger at the border who gave us a good deal. When all the cash was changed into Guatemalan quetzales, Teresa’s coworkers Bea and Pilo left for Chiquimula to pick up her up and buy her medication, at least for a few days, because we planned to buy the rest in Honduras at a lower price. That turned out to be a bit more complicated than expected and required in the end visits to several pharmacies, but they managed to get a supply for three days of super duper and very expensive antibiotics.

Teresa was happy to go home, although the doctor would have preferred to keep her a few more days. But we simply can’t afford it. At least we made sure she’ll receive all the care she needs in Copán, including some new rules on hygiene that will have to be applied in her home. Bea paid off the hospital bills and left around $300 for the surgery, which was still $1000 short (we had some more money in our accounts, but Paypal transfers last 1-3 days) but the doctor was so nice to give is a few more days to pay. By the way, I want to give this doctor (Dr. Jorge Mario Mendez Paiz) maybe the biggest THANK YOU of all, because without hesitation he operated on Teresa, knowing very well that none of us had any money and all of us being foreigners too!

Anyway, Teresa came home in the early evening. Happy. For us, the shock was that we learned that the antibiotics she needed were much more expensive than we expected: at least $800!!!! She was supposed to get her first intravenous antibiotic treatment at home right then and there (through a catheter in her hand she had gotten in the hospital) but the medication they brought back from Guatemala was in powder form, and didn’t come with the IV fluid. It was too let to find any. Oops! More phone calls to doctors which ended with the decision to give her an injection of other antibiotics in her behind, administered by a friend of us, a nurse, who was so nice to go all the way to Teresa’s house in the middle of nowhere at 9pm… It turned out that Teresa needs three injections a day and as nice as our friend is, he’s not that nice… (Actually, he is, he just has other things to do too.) But another solution presented itself: Hellda, a co-worker of Teresa offered to take her in for a few days. She lives in a village much closer to town and in a concrete house, much easier to maintain clean than Teresa's humble house made of mud and sticks. Helda’s neighbour is a nurse, so the injections are no longer a problem…

In the meantime yet other friends were in San Pedro Sula buying the antibiotics we needed. Teresa was brought to town for a visit to the clinic and then to Helda’s home when we received the results of the exams from the doctor in Guatemala: it turned out that Teresa is resistant against the main antibiotic that she needs. This is a mayor problem for Teresa (for now, but also in the future) but something that happens all too often in Honduras due to the fact that here you get antibiotics for the slightest sneeze. And also because people stop taking the pills as soon as the symptoms of their illness disappear. Anyway, we were just in time to call our friend in San Pedro Sula NOT to buy the antibiotics. Unfortunately we already bought 3 doses in Guatemala, but maybe we’ll be able to resell those through doctor and pharmacist friends.

Argi spent much of the morning in doctors’ clinics to discuss Teresa’s antibiotics treatment and as far as I understand, they worked something out. So far, all goes well. Teresa is doing okay, although the bones of her face have been affected too, we’ll need to monitor her kidney closely. and she’s in a lot of pain, so the road to full recovery will take a while.

As for Argi and me, we are very happy that more donations have kept coming in and we hope they continue to do so. We were very excited when we reached the amount of $2,500, thinking we were almost there (the hospital bill and surgery were $2,600 together), but the medication and after care is going to be more expensive than we hoped for. But we can’t complain: so far we have $2,887.72, which is more than I could ever hope for when we sent out our cry for help less than three days ago.

This is what we raised/spent so far:

Money raised                                    $ 2,887.72

Millennium Hospital                           $ 1,366.00

Surgery                                             $ 1,293.00

Medication (bought in Guate)           $    130.00

Medication (bought in Copán)          $      49.00

Food & necessities for Teresa          $      50.00

                                    Total:                   $  2,888.00

           

Still needed for medication and follow-up care: About $ 500. 

If you want to make a donation, you can do so using Paypal (connected to my email address carinsteen at yahoo.com) or write me for other options (bank deposit, Western Union etc.)

Thanks so much to the following people who have donated and/or helped otherwise: 

Agueda Interiano, Al Steele, Alejandro Ferraro, Alice Dearden, Alice Wilbur, Anna Smith, Annemie van Nieuwenhove & Geert van Vaeck, Argi Diez, Beatriz & Aura Martínez, Bill Corba, Café San Rafael, Carlos Alvarado, Cesar Borregón, Diana Pineda, Elisa Orsburn, Elizabeth Butler, Fito Alvarado, Flavia Cueva, Frida Larios, Hacienda San Lucas, Heather Butler, Helena Ihamuotila, Hilda Santos, Jennifer Casolo Pedro, Jody Patterson & Paul Willcocks, Josue, Katie Miller & Marc Wolf, Mark Zipperer, Michelle Fitz, Michelle Vandepas, Miguel Raymundo, Missy Kluth, Open Edge, Paola Carías, Personnel Hacienda San Lucas, Oneida Rivera, Radiant Health Institute, Rina Peña, Robyn & Geoff Affleck, Ronald Speer, Shannon Kring, Wendy Russell and Yvonne Santiago.

The Difference 24 Hours Can Make…

Doña Teresa in better times (artwork/photo by Frida Larios and Tyler Orsburn)

Only two days ago around this hour I had just come back from a trip to Chiquimula, Guatemala, to the vet. It was only sort of a coincidence that we took Doña Teresa, a lady from a small village near Copán with us to see an orthodontic surgeon because of the nasty infection a pulled tooth had left her. Little did we know that the situation was so grave that there was no option left: we had to leave Teresa behind for emergency surgery, if not she would surely die soon…

That left me and my friend Argi baffled and overwhelmed, to say the least, but also very preoccupied. The whole treatment was calculated to cost about $4,000 and where the hell would we get that kind of money from?

But since it was either taking Teresa back with us and let her die a painful death or leave her behind and have her have her surgery… As I said, there was no choice…

So there we went, back to Copán, in the back of the pick-up truck with our rather subdued dogs on our laps. The conversation went something like this:

“Did we do the right thing?”

“Of course we did, we had no choice.”

“But how are we going to pay for the operation???”

“No idea, but we’ll find a way.”

“Are you sure???”

“No, but we’ll find a way.”

“Okay, we’ll find a way. Any ideas?”

“No, not yet.”

Neither of us slept very well that night ($4,000 hospital bills kept popping up in my dreams) but probably not half as bad as Doña Teresa whom we had left without even a pair of clean underwear. But as dawn arrived, we continued our quest. Argi went to work early in the morning and learned that Teresa’s son and daughter-in-law had already left for Chiquimula. That was a good thing, at least she wouldn’t be alone when she’d wake up after her surgery. Argi spent the rest of the morning talking to doctors to find out ways to cut down costs, for example by bringing Teresa back to Copán, even though the specialist in Chiquimula would like to keep her there for at least ten days. But at $50 a day, plus medication and no money, well… how??? The local doctors as well as the surgeon agreed finally that we could bring her home after three nights in the hospital and that we could give her intravenous antibiotics here in Copán, which turns out to much cheaper in Honduras anyway. So far, all well. Teresa was doing reasonably well, although in a lot of pain and with a face swollen up about three times the size it was before she went into surgery.

I spent my morning writing my blog post and writing emails. Argi and I agreed to get together in the afternoon to synchronize our posts and start asking for money wherever we could, because so far the operation had gone well, but it was on our shoulders to somehow pay for it all. We were both on the edge and extremely nervous but especially Argi was hit very hard. She sounded awfully depressed when I talked to her several times on the phone, so I offered, the least I could do, to make her a nice dinner.

When we got together yesterday afternoon we were still $4,000 in the red, but had our petitions ready. We both posted them on Facebook and through emails and sat down for dinner.

Now, let me tell you, I don’t believe in witchcraft and I am a 100% sure that Teresa’s horrible worms are the result of a nasty fly and an infection, not of any sort of black magic. But still, I can’t stop believe in miracles.

We had just sat down for dinner (nice steamed tilapia and pasta with mustard leaves) taking our first bite when: Pling!

My computer. Facebook message. A pledge for a $50 donation!

Pling! Argi’s laptop. A $100 donation in Paypal!

Pling! Mine again. Another donation!

Pling!

Pling!

Pling!

It went on and on. Friends started sharing our links and the whole thing went viral. When I went to bed around 10pm we had already raised about $700. That was 700 times more than with what we had started the day…

Sometimes these things take a spurt and then die a quick death. But oh, no, not Teresa’s case. Today I spent the whole day answering emails to people I’ve never met in my life but who were willing to help Teresa out. I went to the bank to pick up donations through Western Union and from friends in town and did one Paypal tranfser after the other. I just met Argi this afternoon and we were besides ourselves, piling up cash. So far we have raised about $2,000!!!! After talking to the doctor, we have now narrowed down the bills to $2,600, not including the medications Teresa will need, plus the after care. But in the end, we think around $3,000 will do, which is at least a $1,000 less than we originally thought.

We’re still not there yet, but already soooo much further than we ever imagined being only 24 hours ago. Tomorrow we’ll bring Teresa back home. Her family is already preparing the house, cleaning it and making it as adequate as possible for a recovering patient.

This adventure isn’t over yet, but we’re getting there. I can’t thank people enough for their generosity, trust and faith.

To be continued…

(Donations can be made through Paypal connected to my email adress: carinsteen at yahoo.com )

A Series of Strokes of the Worst Luck Possible

Teresa

Being poor and living in the Honduran countryside is hard as it is, but some families have some extra blows to deal with.

This is about a family that I’ve known for years, living in a small village near Copán Ruinas. The oldest kids were some of the first students I ever taught and the rest of the brothers and sisters steadily followed over the years, participating in our photo, mapping, art and video projects.

I remember all too well how we celebrated the end of a video project about five years ago when we noticed that one of the participants, the thirteen year old daughter of this particular family, looked a bit chubby. I remember thinking that she might be pregnant but discarded the idea. I mean, I’m all too aware about teenage pregnancies, but this one was only thirteen and still such a girl!

What a shock to get a phone call only a day after that the girl, let’s call her Doris, was rushed to the hospital in Santa Rosa de Copán were she had given birth to a premature but otherwise healthy baby boy. Her mother, Doña Teresa was there with her, without money or clothes, so with some friends we put some things together and sent it to the hospital.

The baby boy turned out to be the cutest thing ever and is going to school this year. His mother Doris is also back in school while her mother watches her son. So far, so good.

A real tragedy struck when not long after the birth of yet another mouth to feed, Teresa’s sister Leticia, mother of a six year old daughter, was diagnosed with cancer, a nasty tumor right behind her eye.

Going to doctors isn’t easy if you are not used to it since birth, let alone if you don’t have the money to pay for it. But luckily, Leticia was not alone. Argi, the manager of a local B&B where both Teresa was working, dragged her along to a doctor in town and from there from one specialist to another. She contacted a medical brigade (the Rice Foundation) that comes to Honduras to do surgery once a year and Leticia had surgery twice in the following years plus fellow-up chemotherapy treatment. That was quite an ordeal too, because she had to travel to San Pedro or Tegucigalpa, scary as hell for a country girl that had never traveled further than the central park of Copán Ruinas. Leticia was doing much better every day and learned to smile and enjoy life again. Alas, not for very long. Despite the operations and treatment, Leticia passed away last year. Her daughter is being raised by her sister Teresa and her grandmother. Leticia was only 33 years old.

Teresa doesn’t only look after her children and grandchildren all by herself, she also takes care of her elderly mother Doña Munda. This old lady isn’t too fond of the modern ways of life, such as using a latrine, so she does it the way she always did. One day, about two years ago, she was just doing her business in the bushes on the edge of the village when a friend of mine walked by with his dogs and a tourist he was guiding around. Doña Munda all of a sudden appeared from the bushes, startling everyone, especially one of my friend’s dogs, who thought she was a fiendish enemy, and bit her in the leg. Although not life threatening, it was a nasty wound, so my friend did what needed to be done and took her to the nearest clinic. This was easier said than done, because they were way up in the mountains. Luckily, the tourist that accompanied him was a big fellow, so he scooped the tiny Doña Munda up in his arms and carried her all the way down to where the car was parked. From there they drove her to the clinic, gave her money for treatment and a taxi back home and then continued their hike. There wasn’t much they could do for Doña Munda at the moment: she was in good hands (her daughter Leticia was there too), and the tourist had paid for his now much deserved hike after all. So far so good. Except that ten minutes later the clinic was robbed by some armed guys and the doctor and patients were all robbed of their valuables.

Despite everything, Doña Munda was doing okay, she just needed daily shots of antibiotics for a week or so, so the same friend (who happens to be a nurse) went up to the village every day for the next week to give her the injection.

This year, bad luck yet again. Six months ago, Doña Teresa went to the health centre in town to have a molar pulled and the wound got infected. The same friend who had helped her sister, Argi, dragged her from doctor to dentist to yet another doctor. Teresa received various antibiotic treatments but the swelling wouldn’t go down and over the months she got sicker and sicker. Last week, the family was in the middle of a praying session when all of a sudden worms crawled out of Teresa’s eye and cheek. Shock and panic all over and the conclusion was, of course: witchcraft.

Argi intervened yet again and after consulting some local doctors, she made an appointment with an orthodontic surgeon in Chiquimula, a town in Guatemala at about an hour and a half drive, for us in Copán the nearest medical facility. She was going there anyway because Argi’s employers dog needed chemotherapy treatment. My dog was sick as well, so I went along for the ride.

While I took the dogs to the vet, Argi went with Teresa and her daughter in law María to the lab for an x-ray and from there on to the surgeon. The news was bad. The infection had spread beneath the skin of her whole face and larvae were eating away the rotten flesh. The larvae are from a fly that usually infects only horses, but isn’t too picky on which kind of infected skin it lays its eggs. Apparently, Teresa had had some teeth pulled previously (or they had fallen out, that’s unclear), but the roots were never removed. They are now also infected and feasted upon by the larvae. The main problem however, was that the infection is still spreading and can get her brain infected anytime, which will most likely result in death. So the surgeon suggested to operate her as soon as possible, but wanted to consult wit a colleague, an internist, first.

So we waited for another few hours and for more bad news: the internist agreed and insisted on emergency surgery. So from there we went straight to the hospital were yet another doctor came to the same conclusion: an operation as soon as possible, or else…

The problem was… A surgery costs an enormous amount of money, at least for people here. A quick calculation by the doctor came up to $4000. Daughter in law Eva went pale when she heard that amount and said that she hoped that the doctor was talking about 4,000 Lempiras and not 4,000 Quetzales. Unfortunately I had to tell her he was talking about dollars, which comes up to about 80,000 Lempiras.

So what to do? Argi explained the doctor that Teresa has no money whatsoever, but since it really was a matter of life or death, he promised to do the operation anyway.

So at 5.30pm we left Chiquimula to go back to Honduras, one person short. It was awful to leave poor Teresa behind, without toiletries or anything, but at least she was well taken care of while getting ready for the operation this morning.  

The latest news is that the operation went well but they want to keep her in the hospital for another ten days. This costs a considerable amount of money (about $50 per day), but Argi has been going around doctors in town and has been in contact with the surgeon in Guatemala and they all agree that Teresa can get the intravenous antibiotic treatment here in Copán at a lower price, which will lower the overall costs considerably. But still, assuming there will be no complications, we’re looking at a huge amount of hospital bills…

As for how to pay for it all? That still remains the big question… Argi and I are writing letters to any person or institution that might help. So far we have $500 pledged. This family has been lucky enough in all their tragedy to receive help when needed and we hope that once more they will. So if you want to help out, any donation is more than welcome! We need money and we need it NOW!!!

(For privacy reasons I have changed some of the names and omitted last names as well as the name of the village the family is from. If you’re interested in helping Doña Teresa, I can give you specified details on the treatment and other details. Please write me at: carinsteen at yahoo.com.)

The Big Supermarket that Wanted To

Since a year or so, the small town of Copán Ruinas has a Big Supermarket. A real one. As in a small cousin of the Wallmart family. And I don’t go there.

Well, hardly ever. I’m compellingly local to local producers, the market and of course Doña Berta’s (read my previous post for a description of that fabulous store) but every once in a while I go to the supermarket, especially when I have to buy lots of beers (I have lots of thirsty friends). The beer is $0,25 cheaper than at Dona Berta’s, so that’s a $3 discount on two six-packs. Worth walking the extra block.

So the other day I went there again (oh those thirsty friends!) and couldn’t help laughing at how out of place this store is. I mean, they did try. It’s not even as ugly as other supermarkets of the same chain, because the architect went out of its way to conform with Copán Ruinas’ never implemented urban plan and its restrictions. So there’s a lot of woodwork and tiles on the outside as well as all the conveniences offered at other stores, such as a spacious parking lot with a separate entrance and exit. There are even two parking spots reserved for disabled people, which is very considerate since the parking lot is actually the ONLY place in Copán where people in wheelchairs, roller scooters, rollators, the blind, the limp and mothers with pushchairs can move around without tripping, bumping, skipping or hopscotching. The entrance/exit is a different story, because the entrance is at the left, the exit at the right. People in this part of the world tend to keep right, so if you’re bored out of your mind and want to have some fun, sit at the steps of this supermarket and watch how cars regularly almost collide before the drivers get out of their cars for a stand off about who’s right (or left, in this case). Another very funny thing is the sign at the parking lot that says you can only leave kids in the car under supervision of an adult. Nothing about maybe leaving a window open. So I guess smothering kids in cars accompanied by adults are okay.

Less funny are the tremendous speakers outside the store that almost blast you from the stairs. No soft, soothing elevator musac on the background here. But you won’t find that anywhere in Honduras anyway. Here the retail philosophy is: the bigger the boom box, the higher the sales. I’m not the greatest fan of musac either, but the Honduran alternative is worse. I’m just glad I don’t live next door to the store.

Inside the store looks pretty much like every other supermarket in the world. The products are plenty, but basic, so unless you are in love with MSG, as most Hondurans are, there’s not much variety. Lots of Bimbo bread (a friend recently told me he uses it as a pillow when he’s out in the field. Says it works great, like memory foam!), sodas, beer (yes) and cleaning supplies. The supplies are clearly based on the demands in a small town, but the service pretends to be, or actually pretty much is, big city.

Now, that is a problem, because many people here, especially the ones from the mountain villages, have never been to a supermarket and don’t know how to act like big city consumers. So forget about waiting neatly in a line. Hell no, people will actually walk around you in the narrow passage between two checkouts, and lay their products on the counter without waiting their turn. And the idea about a quick check-out? Forget it! Just like at Doña Berta´s, each costumer needs to discuss the weather, the latest politics, and oh my, if someone has died, the line lasts forever.

There’s also no credit at this supermarket, so you can’t just buy whatever you want and have it written down in an old dog-eared notebook. So people load up a bunch of stuff in their arms (few people use the shopping baskets or carts, another novelty in town) without doing the math, so when they’re at the counter and are told how much they have to pay, they start taking things away until they can afford what’s left. No problem, but it sometimes lasts forever while the counter gets loaded with not such necessary stuff.

New are the signs on the many refrigerators that ask people to choose before opening the door. I guess there are many analphabetics under the customers. Also new in town are the coins. The prices are not neatly rounded as they are everuwhere else in Copán (even if you want to buy a 50 cent piece of candy each, you’ll just have to buy two!), so you always end up with a few coins which are a pain in the butt if you carry your money, as local custom for women’s requires, in your bra.

The one thing I absolutely do like in this supermarket is that they charge you for each plastic bag. Now, that might actually cause a riot in town…

Labyrinth Homes

When I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude at age fourteen I wasn’t at all put off by García Marquez’ magic realism. Quite the contrary, I found it oddly familiar. I completely went for the flying carpet and the baby being born with a pig’s tail. The only thing I found completely unrealistic were the repeated names within the same family and the homes decaying into inaccessible labyrinths.

That is, until I came to live in Central America.

I’ve already written plenty about name antics in Latin America, so now a bit about family homes going wild.

I happen to live in one of those houses that started out, if not as a mansion, at least as an estate, right behind the Catholic Church on the central park. The original property occupies about a quarter of a city block. I guess in the old times land was cheap and available, money was plenty, so people built huge houses, often in the Spanish colonial style with rooms constructed around a big centre courtyard. The property where I now live has been divided between three brothers. One of them built a hotel, the next a house for his family and a corner store where he set up is agricultural business. Brother number three has over the years divided his share, just around the corner, into a number of small venues facing the street for business while he and his family live in a house on the back patio. I rent the house owned by the brother who still runs the agricultural business on the corner.

When he started to build his house he had only just finished his studies and had come back to town with his new bride, soon to be followed by two babies. Money was tight, as for any beginning entrepreneur, so there was only money to build two rooms and a bathroom around an open patio. In the front, they built a wooden storage room from where the family ran their business.

When money started coming in the family built a real store on the corner and the storage room became living room, kitchen and a garage attached to it. When the kids grew older, they built two more rooms on the second floor facing the street with a huge cement water tank on top. By then business was apparently flourishing, because the family built themselves a real nice house on a huge property on the edge of town. They started renting out their starters’ home and that’s how I came to rent it as an office for the cultural organization I was director of. The patio was divided in two by a wooden partition. The garage was turned into an art gallery; the living room became our office while the two original rooms were converted in art studio and video editing room. We rented the rooms upstairs out to friends to help cover the rent.

But my landlord wasn’t finished building. He added an apartment on top of the two original rooms (that was actually my idea) and then started building four more rooms on his side of the patio, on top of his store, a place that until that time served as a hangout for his goat (talk about magic realism!) and later his two vicious Rottweilers. A huge black plastic tank was built on top of the older one to provide water for the new rooms. Unfortunately renting out the rooms was not too successful because his tenants tended to be people very good at tearing the place down, but not at paying rent.

In the meantime I had given up my organization but kept the house on (because I liked it) and I moved into the apartment upstairs while renting out the other rooms to help pay the rent. A few months ago I decided to reopen the art gallery, combined with a store and a little café. I told the landlord about my plans and asked him if he could replace the wooden partition in the patio that by now was in such a bad state that even my cats stopped crossing it for fear of it falling apart under their feet. My landlord‘s reaction was:  why not tear the whole thing down? And thus was decided that I would fix up the whole courtyard, the rooms and help renting those out. We closed off one wall, opened another, changed the entry to the courtyard and did a whole lot of much needed fixing up. The result is colourful and cute, but it feels like the whole place is hanging on my rubber bands and masking tape. But then again, I love the serendipity of the place, even though it makes no sense whatsoever and gives me a headache when trying to maintain it, all these odd corners, useless niches, tiny balconies but corridors.  On “my” side of the building there are seven rooms on no less than six different levels! The steps of the three stairways are all different in height and oh! The water pipes! Since the house was built in different stages, some faucets are provided by one pipe, the faucet next to it by another while the drainage goes in opposite directions too. And let’s not get started about the electricity!!! Burned out equipment and showerheads are too regularly an unpleasant event to even mention it.

When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude  that time long ago, I had a hard time picturing how a house could fall apart, be put back together and be divided into a million rooms, some long forgotten and rotten away. But now I have seen first hand how buildings change, how family homes become beehives of small rooms, every time a son or daughter is born or getting married. This doesn’t require major remodeling guided by an architect or engineer. Hell no, everybody can tear a wall down, add another, put some zinc laminas on top. It’s no big deal.

Why Hondurans Are the Way they Are

 A couple of days ago I wrote a post on how the tropical weather might be the cause of the Latin-American "mañana ‐ mañana culture", the tendency to take things easy and not doing anything today that can be done tomorrow. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it goes much deeper than that… Although I’m not an anthropologist, much less a genealogist, just a curious artist, here some of my thoughts…

Hondurans are renowned to be lazy and easy going. If you hire a Honduran to get something done, you better pay when the job is done and not per day or week, because the laborer in question probably won’t show up again once he has some money in his pocket.

I’ve lived long enough in Honduras to see through these stereotypes, but still, I think that in general a lack of long‐term vision can be seen as one of its people’s characteristics and also one of the country’s biggest problems. It‘s not easy to get things done in a culture of unpunctuality and wit a lack of involvement that leads in its turn to a lack of initiative, responsibility and creativity.  Problems on every level are resolved with a quick fix that isn’t a solution on the long run. New projects are set up with as little investment as possible and without taking the consequences in account. That’s why potholes in the road are being fixed with a bit of cement instead of being properly repaired. Houses are built with the cheapest materials that won’t last or withstand the heavy threats of a tropical climate and no politician looks beyond the four years of his public service.

I live in an apartment that is only five years old but already falling apart. Since I moved in three years ago I’ve already replaced faucets, showerheads, locks, window screens and power outlets, and not because I’m such a rough tenant. The roof leaks, the ceiling is being eaten away by termites, the woodwork in the corridor is rotting away, water leaks through the wall, the PVC system that fills my water tank is going to give in one of these days and paint keeps flaking off the walls, no matter how well I treat them, and I know about those things because I’m a painter.  If I complain to my landlord, he thanks me for letting him know and if he makes repairs at all, it is always with the same cheap materials that yet again won’t last long. 

How different it is in my home country Holland. During every visit I’m always surprised about how everything ‐ or at least most of the things‐ are in such good state, although Holland has a very damaging climate too.

My parents live in an old Amsterdam neighbourhood in a house that was built in 1904. And it is in a perfect state. No leaks, no flaking paint, no rotting woodwork. (Now that I think of it, in Holland I have never lived in a house with a leaking roof, whereas in Copán the opposite is the case.) I remember looking out the kitchen window at the backs of the houses from the neighbouring street, and was amazed how even the backsides of the houses were in such perfect condition. Only the house straight across from my parents showed a few cracks in the paint and for some strange reason, that imperfection moved me. But not for long. The next morning a team of professionals in white outfits set up scaffolding and repainted the house.

If you think of where these differences come from, the climate might again be the deciding factor. It was not too long ago that In Holland (and most parts of Europe) the common people had to do a whole lot of thinking ahead. Way before the time of supermarkets and imported goods, people in cold countries had to plan six months ahead. During the summer they would work there butts off cultivating and harvesting, all to survive six months of harsh winter. Not only did they have to make sure to have enough food for themselves for a period of six unproductive months, but also for their live stock. They needed enough firewood, the houses needed to be in good shape for the winter, warm clothes needed to be knit. Weeks of potting, drying and storing were needed before they were ready for wintertime. Now, that requires a whole lot of thinking and planning.

In Honduras on the other hand, the climate is much gentler. Harvests go year-round and if it’s not mango season, then there’re avocados, bananas and other fruits and vegetables. The weather is not so harsh that special clothing or housing is required. I’m sure working the land in Latin America isn’t any easier than it used to be in Europe, but well, why worry now when tomorrow there’s another day. That has probably always been the case and still is to this day.

I think you can even say that our physical appearances go back to those climatic factors too. The Dutch for example are tall and lean (me being the exception to the rule, of course). In the old days they would work hard during the summer to have a relatively sedative life during winter. But that didn’t result in obesity. (Also because food was probably pretty scarce by the end of the winter). In other words, I think the Dutch have a genetic history that keeps them  pretty much in the same shape no matter what, which keeps up to these days (not that obesity recently has become a problem, but that’s for different reasons). In Honduras however, farmers are used to walk up and down the hills year-round and do hard physical labour . Besides working the land, water needs to be hauled, kids to be carried… In the villages you still see no fat people at all. But the ones that move to town and have taken on an office job and take moto‐taxis to that job turn fat almost instantly.

Of course social factors such as oppression, education (or lack thereof), hierarchies and religions also have a huge influence on people as a whole, but still they’re more recent than the thousands of years of genetics  focused on how to survive that we carry in our bodies. In this time an age people from different countries (especially in the cities) live lives that are more similar than ever, but before those genetics that make us who we are will change, that might take another thousand years or so.

A Copán Christmas Story

He liked her, even if he didn’t know her name. 

And although he didn’t know it himself yet, his heart already knew the boy was lost to this nameless girl with the pretty smile right after that first encounter. 

Sebastian was his name and he worked as an assistant bricklayer at the construction of a new hotel. It was, at sixteen, his first real job, thanks to his father’s connections and although he was neither particularly thrilled about the job nor opposed to it ‐he just did what he was told to do‐ the best moment of each day was when he was sent to the market to pick up the lunches for some of the workmen.

Because it was there at the entrance where he first saw her. The third girl on the left. Standing there behind a shelf that held their baskets filled with tortillas wrapped in embroidered cloth. As soon as anybody entered the market place, the girls cried out:”Tortillas! Tortillas! How many do you want?”

They repeated the same line over and over, hundreds of times a day, until it had long ceased to be a question, but an impersonal mantra, a sound and nothing more.

But not her. The girl was quiet, didn’t even lift her chin up in the defiant way the others did. Rather, she lowered her chin slightly to her chest. Then, all of a sudden, they made eye contact in a flicker of a second and a smile appeared on her face. A smile that locked their eyes. A lightning struck his heart.

Sebastian stopped in his tracks, felt even like his heart stopped beating, and smiled back. Well, it was more of a smirk, he thought later, when he had already practiced the perfect smile for her dozens of times in front of the mirror.

From that moment on he eagerly went to the market every day to have a glimpse at the girl. He hated the fact that the lunches he was to pick up already included tortillas, so no excuse for him to address the girl. But then again, he barely needed nor dared to speak to her. Just looking at her, two glimpses a day, on the way in and out, were enough. 

Every day he discovered something new about her. The way she moved the hair out of her face with a subtle flick of her right index finger. The tiny mole just below the left corner of her bottom lip. Her hair that on sunny days seem to glow almost reddish. The way she flashed her eyelashes twice every time she looked up. And how somehow that shy smile reflected in the light of her eyes… 

Sebastian couldn’t think of little else but this mystery girl. She appeared at night in his dreams and during the day in his fantasies when he was mindlessly laying brick. He asked around, but couldn’t find out anything about her. Nobody knew where she was from, nobody seemed to know her family.

The anonymity started to bother him. This girl felt so familiar after a few weeks, so much a part of his life after months, that he decided to giver her a name. Carmen. Yes, Carmen suited her. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know any Carmen, but Carmen it was.

Months went by and with time, the construction of the hotel came steadily along. The goal was to finish before Christmas, and it seemed that that deadline was actually going to be made. But then the woodwork for windows and doors arrived later than planned, the swimming pool didn’t quite turn out as planned, so extra man-hours were needed and the workers were asked, or rather told, that they had to work extra long shifts all the way up to Christmas. Not only made the men extra hours, they also worked harder than ever before. At least if felt that way to Sebastian. Maybe it was just months of hard work that accumulated in even harder work, but at night his mind and body were so exhausted that there was no place for Carmen to enter his dreams.

It was December the twenty-fourth and the job was basically done. One more shift, eight more hours and that would be it. Sebastian was sent, as usual, to the market to pick up food and all of a sudden realized this would be the very last time. Sebastian panicked. What if he wouldn’t see Carmen again? What if a new job would take him elsewhere and he wouldn’t have to go to the market again? He needed to do something and he needed to do it now.

But while he was dragging his feet to the market, he couldn’t come up with anything. He didn’t dare to walk up to her and say… Say what? But then he saw a pickup truck on the corner of Central Park selling rambutans or lichas and on a hunch he decided to buy a bag.

With the bag in his hand he walked into the market. There she was, yet again, the third girl on the left. For a moment Sebastian just stood there, not knowing what to do. But then he gathered all his courage, walked up to the girl and handed her the bag of lichas.

“Here. Those are for you. Because it’s Christmas. And by the way, my name is Sebastian.”

The girl took the bag but didn’t look Sebastian in the eyes.

“Thank you”, she said, while blush crept over her pretty cheeks. Sebastian was thrilled. It was the first time he ever heard her voice and for some reason it sounded exactly the way he had always expected. But when the girl didn’t say anything else, nor looked up again, Sebastian felt conscious about how stupid he felt and quickly moved on to the comedor where the lunches where waiting. Totally embarrassed with a nasty red blush covering his own cheeks he quickly picked up the bags with food and hurried out of the market. He didn’t linger to catch a glimpse of the girl as he had done for so many months, just stared as his feet as he tried to make his way out as quickly as possible.

But just when he passed her, he heard “pssssttt…” and he knew it was her.

“Here,” she said, looking him directly in the eyes with that same shy  but warm smile playing around her lips. It was a bag holding a few still warm tortillas.

“Because it’s Christmas”, she said. “And by the way, my name is Carmen. “