There’s a Man with a Machete in My Office… or, Sell me a Cigar, Damn it

I’m going to keep this brief (since I’m feeling lazy, and since the whole encounter only lasted about ten minutes in real life), but I feel like I need to tell you guys about this. The other day I was at the mayor’s office as usual and I left the main building entrance to head back to my office (which is basically a converted storage closet, with an entrance around the side of the building). I was a bit distracted and it wasn’t until I was actually half way through the door that I noticed the old, wild eyed, campesino man standing inside my office with a machete in hand. Now, back in the US, I feel like this kind of thing would probably have freaked me out (just a bit). After a year of living in Fraternidad however, it didn’t really phase me all that much, and the first thing I did was to ask him who he was looking for, and how I could help him (as opposed to the normal US reaction of “dear god, don’t kill me”). This was when things got weird (well weirder). He continued what he was doing when I came in, which was peering at the wall behind my door, and without missing a beat, asked me where I kept the “puros”. Now I was expecting a question about some sort of municipal business and this threw me for a loop. My mind began quickly racing through possible other meanings for the word, but I kept coming back to “cigars”, which is the only meaning I knew for that word. As I asked him some clarifying questions it rapidly became clear that he was indeed looking for cigars, and had been doing so since the day before. It turned out that some “muchacho” (word for boy or young man) had directed him to the “big yellow house” (the mayor’s office) and told him to go see the gringo, since he sold cigars. By this point I was pretty confused, but was coming to realize that the old man was definitely a bit off in the head (that or really drunk, though he did not smell of booze). Also at this moment I heard a whistling coming from one of the houses that backs up on the mayor’s office (people here can whistle with amazing force), and looked up to see one of my friends on his back porch laughing his butt off. He yelled to me that he had directed the old man my way since I sell the best cigars, and I realized that I had been had. Assuming that this would be the end of the confusion I explained to the old man that it had been a joke and that I did not actually sell cigars. He however was neither finished with his quest for cigars, nor fully convinced that I did not sell them. He continued to try to wheedle some out of me, saying that he would be content with just one (or even if I could just see fit to give him a wad of tobacco to chew on). Eventually he bagan to get a bit agitated that I was so clearly holding out on him, and I decided that I didn’t like the idea of having a debate with an agitated (and as I realized by this point, clearly delusional) man holding a machete, alone, around the side of the building. Thus I walked back to the main office and proceeded to pass him off on the vice mayor, who is also one of the biggest “chavacanes” (tricksters/jokers) in town who calmly listened to the man’s request and explained that we (the residents of the “big yellow house”) had recently run out of cigars, but that the folks in the health center had tons (and that he [the old man] should not take “No” for an answer from them, since he [the vice mayor] had given them a whole bunch of cigars just the day before). In retrospect it seems kind of mean that people just pass off this man (who it was explained to me is not of a right state of mind) on others, leaving him to wander around the streets all day, but I’ve come to learn that it is pretty much standard practice here (they do the same thing with the mayors mentally handicapped nephew when he gets confused and shows up looking for his pay check multiple times in the same day [he gets paid by the municipality to collecting trash with the garbage truck once a week]).

All in the name of progress… or, Again with the world politics metaphors?

So, as many of you know, I have had a lot of unwanted borders living in my house at various times during my service. The most prominent were the mice that, as far as I can tell, had a serious mouse metropolis built in my walls and ceiling when I first moved into the house. They gave me quite a bit of trouble initially, as they ate, or pooped on, all of my food and spent the nights loudly scurrying around my room (presumably as they rushed to where I stored my food, or their pantry/bathroom as they saw it). After a long and bloody genocide I have finally eradicated the mouse problem using traps, poison and machetes. While all of this was going on however I had numerous other critters taking up residence in my home. The most long standing of which were definitely the spiders that moved into my bathroom. It started off as one spider building a web in one of the corners, and by the year’s end I had serious webs emanating from every nook available. Despite the grossness factor of having so many spiders in my tiny bathroom (believe me, it is rather off-putting to have all of those beady eyes staring at you while you shower), I was not particularly bothered by their existence and allowed them to continue living and thriving there. I did this not out of aversion to murdering arachnids or insects (since I have long had a standing “kill on site” order for other breeds of spiders (such as tarantulas), scorpions, and all manner of creepy multi-legged insects), but because they were useful for eliminating winged insects, and because they generally kept to themselves (unlike another breed of spider that like to wander around the room at night and climb onto my face while I am sleeping (needless to say they are on my “kill on site list”)). My affinity for the bathroom spiders was such that when a scorpion intruded on one of their nests and was menacing the spider who lived there, I came to its rescue and hit the scorpion with a hammer.

By now you may have noticed that I have been speaking of the bathroom spiders in the past tense. This is because in order to paint my bathroom, I had to “relocate” them in order to get rid of the webs that were covering much of the upper part of the walls. This process was much like that which the People’s Republic of China undertook to relocate large portions of the population of the Sichuan province in order make way for the flooding of the Yangtze that would result from the construction of Three Gorges Dam. I, like the communist party leaders, had a vision for a greater future and I was not going to be stopped by a few insignificant peasants’ homes… I mean spider’s webs. Though in my case rather than buying out peoples land, and offering them homes in newly constructed cities outside of the flood range, just burned out their webs with a flaming news paper and brushed away the charred remains. As far as I can tell most of the spiders just retreated farther back into their crevices in the roof (and will probably start rebuilding their webs once they regroup), though at least one stood its ground as the fire approached and was incinerated. In the end I have to admit that I feel kind of guilty, but progress is progress and the Peoples Republic of Stephen must continue to expand its glory.

Of Futbol matches and Funerals... or, Can't we Have Just One Game Where No One Pulls a Gun

Much like Jutiapa my town also participated in an important futbol match this past weekend. In our case it was the final match of a two month long tournament that we (and by “we” I really mean “they”, since our town had assembled an all-star team of our various clubs in order to participate, and lord knows I am not all-star material in futbol) had been participating in the nearby municipality of Lucerna. 

Going into this match our team had been undefeated in the tournament and had shown themselves to be the best team in all aspects of play. This was clear from the fact that our goalie was the least scored on, we had the highest goal scoring player, and we had the player voted best defenseman of the tournament. Unfortunately this earlier success did little to help them in the final and my towns team lost a hard fought game 2-0. This outcome is misleading since the two goals came on a blown offside’s call early in the match, and a penalty shot in the last 3 minutes of play, that came as a result of a needless penalty due to desperation to tie the game. The most exciting (if that is the right word) part of the game was came in the beginning of the second half when an on field penalty resulted in a bench clearing brawl (don’t think they use that expression in futbol, but I’m just going to steal it from baseball anyway) that ended with multiple spectators pulling guns (this is a disturbingly common occurrence in rural Honduran futbol matches).

It started when my friend was slide tackled out of bounds over aggressively while trying to center the ball for one of our players to take a shot on goal (this happened directly in front of me and had I not jumped back I would have been plowed into). Rather than just get up and take the free kick that had been called by the referee, my friend (who has a bit of a temper) decided to send the other player a message, and so as he was getting up he kicked the other player in the face (his foot had ended up on top of the other guys head when they fell, so he basically just let it drop on him). This resulted in them both jumping up and exchanging punches (I tried to pull them apart but they were pretty dedicated to beating the crap out of each other). This prompted both teams, and a large portion of the spectators (we were the visitors, but we had showed up with 10 pickup trucks full of fans), to charge into a large group around them pushing and shoving. 

Things got out of hand when suddenly one of the fans from the other town (defiantly drunk) to pull out his pistol and wave it in my friends face. He (correctly) decided that the fight was not worth dying over and bolted across the field. This prompted the gunman to jam his piece in another one of our player’s chests, as he was trying to calm the man down. Not to be out done a bunch of the guys from my town pulled their own guns and started moving towards the confrontation (if you haven’t been keeping up with my blog thus far, many people carry guns, even my mayor was at the game with a 45 caliber revolver sticking out of the frint of his pants).

Luckily for everyone cooler heads prevailed and the confrontation was diffused before anyone got shot. Somehow after things cooled down the game resumed without a single card being issued and the game finished almost without incident (though both teams were playing extremely aggressive and mean spirited futbol). The only other incident being a few minutes after when the line judge, positioned in front of the other towns fans, made a call in favor of our team and was shoved from behind and verbally threatened by their fans. Luckily for everyone (especially the line judge) the police showed up right after this and made a show of forced (which is pretty easy when you are a force of six guys in flack vests armed with M16s). After the game ended I opted to get a ride home with one of my friends and his family rather than going out with the young guys to drink off the loss. 

Though I learned afterwards, that they apparently just bought a bunch of booze and returned to town to get drunk at a vela (wake) for a 14 year old from one of the aldeas (who it turns out was the cousin of a friend of mine, and I had actually met) who was shot by a friend while playing with a parent’s gun last week . Thinking about this made me realize that in my town futbol matches and funerals are both just seen as normal local social events, but I guess that makes sense considering the likelihood that the former will often enough give cause for the latter.

The One with Rainbows and Smiling Children

So, I have yet to read Stephen's blog post about how his fútbol game in La Fraternidad/ Campolandia went down, but I've heard him describe it over the phone, and to me it sounds more like a plot to an episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia than it does the life of development worker.

My story is the complete opposite (sorta the point of this new combo blog venture).  My fútbol game doesn't feature guns or fighting, but it does remind you that "Honduras doesn't always have to win," and that sometimes the simplest of things can make a huge difference to a small community.

Quick Thought: I feel that Latin America's connection to the game of fútbol could be rather easily harnessed to catalyze development and increase community involvement. For the bad wrap that stadium construction gets in numerous urban planning circles back in the states, it might actually be a way for poorer Latin American municipalities to improve their local economies and strengthen or create an environment conducive to extensive community involvement. 

Basically, if you plop down a soccer field in the middle of town, the people will come and good things will happen. The people will buy ice cream, beer, and bags of churros, which helps local business who all operate on very small profit margins, meaning they need to generate a high volume sales to be profitable (think how many Lps. 3 bags water you need to sell in order to make a profit). Not only that, but when you involve local kids and community members, you make the contacts necessary to work on other community projects in the future. This is an idea I want to run with later, and it could serve as an excellent side article to that thesis I've been needing/meaning/wanting to write. 

So if you've read other blog posts of mine regarding Jutiapa's park restoration project, you'll probably know that this is a project that has required a lot of "patience." That is not to say that there haven't been some great moments, but "Embracing the Chaos" is harder than you think. Another thing I would like to do is write up some very pointed critiques of my work to document the mistakes I made, but for now on to my game of fútbol.

The day commenced with a very fortuitous sign.

After more than six months of planning and work we opened the first phase of our park restoration to hundreds of Jutiapeños, the Vice-Minister of the Interior (and rising political star), a freaking rainbow, and a big-time game, by local fútbol standards, played under the lights and celebrated with hundreds of people.

Jutiapa's Police Chief speaking in coordination with the community's anti-violence campaign

Our inaguration kicked off with the traditional opening ceremony, which I'm sure other PCVs know all to well. At our "Principal Table" sat management of ENEE (the electric company), myself, repersentatives of the Municipalidad, the Vice Ministra (Carmen Rivera) of the Interior, the Police Chief, and a community repersentative. Local televesion channels were present, capturing every moment (meaning I made Honduran TV in La Ceiba, the equivalnet of Rockford, Illinois public access haha). Everyone, including myself had to give a speech. During the Vice-Ministra's speech it became evident how much of a politica she really is becoming. During the speech she actually cajoled the management of ENEE into making sure he took care of two missing lights for the field. She did this in front of the large assembled audience, which had to take some serious ganas. Her comment loosely translated into, "Sir, I see you still have some more work to do with fixing those two missing lights. I'm sure that will be taken care of in the coming days, no?"

Teams lined up for the opening ceremony. Note the church in the background. Great pic.

At the end of the ceremony we were able to present dozens of youth with sports equipment that had been graciously provided by the organization Sports Gift, which is based out of California, but there generosity would not have been possible if it weren't for the help of the Orange County Peace Corps Association, NaviVan, and the Higher Ground Family Church in Louisiana.   
    
The work is not done, a point I made sure to bring up multiple times during the day. While this project is taking me a lot longer than originally planned, I like the progress we are now making. It is great to see fruits of your labor, but it is even better to see what is going on behind the scenes. The strengthening of the Sports Committee's capacity is by far my biggest and most unseen challenge, but it is also the work I am most proud of, since the park and futbol field mean nothing if they aren't maintained. 

After the ceremony we started our tournament, which went really well. Teams from all over Jutiapa came to play on our new field, and it was incredible to watch how happy everyone was to be playing on such a professional surface. A Canadian Couchsurfer who had been crashing at my apartment for a  few days made the comment that, "...you must feel like a rockstar." as people continuously came up to me to make a comment on the field and how proud they were that it was in Jutiapa. I can't express how good that felt. Hearing those comments made if feel like all of the fijese ques, missed or canceled meetings, professional incompetence, false starts, and frustration disappear. In Honduras, you need those small victories to keep going, since it is really easy to feel like Honduras is always winning.

After passing most of the day on my balcony, the time for the big game came. We turned on the lights, shook hands, and the people crowded around the field, ranchero music blasting from their parked cars. Even though I hadn't played fútbol in nearly 10 years I was forced to acquiesce at the insistence of my counterpart, Oscar. Expecting to play only 10 minutes, I went out pretty hard, completely forgetting how much running you actually have to do. Our team ended up getting killed by a score of 5-0, but unlike La Fraternidad, no guns were pulled and the people returned to the quiet of a Sunday night in Jutiapa.

The first game under the lights on the new field.

Cheers,


Jesse