Welcome...

(veo honduras)

Monday, August 23, 2010

Opatoro PART TWO

When the bouncing of the Safarimobile halted in the pitch black night, we of course couldn’t help but start cracking jokes about the various reasons we could be stopped, but a simple inspection of our left rear tire left no trace of doubt in our minds (as illustrated by the photo in the last post). And so out came the jack and wrench and our very strongest, machissmo men gave it their best shot, but not a single lugnut budged. About an hour later, after meandering the road looking for large rocks, and a brief sighting of some fireflies, salvation came from 6 men in a small red pickup truck with a meter long pipe in tow. Miraculously, that pipe delivered enough torque when placed over the wrench to make loosening the lugnuts look like opening a jar of peanuts, and so the tire was changed and we continued our journey through the night in the renewed torrent of rain. [the crew + Opatoro in the background]


Shortly after the Safarimobile was safely running again, we descended into a valley speckled with dim streetlamps. Our vehicle curled around a block and came to rest in front of a raised building fronted with a simple but beautiful wrought iron gate and fencing. We bounced up the narrow concrete steps, out of the rain, and entered into the front porch area of someone’s house. Through the door to the right a living space was barely visible, but we carried to the left and into a warm dry kitchen. (pictured here, minus the actual dining area). This kitchen quickly became one of my favorite parts of Opatoro, as we took all of our meals there, though for me it came to symbolize hospitality, companionship, and the wonderful shared human experience of food. That particular night, I could not have been happier to sit down to a meal of beans, eggs, a slice of fried bologna, some fried platano (plantain), and of course, fresh tortillas. The food was warm, the chef gracious, and the company very grateful to be eating at last.

Still unsure of exactly where we were, where we were going, or what was going on, we followed Victor in our stupor through the mud back to the house we would spend our nights. Once again, impeccable Honduran hospitality as another family (we were never actually introduced) gave us a room with six beds and allowed us to use their sink, shower, and restroom for the days we were there. Keep in mind, Opatoro is extremely rural Honduras, and we were in some ways lucky to even have electricity, so the accommodations were quaint in the same way as the town. For example, our beds all had particular personalities: Max’s bed consisted of a wooden frame and a mattress supported by a thicket of cross-hatched baling twine, my bed was very similar. Lindsey’s bed was more like a sacrificial alter considering that her thin mattress barely cut it and the plywood underneath left her with a bruise on her right hip. Bozho’s bed was my favorite because he loved it, so much, in fact, that we woke one night to him frantically DEETing himself to stem the pestering of whatever insect inhabited his bed. All in all, I loved our room and it’s character. Outside, the sink stands directly across a small lawn from our door, and the shower and toilet wait at the end of the covered porch area. The shower spigot only delivered cold water, so most of us opted for not showering until our return to Tegus – a point that had Max speaking up by day 3, but we weren’t too concerned.

[the walkway leading to the shower/bathroom] ------->

As we burrowed into our respective nests for the evening and murmured goodnight to one another, Max made a comment somewhere along the lines of, “Yup, well I’m putting my earplugs for when the chickens go off at four in the morning.” We all chuckled, but when the rooster immediately outside our abode began howling somewhere in what I still believed to be the night, I checked my clock and sure enough it read 4:20. There was nothing to do but laugh. The cacophony of roosters echoed relentlessly through the valley for at least 30 minutes, when it slackened to only the occasional call and answer. Needless to say I envied Max’s ear-plugs every morning as I drifted in and out of consciousness with the cries of the roosters, yet somehow I also enjoyed them. After all, what else could remind me at 4 AM that I was still Opatoro?




Some of the kids in San Pedro, a very. very small town in the Opatoro region where we held a clinic on day 2 of our brigada.


No comments:

Post a Comment