Call My Cell, Let's do Lunch...

SANTA ROSA de COPAN -- The late afternoon sun enters the open windows of Casa Arias making the red table cloths glow. A family of six sits at the table to my right. The little girl, maybe five or six is wearing a party dress of pale peach with satin ribbons wobven in and throughout. She has matching shoes with silver buckles and those lacy little socks that I remember being as mysterious to me when I was her age as stockings and garters and high heels are to me now. Around her neck is another pretty ribbon and suspended from that is a pretty silver cell phone -- a real one, not a toy. I wonder what a six-year-old needs a phone for but hell, she's the best dressed of the group she is with. Maybe she called that meeting...
Back in the States I don't have a cell phone (although I did once and being a gadget guy a few of the new models have me thinking about it). A few days ago, however, I got one down here. There is the practical side of it--my parents could call me, I can make plans the modern way (instead of having to collect firewood to send smoke signals or carry around a large drum) but maybe, all in all, it is part of my ongoing project of making myself slightly more normal...Protective camoflage, if you will, to appear a bit more like others. It is in the same spirit that I started wearing jeans every now and then as well as shirts with some colors, bought a comfortable couch for my house and at least considered a television. That, and, well, Katy was getting a phone and pretty women can drive a man to do some pretty strange things.
Of course one other thing that has prevented me from getting a cell phone in the past is the maddening complexity of the avaricious plans. The "plan" here, if you can call it that, is easily understood. I hope it is, anyway, because it was all explained in rapid fire Spanish to two gringos with an imperfect command of the idiom.
As we understood it, anyway, we buy the phones--I a little black Motorola and Katy a nice silver Nokia--for 1,000 Lempiras each (a little over 60 dollars, these being the cheapest available). What is called a SIM chip is installed along with a free 20 minutes. When more time is needed a calling card can be purchased almost anywhere for about $5.00 per 20 minutes and added to the chip.
At least we think that's what they said. We did have to sign some papers so maybe it also cost us first born children, immortal souls or US citizenship. But probably not.
The real reason I don't have a cell is that, frankly, I usually don't like being called. Sudden noises make me jumpy and half the fun of going weird places is being out-of-touch, of cutting off the ties of the regular world and being both unavailable and beyond the reach of help.
Unless one says that one will answer one's phone at a certain time I believe there is no obligation to do so. There is no obligation to even have the damn thing turned on.
Likewise, It is the height of rudeness to go out with someone and then relegate them to second-friend status when someone calls. I am perfectly capable of entertaining myself but the reason I am out is that I didn't feel like it that night. In the same spirit, when I have a friend over to my house I rarely answer the phone if it rings. I had made a date to spend time and conversation with them. Not with whomever decided to invade my space with their unnanounced vocalizations.
So please leave a message. Thank you. I shall get back to you. Or not.

What You See

--Yo lo creere cuando yo lo vea

SANTA ROSA de COPAN -- With a celebratory honking of horns the bus pulled up in front of Hotel Elvir and began disgorging doctors and nurses and assorted other CAMO types and their equipment like some outsized circus vehicle. As I filmed them getting off most paused and said, "Hello Andrew," as if it were the most normal thing in the world for me to be standing on a street corner in Honduras pointing a camera at them. I always find it vaguely surreal seeing these Ohio faces here. It is, then, equally surreal seeing these same faces back in the midwest. It is as if they, we, all exist in a slightly different reality, an alternative universe where neither world is quite real in the other. My friend Beth Slattery from Indiana says of the midwest, that, "It really is the most provocative geography. The last frontier as nobody wants to come here. People who live here want to leave and those who do live here are considered mutant toglodytes with quaint--if not dangerous--superstitions. It is rather like Kabul in that respect only in another five years Kabul will probably be a tourist spot when Taliban Disney goes in..."
Honduras is truly a strange land. You could say, well, that it is a land of contrasts but if you did you would have committed that most common of lazy travel writing sins. After making that blatantly obvious statement you could then go on to give a few glaring examples that are, indeed, contrasts and leave it for the reader to figure out how smart you are that not only do you know the word, "contrast," but you can recognize one in the real world. It is a lazy and fatuous way out, a short-cut to thinking because every country, town, spot-of-interest that is, was, or ever will be can be described as a place of contrast. It is very nearly as clever as writing that, "_____________ is a country where not everyone is exactly like everyone else. Even more surprisingly, some parts of _____________ look different than other parts."
Every country possesses so many contrasts and differences from every other country that the statement of such is no more than meaningless filler. If one needs to be clever it is much better to pick a particular contrast or tension and explain that in detail. I, however, prefer simply to write the truth, the plain, unvarnished facts as I see them...

...Honduras, you see, is a cold land, with an unknown population of elephants...

What You See

--Yo lo creere cuando yo lo vea

SANTA ROSA de COPAN -- With a celebratory honking of horns the bus pulled up in front of Hotel Elvir and began disgorging doctors and nurses and assorted other CAMO types and their equipment like some outsized circus vehicle. As I filmed them getting off most paused and said, "Hello Andrew," as if it were the most normal thing in the world for me to be standing on a street corner in Honduras pointing a camera at them. I always find it vaguely surreal seeing these Ohio faces here. It is, then, equally surreal seeing these same faces back in the midwest. It is as if they, we, all exist in a slightly different reality, an alternative universe where neither world is quite real in the other. My friend Beth Slattery from Indiana says of the midwest, that, "It really is the most provocative geography. The last frontier as nobody wants to come here. People who live here want to leave and those who do live here are considered mutant toglodytes with quaint--if not dangerous--superstitions. It is rather like Kabul in that respect only in another five years Kabul will probably be a tourist spot when Taliban Disney goes in..."
Honduras is truly a strange land. You could say, well, that it is a land of contrasts but if you did you would have committed that most common of lazy travel writing sins. After making that blatantly obvious statement you could then go on to give a few glaring examples that are, indeed, contrasts and leave it for the reader to figure out how smart you are that not only do you know the word, "contrast," but you can recognize one in the real world. It is a lazy and fatuous way out, a short-cut to thinking because every country, town, spot-of-interest that is, was, or ever will be can be described as a place of contrast. It is very nearly as clever as writing that, "_____________ is a country where not everyone is exactly like everyone else. Even more surprisingly, some parts of _____________ look different than other parts."
Every country possesses so many contrasts and differences from every other country that the statement of such is no more than meaningless filler. If one needs to be clever it is much better to pick a particular contrast or tension and explain that in detail. I, however, prefer simply to write the truth, the plain, unvarnished facts as I see them...

...Honduras, you see, is a cold land, with an unknown population of elephants...

The Evening Spot

SANTA ROSA de COPAN--On the top of Hotel Elvir is one of the world's magic spots. The roof is a patio with a covered bar and a higher deck with tables and a very small pool. To the south are the undulating ridges of the mountains that surround this highland city. Those ridges are topped by perpetually sillouted, strangely shaped pines. There are potted palms that wave in the constant breeze and cast shifting shadows. The bartender stocks up his cooler for the oncoming night while two pretty girls in low-cut tops flirt with him. The tiny pool isn't much for doing laps but it does provide a rippling surface for sunlight to reflect off of. The stereo always plays sentimental music, Mana or the Eagles or Abba, sounds that always produce the feeling that these are moments never to be forgotten, that this moment will never happen this way again and is as incredibly precious as every moment, in truth, is.
From here the sounds of the street are muted and seem far away -- the honking taxi horns and car alarms, the barking dogs and snatches of other music. It is just after 1700 and I just heard the first rooster crow. The light has taken on its golden shade and the smell of woodsmoke fills the air as women light the fires to cook dinner for their men returning from the day's labors.

Return to Santa Rosa

SANTA ROSA de COPAN--As I coughed and Katie blew her reddened nose again I cheered us both by reminding her we would soon be out from under the uni-cloud of Ohio and under the sun instead, that soon we would be praying for an occaisional rainy day, even a lone cloud in the blue sky.
We managed a few hours of fitful sleep and at 0345 my parents were on my porch, standing against a backdrop of fat white flakes, ready to drive us the hour north to Cleveland-Hopkins International. On the drive the snow came down heavier, almost whiting us out and the radio told of a possible 27 inches to fall on New York. It was, all in all, the perfect type of day to leave the Ohio Territories and head south for the sunny and chaotic lands of the Maya and the Hidalgos.
The first leg of the journey, to Houston, was promising. Although it was still cold the sun was out and shining with promise. Soon our second plane was wheels up over the blue Carribean and I was eyelids down and fast asleep. I woke with only a quarter hour left to go and when I looked out the window there was nothing but misty white.
"If I find out Cleveland is under that cloud I'll be pretty pissed off," I whispered to Katie.
The 737 nosed down into the cloud cover and rain streaked the windows. Underneath were the green fruit fields outlying San Pedro Sula. We were, indeed, landing in Honduras but the uni-cloud had followed us south...

Katie, a family practice doctor, had signed on to work with Central American Medical Outreach (C.A.M.O.) the non-profit medical relief group based out of Orrville, Ohio, her home town. I had worked with the group as their Documentary Director several years earlier. Katie had spoken only briefly with Kathy Tschiegg, CAMO's Director and nothing had been said about transport from the San Pedro airport to Santa Rosa. We assumed it was up to us and had consulted our guidebooks, planning how to get to the proper bus station in the big, chaotic city's downtown. Each bus line, and there are many, operates its own station, something that had given me a bit of trouble the year before. We wanted the Toritos and Copanecos station.
After Passport Control I left Katie with the bags while I searched for a place to change money. I did not see an exchange office in the entire airport, not even a closed one, but finally found a private money changer. When I returned to where I had left Katie, Javier, the CAMO driver was suddnely in front of me, shaking my hand, "Andres, amigo, I didn't know you were coming!"
Katie looked quite relieved, not just that we wouldn't have to navigate the cab and bus system quite yet but because she had seen Javier eyeing her and our bags and had, not knowing him, been a bit worried. Javier was relieved as well as all he had been told was to find a gringa doctor.

We passed the checkpoint on the edge of town and took the right turn up into the hills, away from the coastal plains, up and up into the unulating mountains whose taller peaks hid themselves in the clouds and tendrils of fog twisted out of the verdant canyons like fat white snakes.
I looked across the seat of the SUV at Katie during the moments of silence, seeing her familiar profile against the familiar mountains, both things unfamiliar together. I saw her for the first time anywhere but in Ohio and wondered what dislocation she must be feeling. Not quite a month before she had been in New Zealand, another green, mountainous and utterly different place. Now we were here together, in this strange place, in the back of a truck driven by people I knew and whom she had never met, on our way to a place she had never seen.
I remembered how four years before Javier had picked me up at that same airport and had driven me into the same hills. I remember arriving then and being taken to my apartment and left alone and how I had wandered down to the Hotel Elvir in between rain showers and had treated myself to a steak dinner and thought, "What will I do next?"
That is, I suppose, always the question. What next? This promises to be a strange trip. Aren't they all?

Welcome

Self-portrait, Antigua, Guatemala.