Surprises

I wrote all this last night and just didn’t have time to post it, but there was more that happened today so I’ll write again and post it later.

So usually when we do the stadium feeding we go to three places. First we go to this bus stop kind of place right outside the stadium. Then we go to two kind of alley, side street type places and hand out food from out of the back of Amber’s truck. Tonight after we went to those three places we still had quite a bit of food left over. One of the women at our last stop, Jenny, said that there were people where she lived who could use the leftover food, so we had her get in the car with us and give us directions to get there. She took us to this bridge near the stadium that she apparently lives underneath with about 18 other people. There’s this steep hill that leads down under the bridge and all of a sudden people just started coming up over the hill. So we fed them. It was crazy. Amber had Darwin go down under the bridge and take pictures so that we could see how they lived there and he couldn’t get a very good picture because it was so dark, but let me tell you, it’s awful down there.

Another weird thing happened at our first stop by the stadium. When we were there on Thursday there would be people who would walk by us every once in a while, I mean it’s a normal street sidewalk so that wasn’t weird. But tonight there were seriously droves of people, groups of guys and an occasional girlfriend that just kept walking by us, and a lot of times they would ask for our food, and we’d have to tell them no, you’re not living on the street, go home and get your own food. Like I said, we were right there by the stadium so I figured there had been a futbol game going on and I asked Alli if that was the case. But she said no, every Saturday night one of the local gangs has a meeting at the stadium and these are all the people leaving from the meeting. Talk about a shocker! I knew there were gangs around, but there were SO many people there, and that was just from one gang! When we got in the car to go to the next stop I asked Amber about it and she confirmed it, and she said that the first people who walk by are on the lowest tier of the gang and higher up you get in the gang’s social ladder the longer you get to stay at the meeting. They were still coming when we left so I really have no idea how many more there would have been and how important the people who were walking by us were. And what do you talk about at a gang meeting??? I have no clue.

The thing that throws me off is that I feel like the people here all look the same. And I don’t mean that to say that I’m an American and I can’t tell these people apart because they’re all Latino and they all look the same to me, I just mean that I can’t tell a difference between the people who have houses and cars the people who are in a gang and the people who live under the bridges. There’s not really a difference in the types of clothes they wear or anything like that. In the U.S. social class is distinguished by the kind of car you drive and the brands of clothing you wear, but here it’s just not like that. Maybe native Hondurans can tell a difference but I sure can’t. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, just an observation about the culture I guess.

Oh, this was fun. Early this afternoon Tess and Alli and I went to the park just to hang out and read and talk. We were sitting on this ledge that surrounded a basketball court and we'd been there for probably 45 minutes or so and Tess had been complaining about how hot it was and that it was starting to make her feel sick, so we started to get our stuff together to leave. All of a sudden she goes "omigosh" and leans over and faints and just falls off the ledge and hits her head on the concrete! It was so scary! Alli ran over to her and started trying to wake her up and all I knew to do was run and get Amber. I didn't even stop to put my shoes on, I just ran home. By the time we got back Tess was awake, but she was pretty shaken up. We called the doctor and he said that unless she faints again she's probably fine, it was just a one-time thing. She's doing a lot better now, and we've been laughing about it and how scary it was at the time. She's got a pretty nice scrape on her face where she landed and we've been trying to make up good stories to tell people about how she got it. The best one so far is that Amber beats her...if it were anyone else that probably wouldn't fly but since everyone knows Amber would be the last person to beat her interns I think it's a winner lol.