Hammocks, E-Coli, and Liquados #6: Washed and Pressed with Bullets Included – Tegucigalpa, Honduras

6: Washed and Pressed with Bullets Included
If you have ever traveled for long periods of time in the Central or South America (and probably several other places in the world for that matter) you know that your khakis grow three sizes, your favorite t-shirts now have necks the size of toilet bowls and I promise you that your socks will never again be white. The Latinos are afraid of washing machines and dryers. I became pro at the homemade cement washboard and a bar of soap.

Friday was a fabulous day – we came upon a LAUNDROMAT on Calle La Fuente. What luxury! The owner said he could have our clothes done by 6:00. I officially loved the man, a coffee bean plantation owner who even ironed our underwear! We ran home, brought sacks of soiled (and I use that word for everything it is worth), mildewy clothes for him and dropped them off, to quickly run to a Micro credit charla in Los Pinos.

We were late, thus had to run up the dirt hill, saving ourselves from the multa, or fine. The next thing I know, there is a gun shot we can only hear before we round the next corner. The families are inside their houses yelling warnings of danger but in our naivety, even supposed invincibility, we kept running, reminding ourselves of the multa, multa, multa!

In our hurry I almost did some damage to the parked taxi in the middle of the road, rounding the corner as if I was a distance sprinter going for the gold. The adrenaline backfired the minute I looked into the front seat of the car, engine running but dead driver hunched over the steering wheel with bullet through his bloody forehead. We left the scene in shock. I still remember the rosary beads and picture of his baby boy hanging from the rearview mirror.

I’m sure we made it to the meeting on time – but fine or no fine, the world was mute. Life tripped in front of us…and nobody would ever understand that Jose worked hard to bring home the beans for his wife and son he promised would never go hungry. The silence of the empty road pressed in on me with the weight of pity, of anger, of hate. Then I felt the shame of my life. I was pierced with my nothingness – in the sense of doing little to stop what happened to the Senor, of ultimately having no control whatsoever, and even self pity – who am I that will not be forgotten like Jose proved today?

The scene was taped off – reporters, policemen, doctors, ambulances and hundreds of people were gathered around. They put his lifeless body, whose eyes stared into the heavens as if he understood why, into a black bag and carelessly threw it into some unlabeled pick up truck. (Maybe it was an ambulance but everything seemed so understated.) The taped off crime scene was our only way to the bus stop. We were told to climb around to the left. A dead man, a taxi driver, dead will forever stay with me. The murderer escaped and the story didn’t even make headlines. The five of us walked in silence and caught a bus back to the enpalme.

Honduras is real: both clean laundry and life are such luxuries.

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