tomorrow i leave on a plane with the recent memories of the bottom of the grand canyon and its perfect blue waterfalls etched neatly in my mind,
- but mostly i will be thinking of honduras.
many times i have sat down, eager in front of the computer, ready to spill out a bit of the heaviness that lies in my heart,
but articulating this thing inside seems more and more impossible each day. i must admit, there is some anger, and there is confusion...
but thankfully, mostly, there is love.
so i will settle with writing these few things in the thought that we will have plenty of time to talk- and that even if we dont, that if the things i have learned are true, that you will learn them also, in your own time.
honduras.
the facts: after leaving cam and allison in Guatemala i made my way to a beautiful property just outside the teeny mountain village of Urraco, a couple hours from the big city of La Ceiba. A couple named Jason and Sarah are there building an orphanage and I went to do some agriculture stuff... honestly, i can't say i accomplished tons in the time i was there, but none of that matters. I experimented a bit with plants, I visited another missionary couple named Larry and Allison, i talk some english at a local school, i spoke to local farmers, i got soaked in the heavy rainstorms, i bathed in a beautiful creek. i lived in the present in the exact way i have always dreamed of living. i played lots, and for the first time in a long time, i prayed. i fell to my knees feeling the weight of this world, and i prayed.
now in pheonix arizona, i cant help but put the toilet paper in the garbage can, or shiver when I walk into an air-conditioned room. I can’t help but feel odd in this strange land so ordered and so clean, with people manicured and quite tame. here the men do not stare as intently, and everyone’s hair is a little less greasy and a little more silky and soft. here i am again in this dangerously comfortable world- and it is easy to understand why this world exists, and it is hard for me to accept that few are resisting. very hard.
of the crazy little village boys I met this summer while living and working in Honduras, I fell in love with Allen first (motherly love in case you were wondering). One day I was the only person in the house and I was playing the dusty keyboard that sits in the corner of the kitchen, singing to myself. and outside the window he, Allen, was standing there, watching me- listening, trying to calculate and understand what was transcending. Likely Allen has never seen a keyboard in his life, and positively he has never heard Regina Spektor’s spectacular “Folding Chair” song (which, if you don’t know- you should definitely look up). All in all it was a strange meeting of our completely different worlds, and i felt something in us meet right then and there at our incredible differences and erase them boldly, erase them silently. When together with the village kids I felt naked of my history and my education- I felt as though playing was the only important thing in those moments. playing and praying.
Allen and I, and a bunch of the other village boys and sometimes the neighbour girls- would play soccer and swim often, most days. For me that meant at the end of a day of working in the soil. For the boys it meant every afternoon, all afternoon- and when their teachers were gone protesting in the city- it meant all day every day, unless we gave them odd jobs to do around the farm.
On December 28th when I left Canada I wish I had known about the Honduras I would find in my 7th month away. I wish I had gone straight there, to my friend Allen who sleeps in a hammock made of an old rice sac- to him and his 2 “brothers” whose parents are absent. To them whose grandfather works desperately in the mountains to grow beans for food, and whose grandmother is sitting in a chair with a stomach cancer tumour hanging out of her side, waiting to die. I didn’t “know” when I left home about Allen or his brothers, but oh, I knew. I knew just the way you know, just the way everyone knows. Poverty is impatient and murderous, it is now and has been forever. i wish i had known about the existence of incredible people like sarah, jason, larry, and allison- people that are doing great things, inspiring things-- people that are people.
so now i come home to learn about farming in these marginal lands, to read informative books that are impossible to find in small mountain villages, and to rally up an army of people who will fight this disease I call “forgetfulness”… essentially, I come home to serve God in the only way i think he can be served- one day at a time, one broken heart at a time.
id like to be jungle woman
in this modern world of temptations and plans and complications and comforts.
and that's it.
the end, thank you for sharing in this adventure.
(carries a lot of suitcases
But all of them are empty
Because she’s expecting
To completely fill them
with life by the end of
this trip
& then she’ll come home
& sort everything out
& do it all again.
-brian andreas (traveling light))
After a crazy afternoon playing in the rainstorm.
During my visit to Las Mangas and my stay with Larry and Allison and their community of Honduras students who live there and have been sponsored to go to school.
THIS is where I was.
some harvest!! (oh how i miss the mangos!)
Janine, during her visit to Urraco- teaching some English.
