Sit For a Spell

Adventures of living in a third world country.

Jarrod Brown, Choluteca, Honduras Central America

Living in Honduras requires one to give up many of what we consider our God given rights in the US. Actually most of the rights are given by our constitution and democratic government. In Honduras it’s very common to be stopped on highways by the police and be required to let them search your vehicle, why?.. just because! My shining gringo face probably adds to the problem, perhaps an idea of a few quick bucks from the naïve gringo for a bribe crosses their minds.

I used to be terrified about getting stopped. Then I got used to it. I often times find myself smarting off to the officers or having to bite my tongue to keep from making some insulting remark. Sometimes the lack of professionalism on behalf of the officers gets the best of me and I lay into them.

Recently while having our truck searched at a road block built by the US government to aid in preventing drug trafficking, the skilled officer found a case of finger paints behind the back seat of our Land Cruiser that I was carrying to one of our schools. He was very well trained, slowly opening

the box, picking up one of the brightly colored bottles of paint, examining it closely, and then came the question, “What is this?” “It’s paint.” I replied slowly as to imply “what did you think it was?” Then came the punch line, and I admit, I just could not help myself, “What’s it for?” “Its for painting,” I responded back trying to not laugh in the officers face.

You get real accustomed to hurrying up and waiting down here. It’s just part of it, if you try to fight it you’ll go crazy. It appears that so many Hondurans are used to not having any rights that when things occur that are not correct even for Honduras the locals feel that they can’t do anything about it. It’s simple things. For example you might go to a fairly nice restaurant in Choluteca and order a steak. When the food for your table comes out everyone got what they ordered but instead of steak they brought you fish. Obviously the waiter or the cook made a mistake. A local would most likely never complain, accepting what they were given and saying oh well. Or, when the teachers strike and decide to block a highway to get better pay the police comes, not to arrest and clear the road, but to rather make sure that no motorist tries to work their way through the crowd.

So now I get to my story. Friday I had a meeting at the Honduran Immigration office at 10AM to get my picture take for my new Honduras residency, something that needed to be taken care of before the offices closed for Christmas. It’s about a 2 hour and 45 minute drive from my house to the capital of Tegucigalpa. We got an early start, leaving the house at 6:30 AM to ensure an early arrival in the capital. Upon arriving in Choluteca, about 45 minutes down the road, we noticed hundreds of people walking down the road headed to town, it looked like a pilgrimage to Mecca. We also noticed that the normal jammed streets of buses were empty of cars. As we get to the by-pass around Choluteca, the road was blocked with busses and taxis apparently protesting something. Determined to not let them ruin our day I drove our hefty Land Cruiser off the road and through a field and avoided the road block, in just a few minute we were back on the pavement and on our way. Then about 15 kilometers up the road, another road block. I tried the off road thing again but the taxi drivers had wised up and positioned their cars in a way that it made it impossible to get back on the highway. No problem I know a short cut through the mountains that we can take. I turned the truck back around and went back to the turn off to the village of Linaca, that’s were the road turned to dirt. Well, the short cut was a long cut, a very rough mountain village trail that took us through some really picturesque villages but by the time we finally made it back to the highway we had been in the mountains for 2 hours. We had gained about 15 kilometers of highway distance while on our mountain escapade. But, at least we were back on the road again and making good time since most traffic had been blocked in Choluteca. We drove for about 30 minutes and reach the turn off to El Salvador and as luck would have it the road was blocked again. And it was blocked really good. No way around. No way through. Cars, trucks, and Semis lined up down the road just waiting. The truck drivers with their hammocks strung up under the chassis of their trailers and other travelers sleeping on the ground under their cars and trucks to avoid the sweltering upper 90’s heat. After a while of waiting I was about to go nuts. The busses and taxis were cris-crossed all over the road, why can’t the government do something? I commented that if we were in the US tow trucks would be lined up to haul them off, people would be arrested and in 30 minutes traffic would be flowing again. Not here, one truck full of police officers headed to the next town pulled up. The officers got out, grabbed their gear, and began walking since they could not get through. The truck carrying them turned around and went away. Two ambulances pulled up, lights and sirens and all, and then turned around and went back to where they came from.

Now we could not go back home, I could not handle another 2 hours on that mountain road with my 7 month old son screaming the whole way, and we could not get to Tegucigalpa. So we headed back down the road to the costal town of San Lorenzo where we had a relaxing, I guess, 2 ? hour lunch. It really could have been relaxing, eating at this ocean side open air seafood restaurant except for the fact that when I have things to do and I can’t get them done I get really frustrated. At about 1:30 we headed back to the road block to see if things had changed. They had not. So, we parked under a tree on the left side of the road, cranked up the a/c and began to wait. When in Rome…

Finally at 4:30 the protest was over and we began to move. The only problem was that both lanes of the Pan-American highway were parking lots, on our side all of the asphalt and the shoulder had cars facing north, and on the other side of the tangled mess of busses and taxis all of the vehicles were facing south.

After much time of carefully maneuvering around cris-crossed cars we began to move. We arrived in Tegucigalpa at exactly 6:30 PM, exactly 12 hours after we left our house for a 2 hour and 45 minute ride. I hope they accomplished something with the protest.