A Death in the Market

Oscar the candy-man and I met up for another run around town. 

Oscar the Candyman

He doesn't sell much and his sales pitch is him tapping on his hard wooden box with a twig.  The most expensive candy Oscar sells (the cookies) costs 5 Lempiras, roughly 25 cents.  At this rate his profit margins probably never exceed 1 lempira (5 cents).  Despite this, he is gratuitous with his candy.  Shoddy looking disheveled men without money approach him for a sweet and he hands over a sucker with a smile.  A sucker that probably represents a half hour of his profits.

After sitting down for an interview I picked up his candy box for him and I was shocked at the weight.  I had assumed it was about 20 pounds but what I lifted felt around 35 pounds.  He has not once complained about his job. 

Masked Homicide detective at scene of murder in market

As we walked through central market we heard shots nearby, which isn't unusual.  In the faces of the hundreds of people flooding the streets I see a brief flash of concern and quickly they return to the hustle and bustle. 

We came to a crowd and worked our way to the yellow tape and the dead man.  He was running through the market trying to escape gang members.  He was running through a sort of maze inside a musky building past the smells of butchered meat.  As he dashed outside unto the light upon the street he took his final step and was shot. 

I took this photo of the masked homicide detective perusing the scene and looking menacing.  After I took the photo he quickly jumped on his bike and drove off.  Our passage was blocked and so we turned around.

Girl at murder scene

Within about 10 steps of turning from the murder scene a truck doing a three point turn almost plastered Oscar the candyman to the wall.  Oscar is a bit fearless in his handling of traffic but this time the truck was clearly being an asshole.  We waited for the truck to finish turning and walked behind it. 

However, the truck driver was pissed and decided to let Oscar know his feelings.  Oscar wasn't having it.  He gave the fat driver a piece of his mind.  The scene escalated and the driver got out and lurched toward Oscar.  This fat man was a good match for Oscar and I thought my friend might need some assistance.  I decided to forego photography momentarily and began looking around the tables of the vendors for some form of weapon while saying over and over again, "Cuidado hombre."  As fat man came closer Oscar pulled out his garbage bag wrapped machete which promptly caused the truck driver to get back in his Toyota and drive off in a flurry of curses. 

View from Picacho

Oscar and I made our way to mount Picacho which I kept calling mount Pikachu.  Picacho is at an apex of Tegucigalpa that offers a stunning view of the city.  We had to leave his candy box with the Honduran military at the gate.  The military ended up stealing his cigarettes while we took in the scenery.  Thank God Oscar didn't make a fuss about getting robbed by one of the many Honduran military men equipped with AK47s.  One of those military guys was giving me the stink eye as I walked in, I bet it was him.

We decided to go to the zoo.  The monkeys were stretching their hands out of the cage trying to get fed by the people outside.  One baby monkey hid in the corner sucking on a lollipop.  Whenever a smaller monkey managed to get food he had to run, swing, jump and eat all at the same time while escaping as he was pursued by several screaming jealous monkeys intent on robbing him. 

 All monkeys confined to this small space of land and surrounded by borders trying to escape and getting dumped back in the cage.  Arms outstretched through the wire for help.  Whenever one monkey gets something nice he is targeted by jealousy and endangered by his good fortune.  Meanwhile the man at the gate makes money off the show. 

Mi Casa in El Chimbo

The place I am staying at is a three generation strong camp of the Zelaya clan.  My hosts name is Brenda, her 80-year-old father has lived in El Chimbo most of his life.  He and his recently deceased wife have had 12 children.

Each one of those children has roughly 2-3 children of their own, roughly 2 dogs and 1 cat and one spouse. I have asked around and the final count of heads on the compound comes to 27 humans, 11 dogs, 6 cats and 3 roosters (each with a very distinct sound) and the number of chickens fluctuates too wildly to keep track.

  It is jovial.  The front house facing the road consists of two shops.  One is Sonia the seamstress and the other store is Brenda's tined where she sells trophies, school supplies and delicious home-made popsicles in plastic cups.  Connected to each house and shop is another house.  They must have popped up as the family multiplied and as money became available.  Each house has a wash basin for clothes and the trash that escaped the fire surrounds the entire encampment.

About 3 minutes ago the window fell out of the third story and caused a commotion.  Each family came out to witness what just went down.  The building is pure utilitarian with no bells and whistles and nothing to mask the elements of the home.  The drapes are held up with pvc pipe, there are gaps in house and the sink is essentially the shower.  It looks better compared to the other houses which seem to be made of a brick foundation on top of scrap wood with tin roof.   

Everyone seems genuinely happy.  Papa cooks up a huge batch of black beans every week, the neighbor comes to clean up every couple of days.  The kids sing and play hide and seek with little to no supervision and never seem to get bored or hurt beyond repair.  Every morning someone blasts latino punta music to start the day.  The roosters start crowing around 430 am and don't stop until about 9. 

 The youngest child of the 80 year old patriarch is 23 which means he was staying busy until the ripe old age of 57.  He walks around the camp with a battery powered radio that he keeps beside himself religiously.  He wears a tattered old white cowboy hat and has two tiny front teeth that have withstood the test of time. 

Brenda yells a lot and if you didn't know her you might think she was serious, but she she yells out of love.  I have taught the clan how to play rummy and speed.  The last speed game ended in a banana peel fight that included a few limes and lasted about 20 minutes.  The kids get bored sometimes so they grab a stick and chase a chicken, or see what unique operations can be done with a wheelbarrow. 

Everyone is in poverty by the US standards but everybody seems to hold a capacity for joy unlike anything I have ever seen. 

Brenda has just interrupted my writing to blame her stomach pain on my coffee being made too strong.  I argue as best as I can in my broken spanish.  She has taught me new bad words, most of which she uses while watching her husbands football game on Sunday afternoons.  She is strong too, I barely managed to beat her at arm wrestling. 

I could go on with details but suffice to say that these people have close to everything they need and nothing that they don't.  Except perhaps the dog that has pissed in my bed twice.  That damned black mutt has done it very purposeful too, I go to the bathroom and when I come back he is coming out leaving a grand puddle of stinky dog piss dripping off the blankets. 

Tomorrow they will throw a grand bash to see me off back to the U.S.  I had expected that I would only stay here with Brenda for a week and then head into the dangerous city of San Pedro Sulla.  It occurred to me that if I am to chase hell and trouble and forego a nice beach vacation then I had better have a joyful scene to come home to when I am tired at the end of the day.  This family has provided me more then I could have asked.  Another stunning testament to the beautiful and humble people of Honduras.  

~

A Walk Through the Barrios

   Oscar walks with a limp.  He has a voice that has witnessed decades of darkness.  I only understand about 3 out of 5 words.  Sometimes I feel as if he could punch me in the middle of one his speeches because of the hard gaze he throws with his one straight eye.  He never gets much above a whisper but the growl underlying his voice gives inflections. 

  He spent 15 years in prison and he is now a christian.  He has been out for less then a year.

   I've walked with him twice on his candy runs.  He runs a small business out of wooden box strapped around his neck.  The box weighs about 20 pounds and he sells loose cigarettes, matches, suckers, cookies and other misc sweets.  People know him by name. 

   We were searching out the trash dumps where people make their living sifting for recyclables.  We checked out a few small scale operations.  I ran into one his old prison buddies.  He had the same serious growl.

   The places we sought were dangerous and I asked him how dangerous he thought they were.  In his many words I halfway understood that he had faith that we were not in danger.  I sensed he was basing this on his belief that we were doing Gods work.  It was a nice thought but I had my reservations. 

   I had spent the morning going through the Honduran newspaper and in the past 24 hours a victim was thrown out of a car with nails in his eyes.  Another was hacked up into little pieces and bagged up.  The previous day I was appreciating the rustic nature of one of the barrios in Molina.  My friend told me that a body was shot and thrown from the cliff above us and landed on the tin roof that we were looking upon.

    My nerves were on edge but I was willing to risk the equipment I had brought that day which amounted to about $350.  As long as whatever crime committed against me was logical and without passion I would be safe, I might lose a camera but what is it worth if I don't take the risk of using it? 

   I was filming the vultures eating trash near the river and I realized there was a 9 year old girl rummaging through the garbage.  Three more younger kids popped up and then there was a whole family peering out of a shack.  Filthy and one with the trash.  I am envious of the immune system they must have developed to thrive in such grime and grit. 

    From there we walked around a corner.  I asked to photograph an old toothless woman and asked her to step into the shade but she stepped into a watery mud pit and I felt bad so I just dealt with the shitty light.  She kept talking to me the whole time and the I only understood the words, "Here, famous, pistol, dead, dangerous." 

   And with those words we continued.  The looks from people passing were becoming graver and graver with each step.  There was a bar with a man laid out in a wheelbarrow with a swollen blue face.

    Usually in these situations I have a way of walking that keeps me in control of my exit route if need be.  Oscar still had a job to do and anyone who wanted a smoke or light got his and my full attention.  I was confined to the sidewalk blocked off by cars and surrounded front and end with people.  Usually I think the more people the better for safety but when it is a tight spot with the same type of people it is bad news. 

   I saw more and more glue huffers.  Most use a blue bottle cut off halfway and they huff away laid out on the sidewalk. 

    We took a bus through Carraval into Colonia Lomas where Oscar lives.  We hiked up about a mile through winding steps and we met up with his brother who shared his one room shack with him.  His brother talked to me for awhile about how my mission was from God and blessed.  I told him that my mission was journalism and whatever I put out into the world from my experience here will be a reflection of what I see, not for God.  But if God is the truth then yes. 

    I interviewed Oscar for an hour and his neighbor blasted Mariachi the whole time.  Oscar was talking about some heavy deep seeded issues with a voice I would not want to hear in an alley after dark and the whole time this cheesy background of accordions, hollers and tubas is killing the atmosphere. 

   It began thundering and as we walked up the tire steps from his shack I realized his barrio was covered with masked police carrying AK47s.  I immediately counted roughly 20 on the street and as we turned the corner I counted 10 more.  Down the stairs to the bus I counted another 5.  They seemed to be searching random houses. 

    On the bus ride back Oscar and I had attempted more failed conversations.  I noticed something protruding out of his shirt.  I realized the entire day while he was selling candy and smokes he had a huge machete shoved down his pants.  I had a new found respect for him.  I thought he was foolishly putting his and my security into his religious ideology and the entire time he was on guard to hack some people up and at any given moment. 

   He is not the perfect fixer, his English is none, I begin to wonder about his Spanish as he is by far the hardest to transcribe.  But he looks half crazy, he's independent and he's armed. 

The Youth and the Gangs

    I have the kids next door help me out with the transcribing of these interviews.  I felt bad paying them so little at first but I soon realized I was paying them top dollar. 

     My transcriber is a teenager girl named Nila and tonight she was making a card for her friend at school.  Cutting cardboard and color paper with bright markers and glue and sparkles and typical young teenage girl stuff. 

     I had just learned that the last kid I interviewed in Colonia San Francisco is part of a gang and had been told to rob me next time I came out to film.  Ivan liked me and he didn't want to do it so he warned me.  Nila had transcribed the interview and I told her about it. 

     She didn't seem to be shocked.  I asked her why she didn't seem very surprised.  I wasn't too surprised to learn he was in a gang either, but I had seen him, had seen the way he dressed and checked out his Facebook page.  Nila had only transcribed his words. 

     I teased Nila that the kid she was making the card for was her boyfriend.  She told me the kid had just been shot in the stomach.  She said this to me in such a nonchalant way as if she was telling me we would be having spaghetti for dinner.  Here were three little girls gluing cardboard hearts and sprinkling glitter and they seemed unphased by the real and possible violence that surrounds them. 

    The more I have asked about the gangs here the more complicated and nuanced they become.

    It is safer to be in a place where the gang has unquestionable control.  There you know at least there will not be any gang vs gang fighting. 

    Gangs actually look out for their community in some ways.  They often help pay medical bills for people in the community.  I hear stories that they help in parenting.  If a kid is talking bad to his mother and the gang hears about, or if the mother actually tells they gang, the gang will "hit him up".  Which is to say they will beat the hell out of him. 

    One woman told me that gangs force girls into prostitution.  Another source refuted that.  He tells me gang member will take on girls to be their 'Heinas' which is kind of a booty call.  My friend went on to tell me about a kid he knew named Carlito.

    Carlito was a 14-year-old with a dad that left him for the US.  He was poor and living in a tough barrio.  One day an acquaintance asks him to deliver a package.  Carlito does not ask what is in the package, just does it.  He may or may not realize that the acquaintance was part of a gang but regardless he has made his first step into the gang life. 

    The gang member gives him a cell phone one day for his deeds, next time it is a pair of shoes.  People in the barrio notice Carlito has some nice things and they suspect that he is in with the gang. 

    The small deeds go on for a month or two and one day one of the gang members asks Carlito, "Are you with us or not?  You need to decide."  Carlito thinks about it for awhile, he is afraid because he knows who these guys are and he has unwittingly drawn himself deeper and deeper in with them, but now he has a choice. 

    He says no, he wants out.  He is still nervous though as he knows too much now.  He keeps himself locked away in his mom's house for a long period of time and doesn't want to see anybody.

    One night a friend comes over and convinces him to come out and enjoy himself so he does.  This "friend" takes him to the gang where he shot dead on the spot at the age of 14.

The American Dream in Honduras

I caught a ride back from Cedros with a Tegucigalpan violin teacher.  He blasted Spanish operetta the whole way.  We rode through a town called la Ermita and he told me that all of the houses were built with money sent from families of immigrants in the U.S.  One statistic claims that 30% of the Honduran GDP ($410 Million) comes from money sent from immigrants in the U.S.

 I recently attended the dedication of a home built by missionaries for an old man outside of tegucigalpa. It had been built out of wood.  It would have cost the same to build it out of cinder block and it would have lasted through the honduran rain and hard winds.  

I asked how much all of the supplies were.  90000 Lempiras.  That is $4500 in US dollars.  $4500 for all the supplies you need to build a house.  The land was twice the cost at $9000 so all told, one house and a piece of land is roughly $13500.  

However the average Honduran makes about $200 a month and everything else costing roughly the same.  Actually computers, cars, phones usually cost more in Honduras.  It makes great sense to make a run to the US, work for a month and bada-bing-bada-boom you got a house.

Some Hondurans don't manage $200 a month.  As the violin teacher and I rolled into Northwest Tegucigalpa around Comayaguela he pointed out the trash heaps and workers.  There is a cluster of barrios that work the trash and collect aluminum and metals through the garbage.  For 1 pound of aluminum they get 30 Lempiras = $1.50.  Most manage to get about 2 pounds a day which means a monthly full time job of garbage sifting get you $90.

Electricity and Bus Rides

 Last night I had a line up of students ready to be interviewed during the night classes at the Colonia San Francisco and halfway through the first interview the electricity in the entire neighborhood went out followed by the excited screaming of nearly 1000 teenagers.  The electricity goes out often in Honuras and since I have been here Tegucigalpa has cut off electricity entirely in 4 hour gaps throughout the day. 

I had run out of contacts and asking street merchants wasn't working so I walked into the newspaper office of El Heraldo and met a man named Mario who was a well of connections.  With his direction I headed to Carraval which is a foot market in the dangerous Northwest side of Tegucigalpa.  From Carraval I caught a bus to Cedros. 

The bus ride was 3.5 hours long with a constant stream of people jumping on and off to sell corn, cream corn, fried corn patties with sugar, fried plantains with slaw and hot sauce, candy, soda, razors, batteries, snake oil, bread, cane juice and sugared peanuts.  Some people would get on and testify to the entire bus and ask for tips. 

The buses here are fantastic.  Each has its own flair and uses cursive to announce where it goes.  The cost is 7 lempiras which is $0.35.  There are two types of buses, one that blasts Reggeaton which is kind of Central Americas answer to hip hop electronic, the other blasts sappy romantic 80s U.S. music.  The Awesome 80s buses are the majority and everytime I ride I feel like I am back in an 88 Aerostar van listening to my mom sing "I wanna know what love is!  I want you to show meeee!"

The bus rode through the moonless pitch black night into a lightening storm blasting reggaeton the entire way.  I was let off in the tiny town of Cedros near the border of El Salvador. 
There I met up with Mercedes who works with the education of Hondurans and is unique in how outspoken she is with gang problems of Honduras.  She talked a lot.  I asked her to slow down for my gringo ears but she didn't seem to get the hint so I listened for hours and got the general outline of what she was talking about. 

The next day we went out for a few interviews.  Most interesting was an old woman stuck with three children from her brother.  Each child had a U.S. passport and had been dumped off with this poor old lady in a tightly packed house of 7 where they all slept 7 beds in one tiny room.  She wasn't too pleased about the situation.  Although those kids have the golden ticket when they come of age.

I took a shower which consisted of walking to the river and plunging a bowl in a concrete basin and pouring it on myself.  It was very refreshing and conservative.  Outside the concrete roofless wash room the women of the neighborhood washed dishes and clothes.