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.