This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 11, 2011 - "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." (Amish saying)
When the rotted frames came apart in my hand, I knew I had a new pair of glasses back home. When Natalia came running after me and handed me two pieces of something I did not even recognize -- "You dropped your cell phone!" -- I knew I had anticipated its demise when I bought a spare some months ago.
When I returned from a visit to Nueva Palmira with the Legion of Mary and peeled off my cardboard boots, and the socks, and found my tender feet covered with dirt like snickerdoodles cookies dusted with cinnamon, I finally added "boots!" to my shopping list for Tegucigalpa, where I bought these Frankenstein shoes; they weigh a ton, but they are you-name-it proof, and now I could walk on the Moon, even a Super-Moon.
But that's about as much of my life that resembles any order. When I accompanied Olvin and his father Teto to Yoro Hospital for his first checkup since being shot last December, the bus had to dodge an airplane in the middle of the road! There's so much money in drugs (thank you, U.S.A.!), that even airplanes are disposable.
Apparently, the night before, they had blocked traffic with rocks for a "landing strip," set up flaming tin cans along the shoulders of the road, waved the plane down, disgorged the ton or so of cocaine into waiting pickups, doused the plane with gas from big plastic tanks, set it ablaze, and took off. By the time we were going through the next morning, the military and the media were in place, doing their thing. Imagine telling the doctor you missed your appointment because a plane crashed.
But we didn't miss the appointment. In fact, as soon as we arrived, Olvin's dad spotted the male nurse from emergency who first tended to Olvin's shattered left elbow in December. He led us directly to the doctor's door and put us next in line. He looks at me, and says, "Don't you remember me? We met at the AA anniversary in Las Vegas." That's a small world.
It became even smaller when a poor woman with a badly disfigured jaw, whether from cancer or injury, whispers to Olvin to ask if I'm a "pastor." Olvin, bless him, says yes, and she asks me to say a prayer for her. She could hardly talk, but I was really tongue-tied. I held her hands and said what I could, but I'm sure all the grace was going from her to me.
The doctor sent us over to X-Rays, right next to the single operating room in this tiny hospital. Olvin said, "That's where they took me. I was crying, I was so scared I would die or lose my arm." Then he glanced up, over my shoulder. "That's the only thing that saved me." He was looking at the big crucifix on the wall.
I dared ask, "Was your father crying, too?"
"Oh, yes."
I can only imagine.
In the X-Ray, you can see the big screw they put in there, and the Erector-Set hinge they fashioned for Olvin's new elbow. The next step is physical therapy, available at the Hospital in El Progreso, because the arm is really pretty useless right now as is. "It's gonna hurt," I told him, "but you have to do it."
We stopped at a little cafe for lunch, and when they piled Olvin's plate of fried chicken with side orders of beans and rice, he frowned. "I'm not supposed to eat beans or rice till my arm heals." I looked at Teto, Teto looked at Olvin, Olvin looked at his arm. "It's healed!" we all said together. He dove in like an oasis in a desert. Imagine, two months without the campesino cuisine par excellence. That's a "therapy" worse than stretching an atrophied muscle.
I'm no doctor, so maybe there's some sound reason for such a diet when a wound is fresh, but when Chemo got his chest cut open to fix his heart, I specifically asked the doctor, "What can he eat?
"Anything he wants!" (Of course, he didn't want much, those first few days, when he felt like he'd been dropped from an airplane.)
I went to Yoro with Olvin and Teto, you understand, to be their expense account. But, believe me, it wasn't a huge sacrifice. The X-Ray only cost 15 Lempiras, that's about 85 cents! The biggest payout, as is often the case here, was the bus fare. And I gave them more to pay their way to El Progreso.
For the first time in months, I went to Tegucigalpa alone, without Chemo, so he wouldn't miss any school. Of course, the day I left, the teachers went on strike. I love Chemo more than anything, but I do have to say, I get a lot more accomplished a lot more quickly when I don't have to "waste" time on the Dodge 'Em cars or extra visits to the mall.
But his absence was fortuitous at least for one thing. No sooner did I arrive at Tegus than word came that Marvin's girlfriend Lizeth had had their baby, a little girl. Without Chemo, I had lots of free time to help out. Lizeth, who's only 16 (Marvin is 18), needed a Caesarian, so they had taken her to the special maternity ward at San Felipe Hospital, one of the nicer public facilities in Honduras.
Bottom line, Marvin was not allowed to see his baby till we went three days later for Lizeth's release. The expression on his face after he saw her for the first time was priceless. Marvin's a soccer player, and this child was his biggest goal yet. He comes out beaming, "I can't believe it!" and then he says, "Now you go in!" That was the last thing I expected, but he handed me his pass, and I went in, gave Lizeth a gentle hug, and then I snapped one of the cutest pictures I've ever taken. Little Diani Estefani blinked open her eyes just in time for her close-up.
Meanwhile, Marvin's mom, Karla, came from work, and a cousin as well, who had come from Las Vegas to help out. While the nurses filled out the paperwork for dismissal, I walked Marvin to the cashier, where I paid the bill (1,000 Lempiras, about $50, reduced by Marvin's petition in the Social Security office from 1,300 Lempiras). With all the help, there was no more need for me to stick around, so I packed them all in a cab and cautioned the driver, "Drive nice and slow, please" and went about my business, which included getting a short lunch at the El Patio restaurant, a tasty item called "la gringa," a fat flour tortilla folded and filled with a creamy chicken and vegetable concoction.
I had taken "the boys" out the night before to Pizza Hut, to celebrate Marvin's new paternity. Besides Marvin, his cousins Gerardo, Gabriel, Olancho, some new guy I hadn't met before, Adriany, and Alec. Alec had sort of a permanent grin on his face, too, because, after 12 years of life, he's finally met his father. I asked him once in Las Vegas if he knew his father, and he had to say he did not even know his name. That cut me to the quick, and I guess it finally pierced that man's heart as well.
Somehow Alec's father got in touch a few months ago and invited him to live with him in Tegucigalpa, where Alec is now in sixth grade. That's another miracle, because he was in class with Pablito and Chepito. Alec dropped at least one year, and Pablo and Chepito both dropped out completely after third grade. For the last couple years Alec was living with his mom in San Pedro Sula, making, we now see, real progress. And what is his father's name? Rene Alexander.
OMG! I suddenly remembered seeing Alec's full name on report cards he would show me: Rene Alexander. All those years when he did not know his father's name -- it was his own name! I said, let's pretend it's your birthday so the servers will all sing to you. But of course I was kidding; they'd just sung at the table next to us, and that was embarrassment enough!
Teachers Strike
I got back from Tegucigalpa just in time. The teachers started crowding into the capital for massive protest marches, and all hell broke loose. A lot of teachers were wounded in clashes with police, and one veteran teacher, a 54-year-old woman, was killed when a local TV vehicle, blinded by all the tear gas, knocked her down, though some witnesses said she was actually hit in the face first by a tear-gas canister. When they showed the scene on TV, that's what it looked like. Pepe Lobo, the president, who usually just smiles and waves at every crisis, has put his game face on: "They don't know who they're dealing with. I'm strong as an oak." Well, you know, I haven't seen a lot of oak trees in Honduras. He's probably thinking of Wisconsin.
These annual wars between the teachers and the government are a plague. A conspiracy theorist might say they script it like the WWE. Corrupt union leaders whip up the teachers, the corrupt government unleashes the police, the corrupt media spike their ratings, and the status quo stays firmly in place till the next round. Japan has a nuclear meltdown. Honduras has a justice meltdown, filling the social landscape with toxins. There is a core of committed peace activists like a vein of gold in a dark mine, but they are swamped by self-interest. I look at Chemo, inching his way through school. If we lived in the city, would I pay for private school?
Natalia, Chemo's grandmother, a woman immune to self-interest, would not tell me how sick she felt till one of her daughters-in-law, Dania, Marcos' wife, parents of the new little Daguito, clued me in. I told her she must go to the clinic. "But they don't have any medicine." True enough. What good is a diagnosis if they have nothing to give you for it? She knew I would say, Let's go to Doctora Rebeca, where we would pay retail. Natalia did not want to "bother" me. But I told her, you must go first thing tomorrow. "Caramba," her favorite "bad" word. I looked around, "Who will go with her?" Dania, of course, volunteered.
The next morning, I caught up with them at Rebeca's. Now, Rebeca is really wonderful; I love hooking up a woman with a woman doctor; they just click right from the start. Rebeca was alarmed by Natalia's perilously high blood pressure (200 over something), and huge cholesterol count, not to mention the sugar in her blood. "This is diabetes." We have no way of knowing how long it's been Natalia's problem, but Rebeca speculated that the recent "golpe" of her son Dago's tragic death could have stressed Natalia into this illness.
Rebeca gave Natalia a bag full of pills and such, and a load of advice about ... diet! And this won't just be for a month or two, like Olvin's strictures. This is for good. No bread or wheat, for example. That would kill me. I love toast!
As practical as the Amish may be, the saying above does not apply to people. Their claim on us does not "wear out." Nor is there anyone we can do without.
We are just finishing our annual retreat with Father Jack Barron, who comes every year and travels from village to village for a couple months. It's a little thing, just two days basically, but when you see the folks scattered in knots of shade on the hillside in silent prayer listening for whispers from God, it reminded me of the "Didache," the oldest Christian liturgy.
"Even as this bread was broken and scattered over the hills, and then was gathered and made one; so let thy church be gathered from the ends of the earth, into thy Kingdom."
I'm picking up some pieces myself. I'm so stretched out, I'm borrowing money from the Legion of Mary, for heaven's sake! That's when you know you're poor. But it's actually more cash-poor, till I can get to the bank and get my pension. Hey, I DO still have a pension, don't I?
About the Author
Miguel Dulick has lived in Las Vegas, Honduras since 2003.
There he has no projects, no plans, no investments -- only to share the life of the poor.
For years he has been sending reports back to friends and family in St. Louis, and the Beacon is proud to become a part of his circle.