Returning Home

It has been a while since our last posting about the unfortunate event at Rio Zacate. First of all, thanks to all for your comments and interest in our well being. We’ve really enjoyed reading your comments!! Truth to be told a lot of really good things have been going on since then and I’d like to tell you a bit about some of them.

Let me start by quoting Pablo Neruda (from Isabel Allende’s My Invented Country) who said: “… for some reason or other I am a sad exile. In some way or another, our land travels with me, and with me too though far far away, live the longitudinal essences of my country”. In the past 5 years I’ve lived in 5 different states, 3 different countries including my motherland Puerto Rico; and eight different houses. Us humans adapt in order to survive, and embrace change to stay sane, in the process we gain a lot, but we also loose. My life has been enriched greatly by the new experiences and cultures I’ve seen, but I also feel I’ve lost some of my own identity. Puerto Rico is not the familiar, comfortable place it used to be. When I speak, I don’t sound Puerto Rican anymore. Everywhere I’ve been in the states felt temporary, my roots are not there. And there is Honduras… where I’ve been now long enough to start wondering what my true feelings about this country are. Where is home for me? Is it where I grew up? Where I lived for the last couple of years and met my husband? Where Max grew up and his family lives? Where I live now?

With all these feelings in mind, Max and I decided to go “home” for the holidays; “home” in this case being Florida. We were excited to get some time off from Peace Corps, see our family and think objectively about everything that’s happened in the last 7 months. I was scared “home” was going to be foreign, that the excess of American consumerism would make me feel out of place. I was also scared of returning to Honduras. Now that I knew how difficult life can be here, would I be glad to return? Everything that happened during and after this trip was a surprise.

Arriving at the Orlando airport, Max and I were excited to see the wide hallways and clean floors. We loved getting on the highway with no potholes and no incessantly honking or exhaust-fume-spewing taxi drivers. It was nice to see Winter Haven’s pretty houses, with their manicured gardens, and Christmas decorations. It was great to see our family and spend time with them, and to open our boxes of stuff and find my diamond engagement ring, my old Armani Sunglasses and Tiffany’s bracelet. We even really enjoyed going to the Millennium mall and seeing its high end customers buying Louis Vuitton and Prada.
We had not forgotten our 9 year old friend Victor who works selling food on the streets of Honduras to help his mom with some income and goes to school at night, but we were not offended by what we saw at “home”. People there had worked hard for their nice houses and their nice clothes. They were given better opportunities, true, but they are making an honest living out of them, for the most part. I also remembered how those same superficial looking people always poured with generosity when the rest of the world is in need, like for the Tsunami or Pakistan’s earthquake. There’s something good to be said about a society that makes it so easy for its people to leave everything behind and move to another country to help, the way it’s been facilitated to us.

Then there was the question of returning to Honduras. After two weeks in the states, would I be so comfortable there that I would feel sad to come back? When looked at from the outside, would the frustrations outweigh the possibilities in my mind? The night before our trip I felt numb, not exited nor unhappy to be returning, but definitely uneasy about my uncharacteristic numbness. There was only one way of finding out, making the trip back. One thing I knew that night was that staying “home” was not an option. I owed myself the opportunity to find out.

The trip back was uneventful and when we arrived in San Pedro Sula we quickly became friendly with the guys standing behind us in the immigration line. One of them, a Puerto Rican from my hometown (small world), was in Honduras to pick up his Honduran wife (he, too, said my Spanish accent does not sound Puerto Rican), and a Honduran that has worked for cruise lines for more than 10 years and was coming home for a small vacation. I would not have found out so much about the people behind me on the customs line at the Miami airport. I was starting to feel good!

After waiting a long while, our luggage did not arrive to the airport and we had to stand in another line to place the complaint. The representative collected our information and assured us it would be sent to our “home” town, La Ceiba, by plane the next day. Worried about our luggage (we’d bought a lot of stuff for our house here), we got on a taxi into the bus station in San Pedro Sula. SPS is a dangerous city and Max and I are always a little scared to be there, so the ride to the bus station was stressful. Especially after we noticed the cab kept driving past the nice part of town and into the slums. The driver seemed friendly enough, but for a few moments I worried he was taking us to an isolated place to rob us (I’ve been a little more paranoid since the robbery). Of course in my mind the question again… what am I doing here? I want to be “home”.

Luckily for us the guy did take us to the station, we got our tickets and sat in the bus waiting, and waiting, and waiting. After the bus was full we kept waiting. As far as the driver was concerned, there was still space in the isle for more customers. I looked out the window and a guy was peeing right next to the bus. A couple of Canadian tourists came on-board and sat on the wooden stools in the isle right next to us. The street vendors were persistently trying to sell us their soda, or fruit, or plastic stuff. The heat was so dense you could see it in the air, I was sweating, and the humidity had made my hair two times its size. A couple of gold-rimmed-teeth-guys stared at me from the other side of the bus. But then when Max’s face was starting to look desperate (I imagine mine looked the same way), the driver started the engine and shortly after the bus started going. I looked out the window and let the air dry the sweat from the back of my neck… and smiled. The great adventure!!! And I knew there wasn’t any other place in the whole wide world I’d rather be than that bus, then and there!!!

That doesn’t really answer my question of where’s home, because I don’t really have an answer. Home is my country, that I love full heartedly. Home is Max’s country, which I love almost as much as my own. And home is also this country that I so much love and hate, but where the full strength of my heart, mind and energy are focused now. I know I can not change it but perhaps I can help someone, like you the reader, understand it a little better. That day I was glad to be back; even happy. I guess I could call Honduras, also, “home”.