A Walk to Work

How was your walk to work? Anything novel to report or share with the class? A great book about a walk is Dr. Seuss' "To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street". Sometimes I feel like I'm living on that street, except that I don't have to make any of it up. Yesterday we went to a church in Turrialba, about 2 hours from San Jose. The occasion was to teach in their church service (I did that) baptize some new believers (Roger and I did that), and perform a wedding (Roger did that). Don't ask me why we had to do it and not the local pastor, but we did leave our notes with him so he can step up to the plate next time. Anyway, on the way I saw what topped the pig on a leash that Roger saw in Haiti once. We saw a rooster with a string tied around his leg, and the string then tied to a rock. It kept him from wandering out into the highway I guess. It was a beautiful drive up into the mountains and down into the Turrialba valley.



But I don't have to leave the city to see marvelous things. When I get on the bus, and the driver is in a good mood, that's marvelous. When I get off the bus, and hit the crosswalk just when it's turning green, that's a thrill. When I see the little old lady selling her homemade empanadas, and she proudly shows me her new product, baked cheese empanadas, made with love and no grease or cholesterol, it's a good day. There is always the possibility for a mistep or two of course, for though they call this place paradise, it isn't usually so. For example, the other day I was walking to work, and in a place where lots of people walk, you're bound to find persons that don't walk at the same pace. If someone passes you on the sidewalk, what's that to you? But in some instances, your going to have to find the way to gracefully pass the tortugas who block your speedy access to the path. I usually quicken my step, and even veer off into the street a bit, so as not to make it any kind of personal affront to their carefully reasoned and chosen pace. This approach has worked a number of times in the past, and I think I'm rather good at it by now. I guess I was busy congratulating myself the other day however, as I suddenly found myself walking down the wrong street...oh crud, I took the turn a block early!@!! That wouldn't normally be a problem in most neighborhoods, but in this one near to our office, the blocks aren't all connected. I had no recourse but to turn around and go back, and that would mean, of course, passing the same people that I had just successfully overtaken just moments ago.


Some of you guys know what I'm talking about when I speak of the humiliation of passing the same cars or trucks any number of times on the interstate. That's usually because we're so compassionate with our families and will readily pull over and go the bathroom again, no matter who just went, or if the number of the necessity changed, or the Diet Coke is gone or got warm, or whatever. In doing so, we nearly always lose our position in the race, but that's okay. That's just the kind of guys we are. But you need to hear me when I say that such interstate
humiliation is so insulated and impersonal compared with the urban sidewalk in Central America. My fellow pedestrians know I'm lost, they know I'm a wandering child in a foreign culture, it doesn't matter how shiny my shoes are. They can see my red face, feel the heat of the embarrassment, and I can hear the snickers, which sound so similar to snickers in English. I know I shouldn't complain, it's such a minor thing. It's just my walk to work. How was your walk? Didn't you just come by here? Are they laughing at you?

Live from Honduras

Hey, this is crazy. I'm in Honduras, and that often means that things don't go as planned. I know that's true of life in Costa Rica, and life in general, but when we lived here, we learned to expect (or at least be open to and not quite as disappointed by) the unexpected. Shall I begin with my bus trip?

I left San Jose at 3:00 am, on a bus line called King Quality. And it's pretty much that, with a few small exceptions. This was a pretty good trip, I was able to sleep a lot, and I probably needed that. Another highlight was that the movies they showed weren't quite as raunchy as the last time. They showed one called "She's The Man," another called "Second In Command" with Jean Claude Van Damme. By the grace of God, the DVD player was very sorry, and so they skipped a lot, and I'm not sure either of them finished. The sound is kind of bad, and if they put on the spanish track, it's a lot easier to ignore. And the spanish subtitles will nearly always translate the dirty words in a much softer presentation. With those advantages, I just about finished two books in between my naps.

The bus wasn't full at all, so I was able to stretch out my legs. An elderly woman and her grown daughter were traveling in front of me, though, and the elder's violent motion sickness was a distraction every so often, poor thing. Later in the journey, the daughter started praying over her, in a similarly violent manner (which isn't funny, rather it represents conviction), and I prayed along silently for her health. There was also a man with a US passport traveling with his wife and another lady, and he had to have the biggest lungs ever known in a human. I didn't see them myself, but I did hear him coughing up various parts of them every so often, poor smoking sufferer. They kept the bus air conditioning at about 55 degrees, so it was a frigid ride, but that is one of the attractions I suppose of traveling in the "Avion Terreste", the "earthbound airplane", as they promote it. A bathroom on wheels, meals and a couple of drinks, and of course the B-movies are all included in the round-trip ticket, total cost about $74.00, taxes and fees at the Nicaraguan and Honduran borders not included.

The direct bus to Tegucigalpa from San Jose is actually the direct to San Salvador, El Salvador. That means you have to change busses in a place called Jícaro Galán about an hour into Honduras. That's no big deal if you know what's going on, as you simply wait at a hotel called El Oasis until the San Salvador-Tegucigalpa shows up. It's a double decker, all the fun thrown in at no extra charge. I waited more than an hour for the second bus, and I was the only passenger to make the switch. As I waited, I watched other busses pass on the highway in the dark (it's about 7:oo pm by now), and I believed I saw the King Quality bus go by without even slowing down. That didn't bother me, I'm expecting the unexpected. I started to make my plans to stay the night at the hotel and find a bus to Tegus the next morning. We had been at this hotel a couple of times when we lived here, and it's got a great pool, and AC! But my new plan was dashed as the real King Quality did in fact pull in, and accepted my ticket even without the correct boarding pass, which they failed to issue in San Jose. What are details like that compared with the overall adventure that life is?

I arrived in Tegus at around 9:00 pm, not bad. But no one was there to pick me up, and so after waiting a spell and arguing with the taxi drivers that wanted to help me (I didn't know where I was supposed to stay, or that might have been a good idea), I hatched a new plan. First, I asked the guard there if they sold phone cards at the terminal (don't read too much into the word "terminal", it's not what you picture) and they did. Right on. Now, to make a couple of calls, which wouldn't be a problem with the list of numbers that Edwin just gave me before I left. But my agenda wasn't in my back pack, I thought I put it there, where is it?!! Okay MacGyver, think, what to do now? My memory doesn't serve, but I remember that I do have my PDA, into which I haven't yet put the new numbers, but which may contain some old ones from the year 2000. I tried a couple of wrong numbers, but they were wrong numbers. I finally got a hold of my friend Darwin Pineda, who grew up in the church at Tegus and has served as the youth minister there. He is studying medicine and works at the morgue right now. Fortunately he wasn't on a call. He said he would make some calls for me, and eventually showed up in a taxi with a friend who drives it. Saved at last, we started to leave the terminal, and went past the police station a half block away. They pulled us over, the driver forgot to put on his lights. And when they asked for license and papers, he realized that he left his license at home, in the rush to get out with Darwin to pick me up, pobrecito waiting alone at night at the terminal. Diay. We were parked there for about 30 minutes while they argued and cajoled to avoid both a fine and a bribe. But we left, we arrived up at the church, and I don't know what time it was when I went to bed.

Turns out that the Pastors, Jorge and Manuel, had indeed gone to pick me up, but at 6:00 pm thinking that's when the bus arrived. Not finding me, they returned and assumed that I would be coming the next day. (Yes, we had discussed all this, but the internet phone connection was pretty sorry, that's the way it goes.) But all's well that ends well, if you don't get your panties in a wad on the way. 18 hours on the bus had left me hungry (no evening meal from Jícaro Galán apparently, just a boxed apple nectar) and I was embarrassed to tell Manuel that I hadn't eaten by that late hour, especially since he was half in his jammies. He left me to rest at the clinic apartment, and I gave thanks to God for a good trip, and for the two bowls of raisin bran and milk that had been left by the last group that visited Tegus. I found the list of phone numbers later, by the way, I had put my agenda in my suitcase so as to make my backpack lighter on the bus. Still live from Honduras.....

Bag Man

On one of those magical Saturday mornings when you don't have to be anywhere in particular, you can get up when you like, which might still be early. One of the kids will no doubt express their certainty that it's their turn to go to breakfast with Dad. And that might be so. If you don't have to be anywhere, you can go to breakfast, either at McDonald's (cheap, easy, painless), or at a soda, which is a small home style restaurant here, maybe no bigger than your tool shed. Either way there's no hurry, and you can enjoy a cup of coffee with your rice and beans, or Gallo Pinto. But before the middle of the day, you'll want to grab your veggie bag (that's mine in the picture) and saunter down to the feria. The feria is what Costa Ricans call the open air market, if I remember my English colloquialisms. Or maybe you call it a farmers' market. Either way, that's what it is. Produce and knick-knacks everywhere, mostly fresh, and mostly cheap. Do you save any money? I don't know, some would probably say not. Is it all about saving money? Well, saving money is probably not why most people grow gardens, but that's what we often say, isn't it? I go because I like to be there, see people and feel like I'm a part of things.

You Spanish speakers will be correcting me by now, pointing out that the bag in the pix is a sugar bag, not a veggie bag. I guess that's so. But it's been sewed and re-manufactured into a veggie bag, and resold at 300 colones, about 60 cents. And it doubles as a beach bag, too, and who knows yet what else. Are you the kind of family that goes to Grandma & Grandpa's house, and along with the suitcases you have about 37 WalMart bags with all the extras stuffed inside? We used to be like that, but now we have a veggie bag, and I love packing the car. You would, too, if you had one like mine. I may save up and buy another one.

I'm writing an entry here because I'll be heading to Honduras tomorrow so I can teach at a couples' retreat with the Church in Tegucigalpa. I'll enjoy being with so many of our friends there, and I'll be back on Monday night, so I hope I won't miss my family too much. But I'll miss the feria on Saturday morning, and I was just getting into the swing of making it a habit. I've been taking Wyatt with me, or Chloe, and so people are nice to me and fawn over my kids while I buy radishes. They offer sample fruit to me and marvel that a human being could learn another language. I've been eating salad a lot in what amounts to a parasite-prevention campaign, though I guess that could backfire (oh, that's a funny word in this context) if I don't wash my lettuce well. I've been thinking of experimenting with some homemade salad dressing recipes, and we've even planted a few tomato and pepper seeds in pots. But that will have to be on hold for another week, and so I write to spread the grief around. I didn't think anyone would mind.