Going Local or Loco?

So Friday night/ Saturday morning we participated in what they call “going local.” We were dropped off on the top of Las Pitas and separated into pairs. Ali and I ended up with young girl named Anna and her two precious little boys and daughter. She gave us just a glimpse of a typical life in the mountains here in Honduras. She had no running water or electricity in her house. Her toilet was plastic and sitting on top of some thick tree branches over a deep hole with bushes and a sheet for privacy. Her kitchen had an adobe fire pit where all the food was cooked and 2 tables, one for prepping food and the other for holding her water. The closest water source was a 15-minute walk down hill from her house so she has to carry water every day up hill, sometimes making the trip 2-3 times a day. All of the food that she has fits in a big metal mesh bowl that hangs from the ceiling of her kitchen. If you can’t tell yet, Anna’s lifestyle is very different than anything I have ever seen or experienced. Here is a simple breakdown of what we did with her:

1:00ish We arrive, break up into groups, meet our families and put our stuff up in their houses.

2:00ish By this time they realize that Ali and I don’t know much Spanish. So all the neighbors come over to stare at us

3:00ish We decide to visit Anna’s mom but end up playing with all the local kids at the soccer field on the way to her mom’s house. It ended up being a place where all of the interns (except for 2 of the guys) were taken so it was fun seeing everyone and meeting their “adopted” families.

4:00ish We go back because it is starting to be dinnertime here. We end up learning how to make corn tortillas and have fun rolling out the dough and flipping them with our fingers or the knife because there is no spatula. For dinner Anna made spaghetti, added some beans, and gave us some tortillas. We also meet a guy who I call “The Cowboy.” I actually forgot his name but boy was he a character. He was making all of us laugh and ended up singing and reciting love poems to us. He also invited us to his house to watch the novella (soap opera) later that night.

5:00ish Ali decides that she wants to climb the tree outside so we watch her climb this humongous tree. She made it up and then took some real cool pictures (hopefully I’ll post some on here or facebook).  After spending some time up there, she climbs down and Anna starts to do some kind of hoeing chore. Ali quickly asks to help out and does like 10 rows and I do about 2 lol

6:00ish it begins to get dark and we start to head down to the cowboy’s house. It ends up that Reid and Steven were staying with the cowboy so they show us around and take us to the beautiful view behind the house. We come back and awkwardly stand around as all of the Hondurans stare at us and talk to themselves until 7:00.

7:00-8:00 We watched El Passión de something or another. It was hilarious because none of us know what we were watching but I can tell you they weren’t kidding about the passion. Everyone was over dramatizing everything and we couldn’t help but laughing at some parts.

8:15 We have said our goodbyes and walked back to Anna’s house in the pitch dark. I’m surprised that I didn’t fall. We went straight to bed in our hammocks and attempted to sleep until 3:00

3:00 Anna gets up and starts prepping the kitchen for breakfast. She first makes coffee out of a tin can and gives it to us. I actually liked it because it was very sweet, but I wasn’t able to enjoy it for a while because we were back to making tortillas. Her daughter gets up and grabs a chicken in one hand, a machete in another hand and walks out the door. That was when we learned what we were having our roommate for breakfast (the chicken actually slept in the room we did haha). The daughter comes in after a while with a dead chicken and sticks in a bowl to drain. After the tortillas are done, Anna sticks a pot on full of water and we wait for it to boil. Next she sticks the chicken (feathers and all) for a minute or two and then takes the chicken to the table to pluck the feathers off. Ali helped her more with this part, but I did pluck a couple of feathers off.  Then she pulled off the tallions and then she started to chop the bird up into pieces with the machete. I’m trying not to gag, but then she goes and starts pulling out all the chicken guts. The worst was when she cut open the stomach, dumped everything out, and added it to the good parts pile. I had to look away after that for a few minutes. Once the good and bad parts were divided, she washed the good parts off and then puts them in water to boil. Later she adds some tomato paste, vegetable oil, chicken broth cubes, and noodles.

5:00ish This was when the food was ready so we got our plates and had some type of chicken spaghetti soup for breakfast with corn tortillas. The younger boys were starting to wake up so Anna got them up gave them some food too.

6:00ish Cowboy comes up to visit and brings his horse with him. Both Ali and I get to ride his horse for a few minutes and then he gallops of to work. After that, we gather up our stuff and pack our hammocks.

7:00ish Anna starts to make mud to fix her adobe oven (I forgot to mention that Ali broke part of her oven when she was leaning on it sometime that morning). It was really cool how she was able to fix her oven with just a little bit of water and mud. After fixing the oven and washing off, Anna starts gathering clothes and towels. She then takes off the boys clothes, grabs the water bucket, gives us some liter jugs and starts the 15 minute walk to where she gets her water.

8:00ish When get to the waterfront, she takes a bath and washes her clothes. Then we all get to washing the cloths by using rocks and a tubular bar of soap. Never washed clothes by hand before, but it takes quite a bit. I felt bad because the little boy’s shirt was falling apart, yet I had to rub it against a rock to get it clean. I’m guessing that the whole process took about 30minutes because Anna is really fast at washing clothes by hand. We then started the 15 minute walk back but I think it took longer to get back up the hill. Here I was sucking in air just carrying a liter water jug thing and she is probably carrying a 10-liter igloo thing ON HER HEAD, with the clean cloths in her hands.

9:00ish is when probably we got back and literally sat in silence for a while, then Anna made some snacks and then it was time to go back to the top of the mountain.

I have a new found respect for the Hondurans who live in Las Pitas and I am soooo glad that I was able to experience this first hand. I will always treasure this memory in my heart.