The following item was sent to me from David J. Yonker in
response to the Life in Honduras series. It is placed here
with his permission.
Hello Mr. Moore,
Back in November he had made plans to go down there
to help his sister in
law get a visa to come to the states, his wife wasnt
able to go because her
son would'nt be able to take off from school for a
long period of time, and
she didnt have the vacation time yet, he didnt want to
travel alone so he
asked me to come along, again I was a little reluctant
but then I realised
that I have a reputation to live up to ( I am very
eccentric and am always
trying out different things) so the next day at work i
came up to him and
asked "When do we leave?" we left on February 18th.
When I went to get my passport, and you might find
some humor in this, the
photographer asked me where I was going, when I told
him he asked me if I was
in the peace corps , I have long hair and i was
wearing an old grateful dead
shirt and my trusty army surplus jacket from some
eastern bloc country that
no longer exists( its amazing what you can find at the
army/navy store) so I
guess the guy thought that I belonged to some
stereotype or something, I told
him that I was just going down there for a vacation he
just looked at me
strangely.
We left out of Philadelphia, changed planes in
Houston and landed in San
Pedro Sula where we waited for seven hours for a
flight to Le Ceiba, finally
about eight oclock local time we boarded the plane,
which was a 1950s
propeller plane and landed at Le Ceibas small airport,
his wifes family met
us there and within minutes we were in a car and
wisked back to the colony
where they live.
My first reaction was just just awe and to be honest
with you it was a
little bit frightening, it was february and it was so
warm out that night, i
only knew a smattering of spanish and as we rode over
the bumpy roads I just
took in everything like a sponge, there were so many
people outdoors, nothing
like you see in america and at first it seemed that
everyone was staring at
us, I was totally in shock, I saw the houses and just
the overall atmosphere
which was very lively, these were places that people
here in the states would
not even think of staying in , it was a culture shock,
when we got to the
house I called my folks to tell them that I had made
it down there safely and
just to tell them what I was seeing, I had to tell
someone, it was
incredible! its one thing to see this on television
but you actually feel it
when you are right there, I knew that this was a major
milestone in my life,
nobody back home would ever believe it in an eternity,
and here I am a
stranger in a strange land.
The first couple of days were spent visiting, (
different family members
, The beaches ,etc.)
and we just drove around le ceiba and I just took
pictures of everything, the
natural beauty of the place is nothing like I had seen
before, days were warm
and the nights were pleasant, well except for that big
spider in the bathroom
that would come out by dark, I was able to watch CNN
in English to keep up
with the goings on back home, The Riveras have a
pulpierra and we'd buy cokes
and snacks there, and when my marlboros from back home
had ran out, I smoked
Belmonts and Lucky Strikes, many of which I gave to
the local chapter of the
Cholos, that is a big gang down there which consists
of young kids, thier
graffiti was everywhere, and I have several pictures
of them, everytime they
saw me with my camera they'd ask to get a picture,
they'd flash thier hand
symbols ( which horrified my sister when she saw the
pics...she is a social
woker) but we didnt have any problems with them, my
friends sister in law
spoke english and she told me that they respected the
families in thier turf
and since we were guests, they left us alone.
For the most part though , the kids , especially the
ones in the family I
stayed with had some sense about them, they are very
respectful to the adults
and when they were asked to do something by an adult
they did it with no
backtalk, everyone that I met was very friendly, my
only regret is that I
didnt know enough spanish to communicate with them
effectively but they knew
what I was saying and by the time when it was time for
me to return to the
states, i could understand conversations and such.
We did take a boat over to Roatan one day and we
spent the night in a
fleabag hotel, it was only eight dollars a night and
when we got into the
room we quickly found out why, there was a fan and a
complimentary roll of
toilet paper, other than that Roatan was beautiful.
a couple days before I flew home we went to a place
called Los Chorros to go
swimming, the water was clear and there was a rock
waterfall, such a nice
place, I wish that we had places like that here in
Delaware, the following
day I spent getting ready to return home, one of the
sisters washed my
clothes, and a very weird thing had happened that
evening, almost spiritual
you could say, I was standing outside the house
looking up at the stars like
I often do no matter where I am at, a woman from
across the way came out
there and and looked up at them as well, she looked at
me and said Dios and
in return I said its english translation, God, she
looked at me and smiled
for she knew what I had meant, somehow there is a
universal language, well I
like to think of it that way at any rate, maybe she
had heard it somewhere
but it showed me that dispite our differences , there
really isnt much of a
difference when it comes to the human spirit, no
matter how different
cultures are, no matter how strange we may seem to one
another , we all share
a single common denominator...a soul.
The next morning my friend took me to the airport,
he was staying down
there an extra week, when I landed in Houston I called
my folks to let them
know that I was back in the States, when I got off of
the plane in
Philadelphia they were there to pick me up, we talked
about my trip, and what
had gone on at home while I was away, when I got back
to my place I took a
shower ( my first hot shower in 10 days )changed put
on some clean clothes
and took the care package that I had managed to sneak
through customs, to my
friends wife, it was just some things from back home
for her and her son, she
works the night shift at our job and since I had the
following day off It
would be best to get it to her then I got into my Jeep
and as I drove down
the highway that I have driven down so many times and
saw the same things
that I usually see, it had all seemed so different, I
thought about all that
I had seen and done and the fact that I was in a place
where most of the
people around here have never heard of and realised
that it was all good,
there is a big world out there and I got to see some
of it.
well thank you for taking the time to read about my
experience.
This website is maintained by Don Moore,
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I can really relate to your article
on Honduras, I have a
friend whose wife is Honduran and when he had to go
down there last february,
he had invited me to go along with him, we have been
friends since we were in
high school and he really wanted someone to go down
there and see what he had
seen, and experience what he did( he had been down
there five times while his
wife was waiting for her visa to come to the states)
we live in lower
Delaware and alot of people surprisingly enough, don't
even know where
Honduras is, in fact a co-worker of mine had the
hardest time even
pronouncing it and to top it off, she thought that it
was in Asia and there
is a big misconception about Central-America in
general, so many people have
seen all the "Bad Stuff" on the news and they just
leave it at that, the week
before I left, I had visited one of my band-mates( Im
a musician on the
weekends) and his fiancee, he had joked around about
probably having to find
another guitarist because I would go join some kind of
revolution , or turn
up missing down there, I know that he was only joking
but it made me realise
that there is a mighty big misconception of what it is
really like, I had
even had my doubts a couple of years ago when my
friend first went down
there, I was like, "man you are crazy!!!, " and things
like that , just shows
you how much I knew back then, well anyway, he had
made the trip four more
times before I had ventured down there with him.
David
Association of North American Radio Clubs
DXer of the Year for 1995.