Marale con Alicia

Volunteer Site Visit: Marale, Francisco Morazan.
Voluntaria: Alicia, Hondu 9, Mundi-D.
Recounting y Reflections.

Marale, en la casa de Alicia: I’m sitting on the sofa, the Brissa fan going full blast, the door to Alicia’s large and open casa, open to the scenario of her bonito mountain pueblo life—the colors and faces, men and women, ninos and ninas that pass by her house with parasols, appear as if within the clearest picture of a television in any given living room set in the States. This is how my brain digests the visual info—as surreal, a rare unaltered beautiful, a someplace far, far away. Yet here I sit, and all I really have to do is lift myself from the sofa, walk across the doorframe, and step outside into the very same strong sun, dusty roads, azul-colored casas of the seemingly elusive picture.





This trip to Marale, I consider my first real Honduran adventure. I met Alicia in Santa Lucia at 6:30 am in front of the school for the blind where we caught the bus going to Teguc. From hospital San Felipe we hoped on another yellow school bus to the supermercado. I was in a little slice of American product paradise—purchasing a huge tub of raisins, an apple, a yogurt, 2 boxes of kashi cereal, and a Chilean win—pure bliss. After we were loaded down with our luxuries we took a taxi to the mercado where all the buses were, and to our dismay, the 9am bus to Marale was not there as it should’ve been. As it turned out, it left already. Thus we decided to take the bus to the next closest town where a health volunteer was stationed, and where we could seek her assistance/company to await for the next bus passing to Marale—since the Mercado was not the safest place to wait around for 3 hrs with bags of stuff. The bus ride was long, but Alicia and I filled up the time by sharing our pasts and her answering all my naïve, trainee-type questions.


Once we arrived in the town, we got out at a standard kind of ‘waiting place’ and the health volunteer who lived there came by to visit. While we were talking, Alicia found us a jalon with two women from her municipalidad returning home after a conference. Sometimes there is just no other way to reach your final destination once you are far from any major urban zone. The ride was the bumpiest-ass ride of my life. The road to Marale was winding and an Indian-red clay in color. It appeared as if it was freshly cut out of the ascending terra. More beautiful vistas and further and further into the mountains we went, until finally we could see the bright white catholic church of Marale and Alicia informed me, we were home.


Alicia’s house was huge and you could see the underside of the clay roof tiles, meaning there was no ceiling in order to keep the house cool in the hot Honduran sun. She had electricity and running water in the mornings and evening. She did bucket showers, cleaned her clothes in the pila, and had no internet access, but besides that, it seemed a pretty comfortable set up. And she was definitely content in her casa with few complaints at all. Yesterday, we walked through town and made house visits to all of Alicia’s friends, which after almost 1 year in site, she had a lot of! Everyone we passed she seemed to know something about.


The school were she teaches English classes on Saturdays was the first stop to pick up some charla paper for a health charla we were to give at the health center. After that we stopped by the woman who washes her clothes, who makes amazing bread, and who was currently taking care of a baby whose mother passed away during childbirth in a nearby aldea (town) She was very smiley and enjoyed my facial expression when Alicia explained to me how she had tried cow’s blood! Despues, we stopped by another home where the women were braiding hair and the three little girls and one little boy played with the three week-old puppies. They offered us refrescos of banana and naranja, which we accepted, and as Alicia informed me, was custom when any visitor came. Something must be offered and accepted, punto. Even if the people had nothing to give, they gave. We then stopped by the house where a blind man was building a cooking table for Alicia. In this house lived the most flaco hombre y perro del mundo. His ton and Alicia carried the finished table home to rest. Alicia’s friends Gabby and Marecel who are 8 and attending her English class where waiting for us when we got back with the mesa. We helped them with their homework and then took pictures of all of us in the park still under construction. When we were worn out by all the neighborhood kids, the woman who prepares the baleadas and tamales was dropping off Alicia’s order, and we hurried home to have cena. The tamales, pepino ensalada, and white wine made for the best meal I’ve had yet—the wine and conversation. After we were good and full we got out the charla paper and prepared a short lesson on how to treat burn. Once that was finished, we were exhausted and went straight to bed.




Today I took my first bucket shower, which was fine b/c Alicia heated up the agua for me, so really it was no big deal. Breakfast was cinnamon toast, oranges, pineapples, and coffee. Tan rico. After desayuno, we went to give our charla. Unfortunately, the nurses were all at a reunion the next municipio over, and so the office was closed. Que lastima. We thus preceded to the Municipal office where Alicia has designed a computer-based system to track tax records for the municipio and aldeas since there was no real system in place, and years of unpaid and unregulated taxes. If folks will pay their taxes, the municipal will eventually be able to have the citizens apply for property rights b/c currently in this municipio, as in the rest of Honduras, no one actually owns deeds to their land. No one feels the need to pay taxes on something they don’t even own! It’s an initiative recently reinforced by the current President to encourage folks to get titles for their land. After we left the municipal, we headed over to the library where Alicia had to inform the librarian that Riken (organization of a former Peace Corps volunteer that donates money for the creation of libraries in third world countries) was not building libraries in Marale’s zone currently. But, if they were persistent and kept working towards it, RIKEN may just come and build a library in Marale. We left the library and went to one of the aldeas across the river. There, a mother was keeping house and taking care of her 3 yr old hijo sick with a rare disease that no one knows the name of, nor the cure for. Entonces, Alicia has been helping this family get the medical exams he needs in order to analyze what the disease might be. The mother is part of 1 of the indigenous groups of the area, she has 4 sons and an older daughter. The family raises chickens and pigs. The young boy, David, is so soft and sick that he is moved about in a wheelbarrow by his older brother, and he cannot really speak. It was enough to make you want to never leave. Back at Alicia’s house, we ate our lunch slowly, cleaned the dishes in the pila, and just chilled out a bit, digesting the days thus far…

A few women from the municipal stopped by b/c Alicia had take photos and got them printed at Teguc. She does this occasionally b/c she is one of the only people with a digital camera in the village and so she just charges what the prints cost, and renders the service when she can. The women were very curious and full of big smiles. They asked me if I was married or if I had a novio or children. They were shocked when I told them none of the above, and then one of the woman guess that I was 17yrs old! Unbelievable! The day before another woman of the town guessed I was 20! It seems here if you do not have a husband or children you must be of this age bracket. After our visitors left, Alicia and I started watching a movie on her laptop, but we heard the children making noise outside the casa so we would go outside and play with them. Finally, we left the house to play, and the eager kids grabbed our arms and we took off down the road to the cemetery. The children took us to the tombs of their relatives most recently deceased. These were five of many. One was buried just last week, it was a woman who had contracted a rare skin disease and the people had tried to cure here by covering her raw and naked skin with leaves collected from the river. But this only made her condition worsen, and sadly she passed away not long after. The children talked openly about death, but they dare not touch the crosses, which marked the tombs. Once back in town and away from the overgrown, yet freshly serviced burial ground, we all were in a lighter mood and began to play games. We played red light/green light, we danced, ran about, played monster chase, and tornado, and wore ourselves out. The kids however would not let us slip away easily into Alicia’s house, and we had to literally pry their hands from our wrists before closing the door in order to commence cooking a vegetable curry and coconut milk soup for cena.


My last day at Alicia’s the leak of one of her outdoor faucets was finally fixed, and thus the neighbors shunning of the wasted water could be put to rest. There were men threatening to get her water turned off if the leak was not fixed. And though Alicia had told her landlord repeatedly, the leak had remained; thus, a nearby man told Alicia he would fix it if she would give him money for the part. This she did and in ten minutes he had the leaky problem good and tight. The rest of the community was making its way to church service with the visiting pastor from another town as we waited for my bus. It seems there is not one pastor in the town itself, and so one comes for Sunday service, but he does not know the community. Our friends were back to see me off, and so when the 8am bus finally showed up at 9am, I was ready for goodbyes. I was amazed at how much I was saying goodbye to. In one small mountain town with not one restaurant nor venue, other than a Sunday morning service, I felt like I had absorbed and now must close a novel. The people make their own entertainment, they sit and talk, visit and clean, smile and joke, chase and catch, nurture and feed one another and make it a point to know everything about everyone, for they are all there is, they are all they’ve got. And when there is nothing to give, they give themselves.