Wes Anderson, Noam Chomsky, and high school girls…

Dog update: I have a new running route, this one has some serious hills and some seriously awesome views of the country. Really, if not to visit me some of you need to get down here just to see some of these vistas! Anyway, new route means new potential dog dangers, this must always be kept in mind. But to my surprise and delight I have not encountered any dogs interested in my running by enough to chase and/or attack me yet. In fact, to this point my site here in Victoria has become a run-without-a-stone-in-hand type of place…excellent.

Ok, so if week four helped me to see how my service could begin to take shape, then week five helped me to see how enlightened and cool I can become by watching Wes Anderson flicks and reading nonfiction books. Yes, it was a return to the general malaise of the first three weeks wherein there is much to be done but just not…right…now, damnit. The deal is us PCV’s are forbidden from riding motorcycles at all because in years past there were a number of deaths due to moto accidents. Ok, understood. Except that everyone in my neck of Honduras gets around by moto and when I say everyone I mean even the mayor. All of the roads are pretty bad around here, none of them are paved, and some aren’t big enough for cars. The municipality’s only car is in the shop, naturally, and so we have had to wait until the Centro de Salud made up their calendar for the summer of what towns they are going to visit so we can hitch a ride in their truck. Did you want to know all that? It means that next week there are villages to visit and work to begin…but this week, ahem, not.

Back to the issue at hand, Wes Anderson flicks and nonfiction books. If any of you dear friends and family out there have not yet seen either “The Royal Tenebaums” or “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” then I suggest you do so. Now I don’t plan on making this blog a “wow, this is the coolest movie/book/music group” type blog—no, that doesn’t interest me at all. But speaking purely objectively, if you have not seen these movies then you need to, and fast. They are brilliant and it is a kind of brilliance that transcends taste, I think. You know how seeing a Will Ferrell movie more than once makes it much funnier? Well, seeing a Wes Anderson movie more than once makes it funnier, cooler, and significantly more layered and complex than you initially realized. Seriously, get on it. I have watched each three times in recent weeks, with audio commentary and without, and I might not stop there.

To be completely honest, I should point out that the Wes Anderson flicks in question have been the only movies available for me to watch. Ever since arriving here in Victoria I have been leeching off of my sitemate, Gen, and her collection of books and movies (and Wes Anderson is all she’s got). See I was under the impression that movies and books would be a waste of luggage space and would lie useless on some shelf somewhere as I busily saved the world. But quickly I discovered that when the work comes along as slowly as it does, there are only so many times one can walk around the town waving to people or hours one can sit and read or play “solitaire”or “hearts” on the computer before pulling one’s hair out becomes the next logical step. Hence, other people’s movies. This is not a smooth and subtle request for movies or books, either. Once the work starts up I think it will occupy a lot of my time and if I had an entire library of movies it might definitely cut into my town integration time, which will be important. Also, once I come back to the states I don’t want to lug boxes of the stuff back with me. But you see the situation I was in. Gen and Wes Anderson to the rescue!

Nonfiction books. I finished Tom Friedman’s “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” last week and am now tackling “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky”. What does all this mean? It means that in the very near future I am going to be much smarter than you. Ok, that’s not what it means at all. But for anyone who’s ever wanted to ditch work and responsibility and just sit in a chair and read, something they’ve always wanted to read but never did, for hours on end and for days in a row—the Peace Corps might just be for you! That is not, as I understand it, the current slogan…but it could be. And just in case the work does actually kick in soon and I do not have the opportunity to enlighten myself with the teachings of the Friedman’s and Chomsky’s of the world nearly as much, then I am making sure to take full advantage right now and really choosing to occupy myself with little else.

A couple of other things have happened since my last entry which were pretty unique. One was the beauty contest in my town and the other was the President of Honduras coming via helicopter (that whole dirt roads for hours in every direction thing, I imagine) to a nearby town. The beauty contest was between about 7 or 8 high school girls and is called “Novia del colegio” or, literally, “Girlfriend of the high school”—basically their version of Homecoming Queen. Except this is not held at a high school dance but rather at the town’s event center and the entire town is in attendance. The girls walk one by one onto the stage and do a prearranged routine for the crowd, some of them looking very comfortable in this kind of environment, others as if they had just put on high heels for the first time. Then they all stand next to one another and a middle aged man with a microphone asks the crowd to scream for each girl and that’s how the “novia” is chosen. Good times. The worst was that there was a dance for the town in the same center but everyone had to leave after the beauty contest so they could set up for the dance, etc., but the microphone dude wasted so much time having the previous year’s winner come and put the crown on Miss Novia del Colegio 2007 that by the time she got the microphone to thank everyone half the people were on their way out the door.

Then in the middle of this past week there was an event put on by the government in a nearby town to promote some corn growing initiative. It was held in the afternoon in the middle of a corn field just to emphasize the point, I guess. The only problem with that is the rainy season began last week and the rains, at least up here in Yoro, are well known for starting in the afternoon. And it’s true; nearly two weeks into the season and every single day the rains have started sometime after 3pm. So there is a pretty big crowd in this corn field listening to people talking about the initiative and how the President is on his way. Then we see a couple of choppers come over some distant hills and the camouflaged, rifle-toting military dudes drop some yellow smoke deals in the field and the choppers land and Mr. President hops out. That was a cool spectacle to witness and I wondered if Marine One has ever landed in some cornfield, perhaps in Iowa. Anyway, there’s a line of handshaking, sign waving, normal presidential fanfare, he gets onstage, makes his speech. The rain starts slowly and sporadically while he is talking, he does a good job incorporating it into what he’s saying, and before I know it he’s done, off the stage, and heading back to the choppers. Well no sooner does he get into the chopper, and this is just before it takes off, than the sky opens up and the rain starts coming down hard. We’re in a cornfield with no trees or buildings or hope for cover, only a handful of people brought umbrellas, and the one road leading to this field is packed with about seventeen yellow school buses, all from different towns, which are now chaotically filling up with people who want to get the hell out of dodge, all at once. It didn’t happen smoothly, as you might imagine. But it was a great event and something like out of a cheap Hollywood script—President comes to rural town to give speech, then leaves without incident, rains come, everyone but President looks like they went swimming with their clothes on.

Lastly, the housing search. Life with my current host family is rapidly nearing an end, and while that means no more meals cooked for me or laundry washed for me, or TV of any kind (not that theres ever any good TV), it also means complete independence and privacy and comfort. I’ll take the good with the bad on this one. There is not much in the way of available housing in Victoria, but after talking with several people I was able to find a little place available to rent. It has a small patio in front and even a back yard, so I’m crossing my fingers that all goes well and I can actually move into this place in a couple of weeks. It may be a bit longer before I have, you know, a bed to sleep on or chairs to sit in, but before you know it I may have my own fully functional place for any and everyone to come and visit. Excellent. OK, that’s it from me. I hope you are all doing well. I love and miss you guys.
Joe