I’m writing this post on the second floor of a coffee shop in Cofradía, this bustling town in northwest Honduras which has been my home for the past six months. It is January and the temperature outside is 91 degrees, a thick, humid heat that seeps into your clothes and pores.
Cofradía rests in a valley surrounded by the Merendón Mountains, the range that divides Honduras from Guatemala. Before I came here to volunteer with an international NGO, I pictured a rustic mountain town with coffee farms, herds of cows, and run-down houses on quiet dirt roads. Instead, I arrived at an apartment in the town center, where the streets are crammed with shops and the parque central teems all day with families, vendors, and stray animals. The roads are paved (the locals are immensely proud of this) and the traffic is loud and chaotic. Motorcycles zip past slow pickup trucks, their beds full of people or chickens or bananas, blasting advertisements from speakers. Minivans and repurposed school buses are used for public transport, and between them maneuver the tiny moto-taxis, boxy red contraptions with three wheels. There are no stoplights or crossing signals. You just look for an opening and run, covering your face to not breathe in the clouds of dust thrown up by passing wheels.
There are little family-run shops called pulperías on every street corner. Their displays spill out onto the sidewalks: fruits and vegetables, cosmetics, medicine, and children’s toys meticulously arranged in carts and on tables. Vendors announce over loudspeakers and beckon, “Pase adelante, mi reina, qué busca?” The clothing stores always have the most elaborate setups, featuring mannequins with exaggerated feminine bodies. The mannequins display everything from formal gowns to adult lingerie. When I first saw them, I couldn’t help noticing how many of their oversized breasts had become crushed and deflated in handling, leaving sunken holes that the flimsy clothing couldn’t hide.
These grotesque mannequins hinted darkly to me at Cofradía’s culture around sex and the objectification of women’s bodies. Glamorized or condemned, sex is ubiquitous here. Students are lectured about it in school assemblies, preachers and priests rail against it, and reggaetón artists sing about it from every speaker in front of every shop. As gringa foreigners, the other volunteers and I were warned to dress modestly if we didn’t want to attract attention, but the attention comes anyway. I’ve learned to look straight ahead and avoid all eye contact with men on the street, but they still whistle, blow kisses, and shout at me in Spanish or broken English. Despite this, many local girls dress in flashy, revealing, outfits, nails and makeup always done impeccably. Matronly women wear heels that would give me a sprained ankle in five minutes. Even the men swagger around in tight jeans and somehow keep their sneakers miraculously white.
This is another contradictory aspect of local culture: physical appearance and spectacle are highly valued. This comes as a surprise when it’s so obvious that parks, roads, and public spaces are poorly maintained. Many boutiques and cafes have spotless interiors, decorated with flowers, bright paintings, and polished mirrors, even while the streets outside are littered with trash. The park near my apartment is an eyesore, a span of dirty concrete with a few straggly trees, but on holidays it sprouts banners, balloons, and a decked-out stage for dancers and musicians. In December, it glittered with more Christmas lights than I had ever seen in one place.
Despite everything about it that still troubles me, Cofradía is starting to feel like home. When I came back from winter break, I noticed the change; the mix of affection and gentle annoyance I feel for people and places that form an intimate part of my life. I love looking up from a dusty street and suddenly feeling the closeness of the mountains and their promise of cool, clean air. I love coming home, sweaty and tired, and finding that the power has come back on after an outage so I can take a cold shower. I love buying vegetables from the pulperías, where the motherly shopkeepers recognize me and somehow know exactly what I’m going to buy. I love going to church and running into families who wave and beckon me into their pews. More than anything, I love the students who run to greet me with hugs every morning at school; the naughty second-grade boy who made me a necklace of blocks last week after I scolded him for throwing them on the floor; the janitor who drinks coffee and chats with me during recess.
I am excited to write more about this place and what I learn while I’m here. Most of all, I want to write about the people who make me glad I came, the people I want to remember even after I forget the shapes of Honduras’s towns and mountains.
