The past two weeks have kept me busy, and this post is overdue. With Lent beginning last week, the little church choir I participate in was tasked to play for several extra masses, including a wedding – my first Honduran wedding! The church, Our Lady of Mount Carmen, was hung liberally with flower garlands, but the service was no different from regular mass with a few minutes stolen for the couple to exchange vows before the Eucharistic Prayer. The decoration was very pretty, and they even drew “Mr.” and “Mrs.” in calligraphy on the backs of newlyweds’ chairs. Hondurans love to make this kind of random, sporadic use of English words and abbreviations in their special events. I often wonder if they know the meaning of the words they choose. I was a little amused to see that the bride sat in the “Mr.” chair and the groom in the “Mrs.” chair for the entire service.
On Saturday, I had some errands to run in San Pedro Sula. San Pedro (many locals pronounce it without the initial “S,” hence “’an Pedro”) is the second largest city in Honduras. On a good day with no traffic or accidents, you can get there from Cofradía in thirty minutes. The cheapest option is to take a busito. Busitos are privately owned, but they operate as de facto public transportation. They have no fixed schedules, making rounds all day, back and forth between the city center and the various colonias between San Pedro and Cofradía. Busitos come in every possible shape, size, and state of disrepair. Some are the traditional yellow school buses, while others are rusty, rickety vans missing their door handles, held together by impossible tangles of bolts and wire. You wait at the stop, pick the bus that seems least likely to fall apart in the middle of the highway, and pray for an open seat so you don’t have to stand hunched over in the aisle.
Once you’re on the bus, you can expect to be packed tighter and tighter as more passengers board, thrown nearly out of your seat by the jolts and sudden turns, deafened by the wind and blaring music, until the adrenaline kicks in and it feels like the whole busload of people takes on a single identity, hurtling down the unlit roads, our lives in the hands of our deranged driver. These drivers step on the gas, not the breaks, when they approach a traffic slow-down; they swerve off the road as casually as if they were playing Mario Kart; they careen around the crumbling edges of riverbanks just to pass other vehicles. The roads are narrow, scarred deep with potholes, with few street signs and no curbs. The ayudantes who collect our money are boys who should probably be in middle school, yet I watch them hold on with one hand and lean casually out the passenger doors to smoke their cigarettes as the bus accelerates. I’m convinced they have no fear of death.
Of course, this behavior leads to many accidents. On the way home, my bus was stuck in traffic for about an hour. The man sitting next to me showed me a picture on his phone of what had happened up ahead: a bus overturned, crushed by the cab of an eighteen-wheeler. When I realize how raw existence is here, with no cushion between people and the potential for chaos and destruction, I start to understand why Hondurans seem so little daunted by the danger of the migratory road north. If this death-defying experience is your daily commute, maybe riding on top of the freight trains migrants call “La Bestia” isn’t so strange and terrifying.
I ask why so many Hondurans choose to leave, but recently I’ve been wondering if this is the right question. When I ask about family members who left for the United States, the reasons many cite are simple and brutal; there is not enough work here, wages are too low, their children will be better off if they send money from the US. On the other hand, people who tell me of their choice to stay in Honduras speak defensively, even defiantly. Sometimes I think they are trying to convince me that they weighed the options, made an informed decision to stay, and they won’t be talked out of it. Still others speak wistfully about migration. They would like to leave for the US someday, or they would have liked to when they were younger, but something prevented them. The presence of close family in the US is an added draw for many people; I can sense that they are torn. Often one entire generation of someone’s family has migrated, but something, maybe elderly parents or young children, is still tying them to home. It may be that the more pressing question – the question I need to start asking – is why they choose to stay.
