"Te Quiero Mucho (Chapter 1)" by love_laugh_live4him

1. Te Quiero Mucho, Chapter 1

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4. When I stepped off the plane, the climate was just like Mom had said it would be: sweltering and muggy. I guess that made it swuggy.

5. In Atlanta that morning, we had had to be shuttled through the morass of business men, traveling soldiers, confused grandmas and alluring fast-food joints – all within the walls of the airport. As the single San Pedro Sula airstrip welcomed us back to the ground, it didn’t take me long to realize that this place was the sesame-seed-on-the-bun compared to international airports back home. Now we had to hack our way through the last of security. As we new visitors began advancing to the van, the suitcase-ectomy was set in motion. Like leaf-cutter ants, our obedient, single-file train of suitcases lasted for a few bewildering minutes. It was no problema, as I guess people here would say. But since we told them that we were a missions group, what did they think – that we were trying to smuggle in a little heroin or Mary Jane in the bottom of one of our cardboard boxes full of Beanie Babies®? Seriously, there’s enough drug traffickers busy doing that already. We didn’t need to help.

6. Waiting in the lobby were a man and a woman. I was enveloped in an excited hug by the woman, who gave off a potent feeling of care and motherliness. Her wide smile was overflowing with delight and hospitality, welcoming us to her country. I felt I could trust her with anything the moment we were in the same room together. She was real tubby around the middle but one of those few people who can pull it off – like grandmas. (Like my grandma before some effective measures were taken. Thanks a lot, Weight Watchers® and water aerobics.) Some people just have too much love I think, that if they had a tiny body they’d bust open. This was exactly the case with Letty Valecillo.

7. Shaking hands with her husband, I realized that he was different than I had imagined him to be. I thought that Javier would be stern, solemn and not very playful. But I promptly knew by their frequent smiles and laughter that not only were Javier and Letty a cheerful duo, but that they had a great sense of humor. It’s a good thing too, considering that I can’t stand continually serious people. Plus, I am (as it has been said) “fluent in sarcasm.” I was not prepared to spend the next week and a half with a pair of frown-a-lots.

8. Exiting the terminal moments later was like walking into a confined container of hot breath. A portion of our luggage was strapped creatively into the back of Javier’s Ford 4x4 truck, while the rest squeezed into the back of a van. We piled into the remaining foot wells and spaces in the van and then began the 1 ½-hour drive north to Puerto Cortez and up the mountain.

9. It was a drive which would traumatize any strictly law-abiding driver.

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11. The traffic was dense. Bumper to fruit cart. Like stove-top caramel: running oozingly everywhere, and within minutes, solid and unmoving. Unindicated sections of road construction – like bathtub-sized holes in the pavement, signaled only by yellow CUIDADO tape beside it – made bustling highways bottleneck into chaotic CO2 production lines.

12. Rules seemed to be minimal. All I could figure was that we were trying to get from A to B without taking paint off that car, running this motorcycle up onto the sidewalk, or cutting off the irritated, honking pick-up behind us.

13. Along the sidewalks were women with colorful umbrellas over their shoulders, children riding scrawny horses, rickety bicycles, and cows like slow-rolling barrels. For the entirety of the ride my eyes darted frenziedly out the car windows. I was taking pictures right and left. Car dealerships, superstores, Payless shoe stores, Wendy’s and hotels surrounded us. Billboards with eye-catching blondes, white women and children, advertised accessories and apparel. I reminded myself of our chocolate lab, Autumn, whose love for car rides was expressed by panting out one window to the other and fumigating the truck with gag-inducing biscuit breath.

14. Unlike my mother – who could play an entire game of basketball in high school without soiling her uniform – I sweat profusely. So the turkey-roaster-like van and I were as incompatible as a dog and dragon on the Chinese zodiac. Five minutes into the ninety minute ride, two thigh-shaped pools of sweat had somehow condensed on the grey, vinyl seat beneath me. They kind of looked like a pair of sunglasses. Gotta love having your jean shorts feel like you went swimming in them, when you actually didn’t.

15. There was no air conditioning. Rather, a small, portable fan was drilled into the ceiling to the left of the driver’s head. It blew only on the person directly behind him. Between her long history of car sickness and the current jolting and bumping around, Haley was the lucky winner. So lucky, in fact, that the gentle breeze made her fall asleep. How she could sleep when I was so hectically excited, I had no idea.

16. As we left the tourist-centered heart of the city, the commercial businesses became fewer and far between. It dawned on me that we were now passing the “residential areas”. Not neighborhoods (although there that’s what they may have been called), not apartments or condos, or even trailer parks, but slums. Dog kennels. Dirty homes made of an eclectic accumulation of wood, fabric, cardboard, sheets of metal, or whatever could be positioned to serve as a wall, door, or roof. These structures suffocated the sides of the road and my mind. Although scummier, they reminded me of the forts that I used to build in the center of our living room when I was little. Clutter, debris and trash were strewn everywhere on the sidewalks, river banks and amid houses. The litter was synonymous with life. It wasn’t what I had imagined a city in the jungle to be like. I had pictured small huts, yet they were sturdy and fresh – not crippled and barely enterable. I had also pictured culturally-rich businesses and sidewalks, but all of them outdone by the publicized lush green.

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18. Even though the conditions were exciting because they were new to me, the reality soon set in that this strange view wasn’t just a landscape: it was the lives of thousands of people. I could never bear living in a place like this where the man-made ugliness and poverty overtook the God-made beauty. Even poverty in natural conditions among trees, water and fresh air would be better than this congested mess. So I became increasingly satisfied as our vehicles began climbing a winding, up-hill road and the city life began receding. Scrappy towns deteriorated into refreshing smaller villages, and smaller villages gave way to the unadulterated tropical forest.

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20. Finally, we tumbled out of the van, done medium rare. Although I was enthusiastic, the lengthy, vibrating van ride from San Pedro Sula to the northern ocean-side city of Puerto Cortez, and then up the mountain to the village of Zapadril had lulled me into a half-sleepy state. But as I stepped onto the dirt road and breathed in the invigorating, hot mountain air, I again felt like Autumn after a car ride. She’s a package, that dog; complete with ebullient panting, potentially dangerous tail wagging, and elastic pendulums of drool dangling off the corner of her mouth. I had neither a tail, nor was doing any of those, but in this new territory of Letty and Javier’s home, the feeling was the same.

21. It didn’t help that I was completely disoriented. After Mom’s trip, we had gotten to see lots of pictures, but my small-minded self had put the house on the other side of the road. In my mind both had looked different, both felt different. The sun was different, the air was different, the dirt was different. I was a little disappointed when I saw that my surroundings weren’t set up like I had wanted. But within minutes the invitingness of the real place engulfed the imaginary one.

22. Our eleven-person group consisted of my family foursome; Pastor Shane and his sister, Rachele; doctor-nurse team Jon and Tracy and their 10 year-old daughter, Madelynne; and Ken and his twelve year-old daughter, Robyn. Only Shane and Rachele had been to Honduras before. Being their third time here, they had an incipient knowledge of the area and culture, as well as rooted relationships with the natives. Shane was, in fact, the one who had convinced Mom to come in the first place. Plus, being bilingual they served as two of our three translators. Letty was the third. The rest of us were monolingual newbies.

23. Once the first round of suitcases was retrieved, we were led into the house. Made from cement bricks, it was sturdy and well-sized compared to the shacks I had seen beside the highway. We entered through the kitchen, passed the multi-purpose living room/dining room/computer area, and entered our bedrooms. For the time being, the three bedrooms of the Valecillo’s home were organized very meticulously in order to accommodate everyone. The men were going to sleep on bunk beds in Javier and Letty’s son, Abner’s, room, while the women were on bunk beds in Javier and Letty’s own room. The four members of the Valecillo family

24. were all sleeping in their daughter, Ana’s, room. While we were all very thankful for a safe place to sleep, it was a crowded arrangement and not very convenient for their family, who had to heave all of their belongings out of the two rooms before we came. So it was obvious what our construction project was going to be: Yep, to build dorms and provide a more convenient place for our groups to stay.

25. As soon as she was no longer needed, Haley was submerged in a group of friendly, brown children. They all looked to have ages in the single digits, and gravitated toward us in anticipation. Casting uncertain, questioning glances back at Mom, Haley looked awkwardly shy. This wasn’t Vacation Bible School - she didn’t exactly have a prepared agenda of entertainment, not right that second at least. She had just finished avoiding car sickness for the last hour and a half. And sleeping.

26. “Just go play with them, Hon. Look how excited they are!” Mom encouraged her, giving a gigantic hug to one of the children she had come to cherish the year before.

27. “But what am I supposed to do with them?” Haley talked out of the side of her mouth and looked like she was trying to be inconspicuous. Maybe she thought the kids would become hurt and scatter if they heard her hesitancy.

28. “Just go play with them. They don’t care what you do; they just want to spend time with you. Go on, it’ll be fun.”

29. Having been given this OK, Haley let herself be willingly whisked away to a patch of sunny grass in the backyard. Not knowing any Spanish but being great with kids, I could tell that she was mentally rolling up her sleeves for a fun, albeit unusual, week. Moments later, they were all sitting in a big circle, Haley walking around tapping each of their heads. I could hear her methodically repeating pato, pato, pato, pato… and exclaiming ganza! as she was chased around the circle by the chosen, giggling manikin.

30. At the sound of distant voices, Rachele glanced down the road and spotted two girls walking toward us. Rachele and Mom intercepted the one eagerly, while the other girl continued walking, waiting a distance ahead. The three all seemed pleased to see one another as hugs and como estas’s were exchanged. Gesturing to me, Mom introduced me as her hija, Jordan, and I loved the girl’s friendly smile in reply. She had an air of confidence about her; not at all snobby, but like she knew who she was and was proud of it. The girl was wearing a maroon, spaghetti-strap tank-top which, although she was thin, looked a little too tight around her stomach. A thick, black braid hung down to the small of her brown back – a brown that wasn’t African or dark chocolate, but a Hispanic richness that that even the most obstinate tanning American could never touch. She wore coordinating maroon flats, stood with one leg forward comfortably and her hands in the pockets of her skinny jeans.

31. That wasn’t quite the jungle attire I was expecting.

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33. Seriously, she was dressed more currently that I was. Skinny jeans aren’t my thing. Plus, how she could wear them in that climate, I had a hard time comprehending. It was their “winter” right now, though, I supposed. That made the temperature a chilly, oh, 84* and humid. As she and Rachele talked, I guessed that she was a few years older than me. Translating updates about her to Mom and I, Rachele said that Noely was 17 years-old and a couple of months pregnant. That explained the snug top. She had been living in San Pedro Sula, where we flew in, for the past while, being a girl who loved to shop and party – both things that are more difficult to do on a rural mountain. Upon returning pregnant a few weeks earlier, Noely bought some special leaves and was about to drink them in a tea when her mother caught her. When drank by a pregnant woman, the leaves will kill the growing baby: an efficient, poor-woman’s abortion. Valuing the child, and believing that life is a gift from God, her mother wouldn’t let her have them. So in this situation – obligated to carry full-term and preparing to be a mother at 17 – was how I met Noely.

34. The girl further up the dirt road hollered something at her. With a flash of a smile, Noely said that she had to go because her friend was waiting for her and was impatient.

35. As we turned toward the house, someone told Rachele that Nelson and others had just arrived. Exclaiming, “Oh, Nelson!”, Rachele took off back toward the house. Mom, who had met him the year before, turned to me and asked profoundly, “Do you wanna go meet a boy?” A boy? What kind of boy? How old of a boy? Why onearth would I say no to a boy? Of course I shrugged impartially and said sure, following her coyly down the cement steps to the house.

36. Sitting in an arc of wooden lawn chairs were three teens. They were dressed in white, button-up t-shirts which had matching patches on the left breast pockets. The two girls wore navy-blue pleated skirts and tall socks, and the boy (whom I assumed was Nelson), navy-blue dress pants and a gold watch. Rachele was conversing enthusiastically with each of them, looking from one to the next as she asked about school, current ages, grades, and life. Nelson said he was 15 – which made me grin because we were the same age – while one of the girls, Suyapita, was 18, and Glendy was 14. They were alight with smiles as they chatted with Rachelle, gesturing to one another and nodding in response to her questions. Being nearly the same height and build, I would’ve never guessed that the two girls were four years apart in age. Between the average Honduran woman’s height being about 4’ 9’’, malnutrition, and aging lifestyles, ages were a difficult thing to guess. So far I had been doing pretty poorly.

37. A tan, canvas bag full of school books lay on Glendy’s lap. Suyapita didn’t have one, but rather, Nelson was holding two. Had he been carrying Suyapita’s book bag for her? They were on their way to school, Rachele said, which explained their crisp outfits. Plus, if you didn’t have money for a school uniform, you weren’t allowed to attend the school.

38. As the girls talked, Nelson looked down and absent-mindedly played with a fabric corner of the army-green bag that lay on his lap. He had a smooth, warm complexion, round nose and

39. full pink lips. His hair was short, recently buzzed. Although he already knew Rachele, Nelson seemed a hint shy, nervous, insecure, or a little of each. I couldn’t figure out why. Were Mom, Dad and I intimidating? Why would we be? Watching him inquisitively, I concluded that maybe he just had to warm up to new people. He was quiet unless Rachele spoke directly to him, at which he’d look up, smile, and reply with surprising politeness. This behavior caught me entirely off guard; it was wholly respectful, sweetly innocent. The latter part I doubted. For one thing, innocence is a hard trait to come by. Secondly, I’ve only known two people in my entire life who came across as sweetly innocent: my baby cousin, and a baby rabbit, and technically the second one didn’t even count. But everything about Nelson exuded acquiescent sincerity. It was so different. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

40. As we were sitting there getting acquainted, our conversation was interrupted by a delicate, worming movement. Across the ground in front of us it squirmed with deliberate curving, squishing pulses. Our group began to ooh and aah, grabbing cameras as we carefully approached the petite beast. Peligroso, Nelson said, scooping the obese caterpillar up gently with a shovel. The Neapolitan pink and soft green insect sure didn’t look dangerous. But then Nelson pointed to the dandelion-like tufts of fuzz and spikes covering its back and dozen sets of legs. Dangerous, he said, poisonous. If you touch one of these spikes, you come down with a bad fever. We all took an unintentional step backward.

41. After getting reacquainted for a few more minutes, the three teens had to head to school. Javier had left once again to pick up Ana and Abner, whom I was anxious to meet, from their school in Puerto Cortez. So since there was a lull in the excitement, I began to scout out my new surroundings.

42. The house sat on the down-hill side of the road, with the mountain rising up on the other side. It wasn’t like the kind of mountain that I first think of: grey-scale monsters garbed in clouds, with rocky peaks capped in snow. Instead, these mountains were more like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shire: funnily cozy, green, dome houses. But here, each of those houses were instead mountains. Some rounded invitingly on top, smothered in a coat of flora fur, but large enough that they’re intimidating.

43. Behind the house were a backyard, clothesline, large chicken coop, and an additional, roofed area used for cooking. All of this was bordered by a steep bank and a river. Across from the river scaled another smaller mountain. In reality, the house actually sat in a little valley-like area.

44. When looking at the house from the road, I was about eye-level with its aluminum roof. To my immediate left was a small creek that ran through a crude culvert underneath the road and joined the river below. On the other side of the creek was the church of Monte de Santidad, a building constructed with identical materials as the house. The air had a unique smell. It smelled

45. warm, like sunshine, with blended whiffs of flowers, chickens, dirt, sweat and trees that all swirled together in your nose to create an olfactory culture shock.

46. When Javier returned with his precious cargo, I immediately knew that he had picked up the right kids. Ana, at age 13 but having a full chest and looking much older, and Abner at age 12, were indisputably the spitting image of a young Javier and Letty. It was almost weird. Ana welcomed me with a big hug, with the same bubbly spirit that I had partly gotten to know through e-mail over the past year. But as I began talking to her I was sure to keep in mind that English was her second language.

47. “Ana! IT IS SO NICE TO MEET YOU. I am so ex-cit-ed to fin-a-lly be here.”

48. “Hi, Jordan! Oh, I’m so excited too! I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time now, and it seems like I already know you.”

49. When she started gushing English I realized what a doofus I sounded like; she sounded more English than I did! I had planned on “taking it easy” for her instead of spewing verbal eloquence, but I had never thought I would take it that easy. I had unconsciously begun to enunciate my words excessively, speak slowly and with an abnormal emphasis (how I thought a Spanish speaker would understand best.) Even my own voice sounded foreign to me. As we continued our conversation though, I became more at ease, and knew that we were going to get along just fine.

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55. On a surprise note, Javier decided that there was going to be church service that evening. It was an unplanned, last-minute event; normally they would have one, but it had been taken off the schedule because it was our first evening there. We don’t really know why he changed his mind, but oh, I’m glad he did!

56. Being my closest companion so far, I took a seat beside Ana in one of the aluminum chairs which tiled the church’s cement floor. Mom, Haley and Rachele were in front of us with one of the Honduran women. Rachele obviously knew her because she was chatting away in Spanish as if to an old friend.

57. To my right was a fifty-ish woman. She came up to about my shoulder in height, had dark hair pulled tightly back into a bun on her small head. She was far from over-weight but not exceptionally thin or wiry either. There was something about her that made me feel like I had an intangible reason to respect her; like there wasn’t much which she had not been forced to endure. Like she had experienced and seen so much more than I ever will, and had survived. Calloused,

58. almost determined. Not in a bad way though because when I looked at her, her eyes were gentle and her thin cheeks became sweet and round, suspending and a small, pursed smile beneath them. It was a sweet smile –the puckered kind, like when you stick a tack into something soft and swollen and it creates an indentation. She seemed to have a tack indented into both corners of her mouth, making her small smile and uplifted cheeks look cheerfully puckered despite whatever she had been through in the past. I couldn’t help but want to smile back.

59. The church service went from 7:00pm to approximately 9:00pm, but about an hour of that was praise and worship song time. It began when Javier turned on the sound system and just started blaring the music. At the sound of the music, the church seemed to groan, yawn and awaken with a vigorous shiver, like a beast who had been napping beside the river. Since a lot of the people on the mountain didn’t have clocks, this was the routinely call for the beginning of church. When people heard the music, they came, and they just kept wandering in for the next 25 minutes as praise and worship time began.

60. About the first one and a half services I felt uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, just like I didn’t know what was going on, or what anyone was saying or who anyone was. When everyone began singing at the top of their lungs and clapping, I got a little bewildered. Well, that’s a lie – I got a lot bewildered.

61. But that was nothing compared to a few minutes into the songs when, to my surprise, Ana asked me if I wanted to dance with her and some of the other girls. (Me? Dance in church? Where all these people could see me? Don’t you know I’ve gone to a Baptist church all of my life?) I had to confess to myself that I loved living life on the edge though; I was an adrenaline junkie. And since anything new is exciting, I liked a lot of new things. Plus, didn’t the Bible say that David danced and sang praises to the Lord? In fact, when someone criticized him and said that he was making a fool of himself, David replied, “and I will be even more undignified than this”! (2 Samuel 6:22, NKJV)

62. So forget crookedly legalistic religion – David danced and I was going to too. She led me over to the left side of the room to where Glendy and Suyapita were already dancing. I could remember nothing about the 2 girls beside their faces (and definitely not their names), but there, trying to clumsily and self-consciously do the easy, repetitive dance, there was a spark. It was something inside of me that made me begin to love these services without having a clue of what was going on, and that whispered they were going to be a favorite part of my trip. Why did I even like it so much, I’d like to know? It ran much deeper than just a feeling of rebellious freedom that came with doing something looked down upon by some “normal” churches back home. Was it the feeling of joy that’s for some reason released when you dance? I’d imagine that any energy expelled for the glory of God He’ll return to you exponentially, so maybe the spark was the result. Was it just because of the unique atmosphere and all the new dark-skinned friends dancing alongside of me? I had no clue, but I discovered a love for

63. something that I had never done before. It was raw praise. Nothing but the heart of worship – and an extreme cardio workout. Within ten minutes, my ankles and calves were feeling taught and rubbery. I felt like it would take jump roping for an hour in a sauna, on cement, while wearing flip-flops to get the same effect back home. I was glad we hadn’t eaten within 60 minutes prior to the simple “church service.”

64. Javier liked it too, I supposed, because as he was singing and leading songs, he was constantly prancing around the stage, hands clapping, feet kicking. By the end of the 45 minutes, his plaid, button up t-shirts (which he wore all the time) were soaked through, front and back with sweat. A slow song or two diced up the dancing, but for the most part he resembled a joyful construction worker more than a pastor.

65. I also enjoyed watching the people themselves as they sang and clapped. Most of them I didn’t know, but let myself instead be enveloped by the verbular sounds of their voices. I watched the people’s lips as they rounded for oy, toy, voy, pulled them back for se, te, de, rey, and popped them open and shut for aba and abamos. But there was one that tickled me especially every time I heard it: rr. The notorious double r – it pleased me and irritated me at the same time. I had been trying for so long to make it roll off my tongue as effortlessly and purely as they were now doing, and for that long I had just sounded like a cat with strep throat. It was like an exercise; a backbend or the splits that I have to work toward for a while before I see any improvement. But finally, just before we came, I made my tongue purr so richly it gave me chills. And now to hear all these people doing it so naturally… it was all I could ask for.

66. After the praise and worship segment was finished, everyone settled into their seats, or onto the cement floor. Javier introduced us briefly, and then continued on to preach an animated and passionate sermon, of which I understood nothing. There were specific words that caught my attention, ones that I had been learning on our Rosetta Stone computer program. But putting these individual words into context, or even being able to sum up his sermon were things I would need to continue working on.

67. When the service was finished, we were introduced to yet others in the tumultuous whirlwind of brown skin. It was a whirlwind created not by business, but by everyone just standing around, smiling, nodding heads, being introduced; it was hectic because there was so much to absorb. Even though there was no bustling commotion, it still felt hectic because there was so much to absorb. Whenever I’m put into new surroundings or situations, everything seems so uproariously busier than it really is. I had my loyal Canon XT and was taking a few pictures when Dad called me over to where a couple teens were standing. One was the boy, Nelson, whom I had met briefly that afternoon and knew nothing about besides his name and age. The other I hadn’t met yet. He had mysterious and attractive eyebrows and a little soul-patch on his chin. High cheekbones. A look, an intriguing air about him that also hinted of mysteriousness. Entirely opposite to my impression of Nelson, something about him made me cautious although he seemed very friendly. I didn’t really know what to make of him, but was immediately slightly

68. curious. And suspicious. He seemed to be the Latino epitome of “tall, dark and handsome”, minus the tall. In fact, he was only about 5’3” tall, which made him about three inches shorter than I.

69. “Here, Jordan, give me your camera. Stand right here between the two of them, and I’ll get a picture of the three of you.” Dad commanded mischievously.

70. “But Dad! Why? I just met them, well, him, I mean, but…”

71. “Oh who cares? C’mon, Hon – it’ll make a great Facebook profile picture for your friends to see!”

72. I should’ve known from that look in his eye when we called me over; what’s it matter that I barely knew one and didn’t even know the other? I got to laughing and was a smidge embarrassed… but not enough to refuse. (Like I said, I like to live on the edge.) So after just a remembering smile from one and an introductory handshake from the other, Dad had weaseled me into standing between them for a picture. That’s so Dad all the way.

73. Rachele swung by and introduced the latter to us as Will, a son of the lady whom I had stood next to during church. She was Olga. (Well there’s that experience I felt she had had: having a teenage son!) Not only that, but Will was one of 6 kids, the other five now all young adults: Jairo, Mainor, Oneida, Grevil and Kenia. Being 17, Will was the youngest. Chatting away with him, Rachele threw us info in between sentences. She mentioned to Dad how Will’s brothers were into “some bad stuff”. Something about gangs came up and that immediately caught Dad’s interest, being a go-bust-some-crack-head-gangbangers-without-taking-a-bullet detective sergeant and all. Excited, but not knowing a lick of Espanol, he began trying to ask Will if he was familiar with the Latin gang MS-13. At first Will looked confused and I’m not surprised; Dad was making motions for spray paint and graffiti with gusto. But suddenly it seemed like the boy got it, and he got a sheepish look on his face. Laughing, he shook his head no. Dad grinned and elbowed me persuasively, “Oh yeah! He knows what I’m talking about, uh-huh! Just look at him!”

74. It was his first “successful” English-Spanish translation – no words involved. Call me skeptical, but I doubt Will ever had a clue of what Dad was talking about.

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