Beanland Diary #7 - Hell in Honduras
Dear Beanland Reader,
It is with great relief that I announce that your faithful correspondent has survived his first Honduran dry season. While this part of the year is indeed very dry, this misleading name completely overlooks the season’s main event: the unrelenting hellish heat. Maybe “hellish hot season” was nixed by the Honduran tourism board for marketing reasons.
Around Cantarranas in particular, "hell” (according to what Deko tells me it will be like) is a very accurate metaphor. Let me explain. Sugar cane is a popular crop in this region, and the dry season is when the cane farmers set their fields on fire in preparation for the harvest. So in addition to the brutal heat and sun, it’s common on any given afternoon to see a few acres of land engulfed in orange flames and spewing black smoke into the sky. Crispy pieces of burnt cane husk, carried by the wind, sprinkle the town like black confetti from Lucifer’s birthday piñata. Factor in a few desiccated snakes hard-packed into the dirt streets, rabid dogs gnawing on sun-bleached cow mandibles and a church that spontaneously combusted right before Halloween and I doubt Poe or Milton could create a scarier rendering of the underworld.
And only a truly masochistic society would deem it inappropriate to wear shorts in weather like this. There’s nothing like slipping into a toasty pair of jeans when it’s already ninety degrees at 8 AM, knowing that you’ll have sweated through them before you even finish the fifteen minute walk to work. The only consolation on this front is that it’s totally acceptable for men to have their shirts unbuttoned all the way down to the navel. I’m serious, you can leave the top 4 or 5 buttons open, flashing ridiculous chest, and no one says anything.
With all this flagrant open-chestedness, an observant gringo will quickly notice that Honduran men have absolutely no chest hair. Neither do the women, incidentally, which is just as openly observable. In Honduras breast feeding ranks just below nail clipping and right above farting on the scale of publicly acceptable activities. Whether in the town square, on the bus, in a business meeting or in church (so I’m told), you’re likely to see a baby grappling with a floppy brown breast. This social acceptance derives from simple mathematical necessity, given the massive aggregate nourishment required by Honduras’ enormous infant population (see Beanland #5). The milk-producing Honduran mother is awake for 16 hours on average and hence capable of offering 32 breast-hours daily. If all the infants of Honduras were to get their recommended feeding time, each mother would need to use at least 21.5 of these 32 hours. Right now, by my initial calculations, we’re running at about 14 to 15 average breast-hours daily per mother. Perhaps efficiency could be improved with the organizational help of a motivated Peace Corps volunteer (I’ll suggest this to the manager of the Youth Development project).
In other recent events, the end of the dry season also marks the annual Cantarranas Traditional Food Festival, or El Festival de Alimentos Tradicionales. This is a really big deal for my dusty little pueblo, as thousands of people from all over Honduras come in to enjoy the dishes unique to this cozy corner of Central America. “What are these unique dishes?” you’re probably wondering. Let me describe them and their ingredients and it will be obvious why you’ve never heard of Honduras’ traditional foods. Mondongo, for example, might seem like nothing more than a hearty vegetable soup of yucca and corn. Except that the main ingredient, which at first glance looks like a rubbery slab of coral, is actually boiled cow stomach. With the stomach used up for the mondongo, we move on to a dish called shanfaina, made from the chopped heart and liver. Needless to say, I chose to keep to my own personal eating traditions during the festival by washing down bean and avocado baleadas with cold Port Royal.
The festival also showcased such traditional activities as cow milking and extracting cane juice with an oxen-driven mill (see new photos on Snapper). As far as beasts of burden go, these oxen might give the donkey a run for shittiest job ever (employment by Sultan Film Productions excluded). First they are yoked together and attached to a rotating horizontal beam which cranks the gears and grinds the cane. They spend hours going in tight circles, their hooves wearing a deep groove in the dirt. Kinda like when Schwarzenegger is enslaved in “Conan the Barbarian”, sans the greased torso. In fact, maybe it would cheer the oxen up a bit to know that while there is absolutely no chance of career advancement for the donkey, it is possible to go from being yoked to a mill crank to Governor of the State of California in just around 20 years.
Atentamente,
Your Correspondent, San Juan de Flores F.M., Honduras
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
It is with great relief that I announce that your faithful correspondent has survived his first Honduran dry season. While this part of the year is indeed very dry, this misleading name completely overlooks the season’s main event: the unrelenting hellish heat. Maybe “hellish hot season” was nixed by the Honduran tourism board for marketing reasons.
Around Cantarranas in particular, "hell” (according to what Deko tells me it will be like) is a very accurate metaphor. Let me explain. Sugar cane is a popular crop in this region, and the dry season is when the cane farmers set their fields on fire in preparation for the harvest. So in addition to the brutal heat and sun, it’s common on any given afternoon to see a few acres of land engulfed in orange flames and spewing black smoke into the sky. Crispy pieces of burnt cane husk, carried by the wind, sprinkle the town like black confetti from Lucifer’s birthday piñata. Factor in a few desiccated snakes hard-packed into the dirt streets, rabid dogs gnawing on sun-bleached cow mandibles and a church that spontaneously combusted right before Halloween and I doubt Poe or Milton could create a scarier rendering of the underworld.
And only a truly masochistic society would deem it inappropriate to wear shorts in weather like this. There’s nothing like slipping into a toasty pair of jeans when it’s already ninety degrees at 8 AM, knowing that you’ll have sweated through them before you even finish the fifteen minute walk to work. The only consolation on this front is that it’s totally acceptable for men to have their shirts unbuttoned all the way down to the navel. I’m serious, you can leave the top 4 or 5 buttons open, flashing ridiculous chest, and no one says anything.
With all this flagrant open-chestedness, an observant gringo will quickly notice that Honduran men have absolutely no chest hair. Neither do the women, incidentally, which is just as openly observable. In Honduras breast feeding ranks just below nail clipping and right above farting on the scale of publicly acceptable activities. Whether in the town square, on the bus, in a business meeting or in church (so I’m told), you’re likely to see a baby grappling with a floppy brown breast. This social acceptance derives from simple mathematical necessity, given the massive aggregate nourishment required by Honduras’ enormous infant population (see Beanland #5). The milk-producing Honduran mother is awake for 16 hours on average and hence capable of offering 32 breast-hours daily. If all the infants of Honduras were to get their recommended feeding time, each mother would need to use at least 21.5 of these 32 hours. Right now, by my initial calculations, we’re running at about 14 to 15 average breast-hours daily per mother. Perhaps efficiency could be improved with the organizational help of a motivated Peace Corps volunteer (I’ll suggest this to the manager of the Youth Development project).
In other recent events, the end of the dry season also marks the annual Cantarranas Traditional Food Festival, or El Festival de Alimentos Tradicionales. This is a really big deal for my dusty little pueblo, as thousands of people from all over Honduras come in to enjoy the dishes unique to this cozy corner of Central America. “What are these unique dishes?” you’re probably wondering. Let me describe them and their ingredients and it will be obvious why you’ve never heard of Honduras’ traditional foods. Mondongo, for example, might seem like nothing more than a hearty vegetable soup of yucca and corn. Except that the main ingredient, which at first glance looks like a rubbery slab of coral, is actually boiled cow stomach. With the stomach used up for the mondongo, we move on to a dish called shanfaina, made from the chopped heart and liver. Needless to say, I chose to keep to my own personal eating traditions during the festival by washing down bean and avocado baleadas with cold Port Royal.
The festival also showcased such traditional activities as cow milking and extracting cane juice with an oxen-driven mill (see new photos on Snapper). As far as beasts of burden go, these oxen might give the donkey a run for shittiest job ever (employment by Sultan Film Productions excluded). First they are yoked together and attached to a rotating horizontal beam which cranks the gears and grinds the cane. They spend hours going in tight circles, their hooves wearing a deep groove in the dirt. Kinda like when Schwarzenegger is enslaved in “Conan the Barbarian”, sans the greased torso. In fact, maybe it would cheer the oxen up a bit to know that while there is absolutely no chance of career advancement for the donkey, it is possible to go from being yoked to a mill crank to Governor of the State of California in just around 20 years.
Atentamente,
Your Correspondent, San Juan de Flores F.M., Honduras
[Please send comments and criticisms in writing to 5 Ridgewood Rd, St. Louis MO 63124 attn: Jerome]
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