Unpacking
There’s been no time to write. No time to process any of this. I’ve just been compartmentalizing everything, promising myself I’d unpack it all and give each part it’s due later—when I get to the mountains.
Well, here I am. Buck’s, our local coffee shop, is so quiet in the dead of winter. Besides the two people working behind the counter and the lady hanging out with them (who’s apparel oddly resembles that of a pirate…maybe it’s the black skullcap?)—besides them, it’s just me and Paul Bunyan’s grandfather camped out at a table across the shop.
Eight days ago, it was my last day in La Paz. I had moved into Dona Gloria’s house again to help Fenley feel like that was home before I just up and left him. I woke up in that old bed in my old shoe-box bedroom, Fenley sleeping curled to my back. I got up early to say goodbye to Monica before she left for school. Maybell had turno A, the morning shift, and so had already left to get to the soap factory on time. I stood in the kitchen and played with the fridge magnets with Monica in the early morning darkness, waiting for 6:05–the time when she left to walk to the corner for her bus to school. We hugged for the millionth time, then she left and I went back to my room for one last bucket bath. Fenley was outside exploring.
After breakfast–Dona Gloria made me a triple-decker white bread, mortadela (ham), and American cheese sandwich (with the infamous half ketchup, half mayonnaise “salsa”)…such an appropriate last meal!–I left the house to run some errands: paid the rent through mid February, bought some wine to get me through the conference, said goodbyes to the family that owns the grocery store that sells the wine, bought two huge bags of cat food to leave with Fenley. I returned to the house and packed up the last of what I had. Most everything had been given away. Ten months of accumulation…no, it was more than just “accumulation”…I was building, creating a life, choosing the components that would color my memories of my life there. In less than two weeks, I disassembled it all.
With my bags ready, I went and sat in the kitchen while Dona Gloria prepared a lunch for me. I ate, even though I was supposed to be having lunch with all the other PCVs when we met up in the park later. Thankfully, a friend of Dona Gloria’s came by to visit. I sat and listened to their conversation, chiming in now and then. It saved me from having to try to find anything to say myself. My stomach was in knots, and the anticipation made anything I tried to say seem trivial. I watched minutes go by. Fenley was laying, in that regal way he does, beneath the little green table outside, surveying his surroundings through eyes half-closed. At least he seemed comfortable. That made it easier to leave.
Dona Gloria called the cab at 11:10, and we lugged all my bags to the gate. I muttered a choked adios to my pretty blonde baby, still under the table, as I pushed past with my bags. The faster it all happened, perhaps the less it would hurt. The guys from the cab loaded all my bags, surprised by everything I was carrying. They didn’t know I was leaving with everything I owned there. The didn’t know I was leaving for good. Dona Gloria shoved some money into the cab driver’s hand, and I couldn’t even protest–nothing, not a thing, could come out of my mouth. Just a fountain of tears from my eyes. I hugged her so hard, and just cried. Thank goodness I’d thought to leave her a note on the bedside table in my bedroom saying thank you, and how I’d felt loved in that house since the minute I crossed it’s threshold, because now in the moment of real goodbye all my words failed me. She was crying now too, but managed to tell me Dios te guarde en su viaje, y yo se que usted va a encontrar un buen trabajo alla. God has a plan for you. Take care. I let her put me in the cab and close the door, and I lost it. Those poor twenty-something cabbies had no idea what was going on. A gringa with too much stuff leaving a Honduran family’s house, with lots of public crying. Certainly not a common occurrence.
They drove me to the park. As we pulled up, so did the bus coming from Comayagua with all the volunteers from that area. I dried my tears and said hellos. A few minutes later, everyone from Marcala arrived in a second bus. While we ate at the infamous Mexican restaurant on the corner of the central park, one last time, the staff loaded all our luggage onto one bus. We finished lunch, said goodbyes to the owner and her family, and left together for the hotel in Tegucigalpa.
End, Act I.
Begin, Act II.
Two hours later. We arrived at the hotel through the service entrance in the back. There were staff everywhere shepherding the busloads of volunteers, as they arrived, towards the conference area. Room keys were issued. Crying goodbyes were replaced by hugs and hellos to people–staff and volunteers–we hadn’t seen in weeks, maybe months. It’s nice to be brought all together like this, just not under these circumstances.
There was a three hour break to settle in and eat dinner before our evening sessions began. At seven, the conference officially started. Our US ambassador came to address us and thank us for our service in Honduras. Then, the part I was most eager for, the presentation from our regional director on the thoughts and process behind the decision to close Honduras and send us all home. Tired as I was, it was good to hear. I left feeling a little better–a little relieved, a little less cowardly (yes, I realize it’s kind of ridiculous that I felt that way at all), a little more justified in leaving (through it wasn’t actually my choice), a little less like I was abandoning my world there…in the hands of a fate that seemed increasingly less kind and certainly less just.
But there wasn’t much time to dwell on that then. It was finally bedtime. Physical and emotional exhaustion won me over. I slept hard in that plush bed. Dreams peppered my sleep, though I can’t remember any of them now.
End, Act II.
Begin, …??
That was only eight days ago. Since then, I’ve had four days of conference, slept very little, said two more rounds of goodbyes (first to staff, then to my fellow volunteers), stayed a night in Miami, found out my dog has cancer, spent two days unpacking, repacking and making my car roadworthy again, visited my brother in Greenville…
…and now I’m here, in the one place I know where the sounds of nature are still louder than the sounds of any man made thing. Except, of course, for the heel of my right tennis shoe that squeaks with every step as I go for an evening walk down our dirt road, under bare trees and gray skies.
What a lovely life experience! There is no way that you would leave that place without a life-changing attitude. These are the experiences that will form you and allow you to move through life bolstered by the goodness you have received and given. Congratulations!