Description of Service- Chapter 5

5. Like the Fields Wait for the Rain

For the final act of training, Peace Corps invited representatives of the organizations that would be working with volunteers to a ceremony in the capital. After the trials of the training period, most of us could have predicted that such an event, requiring planning, coordination, and promptness, was sure to be disaster. In the end most of the volunteers were left jilted, their new work partners having failed to show, or never having properly received the elaborately drafted, stamped and certified communication announcing the event.

But my case was different. The general manager of the cooperative had come from La Esperanza, along with the manager of the branch in San Juan, in the organization’s new pickup truck. The pair was anxious to retrieve their two new consultants – Sally on her way to La Esperanza, and me, to San Juan.

“I am happy to finally join your team,” I told the two men after the event, as they shepherded me through the parking lot towards the vehicle which would take us on to La Esperanza.

“So we will be travelling in luxury today,” I said, doing my best to emphasize my admiration for the shiny new car as we approached.

“We just bought this truck,” Renan said, smiling proudly. “And we are glad to inaugurate it with the important task of bringing our new advisors to La Esperanza for the first time.”

“And also to San Juan,” chimed a voice from behind Renan. It was Juan, the manager of the San Juan branch, peeking over his boss’ shoulder. “We can’t forget Kawil’s new home,” he said, smiling.

Sally, who had been following behind at a distance, caught up to us at the car. She was talking with another volunteer, Katie, one of the many who had been left waiting by her new work partner. She was assigned to a project near La Esperanza. The two girls handed their bags casually to Juan, as they continued their conversation.

“Kate’s going to come with us as well,” Sally announced, to no one in particular, as Juan carefully loaded their suitcases into the bed of the truck.

“That one needs to go inside, with us, to keep it safe” Katie directed, as Juan lifted one of her bags into the back of the pickup. Following the instructions, he carefully pulled the suitcase down and placed it on the back seat.

In the meantime I was observing Renan. I thought I caught a brief expression of concern on his face as he surveyed the amount of luggage the girls had brought. But his countenance quickly transformed into an accommodating smile.

“That will be fine,” he said, “but we have to pick up some other employees, so we will need to make room.”

Sally and Kate didn’t hear him. They had already gotten into the backseat.

Juan jumped down from the back of the truck, where he had been wrestling with the luggage. He smiled as he held the door open for me. “We’ll have to squeeze in,” he said, still smiling. “There are two more to pick up.”

I got into the back seat next to Sally. The pick-up had a double cab which could hold five people. With the three of us in the backseat, it was now full. I wondered where the others that we were going to pick up would fit.

Juan closed the door and walked around to the front, and we were on our way, as Renan began to tentatively navigate the busy streets of the capital. Next to me, Sally and Kate continued their conversation in English.

“Where are you headed exactly?” I asked Kate, in Spanish, trying to change the language to one our new coworkers in the front seat could understand.

“Near La Esperanza, you know that,” she snapped back, in English, frowning harshly at me, before resuming her conversation with Sally. I gave a concerned glance towards Renan and Juan, but rather than worrying about the foreign language being spoken behind them, they were distracted in an attempt to extricate us from the maze of traffic-congested streets that lead to the road north, out of town.

I tried to relax, and looked around. The vehicle was indeed luxurious, in more than one sense, though I’m not sure I realized it at the time. In retrospect, that trip to La Esperanza was the easiest I would make along that route for quite some time. It wouldn’t be long before I would learn that intercity trips tended to draw out, on the decrepit, second-hand school busses imported from the United States for use on these routes - the only choice for travelers without their own vehicle, a group to which I would soon belong.

As I was beginning to get comfortable in the backseat, we pulled to a stop in front of an office building. Juan hopped out, and greeted two older men. “These men are co-workers,” Renan said, turning half way around. “They have come for a meeting here, and will return to La Esperanza with us.”

I could see Juan, behind the truck, climbing into the bed of the pickup. One of the older men opened the front door, had a quick look at the full backseat, and began to slide into the front, as the second newcomer pushed his way in, attempting to squeeze into the front seat alongside. I opened the door and stepped out onto the street, and around to the bed of the pickup, where Juan had already sat down on one of the suitcases.

“Juan,” I said, “shall we travel together back here?”

“No, no,” Juan quickly protested, “there is room for everyone inside.”

“No,” I said, “I prefer it back here.” It was difficult to say those words convincingly. I shuffled back to the driver’s side window, where Renan was looking on with curiosity.

“You can spread out in the back,” I said, talking generally into the car, to Renan and the two men, who had accommodated themselves uncomfortably, together in the front seat. “I’m going to go in the back with Juan.”

Returning to the back of the pickup, I pulled myself as gracefully as possible over the side of the truck, into the bed, and sat down, leaning against a suitcase.

“Come back here, against the window,” Juan said, when he saw me sit down leaning against the side of the truck. “It is more comfortable in this area- with the bumps of the road, and the wind.” As I was resettling myself, the car pulled away with a jerk.

Renan must have felt more comfortable driving on the highway than the packed streets of the city, because he increased velocity considerably as we headed north through the early evening. The first part of the journey passed like a whirlwind. The truck sped across a wide valley towards a mountain range ahead.

“Renan will want to make up time,” Juan shouted. “It’s late already, and the trip is not short.” I nodded. I could only make out some of his words over the roar of the wind. We sat next to each other, but with little communication, and I slowly sank into my thoughts.

I took in the sights along the road through the countryside. Headed out into this new world, as the cool evening breeze caressed my face, I suddenly felt freer than I had for the last few months. Out here, my actions and words could no longer be so closely observed and manipulated. Now I was far away, and the distance grew further mile by mile, from the burdens of the oversight of training; free from judgment; free now, to make my own way. It was what the feeling I had come to this country in search of.

But the sense of calm that accompanied my newfound freedom quickly dissipated when the car climbed into the next set of mountains. Frighteningly sharp curves twist around the corners of those high passes, a few feet away from an imposing vertical drop to a death that more than a few unfortunate motorists have met. Racing against the falling night, as if our lives depended upon speed rather than caution, Renan wheeled the vehicle around each corner, as I felt the truck, and my own weight, shifting too close to that drop. I held my breath as the car rounded each turn, and forgot about the increasing cold, as I bounced uncomfortably around the bed of the pick-up.

Juan smiled broadly, holding one hand over his head to secure a baseball cap against the wind, as he held on. Imitating him, I firmly clenched the sides of the pick-up, but he must have guessed that fear rather than experience was driving me to grasp at the sides of the truck.

“One has to have faith on these roads,” he shouted, trying to reassure me. But the numerous small wooden crosses planted here and there along the roadside, each memorializing a motorist whose premature death on this road had come suddenly, in an instant much like the one I was now living, was the first of many lessons leading me to understand that faith in this land is too often inadequately tempered by caution.

Perhaps, it occurred to me, as I sat in that decidedly unsecured state in the back of that machine, speeding through the green hills into the twilight, premature death is a normal probability given the risks one is compelled to accept in a place like this. I thought of Miguel and his theories, which now seemed to be permeating my own way of seeing things. I had little choice but to ride on, and hope for the best. I took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air, and looked at Juan, sitting in a profound state of distraction, as he gazed calmly into the darkening valley below. Then, I was again glad to be free, under the open sky, in the back of that pickup.

Despite my fleeting attempts to emulate Juan’s relaxed state, it was a long, cold trip to La Esperanza. Pressed for time against the falling night, we wouldn’t stop even once along the route. Not long after we turned off the main north-south highway, and began to head west on a secondary road, I tired of asking Juan how much longer the trip would last, even if he never stopped answering me good naturedly. There, in the dark of the night off the main road, few other vehicles were to be seen. The rutted and desolate highway continued its game, climbing and then descending hill after hill, and though I felt that we must be getting close after what seemed like several hours had passed in that way, each turn revealed only another one ahead, until finally, where a cold ascent up another mountain gave way to yet another climb, further upward, into an even more painfully frigid climate, the road gave up its thankless task, and yielded to the town of La Esperanza, its streets black under the cover of night.

When Renan finally pulled to a stop in front of a hotel, I jumped eagerly out of the back of the pickup, and found my legs reluctant to bear my weight after such a long period sitting awkwardly. Still, if I was tired, the completion of the journey put me immediately in much better spirits. I smiled, putting my hand on Juan’s shoulder. He had endured the journey with me, and, though a veteran of such trips, must have felt much the same.

“You’ve passed the first test,” he said with a broad smile, as we shook hands firmly. “Tomorrow, we go on to San Juan. There, the weather is more agreeable.”



I was awakened early the next morning by a rap at the door. “Who is it?” I called from the warm comfort of the bed. The temperature had dropped further overnight, during which I had been forced to search out an extra blanket in the closet.

“It’s me, Juan,” a voice answered from the other side of the door. “Are you awake yet? Good morning!”

I stumbled out of bed and pulled on the clothes I had worn the previous day, then made my way over to the door.

“Good morning, Juan,” I said happily, as I opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you quite so early.”

Juan smiled. “I wanted to give you a tour of the town before we leave for San Juan,” he said. “The bus leaves at ten thirty, and we’ll need to be on it if we’re going to get to San Juan today. It’s the only one of the day. What if we go get some breakfast and see the city first?”

“That sounds great,” I said, stepping out into the hallway. “Shall I get Sally?”

“No,” Juan said. “Let her rest, don’t you think? Later, Renan will come by and pick her up to take her to the office here in town. But our mission today is San Juan. Let’s go,” he said excitedly.

We left the hotel into the bright, clear air of the mountain valley. I was relieved after the cold night to feel the warm sun on my face. Juan led the way downtown, through a colorful market, where women in bright dresses sold equally colorful assortments of fruit from makeshift wooden stalls.

We stopped in a store front, and Juan bought several items, including a number of packages of batteries. “For my radio in San Juan,” he explained. “It is very difficult, and expensive, to find things there, so it’s best to stock up here if you have the chance. Is there anything you need?”

“Nothing in particular,” I said, eyeing the merchandise. A brightly colored hammock caught my eye. “How much is that hammock?” I asked the storekeeper.

“Three hundred lempiras,” the man replied quickly.

“That’s absurd,” Juan snapped back, before I had the chance to think. “We’ll give you one hundred for it.”

“One hundred and fifty,” the man said.

“Done,” Juan said, pulling out a pair of bills from his pocket.

“Allow me, Juan,” I protested, taking out money of my own. But Juan pushed my hand away.

“The hammock is a good idea - for the siesta. We can hang it behind the house. It will be of much use to us,” he said as he paid the man, and handed me the hammock.

From the market, we continued up the town’s main street, which gradually ascended from the city center, up a long slope. Towards the edge of town, the road turned into a cobblestone footpath which led in turn to a long set of white stone stairs.

“Up there,” Juan said, pointing to the top of the stairway etched from the rock face of the hill, is the shrine of the virgin of Suyapa, the matron saint of the town. “Shall we climb?” he asked rhetorically, as he took off, bounding up the trail.

“I’ve known this area since my youth,” he continued as we climbed. “I studied here, and began working for the cooperative after I graduated. The cooperative has its main office here,” he said, as we reached the top.

I turned around to behold a panoramic view of the city, stretching across the valley below. In the distance, I could see the road leading into town.

“That’s the road we came in on last night over there. It leads east to the main road. This area, when I was a child, was a backwater, but the completion of that road through the mountains improved the prospects significantly. The town has grown.” He then turned and waved in the opposite direction.

“Beyond those mountains,” he said, smiling, “are more mountains. And beyond them, lies San Juan. I have been working out there for four years now. The office there was something of an experiment. Around here, people grow fruit and potatoes. But in San Juan the crop is coffee. Following the last boom in coffee prices, the cooperative’s board decided to try opening for business in San Juan, since there was no other bank there. They sent me to manage the branch.”

So Juan was not from San Juan either. As he gazed over the hills in the distance towards that place we were headed, I thought perhaps I could understand him a bit more. It seemed like he, too, saw at San Juan as a far off place, lost to civilization. Perhaps we had more in common than I would have dared to believe.

Suddenly, as quickly as he had come up the hill, Juan began back down. “Let’s go get some breakfast,” he said.

“San Juan is a prosperous region, then?” I asked as we walked back down the street towards the market.

“The coffee boom, like many such things, has come and gone,” hr replied. “Many of the businesses, and our loans, have turned bad. We are counting on you to help fix the situation.”



Nothing I could have learned in training would have prepared me for the moment later that morning, when I climbed on board the old yellow bus that runs the route between La Esperanza and San Juan. Formerly employed somewhere in the United States, to take children to and from school, the bus had seen a drastic change of proprietorship at some point, after which the present owners had sloppily crossed out the previous route information – the name of some rural American school district - and replaced it with the words “San Juan” scribbled in bright red paint across the front windshield. Born in the USA, its present incarnation was a much more rugged and utilitarian version of the previous one.

Juan boarded the bus ahead of me, with the air of a parent who has lied to his child to get him into the car on the way to a dentist’s visit. He rode along next to me, crammed into the child-sized seat, perhaps reluctant to explain to me how long this leg of the trip would take, for fear that I would refuse to go on. After all, I had withstood a four hour jaunt the day before in the cold, and was in little mood for further travel. But if the previous day’s adventure had brought us several hundred kilometers from the capital in four hours, I might also have found it hard to comprehend how the ride I was about to embark upon would take nearly as long, if it covered only a small fraction of the distance.

I would soon learn. The road made it so. All the roads I had travelled to that point had at least been paved, imperfect as they were. But the route to San Juan was unfinished in every sense. The road was founded of dirt and clay by necessity, as it snakes along the edges of hills and across the mountains westward, where a paved road could not pass without the help of extensive feats of modern engineering.

Adding to the bumps of the rough ride, the sun of the early summer made itself felt along the route in a way it had not among the green hills to the east of La Esperanza. The heat baked the white clay of the road, sucking the moisture from it, so that each passing vehicle raised a thick cloud of chalky white dust. The roadside and everything I could observe alongside it – coffee plantations, the isolated houses with chimneys puffing out black smoke, numerous farm animals large and small, and even small children playing in the yards of their homes- were all covered in a blanket of white powder. To protect the passengers from similar inconvenience, the bus windows were kept closed, a measure which exacerbated the stifling heat, but did little to prevent the dust from covering everything inside the bus as well.

Hidden under that layer of white was a beautiful countryside that I could not yet see. Blinded by frustration, realizing that after all the hours of travel the day before, it would still take several hours more just to get to the place I was expected to live for the next two years, I needed to concentrate on understanding that there was a place so remote, and contemplating what was to be done about my situation. It would have been quite different if I were just passing through, I thought. But I was meant to live out here.

Juan, on the other hand, was seated comfortably next to me, aided by his short stature, which was much more compatible with the limited space provided by the school bus seats. He demonstrated unlimited patience in once again explaining to me repeatedly, like a parent to an irritated child, how much further we would need to travel.

“This is the town of San Miguelito, which neighbors San Juan,” he said, as the bus gained speed and descended a hill into a small town. “It’s not much further now.” In a very real sense, he would have been right had he said that upon leaving La Esperanza. The trip is only about thirty kilometers, in distance as the crow flies.

When I had finally given up on the idea that the twists and turns leading to this place at the far corner of the world, as known to me, would ever come to an end, the bus rounded a large bend, and a town appeared on a ridge, above the river ahead. It was past noon as the bus crossed a small bridge and rolled to a stop at a crossroads at the edge of the town.

“Welcome to San Juan,” Juan said, perhaps sharing the type of tempered relief which accompanies those who have overcome the first in what is sure to be a long series of obstacles. He pointed to a road that diverged from the main route. A collection of tired people, women in bright dresses, and men with their sombreros pulled low over their eyes, waited in the shade at the crossroads.

“The road here leads south to the border region,” Juan continued. “Those passengers getting off here will wait for another bus south. It takes several hours to get to the border from here.” San Juan already seemed like the end of the earth to me, I thought.

The bus workers finished unloading the cargo of those who would await the trip further afield, a long process only after which the machine again began to advance slowly, up the small hill and into town. I mustered what energy I could after the long, hot trip, to look around as the bus rolled into town, and I found San Juan to be like nothing I had yet seen. The streets were completely abandoned in the midday heat. Like the roadside along the route, the whole town was covered in white dust that, along with the faded roofs of red clay tiles on every building, gave the motionless town the dull tone of a sepia photograph from many decades past.

Juan stood up as the bus screeched to a slow halt at a plaza in front of a large church. As we stepped down into the full sunshine, I realized how warm it was. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve.

“As I told you, the weather is more temperate here” Juan said, as the bus rumbled away, leaving us alone on the streets of the quiet town. “The altitude drops significantly from La Esperanza.”

Without the noise of the bus engine, the street was eerily quiet, and it was not obvious that anyone actually lived in the town. “It’s quite empty here,” I said. “It seems like the town has been abandoned.”

“It’s a little barren at this time of day,” Juan offered hopefully, as he picked up my bag. “The people are in their homes sleeping their siesta. The businesses - our bank and the coffee producer’s cooperative - have closed for the midday lunch break.”

If Juan had not been with me, I might have been inclined to board the next bus back to Esperanza, never to return. If I felt that way at any rate, turning back was impossible, since the bus we had just came on was the only way out, and it wouldn’t return until the next day.

I said nothing as I looked around. My irritation at going through with this farce was beginning to grow. A few days here, I thought, and then I’ll return to the capital and demand to have my work changed to a more reasonable place.

“Let’s go get some lunch,” Juan ventured, chipping at my silence with an optimistic smile. “Then I’ll show you where we live.”

We crossed the street from the central plaza and started up the street. “The cooperative is right down that street, on the other side of the police station. Further down is the market. Down this street here,” he said, pointing towards a perpendicular road, “is Dona Aida’s house, where we will eat our meals.”

He led me up the narrow street towards the next block. In front of me, I saw the face of the jagged mountain as it towered above the homes on the other side of the road.

“That’s Cerro Grande,” Juan said, pointing at the hill by piercing his lips together, in a very particular way of signaling that I was yet to learn. “Around this corner is where we will eat lunch. You must be hungry after the trip.”

We turned to the left and climbed onto the step in front of a house, across the street from those on the ridge in front of Cerro Grande. Juan tossed the loosely hinged screen door to one side. It opened with a bang, and we passed through. “Doña Aida…., Patricia…., wake up,” he yelled into the interior of the house.

The screen door slammed abruptly behind me with a loud pop. The room we had entered, a dimly lit space with crumbling walls of gray mud and straw, was sparsely furnished with a few plastic tables, and chairs to match. On one table, closely surveyed by a swarm of flies, was a plate with the remains of a meal. Except for the tables, the room was bare, with the exception of a metal shelf in the corner, which held a scant assortment of random mementos, including a timepiece. I inspected the device, which proudly bared a sticker declaring it to be a “high class quartz clock.” But the time keeping mechanism seemed to be broken, as I knew it was not nine o’clock.

My appetite had returned the moment we stepped into the cool room, from the sunshine outside. “I am hungry,” I said to Juan, just realizing it myself. The frame of a woman appeared in the doorway in front of us, lit from the back by the sunshine streaming through opening that led to the interior of the house.

“Hungry? You’ve brought your friend to the right place, Mr. Juan,” the woman said in a song-like tone. “Good afternoon!”

“Good afternoon, Patricia. As you can see, I bring company.” Juan smiled as he strode confidently forward. “This is Kawil, he’s come to live in San Juan, from the United States.”

It was obvious that this was the first this woman had heard of the plan, and Juan’s explanation must have seemed as strange to Patricia as it had sounded to me when I had first been told by the Peace Corps that I would be coming out here, because she couldn’t hide the confusion that such a paradox provoked.

“Come to work here, to San Juan, from the United States?” she gasped, in thorough disbelief. “A gringo? For what?”

It seemed strange to me that this was the first Juan would have mentioned, to this person with whom he seemed to share intimate contact, a new worker at the cooperative, especially one so unusual as I. But perhaps he had shared my reluctance to fully accept that such a moment as this would actually materialize. Under the circumstances I thought it necessary to corroborate Juan’s assertion.

“Like Juan says, I’ve come to work at the cooperative,” I offered blandly.

I mustered a smile as Patricia grabbed my wrist tightly with both her hands. Her unassuming expression now beamed with acceptance and understanding. Her confusion at seeing me in her house now seemed as if it had been feigned, and she hugged me as if I were a long lost family member, finally returned home.

“Come in, come in, meester Juan and meester gringo.” Patricia said as she pulled my arm, leading me through the doorway and further into the house. “How did you say he was called, Juan?”

But Juan didn’t answer. He had already proceeded through the corridor and into the kitchen further inside the house. I followed Patricia through the doorway, where the house opened onto an inner patio. A walkway, covered by a rickety tile roof, sloping down from the main structure of the home, ran along the inside of the house. The cement path led past a series of doors opening onto the patio from individual rooms. To the other side of the walkway was a lush garden, full of flowering plants and trees, many of which bore fruit, some of it now scattered about the ground below.

“Sit down, mister, you are at home now,” Patricia said, as we stepped off the patio into the adjacent kitchen. A rickety wooden door loosely tied to a post was the only element discernibly separating the cooking area from the patio outside. The floors in the kitchen were of packed dirt, enclosed by four smoke-stained adobe walls surrounding a covered rectangular room containing a rudimentary sink, and a large, wood burning stove crafted from mud, in the far corner.

Patricia pointed at a long bench, paired with an old wooden table placed against the wall next to a small window, in an alcove at the entrance to the room. “Our closest friends, like Juan, eat here in the kitchen, so we can keep an eye on them.”

“Mama, two lunches for the new arrivals from La Esperanza,” Patricia yelled into the smoky depths of the kitchen.

By the light of another small window inside, I could see Juan, next to the stove, at the far end of the room. He had taken a corn tortilla from its place on the stovetop, and with it began to scoop from a pot on the countertop. Close to him, a woman of impressive girth attended to another pot, her back turned towards me.

“Leave the tortillas and sit down, you wild Indian,” the woman suddenly cried, noticing Juan behind her, pilfering the stovetop. She turned and swatted dramatically at him with a large wooden spoon, as he hurried over with a smile and sat down next to me, stolen tortilla in hand.

“Doña Aida is very irritable this afternoon, perhaps she missed her siesta,” he said in a loud voice, meant to be overheard. Patricia laughed.

The large woman turned towards the table. Her face was worn with the care of one who has slowly lost youth to time, with little in return. A thick mat of gray hair outlined a dark countenance that spoke of more promising years past.

“And how would I sleep a siesta if a bunch of wild Indians come to eat at any hour they see fit,” the woman exclaimed, shaking the wooden spoon in the air and frowning to emphasize her displeasure.

“That’s Doña Aida Perdido,” Juan said, again speaking loudly. “Her last name is the best indication of her mentality. Doña Aida, this is Kawil, he’ll be working with us in San Juan.”

The large woman shrugged, and turned back to her pots. “Savage Indians,” she murmured, “don’t know what hour is lunchtime.”

Juan continued to laugh as he described the trip to the capital to Patricia. A teenaged girl soon came in to help with the food.

“What did you bring me?” the girl asked, as Juan described a trip to the mall in the capital.

“Nancy!,” Patricia cried, “such indiscretion.” She turned to Juan with a smile. “So what did you bring us?”

Before long the old woman emerged from her kitchen with two small plates of chicken, rice, and beans. She set the plates on the table in front of us, long with a separate plate heaped with corn tortillas. She then glanced quickly at me, turned, and walked back to the stove.

Juan began to eat, and I followed his lead. He ate with a fork in one hand, and a tortilla in the other, taking a bite of tortilla for each accompanying mouthful of food. I tried to imitate him.

Aida walked past the table and out into the hall. “Savage Indian,” she yelled at Juan as she passed, “don’t waste your food!”

Juan laughed. “You know not to serve me onions,” he called after her. I looked down at his plate. He had meticulously picked the small bits of onion out of the rice. “I don’t like onions,” he said, as Aida returned from the corridor with a large pot.

“It’s all there is to be had in this town,” Aida said, unapologetically. “At this hour, one eats what food there is.”

As we finished our meals, the noise of the screen door could be heard from the front room as it swung open.

“Is my lunch ready?” A voice called from the other room as the door slammed closed.

Patricia looked up from her work in the kitchen. “Uncle Anhiel,” she cried, with a smile, as she tossed down the knife she was using to cut vegetables, and hurried towards the front room. Before she could get out of the kitchen, a balding, middle aged man with a graying beard appeared in the archway. He stopped there and straddled the entrance, supporting himself against the pillars on either side.

Juan, sitting next to door, stood up. The man grabbed his hand and shook it energetically, as he smiled broadly.

“So you are back from your trip,” Juan said to him. “I thought you would have been back sooner. How did it go?”

“Well, very well,” said the man, still smiling.

“We expected you days ago,” Patricia said. “Where is my brother Oduber?” asked Patricia.

“He is on his way with the things. We came back from La Esperanza with Santiago. He is just getting some packages out of Santiago’s car,” Anhiel said.

Patricia frowned. “But you went in Oduber’s car? Why did you return with Santiago?”

The man turned his attention towards the table where I was still seated. “And who is this?” Anhiel asked, looking at me.

“This is Kawil,” Juan said. “He has come to work at the cooperative.”

Before more detail could be added, the door opened and crashed shut again, and in hurried a rotund man in his late twenties. He brushed past Anhiel and into the kitchen without looking up. There, he dropped the bags he was carrying onto the floor, and collapsed into a chair next to wall. The old woman continued washing dishes without looking up.

“Hello mami, hello sisters,” he said, turning towards his sister.

“Welcome back to San Juan, Oduber. How was the trip?” asked Patricia. He looked at Anhiel with a puzzled expression, then turned back to his sister.

“Anhiel didn’t tell you? It didn’t go well. The car was stolen from us.”

There was a deep gasp from Patricia. Nancy turned around in concern. Aida continued her dish washing.

Patricia looked at Anhiel, who was standing silently in the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

But she immediately forgot that question, and turned back to Oduber. She already knew the answer. Anhiel, this jovial uncle who had just come in the door, wasn’t eager to begin a controversy by speaking about something unpleasant. Better to ignore it and hope it would go away.

Juan seemed to be in on the plan as well. “We were just on our way to see the house where we will live. So long,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. He slipped by Anhiel and through the archway, discreetly signaling me to follow.



The sun was still blazing down outside, and the streets remained empty. Though the desolate nature of the town purveyed an unwelcoming air, I was glad for it, since I didn’t have any patience left for meeting anyone else just then. We walked downhill, in the direction of the road to La Esperanza. It was no more than two hundred meters, down the road where that secondary street curves abruptly to meet the main road.

“Did that man say that his car was stolen?” I asked Juan, slightly concerned.

“Things like that are always happening to the Perdido family,” Juan replied. “It’s best not to get involved.”

“Here on the corner is Sandro’s store, where you can get most things you might need on a day to day basis,” he said, quickly changing the subject. I glanced over at the store, which looked like the rest of the houses, save a few product advertisements glued on the walls and the door, which was tightly closed.

“It appears to be closed,” I said.

“Our house is down this road on the corner,” Juan said, either not hearing me or choosing not to explain again that it was time for the siesta.

At the next corner a wide street, which seemed heavily travelled, ran back to the main road. There, the street we were following turned quickly from a well travelled and groomed dirt road to a narrow, barely navigable trail littered with small rocks, and rutted from past rainfall. In that condition, it continued downhill to the point where it turned to the right suddenly, to avoid falling of a sudden precipice.

Juan led me to the crumbling façade of an old house just before the turn. Covered in dust, the house looked like it had not been lived in for years. Juan approached one of several splintered old doors that lined the street under the overhang of a decrepit tile roof that had fallen in at the far end of the narrow walkway in front of the house. He reached in his pocket, and extracted a key.

“I just rented this house from Don Luis, who is a member of the board of directors at the cooperative,” he said, as he struggled to force the key into the lock. “He lived here with his family some time ago – but no one has kept the house up since. He has agreed to fix a number of things, such as this lock, but we will need to encourage him, since he lives in La Esperanza, and never comes to San Juan.” With a loud creak the heavy wooden door swung open, revealing a narrow passageway to an interior patio.

Juan pushed his way inside, forcing the door further open with the weight of his shoulder, as he entered the passageway. I followed him across the dust-covered floor, past the empty frame where an inside door had once hung, and onto the rutted concrete floor of the interior patio, where the deteriorating house gave way with little pretext to an overgrown garden in full bloom.

“It looks as if the garden has had its way for many years,” I said with a smile.

Juan reached for a machete leaning against one of the posts holding up the roof over the inner patio, and began to hack haphazardly at the vegetation.

“I have been working on that,” he said, giving up the task almost as suddenly as he had taken it up. He looked over at me as I considered the next thing to catch my attention – the sweeping view of the valley behind the house, with the mountains towering behind.

“The house is a bit run down but we will have it fixed up,” he said, repeating himself apologetically. “It costs only four hundred lempiras a month, so we will save on rent.”

Following what I now understood to be a standard design for its period and place, the house was built as a single line of rooms along the street. I followed Juan as he led me from one room to the next. There was a large room at either end of the house, and two smaller rooms, which were more like hallways, in the middle, one of which we had come through on our way into the house. Each of the four self-contained rooms had an exterior door which opened to the street, and an inside door opening to the patio.

“I’ve put my things in the room down there,” Juan said, pointing to the far corner of the house. “The other room is the one over here,” he said, as he continued to a large room on the other extreme of the patio. It was a dark space, the walls stained from years of rain seeping down them, and the standard layer of dust covering the floor. Inexplicably, there were two separate doors to the patio, the larger one of which had rotted and fallen over, leaving the room exposed to the elements.

“We’ll have to get that door fixed,” Juan said, as he walked down the corridor to his room.

“I meant to get someone to come tidy up,” he continued as he reemerged quickly, with a broom. “I have arranged for Soledad, Doña Aida’s aunt, to lend us a bed for you, until the carpenter can make one. We can pick it up after dinner tonight.”

At that moment, for the first time in the bustle of the trip from the capital, it dawned on me that I would be sleeping there, in that dirty room, with no door, in this dilapidated old house, open to the elements in this wild, deserted place. I wasn’t ready, but there was no other option now.

“I’m glad you thought of the bed,” I said to Juan, as he handed me the broom.

“I’m going to head over to the office and see how things are going,” he said. “I’ve been gone several days, with the trip to the capital.”

“I may spend the afternoon cleaning out the room and arranging my things,” I said, contemplating the single duffle bag I had brought. Having decided to travel as lightly as possible, I had left the rest behind, stored at Doña Marta’s.

“Don Luis has left some furniture – a few desks - that you can use,” Juan said. “He was a school teacher, and it seems he borrowed some of the desks from the school, which now turns out to our advantage.”

I unzipped my duffel bag and took out the hammock we had bought that morning. Juan’s face lit up.

“We can hang the hammock out here, on the patio” he said excitedly, as we stepped out of the room, into the bright sunlight.

“In fact, feel free to hang whatever you want from the walls, without worrying about making holes or anything like that. It’s a benefit of living in a house that is falling apart. I’ve got a hammer and some nails in my room,” he said, as he once again scampered off down the passage.

A long, ample covered area ran the length of the house, down towards Juan’s room, tucked in the opposite corner of the dwelling. Below a high scaffold of exposed wooden beams, an extensive roof of red clay tiles provided cool shelter from the midday sun for that half of the patio. Beyond the shade of that space, the garden had begun its gradual process of reclaiming the sun-bleached cement. An overgrown tangle of weeds and bushes sprung from the planted area in the center of the outer patio, between two large cement slabs. The collection of plants included flowers and fruit vines overloaded with their fresh burdens.

Where the cement of the patio ended, the property began to ease downhill, towards the valley. On that slope, an orchard of mature fruit trees grew. At first glance, I could see an assortment of mangoes, lemons, and avocadoes, in the early stages of development. Framed starkly against that natural green background was the bathroom area, a rickety construction of deteriorated cement and iron housing a medal tube emerging from the top of one wall, which apparently passed for the shower, and second, closed door, behind which I would find the open latrine which was to be used as a toilet. The roughness of the setup seemed quite appropriate given the surroundings.

Further out in the field, beyond the trees, horses grazed the green pastures of the valley. Behind them Cerro Grande began its climb from the valley floor, its green, pine covered slopes slowly giving way to sheer granite cliffs.

“In the distance off to the left,” Juan said, interrupting my survey as he returned with the hammer, “you can just make out a brown line. That is the road to La Esperanza, which we just travelled, as it climbs the mountains.”

Rather than focusing my attention on that distant point, his words brought me back to my immediate surroundings. I walked over to a large, detached room to the side of the patio. Pushing aside another fallen door, I peaked into the darkness.

“That is meant to be a kitchen,” Juan said. “There is a stove in the corner. There is another kitchen on the other side of the patio,” he said waving his hand across the open space.

“But we won’t be using those,” he continued, “since we have Doña Aida to cook for us.” Looking towards Juan drew my attention to a large cement basin in the middle of the patio, half covered in growth from the plants in the center area, upon which he was supporting himself.

“This is the pila, where we gather water. We should keep it full” Juan said, demonstrating the necessity of which he spoke by turning the faucet knob. There was a hiss followed by silence. “When there is water,” he said with a smile, “we collect it here - for the inevitable shortages.”

Juan must have detected a look of further incredulity in my expression. “No water right now,” he observed. “It comes at night, usually,” he said, again smiling apologetically.

“Would you like to accompany me to the office?” He asked. “Or do you prefer to stay here and tidy things up a bit?”

“I think I’ll stay behind for now and prepare for the evening,” I said, trying to veil my concern at spending the night in that house. “We have two years to get our work done at the cooperative.”

“Yes,” Juan said, “two years.” He smiled again, as if he believed only slightly more than I, that staying in San Juan for so long would be possible.

“We have waited for you, like the fields await the rain,” he said. Then he left through the passageway, closing the door behind him. I was alone.