Dan Mayer's Blog

We get our things together and hope into a cab that takes us to the bus station that will bring us to the town she has been working in, La Esperanza. When we arrive Erin and the cabby haggle over the price, and Erin says taxis don’t cost that much to the bus station and the cabby explains she has to pay that because she is white. What people in Honduras call the gringo tax. We grab some water and food while waiting for our bus, which is hot, dirty, and gross. We then spend the next 5 hours or so building up some of the most surreal tension imaginable just talking, holding hands, and looking at each other.

Traveling invokes so many thoughts and feelings that it is an amazing experience to go through, but almost impossible to reflect on and get the same feelings and emotions that were evoked while looking out the window of a bus traveling across a foreign country. When I travel I always wish more people could afford to travel the world. I think it forces people to challenge and think about their notions of other countries, cultures, and people. If everyone in the world could really meet and have a meal with families in many other countries, it would be infinitely hard to support or to go to war against people. I think travel and communication helps with compassion and understanding.

One thing I always find while traveling around in foreign countries is how often I feel guilt. I feel guilt for all I have, all I have been born with, all I have wasted. I always feel some need to simplify my life, get rid of some of the excesses, be happier with what I do have, enjoy all the nice things I can afford instead of asking why I can’t afford the even nicer version of the things I have. Honduras was no exception, seeing some of the towns with thatched roofs and children flocking the buses trying to sell snacks and water and the poverty as we traveled from village to town. One thing amazing to note was they actually work with and use literally the things we throw away, working off our waste. A large portion of their public transportation system is made up of old broken down and fixed up Americans yellow school buses. The whole concept of how so many of our buses ended up in Honduras as a normal part of their lives blows my mind.

A Honduran Market, and a dirt road we walked like 45 miles on (okay maybe 1)...

Another thing that always fills my head when I travel is that I need to travel more. Reading, talking, and following news does nothing in comparison to at least seeing another culture and getting to have even brief communications with people that live and work in those countries. My list of places I really want to see just grew while traveling, while looking out the window during any of our numerous bus trips. That list and my thoughts about why I want to visit so many other countries is clearly the topic of another blog post, but I had really forgotten how important traveling internationally is to me. It all swarmed back so quickly and vividly during this trip, that I was kind of shocked by my changing priorities and feeling. Give me less money and more vacation days!

A goal I have basically been failing my whole life is learning to speak a foreign language. I have always wanted to be fluent or near fluent in another language. My language of choice has always been Spanish, but I have literally failed to achieve that goal, failing 2nd semester Spanish two in high school. I remember my few lines which can get me by with food, water, bathrooms, and very simple questions. I really don’t want to die without learning a foreign language and this whole trip, watching my girlfriend communicate and help many Hondurans and that she could be quickly better accepted just by being able to communicate in Spanish even if they knew English was amazing to me. How can I ever really claim to understand some culture or group, if I can’t understand anything the people say except hello?

I feel my parents have really helped instill a sense of goodwill and helping those less fortunate than I. Quickly after getting my first job I began giving significant monthly donations to groups I wanted to support. Though traveling through Honduras seeing such a large amount of uneducated people and poverty makes you consider what you’re doing to help. How much help can you give and where? Should I really people donating to help put Americans through college, when most Hondurans aren’t finishing much lower levels of schooling? Would my money at least go a lot further towards helping people in impoverished countries like this? Do I have a larger duty help my local people in my community over those in another country? In the end it puts so many questions in your head about how you can help, what you can do to help, where and how to start that it is overwhelming. The only common theme on helping is that I haven’t really been doing enough, and that I am currently not really in the position to help. It makes me feel bad that I currently find myself living on a budget and reducing all my costs cutting nearly all the money I give to charity, but still living 200x better than most of the people in this country.

Erin leading the way to our hotel room during a power outage.

I was amazed by some difficulties you would face while trying to do business in the country. Countries that can’t support companies and growth end up with high unemployment and weak economies. While I was visiting power was lost to the entire city numerous times. There were really no street names or addresses. The country has no mail system. I mean how could really expect to start a business without a functional communications system? Can you run a large business with no reliable way to send or receive goods? I was amazed to find that you couldn’t buy stamps or mail things from the airport. I bought a post card, then asked to buy a stamp, they didn’t have any, I checked every shop and asked numerous locals and found that no one had stamps. I then realized I hadn’t even seen a place to mail the postcard if I could have found a stamp. A government that can’t keep a postal system together has some serious failings. Amazingly though a system of sorts survives. I was amazed to hear that basically you could send letters just describing things like the 3rd house after the hospital that is yellow in the town of La Esperanza. Sent from another country or city this letter would arrive. The letters get placed on the buses used for public transportation between cities, when they arrive in cities kids on bikes grab the letters and deliver them for tips. It is kind of ingenious how the people work around a system of little government support. I guess for awhile I had thought coming to Honduras and starting a business must be great, no where to go but up, but with out being able to rely on communication systems, power, or government it is easy to see why it would be hard for large corporations to invest into growing their business in a country with these problems.

Starting in the top left moving clockwise: Many of the women Erin helped. All the food and the nutrition sign teaching them about the importance of eating during pregnancy. Erin teaching the group in spanish. Erin leading a talk for the debetic club she helped form at the hospital.

The trip focused my thoughts on how important life and living it is. You can’t waste time away not enjoying your life, if you are not happy you better make some significant changes and get happy. I am not happy when I am not in love and I am not happy when I don’t have goals. I have found these to really be some of the most important things in my life. Luckily I am currently working relentlessly towards a goal and I am in love with someone who forces me to travel and explore the world. I love that my girlfriend felt she needed to do something about all the helping, poverty, and world relations enough to go and live in another country helping people. I think Erin and the peace core in general has done more in Honduras and countries like it to spread goodwill for America than most people could ever realize. In a world with increasingly violent terrorism and distrust towards our country, these are the people changing minds. No one in La Esperanza really could have ill will for our country and our people. There are so many volunteers helping with women’s shelters, hospitals, homebuilding, education, and other things in that city that the people truly love us Gringos. Honduras as a whole might still be scary with a powerful drug trade and full of corruption, but seeing what small groups of volunteers have done in La Esperanza is truly an inspiration, and it certainly made me question the value of some of the ways I have spent my life, and hopefully has changed the course of how I will spend it in the future.

My thoughts above aren’t truly specific to Honduras, but more of traveling, poverty, and my life. After all that perhaps you were thinking wow this must have been a horrible trip, actually quite the opposite. I had an amazing time, it did make me think a lot, it did evoke a lot of emotions, but I also got to see smiling faces as my girlfriend helped people in the hospital. I got to have an amazing multi course meal and beer for about $5 dollars. I hiked around town, waterfalls, miles of dirt roads trying to find the waterfall, and visited Roatan (a touristy island which is as much like amazing American resorts or amazing resorts in Mexico and nothing like what you would think of a 3rd world country). Honestly the only parts of Honduras I really disliked getting shots to travel because of disease, gross dirty busses, and it taking a full day to get from any point A to point B.

Fun Animals in Honduras you bet, I got to play with a Monkey, but he liked Erin more

Scuba Diving in Roatan

Scuba diving in Roatan is amazing. Apparently it is a world leader in training divers, it is easy to see why, it has to be the cheapest place in the world to get a world class diving certification. I mean, a large percentage of people we dived with were working on adding to their diving certs, and the dives just for fun, were insanely cheap. Scuba diving sucks because it is an expensive sport (if you can call it that), but if your going to pay to dive, might as well be here, great diving and it is cheap. Unfortunately, since it seems all the restaurants are owned by rich gringos on the island, the amazing meals are actually resort style prices. I really can’t complain about some $50 a night dinners after spending next to nothing wondering through the country for 7 days, it is just unfortunate that in the end I probably spent more money in the last 3 days and it ended up mostly in the hands of gringos and not native Hondurans. Besides a wonderful place to dive, there were fun bars, dancing, and a father daughter band which was pretty unique to see (We also met the daughter child, while having a drink and watching the sunset over the ocean). I can give a huge recommendation to Roatan even if you want to skip the whole 3rd world country part of Honduras, it is cheaper than Mexico and actually quite a bit nicer and friendlier.

Erin and I sharing a kiss in the sunset before leaving Honduras. The final picture shows no matter where you go or what you do you can't forget the stupidy of modern society as Paris Hilton invades my thoughts in the Honduran airport before heading home.

For the possibly 3 people that would still be reading this in the world. Leaving Honduras was hard. After spending 10 days getting to re know someone you love, and getting to spend all you time together. A plane flight and a car ride will separate you again for a short while, you with return to a heavy work schedule, you won’t be living with each other anymore as you were before Honduras. Spending 10 days with some one you love with almost no stress or worries can change the way you feel, the way you think, and the way you enjoy life. Dropping back to many tasks and long filled days I wonder why we do this to ourselves. Why is it with all the technological gains in our societies that people spend more time working than they did in the past? I don’t know but having a bit simpler life for 10 days makes it hard to really say we really hard to say we have made a ton of progress in the world. I have had other trips truly effect who I am, and this is why traveling abroad is so amazing. My trip or vacation to Honduras with Erin was truly an experience I will never forget, and even now six months later I can think about vividly.