El Pital
Dinner with the locals in Honduras is always a wonderful experience, albeit a humbling one. Tonio is my current landlord and next door neighbor. Despite his short comings as a builder (being three months overdue on my house and all that) he’s been nothing short of lovely to me. I forgive him for all that (and for waking me up at 5.30 every morning) because he brings me limes, tomatoes and mangos from his finca. He also makes his daughter give me tortilla lessons and sends his dog to sleep on my porch at night (to protect me apparently). Some nights we sit outside chatting and drinking pop and he asks me questions like “do the people in England know how to cook rice?” Then he makes us fried chicken, tortillas and refried beans before going to work at the local school where he spends every night sleeping on the floor as a night watchman. After dinner we all went to sit outside in a bizarre collection of chairs and hammocks chatting and trying to cure Tonio’s grandson of his fear of the hand sized moths flying all around us. The house is simple, three rooms with dirt floors; a kitchen, a bedroom – shared by the other six members of his family and a spare bedroom where the family host visiting volunteers. It’s amazing to look at what little they have and how much of it they are willing to share. The kindness of Hondurans never ceases to amaze me.