An American Fourth of July and Glimpsing Nicaragua

Ranae: Happy Fourth of July!

We were invited to attend the American Independence Day celebration at the US Soto Cano Air Force base about 1 hour north of Tegucigalpa near a city called Comayagua, which was one of the old capitals of Honduras. Anticipating the event brightened the first half of our week. By Wednesday, the children were as excited as puppies with sparklers tied to their tails. They woke up eager and early on Wednesday and busied themselves to prepare for our day out. We drove to the US embassy in Teguc, parked, and boarded the bus to Soto Cano. The day was happily filled with true blue American experiences, which the children will detail below. We felt like we were really on American soil. At one point, Jack said, “I forgot I was in Honduras!” And so it was. Maybe some of the feeling came from being able to understand all the conversations around us. Maybe some of the feeling was the freedom that comes from feeling at ease to move about as we please in safety and health. Clean restrooms, familiar traditions, fantastic facilities, lots of gringos, chocolate chip cookies, fireworks—aah, America! I left the day with a deeper gratitude for my country, with some of my longing for home satisfied, with a surer sense of delight in my family and in the opportunities that are ours because of our heritage.

ABRAHAM: The fireworks at the Fourth of July made Calla cry, and they were very loud and very big. There was an army helicopter, and it was very awesome. We could go inside it in the back and in the cockpit. Click on the picture and you can see the children in better detail.

We got to put on the helmet.
There was a very big fire truck and we could get in it and in the driver’s spot. There was this thing that was probably as big as a dining table and it was called a smoke house. It had stinky smoke (I think like candle smoke; it smelled like candle smoke). It was made out of wood and we could go inside of it. And there was a train. (It wasn’t really a train, it was kind of like a tractor with a little trailer that you could sit on, and then it had a roof and it had seats in the middle of it that you could sit in.) ABRAHAM

Jack: Happy Fourth of July, everybody! We thought we were going to ride on a really nice charter bus from the embassy to the air force base. But we didn’t. We went on an old school bus and two of its window panes were missing. On the way home, we were driving on a part of the highway that was really bad, where some ladrones [robbers] could ambush us, so we drove with some Humvees escorting us. There were also some big Suburbans that drove with us all the way back to the embassy.

I liked to jump off the diving board at the awesome pool, because the pool was so deep. There was free cotton candy, popcorn, and snow cones. I got three snow cones—one of blueberry, one of orange, and one of strawberry. I gave the orange one to Calla because she wanted it and I didn’t really like it. I ate two little cups of flan. Flan is a pudding thingy that tastes really good, and is squishy.

Yesterday we went to Nicaragua, and I crossed the border illegally a couple of times. I have a video, and there were a lot of big loud trucks. The border was just a little chain on the ground, and Henry moved the border between Honduras and Nicaragua by kicking the chain. On the way home, we stopped at Pizza Hut, and all of a sudden it started to rain really hard. The pizza was really good.

Henry: At the base there was a Blackhawk helicopter. They let you go into the cockpit and put on the helmet, and there were a lot of buttons. One of the gadgets was a little blue circle, and it showed you all the aircrafts in the sky. We also got to go in the back, where there were a bunch of seats and a machine that you can pull people out of the ocean or the jungle with. The helicopter had giant propellers. It was awesome!

We also saw a lot of Humvees. Some were camouflaged, and some were just brown. We got to go inside a fire truck that they use to put out the airplane fires.

Does this look familar, Eng. Jones?

The driver’s seat was in the middle of the cab, and it was giant, and the front was slanted up. I got dressed up in all the fireman’s gear, with the helmet and pants and jacket and axe.

The swimming pool was very deep. When I jumped in from the diving board, I didn’t touch the bottom. I only touched the bottom of the pool once or twice (and I jumped off the diving board at least 15 times). Then it started raining, and the lifeguard blew his whistle and we all had to get out. We made little dressing rooms out of our towels to change back into our clothes, because all the normal dressing rooms were full. After swimming we got free popcorn.

There were these stilt walkers who were at least 8 ½ feet tall.

They were dancing and running alongside of the “train.” There were also four bounce houses. One was giant and the other three were small. There was this DJ dude, and he totally took requests. We listened to “Fireflies,” “The Scientist,” and “Waka Waka.”

We also played pool and foosball. I beat Jack in pool. [This detail is contested. Supposedly the game was truncated prematurely.] On the way home from the Fourth of July, in the escort Humvee, there were soldiers with machine guns. If bad guys did come, they would have jumped out and started fighting and called for back-up. They were right behind us, and there were turrets on the top of the Humvees (but there were no guys at the turrets). Once we got out of the bad part of the road, they pulled off the side of the road with their flashing lights and went back to the base, and we were left alone.

On Saturday, we didn’t know what to do, so all of the sudden my mom came up with the idea to go to a different country! That day we went to Nicaragua, and I crossed the border of Nicaragua illegally! I thought it was cool that I moved the border between two countries by moving a chain. On our trip, we saw a giant tree with a bunch of nests of oropendula birds.

They weave nests that are like bags, which hang down from the branches of the trees. They have a really weird song. Also, on the way home we stopped by Pizza Hut, and there was a “Play Place,” and it was actually a good play place. I really liked that. (But some of the parts stunk really bad.) Also on the way back, Abe, Aspen, and I had to get out and walk 100 yards down the highway because we were being bad in the car.

Aspen: When I went in the helicopter, I put on the survival vest and the bullet-proof vest at the same time, and it was super heavy. It weighed about 26 pounds.

It was really cold on the bus ride home. The army Humvees followed us as an escort because the highways were really bumpy and dangerous. I thought the Humvees were really cool. At the embassy, Jack and Henry had to go to the bathroom, and a guard escorted them there.

We also went Nicaragua, but we didn’t really go in. The border was just a chain, and I stepped over it. On the way back we saw a nanny (goat) and her kid.

Ranae: At the end of our week, we found ourselves with an empty Saturday. We decided to go get our passports stamped in Nicaragua and do a quick trip down into the country, since the border is only about an hour and a half away.

Today we invited Reiniery and his family to join us for dinner. When we have Honduran friends come for dinner, we like to make homemade wheat bread, chicken, sautéed vegetables, and avocados. We set out peanut butter and jam, too, and everyone makes his own sandwich. Sometimes they put together unexpected combinations. Today we all giggled when Reiniery’s son Cesar combined chicken salad with mustard and quesillo (a salty white cheese) and orange marmalade.

Stuart: The Fourth of July fest was great. Though I do not work for the State Dept. because the Fulbright award is administered though them, we have gotten to participate in a few things that "normal" expats don't get to do. That has been a great aspect of this trip. The connection to the US has been reassuring in a country where security is something I constantly think about.
The bus ride was authentic and very bumpy. I had contracted (I think) a parasite which wasn't easy on the bowels. However, on the 2-hour ride up and 2-hour ride back there were no problems, for which I felt very blessed. The issues returned just right after we got back to the house.
I took some antiparasite medicine (2 pills in the AM) on Saturday and seem to be much better now. I am hoping that situation is resolved!

We have been wanting to go to some of the other countries of Cen. Am. but since we don't own our vehicle, we have to get permission from the University and others (lots of paperwork). Well, we finally got permission. So we are trying to figure out how to go places in the limited time we have left. We'll see if we can actually get somewhere!

Passing from Zamorano to Nicaragua, we pass through the main large town, Danli.

A good friend of ours spent time as a missionary in Danli more than 30 years ago. We spent some time there remembering him and wondering if he bought mangos at that fruit market.

When we arrived at the boarder of Honduras and Nicaragua, the immigration offical from Honduras, for some reason, couldn't understand what I wanted to do: Just cross over, get a Nicaragua stamp in my passport and come back. I explained it a few times. I have even explained it, in Spanish to others, they understood fine. So clearly, it wasn't my Spanish. In any case, "if I helped him, he would help me" and we could have gone through the border, no problem. I decided I didn't want to "help" him and didn't really need him to help me, after all. So we walked up and the Nicaraguan Homeland Security detail (1 guy in a polo shirt and ball-cap,) at the border let us cross over the small chain to be in Nicaragua. He was very pleasant and talked with us for a while about the US and why we were in Honduras. The border is certainly porous and had we been really motivated, we could have just hiked over through the coffee plantations surrounding the border crossing.

I have found that doing one's duty, even when you don't want to very much or you are reluctant to do it, still brings blessings. E. Eyring talks about doing things now (when you're young) that are hard, so you can strengthen your faith. Then, when you are older, you will have greater ability to do things that are hard for you because you are old and more decrepit. He has noticed that things are harder for him now, that he is in his late 70s, than before.