A Thief in the Night, Pt.5

Nacaome Catholic Church

I reach Nacaome at 9PM, glad to find the internet cafe still open. I post a quick update on facebook to let those who follow the project know what had happened and that I still did not have my passport.

Steven, the intrepid traveler I met at the border earlier in the day,  wrote a comment on the website, offering an excellent suggestion. He said that while he wasn’t a believer and wasn’t praying, he was definitely sending thoughts out to the cosmos for my support and suggests that I simply return to the place where the incident occurred, during the day, tell the villagers about what had happened, and offer to pay a $10-$20 finder’s fee for the person who could “find” my passport.

The idea is brilliant, actually. I reply that our thoughts are our beliefs, and I am glad he believed that he could find a solution to my problem.

Looking on the US Embassy website, I would normally have to pay $100 and wait 2 weeks for a new one. Since tomorrow is Friday, and I won’t have time to get the paperwork in order, not to mention the money, it makes perfect sense to return.

More importantly, I determine that I will use the opportunity to apologize to the woman and her family who wouldn’t let me stay with them before the incident occurred. Though not superstitious, I believe that saying what I said was not consistent with who I am, my commitments to myself, my God, this project, and to the people that I meet along the way. I believe that the reality that I created was the reality that I projected, in this case towards her.

I write you from Nacaome, Honduras, which is like many other cities I have been seeing as of late. Fairly nondescript, cement buildings everywhere, seen as superior to adobe for their permanence. The streets are no longer cobbled, planners now prefer interlocking geometrical cement blocks to pave the way.

Many newer cities built up along the Panamerican Highway are likewise not centered around a park adjacent to the Catholic Church or cathedral. Instead , they find their heart in the markets and bus terminals connecting them to other cities, built for function, without imagination. The walls of homes no longer thick adobe, the load bearing beams no longer wood, the roofs no longer clay. You still see homes like this, but more in very rural places. There windows are small, they are doorless, and in the cities, these old adobes are more often abandoned to the elements from which they were built. Weeds now grow from their roofs (where the roofs have not fallen in) and rooms are now gardens to birds and light.

Leaving the cafe, I make my way down the street to look for a place to sleep, the constant unknown in my life at the moment. I pass a church service, and having made a promise a few days earlier to actually stop at every church service I see, I park myself outside on the wall and decide to just listen at first. Feeling a bit awkward, I decide I might keep my promise and go in in a minute.

I hear a woman inside, who the congregation refers to as “prophet”, preach using repetitious phrases, asking what the importance is of the name of God, what is the significance of “Yo soy”?

A man dressed in white comes outside, looks me up and down, and calls back inside to the church, “hey, there is a gringo out here!”

The “prophet” tells him “great! invite him inside!”

I find a seat in the back. There are not many people, maybe 25 total. The men and women are divided, women and girls on the left, men and boys on the right, everyone wearing white shirts, dresses, or tops.

A baby falls on to the tile bumping his head and starts to scream, the “prophet” motions to bring him forward, casting out the pain “In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the naaaame of Jesus”.  Using her hand, she gestures as though she is pulling something out of the child. The entire congregation works up into a frenzy, making similar gestures, calling out “in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the naaame of Jesus”. Each has a  slight addition of their own to each one of her call-outs, with their voices slightly below hers, amplified by a PA.

The effect is bizzare. Soon there are 25 people all doing the same thing, calling out Jesus’ name, pulling evil from their foreheads and hearts, fingers pinched as though pulling malevolent spirits via string. I notice some of the boys going through the motions, they too are speaking the words, but their fingers…slightly more limp, they have less confidence in what they see and conform to around them. Perhaps like other adolescent boys their age, they turn around to see what the others do, and if someone else is looking who is not doing the same.

Cont´d…