Hurricane Mitch: Eres Malvado
Trip Start
Sep 01, 1999
1
7
17
Trip End
Dec 01, 2000
While glancing down at the blue corn tortilla I was eating, I could not hold back a grin and a chuckle as I thought about the circumstances I was living. On this particular day I had caught a ride in the back of an old Nissan pickup from the market in Nacaome out to the small gravel path leading from a main road that heads into the regional seat. Pedro and I walked from the main road for about a half hour up hills, through corn fields, across streams, and in the midst of an incredible heat and humidity. We arrived to a small community in which the houses were separated by large patches of beans, coffee, and corn and stopped at the first house. We were immediately invited in. It is amazing how that first glance that one gets as one enters an unfamiliar place is soon replaced by a completely different understanding of the surroundings. I suppose my first thoughts were that it looked similar to every other campesino home I had visited. Dirt floors, hammocks tied up out of the way during the day, corn drying in a corner, dogs and chickens coming and going, a constantly burning coal pile in the mud-brick stove in the corner, and sun-worn, tranquil people in hand-me-down clothing. The air inside was stagnant but no worse than the outside breezeless air and actually a bit more bearable with the shade. Sitting just inside the door through which I had instinctively hunched my shoulders and dropped my head to fit, I now began to notice the special characteristics of the house that I had not seen on first glance. To my left in a corner a man was shielding a stand-up bass with three strings as if to protect its shabbiness from the curious gaze of a stranger. Beside him was another man, a little younger, with a guitar from the same origins rigged with a pencil over the second fret to act as a capo. My best guess as to why all guitars in Latin America are capoed up a couple of keys is because either the people tend to sing in higher keys than in US and European cultures or the nasally manner of singing that is customary to these people raises the pitch. On the other side of the room were three dish racks hanging from the rafters. The dish racks were nothing more than the upper most part of a small deciduous tree that had been cut and dried and then hung resourcefully so that the clipped and cleaned branches would act as hooks from which to hang mugs and pots. In the one hammock that had been left down a boy was lying face down so that he could peer at me through the holes left by the twine. We had come simply to pass a message along, but it would turn into a day-long affair because of the travel, the time spent in the home, and the humanity we were to share. After the brief salutations the musicians called over three others, including the boy in the hammock, and a bongo drum and a tube filled with dried beans were added to the band. They sang two songs for us about the Hurricane that is about to celebrate its one year anniversary. It had not occurred to me until now that although the Hurricane was destructive, deadly and costly, it was also the most memorable thing that has happened to these people for a long time, if not there entire lives. They speak about it in terms that I associate with myth or crime, and the vocabulary of Hurricane Mitch is going to flavor their music and art for years.
