The In Crowd

One of my favorite things about living in Honduras is that it’s kinda like living in a movie, as you never know what is going to be around the corner, and you always end up being the star of the oddest situations.

Last night we were riding our bikes home from dinner when I needed to stop by the pulpería for some breakfast stuff for the next morning. Pulperías are a staple of the Honduran local economy, they are pretty much corner stores that one finds scattered all over the place. The range in size from an extra room in someone’s house where they sell a scarce and odd selection of consumer goods to a miniature supermarket (hence my favorite local oxymoron, ¨the mini-super¨) with a variety of products assembled together that transcends any designation of complimentary goods. They also function as local areas of congregation, where the patrons of that specific pulpería (everyone has a particular pulpería that they prefer) gather to gossip and socialize. We tend to bounce around town to different pulperías, as we are not bound by this rigid social custom, and each one tends to have one or two things that you can’t find anywhere else in town.

It is with this context that I rolled into the pulpería down the street from our house last night, known amongst Crystal and I to be a goldmine of certain items that they always have, for Crystal this means bananas, for me this means tons of random rock hits from bands like Blondie on the stereo. Last night there was a group of men hanging out having drinks in the pulpería that had the gruff appearance of people that one would not generally want to pick a fight with, nor ask for personal hygiene advice. I tend to avoid these people in regular circumstances, as I oft find that we have drastically different worldviews, and because I am a coward. However last night that option was removed as I drew a lot of attention by being the only gringo in the place at that time, and they literally backed me into a corner near the nonfunctioning standup arcade machine and began to practice their single lines of English on me. A reasonable comparison would be to walk into a bar looking for change for the meter and find yourself surround by Hells Angels.

We had a conversation that hit on many points of interest, ranging from sports to local economics, to international politics to music. At first I was concerned that this was all a well organized plot to steal my bike which was parked outside, but I gradually realized that this cultural exchange was in earnest, and that my bike was safely absorbing rain. I soon realized that they all were huge fans of rock music, as opposed to the other half of young Hondurans that prefer reggaetón. All of a sudden they started pulling scraps of paper out of their wallets and asking me to translate the titles of songs by the likes of Green Day and Ozzy Osborne which they had written phonetically in Spanish. It also became apparent that they all loved the band Coldplay, especially for their ¨beautiful music.¨ At this point, the guy behind the counter threw on ¨A Rush of Blood to the Head¨, Coldplay´s second album, and they all looked to me to do some simultaneous translation of the lyrics into Spanish. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by every roughneck in the joint, and we all sang the first half of the album together. A reasonable comparison would be to walk into a bar looking for change for the meter, being surrounded by the Hells Angels, and then singing show tunes together.

This went on for an hour and a half before I managed to concoct a weak excuse to leave using the rain and the hour as an excuse. They quickly pointed out that I only lived three houses away, roundly refuting my weak argument; yet I managed to leave eventually. I promised that I would return to pick up where we left off in the near future, and the next time I wander in to find these guys, I fully expect to be received with open arms and additional scraps of paper.