The Slack Life

“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” -Luke 12:24 

The Dilemma 
Most people work. Some save a portion of their money, put it into retirement accounts, invest it in the stock market or real estate, build equity, etc. Many live paycheck to paycheck. A select few are independently wealthy. Then there are the homeless.
Everybody worries.
But consider the ravens.
 We don’t have any ravens to consider here in Central America. There are some rather large blackbirds, however, namely the great-tailed grackles, which aren’t of the same Corvus family but still, they are worth considering. 

They’re scavengers and thieves.

I think that deep down, most people either don't believe Jesus’s teaching on the subject of worrying, or perhaps they don’t give it much thought. It would just be another thing to worry about, right?. Bible teachers sum up these verses as a simple admonition against anxiety. They're careful to tell us not to be stupid, to work hard, make plans, save money, invest. Just don’t worry. Jesus's disciples, however, took His teaching more literally. They dropped everything and followed Him. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop them from worrying about their position in the organizational chart of the kingdom. Everybody worries; everybody is on the scale of 1 to 10. There are no zeros.

A peaceful sunset from the dock of the Rio Coco Cafe

The Semi-Relaxed
I’m on Utila, watching people chill hard. They come into the Rio Coco Cafe in various states of partial relaxation. A few are wealthy, but most are European backpackers who work for a season and stretch their wanderings by living on 88 cent baleadas. Some work on the island and chill part time.

 
We are workers. We wake up at five, shower, dress, read our bibles, and pray until six, then we set up shop, which takes about forty-five to fifty minutes. If we hurry, we can get in a truncated team prayer for peace that surpasses all understanding while the first customers arrive and rattle the lock at the gate to see if we can open a little bit early this morning.

 
These early birds are the master dive instructors, tech people, administrators, and social organizers who staff the dive schools on our end of the island. They are in a hurry to get their coffee in to-go cups—paper, not plastic please and no plastic cap either. They worry about the environment. They are our peeps, the ones who are on the island long-term. We care about them. Some mornings they look a tad hung over from the parties which seem to be part of the dive school curriculum. Other mornings they got their game faces on: time to bring it ... again. Our purpose is to serve them, because they will be serving other people all day long. Can we ease their worried mind?

Most of the people who walk into Rio Coco Cafe are visitors on Utila. 

We ask them, "How long you been here?" 

They reply, “Oh about four months … no wait … a year. Wow!” 

I find the majority are from Canada or Northern Europe—particularly Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and England. Perhaps they’re escaping the cold. They’re not returning immediately. Rather, from here they are heading to Nicaragua, Ecuador, or the Panama Canal, hoping they can crew on a private yacht and continue traveling. We barely know their names but chat with them as though we were best friends. This is an idiosyncrasy of paradise culture which of course everybody navigates without confusion. We're fashionably chill. But what if they really need a friend?  We would be there for them. Love is patient. That's the first thing the Apostle Paul says about love (1 Corinthians 13:4). Sometimes love is there but goes unclaimed. People don’t see it because they're looking in other directions. They are seeking, which is just another form of worry.

A Pastor's Burden
Pastor Wilson lives across the street. He’s got a nice house, powder blue with white trim and fancy columns along the length of the front porch like an antebellum plantation. It’s almost always shut up, the blinds drawn. Inside, it is quiet--artificial air and artificial light. Outside, it is blazing hot, and on the rag-tag street below, clusters of shirtless foreign dudes saunter by, waving beer cans and laughing with bikini clad dudettes. Pastor Wilson’s house sits right on top of Utila’s main street, which is so narrow it fits only noisy type vehicles—motorcycles, four-wheelers, and caponeras (tuk tuks). These weave wildly around revelers who don’t seem to notice how close they've come to losing their funny bones. 

Once in a while, a pale man with stooped posture emerges from the powder blue house. Wilson is his first name; he’s a Howell, I think, or a Cooper, descended from Cayman Islanders who were descended from pirates. Pastor Wilson emerges and is off on his scooter. He is careful not to hit anyone. He drives slowly, stern-faced and sober, his gaze is straight ahead. Music blares from Underwater Vision, a dive school across the street:

She’s up all night till the sun
I’m up all night to get some
She’s up all night to have fun
I’m up all night to get lucky

Utila has become a destination for people playing pirate before the horrified gaze of the descendants of real pirates. Pastor Wilson has a tremendous burden for his island home, which he shared recently at church. When he unstrapped his Squire guitar (he and Sister Ruth are all that’s left of the worship band) and trudged over to the pulpit, he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes (I thought, “Is this the only man on Utila who still carries a handkerchief?”). He was weeping. 

“It’s alright to weep,” he said. “Jesus wept.” 

Then he read from the passage in which Jesus wept over Jerusalem: And they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.  This, he warns, will be Utila’s fate.

Pastor Wilson worries a lot, and so does his church. You can tell by the kind of songs people sing during the “Specials” portion of the service. Old country songs; songs bemoaning troubles here on earth and yearning for the sweet by-and-by. The church doors remain closed during service because of the air conditioning, but it feels like they have shut themselves in for protection.

The Slack Life
Three-legged taxis called tuk-tuks have stenciled the slogan, “THE SLACK LIFE” on their vinyl awnings. What does that mean? They promote an image that belies their own reality. Long lines of them scurry like leaf-cutter ants along the waterfront road from sunup till late at night, carrying their fares. They are the Ants and their clients the Grasshoppers of Aesop's fable. They are busy, their clients idle. These ants are Spanish speakers who have come to Utila fleeing poverty on the mainland. They live in the “Spanish” ghetto of Camponado, work hard at legal and extra-legal endeavors which may include hooking up the grasshoppers with professional women or their drug of choice. Just like in the fable, the ants scorn the grasshoppers when they run out of money. It’s true, idleness causes future regrets. Procrastination intensifies anxiety even before hunger sets in. But Aesop’s ant was pretty cold. Will these hustlers, who work today so they may eat tomorrow, enter into His rest? They too are anxious.

Sirius Dominos
A table made out of shredded plywood and lumber scraps sits out on the street in front of Dorel’s house. Unoccupied, it looks like junk, but the garbage truck never takes it away. It’s not supposed to. The Domino Table has been there forever. It is a venerable institution and one of the last remaining relics of the laid-back life that was Utila before the tourists arrived. On most mornings and practically every afternoon, you will find a half dozen-or-so men sitting on crates, throwing down their ivory bones with great force. The smack can practically be heard all the way down to Bush’s store, letting everyone know there’s a game in progress. The guys pay absolutely no heed to the tumult speeding by. They've been playing dominos on this street since before it was even paved, back when the word tuk-tuk referred not to a taxi but to a fisherman’s dory with a 16 HP Wisconsin or Briggs & Stratton gasoline engine and a discarded flip-flop for a stuffing box. Folks nowadays don’t even know what a stuffing box is. Google it, hahaha.

I watch these guys playing. They are in a zone--nothing distracts them from the game. Surely they are not anxious about what they will eat (duh, FISH) or what they will wear (same duds all week). They certainly aren’t worried about shaving anytime soon. Are they living the life Jesus, or as they say, “the Good Lord,” recommends? Have they considered the ravens?

The fallen-down front steps of Dorel’s house serve as bleachers. Dorel and three others sit on them, content to watch. Dorel is a gentle soul. I met him back in the ’90’s when he came out to the Mosquito Coast with a Utilian mission team. He accompanied my daughter Jessica to the village of Kruta and was of great help to her because her physical challenges made it difficult for her to get in and out of dories and walk on swampy ground. It saddens me a little to see the deteriorated condition of Dorel’s house, but he doesn’t seem to be too worried about it.

  
Later, I run into him on the street and ask him, “Dorel, how come you’re always watching the game? Don’t you ever play?”

“Well Mr. Tom,” he drawls in his Utilian dialect, “I use to play but I don’t no mo-ore. Dey gets too SEE-ree-US. Yes Mr. Tom. Dey gets too SEE-ree-US.”

   

Free Falling
Our next door neighbors at the Rio Coco Cafe run Freedive Utila. They are all about teaching people to reduce their anxiety level. Free diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on divers' ability to hold their breath until resurfacing rather than on the use of a breathing apparatus such as scuba gear. The home page on their website reads, “Freediving is pure. You take one breath and experience the ocean in its natural silent state. Your heartbeat slows while your body learns to trust the experience, and the mind remembers what it always knew.”  The trick to free diving is relaxing, slowing your heartbeat. So I went and signed up.

Jon and Chris are the two instructors. They are both super-mellow, but in different ways. Chris, the Australian, is the master of every situation. He knows what to do. I watched him coaching a stressed-out girl how to alleviate an inner ear problem. It impressed me the way he could describe exactly what she was feeling and give an instruction with absolute assurance, predicting what would happen next in the deep recesses of her body. Almost Psalm 139-ish. It was like he knew. Chris is like the calm surface of the ocean at daybreak, hiding all its dark secrets before the trades awaken.

 
He and Jon came over for supper one time after Tommy and I caught a mess of tuna. Because he is Australian, I commented that I had just rented The Sapphires—one of my favorite movies (about a singing family of Aboriginal girls who get transformed into a powerful Motown group and go off to entertain American troops in Viet Nam)—to show to my teammates at the Cafe. Chris smiled and recommended another Australian movie—Rabbit Proof Fence—which I declared I had wanted to see for some time. I mentioned Crocodile Dundee, expecting guffaws, but an expression of great pleasure rolled like a tarpon on the tanned surface of his face.

“Paul Hogan,” he smiled. “We Australians are cheeky like that. I suppose we get a kick out of foreigners thinking places are dangerous.”

     
“You do remind me of Crocodile Dundee,” I replied. “When he went to Manhattan and tipped his hat to every person on the street.”

Yes, definitely, if you’ve seen Crocodile Dundee, you have a good idea of Chris’s persona. Jon, on the other hand, relinquishes his anxiety by showing his vulnerability. It’s not that he lacks confidence; he intentionally goes beyond his comfort zone in order to expand its boundaries. This is how he approaches free diving and life. He takes a leap out there, then he abides until the fear is gone. It never comes back.

My work schedule didn’t allow me to finish the free diving course, but I learned a lot from them. Yet I am not convinced that eliminating stress by learning to relax your mind and slow your heartbeat underwater is applicable to every other area of your life. The Flow Yoga instructor says, “Graceful transitions on the mat lead to graceful transitions in life.” On the other hand, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8). The author of Hebrews also states that only Jesus could set us free from our most primal fear:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14,15). 

Could something rock Chris’s or Jon’s world and send them back to square one?

Tex is the main guy at Freedive Utila, the founder and Master. We met him last year, but he’s not here right now. Everyone at the cafe liked him a lot. He even stayed at Rio Coco house to safeguard it for us when the cafe shut down for a few months. But his girlfriend got island fever and went back to Brazil. The Urban Dictionary defines island fever as “the realization that you are stuck on whichever island you are living and not going anywhere.” So he went after her, presumably to try and bring her back. We’re all rooting for him, for them. Trouble, man, it happens.

Woe Is Me
Me, I have plenty to worry about. I don’t exempt myself. Just google “economic collapse” and see what comes up. There is a tangible awareness that the global economy is in a precarious condition and that the United States in particular, with its recent third world electoral campaigns, is going down. The Bible doesn’t offer much reason for optimism about the markets, either, as evidenced by this excerpt from Revelation 18 (The Message):  

“The traders will cry and carry on because the bottom dropped out of business, no more market for their goods: gold, silver, precious gems, pearls; fabrics of fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet; perfumed wood and vessels of ivory, precious woods, bronze, iron, and marble; cinnamon and spice, incense, myrrh, and frankincense; wine and oil, flour and wheat; cattle, sheep, horses, and chariots. And slaves—their terrible traffic in human lives.”

You can hang on to your eschatological chart and say, “Well, that’s all going to happen after the rapture,” but it seems like it’s happening already and we’re still here. There is no guarantee we will be kept from pain. Didn’t Daniel get taken into captivity even though he wasn’t one of the bad guys? What if the people we work with along the lower Coco River, who survive by subsistence planting, hunting, and fishing, and whose remoteness denies them access to the global economy—what if they suddenly become the most economically secure people around? The last will be the first. Do you think they will give us a little plot of ground and help us like the Indians helped the pilgrims? Or will they send us away because they learned in the schools we have provided how that particular narrative turned out?

At times I’m afraid I might become allergic to peanuts and other times I fret that I might discover that I really like peanut butter and it will torment me, because long ago I convinced myself to hate it so I could manipulate my mother into packing ham sandwiches in my lunch box. Sometimes I just worry about my kids. They’re great kids really, grown up now.

The Raven
Who truly lives free, like the bird on a wire? How about Perry? If anyone on this island reminds me of a raven, it’s Perry Bush, Utila’s official homeless person and Rio Coco Cafe’s unofficial employee. It’s hard for a Utilian to be homeless because everyone has family, and families take care of their own. But Perry Bush lives in the Abandoned Hotel next door to the largest general store on the island—Bush’s Store—and he likes it just fine, except when Utila’s official crazy guy moves in on him and has a shouting match with his demons all night. That goes on for only one or two nights, however.  Unstable in all his ways, the crazy guy soon wanders off, so Perry merely waits him out.

 
Perry doesn’t want a full-time job, or even a part-time job with a real schedule, for that matter. A consummate scavenger, he can usually be seen shuffling along the main road with a borrowed machete and a burlap sack slung over his shoulder which he fills with coconuts, limes, papayas, and whatever else he can glean from sympathetic landowners. He takes these products to other sympathetic neighbors and sells them. Then he takes the money and barters for a meal with a sympathetic owner of one of the many cheap eateries in town. This is how the Rio Coco Cafe fits into his plans. He knows he can show up before opening or after closing time, sweep up a little bit, water the plants, and collect one hundred Lempiras—good money for fifteen or twenty minutes’ work. He gets a free iced coffee—sweet, with milk—and some banana bread or whatever other baked goods are leftover from the previous day. Rachel, the kindly manager, also lets him take all the coconuts he wants from the trees in the yard.

 
He neither sows nor reaps, nor even cooks. Aim low--maximum benefit for minimum effort. This is the way life goes best for Perry.

Perry has never contracted island fever. In fact, he claims he has only left Utila once in the fifty-some-odd years of his sojourn on the planet, when he went to visit his sister in La Ceiba. He told me that he promptly got on a boat headed back, and when he saw the lush green of Pumpkin Hill drawing near, tears began to roll down his cheeks.

“I love Utila, Mr. Tom,” he says. “I don’ want to go nowhere else.”

I don’t think many people believe there is any such thing as a happy hobo, and really, I seriously doubt it too. To be truly at peace with your circumstances, you have to be at peace with yourself. Your identity must be founded on something unshakeable, like for us Christians, the unconditional love of God. Economic standing and station in life don’t even factor into God’s evaluation of who we are. He loves everybody the same. There is no reason under the sun why Perry needs to feel inferior to any of us, but in his eyes you see the shadow of all the beat-downs that he carries all by himself.

No one here can love and understand me
Oh, what hard-luck stories they all hand me
  
All of us at the Cafe want Perry to know that unconditional love; I asked him if he did.

“I receive de Lord, Mista Tom,” he said, “I use to go to de Metodiss church.”

One day after work I found one of the café co-workers attempting to repair one side of Perry’s flip flops, but it was useless. The thong which runs between the toes was completely shredded at the point where it is supposed to disappear beneath the sole. I went to a shop a quarter mile down the street and found a new pair just like them for only seven dollars, but I didn’t know what size to get. Right then I saw Perry walking by on the other side of the street. He was barefoot. I called to him, but he didn’t turn around--he just waved his arm in an agitated sign of dismissal. He was in a hurry. I ran and caught up to him—I had to run past him and turn around in order to get him to look at me. An evil presence had twisted his face.

“I muss go watta de plonts,” he said. 

Perry didn’t even break his stride. He needed money for RX, fast, to make the demons go away.
   
Pack up all my cares and woe
Here I go, singing low
Bye-bye, blackbird

At Worry's End
Jesus told us not to worry, but we do. We’re all in the same boat on a figurative Sea of Galilee, suffering the storms of life with the rest of the disciples. After calming the waves, Jesus reprimanded them: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 

I hear His rebuke and answer, "Yes I do have faith, but maybe not enough.” 

But He knows me and still calms the storm when I squeal for help. He knows our weakness, he knows we worry in spite of ourselves, and he comes to our aid. We are more valuable to Him than birds. We can rest in that.

So I ask the Lord, “Is it a sin, then, to worry?”

“Yes, it’s a sin.”

“And You hate sin…”

“Yeah.”

“But if I didn't worry about that, then I would be lax on sin.”

“It's after midnight, Tom. Go to bed.”

I thank the Lord for his advice. He always knows what to say. God is good. 

Post Script 

It is March, 2021, four years later. The COVID pandemic has given people plenty to worry about. Electoral politics threw gasoline on the fire. 

It's the eve of Presidential primary elections in Honduras, and on the island of Utila, caravans of tuk-tuks, motorcycles, and ATV's pass by the café jubilantly waving blue or red-and-white flags. Everybody's happy. Everybody thinks they've won.

The island has been without tourists for a long time, but the scuba schools have recently reopened. Some nights there's loud music and partying on their docks till around 9:30, but nothing like before. The approximately 5,000 local inhabitants are concerned about the loss of income but have enjoyed having their island to themselves. 

There is no COVID here but Semana Santa (Holy Week) is coming and they're expecting an invasion 1,500 revelers from the mainland. People tell me they're not concerned about the foreigners because they get tested before getting on the airplane, but the Hondurans from the mainland don't. 

One last thing. Perry is well! A family member put him in a rehab facility in La Ceiba before the pandemic, and now he's back. His cheeks are round and full and he's wearing new slippahs. 

     

Alone Time

I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry but a night.
Do not detain me, for I am going
To where the rivers are ever flowing.
            -Traditional song, c. 1862

Nutie and I have been on the move since the tenth of December and we haven’t stopped yet. To the best of our knowledge, we have been following the path on which God has led us, and certainly we have ministered—if indeed ministry is just a fancy word for serving God and the people around you—it’s just that we haven’t done it in the place designated as our “mission field.” Also, God has abundantly provided for us in that we have certainly been ministered to, with beds and meals and all manner of kindness (for which we are very grateful to many of you). But in the end, one feels a yearning to be back home, to unpack one’s bag. Ironically, home to me happens to be that selfsame mission field.
Truthfully, I haven’t seen one Miskito face (with the exception of my children and grandchildren) until this morning when I ran into three men in La Ceiba, Honduras. They recognized me but not I them because they are of my children’s generation and probably were kids the last time I saw them. Funny how that works.
Throughout our travels, Nutie has been my constant companion, but she dropped me off at an airport shuttle transfer station in Fort Collins three days ago—she to stay at her mother’s bedside in Colorado as I head back to Utila where I resume helping out at the Rio Coco Cafe.
Time by myself affords me the opportunity to gauge just how much my life has changed since I first met her. So this is what I have to tell you about; the chronicles of Tom traveling alone, practicing being the new me without her assistance in a world that is breathtakingly beautiful but at the same time slightly off-kilter so that nothing really works properly. I am constantly attempting to arrive at a place where everything is as it should be—just like everybody else—but I, having access to grace through the Lord Jesus Christ, hold myself responsible to receive it and give it out “on the road,” which is an amalgam of diverse kinds of people in uncomfortable situations against a backdrop of awesome vistas, like Utila.

Destination, Utila

Denver International Airport, aka DIA. For a brief moment I feel like a little boy, wide-eyed, pulling Nutie’s little red carry-on bag—my check-in—behind me like a wagon while scanning a large, cavernous airport terminal. Senses heightened, I feel vulnerable in the rush of people. Where do I go? I have my harmonica with me for when I feel lonesome, and I  have seats together with Jesus on the airplane. I get my bearings. I remember: I’m an old man.
My route is a Z: west to LA, east to Miami, south to San Pedro Sula; a total of 20 hours before a 4 hour bus ride, an overnight, and finally the morning ferry to Utila. First leg is a packed, American Eagle commuter flight. I’m carrying a little pink princess backpack—a present for my granddaughter—and guess what? There’s no room for even an empty daypack in the tiny overhead compartments. I’m holding it on my lap, thinking, and I observe an older couple find their seats across the aisle. The husband, tall and not yet feeble, tries to cram his overstuffed carry-on (I’m surprised they allowed it at the gate), turning it, crunching it, rearranging everyone else’s stuff before giving up. Flummoxed, they both wander back out into the frigid jetway. I follow—we have a similar problem.
They are heading to Saigon with another stop in Hong Kong. Gate check? No, because they’ll miss their connection. Check it through to their final destination? No, because it’s frikkin’ SAIGON for chrissake and an18 hour trip and they need all of the bag’s contents to tide them over. The wife’s face is twitching. “Can’t you make an exception?” They want to put it in an empty first class bin but no can do.
The gate officer has bustled down the jetway to the logjam at the plane’s portal and stands beside the “One World” decal. Agitated, she says to the flight attendant, “This flight is just going to be delayed that much longer,” then turns to the couple. “What do you want to do then, get off the plane?” They are incensed. People are dodging, still trying to board the plane. Everyone is stressed.
A small girl with a round, Korean face is the flight team’s underling who will carry out orders. She looks like she’s barely eighteen. I meekly surrender the empty backpack and she checks it through to San Pedro Sula. “Are you sure it’s going to be there when I arrive?” “It’ll be there,” she says reassuringly. I thank her and return to my seat. Now she must deal with the anxious couple.
The others return without their bag. After take-off, the wife’s face is still twitching and she’s blinking madly as they conspire together with urgent gesticulations. I resolve to speak words of comfort to them if I get the chance, which happens later, on the inter-terminal shuttle at LAX. After our conversation, I note that it has been a post Nutie exchange. Beforehand, I would have merely said to myself, “Typical Americans.”
It turns out that the couple got their way—the bag went first class. Aleena’s princess bag was also there in San Pedro Sula and my granddaughter was there to meet me with hugs.

Approaching San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

The lines at immigration split, Honduran citizens and residents to the right and foreigners to the left. There is only one agent to handle each station, but the line for foreigners is longer and much, much slower. It is 1:35 and my bus to La Ceiba doesn’t leave until 3:05. Plenty of time, no? 
I am surprised that most of the people with me in this queue are Hondurans who are traveling with US passports. Why don’t they exercise their Honduran citizenship? The woman in back of me, a black Garifuna from Tela, explains the situation. She has dual citizenship but if something were to happen to her while traveling with her Honduran documents—after all this is the “Murder Capitol of the World”—the US government would not look into it. A Garifuna man dressed like a checkerboard in white and black, New York spelled out on his cap, expresses his irritation at his backward fatherland with the F word. He is standing next to me but because the line is cordoned off so that it doubles back on itself, he is really 15 places behind. At 2:15, not having advanced significantly, he jumps to the line designated for “special cases,” which usually refers to the handicapped, pregnant women, and senior citizens. I suppose he could very well be a senior, but he has taken a partner-in-disgust with him—a sloppy white American in what seems his late twenties. The latter complains of diabetes and says that he hasn’t eaten all day. I am 65, I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and I’m starting to worry about making my bus. I decide to sit tight; maybe I want to make it interesting.
The Garifuna guy makes his plea and the petite immigration woman at the booth accepts. In a minute he’s gone, admitted into Honduras. The American steps forward, becomes belligerent, and the petite woman pushes back. Several men in uniform rush over to tell him in broken English that he needs to go back to the visitors line. He protests. There is a commotion. The Honduran Americans in my line adjure the agent to stop wasting time and let the guy through already. Meanwhile, the officer at the Honduran Citizens’ section has dispatched his last customer and several of the Hondurans who have U.S. passports migrate over there. It is now 2:30. I get Evelio, the taxi driver, on the phone; he says it takes 20 minutes to get to the bus stop. Aleena is with him; they’re on their way.
The petite woman is flustered. She has opposed the entitled young man and lost. She waves me forward. Another American. She attempts a smile and tries to be nice. It is plain that she feels hurt, so I give her the Jesus eyes and begin to minister the double balm of submission and fluency in her native tongue.

Evelio drives like a crazy man and we make it to the bus station at 2:55, just as the PA announces the bus for La Ceiba. I go to the bathroom, buy a crummy chicken salad sandwich and bottle of water, then fumble with them along with my ticket and passport at the gate, and finally find seat number 21.
Seat number 22 is occupied by a large, pudgy man-boy who with the help of my imagination turns into a buzzard. He’s all in black like Daddy Yankee, three chains around his neck, and his wings are extended well across the armrest into my ribcage. He has staked out his territory and he’s not budging. “It’s hot,” he sighs languidly to me—sort of. When the bus gets underway he immediately falls asleep with his earbuds plugged; I hear the repetitive electronic drum rhythm. Every time the bus leans around a right-hand curve on the mountainous road, his slack body slams me against the window. I consider Carl Jung’s Law of Attraction: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Hedman Alas Bus to La Ceiba

The bus moves through driving rain. I’m reading Ioan Grillo’s “Gangster Warlords” on my tablet while simultaneously watching the 1997 movie Titanic play mutely on the monitors dangling from the ceiling. Viewing a movie without the soundtrack helps you see how they put the story together. We are almost at our destination. I’m not paying any attention to the other passengers until the door to the waterless WC (directly across the aisle) slams shut with excessive force. A blur of motion just behind my field of vision and a woman’s voice from the row in back of me cursing bad smells and people who don’t close the door.
Arriving, the bus parks so that the exit is directly over a mud puddle and we disembark. The passengers form a fairly orderly line as a lone baggage handler shuffles laconically back and forth from the bus to the platform—at least 30 trips—until all the luggage is piled up behind a railing. By that time the line has become ill defined to say the least, but still I’m officially third, behind Daddy Yankee and Bathroom Doorwoman. With a sense of propriety, the baggage handler calls us in order as best he can. I finish sixth, and remember that line from Ecclesiastes: “The race is not to the swift…”
A cab driver approaches on foot and I hand him my bag, but he promptly trades me to another cabbie for two Honduran nationals and a pile of luggage. I’m trying to figure out if the exchange means my stock is up or down when Bathroom Doorwoman—short and powerfully built, like Tina Turner—comes up behind tugging on a behemoth suitcase. Apparently, she was part of the deal. “Al Ligerito,” she tells the cabbie. Remembering my role as an Ambassador of Christ and fitting with local culture, I open the rear door for the lady before claiming the shotgun seat. I chat with the driver as he weaves through rain-splashed streets till we arrive at an unmarked dwelling. So this is Ligerito; I thought it would be a hotel.
A man waiting outside the door runs out, unloads the giant suitcase, and helps Bathroom Doorwoman negotiate the deep puddles. Just before going inside, she returns and leans into the cab with a bus receipt in her hand. I’m confused. I am trying to be diligent to keep all my receipts for tax purposes—could I have dropped mine back at the bus station? I take it from her but intentionally slip it into my left-hand pocket because I believe I had placed my own in the right. When I arrive at the Gran Hotel Paris and settle into my room, I pull out the crumpled slip of paper. Scrawled in pencil on the back side I read, “Esperanza- 8927-4951.” Oh Lordy I’m still a long way from home.”

At Lorena's

Michael Bagby had encouraged me for years in his characteristically persuasive manner to stay at Lorena Panayotti’s house when I was in La Ceiba, but heck, I had never even met her. I wasn’t the kind of person who could just brazenly ask. I was familiar with the name Panayotti—who in La Ceiba, or Honduras for that matter, hadn’t? The Panayottis are one of a small clique of merchant families who immigrated from Palestine to Honduras in the early 20th century. As a minority, they are thoroughly integrated into Honduran society, but many majority ladinos call them turcos and resent their disproportionate wealth and power.
From the beginning of my friendship with Mike, I noticed that he readily schmoozed with the wealthy even as he embodied the biblical admonition, “Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly” (Romans 12:16). I, in contrast, hung around mostly with poor people, not because I had anything against the wealthy, but because those were the people I lived with. In all the years I spent in Honduras, the extent of my contact with the Panayotti family consisted of visits to their department store where I could get nice dresses for my wife, Martana, and Nike basketball shoes for myself. I would see Lorena’s mother, perched imperiously in her air-conditioned, glassed-in office, unaware of the customers milling around on the floor below.
Once, somewhere in the jungle, Mike confided, “You know, Tom, we’re really just a couple of dirt-baggers anyway.” I had never heard the term before, but I began to employ it in reference to myself until I met Nutie. She made me promise not to call myself a dirt-bagger anymore.
So this year when Mike requested that Nutie and I help out on Utila and repeated the suggestion to stay at Lorena’s, I asked him to call and tell her I would be contacting her. I know I need to grow up and get comfortable being authentic around high class people. As the Bible says, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how to respond to each person” (Colossians 4:6). This is also part of what I am trying on.
Lorena turned out to be the most down-to-earth, gracious hostess one could ever imagine. She personally picked us up at the bus station in the pouring rain, took us home, fed us, and drove us to the quay early the next morning, making sure we got our tickets before she departed. She was completely open, sharing personal stories—some hilarious some painful—and in the company of Nutie who always says the right things, we encouraged and prayed for one another.
Now, traveling alone, I’m back at the hotel, not at Lorena’s. I had halfheartedly tried to contact her during a four hour layover at the Miami Airport and wasn’t getting through when suddenly I remembered it was Semana Santa, the beginning of Holy Week. Hondurans flock to the beach; the hotels in La Ceiba might be full. So I called my son Tommy and asked him to book me online. I feel a little bit like I’ve chickened out.
I wake up on the third day from Colorado (in the same way you count 3:00 P.M. on Good Friday till 6:00 Easter Morning as three days). I see from my hotel room window that it has dawned blustery. The port captain has shut down the pier. No boats today. I am stuck in La Ceiba, so I decide to call Lorena and touch base.  She insists on picking me up and moving me over to her place, and on the way takes me to a wholesaler to pick up dozens of blow-up swimming pools. There has been a run on them at her store—it’s Semana Santa.
I spend the rainy day writing this dispatch in the posh room she’s given me while Lorena does business at the Tienda 99.99, kitty corner from her Mom’s Almacén. The house is immense. Every horizontal surface is filled with portraits of her 4 children—2 boys and 2 girls who are grown. She now lives alone; hence, there are guest rooms all over the place.
Ana, the maid, lets me know that supper is on the table and that she’s going home now. Seven in the evening; Lorena still hasn’t shown up. “She works late a lot,” says Ana. “It’s OK. You can go ahead and eat while it’s hot.” Two places are set at the dining room table. The door closes behind Ana and it’s very quiet. I imagine Lorena would like to have company for supper; I decide to wait for her.
We eat together at 8:30 and this time I tell her my story, mentioning the rough company I used to keep in the Mosquitia and La Ceiba. She knows everybody. I am very honest, wanting to be as open with her as she had been with Nutie and I. I tell her how Nutie and I got together and how my life has changed.
Lorena says something like “Opposites attract,” to explain her wonder at how two very different people like us found each other. After a pause, she says, “Nutie brings out the best in you.”
At first, I take it the wrong way, like she’s making a value judgement about my past. But her body language, her face suggest she’s looking at a friend, a trustworthy person.
“Yes, maybe she does,” I reply, conscious that I’m giving my best.

Arrived on Utila