Semana Santa

Here's a recap of Semana Santa. The first half was spent doing four things: eating, sleeping, swimming, reading Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Throughout about 240 pages, he weaves tragedy with comedy into the same thought; it's difficult to laugh about a soldier's situation, but he had me laughing one moment then cringing the next. It's a WWII "autobiography" about the Dresden bombings (Vonnegut was a soldier at Dresden.) I learned that 131,000 people were killed in those bombings, more deaths than when the US. dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The book flashes back and forth in time and space, giving a deranged feel to the flow of the story. There is no suspense whatsoever, you know how the book ends before it starts--his style is harsh, to the point, and dark. For example, when one of the American soldiers swears revenge against his fellow soldier, Billy, the protagonist who was abducted by aliens, you know instantly that that is how Billy is going to die, even if it is 40 years later. Luckily for him though, the aliens helped him accept his death as a part of his life and focus his attention on the beautiful parts of life.

I missed the bus going to Trujillo from Casa Kiwi so I decided to hitch hike. The second car to pass picked me up and we drove the 10 minutes to the bus terminal in town. This guy was overweight and friendly with an expensive SUV and sun glasses resting half way down his nose. He lives in Massachusetts but was born in Honduras and makes trips here twice a year. It turned out the bus I needed to get to the farm was on the opposite side of town so I paid $1.25 and took a taxi. On our way, the driver is trying to convince me to take a taxi the whole way to the farm (this would cost $8 bucks, a hefty chunk of my travel money) because the bus drops people off at an intersection but to get to the farm I would have to walk a ways alone along the road, and "it's very dangerous". I considered it for a second then remembered Kristina offering to walk to the bus stop and meet me, so I figured it can't be that dangerous. Another possibility is that it IS that dangerous and Kristina is simply brave and faithful.

The farm is a beautiful place in so many ways. The volunteers are experiencing many aspects of Honduran culture. For one, they live a humble to average Honduran life: no fridge, power and water outages are expected, carpooling in trucks and vans on dirt roads, a lot of work for not very much pay. It's not a commercial farm, it's more like....hey we have some land.....a handful of mango trees sprinkled all over the place would be nice. They also have bananas, oranges, avocado, tamarind, pineapple, almond, and several more that I'm forgetting. I was not ready to leave by Thursday, but because of the bus schedule we decided it was best if I head out early Thursday morning. Kristina walked me to the bus stop and I headed back into town thinking how marvelous it is to trust in God.
Back at the edge of Trujillo I catch a second bus and explain to the driver my travel instructions which I had received from one of the older farm volunteers. Since the bridge was out, I wanted to cross the river at the boat terminal, instead they just drop me off at the bridge site and tell me I have to go around 20 minutes down this side road....UHHGG! Start walking and what do you know, Hondurans are SO KIND to hitch hikers, it's GREAT! This time I get to share the truck bed with a 70 year old sage. The driver was quite old as well, it honestly felt more like a horse pulled carriage because the whole truck bed was completely wooden and had a bench near the cab. This guy drops me off at the boat terminal (it turns out 2 consecutive bridges on the same road are out, causing an ugly pile up of vacationers eager to get to the beach.) He charges me 50 limps. So it goes. Two boats are hauling loads back and forth, one for passengers, the other for vehicles. Luckily there is a cab waiting for me to take me to Corocito where I can finally catch a bus back home. He says we can wait for two more people which would cut the cost per person, but I"m worried I'll miss the bus so I just pay the full 60 limps. So it goes.
Now the triangle in Corocito is the town center, and it's where I saw those masquerading bandits and it's where street vendors recommended me some Honduran music groups which I later purchased the very next day and it's where I bought a bag of corn tamales for 20 limps then left them on the table when I finally caught my bus after waiting almost three hours. They weren't very good anyway. So it goes. I was literally on my way to get a hotel room in Corocito when the bus came. Even though this bus only went to San Esteban, it at least got me into Olancho and it broke up the grueling 9 hour trip in half.
I'm back home now, I just went to the barber for a very pleasurable shave and a haircut 2 bits. It's really short, like the kind of short where it feels super cool to rub my hand over my almost bald scalp.

Winston almost got his eyes eaten by rats

In the haunting, futuristic, sci-fi 1984, George Orwell gives us a warning against despotism and tyranny. Published just five years after the end of WWII, we can expect most of his original readers knew what totalitarian governments consisted in and why they were to be resisted at all cost, or even abolished. So, his primary aim is not convincing us of their illegitimacy, nor is he arguing why this or that type of governance is better than another. His main purpose is to expose these governments as surprisingly more insidious than we have imagined by telling a story of a nation, called Oceana, whose unfettered despotism invades every human element including the soul. Imagine if Nazi Germany had convinced the Soviets to ally and together continued Hitler's empire for another thirty years. It is also worth discussing how these governments arise in the first place. If we know that a government is tyrannical, then of course we may easily reject it in principle. Even though real resistance may be very difficult; the decision to reject it is more or less straightforward and simple. But if we're caught up in the process of becoming a nation which is gradually demanding more and more of its citizens, then the question of national support is much more difficult, as I suspect it could have been for many Germans in the early 30s.
Winston, Orwell's protagonist, resists the political leaders of Oceana, simply named, "The Party", as best he can but ultimately fails; at the end of the novel we are left assuming the party is stronger than ever on its way to forcing everyone into total submission. Winston works for the party in the "Ministry of Truth" as a newspaper writer who is ironically also responsible for erasing and modifying historic records, newspaper articles, radio programs, magazines, books, etc in order to allow the party the pretense of always being correct. But it doesn't stop there. The party mutilates novels and screenplays from all the great writers so that their work will appear to coincide with The party's agenda, which is summed up in three contradictions: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Several times during his role at the ministry, his superiors remind him of a tenent of their ideology: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The common sense view of the past and the view held by Winston is that it is unchangeable, set in place, permanent, so to "control the past" seems absurd.
The party is obsessed with monitoring the people; with video cameras and hidden microphones at every street corner, restaurant, store, hotel, bank, transport station, everyone is continuously under survelience. Even in the solitude of one's home, privacy is never guaranteed because the "thought police" can detect mere whispers of dissent in the minds of the people. By meddling with historic records and by censoring every word, thought and deed, the party has an impressive grip on society. If our attitudes and consciences are in part formed by what we read and who we talk to, then censorship may be one of the most powerful weapons of a tyrant. By changing what all the history books say, the party believes the past retroactively changes with it. Winston's personal struggle which eventually incriminates him into captivity essentially rests on the distinction between the permanence of the past and the subjective rewriting of the past.
After his capture, Winston is severely tortured to the point of being unrecognizable. He looses track of time and betrays everyone he has ever known, including his best friend, Julia. But by this time he can hardly be culpable for anything because his tormentors have cleared every thought from his mind except the awareness of pain and every desire from his body except the end of that pain. By allowing the party to prevail, Orwell is saying if a nation gets to this point then its people are hopelessly depraved. Hopefully we will never know if this is true, but we ought to guard against even the miniscule tendencies toward Oceana.

GO BUTLER!!

Hoosiers represent!! Tomorrow night Butler University plays UCONN in the final NCAA tournament. I won't pretend to follow basketball, even though I enjoy watching now and then, but I am glad to see Indiana doing so well. Speaking of Hoosiers kicking some ass, Mitch Daniels is talking a whole lot of sense in politics, and Lord knows we need a lot more of that. With Democrats abandoning their commitments, jumping ship and taking refuge in IL, I'm glad to see Daniels' reproach of their blatant mistake couched with a calm and patient trust in the Democratic process; let's hope that voters remember how Democrats neglected their commitment when they're up for reelection.