Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Ayyyy chile!

Recently I´ve been discovering the joys of Honduran chilies. I was at La Campa´s only comedor (restaurant) the other day and I thought I recognized pickled vegetables in a jar, so I took some. My co-workers assured me that they were ´muy rico´ or very sweet, which didn´t sound so crazy since I don´t recognize a lot of the vegetables that I see here. I ate the little round red one and it burnt like anything! Then today I was at our office and I found a bush in the back that had plenty of black things on it and a few red ones. I picked a red one and squeezed it and much to my delight it smelled really hot, which I confirmed shortly thereafter. So I picked the red ones and I´m going to try to make some sort of mad hot sauce for my frijoles...mmmmmm.

I´ve been discovering a little bit of the local economy here. Since its such a small place, not much is marked, you just have to know that this house sells ´pan de mujer´ or woman´s bread on saturdays and that house up the hill repairs shoes and sells sandals. The house on the corner sells bananas and pineapples when the boys break from studying (I´m sure) long enough to go and get them.

Life is wonderful here in La Campa. And despite the opinions of a couple of local gringos and a Peace Corps volunteer or two, Honduraños (as) are very awesome people. Come visit, soon :)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

So what exactly are the complaints about the people there? It's rather unfortunate that there's a disconnect between the Peace Corp folk/gringos and the La Campa folks. I'm going to put my (uneducated) guess in that it has to do with educational boundaries, much to do with a sense of hierarchy between social types? Just wondering, I just read a book about Tanzania and the dichotomy between the local populations and government/NGO power structures; like how the latter ignore the former based upon what they assume they know.

Glad things are going well though, cheers,

Bill S.

Afriqnboy said...

What I meant was just cultural misunderstanding. Culture here puts priority on relationship with people rather than acchievement of goals like we do in the US. Its hard for us to understand. They really don´t mind sitting around all day and talking or waiting for something, while for us that just seems like an extreme waste.

They were also pretty condescending. One peace corps worker at least and another gringo. That part has to do with education, we tend to feel like we know what is happening and we get frustrated when people don´t do what we tell them to. We being white authoritarian people...not necessarily you and I haha.

Unknown said...

yeah hot chiles! glad you're doing well and finding good food.