Public Fruit

I just posted some pictures too; http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001279&l=fd945&id=1161480074

One thing that I really love about being back in the tropics is great access to fresh, local fruit. Fruit is often public here. There are guayaba trees ripe with fruit that line the road in places, just waiting for a traveler to take a bite. Behind the guayaba trees are fences or walls which attempt to hide lush ayote (squash) vines, corn stalks, banana, orange, lemon, and mango trees. Basically everyone in rural areas produces their own food either right next to their house or somewhere nearby.

Yesterday I went paseando (a favorite past time involving walking to friends houses to sit, talk, and enjoy some coffee with bread) with Cristina, the jefa of CASM, La Campa. We hitched a ride up the hill to her cousin`s house. After briefly catching up, Cristina asked about their land, so we went to take a tour. We saw the chickens, the orange, mandarin, and lemon trees, and Cristina asked for an ayote. My culture would consider that rude, but here produce is given freely. So we were given a 10kg (22lbs) squash, which we took with us paseando back down the hill. On the way down, we took a side road and repeated this surprisingly quick (less than 15 minutes?) paseando ritual with a green pepper farmer. This time, Cristina bought 7 for a 20 Lempiras ($1). The farmer walked around among thousands finding 6 quickly, then spending a few minutes searching for the 7^th and once he finally had it, he carefully placed two extra smaller ones in the bag. The seven that were being bought had to be of the highest quality, the two extra were separate from the purchase.

Siguiendo, Cristina showed me a beautiful piece of land that they are hoping to buy. She dreams of producing public fruit to give away to people who are paseando, having different animals, and occupying her children with things other than TV. She wants to have trees that will attract birds, so their shockingly bright feathers become familiar.

The culture of gifted produce is not confined to local people. I go paseando myself pretty often now and I am always offered coffee and bread. Generally before I leave I am gifted something else too, like a Christmas nacatamale (tamale with meat), oranges, lemons, or bananas. While I was visiting my co-worker Dago, his neighbor gave me a bag of bananas, to which Dago added lemons. Two days later, I am paseando again and the same neighbor invites me in for some coffee and bread, plus (surprise!) 5 more bananas! Her daughter jokes about going mojada (wet or illegally) to the US so that she can get a higher paid job. I try to explain that things are different in the US and among a host of wonderful Honduran things, we don`t know what paseando is. She seems doubtful.

That seems to be the attitude. Plenty of people want to go to the US, probably because American TV displays the ludicrous, normally unattainable wealth with which capitalism tempts. I find myself often telling Hondurans about how beautiful, fresh, sweet, and wonderful their country is. Then again, I don`t really understand where they are coming from, I know nothing of their struggles.

On the other hand, I do know is that in my culture nothing, not even fruit, is free, and farmers are anonymous. I was thinking about how so few things in the US are public, rarely do people take time to breathe, and there is so much forbidden fruit, unless you have money or can run fast. In contrast, this place looks like the Garden of Eden, where you can breathe deeply and walk slowly in the cool evening breeze loaded down with free fruit, so long as you are in good relationship with the people and land around you.