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I could track the date by weight gain rather than with a calendar this month. Eating as Copanaceans eat I’m keeping it where they keep it… above the hips and below the ribs. Enchaladas y pollo, pescado frito y arroz, pina y mango, banano fritos, and custards con cinamon so light they drift off the plater and into my hand. Once swallowed, it all mixes together and inflates into an inner tube around my waist. As in permanently. As is the shape of these steep, mountainside folk here… short people with strong, skinny legs, small, tight butts, and stout, pouchy middles.

Meal portions in my host home are muy grande and muy rico. Large and very, very rich. And that’s before Mama’ adds a generous cut of fresh, crumbly quesos. Just last meal I discovered the baggie of white stuff with the corner clipped off, used to squeeze a drizzle on most foods is half churned butter. I do not serve myself. My plato or platos are awaiting me three times daily. Always home made, always fresh. Never a single leftover in this familia of three generations where Mama’ does all the cooking. Daily. I have yet to see store bought anything in the kitchen… but I have seen dried maiz being soaked and sorted for tortillas, and once an old woman carrying five live chickens by their feet through the center of the pueblo. There is no meat nor prepared foods in any tienda, only snacks, Popsicles, and ice cream sandwiches for relief from the heat. All meat is fresh, locally processed, and nature fed. Most food is trucked in for restaurants, but after one week, almost twenty-one meals, I have yet to go to one. They couldn’t measure up. Restaurants for for touristas. I just happen to have lucked out and landed in a multi-generational home where the cooking goes on nonstop.

Copanaceans are worth studying. I never see them doing anything “so that” they can do something else. They are never “waiting”. If it is not time for something, it is time for nothing. They stand or sit calmly, completely present. When working they work. When talking they talk patiently, joyfully or passionately. When resting they rest because it is a worthy, necessary and satisfying activity of its own. They are a part of their own environment rather than merely living “in” it.

There are things about life in Copan Ruinas that cultivate presence. It is important to be aware of your surroundings and responsible for yourself. Rebar is missing from storm grates leaving gaps large enough for a leg up to the knee (or the entire grate may be missing and you could fall into it and disappear!). Sidewalks have crumbled edges, varying heights and widths, suddenly with uneven or no steps at all. Motorized vehicles have right of way over pedestrians and ricochet wildly down calles as if trying to score bonus points in a pinball machine. Meals may include thin fish bones and small chicken bones. If you need basic translation, it will likely come from the nearest six or eight year old school child (or not at all). Add to that electricity that goes out frequently, sudden rain showers, unreliable bus schedules, and a culture that generally adds a half hour or so to any agreed upon time and you will eventually learn to go with the flow. You will be in collision with everything and everyone until you do. A wise old woman leaning on her walker I met in the bank before I left gave me this bit of wisdom from her near century of living, and I quote, “Don’t panic. Adjust.” Going with the flow is simply adjusting to the situation rather than fussing and fighting.

The pace of this area is most obvious in the Chorti people from the surrounding hills. These miniature people, about four foot tall, walk or ride horse or donkey into the pueblo for supplies or a weekend of drinking and music. Their faces and hands dark brown, wrinkled, and leathery from long days in the near equatorial sun. Their days are spent swinging a machete to clear steep hillsides for maize or coffee, or weeding the near vertical slopes with an ancient hoe. They arrive in town with the ubiquitous spotless, cream Stetson-like sombrero and worn black machete. They are humble, averting their eyes, and blend into the landscape whether walking, sitting, laying on a bench or alongside the road. Sometimes there is a saddled pack animal tethered nearby. Their women are pequina… even more petite than the men, and when in town at all stand or follow close to their man. Chorti follow time by the sun in the sky. They have no use for a minute nor second hand. When tired they lay down wherever they are and sleep. When they are rested, they rise. The sombreros and blosas of these proud, hard working folk are always surprisingly clean, even after a night on grass or a stone bench. I don’t know how they do that.

The Chorti are the poorest Honduran citizens, and perhaps the most genuine and humble. Theirs is a simple, industrious life of working the land with primative tools, intimate with soil and plants, vulnerable to instantly changing weather, and working partners with mules and horses. They may be more attuned to the earth and its cycles than anyone in our world.

It is the Mayan ancestors of the Chorti who left us the Thirteen Moon Toltec calendar said to prophesy the destiny of the world, and which is astronomically more accurate than our Gregorian calendar. The Chorti are a people who although economically poor could not be enslaved by their wants. Instead they choose hard work, economic poverty, and interdependence. They continue as an example to us all. They are free, and they are in harmony.

In Copan the layers are peeled from the onion one after another. But Copan is wherever we are. We can open our eyes at any moment. We can taste life. We can awaken to this moment.

What is the flavor of your life when you stop and taste it?

Honduras Victory

Honduras conquered El Salvador in futbol on ViaVia’s big screen,
blue jerseys and honking horns cascading through the streets.

Jose teaching us all the Mamba and we pour sweat and heat
collapsing and the locals burn up the linoleum floor.

Rains water that mountain flowing over our tiled rooftops
awakening me every hour to draining gutters .

My mind clear as rainwater but slow as muddied rivers.
How am I to study Spanish for today’s class?