Touch

you can ask me, but the truth is that nothing much has changed

if I'm already fasting, it heals me a little to have companions

in this hunger strike

as they say, misery loves company

but, think about it, what if mercy loves company too?

an opportunity

since it's impossible to pretend that everything's okay

for anyone

to finally reveal the rest of what hurts us

- 2020/03/23

My primary love language being physical touch had become, to a certain extent, the primary thing I'd be teased about in the office. Not in a mean way, just in a friendly, poke-fun kind of way. "Lily, do you want a hug?" one of the team members—one I know isn't a hugger—would ask.

Honestly, no. I mean yes, I would love a hug—need a hug—but the thing is, it doesn't really work if the other person doesn't also want the hug.

And it doesn't really work at all, now.

Rosita posted something on her WhatsApp status back in early January that I took a screenshot of because I loved it so much:

The best feeling in the world: hugging someone and they hug you back even harder.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd be able to say physical touch is my primary love language. They all are important to me. Quality time and acts of service also suffer, to a certain extent, from physical distancing measures. How I miss the spontaneous interactions in the moments before, between, after. The gifts that we want to give can't all be given under these circumstances... and yet, a simple, unexpected, and perfectly-timed one can still make my heart melt. I guess we still have words of affirmation, but when only 7% of our communication comes through with the literal meaning of the words we type... sometimes they fall flat.

This is easier for me to write about in this season because it's something that everyone is very publicly dealing with. For the same reason, I've been able to make great strides over the past seven weeks in the amount of compassion I'm able to have for myself... especially when it comes to productivity. The sense of solidarity and not being alone in the struggles of quarantine... it's so important.

And yet, there is still that feeling of being alone. Because we are. It's not called self-isolation for nothing.

But at least we're all feeling alone, together.

Maybe this feeling is pandemic sonder. I'm grateful for the windows into others' experiences. Even (or maybe especially?) those of strangers.

My first year of university, I remember counting the months it had been since I'd hugged anybody. Everybody else seemed to be making friends so quickly. No sense of others going through the same, although I know there must have been. At least this time I have global solidarity. And my host family... Valeria still gives good hugs. But many people I care about are out of my reach for now... ones who would squeeze me back even harder. Some of them are two thousand miles away. Another is in Tegucigalpa. Perhaps most painful are the ones only a neighborhood away. A mile might as well be two thousand.

Elieth posted this a week ago 🥺

We live in the "most connected" age humankind has ever known, right? So why are we still lonely? This was a question we were asking even before global lockdown. Virtual connection is great and all, but it's no substitute for frente a frente... and society was already grappling with the realities of the loneliest generation. Our symptoms are an acute manifestation of the chronic ones we were already seeing... brought on by this triggering event.

Another thing I don't want to go back to "normal" in the aftermath of the pandemic. Let's go back to human, instead.

Don't get me wrong. I'm so grateful for technology right now. For the solidarity, for the otherwise-unavailable spaces, for the connections over video complete with inflection and even a window to partial body language. But it's no substitute for the real thing.

"There is still at least one thing missing: that moment when your mutual darting attention comes to rest and you make real eye contact, not the off-kilter kind that comes from peering at a screen located a few inches from a camera, but an actual meeting of actual eyes transmitted through the air..."

- Gary Greenberg, 2020/04/23

And it's so hard, even with grace for self and others... to reach out virtually.

Sometimes, when your chest is too tight for words, you just need to be able to go to that person who you know will hug you back.

"I will not kill off my yearning to touch you. I will let it guide me. I will fantasise about it. I will write about it. ... I will feel the fire of rage in my belly and the impossible sorrow in my throat. And I will learn over time how to translate this hunger ... into the making of this most necessary new world." - V, 2020/04/21

Gustavo

I haven't been looking forward to posting about this and to some extent it seems pretty futile to do so since most of you probably already know about it. But it wouldn't be right to omit it from my blog. So, here goes...

My host dad Gustavo passed away at the age of 68 on Wednesday the 15th at approximately 3:50pm from what they’re saying was a heart attack. He’d gone to the hospital early on Monday the 13th (like midnight/1am) and later that day they found water in his lungs and gave him meds to help with that and he seemed to be responding well. They also found that his heart was somewhat enlarged so after being in observation on Tuesday, he was going to have a catheterization for diagnostic purposes on Wednesday. He died just before the procedure. He had been just fine before Sunday the 12th when he'd just felt really tired… so it was a shock to the whole family because we'd really thought he'd been getting better on Tuesday and Wednesday. He was diabetic, but even in the hospital all his sugar and blood pressure levels were looking really good until the end.

He was buried the next morning at 11am. Due to the measures being taken in Honduras for all deceased persons—whether the doctors suspect they were infected with COVID-19 or not—no one was allowed to see his body and only 10 people were allowed at the burial: his wife (my host mom, Aurora), his grown children, his sister, and a couple other close family members. His grandchildren and I, along with his children-in-law and many neighbors and friends, were among those who could not go. This was a man who likely would have had hundreds of people at his funeral under other circumstances.

Things in the house are... weirdly normal... well, pandemic “normal.” Aurora has expressed trust in God’s timing and gratitude that it happened during a time when her children don’t have to go to work and her grandchildren don’t have to go to school so the family can be together and support each other. Although I don’t entirely agree with her theological perspective, I too am glad that she’s not home alone after such a loss, especially when her children’s employers may not have been sensitive to requests for bereavement leave.

I’m doing alright, I think. I’m finding time to grieve and remember with my host family, time to talk it through virtually with people close to me including my family in the States and my MCC Honduras team, and time to escape and have fun both with my host family and virtually with others. I'm appreciating it when people reach out to me. And I am very grateful to be with my host family right now... I cannot imagine how extra-painful it would have been if I had left a few weeks earlier and then this had happened. I still feel like the safest thing for me to do in my current situation is continue sheltering in place with my host family and doing what I can to continue the work of my position remotely.

Gustavo's hammock has been conspicuously empty these past two weeks. His chickens are also gone; he'd had someone lined up to inherit them. They came to take them away on the 17th. I'll sign off for now with a picture I took the day of the burial and shared on my Instagram with the following reflection.

Grietas

Curse the cracks that open up and swallow.

We were keeping a safe distance from the pit, or so we thought

But the ground shook, yawned wider, and we fall prone

Supported by the new precipice only up to our shoulders

Forced to peer down in

It was a hot day, but the miasma that emanates chills to the bone.

Careful! These clay jars are our inheritance

Stop putting them so close to the edge of the table

They're already cracked

The twelve o' clock news of ten at eleven? Curse the cracks that forbid goodbyes

But the jars have sunlight inside

And their cracks let them share and receive it

And they can still hold food, we almost forgot

So in the first hour of a strange new day

Unexpectedly

There is laughter.

Bless the cracks.

Tombs

I was affirmed a couple of times for this devotional I offered during our Thursday office meeting. Here's a slightly modified version.

Something I’ve been thinking about over the past week is how we as Christians would usually be celebrating the end of Lent this weekend, but in a way, we’re heading into an extended season thereof. We won’t really get to physically emerge from our tombs until an unknown date in the future. Our next doughnut will not be next week.

I could wax philosophical about emerging from our metaphorical tombs, but I don’t really want to go down that road right now.

A passage of scripture that has presented itself to me multiple times this week is:

There must be no competition among you, no conceit, but everybody is to be humble: value others over yourselves, each of you thinking of the interests of others before your own. Your attitude must be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

     Christ, though in the image of God

     didn't deem equality with God

     something to be clung to—

     but instead became completely empty

     and took on the image of oppressed humankind:

     born into the human condition,

     found in the likeness of a human being.

     Jesus was thus humbled—

     obediently accepting death, even death on an execution stake.
Philippians 2:3-8

I appreciate this translation because it highlights Jesus’ solidarity with humanity, especially those who are oppressed. It portrays Jesus as the image of God, as we all are (Genesis 1:27). And it speaks to some of the most frightening parts of being human—the human condition, in all its uncertainty, and the knowledge of our own mortality—and that Jesus faced all of this, too.

When Jesus was crucified, his friends were not expecting him to rise on the third day.

They hid from death in locked rooms.

Their uncertainty over what to do next must have been crushing; they didn’t know if they had anything to move toward or look forward to. They were paralyzed.

I’m going to read John 11:17, 21-24:

When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When she got to Jesus, Martha said, "If you had been here, my brother would not have died! Yet even now, I am sure that God will give you whatever you ask."

"Your brother will rise again!" Jesus assured her.

Martha replied, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

I feel somewhat like Martha in this situation, having faith that coming out of the tomb is in the cards, albeit far in the future. What I want to highlight is the uncertainty of the time within the tomb. Even though we will be in a Lenten season for more than 40 days and we are in our tombs for more than three or four days, those four days must have felt like an eternity to those who loved Lazarus, those three days forever to those who loved Jesus.

What happens during the eternity of the tomb? How do hearts change? How does the uncertainty of the resolution change the responses to life restored, since it wasn’t clear if and when it would be?

Curfew

The Honduran government changes the rules so often that it's hard to keep up. At nine in the evening after I published my last post, the cadena nacional on TV and radio announced that the department of Cortés (where SPS is) and the neighboring city of El Progreso would be under absolute curfew for the rest of the week. No leaving home, even to go to the supermarket. The rest of the country would remain under the MWF (1,2,3/4,5,6/7,8,9,0) schedule.

On Wednesday they announced the rest of the country would be changing to a M-F schedule (1,2/3,4/5,6/7,8/9,0) but that Cortés and El P would remain completely locked down. (At least they're spreading out the people over more days now...)

Earlier today we saw this schedule:

After a week at home, are we finally going to be able to go to the grocery store again?

It was quickly revoked.

This evening at 8:30 on the cadena, they announced this new schedule:

Looks like Colón department has joined the fun...

I won't be shocked if I wake up tomorrow morning and there's a new one.

Even after a week without being able to leave the neighborhood, my host family and I are in good shape. They have good connections to neighbors who can supply us with meat and eggs, the pulperías (neighborhood markets) are still getting supplied with paper goods, and produce vendors wearing masks are allowed to come through with their carts.

There is some effort by the government to deliver supplies to people in situations where they'd typically be earning money one day and buying their food with it the next. But there are the questions of is it getting to them fast enough and is it really enough food for 15 days like they're saying it is...

I know physical distancing measures are essential to stopping the spread of the virus, but... hunger is more deadly than COVID.

Three

As week three encerrada comes to a close, I thought I'd give y'all some novedades from the past week. While I was writing my update last Saturday, we got news of new regulations to be followed during the curfew. Each person can leave their house one day a week between 9am and 3pm to go grocery shopping or to the bank. Whether you can go out on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday is determined by the last digit of your government-issued ID: 1, 2, 3 on Monday; 4, 5, 6 on Wednesday; and 7, 8, 9, 0 on Friday. No movement is allowed on the other four days of the week. Those who go out when it's not their turn risk having their vehicle decommissioned or worse. So, here's my take on how the first week under these rules went.

The lines for the grocery stores and banks are ridiculous. Jenny and Rudi went shopping yesterday at one of the grocery stores that actually lets you go inside, even though it's more expensive, so they wouldn't have to wait outside in a line for an hour at least, but a lot of average folks don't have the luxury of that choice. And the hot season is really kicking into gear... it's getting up into the mid-90s pretty regularly with a heat index at about 105. This is not the season of the year where you want to make a habit of standing outside for hours! (I mean, you rarely want to be outside for longer than you absolutely need to in SPS... as I can attest to from my heat-exhaustion-induced low-grade fever nap I took after our four-hour outdoor foray back in August.)

From some of the footage I've seen on the news channel my host parents watch, there are traffic jams behind the checkpoints where police check IDs to make sure people are following the rules. In my opinion, it seems a little nonsensical to condense traffic in stores and public areas to three days a week... wouldn't it be better if people were spread out over more days so there wouldn't be so many people in one place at once, even if there are 6 feet between people when they're lining up? And what a great idea to have a couple police officers touching every single one of the IDs of everyone in a long line of cars 🙄

Life didn't change too much for me between this past week and the one before, except I think I'm getting better at being gracious with myself? I'm trying to do my self-work in such a way that I can maintain it cuando regresemos to "normal" work patterns (the subjunctive mood is definitely needed in this case).

Maybe subjunctive is my mood over the past few weeks.

One of the things I've learned being in Honduras is to feel more comfortable thinking about the future in more uncertain terms. (I've alluded to this before but haven't directly addressed it.) Language is a big factor, since the prominence of the subjunctive in speech makes a non-native speaker like me really pay attention to the difference between things we do know and those we don't (e.g. cuando llegué en Honduras en Agosto vs cuando regrese a los EEUU en Octubre). Even short term plans that we might not even label as "plans" in English, such as nos vemos ("see you later" or "we'll see each other") is often accompanied by a si Dios quiere ("if God wills"). I can only imagine how, for a native speaker, this way of expressing concepts must be so ingrained in their way of thinking that there's an inherent ease with uncertainty. Even though I still feel much more comfortable expressing myself in English, there are now some things I feel like I can't fully express without using Spanish... cuando regresemos a trabajar en la oficina being one of them.

I wonder if being immersed in Spanish—and in a culture full of people for whom thinking about time and plans in this way is the air they breathe—has made me, mentally, somewhat more prepared and comfortable with the weirdness, uncertainty, and discomfort of this time. It may not be the air I breathe, but it's the water I swim in.