Happy Mother’s Day! As we post this last blog, Namanda (Nick & Amanda) would like to take the opportunity to thank the mothers (and fathers) out there for giving space for your son and daughters to further spread their wings over Central American’s vibrant currents. How to encapsulate three months of intense living and inspiring transformations… although there is not so much a need for this, since the ‘light bulbs’ from our trip have registered at bodily levels, and will thrive in us and lead us onwards.
For one, I think we’d all agree how we’ve learned of the freedom that comes from opening up to the magic of the moment. For one, I (Amanda) am reminded of that as I scribe this blog from Arizona. Prior to May 5, I had no plans to make it home for Mother’s Day, but found the world conspire to move me in this direction as our CAM family attempted to travel to our respective homes from Roatan, Honduras.
On May 5, we arrived to the Roatan aiport and Namanda began the check-in process. To our amazement, we learned that five of the eight of us had our plane tickets mysteriously ‘canceled’. While a bit strange, we expected this to eventually sort itself out, but ultimately Nick, Tim and Julia had to board the plane without the other five after we said our abrupt goodbyes. The rest of us hunkered down to 6.5 hours of airport time while we phoned our travel agent nearly every half hour in hopes of new flight confirmations. As the airport shut its lights off around 7pm, we swiftly negotiated vouchers for food and lodging, and set off in a taxi for West End beach. Safely checked into our hotel, we found out from headquarters that indeed we’d have the same flight schedule the next day. We drifted off to sleep with that relief and assurance.
The morning greeted us with another unexpected surprise: rumors of strikes on the island which might prevent us from traveling to the airport from West End. We heard several different stories, but ultimately took the advice of a taxi driver wielding a cell phone and radio. He anticipated that the strikers would close down several more routes as the day progressed, and that it would be best for us to leave for the airport immediately.
As this driver (who we learned is the president of taxi drivers on this side of the island) carted us to the airport, we learned more about the situation at hand. The strikers were Honduran construction workers frustrated with the reality that many Guatemalans have been arriving to the island and taking up jobs that would otherwise be theirs. As a result, many Hondurans were struggling with ‘making ends meet’.
We arrived to the airport to find all but one of our plane tickets confirmed and easily ticketed. While we waited for TACA to locate Amanda’s ticket, several reporters entered the airport to investigate the situation of plane departures in light of the striking laborers. Apparently, there had recently been an altercation between the police and the strikers, reporting several injured, and the rioters were now moving towards the airport. Amanda was briefly interviewed live by these reporters, before being called by TACA personel who asked all of us to move through security to our first flight which was taking off an hour and fifteen minutes before schedule. Unclear, but a bit relieved to have lift-off from the island, we boarded our first of four planes en route to San Francisco.
For the next twelve hours, Anjali, Hannah, Rachel, Jessica and Amanda rode the wave of travel home (Amanda having decided to suprise mom for mom’s day rather than travel El Salvador), through La Ceiba to San Pedro Sula to San Salvador, and finally to the open arms of Julia awaiting us in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Nick was struggling with worry as he attempted launch into solo travel in Panama, and Tim was off to his Boston home.
The interesting twists of these final moments of our journey appropriately reflect the curiosities we encountered on our travels through the region. It’s these unpredictables of life that encourage us to develop a comfortability with the ‘chaos’. The attitudes with which we deal with these such situations that arise are ultimately those which sculpt our experiences of life…
We hope you continue to find the magic, the silver lining, the message of hope and possibility in every instance of our ever-changing lives. Remembering that it is our relationships with one another that sustain, and in the most frustrating and seemingly ‘lost’ of times, we can call on one another and again set aflight with the wings expanded in Central America. Que viva, pura vida.
