We sat in a circle on a square wooden platform built on the powder white sand beach in front of our hotel, a collection of aging bungalows arranged on a secluded beach like driftwood scattered amongst sea grape and mangrove trees. The platform by day functions as an area to bronze or burn and, for most visitors, drink beer or brightly colored cocktails while watching the sunlight change the color of the sea. Our repurposing of the platform for our closing ceremony matched the repurposing our Carpe Diem group in Central America brought to journey as a whole: no matter how potentially enticing, we traveled for more than drinking beer.
We sat in our circle quietly, lighting candles and placing them centrally on our trip’s paper souvenirs, the candlesticks casting shadows on our words. It was the preparation of a Carpe Diem-style sacred space. Part activist, part Taos hippy as much as Portland yogi hipster, we bathed in the comforting flicker of candlelight, ready to share.
The silence of our preparation ritual was suddenly broken by the shrill laughter of a woman swigging a near empty plastic bottle of coke. She was strikingly beautiful, but disheveled and weathered. She wore a hand-woven palm frond hat high on her head, exposing portions of her long curly hair that fell messily about her head and across her face. Her large old t-shirt fell off of her shoulders, reaching her knees, its faded dark fabric bore salt stains from her sweat or from the sea. For trousers she wore tight faded white leopard leggings; for shoes, pink high-heeled sandals noticeably out of place for our location. She appeared as woman who was once fawned over and loved, but who now survived on the streets.
The woman made a space for herself in the quiet circle and started bursting into uncomfortable laughter. “Ooo, What are you doing here?” she slurred. I replied, “We are having a private religious ceremony.” A few of the students started chanting “Ohm” to diffuse the building tension. In between laughter she continued, “I am from Pakistan, where are you from?” The ohm continued into a few pleasantries, though most of her replies were indecipherable. She seemed drunk.
After a few awkward minutes of silence punctuated by her laughter and incoherent expressions, I asked if she could leave us alone for one hour.Politely I asked, “This is a final ceremony for a group that has been traveling together for a long time. The ceremony is private, we are family. I am sorry, but we need to be alone.” Gazing at me in apparent misunderstanding, I began speaking in Spanish, though midway through my sentence, she interrupted in English, “Blah, blah, blah. M*r F*r, this is MY home and you cannot ask me to leave. If I go and something bad happens it is YOUR responsibility. YOUR responsibility.”
I recoiled, castigated and confused. Was she homeless and upset that I was rudely admonishing her to leave her space? Was she merely drunk and trying to intimidate me? Was someone after her and by asking her to leave was I placing her in danger?
Her cursing continued. I languished. I could not make out everything she said, though she kept repeating that something bad was going to happen and it would be my responsibility.
I was at a loss, but needed to do something. Resorting to the futile solutions of the helpless, I tried greater force, “If you will not leave, then we will leave.” She cackled. More threats. More cursing.
I summoned the group’s help in quickly carrying our makeshift shrine out of the area, hoping she would stay behind. She didn’t. She started following our group. I was deeply concerned for her well-being, but her aggressiveness and apparent inebriation worried me more.
“You cannot follow us. If you continue to follow us I will find Foster (the owner after who the West Bay hotel was named) or the police.” I looked around at the desolate and dim hotel grounds, without fully considering the application of my words. She lunged forward, six inches from my face. “It will be your responsibility and I know Foster. Foster knows me and this is my home M*r F*r. You can’t tell me M*r. F*r.” Fearing a smack to my face, I removed my glasses.
After our moving the group to the safer and brightly lit grounds of the dive shop nearby, Jackie stayed with the group while I ran for help, trotting aimlessly through the dark kaleidoscope of sea grape trees and shrubbery to the only house nearby whose windows were lit by the flickering of a TV. I knocked on the glass, spooking a nearly-asleep man in a Lazy boy chair in the process. I yelled for Foster’s number and if I could use his cell phone for the call.Surprisingly, he didn’t find me a lunatic, for he opened the door, phone in hand. “I’ll dial Foster’s number for you.”
Foster groggily answered the phone and I quickly began recounting what was happening with our group. The woman, the cursing, the following, the aggression. Did he know her? What should we do?
“You typically have nothing to worry about with her,” Foster consoled, “She has lost her mind, unfortunately. She hangs around here often during the day. With her sister, she has a twin. When the two of them were young they used to sell woven palm hats and trinkets on the beach with their father. One day they were raped, both of them. Over time I believe they were raped multiple times.” I was speechless as his story worsened. “As she got older she was still beautiful and, being poor, always attracted the wrong attention. One day a guy from the States, a really bad guy, stuck around Roatan and started giving her all sorts of drugs, calling her his girlfriend. They hung around for a bit. She was never really the same after that relationship. I don’t know what happened.”
Foster called one of his sons to come over for help in case she was having “a bad episode,” which has happened, though rarely. Within five minutes, he met me at the dive shop where the group was waiting. By the time we arrived however, she had left. Before leaving she had mentioned that I broke her heart, her life, and her shoes. “I’ve known him for a long time, “ she recounted.
As quick as she had come, she disappeared. We didn’t see her again for the rest of our night or the rest of our stay in Roatan. Her beauty, her aggression, her emotion, her history, the fleeting bizarreness of the moment can’t be repainted, no matter how many adjectives we use to color our chance encounters. Most importantly, our memories or words never do justice to the experiences of the people we meet or the communities in which we primarily traverse. In our travels, the faces and the stories of those we come across lay tracks in our memory like fossils, reshaping our often rigid perceptions of human experience, if we let them.
For three months we opened ourselves up to experience the push and pull of life, learned from living, and continued to move forward. This final night together condensed the essence of our trip, and life in many ways, into one heartfelt paragraph, with laughter and tears coinciding on the same page. And like a novel one cannot put down, we continue to move forward as our story continues.
Our Carpe family of Central America, Jackie and I wish you continued learning, increasing tolerance, unending passion, continuous questioning, the strength to fight oppression and inequality, the ability to smile in the face of adversary, the ability to digest your food til you die, solid nights of sleep and, of course, good tortillas.
Goodbye Carpe Diem ITZA Spring 2011….We’ll miss you!
Jackie and Alex
