the road already traveled

comparison time:

Zelaya is to come back through Nicaragua...I was just there and came back through a very similar journey.

First, he's coming from Managua (the capital), thats where my bus dropped me off. I shared a cab with some quebequios and got dropped off at a random bus station. ZERO busses to honduras. But, one bus to ocotal, about 15 miles past esteli.
Zelaya has a jeep. Which he gets to drive. I am jealous.
Of course, he spends the night in esteli, a more touristy and nice town with a hotel that might be 2.5 stars. He's accompanied by the venezuelan foreign minister, press, his wife and daughters.
I got off the bus and walked the wrong way down the street. Asked some people where the closest hotel was and they asked me if i saw the one that was literally about 15 feet from where i got off the bus. I ended being accompanied by a random korean guy with ridiculously long hair who had been traveling around for about a year or two in central america, and the weird brothers who ran the hotel. As for my wife and daughters? I had a bottle of the finest nicaraguan rum, flor de caña, lite...yikes. It was the cheapest bottle...and the only bottle ironically enough, that i could find.
Zelaya is gonna pass through the town of Las Manos...or "The Hands." When I went there i got lectured by some guy about how i was just traveling and that the central americans were smart for putting their immigration offices together. he told me he hoped that i had my 7 dollars ready to pay to enter into honduras again. that is until i showed him my fancy little card that says i live in honduras, and told him that i was smarter than the central americans because i didnt have to pay. i did, however, have to lose 5% of my cash when changing from nica$ to hondu$, but that was expected.
on a side note, i didnt have to pay when i changed my money from hondu$ to nica$ because i was rollin with the ingeniero who had passed through this checkpoint twice a month for the past 20 some'odd years
the ousted president will likely have a much different experience in The Hands. Most likely he won't be too preoccupied about changing his money and finding his next ride to Danli, as i'm pretty sure the guy hassling him may have a bunch of guys behind him with big scary guns.
or
he could find friends there who give him a salute and welcome him back with the protection of said guys with big scary guns.
whatever he does, he's a friggin copycat, and i dont appreciate it...that is unless i get some royalties when he gets his book and movie deals!

every event has its beginning, every event has its end

in the middle theres a wash of mud and dirt, blood and sweat--tears line the streets and you know at some point that the shouts you hear will be replaced by gunfire.
its not something that i want. i cannot imagine what it is like to live in the midst of war. what will these children do? when the embassy evacuates people i can leave, but what happens to these 500 children? do they just sit here waiting for the war to be over? do they leave and join the fight? its a ridiculocity that is completely inconceivable. have you ever thought about it? what would you do if you were in charge of 500 children and a civil war broke out? do you risk taking them to another country? do you cross the border legally? what do you do with the staff? they can make their own decisions, but when you're 3 hours from the border, and have to drive 6 big yellow buses along the highways filled with hundreds of orphans...what do you do?
i'm not saying this is definitely going to take place. but the talks are breaking down. the interim gov't sits there rejecting the offers and then the ousted president rescinds his own desire for a peaceful end. they say the talks are done. they say that the talks will continue in 3 days. they say they say.
but each side wants the same thing: power
you cannot get anywhere unless they both accept to remove themselves from such a position. which they won't.
the talks are set to resume in a few days. but unless the two sides accept their differences, nothing will happen.
and its when nothing happens that you have to be at your most alert.
i would be lying if i said i wasn't scared. i am. but i'm also enthralled. its life--in its most demanding and brutal way. life, at the hands of another. life in the palm of your hands, the look of a diplomatic eye, the tension of a finger building on a trigger.
life can end. and it just might. pretty soon. another protester death and this thing could ignite. its not quite iran, but i think people have a lot more audacity here, the two sides are more than just an army against a people. everyone in this country is armed. plus nicaragua sits to the south, and venezuela may come to aid zelaya as well.
in iran there are tensions, and people are dying, but no one seems to be taking a more rash and physical step from the opposition side.
here in honduras, the education level is much lower. the idea about talking can only get so far before a fight breaks out.
the students have been leading the pro-zelaya protests so far; but zelaya is looking to come back, and when he does, the peaceful students are going to learn a valuable lesson that hasnt been taught since the end of the cold war in central america.
the clock is counting. and i dont know what its gonna look like on saturday. i guess we will have to wait for satuday to come to know what it holds in store for us.
i do have this to say though. before everything gets out of hand.
hondurans are a ridiculous sort. they are some of the kindest and thoughtful people at times. at others, just looking out for their own best interests.
but the most telling sign, and the one that will ultimately determine how this all plays out is the hondurans ability to talk. they can bicker on the color of a t-shirt for hours, just to decide on the same color they use every year. this unbelievable ability to talk and talk and talk may be the best hope for honduras to find peace, or it may be the wind to blow over this house of peaceful (and tense) cards.

so you would think that a military coup would be a good blog.
definitely timely...err, not.
it happened a few weeks ago, and we're still trying to sort out the mess.
the other day i figured out what it is...
"its like you just broke up with your girlfriend. but you didnt really break up with her, so neither of you two know if you're still together or broken up. but you start hanging out with a new girl, only you're not dating her yet."
yeah, thats pretty much the situation here. its messy and ugly, but the suns comin up and there will be a day of pizza and photos, maybe even a pirated movie or two...depends on how the money holds up.