It was suppossed to happen 2 weeks ago....I was suppossed to come to Honduras to shoot footage and do interviews with a Pastor who's doing AMAZING work in quite possibly the worst neighborhood on the planet. Well, at almost the last minute, and because of a visa that I ended up not needing, my trip got posponed to .....well.....now. So here I sit in a hotel room in Tegucigalpa just thinking about the last 4 days......the trip started off with the landing in Tegucigalpa airport......now, I had been here once and I knew what the landing was like..........but I'd forgotten.....when the pilot comes on the intercom and says..."folks, the only approach into Tegucigalpa calls for us to perform a sharp turn during a sharp descent"......it's time to, well, at least pay close attention (and pray) :-)
I asked the airline attendant to let me move to the other side to an open window seat so that I could shoot it with my little still camera's video function.....as the 757 banked sharply to the left to then swing to the right TO make a very sharp left hand turn, some women in the rows behind me screamed really loud.....at this point I was shooting out my window and where the horizon would usually be 7 to 10 miles away I distinctively saw a yellow school bus and dogs.....and I would guestimate that at this point we were no more than 1200 feet above the ground....slightly higher (looking out of my SIDE window) I saw our RUNWAY!.....just as I thought "man he'd better turn sharp if he wants to get there...." he did just that! I felt the G forces tickle my forehead and I must admit that the faces of my kids flashed accross my eyes....well, as the plane landed we skimmed the side of the hill much like this video will show...(by the way I'll have the one I shot up pretty soon)
After surviving the landing, came the first of my challenges, I disembarked, (congratulated the pilot on my way out), went through immigration and customs in the quickest manner that I ever have in any country that I've ever been to period. When I came out of the secure area to the receiving zone I was in a world of people waiting for passengers in front of me and behind me...I stood there looking for someone holding a sign that said, "Landa" on it...nope. I waited, and waited, 20 minutes, 30, 45....nothing...as I walked over to the ATM to get local currency (Limpiras) so that I could just cab it to my hotel, they showed up....something about our plane landing early....miscommunication...whatever, who cares, they showed up...
The next couple of days have been a whirlwind, the first order of the following day was to actually get my own shots of the infamous airplane landing, my host (who knows this town inside and out) got us out into no-man's-land, and after climbing a couple of sand dunes we got into the perfect position and we got 3 jetliners as they circled Tegucigalpa and performed their U-turns and landed quite nicely...lesson learned.....Boeing Jetliners are a WHOLE lot more maneuverable than you think.
The bulk of my trip revolved around the work that a very brave pastor is doing in what I would consider the worst, vilest, unsafe, drug-infested, gang-controlled, mafia-owned neighborhood that I have ever heard or and DEFINITLEY ever been into...I have been to the favelas in Brazil...this is worse.
As we drove through the market which is a sort of "buffer zone" between Tegucigalpa and the "colony" of Chiverito, I stood in the bed of his pickup truck and shot from the back....market people, latin-american traffic, the market place...you see one, you'veseen them all...at one point he stopped, poked his head out and said, I think you should ride inside now....
Now, his little truck was almost specially made for the occassion, windows completely tinted and polarized, I could shoot from inside the truck without being seen from the outside...what I have seen over the last 3 days have "yet again" made me really, really, think about everything in my life...you see? it's so much more and so much deeper for me than simply "being thankful to live in America"...am I thankful? yes!! and then some!!!! but it's more....
I have come the realization that the reason why we're so spoiled, politically correct, and bankrupt, is because in The US we're living in a safe haven of fantasy...we are basically the Willy Wonka version of nations...in other words folks, the reality we see outside of our windows is NOT the real world...therefore everything that we think is the glue that holds our "world" in place is just as fake as the big room in which everything is edible...am I dissing America?? NO WAY!!! I'm yet more grateful...however, a few things to point out...
Much in the same way that I felt when I spent 3 weeks in Nicaragua, and certainly without meaning to be heartless or disrespectful to anyone...in America WE DO NOT KNOW REAL POVERTY!!! read it again, and again, and again...if you think I am lying to you then PLEASE put your stones down for a minute and purchase a ticket to Chiverito, Honduras or La Chureca, Nicaragua...here's the deal...in America we have the one thing that these countries DO NOT nor WILL have...HOPE.
The hopelessness of places like this one are'nt only measured by people with no money, and for that matter, even in homelessness...it's so much bigger...we complain about our government being corrupt??? sure there are instances of corruption.....we might even blame the fundamentals of leaders in corrupt motives, but CORRUPTION???? let me tell you about corruption.
There are only 2 classes of people here....rich and poor...the only question is, how poor? The government doesnt care about the poor, all levels of government are really set up behind closed doors after elections, and they appoint the leaders that they want, no hanging chads nor constitution to mess with.......the people vote, the politicians make deals amongst themselves, new leaders are elected....there is no running water for a large part of the population, and in large areas of populations they are still using latrines...when was the last time you heard of someone using one of those in the States? no running water, so they walk to a public faucet or (God forbid) the closest stream and just pick it up in plastic jugs....at certain times, they pick random hillsides, stake a claim and start putting up walls made of wood, with whatever they can muster up between landfills and refuse all togeter...they sometimes are able to save up to buy bricks and make real walls, but most of the time they use tin sheets for roofs...they turn into ovens in the summer when the tin keeps the house nice and HOT at temperatures topping 100 degrees.
If you have high aspirations your options are kind of limited, you can become a police officer, you will enjoy a lousy, lousy salary, BUT you will still make out ok because police officers only bust criminals to take their loot...they also are on the take from gang members who want for them to look the other way in their drug running, and drug cartels who are willing to let you (the police officer) live and not kill you and your family to not only look the other way but to come and rat out other officers in the unlikely event that they are planning to bust you....
On the other hand, if you don't feel like being a hypocrite, you can always become a drug dealer, or you can join a gang...in Tegucigalpa alone there are well over 250,000 gang members...MS-13 or MS-18 (archenemies)...f you are a young man ages between 14 and 18, pray that no gangmember recruiter sets his sights on you, or your options will be to join or die...they also threaten your family. The vast majority of the "soldiers" of these gangs are between the ages of 14-18...and they are the ones executing the "hits"
I was thinking today of all the luxuries that we as Americans have...the luxuries of DEMANDING that certain adjectives not be used to describe our particular races and genders...the luxury that we have of expecting for police officers to act morally....he luxury that we have of calling the police and having something called (LAUGH!) "response time"...here 80% of the time that a police unit is called, they either show up hours later ORNOT AT ALL...
Am I putting down those luxuries???? again....no!! I'm not...but I do encourage you to think of this...we'd better PRAY our hearts out, PRAY that America and the way of life in America NEVER becomes like the 80% of the rest of the world that America is NOT.......because the day it does my friends, you might have to take all of your luxuries and pawn them together for a gun to keep your children safe from the reality of the rest of the planet, do you have the stomach to do it??. Am I being an alarmist? no, I'm just a guy who's made sure 3 times in the last hour that I actually do have my passport to head home tomorrow...
So pastor Jorge (an ex-gang member himself) has a center to rehabilitate alcoholic men in Chiverito....now please understand, alcoholic men in Chiverito, are not the type that get drunk and have their productivity at work suffer.....nor do they get withdrawn from their wives and kids, they don't "come home late smelling of alcohol"...nope...they are the kind to pass out on the floor in the middle of the street at 3 pm and lose control of all bodily functions, and stay in those conditions, soiled in their own waste as it cakes up with the unpaved road and they get bleeding sores from their skin rubbing on the ground....bug bites all over them, and lice that make their way out of the head and onto facial hair and eyebrows....case in point, I videotaped 8 or 9 of them on the sidewalks in the middle of the afternoon...Pastor Jorge picks them up, takes them in, cleans them up, gets them dry (from alcohol) weathers out the withdrawal, they rehab their chemichal addictions and then they rehab their souls, then they teach them auto mechanics or carpentry so that they can come out and try to find decent work...he's rehabed well over 500 of them NOT ONE has ever ended up on the streets again!!...
The last stop of the day today was the food kitchen...as we pulled up to it, I actually caught a drug deal on tape...literally accross the sidewalk from the food kitchen....they feed over 80 children daily...kids whose dad is passed out on the sidewalk and where mom's making a few Limpiras in the world's oldest proffession...not only is he feeding their tummies, he's feeding their spirits...just as the Jesuits did 150 years ago, they are a mission house and they teach these kids about God before the gangs get into their heads...I was there today, I heard them sing....their little arms raised in their raggedy clothes, their little eyes closed as they sang....they were feeling every word that they sang....the entire time as I rolled tape furiously, I had a lump in my throat and I was pushing back tears...for all the darkness around them in this poor country, for all of the darkness of their neighborhood, of the gangs, the violence, the injustice and corruption....and like a single candle in the middle of a blackout...I saw hope in their faces.....I looked at them and saw my kids...suddenly I felt so far away and I wanted to hug them more than I ever have...I once again thought about the blessings of the life we live....I thanked God....and I prayed that at least once in their lives, every flag-burner and every spoiled brat who feels "entitled" to anything SOMEHOW AND SOMEWAY spends a day here...may I somehow in my life do something worthy of the blessings that my family and I have been given.
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