Growing up, I was trained that when ever you hear a gun shot, you listen up to make sure you don’t hear two more. And, if you do, you know someone is in trouble. Three gun shots is the SOS signal of Southeast, Alaska - probably many places, but especially SE Alaska. If you are lost in the woods, hurt in the woods, run into a bear, your skiff ran out of gas, or any other reason that makes you need someone to come and assist you, you shoot three shots into the sky. So, last Monday morning at 3:30 a.m., I was soundly sleeping when my subconscious was stirred because of a gun shot. When it was immediately followed by a second one, I was awake, and when it was immediately followed by a third, I was sitting up in bed. Yes, I’m in Honduras, and I have no idea if they use the three-gun-shot rule, but the point was quickly moot because following those first three came eight more. I laid back down and was trying to fall back to sleep only to be stirred again one minute later by 11 more shots. Over the next half hour, I counted 78 shots, albeit, I was trying to sleep during this insane racket, so I’m sure I missed counted, but the point is, there were a crap-ton of shots. These were not far-off shots that I could just barely hear either, no, they were from about two houses down, so I could hear them as if they were right next to me.
You may be asking yourself, just like I was at 3:30 in the morning, why the hell was someone blasting a bunch of shots into the air? I found out the reason later that morning when I walked into the kitchen rubbing my eyes and asked my host mom what the heck was going on. Of course, I do not know the word/words for gun shots in Spanish, so I just formed my hand into the universal sign for gun and made the “bang bang” noise. Her explanation was that Monday was the start of the week students had off because of “Student’s Day,” which is June 11th. So apparently that means that it is ok to shoot a gun off at all hours of the night. She didn’t think anything of it. It took her a second to even register what I was asking her about when I made reference to the gun shots. For a second I thought maybe they didn’t wake her up, which would have been crazy. If someone could sleep through more than 78 gunshots, I would be thoroughly impressed.
As weird as this experience was, I didn’t here anyone mention it in town all week. Like I said, apparently it is nothing to think twice about. Ya, it sort of gave me the creeps, but nobody else seemed to care in the slightest. Guns are an everyday thing here in Honduras. During training we learned that if someone is trying to mug us, we need to just give them what we’ve got because the odds of them having are gun are not in our favor.
A lot of incidents have happened this past week - not TO volunteers - involving guns. One day last week, I was sitting at the desk in the vaccine room in the health center and walks in a guy with a glock tucked into his pants. I couldn’t not look at it. Thankfully Janet was in the room, too, because when he asked his question, I didn’t hear it. I was just staring at the gun and wondering why on earth he felt the need to have that on him in my friendly little community, let alone when he came to pick up his daughter at the health center!
Yesterday, Amanda told us about her day on Friday. She apparently went to a funeral with some of her co-workers from her site because a man had died who was related to one of them. Amanda was expecting some old man that died of natural causes, but that was not what she got. On the way to the funeral, there was a traffic jam. Upon investigation, they realized a tire was getting fixed on a pick-up, up the road a little bit. After waiting a little while for the truck to be moved, so cars could get by more quickly, Amanda realized that the other side of the truck looked like swiss cheese because of all the bullet holes, and that all the windows were shattered. As shocking as this discovery was, Amanda didn’t think much of it, but when she got to the funeral and saw a body laying on a piece of plywood that was sitting on two trashcans, she made the connection. This man, had not died from natural causes. He was gunned down in his truck (most likely drug related) that morning. She told us that the man was still in the clothes that he was killed in, with blood stains all over them. It sounded like an experience I would not have wanted to experience. I have never even been able to make myself go to a funeral of someone that I know, let a lone a stranger covered in blood that might be sitting on some plywood.
Then, last night, in Gracias, a few volunteers ran across a dead man. We obviously do not know that what took place that night involved a gun or not, but one can only imagine. So, what the guys told us gals, Amanda, Ashley, and I, who had called it a night a little earlier, was the following: The guys were walking back to another volunteers house, where they were going to crash for the night, when they noticed what they thought looked like blood in the “gutter” of the street. For two blocks, they walked beside the stream of blood and then realized there was a person laying on the sidewalk ahead of them. Their first instinct was to assume it was a bolo (drunk guy) sleeping on the sidewalk because that is something you see everyday here in Honduras. But, taking into consideration the amount of blood they had just walked past, they had second thoughts. When they reached the body and saw all the blood pooled around it, it became painfully aware that it was not just another bolo. As new volunteers, these guys didn’t know exactly what to do. It is not like there is a 911 that you can dial and have an ambulance rush right over. When they arrived at their destination, they decided to call the duty officer of the Peace Corps, to ask what to do, and I’m actually not sure what he said. But, the other volunteers who live in that same complex had apparently seen the man when they walked home too, and were also trying to figure out what to do. They did get in touch with the police, who apparently said that it was just some drunk guy and not to worry about it. When they all asked the landlord of their building for advice she instructed them to just let it be. Which, in the end is what they had to do.
Maybe the man fell and cracked his scull on the corner of the sidewalk, maybe he was beaten to death, maybe there was a gunshot wound somewhere on his body - we will never now. However, I’m slowly becoming aware of the fact that I may at sometime in my new Honduran life have to face a gun, which is not something that is fun to think about.
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