Our new family and Fred’s nonsense

This week we met with new volunteers, all but one from the United States. One of them, called Jake, has been volunteering with Global Volunteer Network in the past, and has been making a living recently here in La Esperanza. Not surprisingly, he plans on moving on to bigger and greater places in the near future. Volunteering seems to be more of a popular solution to travelling around the world than we first expected. Just this week we met with seven new volunteers; it’s great to have new people around sometimes.

We have had serious problems with the water from our first day in La Esperanza, and not being able to wash properly was a major hindrance to our comfort here. Along with the project coordinator, GVN has arranged for us to change households to one with running water, provided the city tanks are operational.

As we arrived to our household after getting back from Los Hoyos, we got a call from someone at GVN telling us we were to pack up and get ready to move to a different house. We got to our new house and met our new family, younger at heart and more talkative than our former. Most families here seem to comprise from the whole family tree, and sometimes it is hard to see who is who in regards to another.

We soon found out just how much party animals they were when they asked us to invite our friends over for a night of dancing: since they had heard that Dre, Fred, Victoria and I were also going to the carnival at La Ceiba on the weekend, they figured we might need a bit of help mastering the local dancing. And oh, did we… The next night Fred and Victoria came over and we danced on Punta, Merengue and Reggaeton (I guess the local “pop music”) all night. How embarrassing.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that Elvis, the older son of our family, had something going on for Fred, as he kept demonstrating daring dance moves with her. We found that quite amusing.

The next morning, despite the late night, we were to get up very early again to catch the 4:30AM bus, and again, Fred had insisted we go get her and Vicky at their household before attempting the ‘dangerous’ walk through the city. While I was getting ready that morning to go to their place, my friend Dre was being sick again in the washroom. We were already running a few minutes late when I decided we should wait no longer, and so I left him at our house while I went out to fetch the ladies.

Of course, they could do nothing else than complain at my five-minutes-late arrival at their place while I waited for them to finish up whatever they were doing and gather up their stuff. Five minutes had already passed by when I passed through the gates again, ready to go and regroup with Dre at our meeting spot. However, things could not really run so smooth without one thing going awry; too busy complaining, Fred let one of the dogs out in the street, and we had to wait another twenty minutes as she scampered off in the streets like a wild goose running after the dog, trying to herd him back inside the gates. Fair enough, if she had not cried out the whole time how I should have caught the dog in the first place, awakening everyone in their nearby homes.

When the girls were finally on their feet and ready to go, they ran off in the distance at a trot, with me trailing behind them, all the way to our meeting point with Dre. They had to turn back a few times as I cried after them when they took the wrong turn, but generally, the walk over there went well. Thank god we had taken the trouble of meeting at their place so we could protect them from the rabid dogs. We never really figured out what purpose we served as far as protection went: the girls (ahem, Fred) seemed quite content to walk off at a distance to lead the way.

I just had to write about Fred.