Neighborly Love

Hospitality. That is the word that comes to mind whenever I think of my Honduran neighbors. As I’ve told you before we live in the same house as a Honduran family. An older grandma lives there with her daughter Sanovia, and Sanovia’s son. In the middle of the house there is a door that “separates” the two halves of the house. The door does not keep too much separation between us. We can constantly hear their music blaring to Spanish Praise & Worship music, or hear door of the microwave opening, and mostly their rapid conversations all in Spanish. On the other hand, they can hear every time we scream when killing a bug, every laugh shared when telling stories from school, occasional gringo parties, and they SMELL every food item we burn…..I promise it doesn’t happen often!

There’s so many times Gayle and I have been stuck in a pickle not knowing what to do next, when our neighbors have come to our rescue. One time Gayle and I were trying to open a can of garbanzo beans. We only had one little problem…we didn’t have a can opener. Opening our middle door, we asked them if they had a can opener we could borrow. We watched in amazement as Sanovia jammed a knife into the metal can and cut the top off. She. is. WONDERWOMAN. I felt like there should have been an announcer in the background saying, “Do not try this at home.” But of COURSE we had to try it out. Since then Gayle has successfully done it once.

Recently, we have hired them to clean our house. We found out the hard way cleaning is not easy when you live in a third world country—and things get dirty FAST. Our house was looking pretty disgusting and Gayle and I weren’t finding any time to fully clean it. So, we hired the best cleaning ladies in town! Our neighbors are THRILLED to clean. I think the grandma really enjoys looking through all our stuff. J These cleaning ladies go above and beyond. Each week they mop all of the floors in the house, they clean both of our bathrooms, they wash any dirty dishes, take out all of our trash, refold and re-organize our clothes, tidy our desks, and even put up new decorations. Two weeks ago I came home to see they had hung string on my wall tied to nails, which they nicely organized all my jewelry on!! On the chance of sounding extremely lazy, it is so nice to have a clean house without doing any of the work. 

To show all of our appreciation of their help, Gayle and I like to bake little desserts and bring them over to our neighbors. And every single time WE bake something for them, the next day they bring over some different kind of food for us! They are way too kind to us. So far this week I have had pan (delicious homemade bread) and sandia (watermelon).

We assume that our neighbors think we are failures in the kitchen. The grandma has been living in La Union her whole life, since way before they had electricity. It is amazing to see what she can do with food. Gayle and I on the other hand are doing the best job possible being thrown into a town with little to none food resources. The grandma constantly mentions how our stove top always seems to be dirty, and how little time we spend in our kitchen. It’s understandable, since she been cooking food and cleaning her home for 50 years now.

The other night Gayle and I were making breakfast burritos. We had everything covered, except for the tortillas. We decided we’d wing it and try to make homemade ones. They can’t be that difficult, right? Everyone always makes them here, 100’s a day! We quickly confirmed we were clueless in the tortilla-making business. So what do we do when in a pickle? Of course we opened our middle door. The entire family (grandma, Sanovia, Sanovia’s son, and 4 cousins) flooded into our tiny kitchen. The minute Sanovia enters our kitchen and sees the potatoes cooking on the stove she starts stirring the potatoes saying “They’re going to burn! They’re going to burn!” We asked them if they could teach us how to make tortillas for dinner. They could not have been more thrilled. Gayle went outside to the stove with the entire family to learn how. I’m sure it was great entertainment for the family to watch the Americans fail miserably at cooking. Gayle came back with some beautiful looking tortillas; she even made half of them! I was so proud. The grandma told Gayle I would be able to tell whose tortillas were hers and which ones were Gayle’s. J (Hondurans are extremely blunt)

And although she may be extremely blunt, I cannot imagine a more caring and thoughtful person. She has mentioned multiple times that all she does is think about us and what she can do to help us. Whenever we come home from a late Saturday night (11:00PM ..don’t judge) I can see the light shining from their half of the house. The instant we walk into our door her light turns off and she heads to bed. She waits up until we make it home safely! When we come home on the bus from a weekend get-away, she is always standing in her doorway, waiting and watching for that bus to rev up our mountain. The instant she sees us stepping off the bus she waves rapidly, runs into her house, and brings coffee over to us and asks us about our trip. She has a heart of gold.

Our neighbors hospitality and love makes me wonder what would happen if roles were reversed. Whenever I live in the United States, what if I had foreigners move next door? Would I be rushing over there making sure they were feeling at home? Would I constantly be worrying about their comfort, making sure they felt accepted into the community? Would I voluntarily do kind and thoughtful things for them without expecting something in return? If they didn’t speak my language, would I still try and reach out to them?

Before having this past years experience in Honduras, I shamefully don’t believe I would have been as hospitable as my neighbors have been to me. I pray that living in Honduras has changed that. I hope that whenever I move back to the U.S. I can be just as hospitable to all of my neighbors..no matter who they are. After all, that is what Christianity is about, right?