Sounds of the Night

Honduras is a noisy place. They don’t really have the same “respect” for quiet like we Americans do. There is usually someone in the neighborhood playing loud music, there’s people shouting, cars honking, dogs barking loudly, etc. Also, most Honduran homes have window slats (kept open except when it rains) to let air circulate through the house, so all the noise floats in. (Window slats are key when you don’t have air conditioner in the tropics.) When other volunteers come to our house they say we have a peaceful neighborhood, so you can just imagine.

The neighborhood behind ours on the hill is a neighborhood of “escasos recursos” they say here (scarce resources) and they’ve got more farm animals then you will find in our neighborhood. At night, about every 3 hours starting around 11ish, the farm animals get all stirred up and sing in chorus. Dogs, roosters and donkeys will bark, crow and hee-haw for like 10-15 minutes straight.

But Monday morning was the craziest night commotion yet, even beating the THOUSANDS (literally) of firecrackers that were set off here on Christmas Eve.

Javi and I were sound asleep in the wee-hours of the morning (around 4 am) when I awoke to the sound of a parade marching past our house. Yes, a full-on parade at 4 AM…..a school band with drums and xylophones, cars honking, a loud speaker. When I woke up I put my hand on Javi’s side of the bed, but he had moved to the “sofa” since he sometimes can’t sleep at night and needs to change his sleeping environment. I got up and went to find him, but when I looked at the "sofa" I couldn’t see him (it was dark and I was sleepy, after all). All of sudden, he bolts up from the "sofa" and starts running into the bedroom, head down, almost plowing me over. His eyes are wild. He was freaking out because he had just woken up and had yet to figure out what was going on. I’m shouting at him "ITS A PARADE!", trying to be heard over the noise (it was that loud!). They even gave us the courtesy of crossing by our house TWICE.

Of course, later in the day we were asking people what that hell that was all about. Some people didn’t think it was a big deal but there were a few people who thought it was kind of outrageous. Anyway, the consensus was that it was a school celebrating their anniversary.

WEIRD!