Basic manners between the two cultures are different too and I’ll admit; I miss the American ones and sometimes the Honduran ones bug me. Typical American manners include forming lines and waiting patiently. Well, for a culture where people show up to meetings an hour (or more) late, they sure are in a hurry when in the stores. Here the loudest and pushiest gets served first. My large American personal space is frequently invaded. I’ve learned boxing out techniques and use my backpack (which I wear on a near daily basis) as a buffer zone. Cell phones and talking during meetings are also not frowned upon. Well, I feel there is the tiniest, tiny bit of progress being made on this, but nothing at all like the bad manners it is considered in the US. Put my cell phone on vibrate, but why? Not take a call during the meeting? Please, why would I make someone think I’m busy?! The ringing phones, calls being taken in (not) hushed (enough) voices and no one saying anything about how distracting this is severely annoys me. Admittedly, I’ve taken this culture difference to my advantage. In a boring meeting I will gladly take a call from a PC friend and not feel a least bit of guilt.
Honduran manners which are not practiced in the US, while friendly in their intent, also annoy me at times (because of my American culture). When someone enters a full room, be it late, invited, welcome or not they will loudly say, “Good _____ (insert time of day here.)” Everyone in the room will say it back. OK, so imagine if you will being in a meeting with a dozen people having already commenced and in come three people late. Instead of trying to quietly and politely find a seat they will not simultaneously, but one by one say “Good morning.” The dozen people in the meeting will stop what they’re doing and greet them. See what I mean? It’s with the best of intentions of being polite, but with my American background it drives me nuts and makes me yearn for timeliness, coldness and being guilted into silence. Same goes with eating. I’ll be eating out (which I do nearly every meal right now, for not having a kitchen where I rent) and people who enter will say, “Buen provecho.” It’s incredibly nice to be wished a good meal by a stranger, but if I’ve got my mouth full of food and have to throw out a “gracias”, it can be inconvenient. Oh sheesh, I just realized how dumb it is to complain about this stuff. Oh well, I went through all the work to write it, not editing it out! :) The last Honduran manner is the greatest. Anytime you visit someone’s home you will be offered something. In the US it rarely goes beyond something to drink. Here, you aren’t offered water, because it’s cheap and people like to show off their “affluence” and their ability to buy coffee or soda. After being brought a glass of something (many times without being asked whether it’s desired or not) you’ll be given something to eat: bread, cookies, etc. Basically, if it’s got carbs you’ll be given it! If you also happen to visit around meal time, you’re getting a free meal. The other day I visited my soon to be landlady around 8:30AM and she gave me coffee and bread. After that I paid a visit to my friend who was recently laid off from the Mayor’s office. She happened to be cooking breakfast for her son, so naturally she had to cook for me too. Mind you I had actually eaten breakfast that day and without having asked if I was hungry, she sat a plate in front of me and said, “Buen provecho”. I love the generosity and it’s always from the people who seem to have the least to give. Sometimes I just wish I could turn it down.
There are many more pick-ups on the road here. The reasoning being you can cram more people into the bed of a truck than you ever could in a four door sedan. Duh, why on earth buy a four door sedan where you can cram maybe seven to eight people when you can buy a pick-up and have up to twenty people in the bed? Yes, that is the reasoning behind buying a car vs. pick-up here.
Because people here have very little personal space, they often don’t realize that they deserve more respect. For example, when traveling on buses, the seats will quickly fill up. Rather than denying anyone a ride, people will fill the aisle and be forced to squeeze together as tightly as possible. The ridiculous part of this is that, standing people have to pay the same fare and people let themselves be yelled at by the bus “helper” to move back and stand back to back in the aisle to make more room for more people. Whenever I climb aboard a standing room only bus I refuse to cram myself into ridiculously small places. I’m sure they think I’m a rude American, but I merely realize I don’t deserve to be smashed into someone’s back for two hours while paying the same rate as someone seated comfortably. Now, if only I could teach this to the locals, or better yet teach the bus companies better business policies.
Despite a lack of safety laws in the sense of an overcrowded bus, there is a helmet law for motorcycles. Is it enforced? Um, kinda. I see people on motorcycles all the time without helmets. There are those that wear normal motorcycle helmets that would actually protect them in the event of an accident. Then there are those, which are still abiding by the law, which wear hard hats or bicycle helmets while riding their motorcycles. I’ve never read the law, so I don’t know if that counts or not. However, it’s just a little ridiculous to see and I just pray I never seen a motorcycle accident in which the driver was wearing a hard hat. “Red Asphalt” in Driver’s Ed was bad enough. I don’t need a live version.
Many times when eating at a friend’s house my plate won’t have any utensils set beside it – just a stack of corn tortillas. Here you eat with your hands and use pieces of tortilla to pick up your food from rice and beans, to avocado and eggs. The Hondurans are real experts at knowing how to measure their tortilla allotment to food on plate ratio and will finish perfectly the last few beans on the plate with the last piece of tortilla. I, however, do not have years of practice and frequently require many more tortillas or simply have to ask for a fork. (Although there’s been times where I’ve eaten my plate surplus with my fingers.) It brings up the subject of different manners again, but instead of over thinking it, I just go with it and enjoy the chance to feel a little kiddish again.
There you have it. A list of some of the biggest differences I experience here. Luckily, it’s nothing that bad. My patience has definitely grown thick (as opposed to thin) and I frequently remind myself that I will experience crazy culture shock when I go home too.
Stay tuned for updates on my latest work projects coming soon!
Hasta la proxima vez…
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