So I wandered around the local market on Saturday in effort to entertain myself and bought some sweatshop wares. I happened to run into a friend from the school who convinced me to go with him to some church fundraiser dance his house mom was requesting he attend. Not to0 exciting, as the majority of the people there were 50-year-old Hondurans, but it was interesting to see them doing different latin dances. During one slow song, I was sitting at a table with my friend watching people sway on the dance floor and thinking , oh, its so nice to see so many old people who are still in love. My friend suddenly leaned over and goes, “Ninety-eight percent of those men are unfaithful.”
According to the local paper, which was referring to a recent study by the United Nations Population Fund, 98 out of every 100 Honduran men have extramarital relations. The article also talked about a people sleeping with as many as 1000 women who weren’t their wives. 98% is unbelievable to me, but my teacher didn’t seem to think the numbers were wrong. My male American friend was much more flabbergasted by the concept.
Being here reminds me that if you’re gonna be a woman, the best place to do so is probably the US. Every time I step out of the house, I realize this as every other man from the 65-year-old on the street, to the entire 10-year-old soccer team being transported in the back of a pickup truck yells, “I love you, baby.” My favorite was when some rich 19-year-old in his brand new SUV pulled up next to me as I walked to the mall alone. He introduced himself by saying, “Where are you going?” A few exchanges followed after I told him I wasn’t going to tell him where I was going. He then proceeded to say, “You people are not good with Honduran people.” (All this in perfect English.) What a fucker. For as horrible as we people are with Hondurans, he thought he’d give it one more try and yelled “You seem cool,” As he was forced to move through the traffic. Bah. I thought briefly that maybe its just part of the culture and the women here don’t mind it, but my teacher told me the second thing she would do if she were president, was institute a fine for men you yell nasty things at women. Luckily their English isn’t quite good enough to get crude. Fuck machismo.
3 comments:
Ha! Well that makes me feel better about being an `merican. So if nothing else, it least experiences like these can give you faith in your male counterparts in the US of A. 98% though? Yowza! Watch out for the STDs, don't touch down on public toilets. Actually avoid them all together.
I wonder what your teacher's first law would be as President. Also, I'm not sure I agree that the best place to be a woman is America. We haven't even had a woman as president and possibly will never even see one in the running in our life time. As well, I think men are pretty unfaithful here (as are women) they just hide it better. I do agree that it is one of the better places to be a women, but then again, everything is relative.
Hey Coletta, Interesting blog! Found yours through Elia's ;-) (btw: This is Kris; Jeroen's House mate in Belgium)
I do have my thoughts on those extramarital activities your wrote about. As you said yourself, people seemed in love while dancing. Maybe the secret in every good marriage is having someone on the side. Not that I approve from a moral standpoint but if 98% of the men are sleeping around, well that means probably as much women are sleeping around unless there's just a few of them sleeping with a lot of men ;-) It might even be nice for women over there to get attention from men outside their marriage. Might work stimulating for both parties to not start taking each other for granted like we western people (European or American ;-) tend to do after a certain amount of years of marriage. So maybe it doesn't sound good but who says man was made to be monogamous? Maybe, just maybe those Honduran people have found the secret to a happy marriage, by sleeping around collectively.
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