(For both people out there who are reading this, sorry for the long lag with no posts. Some interesting things have happened, which I will report in the fullness of time. For now, I'll just try to catch up a bit from my notes.)

Entonces... 3/20- A Sunday. Woke up, or rather became more uncomfortable tossing and turning in the sweltering heat, wrapped in my now-adhesive silk "sleep" sack, than getting up to face the day. Maryse and I held counsel, and decided that, even through Maryse's rather rosy lenses, this place sucked badly and we wanted to leave. Now. I then segued into a round of pathetic existential/philosophical/psychodramatic wailing, along the lines of "Why me? Why did I pick this wretched place instead of someplace nice? What's wrong with my karma, my energy, my fate, my character, etc, etc..." Which, of course, led nowhere but into a useless spiral of guilt, recrimination, and self-hatred which Maryse handled easily by suggesting that I accept the fact that shit happens to everyone, get over it, and move on. Of course, she said all that in the most compassionate and sensitive way possible, being as she is the sweetest, kindest person on Earth, or at least in my world. I love her more every day, after four years of partnership. Anyway, her advice was (as usual) sound, and I attempted to master myself and pull it together to form a plan to improve our situation rather than just sweltering, being miserable, and feeding the sandflies with my blood. Somewhere along the way I fed a mosquito, too. But improving our circumstances meant leaving the area, because even if our hotel was wonderful rather than a total dump, the stifling heat and humidity would still suck.
The problem was that it was Semana Santa, the main Latin American holiday- what Christmas and New Years' are in the States. That is, _everyone_ travels and all the rooms are booked a year in advance, plus prices are high on everything, not to mention that thieves love to work the crowds... So making our getaway involved a certain amount of uncertainty and even risk. We did not at all want to get stuck in San Pedro Sula, the unwashed armpit of Honduras, for a crowded holiday, but we had to travel through there to get to anywhere else. Also, I had made a commitment to Chaz to help out for Semana Santa, and despite her not holding up her end of the bargain, I still felt a little guilty at the thought of bailing out. Hmmm.
Meanwhile, Chaz decides that it's finally time to train us to run the place. This she does by vaguely pointing around the bar and mumbling things that make no sense, and in no way resemble any sort of job training that I've ever seen. This absurd episode is interrupted by the arrival of our breakfasts, sad-looking, flat splats of eggs and beans with blazing white Bimbo bread on plastic plates. Chaz displays her first instance of courtesy by going away while we eat. After our ghetto repast, Chaz is already hitting the beer and talking with her old UN buddy, Bjorn the Norwegian, who has come down from NYC to visit her. Bjorn normally drinks himself comatose in the morning, passes out for a siesta, then drinks himself comatose again for dinner. He was working on his first good drunk of the day, and was therefore in the verbose stage of inebriation. He and Chaz were telling war stories about Mogadishu or something, and she ignored Maryse and me while we stood around waiting for the training to recommence. After several minutes of being ignored, I gave up and wandered away to read a book on bartending in one of the decaying hammocks underneath an alarmingly unstable palapa just outside the bar, so that when Chaz was good and ready she could come and get me. Maryse studied her Spanish.
Chaz appeared four hours later, very annoyed at our absence despite the fact that she herself had caused it, and could have at any time just said she was ready. She could, after all, see us from the bar. I tell her that I've been reading up on bartending, and learning some recipes, which seems to piss her off further. "You don't need to know how to mix drinks to bartend here. Everyone orders the same thing, and the kitchen makes it anyway." Oh, okay... Why not tell me that upfront? There's no "why" to any of it, though- Why is the money kept in a locked box, in a leather wallet with zippered compartments, and all the different bills in different spots, in neither ascending nor descending order, so that making change is always a lengthy ordeal? Why is there bug netting on all the walls, (or rather serving as the walls) but three-inch gaps between the wall, door, and floor? Why write down every single thing a guest buys or uses during their stay, with a different page for each day, rather than just have a stack of copies so you can make hash marks next to the limited selection of items...? And so forth. I am pretty good at seeing ways to improve systems, but with Casa Kiwi, where would you start? I saw nothing but room for improvement, to put the most positive spin possible on it.
My on-the-job training starts abruptly by Chaz handing me a plate with a fish on it. Nothing else, no garnish, just the one small fish. "Take this to that table there," she orders. Okay, I take the fish on the plate to that table in the corner, occupied by six moreños. "¿Para quien?" I grope, not knowing whose fish it is, smiling like an idiot. The table is clearly astounded to be waited upon by a tall gringo male, and erupts into rapid, slurred, totally incomprehensible Central American Spanish. I'm not sure what it's all about, but they don't look happy at all. I drop the fish at a random spot on the table, and mumble "un momento, por favor," retreating to the bar as fast as possible. I am beginning to suspect that I am in for an extremely embarassing experience, the only real question being its duration. I tell Chaz that I can't deal with the fish table, and she goes over herself. Five minutes of yelling in Spanish commences, with the whole table participating, before Chaz returns. No explanation.
Chaz leaves. No explanation, no direction on what to do in her absence, where to find her in case of need, or the expected duration of her absence. No introduction to the kitchen staff. No nada. No Chaz. For a few minutes, I can't believe she's just split. Then, I become stressed about my responsibilities, which I am unable to fulfill, never having had them explained in the first place. Kafka would have appreciated the situation, I think. Then, I take the attitude that if she cares so little for her own business, I probably shouldn't care much more either, so I just start drinking beer from the cooler in an attempt to assuage my preemptive panic concerning the next time someone comes to me with some request in Spanish I can't comprehend. The inevitable happens and someone orders something. I make it through the order-taking okay, only having to ask the bemused Honduran to repeat himself a couple times to get the order straight. But then, I need to give the kitchen the order. I've never met these guys, never been introduced to anyone but Joel and Nindro, and I'm a bit nervous giving them, literally, orders.
I start flailing away in my fragmentary Spanish, producing nothing but looks of confusion on the faces of the kitchen staff. Shit, this isn't working at all... When suddenly, one of the guys breaks into totally accentless English and says "Yeah, okay, one order of fish, one cheeseburger, and a piña colada, right?" I was stunned, to say the least, and the sensation was not unlike that of a man about to be hanged having the noose removed from his neck, or so I would imagine, having never been relieved of a hanging. In any case, I was saved. Turns out that Eddy had lived all over the States, and is a very professional cook and a masterful bartender, among other things. The burning question in my mind is why the hell his bilingual ass is in the kitchen while I'm attempting to take orders from Central Americans with my 100-word Spanish vocabulary. The only answer we can come up with is that Chaz trusts me and Maryse to handle her money, but won't trust a brown person to do so, which sucks deeply. I am tempted to rip off a bunch of cash to re-educate her racist ass, but refrain for the sake of my personal karma, a choice I am still regretting a bit.
With Eddy's help, I am able to resolve any linguistic difficulties and am confident that my inability to communicate won't result in a machete-wielding incident or something. I relax, and actually, the bar is nearly dead so I don't need to do much of anything. Tim, an American who's been living in Honduras for several years teaching English, and Bjorn, having recovered consciousness from his morning drunk, both take up their barstools, and we start chatting away. Both Bjorn and I have Norwegian ancestry, so we talk about manly Viking subjects, and being a bit drunk he brags a little about his physical prowess. A round of Indian wrestling ensues, which I win easily and repeatedly. This is followed by several rounds of arm wrestling, all of which I win despite his having about 20 kilos and several inches of bicep circumference on me. Combat phase duly completed, we move into pool, more beer, and several hours of Bjorn explaining how he can deal with getting beaten by a fellow Norwegian, but if I was Swedish, he would be obliged to kill me.
About 3 AM I get to bed, having consumed around 30 beers and most of a pack of the wretched Honduran Belmont brand cigarettes while playing pool on the warped and decaying table. It's like a cross between pool and golf, actually, as you have to take into account the dips, valleys, and slant of the terrain when making your shot, and you usually approach the pocket by a series of putts rather than a hole-in-one. I approached my bed in a similar manner, actually, but did finally manage to attain a horizontal position, followed very quickly by a deep, deep oblivion.