Black Jesus

I had written down all the numbers for my meager budget for the trip in a spiral bound notebook ( the Escudo Nacional on the front cover,times table on the back )which I had bought for 50centavos at Leonela Bowman’s store . I only had 100lempiras to my name . I needed at least 200 and so I borrowed 100 from Leonela , God rest her soul. I would have to dive everyday , and catch a lot , when I returned in order to pay her back. The trip was unexpected and there was a sense of doom about it. I felt deep down inside that I would never come back to my wife and unborn child. I had overstayed my Visa and although my permanent residence was in tramite the Immigration officer was having none of it as he slurped his fish soup while seated at his government issued metal desk , the kind that deafens you when a drawer is opened or closed. Montes was his name and although always affable with me on the occasions I had visited him previously , this day he seemed irritated. His eyes were red and face puffy so it must have been a bad goma. I could speak very little Spanish and so my mother in law had travelled with me to translate . ‘Tenes una buena suegra’ , punctuated by a noisy slurp of soup , ‘pero igual , siempre tenes que salir del país por mínimo 24 horas’ 5 lemps for the dory to Oakridge , 10 lemps for the bus to Coxenhole , 42 lemps for the plane to La Ceiba it was all written down to the last mortadella and cheese sandwich , a line underneath it all to make the grand sum of 200 lempiras ( $100 in 1987 ) . In those days the bus trip from Oakridge to Coxenhole was an Odyssey in itself especially in rainy season since the roads were not paved ; it took 4 hours through winding roads and sleepy villages with brightly painted wooden houses on stilts and rusty tin roofs. The further I travelled from Helene the farther I felt I was from those I loved and the closer I felt to losing them. The plane was a noisy old DC-3 ( Dak we knew them as in Africa ) that made the hop over from the island with the door open , the sultry hen on the lap of the passenger next to me did nothing but stare and blink. Leaving Ceiba and passing El Porvenir I counted my money for what must have been the 50th time while looking at my spiral bound text book , getting increasingly dogeared each time I thumbed through it. The bus was not comfortable by any means but it was within my 200Lemps round way to Guatemala budget. Seating was a thinly upholstered bench with a backrest. It was a novelty for the first hour seeing the mountains and then in the Lean valley miles upon miles of Banana plantations but the repetitive scenery was soporiphic and I found myself nodding off and banging my forehead on the metal piping on the backrest of the seat in front of me which provoked a grin from the snotnosed urchin sitting on his mother’s lap in the seat across the aisle. It took 6 hours to reach Ocotopeque close to the border with just 2 stops along the way to use the toilet and buy goods being peddled at bus stops in distant , dusty villages . “Pan de Coco , Pan de Coco” sold by solid Garifuna matrons in Tornabe , outside Tela and “ Rosquillas “ from Lencas in Siguatepeque. I had my half dozen Johnny Cakes lovingly baked and packed in a muslin cloth by my wife of which I had calculated ( much in the same way I had managed my budget )at what time I would eat each one. After Siguatepeque it was all a blur , I barely remember the names of the towns just La Esperanza , I remember because it means ‘Hope’ and Ocotopeque closer to the border where we changed to a minibus .The border post was called Aguas Calientes and since I was learning Spanish I had made a habit of translating all place names and anything I read on signs or newspaper headlines. With the pink glow of a disappearing sun on the horizon behind it , I read a flimsy sheetmetal sign that appeared to have lost its lower half , that announced “Pecadores” which I realized was ‘sinners’ and not “Pescadores” , ‘fishermen’ . It tormented me for a while to know what the sign had once warned or even promised sinners . I crossed as a Britanico into Guatemala , leaving Honduras behind me with only the thought of my loved ones faraway which was bringing a lump to my throat. A 20 minute minibus ride took a handful of us into Esquipulas where we arrived in the dark and chill of early evening. I headed for the cheapest pension which was also called La Esperanza ( Hope , again like the Honduran town ) apparently a popular and affordable option for pilgrims. It wasn’t much . The room so resembled a prison cell that even the tiny window had bars on it. It had a rickety steel framed bed with unwashed sheets and a hairy blanket poorly folded at its foot. The smell of Pine Oil pervaded the poorly lit corridors and my room for the night. The key was tied to a wooden block with the number ‘5’ crudely carved into it which looked like an ‘S’. There was no door to the bathroom and so it was dark and the tiny soap didn’t lather much with the freezing water but I could brush my teeth. I ate my Johnny Cake ration and thumbed my notebook adding and recalculating the pittance I was travelling with expecting it to somehow have multiplied like the five loaves and two fish. As dawn broke I thought I would venture to the Basilica to see the famous Christo