Tegucigalpa: Back broken on

I was coming home from my SHIT Spanish school yesterday evening, chatting to the taxi driver, looking down at the neon on the Bulevard Morazan, and a wave of warmth for this damn city came over me. This is bad news for Simp, but good news for me. Good news for you guys too, who respond so quickly to emotional blackmail. Thanks for the comments, and the emails: you're all legends.

It's taken 3 months for me to feel warmth for Tegucigalpa, and in the end, it was a good old drinking session that sorted it all out. Two enabling factors: 1) the arrival of an Irish tv crew to film one of our partners for a week, and 2) (somewhat improbably) the decision on the part of a bunch of sporting heathens that the best possible way to spend a Saturday evening would be watching Honduras play Denmark in a friendly match in the national stadium.
The match was lousy. There were two goals, one apiece, equally forgettable. There were a couple of Danes dotted around the stadium (most of whom ended up out for dinner with us and the tv crew, somehow), and not so many Hondurans. When, about 60 minutes into the game, Denmark scored the first goal, the Hondurans all stood up and cheered them delightedly. Apparently that's what they do: if their team is shit, they'll just switch allegiance, and hiss and jeer their own lads. You can draw your own conclusion about the Honduran character, and its appreciation of loyalty.
You don't want to know about my Saturday night: suffice to say it made me very happy. And ended, having involved weeing in a traffic island at 3.00AM, at a house party full of Honduran people who didn't look like they'd shoot you for your mobile phone or boo their own national team; rather, a bit like my mates.

Now, I put all that in their so's you'd know not to worry about me. I'm definitely settling in. I'm off to write a serious blog about civil society now: you should read it for homework.