El Amatillo, Honduras

Note: To read from the beginning, click here.

Inside the office, there are beastly metal desks and a small line of people. A mother and her teenage daughter stare at me the way I stare at the mangy, broken dogs I see on Central America’s streets. Pure pity.

I'm motioned to the back. There, the corner office is occupied by a big women with a cavernous voice, talking on the telephone. I wait and I wait, for what feels like an hour. The administrator won’t look at me. She’s pretending I'm not there. Tears gather in the pockets of my eyelids, then tumble over the ledge, down my cheeks to my chin. Silently, I wipe them off with the back of my hand. I try hard at being patient.

Here’s the thing: I don’t cry often. I was raised by a single father, himself the son of a hardened, WWII-Depression Era mother. I definitely don’t cry in front of police, bureaucrats or elected officials -- people a journalist instinctively distrusts. But, on the semi-rare occasions when I do cry, I always find a great challenge in stopping. When a movie or a song (or the punishment of a sadistic Honduran border agent) gets me going, I stifle sobs for hours afterward. When I need to cry, I really need to cry.

So, what started as a few, small, frustrated tears became the kind of crying that, while far from spectacular, was nonetheless hard to conceal. There was a lot of misplaced self-pity welling up with those tears: How did I end up here? Jobless, homeless, trapped at the El Salvador-Honduras border with empty pockets and knotted tongue? These are the thoughts of the mangy dog version of myself. A pitiful creature.

I try to regain my composure, to at least seem composed. But when the administrator finishes her rambling, giggling, booming conversation (I imagine a lover on the other end of the line, telling dirty jokes) she sits down, pulls her heavy metal chair to the desk, looks me in the eyes and asks, Why are you crying?

This is it for me, I think. This is a women who does not like dogs. This woman wants to be naked beneath the covers with her telephone lover. This office is her hell. She has no patience for me and my gringa bullshit.

I try to explain: I've been here for hours. Done everything I was told to do.

She nods, expression as blank as floor tile.

I paid all the fees, but now I'm out of money. There’s a problem with my form, but I don’t understand what it is.

She looks to my right, where Jerry-Curl still lurks. There are mutual nods. She's already heard all of this -- and she's on his side. She explains the grave importance of my injured form. Any markings, she explains, drawing a painted fingernail across the paper, could jeopardize my crossing through the country.  She’s a master of the ominous. Even now, in this moment, I pause to appreciate her flare for the dramatic.

Then she says something that, for all its corruption, is the first explanation I’d heard, real or not. The police, she tells me, will stop you on your way through. They’ll check your papers, using the markings as cause to say the form was forged or “compromised.” It’ll be a problem for you, she says. It's them, not us, you have to worry about. We're just looking out for you.

I’m skeptical. Why can’t I just get another copy of the form? I try not to sound angry, impatient or homicidal -- all things I feel, to varying degrees. I already paid my fees.

 I’m sorry, she says, not sorry at all. There’s nothing we can do.

There has to be something you can do. Can’t you give me another form?

We can’t. You have to pay for the form.

I did pay. I already paid.

She stares at me, floor tile. I don’t flinch, don’t look away. Finally, she looks to Jerry-Curl.

Really, she says, this is your responsibility. His face falls. You were supposed to tell her how to fill out the form. He’s stunned. She’s throwing him under the bus. I don’t know what to think. Was this about money, and she now sees that I really don’t have any? Was it all spectacle, a game -- some kind of border theater, for the entertainment of disaffected agents? Is it possible “the rules” really are the rules? Or that the police, not the good folks at customs and immigration, are the problem? I do mental math, calculating the logic of the border. None of it adds up to an answer.

Then, Jerry-Curl springs back. It wasn’t me, he says. It was Boat Shoes.

They go back and forth for a bit. She’s not harsh, but makes the point. There’s a problem and he needs to figure out how to fix it: find a way to run the paperwork without a new form.

I follow Jerry-Curl back across the street. The crowd outside the customs office is growing. I slip past and inside. There’s a barefoot Australian inside, with bleach-blond hair and a goofy, hapless way. I watch him fill out his form, asking what each line means. (Days later, in a Leon bar, I will meet him again. He’ll say, you were the girl stuck at the border, and laugh. One of this friends, with a skeletal face and hair not so much blond as white, says, Yeah, I saw you there. I was hiding in the truck. Yeah, yeah. Man, that border was crazy. He’s on fast-forward, something about a three-day bender. They’re all bouncing, fluttering like hummingbirds.)

Jerry-Curl explains the situation to Boat Shoes. They deposit me in a swivel chair, in front of a computer, and Boat Shoes leaves. Jerry-Curl goes about the business of whatever other business he has to do today. He won’t look at me again. I sit a long while, and when I ask him questions, he answers without looking up. He’s washed his hands of me.

Then, just as quickly as it went bad, it’s all over.

Boat Shoes returns. He shuffles a few papers. Stamps a few forms. Thrusts them in the hands of one of the other border guys, and sends me on my way. There’s a few more hoops (the agent has to check the VIN on the van, and I need to make a few copies), but then we’re on our way, driving south west, Nicaragua-bound.

As we’re putting our documents back in their case, I find a $50 bill, the emergency money I forgot we had.

El Amatillo, Honduras

Note: To read from the beginning, click here.

With computer problems solved, Boat Shoes returns to my forms, forms he's laid eyes on three times now. Then, there's a pained face, gurgling and groaning. He says there's a problem -- a big, big problem. His finger bounces between two lines on the form, lines where I'd confused marca (brand) with placa (plate) in the vehicle information section, realized my mistake, carefully crossed out my plate number and wrote "GMC".

The woman at the data entry office had been able to read it -- and take my last $11 for typing the hand-printed form. But, No, said Boat Shoes, this will not do. No, no, no...this will not do at all. He hands me back my forms, stamped and payed for, says a quick something to Jerry-Curl and turns around, back to his work.

Jerry-Curl and I look at each other. Anticipation like a Western movie duel. I'm waiting for him to tell me what's next. He's waiting for me to understand what just happened and react, as he knows I will, in panic. It's me who flinches: What do I do now? Can I have a fresh form? I'm sputtering like a wind-up duck.

Yes, you can have a new form.

Relief.

But you'll have to repeat the entire process -- with the bank, the data entry office, the stamps. You'll have to pay for each again.

He smiles a wicked half-smile. He has me.

This is where the logic hurts: even if we accept this $53 extortion, in the name of sanity and our desire to reach Nicaragua, there isn't another $53 to spend. Not today. We withdrew our last $200 from our international checking account in San Miguel; we're waiting for a transfer from our second, American checking account, to go through before we could get more. That wouldn't happen for days. We'd figured $200 would be more than enough to get from San Miguel,  to Leon, with a full tank of gas and a 10-hour drive. We were wrong.

Jerry-Curl is enjoying this. I should have paid to have the form completed for me, since clearly I don't understand the language. There's nothing he can do, I simply have to pay again. It's the rules, he tells me. He's not being cruel, just professional, like Boat Shoes.

This is when I realize that this isn't going to be easy.  It's definitely not about a scratch on th form, but it might not be about money either. This is punishment, or sadism. Whatever it is, it's not a matter of smiling warmly, apologizing for my mistake.

And if Jerry-Curl refuses to let me pass, we'll have to turn Dolly around and return to San Miguel, two hours away, where we can use our credit card on an overpriced hotel room and wait for our transfer to go through. Then come back to the border and do it again.

So, with nothing left to do, I beg. I tell him we're out of money, that we're only passing through. We just need to get to Leon. He's unmoved. He has me follow him out of the office, across the street, to an unmarked building. He goes in, motioning for me to stand outside and wait for him. When he comes out a few minutes later, he shrugs. Nope, like I told you before, there's nothing we can do. He's been with the administrator.

I stand there. Blink a few times in silence, and start to cry.

It wasn't a proud moment, but the combination of overwhelming frustration coupled with some small knowledge that crying might save me, took hold. It's pathetic, I know. A humiliation I'd like not to have granted. But this is how it goes, when logic is against you, you use what you can.

Well, can I speak to the administrator? He shrugs, disgusted, and opens the door.

To be continued...

El Amatillo, Honduras

Note: To read from the beginning, click here.

 Immigration offices, care of: www.guanacosonline.org
Boat Shoes “helps me” first, giving me the multi-layered and multicolored carbon copy form required to take Dolly into the country for the three hours it’ll take us to cross through the Honduras' southern tip and into Nicaragua.

There's an office across the way can fill out the form for me. But I opt to do it by hand myself. The service, I figure, is for the illiterate. No reason I can't do it myself. He watches me pull a pen from my purse and deliberate over each line. The form, a rainbow-colored bureaucratic wonder, requires multiple stops and multiple stamps. But I don’t know that yet. All I know is that a form is a form is a form, and I have filled out plenty.

The border is open 24 hours a day, but the bank that processes the border fees is not. This logic, see, is just too much for me. I join the line standing vigil outside Banco Occidental, watching a small girl chase a cockroach along a ledge with her finger.

When the bank finally opens two guards with large barreled, pump action guns escort us into the lobby, three at a time. They use metal detecting wands and brisk hands on the men, but let us women pass without a groping.

Inside, it’s cool and shiny, somewhere I'd like to stay awhile. Instead, the teller tells me I’m in the wrong branch. This office can't process the money I need to pay for the Vehicle Certification. She points me down the street, in the direction from which I’ve just come. At the main customs building, there’s a closet-sized room with two tellers and it’s own, less vigilant security.

Again, I'm turned away. I can't pay the $42 vehicle permit fee until I’ve been to another office, where a private company enters the information on the Vehicle Certificate into “the system." I don't know what this means, but it sounds very important. She points me toward a tree, obscured by a giant truck. Over there. She waves me off, a bug in her ear.

Photo care of: www.guanacosonline.orgTim’s reading Didion’s Salvador behind the steering wheel, with the window up to keep the vendors and street kids and money changers -- the present horrors of El Salvador -- from distracting him from the horrors of twenty five years ago.

At the data entry office men wait, leaning against the window, holding folders thick with forms. They’ve been there an hour, waiting to hand over their packets of someone else’s papers. Finally, a large women, eyes and lips painted in blue and hot cherry red, slides open the glass window without a word. The men shove their arms in between metal bars, dropping their papers onto the counter. Nobody speaks. One of them, the only one wearing a pressed shirt and slacks instead of jeans and a grubby t-shirt, grabs my arm and shoves it through the crowd, depositing my papers at the top of the stack. Chivalry, even at Amatillo.

A half hour later, the data entry woman slides the window open again and my papers appear, along with her open hand: $11 US for typing the information I’d filled out and printing it on a separate, stamped piece of paper, along with a stamped receipt. I give both to the teller at Banco Occidente, along with Dolly’s rainbow-colored visitor’s permit. I only have dollars, El Salvador’s official currency since 2001. But this Honduran bank doesn’t accept and will not change dollars. She waves me off again, pointing to a fat man with a four-inch thick wad of bills, sweating on the street outside.

I pay my $42 dollars in Honduran Lempiras and the teller stamps the many layers of multi-colored forms -- then hands me another form for good measure. Back across the street, Boat Shoes is working hard to get his computer to accept an illegitimate password.

He enters it again and again. After half an hour of entering digits, with careful pecking but no luck, he gets a cell call and leaves. I pray it’s tech support, but upon his return, he resumes the half-hearted pecking -- typing starred digits, hitting Enter, then entering them again.

Finally, he makes the call--the call that will save me from murdering this man with the rimless glasses. Or so I hope.

To be continued...

El Amatillo, Honduras

I. Part One

El Amatillo border station, El Salvador-Honduras, care of: kariandadam.comThey say that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. The same, it seems, is true of extortion. There are small extortions, like being over-changed a few dollars on a multi-course meal, and large extortions, like those perpetrated by presidents. In between, there’s a room with peeling beige paint, a dysfunctional computer that operates in a DOS-like language and a pigeon that flies in through the open windows -- in between is the El Salvador-Honduras border crossing at El Amatillo.

It’s hard to see what the pigeon might want with this place, where the air is hot and stagnant and the company foul. The men who make their living filing customs and migration papers for those who can afford not to are hustlers. Aggressive and swarming as this country’s biting ants, border “guides” lurk outside the aduana office, waiting for their client’s papers to be done, making faces at me through the open doorway. Why they’re outside and I’m inside, I don’t really know, but it seems to be part of the logic of this place. Gringos, who know nothing and pay more, get to sit inside the stifling beige building, with the tapping keys, peeling paint and pigeons.

We pay more, I imagine, because the logic of this place is too convoluted for our feeble First World minds to make sense of. We’re animals who’ve lost our instincts, schooling fish that don’t know how to school. The ebbs and flows of the border might make sense to someone better at seeing and following the patterns of people, but to me nothing is obvious except that I’m lost, alone in the open water. One thing is for sure: the other fish are laughing at me.

It’s not politically correct to say you hate a country. Oh, sure, you “didn’t have the best experience there.” Or maybe you "had the worst luck.” But to say a place is wretched and you never want to return is unacceptable. Of course it’s unacceptable for good reason: that bit about luck is true. If the world’s out to get you, any place can be hell -- and maybe tomorrow I’ll have the perspective to see Honduras as the absurd, large-scale case of bad luck and coincidence it was. But right now, I’m pretty sure I hate Honduras.

The customs men -- in white polos and khaki pants -- bounce their legs as they shuffle papers. The younger one is cool and professional, with a thick middle, rimless glasses and leather boat shoes; the other is older with acne scars, a jerry-curl and a bitter bureaucrats way of avoiding eye contact and questions he doesn’t want to answer. I imagine that, when he was younger, Jerry-Curl was the better of the two, but if there’s an equivalent to going postal at Amatilla, he’s it. He’s had it -- and he’s taking me with him.

To be continued...

Tonight, we shared a seven dollar filet mignon “a la Paris,” sitting in the bell tower of La Villa Balanza. Overlooking Lago Suchitlán, with the bugs buzzing but not biting, it was especially delicious.

But we’re heading South, so no lingering.

Time to drive.