Tegucigalpa: En la Ciudad de la Furia
Dear readers, Three or four months ago, I went to a nightclub named Noches Magicas, close to downtown Tegucigalpa, or Tegus, as it is more affectionately known. It’s an after party place, a haven for those who aren’t content on returning home after bars and clubs have kicked everyone out in the Godly hours. It’s a venue for the true nocturnals, also known as dirty stop-outs. And on that night, I was just that. It’s in a hotel. I was told it had been abandoned but the social media pages suggest otherwise. There is a swimming pool plonked in the middle and different rooms playing different genres of music, catering for all sorts, because that’s exactly the type of person Noches Magicas attracts: all sorts. There were folks of all ages, generations, social classes, backgrounds and walks of life, dancing, smiling, chatting, kissing, God can only tell you what else, along with the doormen, spotting sins of all sorts. But I like that: a blend of people of many orientations, tastes and spices of life, all under one roof, of varying states of inebriation, all enjoying themselves. It reminded me of a place I used to hang out in Birmingham in my youth called Moseley Dance Centre. A haunt, with a similar vibe. But for Tegus, there aren’t many places like this. I feel it’s quite unique, but all cities and towns require such a place, for the dirty stop-outs of life. Sadly, I have no photos. A fool, I am. Or maybe not, because I too was in an intoxicated state. On that night, at some ghastly late hour, I decided to walk home. It’s about 4 or 5 miles from where I live, mostly flat, and it took me about 2 hours. I knew the route and my legs carried me on automatic pilot. I didn’t feel I was going through any particularly dangerous barrios, but I get it: it only takes one ghoul to put you to sleep. I don’t know what my rationale was at the time when I made the decision to walk, other than I just wanted fresh air and to spend some time alone with my thoughts. A strange hour and a place to stroll, I agree. Suffice to say, Tegus isn’t the safest place to walk alone at night, but no city is. “Especially for a white, gringo-looking dude like you,” a friend told me the next day, an echo of many other comments I received from friends and family. There were quite a few adjectives, actually: crazy, irresponsible, silly, selfish, daft, foolish, arrogant for thinking I was untouchable. Maybe it was just my flow of thought at that moment, as I’m usually more sensible (kind of). Then again, what they don’t know but will do now; I’ve walked home loads of times, and I love it. It’s not that I enjoy taking risks. But I don’t feel unsafe in Tegucigalpa. Hondurans look at me bizarrely when I say that. People are generally sweet, nice and have a good vibe here, with a bit of boisterousness to add to the spice. Don’t get me wrong, I know very well that the barrios marginales (marginal neighbourhoods (sorry, I really dislike the English term slum. I find something so outdated, undignified and disrespectful about the word)) can be very dangerous. I don’t want to underscore the violence in Honduras and paint the place as a safe haven, nor do I want to pinch a patriotic nerve, as I know many Hondurans are tired of having their country portrayed with “the most dangerous country in the world” narrative. One shouldn’t drop their guard, of course; it would be irresponsible to encourage folks to flaunt their valuables to the world walking down a street. However, I sometimes feel more unsafe walking the streets of Birmingham, London or even Preston, especially at night, than Tegus. I’ve been robbed and assaulted more times in Europe than I have in my 13 years in Honduras. One might point out that in Tegus I live in a gated community, true. Nor do I have not the faintest idea of what it’s like to live in a barrio run by gangs. But still, generally, I feel it is less likely that a drunk smashes a bottle over my head or a gang stabs me for no reason in Honduras, than the UK. I’ve seen less bar-room fights and had less people starting on me because I accidentally looked at them a little funny. That’s not to say these things don’t happen in Honduras. I acknowledge there are many variables to take into consideration. In Honduras, I enjoy an anonymous life where I don’t frequent the cantinas and bars in certain neighbourhoods, where as in my younger days in the UK, I was probably more carefree and enjoyed going out more. I might be painting my native country in negative colours, as well as crafting an image of Honduras that many feel might seem as unrealistic, but I’ve heard other Europeans in Honduras say similar things. It’s bizarre to say it, and maybe contrary to popular belief, but an honest observation, it is. En La Ciudad de la Furia Tegucigalpa has a certain melancholic charm, but it shines even more after the sun goes down, and I love to embrace it. Even with the energy, excitement and drama that comes with the nightlife in a Latin American city, Tegus possesses something magnetic that makes it hard to depart the place. Maje, as I mentioned above, I’ve been here for 13 years, and while I might moan about it now and then, it’s difficult to claw myself away. Please excuse my machista language, but for many years, many Capitalinos have given their city a colourful little tag: La puta: ugly by day, beautiful by night. And that’s the certain melancholic charm I was telling you about. On the walk home, I took a few photos. Despite the intoxicated state, my senses were
The Game of Grief
Dear readers, As you can guess from the title, this post is an alternative type of a jolly festive read. I’m sprinkling it all with a bit of jest and dark humour, which is the language I love best. That’s my first disclaimer. The second is that I’m not a qualified counsellor or psychologist, but God help my poor patients if I would ever decide to become one: their spiral might forever descend if their lives were put into my hands. The third disclaimer is that this post has no objective to obtain sympathy or empathy of any sort. I don’t need it. I write through personal experience, logging the journey and memories of mourning in order to support others who have also suffered a loss of some sort, whether it be a death or separation from a loved it, or anything that gives a sense of mourning or disappointment. It is also in dedication to my father, Stephen Arthur Rogers, who passed away on 9th October 2022. As romantic as it sounds, and I know he’s rolling his cynical eyes at me right now while I write these very words, but I feel he’s pushed me to write this. Or in any case, he’s certainly inspired it. Over a year has passed. I haven’t written much publicly about my father other than expressions of grief on social media. I guess it might be that I’ve had too much to say or on my mind, and I didn’t have a blog or the correct medium to express it. I’m not in the business of drama dumping the world with my thoughts. Fuck no, I save that for my nearest and dearest. If we talk about the different stages of grief; by Jaysus, there are anywhere between 5 to 7 to a zillion steps to pass through depending on what and where you read it. On some level, I guess this post is my own way of coming to terms with it: the Acceptance stage. But what I write in the below paragraphs may contradict the last sentence. Because the process of grief is more complex than a step-by-step process. I knew a little something about the grieving process. Just before my father’s death, I was going through separation from my former partner. From that experience alone, I was going through tremendous loss, and as a way to find relief and emotionally and mentally prepare for the pending divorce, I read up on the grieving process to gain insight on what to expect and when. It’s not as though I was walking into it blindly; I’d heard of the 5 or 7 or however many stages there are of grief beforehand, but it all seemed simplistic and unrealistic. We all know, emotions are wretched to grasp, comprehend and control at the best of times. When a big life event comes along, it’s an emotional boxing match: blows all over the body, especially the head. The majority of the websites and self-help guides on grief have their disclaimers before launching into the “5 steps of horrendous mental suffering”, by stating that grieving is never linear, which is very good of them, but also wholly accurate. Grief isn’t linear whatsoever. But still, I felt it was lacking that je ne sais pas quoi. As mentioned above, my father passed away on 9th October. He battled a short but intense fight against lung cancer. I remember in the weeks after the initial diagnosis in early August, I was learning all these terms and what they meant, like CT scans and the use of different dyes and colouring. I learned this-or-that scan may impact if Dad could receive chemotherapy, or that the effects of this-or-that treatment may make dad more poorly for a day or two. There were different types of diagnosis which I never knew existed, and then there was the dreaded term nobody wants to hear about themselves or a loved one: palliative care – end of life. There were different types of nurses and hospital units and treatments flowing through the conversations, and consequences and ifs-and-buts if this-or-that happens: it confused me more, as well as being the worst dictionary exercise ever. My brother and sister were grand, talking me through everything in layman’s terms. They are professional doctors and have witnessed some of this in their day-to-day jobs. It couldn’t have been easy for them having to regurgitate the spiralling bad news and information from the doctors’ technical jargon into words that the rest of the family could comprehend. That comes with its own traumas. Something I will always be grateful to them for. This was all happening during a British autumn. I was not used to the wind and drizzle and greyness, being that these days I am very much a tropical animal, thriving on vitamin D and rays del sol. Still today, in Honduras, on the rare day when temperatures drop and there’s a little drizzle, it evokes something of a melancholic trauma of those final weeks. The dampness and rain and clouds and sitting in cafes at the Royal Worcestershire Hospital drinking shitty coffee waiting for shitty news; I fucking hate those memories with a passion. It still sits in my system rather uncomfortably. I remember the first pangs of grief hit me some weeks before my dad even passed. I sat down for a pint with my best mate Stuart Harbourne in a bar in Birmingham, and he kind of confirmed what I already knew, “Lung cancer: it’s one of the bad ones”. It causes a little sense of guilt in my low moments, that I somehow premeditated or manifested the worst-case scenario. What might have happened if I’d used the power of positive thinking? Would things have turned out differently? Silly, really, I know. Very irrational and absurd. The devil’s work, procrastinating such things. I’m able to rationalise it; don’t worry. After all, I’m not sure how positive-thinking medically prevents the spread of aggressive cancerous