MUD BY ANY OTHER NAME…

Before leaving the remote village where we had arrived after a half-hour motor-boat ride across a placid coastal lake and a pleasant, spirit-inspiring, forty-five minute journey in a dugout canoe through acres of mangrove trees, my hosts asked me if I wanted to borrow a pair of rubber boots as we continued on our way to visit a farmer who was planting nitrogen fixing trees on his small plot on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras.  “There will be mud along the way”, they said.

“Ha! Mud!” I replied, ever the intrepid traveler.  “I can deal with mud!”  I have walked through plenty of mud in my day!” “I am a development WARRIOR!”  “Keep your most probably ill-fitting and blister-causing rubber boots!  I will continue on in my Payless store-bought leather shoes!”

Twenty minutes later, I was cursing fluidly – at times under my breath, at times openly to the surrounding forest:  “There is a word in Spanish for SWAMP, you foul sons of our honorable local partner!  “Pantano!”  “It is called Pantano!”  “Mud is what you find in puddles that you can go around or skip across!”  “THIS IS A SWAMP!”

I was up to my knees in a foot of brackish water covering a gray, sucking mud (okay, so YES there was mud) that pulled me in to about mid-calf.  Each step required a force equal to that used to pull the cork from a bottle of cheap wine.  Every fifteen feet or so, I had to stop to reach deep into the sulfurous muck to withdraw either or both of my shoes as they were pulled from my feet.  Swarms of mosquitoes rose from the surrounding plants and water, calling to their cousins to come join the feast of much sought after white meat offered by the non-native who was “thwucking” his way through the seldom visited alleyways of their home.  

Arriving an hour later at our destination, I hopefully, but resignedly, asked if there might not be an alternative route back.  I thought perhaps that they had been testing me, and that they would happily and good-naturely announce a nearby road where a project vehicle was waiting to return us to the village.  There were many laughs at my pleading question.

Finally arriving back at the village shortly before dusk, I removed my mud caked shoes and rinsed off as much as possible in the small stream before settling back into my place in the dugout canoe for the 45 minute return trip through the mangroves.  Jokes (jokes?) were made about how we should hurry, before the snakes began to slither out onto the overhanging branches to begin their nightly hunt.  Within 10 minutes, my legs began to cramp from the previous mud thwucking, the dampness of my drying pants, and the increasing chill that as night enveloped us.  I could not move much to alleviate the cramps, as the edges of the flimsy dugout canoe rode about a half inch above the surface of the water.    

We made it back to the base camp, and it was all I could do to hobble to my cot, strip off my sodden shoes, socks and clothes and pull the covers up over my aching body, dropping to sleep within seconds.

The following day, I had a long discussion with the partner representatives on ways they might consider organizing our field trips to better ensure their continued funding…  (No, not really, but you know what I was thinking…)