Chisme

To successfully live and integrate/understand any conversation in Honduras there are a couple of key words that you have to learn, they come up in every conversation and are essentially the life blood of Honduran speech. Cheque, vaya pues, and pucha ka, arise in any situation and can mean a plethora of things ranging from 'cool' to 'see ya later' or 'oh snap' , words like bolo, mal criado, and chancho and the dreaded ‘fijese que‘, all being negative statements are also used all the time to describe any and everybody. The one word however that really defines the Honduran culture however is the word and lifestyle that is 'chisme' otherwise known as gossip. Everything is gossiped about here, especially in the smaller villages like Yarumela, anything newly developed is instantly communicated by the lips of children, adults, men, and women anything with a way to communicate will chismear. Some things are harmless, like the spread of the gringo's names throughout the town, every day while walking through the streets a new house or family that I've never seen before will randomly yell out 'estuart¡', this is fun, but other chisme isn't quite as harmless. Whenever anything bad happens, like a death or a fight or an accident over half the town knows about it within 10 minutes, but nobody actually knows the facts, for example the other day a girl got hit by a car in town, she apparently was between 4 and18 years old, possibly had blood coming out of her ears and had to get brain surgery or was completely fine, the driver was also either going too fast or was drunk and on drugs, these are just a few of the 'minor' details that nobody can ever keep straight. It's funny down here because although nobody wants to be known as chismoso there isn't a single person that doesn't deep down inside absolutely love the chisme.