Make sure you are near a bathroom because you might pee your pants. So yesterday was an awesome day of ministry, and it seemed to be a normal ride on the bus back home. As we were standing in the normal packed bus I felt something tug on my backpack. I turned around to find a small Honduran man with a curious mustache slowly bringing his hand down from my pocket to his. I thought to myself, either this man is a horrible theif or he is so quick I barely felt it. I casually turned my bag around to my front (always the stylish choice) and continued my conversation with my friend Jake.
The man decided to continue with our interaction and tap me on the shoulder repetitively trying to get across the fact that he doesn’t like Gringos in slurred Spanish. By this time I could smell the alcohol on his breath and others around me realized what was going on and the mood turned somewhat humorous. I just decided to ignore him, but he wouldn’t have any of it so I decided to enjoy it and carry on a conversation. I couldn’t ever figure out if he liked me and wanted me to be his friend or if he wanted to beat me up, but either option didn’t seem to be a threat. When he asked me where I was going most of the Hondurans around me shook their finger in a resounding DON”T TELL HIM. I would soon find out why. I just ignored the question and went on making jokes. everyone was having a good time. Finally our stop came up and we began our 5 minute squeeze to the exit. We got off and began walking back towards home.
We were joking around just talking about our funny experience about 1/2 a mile down the road when we here a moto taxi (to the right) coming down the road. Everything was normal until the taxi slammed on the brakes right after it passed us. To our surprise out walks our slightly inebriated friend from the bus. There was about 2 minutes of us four Americans, our friend we are discipling, the taxi driver, and our new Honduran friend just staring at each other. We couldn’t just continue walking because he would follow us home. We had two options: the first was to pay the taxi driver to take the man back the road and leave him there to catch the next bus, the second was for all 5 of us (six including the driver) to get into this amazingly undersized vehicle and leave him behind. Since I didn’t know how to communitcate the first in Spanish I decided on the second. After some adjusting and paying 4 times as much because he would probably have to fill up again with gas after we got out we were on our way. The only problem was that our new confused friend decided to jump on the side. Clearly confused, we tried to explain to him that he couldn’t come with us. This didn’t work. He continued to jump on the side an neayly flip the poor three wheeler.
The driver took matters into his own hands and decided to floor it and then slam on the brakes in an attempt to throw the man off. This also didn’t work. It was time for drastic measures. I proceeded to exit the vehicle, walk away from the taxi and call the man over. He came over to me probably thinking that we had finally given up. Never. I told the taxi with my four friends to continue as fast as they could toward home. When they did this, I put my arm on his shoulder as he staggered toward me and told him in the best Spansih I could “I am sorry my friend, but I have to go now.” With those words I took off on a dead sprint after the taxi that was by now a little bit down the road. Not slowing down at all, I was forced continue my sprint until I finally caught up to the taxi and mustered the courage to jump in the taxi as it barreled down the road. Though our friend chased us for a bit, the alcohol caught up with him. We were free at last. Although we took a little more caution that night, it reminded me to just ignore drunk people in the future.
