Only in Hondo Land, "No Hay"

Only in Hondo-land…. That’s an expression expats and gringos (and even the occasional Honduran!) resort to when things happen that just cannot make any logical sense, no matter how hard you try to fathom it.

I had started writing postcards March 27th, planning on getting them mailed out by March 31st so that it might be possible for them to get to Canada before I did. Seemed like not a bad idea…. I then ran out of postcards.

Okay, no problem I’ll just stop at the souvenir shop on Friday, buy some more and pick up my stamps at the same time. That was a good idea but they close from noon to 2pm, it was 12:10 and I wasn’t going to hang around town until they opened again. One fact of life is to simply accept that just because you have a plan does not mean its going to happen, so move on.

The next good idea was to simply reprint a couple photos of my husband and I, (they are postcard size after all) and simply mail them out, instead of buying more of the same ones thate have been in La Ceiba over the last five years. So I set up the printer and got to work yesterday and by the end of the session had 44 postcards that were ready to go except for still needing stamps.

My next good idea was to take a taxi straight to the “Correos National” at 3pm, while they were open, buy the stamps, stand there to do the “lick and stick” routine (yuck!) and get everything in the post. Therefore it would be mission accomplished and a big piece of work finished for me. Yeah team!

I got to the post office, waited my time in the line up, got to the counter and made my very simple request, with nice manners and a pleasant demeanour. That was the beginning of the end for me and my good ideas!

The bane of anyone’s existence here in Hondo-land is the expression “No hay”, (sounds like no eye) and is generally pronounced softly, apologetically, loudly or firmly depending on the person speaking.

What it means is “We don’t have any.”, “I don’t want to look for your item.”, “I don’t feel like selling anything right now.” or “I don’t care if you want it.”

How can the National Post Office run out of stamps!?!

I realize that I’m catching a cold, that my sense of humour is not operating at full strength but to add insult to injury I was informed that no one else in town had any (which may or may not be true), they didn’t know when they would get any more and I could try again tomorrow. That sure sounded like “manyana” to me and for the uninitiated it does not mean “tomorrow”, it actually means “just not today”!

Therefore the postcards will be mailed from Houston International airport on April 30th and I know that they will get home to friends before I get there from my visit to Whitehorse, Yukon. There is some small satisfaction in the realization that I won’t be standing in a line up for 20 minutes to be, yet again, told “No hay”.

POSTSCRIPT: I changed my mind... All the postcards were mailed April 2nd, from the National Post Office here in La Ceiba. It was purely by chance that I decided to try again! No line up, no excuses and no problems purchasing 44 stamps. Except that the real costs were 15 lempiras for the stamp on a 10 Lp postcard (total of 25 Lp is about $1.75 Canadian).