Friendly people

I recently posted this on Facebook and was gratified to see the large number of comments from others confirming the same. Here it is:
“I was reminded of something while on my morning hike – with every person passing exchanging “Buenos Dias!” – that I had to share:
The other day we had problems with the truck – when we arrived at the Uno station outside Trujillo there was a large quantity of smoke coming from under the driver side fender. When I parked, almost every man at the station came over to see what was wrong and if they could help, telling me to be careful as I opened the hood. I called our mechanic – Jim Anderson – who quickly came out to see what the problem was. We decided to drive back home (it was late Saturday so we couldn’t do much investigation or get any parts we might need) with Jim following to make sure we made it. However, I stopped on the road outside Cristales because it was again smoking badly. While sitting there, every person driving by stopped to see if we needed help. (including one gringo friend – John Leverich, who said he had tools in his truck we could use). I was struck by how nice all the Hondurans where to stop and offer assistance. How many people would do that in North America? In fact, sharing this story with Kyle Walker yesterday, he mentioned something similar happening to him in La Ceiba when he had a flat tire – someone stopped and helped fix it then drove away, with no request for anything for his help.
So when you hear about the violence down here (which btw, is very over-rated, especially in the area in which we live) know that there are very wonderful people living here, many living on the barest sustenance, who will offer their help freely and are kind & friendly.”