Heidi Kramer, a Honduran, is busy playing tour guide in Dubai this week. Ms Kramer, who manages the executive lounges in the souk at Madinat Jumeirah, has hosted five guests from Honduras passing through on their way to South Africa to watch the World Cup. "It is hectic," says Ms Kramer, 26. "People from Honduras travel a lot to see the team play. The support is always there." Victor Aparico, 32, one of Ms Kramer's guests, who arrived in Dubai on Monday and left on Wednesday, says he heard from a friend at the Honduras Football Association that about 5,000 people were travelling to South Africa from his country.
"We don't expect to do much, but it is our first time in the World Cup since '82 so everyone is pretty excited about it," says Mr Aparico, 32, a restaurant owner from San Pedro Sula, who will have flown more than 25 hours to get to South Africa. In Honduras, the government had declared the national team's match dates as holidays. Ms Kramer, whose German father was born and raised in Honduras, says she has missed the support of fellow Hondurans in the UAE. She had lived here for two years without meeting another person from her homeland - until last month, when she heard someone speaking Spanish at Madinat Jumeirah. That Honduran introduced her to about 10 others from Dubai and Abu Dhabi. "Can you believe it? It's crazy," she says. "I tell people I am from Honduras and they look at me like 'What are you talking about?'
"The best thing about meeting them was they had my food. I was able to eat most of the things I don't see here." Ms Kramer, who left Honduras about nine years ago, has never seen Honduras compete in the World Cup. "I had to wait quite a while," she says. Her new friends hope that Honduras, ranked 38th in the world by Fifa, can win a match or "at least leave the World Cup with a little bit of dignity", says Cynthia Harp, 46, who left Honduras in 1986.
Mrs Harp, a mother of two, can recall Honduras's last appearance in the World Cup. She remembers vaguely the "Football War" of 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador, four days of fighting that had its roots in border, land and immigration issues. With that as a backdrop, three World Cup qualifying matches were played between the two nations in June in which travelling Honduran supporters were killed and national flags and anthems insulted. In Honduras, Salvadoran migrants were attacked and thousands fled. Eventually, diplomatic relations were severed as El Salvador won the decisive qualifying match 3-2.
One month later, the Salvadoran army launched military action against Honduras, starting a war that killed thousands of people. Thousands more were displaced. "I was very young and my dad was a pilot at the time," Mrs Harp says. "He used to fly with the air force and transfer injured soldiers, and I remember being in my grandmother's house with the lights on, stuck in the house, and we couldn't get out."
Relations between the two countries are normal now. For this World Cup, supporters like Mrs Harp, who has lived in the UAE for 13 years, can focus strictly on the football. "I think we have good players, so I hope to perhaps move to the second round," she says. "But we have not won any games during the warm-up games.People in Honduras are a bit sceptical, but other people are hoping just for the team to do a good job."
mchung@thenational.ae
