Portrait of a City

Oh, hello Readers. I figured since you were all insanely engrossed in my blog, I should tell you a little more about the city of Juticalpa, Honduras. So without further ado, a portrait...

Juticalpa lies in the high dusts of a valley surrounded by mountains, although I'm not sure which ones. Possibly the Sierras? It's a big city of about 50,000, but seems much smaller. The houses are like Legos - colorful and smashed together with a toddler's chubby hands. It is not dimensional, but flat with very few two or more storied buildings. There are only about 6-8 paved main roads, and even those are not paved all the way through from point A to point B. The other streets are dirt and stones. The streets have no order or pattern - the city planner must have been on drugs, PCP is my guess. There is a central park that is spread in front of a towering, white cathedral like an inviting blanket.

Pulperias are located on most corners and are differentiated by the woman's name who owns them, Puleria Sonia, Pulperia Flores, etc. These are like small, family owned 7-11's, and it's not unusual to see a kid running the register, or their family chatting on the stoops. All the stray dogs have their own corners too. I pass the same scruffy pups every day on the way up to school. While it is tempting to harbor all of them in my home, 87% of them have lice/rabies...but this is an assumption.

Taxi drivers hunt for passengers in Toyota models from the 80's. Sometimes the smell of poop stays with you so long that you actually check your shoe to see if you're the a**hole who has been walking for 20 minutes with poo on the bottom...but alas, that's just the way the city smells in some places. The Eskimo ice cream shop is a popular hang out for ages 2-97. It has A/C. Hondurans have warm and wide smiles and can't get over the fact that we are white.

Olancho, the department (state) I'm living in is considered the Wild West of this area, and that couldn't be a more accurate description. Everyone has a gun and all proudly display them in their belts. Armories are stationed on every other street. The second most frequent is a barber shop.

You don't see many homeless Hondurans. This might be a stretch but it seems like most of the people here do nearly the exact same blue collared job. I've seen very few large houses. Also, it isn't common for houses to hold entire families - like 15 members. But perhaps I just can't distinguish the homeless from the homed, which is a real possibility.

It's the rainy season and when it rains, it pours to use a cliché. Streets become flooded, and this is probably why there is such a huge problem with dengue fever here - puddles are rampant and unfortunate breeding grounds for mosquitos. Speaking of those foul bastards, they are very different here than in the States. Here they are so terribly small, you don't even notice them until they have been biting you for some time.

It's hard because I see all these problems and I know how to fix them, even with only 22 years of existence, but I really just can't. This is a subject for another blog though, excuse me.

Honduras is hard, but it's real. Whenever I feel frustrated with too much dirt in my eyes, and poop on my shoe, I can look up in any direction and look at the beautiful and awesome (as in its true definition) mountains, and remember that this is absolutley where I want to be.