La Paz Street Scenes

24. January 2010 by Fortunato Velasquez.

This is where I live: La Paz, La Paz, Honduras.  From the bottom right photos I’m going to take you on a walk to the grocery store from my new apartment.  After 11 months in-country I finally have my own two-bedroom, two-bath unit with a kitchen and 24/7 running water.  Not common in the country’s smaller communities where most PCVs live.  I live on the second story of the Pharmacy you see on your left.  I also have access to the roof where I’m going to plant a garden.  We turn left when we exit my building and walk down two blocks where the Fundacion Senor San Jose is located; the children’s home where I spend many hours.  Like most Hispanic countries I have visited, like Spain, Portugal and Mexico, the homes here look almost nondescript from the outside.  But once you cross their front portal the interior living spaces are built around large flower-filled spaces: like the Hogar San Jose where we are growing a large garden and are raising chickens.  Our tour will have us walk in a large square through the center of town making right turns all the way until we arrive back at my place.  At the Plaza Central across from the alcaldia and the church there is a coffee kiosk.  Nearby I meet a couple of my friends, Carmen and Marla, colleagues from Jovenes Sin Fronteras who had just finished an HIV/AIDS lecture at a school visible in their background on the other side of the park.  We walk down Calle de los Pinos and make a right turn towards the Despensa, one of 4 small supermarkets in the city.  When we leave the grocery store we make a right turn at the El Soldado traffic circle and enter the Mercado, a crowded place several blocks long where one can find just about anything edible or wearable.  Which brings us back on the same street, the Calle de Comercio, to home where unfortunately the raucous market sounds sometimes don’t die down until evening.  On this wonderful Sunday the weather is balmy and the cloudless blue sky a picture of perfection, so who cares.

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