Business in the Barrio

I do love living in my little barrio! There’s always something happening, starting in the wee early hours of the morning, going on throughout the whole day and finally winding down sometime in the mid to late evening. We won’t discuss the neighbours who like really loud, really late night music though…

There are the door to door deliveries of water, various companies on various days, all with their own distinctive calls that I’ve learned to recognize over time. There are the horse carts selling green plateno by the single pound right on up to the giant stalks of more than fifty or sixty at a time.

There are the hand carts full of vegetables or citrus fruits, (complete with their swinging scales) that are pushed along while the vendors call out their sing song of wares for the day. There is the man who uses a hand pedalled, bicycle cum cart who comes around selling huge, fresh avocadoes for 20 Lps a piece and the Garifuna women who stride along with their big plastic tubs full of fresh “pan de coco” or “casaba” balanced on their heads, calling out their own song of wares for sale.

But today I watched something new for me. It appeared to be a scrap metal buyer that drives through each street, in each neighbourhood, using his loud speaker to announce that he will buy your scrap metal, car parts and batteries, corroded lawn furniture, aluminium window frames and even dead and dismembered electric fans for cash. Not necessarily cash on the barrel head, simply lempira passed out of the passenger window.



Two young men do all the physical work of collecting, hauling and miraculously loading onto the truck, the various and sundry items that people have stashed in their carports or yards rather than discarding into the garbage. The buyer, who is also the driver of said over-worked vehicle, watches from his mirrors and determines the value of the booty and hands over small or large amounts of lempira to the seller.

One elderly gentleman determined that his “junk” was of greater value so the buyer lumbered out of the truck to continue the payment negotiations in plain view of said goods and it appeared that both men were satisfied in the end.

























Then he climbed back in, fired up the truck, started repeating his spiel through the crackling loudspeaker and trundled off down the road with his workers hanging onto the back of the overloaded and definitely over-used pick up truck.

I guess there’s always room for one more piece, isn’t there?