Just Another Day at the Grocery Store!

One thing I've learned about living in La Ceiba (or anywhere!) is that life is best experienced when you expect either the least or accept the unexpected.

We used to have a chain of grocery stores called "Ceibeno" and with four outlets throughout the city they were creatively titled simply by the numbers 1 through 4. The second largest and most accessible was Ceibeno #1 located at the edge of downtown La Ceiba, next door to Swinford Park and within easy walking distance of the street markets.

A few years ago, the chain was purchased by Walmart (Yes people, Walmart is alive and well in Honduras!) and a couple of the outlets were closed. The original Ceibeno Uno is now called "Paiz" and still provides a fair selection of grocery and department store goods.

When I first moved to La Ceiba, some of my original forays into the world of food shopping were not only frustrating, but desperately nerve wracking as well. Keep in mind that I don’t particularly like to shop, for anything! But given that food is a necessity, I enjoy cooking and dislike the unknown content in restaurant or fast food offerings even I had to learn to do it here. I admit that I copped out and made use of the large Ceibeno Uno because I could find most of what I wanted with a minimum of attempted Spanish, and still remember my early forays with the grocery list in one hand and the dictionary in the other as I tried to decipher if what I saw on the shelf was what I had on the list!

To this day, there seems to a rather curious approach to supply and demand. You never know when any of the shops will have an item that they usually have; if they run out there is no guarantee of when it will return or even if said item will return and finally just because a commodity is a staple, don’t be foolish and take it for granted that it’s always going to be available. So many of us find shopping for basics either a curse or a bizarre form of treasure hunting – you never know when or where you’ll find said item, so you stock up or do without!

But there have also been some more pleasant adventures in the grocery aisles… Like the day the perky, scantily clothed young ladies were handing out free Flor de Cana 4 year old rum samples. Gotta tell you that certainly lowered my anxiety levels!

Or the day there was the big stage, with even bigger speakers, set up in the parking lot complete with (yet again!) perky, scantily clad young ladies dancing, the band playing raucously and between songs there was the evangelically inspired speaker vehemently preaching the sins of drugs and alcohol and promoting a local milk producer!

Yet, because I don’t want to support Walmart and my Spanish has improved slightly, I rarely shop in the larger stores anymore. Yesterday was the exception to the rule as I needed my bi-monthly loaf of “Bimbo” multi-grain bread and my usual shop, Tienda Palmira, was out of it so I broke down and went to Paiz.

What a surprise! And what a commotion was going on… There was this person dressed in the over-padded costume of the Bimbo bread company mascot, a gentleman with a microphone and camera, loud music blaring and all this right at the very entrance. I just wasn’t ready for it and stopped in my tracks, with a bag in either hand as this same mascot lurched forward to greet me. Without thinking I threw out both arms, bags still firmly clutched and blew “it” a kiss hoping that it wouldn’t hug me! Well, just like at the circus, the audience of clerks, customers, small children and security guards loved it and were even applauding as I made my escape to the package “put away” counter.

As the saying goes, in for a penny – in for a pound, so I proceeded to take a photo and then stand back and watch the show with everyone else as the mascot danced, pranced, had photos taken with people and generally made a very happy nuisance of itself at the check out counters.

Just another day at the grocery store!

Street Adventures during Easter Week

I tend to regard even the simplest events as a potential for adventure and La Ceiba certainly provides me with ample opportunities to witness the curiosities of life! An ordinary walk into El Centro to purchase fresh food in the market can present some amazing moments in life.

One day it was a live band on a street corner raising money for a local charity, complete with the sound system plugged into an extension cord from a nearby shop. Another time it was the police truck that had rear ended a taxi thus closing St. Isidro, a main artery through town, for over an hour.

Two years ago it was witnessing the Hotel Los Angeles burning to the ground and watching the crowds and fire fighters and National Guard. That was also the day that I decided to never leave the apartment without my camera again!

During this year’s Easter Week (Semana Santa) I spotted a wandering band of Garifuna men and boys, all dressed as women, some with shocking Halloween type masks and all carrying empty plastic jugs and small wooden sticks. I stood back across the intersection and pulled out my trusty digital camera and started taking these pictures as I watched them accost pedestrians and vehicles that came near.

They were banging on their jugs, dancing up and down, waving and shaking their arms though didn’t seem to be actually frightening anyone. Then I noticed that they were given small lempira notes or coins, stuffed into their plastic containers and the pedestrian or vehicle was freed, so to speak. They swarmed a number of vehicles as I watched, with one passenger even taking photos and then charged off down the street to another location.

Later that same day, I met up with a few members of this original “tribe” and was able to get some wonderful close up shots of the costuming and masks. These men were quite pleased to see the photos on the monitor but wouldn’t explain why or what they were doing, except to have me make a donation! Which I did rather happily as they gave me the photos; a good exchange in my eyes!

I have always wondered the “why” of this business of (most definitely male!) young men dressing as women and think I’ve found an answer. It appears to be a modern day equivalent of an original Garifuna fighting tactic; taken from a war dance whereby the men wore brightly coloured masks, layers of women’s clothing and would present themselves to their opponents as wildly suggestive women, dancing most invitingly before pulling out their weapons (from under their skirts!) and attacking. Talk about shock value!

Needless to say, I could be completely wrong but the tie to their original history makes sense to me.