First Walk

We took our first walk outside the compound today. We covered ourselves in bug spray (to protect from Zika, Dengue, or Chikungunya biting mosquitoes) and sun screen, strapped B in the red stroller and instructed T to hold tightly onto granny’s hand. As he opened the large steel door to let us pass outside, the guard gave us a strange, blank look. He pointed right and said don’t go past the intersection (two doors downs where our street meets a busy road); then pointed left towards a cluster of trees in an abandoned field across the way and said don’t go past the mango tree. I smiled and nodded; thinking to myself “I don’t even know what a mango tree looks like!?” We wandered away under the perplexed gaze of the guard with his handgun strapped to his waist topped with extra bullets displayed decoratively on his holster. The sun was scorching hot, and then a stray dog approached us menacingly to block our path. On our first foray outside we got as far as the front lobby to the condominium complex… to our own compound! We were so scared and exhausted that WE WENT BACK HOME! The little voice in my head kept on repeating that we are living in one of the world’s top ten most dangerous cities for crime. I tried to reason with myself that we were stopped by the blazing hot sun and a ferocious looking stray dog. I’m sad to say it was fear that overtook me…

A few days later, after checking and double checking on the map that we were in a green zone and confirming with our neighbours that we could walk safely in the immediate vicinity, granny and I decided to bring the children for a second attempt at a stroll in the neighbourhood. Went for our first REAL walk outside the compound today. How daring! What an adventure. On our second attempt, we decided to leave the stroller at home and strap B to me in the baby carrier. It’s important to note here that ever since he started to walk to the park in Montreal with granny a few months ago, T has learnt to stay on the sidewalk, hold an adults’ hand, and look both sides before crossing the road. Here on the short street inside our compound, where only the residents and visitors of the twenty odd homes who are vetted by the armed guard are allowed in, T still insists we walk on the sidewalk in a very imperious tone: “Sidewalk granny! Sidewalk mama!” as he follows along on his little orange Strider push bike.

The mangy dog having moved on, the scorching sun hiding behind the clouds, and especially our curiosity having got the best of us, we ventured out a little further on our second attempt; this time we discovered walls and sidewalks.

It appears that each home and business owner in Tegucigalpa is responsible for building and maintaining his/her sidewalk which translates into a haphazard mess of steps, bumps and random slopes. Some sidewalks are skinny, others are very wide. Some are removed from the road and allow for a relaxing stroll beside pretty flowering bushes and below leafy greens and palm trees. Others are dangerously close to the street, so crooked, cracked and broken that we must be careful to not stumble over! We were lucky that T did not fall into the open sewer which was sometimes right beside his beloved sidewalk. Granny and I chuckled at T’s bossiness about staying on the sidewalk and the state of the roads here in Tegu.

Our first and (only possible) stop was a Pulperia (depanneur in French, or corner store in English) where we bought ten fresh handmade corn tortillas for 10 Lempiras (about 50c) from a kind chatty lady, her daughter and her 3-month-old grandson who was sleeping in a little cot under a mosquito net at the back of the store. Satisfied with our second outing, we headed back home slowly meanwhile observing colourful bougainvillea, flowering trees, tall cactus plants, and ants going about their business in the cracks on the pavement. When T got tired and wanted to be carried, granny invented a race game which got him running along with squeals of laughter to: “ready, set, go!”

But what we mostly saw were walls, lots of different walls. Tall walls, fat walls, grey brick walls, walls topped with barbed wire, walls topped with five live electric wires. As we walked along the street (just one block over from our compound), we could only guess at what was behind the 12 foot plus walls. Some homes had lovely ornate wooden doors, others had thick metal gates with only a small window which could be opened from the inside. I still wonder to myself what is behind these fences as we occasionally get a quick glimpse through open gate as a car drives through. For now, I can only guess what lurks behind them and what the armed guards might be protecting.