Neighbourhood Watch

When you enter a town in North America there is a sign from the wildlife 'service' clubs there to welcome you: The Honourable Order of Moles welcomes you to Pavement Narrows. Enjoy your stay. How benign.

In other parts of the world it just ain't so. In parts of Central America (same continent but south, very south) the wildlife can be somewhat more dangerous. This must be particularly so in Honduras. As you enter a town (sic) or a village there is a massive billboard of welcome just as in the north. But this welcome is not set out by a 'service' club, o no. The very large sign of welcome is sponsored by the local Armada, ie: the gun shop. And for cash this emporium of supersonic metal delivery systems will provide anyone, at almost any time, a handgun, rifle, or assault weapon of choice. There is plenty of dangerous wildlife.

In a state capitol, which is essentially a fishing village that is home to the area prison, on the north shore of the country and the south shore of the Caribbean Sea, gun toting is seen as a status symbol. Being a country that has been raped and pillaged of all resources since discovery by the west guns are basically the only affordable symbol for a majority of the poor people that live there. Houses are for the main made out of mud and sticks and one pile of mud and stack of sticks is truly the same as another. Cars are seen on TV. Many families dream of having a personal telephone line strung to there mud and stick pile. So guns are the measure of keeping up with the Joneses.

In most cases this status symbol is somewhat like a hillbilly having a Gremlin mounted on blocks in the front yard: possessed, displayed and completely useless. Due to this it is lucky that there are no laws regarding where and how a person carries that portable death machine. Waistbands and pockets are the usual places, holsters costing extra show a sort of elitism. But there are those that can actually afford bullets. This is something that they let everyone in the village know nightly by firing bullets into the air when drunk. There is a distinct difference in the sound of a .38 revolver and a .22 automatic.

Two things are peculiar to a fishing village. One, everyone is up early. Like the birds, those who fish have to get the worms to entice the fish into the pan. Two, the beach road is Main Street.

So on this particular Main Street the women of town are up early gossiping, endlessly mending clothes and waiting for the day's catch to arrive in order to begin making lunch. And late every morning from a big mud and stick hut, designated as a hotel, a man comes out to enjoy his morning piss against a cocoanut palm on the edge of main street. He always takes care in his toilette. He comes out wearing his holster with a .44 revolver (as any real man should) and nothing else. This ensures that he can never drip any pee on his shoes and that if he was aware enough that the wildlife might have trouble sneaking up on him.