welcome to the hood

 

the trucks

 

the bar (and trucks)

 

the house! (thankfully construction on the one behind doesn't move so fast...)

so let me tell you about this neighorhood i live in. there's a flour factory or something, of which apparently the president owns shares in, and well it means the factory can just do what it wants with this neighborhood, and so there are giant 18 wheeler trucks parked everywhere. i mean everywhere.there's no sidewalk anymore, there's trucks. trucks on both sides so that even a third truck can barely pass through and sometimes 2 trucks meet in the middle and there's nothing to do. maybe that's why there are so many motorcycle taxis, right on this block. you either take a motorcycle, or walk. and it's best not to walk on the street because that's the best way to get your foot run over by one of these trucks. so, you find a suitable opening and just swing under the trailer to the other side. it's shady and cool underneath so sometimes you'll have someone sleeping under there, or drying their laundry, or just hanging out and smoking weed and offering you some.
you'd think that because of this nice flour factory with presidential influence there would be a bit better electricity provision. or maybe that's the whole reason why all the houses lie in the dark in the evenings, because the factory sucks it all up, glowing in its well lit glory. so when marie and i get home from work and the streets are all dark, we meet at the little pharmacy/bar on the corner. usually, when the bar has no power, the house has no power, and so you sit at the bar and wait for it to light up. you wouldn't want to actually be here when there's power because they blast this really obnoxious music and it's rather unpleasant. so instead it's dark, dusty, but it's mellow, people come by and sell you peanuts and cigarettes and adidas sneakers and whatever you want. no one cares that we are the only white people for miles. there are constant traffic jams, people honking, and getting angry and jumping out of their cars and yelling at one of the sleeping truck drivers. i'm pretty certain one day someone is going to just plow into these plastic chairs. but also, i've started to become accustomed to the chaos, i almost don't even notice it anymore. or that i'm sweating through 3 layers of clothes, my toes are covered in mud and i keep jumbles of dirty cash in my pockets and that's how i pay for stuff.
there are some guys at the corner with a goat who are always trying to get enough people interested in eating goat to kill it. they also have chickens, and we keep telling them, tomorrow, tomorrow we'll come eat. but it's kinda gross so we decide what we are going to cook back at the house, based on whether there is power or not. it's a choice between headlamp salad (i wear my headlamp gangsta style while i chop avocados) or if we are lucky, will i cook a ton of cooker-jules style rice. but for now it can wait, this huge 1 liter beer is only 1$ and so we just drink and order more cold ones (these people are smart and keep their beers in the freezer so they are always cold) until the music comes on.