A very loud place
Matagalpa is a trading town and the bus station is where
it all comes together. It is an equalising sort of place,
where everyone is on common ground, for a moment anyway. It
is a marketplace of chickens, radios, tortillas, rope, soft
drinks, cakes, newspapers and if you have time, even stirrups.
Farmers just in from the mountains with their sacks of corn
and coffee beans; working boys with homebuilt shoeshine-boxes
giving businessmen in suits a shine; market women in their
big aprons with baskets full of potatoes and tomatoes. Taxi
drivers compete for arriving bus passengers. Hawkers wait
for permission from the drivers to board leaving busses to
save souls, collect for AIDS victims and drug rehabilitation,
sell bubble gum, miracle potions and vitamins, ask for money
to cover hospital or burial costs for loved ones. One woman
after the other walks by, filling the
air with their cries, announcing what you really do need today.
This is a place of exchange. |
