Frontier Towns

A verbal description of my impressions of "frontier towns" from my travels...
No pictures this time ... Its for your "minds eye" :))

Where to start?
Well the way they always start for me I guess... riding in from the outskirts... So Ill start with the town streets, which are in the outer parts of the town, just a grid of dirt roads that fade off into the jungle (or scrub or desert depending on where they are).
In the middle of the town though, the streets are paved, but often that is largely token because they usually have all sorts of potholes and absolutely always have lots of mud and dust thats been tracked in from the surrounding dirt roads.

The buildings and architecture of these towns are a real mixture too... There are usually only a few more solid looking modern and "planned" buildings of two or more levels. Most of the other buildings are of a very simple and functional form and made of concrete blocks and corrugated iron roofs.
It seems to me like most buildings start out as a storage space of some sort and then get external walls and then an internal wall or two added over time, along with maybe some haphazard bathroom plumbing and voile!, its now a home... Well yeah, you need to knock a new door in there and maybe a window over there and perhaps add a small extension there too... Yeah, now its good! :))
I would describe the general "architectural" qualities of these towns as being "If it stays up its good!"... Aesthetic aspects are reserved for the few larger buildings that I assume are owned by the wealthier local merchants, and their ideas of "style" usually involve some large white concrete pillars and some concrete lions guarding the gate... And of course a big imposing fence with lots of spiky wrought iron work... You know... The old "Im successful and important" style! :))

But most of the working people in these towns are very poor and have the simplest little box-like shacks made of the same concrete blocks and corrugated iron but on a much smaller scale. Many of the poorer ones dont even manage the concrete blocks and a new shelter material is added to the mix in the form of large tatty sheets of black polythene plastic being used as roofs or walls or doors etc.
These tiny little homes line many of the streets, often leaning up against each other in long rows seemingly for "mutual support" or at least "for the company" :)

The wealthier areas do have glass in the windows, but always these are also covered by a grid of iron bars. The poorer districts dont have any glass at all and often no bars either (nothing to steal inside I guess).

The streets are of course a constant bustle of activity with a distinctive mix of traffic that always has a high percentage of large trucks. The trucks are carrying whatever it is that makes money out here at the frontier...
It may be bananas, or rough cut hardwood lumber from the forest, or cargo off the boats or whatever. Most of the trucks are in really bad condition and have likely never seen a "service" other than to fix something when it actually breaks... But then only if its essential to the vehicle operation... Like say two out of four of the wheel brakes or the wheel bearings, But certainly not including the mirrors, lights or indicators or even doors or windows etc!...

Anyway, these trucks are constantly driving slowly through the streets to or from one storage building or other. They constantly just stop in the middle of a street and spend the next two hours slowly engorging or disgorging their cargo. Or if they do get off the street at all then its always into some tiny little lane that takes them an hour to manoeuvre into or out of, and always with a constant barrage of shouting back and forth between the driver and two or three guys at the back of the truck who seem to make lots of noises and gestures but have little or no effect on what the driver actually does...
The driver of course is constantly revving the big diesel engine which belches out black smoke and ear-splitting decibels of noise while he monotonously changes gears between forward and reverse and then frenetically spins the steering wheel from "lock"position on one side to "lock" on the other side, and "tries again"; Each time gaining an inch or two toward a better position for the big trucks final desired orientation... Its a dance that can and often does, go on for hours.

... But you need to add to that vision a mirriad other street users too,
Like the hundreds of battered little yellow taxies of some cheap and unknown brand made in China that seem to ply the inner streets carrying almost exclusively the towns women from place to place. It seems they (the women) dont like to walk in the mud and dust so much and they almost always have a big load of either household shopping, or its the baby and a couple of very young children in tow, or perhaps the two or three school aged kids being picked up or dropped off.

And all these little taxis are constantly using their horns to say "Hi" too each other or "get out of the way" to one of the trucks blocking the street, or to get the attention of this guy or the next one or the one after that, to see if they may want to use his "most excellent" taxi services rather than one of the other dozen taxis that just went past ahead of him or the other dozen that will come past behind him... Or then of course there is always a supply of "eligible" girls on the pavements and corners that NEED to be tooted at to demonstrate that the driver thinks they are "highly desirable" etc...Or maybe they just beep constantly because they are taxis and they can! :)

And competing with the tiny little car taxis for the same fares there are always plenty of the even more diminutive motorbike taxis. These guys are smaller and more manoeuvrable and zip in and out of small gaps in the slow moving traffic. They carry cargo or passengers and usually more than you would think could possibly fit on a bike that size... But fit it does, and mum and the two kids and the shopping seem to "stick like glue" to the back seat of the little bike as it bumps and swerves its way through the traffic as the "possessed" driver pilots the little "assemblage" to its destination at top speed.

The bike drivers though also do lots of tooting and of course it always helps to show the world "How much of a man you are" by constantly revving their tiny little 125cc motors even though they are not going anywhere... How cliche!... It must be something genetic in the human male right hand!...possibly related to some other repetitive manual and self satisfying action?... Who knows! :)
But like guys everywhere, they love their machines and barely a single one of the little taxis or motorbikes is without some sort of additional "bling" added at great expense...
It may be the oldest and most beaten up little bike on the planet, but before the owner spends money on new tires or brake pads, or an oil change, he'll buy a fancy new seat cover with a picture of a scantily clad "Beer commercial girl" with big breasts on it; Or he'll replace the headlight with a blue tint bulb so it looks cool at night, Or maybe its a big "No Fear" sticker on the tank, or some other suitably shallow symbol of "macho pop culture"...
Guys are the same all over the world! :)

And then, next size down on the traffic scale are the bicycles and carts (both two and three wheeled varieties). They move at walking pace and again they carry any cargo they can, from propane gas bottles to water bottles or loads of chickens in cages etc. The ones I like most though are the vendors who have their whole little shop with them. Its a hardware or fruit and veggi shop on wheels. Now, these guys dont have a horn they can toot but they do have a voice and they use it constantly and loudly; Each with their uniquely different and barely decipherable cry touting the availability of their wares in an infinitely diverse addition to the cacophony of the other street noises.

Then there are the pedestrians. They are the people of the town moving about doing their "thing". Many of them are simple manual labourers who earn their livings by carrying loads on their backs from one place to another. Whatever people do, they mostly dress in very casual attire, though down here in the Caribbean tropics, there are lots of bright colours in the clothes... And lots of bare skin too in every shade and tone that has ever seen the light of day :) The working guys often have no shirts at all or if they do then its covered in stains and grime from the loads they have been toting around on their backs. Their skin is dirty too and always with either a sheen of perspiration or downright drenched with sweat... They work hard for their pittance!

And peoples footwear is usually pretty limited and mostly based on rubber in these towns. Its either flimsy little flip-flops and the wearers are resigned to their feet being in the mud and dust and general filth, or its full length rubber boots (only in the wetter climates) which provide substantially better protection for their wearers :)

But, of the pedestrians, there is a special sub-group that always seem to catch my eye because there are always surprisingly large numbers of them... School kids!... Dressed in confoundingly prim and proper "Catholic" style school uniforms with ties on the boys and pretty plaid skirts and collars on the girls. The shirts are usually white or light blue and I simply have no idea how either the kids manage to keep themselves more or less clean as they move through this incredibly filthy environment or, likewise, how their mothers manage to wash and press their shirts to this state of cleanliness given that they get washed in the muddy rivers and dried on clothes lines outside these little shacks in the dusty streets of these towns... It truly baffles me! :)
... But, school kids there always are! It does not seem to matter what time of day it is, they are always there picking their way through the maze of traffic in their twos and threes.

But there are smaller players in the traffic flow too... These are the domestic pet animals that are usually just destitute and undesired off-spring from house pets or guard dogs that have been "cast out" into the streets to "make the best of it" that they can... The less fortunate ones; The occasional cat and the numerous dogs.

The cats are not very common (Its not their sort of environment) but those that I do see seem to do better than many of the dogs as they are more independent of humans than dogs and smaller too, so they can get buy on less. They are usually quite grubby, though you can only see this on ones with white in their coats, but otherwise they look healthy enough.

The dogs however are always very common in the streets and sadly they are often very "hard up". They are always dirty and always hanging around the little roadside eating places and sniffing around for scraps. They are constantly being "driven off" by the proprietors of these places,... And actually by pretty much everyone all of the time... They never get a pat (No one wants to touch them) and rarely a kind word it seems... So much for "man's best friend"... Though I think their situation is more a reflection of the "man" in that statement than the "friend"!
The street dogs that Ive seen on my travels are some of the most heart wrenching visions Ive come across...There are ones with horribly disfigured and uselessly limp limbs that make their way slowly and painfully around their town "beat"... There are others with terrible "whole body" mange that leaves them hairless and covered with scabs. And there are still others with infestations of ticks and fleas that they just have to live with.
And if that wasnt enough then they also have their own "dog society" but its little better than the human one they are in because its a viscously maintained hierarchy ... And to the "top dogs" go all the prime feeding opportunities while the lower ranks just get the scraps of the scraps...If they are lucky!
I dont like to think about what happens to the poor canine unfortunates who slip over the edge of the precipice of life on the streets... Im guessing its very unpleasant but maybe its actually quite quick...
Still, its a very sad life with not a kind word from anyone... Truly, "Its a Dogs Life" !
But there are also of course, plenty of them that are basically healthy and "getting by", but their demeanour is always "cowed" by the constant verbal and physical abuses they receive... When it comes to human interaction, they virtually all keep a very wide "guard band" and are always on the edge of yipping and skulking away with their tails between their legs.

The most common place to meet these poor "denizens of the streets" is of course hanging around the local "eateries", but as a visiting human to these frontier towns, eating houses can be harder to find than you might think...
Its usually one of the first "tasks" that I have to deal with when I get into one of these towns. The usual approach is to do a searching walk through of the streets in the middle of the town... But this is usually not that fruit-full, because even though you do locate a few places, they are usually far from the model "cafe" of your minds eye! Neither the cuisine nor the hygiene/atmosphere of the dingy little places comes anywhere near my desires... But there is what there is, so after about a half an hour of pointless wanderings I generally settle for "the best of a bad bunch", wander in, sit down, order something simple and hopefully recognisable off the menu (or often just verbally)... And then I sit and wait for the delectable "mystery dish" to arrive in front of me!

And arrive it does, and as my Spanish has slowly improved over the months of travel, the mystery aspect seems to have reduced and Im left staring down a "meal" of sorts.
Its never fancy, and there are often portions of it that I just dont touch, but its food and thats what I need and so ... Down the hatch!
But, not quite so fast... Without fail, within about a minute of the plate of food hitting the table, a small squadron of highly skilled flies arrives to harry me for the remainder of my stay! There may have been no flies around at all while I was waiting, but Im sure they were there and they saw me and they were just waiting for the right moment...Perhaps utilising the element of surprise?
But now that the food is here, they are on the move!
Im sure the scientists would say its impossible, but I swear that these little black flying vermin have developed a sort of "hive higher mind"... They seem to work in a team like a pack of dogs!
Seriously!, Two of them will be distracting me over near my drink (trying to land on the lip of the bottle of cola for a nice bit of sugar to start their meal), and while Im trying to shoo them away with my fork hand, there are another two that sneak in "under the radar"on the other side and pop up over the edge of the table for a surprise attack on the bit of leather hard meat of some description that is sitting sultrily curled up on my plate awaiting its own insidious attack on my taste buds! :)))
And there are others circling constantly just out of range ... watching! I think of these guys like "rodeo clowns"... Ready to fly directly and conspicuously into my sight-line (or if necessary, directly into my mouth or eye!) to distract me from my target if one of their brethren on the "close quarters attack detail" should "slip up" and get distracted for a couple of seconds too long (enough for me to get a good swat all lined up!) as it walks around on the salad.
Its seriously all I can do to keep them off my food for 95% of the time (They get the other 5% no matter what I do!)... And Im really quite experienced at this "little dance" these days too!

Ahhh :)) , but its all just part of the game I guess...
Like I say though, Im starting to quite like these little frontier towns....
But Im still not sure why?