A hole new world.

Something I’ve mentioned in this blog is that when you travel in a developing country, your mind adjusts and you accept things that you wouldn’t at home. I have mentioned weird creatures indoors, putting toilet paper in a basket, a lack of electricity. The other week, I wrote about taking the time to notice the differences and enjoy them, make them part of the experience. At first, when encountering such differences, you might think, “Holy Cow (or Holy Baby Cow as the case may be), that is something, isn’t it? Well, you just don’t see that in the U.S. now do ya? But this is a developing country, so things are just not the same.”

Sometimes you’re walking down the street and you come across something that pushes you into the aforementioned thought process. Sometimes, you see something like this:

This is street construction in Xela, Guatemala. It was
the weekend, hence the lack of workers. 

Now surely you would never see construction like that here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Oh yes, you will see construction galore, but it doesn’t look like that ... like someone drank way too much cerveza and decided to party with a backhoe, leaving a random, gaping hole in the middle of a street.

To that I will simply say: guess again.

Sometimes when you are traveling in your own country, your perspective switches around, and you see things that remind you of the developing country you visited, only turned up a notch.

This is construction on a street in Manhattan. As in New York City. As in the greatest city in the world (as people who live there, and David Letterman, will tell you). At the time, I wasn’t actually reminded of the street in Xela. I was just shocked. I think more than a backhoe was used for that job. I mean what the heck was going on there? 

I am not writing this to say this hole is bigger than that hole, or this mess is more complex than that mess. I’m just pointing out that sometimes things aren’t quite as different as you thought. And sometimes you see some unexpected sites in your own country. And sometimes the universal message is as simple as: there are circumstances in this world that are inevitable, Grasshopper. Street construction is evidently one of them.