Beginnings

To begin to understand the story of the Girl, you must know a little about the setting in which it all takes place. Honduras is a country of beautiful landscapes. A place of unending mountains, with narrow valleys in between the steep green slopes. Strikingly green and lush during the rainy season, a lesser green in the dry times. Trees and shrubs with gorgeous blooms of purple, orange and red. Bright blue sky that can only be seen in places that have little industry to pollute. Small towns scattered throughout the countryside. Some quaint with a sleepy-looking sort of Central American charm. Most look far less than what North American standards would call prosperous: sub-standard housing, narrow trash-littered streets, free-roaming livestock.

There are two major cities: Tegucigalpa (the capital) and San Pedro Sula (the industrial center). Both are typical third world cities--crowded, noisy, full of vehicle traffic and countless people and who have flocked there looking for work. Tegu (as it is typically referred to by the gringo) is particularly mesmerizing--almost too much for the eye to take in. Streets lined with small shops. Street vendors plying their wares. Cast-off vehicles from the North, especially old Blue Bird school buses. Ramshackle houses crammed together on slopes so steep that you have to wonder how a rain drop hits the ground and makes it on down the hill. People everywhere you look, especially children. Like the Pied Piper led them away from Hamlin and dropped them off here.

It was into this landscape, this setting, that the Girl was born.