2010

10. January 2010 by Fortunato Velasquez.

Back home in Seattle I eat organic.  Madison Market on Capitol Hill where I live is practically my second home.  A local member cooperative, they provide food grown by organic farmers in the Puget Sound area, a welcome outlet from the unhealthy, chemically contaminated foodstuffs sold by national food merchants like Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyers and Krogers, among other US chains.  Here in Honduras I have no choice.  There are four small supermercados here in La Paz where I live that have most of the required basics I need to survive, however one is never certain of the origin and quality of the available food.  Especially in our first weeks of training, dependent on host families for our sustenance, one is at the mercy of what is provided.  One is consequently forced to change one’s eating habits.  Hence the small can of potted meat I had purchased months ago, Spam, something I would never have thought of consuming back home.  I opened the disgusting mess on December 28th to make myself a sandwich and after forcing a few mouthfuls I bit into a small piece of unseen bone that the dentist told me afterward sliced in between my wisdom tooth fracturing a filling and an adjacent three-tooth bridge fracturing the porcelain.  It has taken that long to address the damage because approval (over the New Year holiday) for the bridge repair had to come from Washington DC.  Yesterday, Saturday morning, the broken filling was finally repaired and an impression made to construct a new bridge.  I was fitted with a temporary plastic bridge until my new one can be made in Guatemala.  What a painful way to start the new year.

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