A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

city of Worthington.
Like our city, San Benito is located alongside a lake, about
150 miles from a major city. Population: roughly 10,000.
The problem is that it is situated on the vast limestone shelf
of the Guatemalan lowlands, making an effective sewer system
impossible.
Accordingly, waste of every kind is piling up in San Benito,
and has been for decades. The city smells. Its market, unlike the
typical Guatemalan market – attractive and not entirely without
order – is like one great indiscriminate heap of produce and flesh,
with the freshest on top and the most fetid trampled underfoot.
In the back bins, children and the elderly sort through the
rotting vegetables for parts still edible.
Guatemala is a poor country, but seldom squalid. San Benito
is squalid. We were eager to leave, but dismayed when,
approaching the bus that we had heard such nightmarish tales
about, it was already full to the exploding point.
I counted 93 bodies on board, not counting two turkeys and
an undisclosed number of chickens issuing complaints from a
burlap sack. This was on a bus whose maximum capacity in the
United States would be 54 or 60.
Happily, a Spaniard architect preferred to be smashed up
against us than against any alternatives on board and offered to
share his seat.
Less happy were a group of British tourists with pigtails (the
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