Orosi is Depressed

Its big advantage was its beautiful natural setting, people liked being here. But this is gone and cannot be retrieved. 

If you look down on Orosi now, you can see the older part of town, now called Orosi Central. with its church, that tourists still come to see. But new housing developments, built on what used to be coffee fields, have many more, mass-produced, inexpensive houses. Orosi has plenty of water, and this permits development to continue.

These people crowd the buses going out of town - they will ride a bus for three hours, work for eight hours - and think nothing of it. Orosi is just a place where their house is, and they do not consider it their hometown. If they can afford a car, this allows them to make their big purchases elsewhere.

Orosi has gone through a building boom, new houses have been built on every vacant lot. With no thought given to the future of all this new housing - who would live in it, where they would find jobs, and whether the value of housing, in the entire area, would go up, or decline. They never considered that every boom is followed by a bust. 

The house I live in, is an example of what happened. It was bought by an American couple, who wanted to build a new life for themselves. They started a vegetarian restaurant in the front part of the house. The husband was a good cook, and had food from a different country, every day of the week. 

But he died, and was buried in the cemetery just up the road. The wife and her daughters went back to the States, and rented the house to Ray, who rents the apartment in the back of the house me. The wife would occasionally return to visit, but was satisfied to own a house, in a town that felt like it had a future. 

But her attitude has changed - she now wants out, and has decided to sell the house - but has found that many other people want to do the same - and selling the house will be difficult.

There used to be quite a few Americans and Canadians living in Orosi, but gradually they had been leaving. So gradually, no one noticed. But eventually. these Gringos realized that Orosi was no longer where people like them wanted to be - and they wanted out also. 

The only businesses that are prospering in Orosi, are the grocery stores - who sell to the greatly increased population. Other businesses try to start up, but do not last long.