OK…I won! Everyone tells me that no one has accomplished so many things in one day in Nicaragua as I have! Of course there is no prize except the incredible feeling of things finally coming together. For six months now I’ve been trying to do these things, but they just never worked out. And then suddenly, they happened all on the same day. It may not sound like much to you, but this is what I’m talking about:
I have TV! Not that I’ll watch it all that much, but I have it if I want it! It was too windy to put the satellite dish on the roof, so it was installed in the middle of my yard. The big black cable sneaks prominently down my white wall and across the floor. Ah….but I can watch Ally McBeal reruns… or reruns of just about anything. It looks like all US programming is about 3 years old (yes girls, even One Tree Hill!). The good thing about TV here is that there are many movies in English with Spanish subtitles and that really helps you learn the language! CBS, NBC and ABC are not available, not even with the most expensive package! Update: Watched Carlito’s Way and one of my mother’s old tear jerker favorites: Marjorie Morningstar. Cried when the name of the movie came on. We had seen it so many times that Mom and I would just start crying at the beginning because we knew what was going to happen. The TV is worth having for me.
I now have a real stove/oven. Before I had three gas burners for cooking, and that was it. This year I’ll actually be able to make the Thanksgiving turkey in my own kitchen, rather than in a neighbor’s, like last year! In order to do this, I actually had to have someone come out and cut out part of my concrete kitchen counter, not a small job. Then I had to find a stove/oven that would fit in the small space. Another accomplishment checked off!
Also on that same day I arranged to have garbage pickup for myself and all of my neighbors for $6.00 a month each! No more horrible trips to the dump!
No more dodging the dozens of vultures, wild dogs, burning fires, groups of leering men and millions of tiny flies that get into your mouth, ears and nose. Now a truck actually drives up to our houses twice a week and takes our garbage away. But get this….what prompted me to look into this was that the dump started charging people for bringing their garbage!!! Imagine that it cost me $3.75 USD EACH time I dumped my trash myself and $6.00 a month for twice a week pickup. Doesn’t make sense you say???? Yes, no kidding!!!! Ask me sometime about “logic in Nicaragua.”
The sun burns hotly through my front patio windows and right now, the hottest time of the year, the inside temperature in the afternoon is well over 100 degrees! The fans don’t help and don’t forget that the electricity is often off anyway. The house has air conditioning, but I don’t use it because of the expense. So…..I had sun blinds put up this same day on the patio. Now the sun is blocked whenever there is too much sun and that cuts the temperature down a good 20 degrees!
I also got a new gardener today and he started building the structure for my herb garden. I brought lots of seed packs with me because they don’t have sweet basil, cilantro, parsley, etc. here. I’m also going to start composting so I can have organic soil. This will be a fun new thing for me to do and I’ll have the herbs I need to cook.
Anyway, the odds of getting all those things done on one day might be more than a billion to one! Not kidding….but suddenly it is a lot easier to live here.
Also in the past month, I welcomed three new kittens into my home. Two were rescued kitties from the Veterinary clinic at our fanciest hotel, Pelican Eyes. They are brother and sister, Zorro and Luna (short for Lunatic…she is the crazy alpha cat).The third was a gift from a friend. I thought they would be outdoor cats, but until my next door neighbor Fritz puts a gate up on his fence, his Rottweiler Vicki wants to kill the cats.
She charged my glass patio door the first time she saw the kittens. Lucky she didn’t break through the glass! Very lucky for the cats! But that means I can’t let them out right now, which is very inconvenient (think of kitty litter in a 100 degree house!!!). However, I have a nice guard dog named Vicki who now sleeps every night on my patio watching the kittens.
My volunteer work is going well. I have 12 students in my English class with some others who pop in from time to time. We have a good time, lots of laughs and it seems as though they are learning. I’ve developed my own classes, based on the information they need for their jobs. I’ve looked at many books on teaching English as a second language in my life (I taught this in Mexico City) and I’m convinced that there is more than one way to teach English. With the right spark of interest and a good amount of repetition, anyone can learn a new language.
Going to the schools in the campo with the mobile library folks has been fun and rewarding, however, it’s tough to see so many things being done in a less than effective way.
Suggestions are ignored, with the statement “It’s how we’ve always done it.” After reading Three Cups of Tea and learning what Greg Mortensen did in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it makes me think of all the improvements that could be done here in Nicaragua. The school structures are already built, so I guess you can say that Nicaragua is a step ahead of where Mortensen had to begin. But that is where it stops. Education here is rudimentary at best, disorganized and ineffective at worst. The kids love it when I come in and teach them some English words and phrases, but it would be better if there were a program established to actually teach them English properly. It’s something for me to think about. Since there is no English training in the schools at all, I wouldn’t be stepping on any toes. There is a woman named Jane who started the mobile library program. I have it on my list to speak to her. Maybe we can get something going.
I went to start my evening free English classes last night and, not totally surprisingly as things go here in Nicaragua, the restaurant that asked me to give the classes and offered a large space to do it, was closed and locked when I got there, with no one around. Again, ask me about the logic here sometime. Possibly, just possibly, because we are having a big strike (next paragraph) they figured no one would get there or that I wouldn’t be able to arrive and just decided to close. Usually this restaurant is open every night. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe the employees couldn’t get to work so they had to close. I’ll find out later today when I go and see what happened. But one of the things you REALLY must get used to in Nicaragua is that things almost never happen the way you expect. And it’s best to laugh, rather than be frustrated about it. UPDATE: Went to the restaurant on Thursday to see if anyone would show up and nine students came to the night class! That is VERY good for the first night. They are very happy and appreciative to be having free English classes.
The strike. Well, there really IS a reason to strike. In the last week, gasoline has gone up 50 cents a gallon. That brings it up to around $5.55 USD a gallon. Also, the local money, the cordoba, also lost some value. With the higher gas prices and the fact that most transport drivers are joining the strike, the price of basic foods like beans and rice have really gone up. The people here can’t afford this! All the buses, taxis and commercial vehicles are on strike. There is no way to get from place to place unless you have a car or you want to hitchhike. I keep Bruiser’s gas tank full due to the rumor that pretty soon our only gas station, TEXACO, will run out of gasoline if the strike continues much longer. There are blockades on all the roads, made up of dozens of men who stand and don’t let commercial vehicles by. Even the dirt road to my house has a blockade! The men just line up over the street or put rocks down or tree limbs and they decide whether you can pass or not. Of course private citizens are allowed to pass. But the rumors, and they are only rumors, are not so great. Word has it that the longshoremen who bring in the tankers of fuel oil are going to join the strike and after awhile there will be no electricity. Without electricity, many of us (like me) don’t have water either. Well, I guess at that point I’m a little unsure of how you can live here. If there’s no food, no electricity, no water, what do you do? I know there are people all over the world living like that, Iraq comes to mind. But I personally don’t know how to do that, or think I even want to try. That would be an ultimate challenge, for sure. The strike was supposedly settled two days ago, but the people are angry because Daniel Ortega (whose tagline is “Together we will raise the poor”) has not said a single word publicly about this strike. NOT ONE WORD. Yet last week he entertained Chavez of Venezuelan fame and other Central American presidents in a manner befitting kings. Of course they don’t take the bus!!!! And in fact, the ONLY people being hurt by the strike are the poor, the ones who are actually playing it out. I’ve spoken to a few locals about it and they are very frustrated. However, they don’t understand that as long as the strike is only hurting the poor, as horrible as that is, no one worries about it too much. I told them if they did a TOTAL strike, like get EVERYONE not to go to work the next day and the country was crippled, then the government would start to take notice. But so far, Ortega et al can live without the people who are striking. The rich can get their food and gasoline and get around. Actually, so can I. But there are many who now can’t. I believe the government is just playing the “let’s wait it out” game. Who is hurting? The children because the schools have closed, the men who take the bus to work because it is too far to walk and are no longer getting any money. All of the poor families are hurting. I have constantly been giving local women and children rides to where they need to go. Small children are hitching on my dirt road. It’s all very sad. The people here, as in other third world countries, are very stoic. They believe that what they are doing is the only way they are going to be heard. And maybe they’re right. But maybe they’re not. UPDATE: The strike is over. Water is intact. Unfortunately half the electricity in my house went out, including the outlets in my renter’s room so she can’t run her fan. (But this has nothing to do with the strike. It’s just a typical day in Nicaragua.) And it’s hot, hot, hot today, probably 100 degrees! Luckily, Alfredo, my wonderful electrician will arrive at 3:00 today to fix (I hope) the problem.
I’m writing this on my living room sofa, listening to the Salsa music channel that my new TV service offers, looking out at the ocean while my renter Kim (from British Columbia) hangs out on the patio hammock trying to get over an ear infection. Tiniest kitty Gitana (gypsy) is sleeping at my side with her front paws hugging the new TV remote. Not a bad day......
No comments:
Post a Comment