3rd world root canal from 2-08

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Third World Root Canal January Up Date --I just got back from a late afternoon bike ride up to Sandino Park near the Police Station and the old rail road station. A gringa woman I know here has an affordable remodeled house for sale near there and I have been checking on the neighborhood. It's about 8 long blocks to the town square….When the fancy new USA style grocery opens here it will be right near that park as well…Even riding on the shady side of the street with a nice breeze I soaked my favorite shirt. I rinsed it out and have it hanging off the red tile roof drying in the sun while I eat water melon and watch the Daily Show Intl Edition. I see all that sub zero blizzard icy dark and gloomy winter weather up north in the states on the morning talk shows. I can't even imagine it. It was 75 the other morning and I had to put on socks with my flip flops. There are even some morning when I have to turn off the fan… My visa is expired and I need to leave the country and then re enter. I am just going chicken bus it to Rivas and then another local used up old school bus to the border….Pay my fine and cross to Costa Rica, I don't want to leave the garden and cat unattended for days just yet, but the rule is 72 hours out of Nicaragua then return straight away to Nicaragua with another 90 day visa. Right now I am running a 20 cord a day fine up. I have been putting it off all month, just a long hot and sticky bus ride interrupted by some bureaucracy…. January has been busy. It's been in the 90s with 60% humidity The rains are finally starting to stop and the temp goes up a little every day. New restaurants seem to open every week and the tourist season stays strong from Xmas. Big groups of wealthy Europeans fill the restaurants and herded groups from the cruise ships fill the central park. All the vendors, street merchants, teen hookers, touts and tour guides know the schedule and eagerly await the tourists like bears at salmon season…..Old men on ancient three speed bikes wait on the cathedral steps to watch and pick up loads of tourist police get trucked in to baby sit the glue sniffers.. --Mandarin oranges, mangos and musk melons are coming into season. The hibiscus and shrimp plants are in bloom……In a month or so the mangos will be so common that piles of over ripe fruit will cover the ground at the base of the tree and monkeys and those squawky parrots will gorge them selves. Right now the vendors have the green mangos sliced up and served in a clear plastic bag with chili powder. An acquired taste but a highly effective laxative…The mandarins are big and juicy and make excellent juice. I bought 6 for 10 cords. They were so good I am saving the seeds… ….--I lost a filling from one of my molars months ago and I have been putting off a trip to the dentists. It felt like it was broken but it hadn't hurt at all until Xmas when Santa brought the pain. By New Years I thought it was time to seek professional help. I asked Ed, a cranky hard to please Dutch restaurateur to suggest a dentista. Ed has been compared to the soup Nazi on Seinfeld. "No eggs for you"…I figured if you can please him you must be good. I was right, Leonard Grant the dentista had a clean modern office and a gentle touch…Even paying for the root canal and new filling didn't hurt much,. $92 for everything. I am going back for a cleaning and maybe a bleach job soon. --As a reward I finally bought my very own Chinese Mountain bike, a shiny red 24" Lynx….65 bucks with a carry basket. It's a pretty crappy bike but it's fun to ride. Hard to do in the heat and I am very out of shape. But it expands my neighborhood geography and luckily the town is mostly flat. Locals routinely ride two or three to a bike. Special pegs for the axles and carved wooden planks down the top tube. With the baby safely tucked in between mom and dad. No one seems to have a bike that fits or even the seat adjusted. The small Sting Ray type bikes are popular with the older folks. Easy to mount and dismount and the high handle bars and sissy bar are handy to hang bags from…Most of the mature riders pedal slowly and I tuck into the pack.…. My new bike is like an old car.. every time I use it I have to tighten every nut and screw when I'm done and I need to up grade the brakes. I met an old timer here who has a garden full of old bikes and parts. I want one of the old 28 inch Euro black lite weight three speed black bikes from the 1950s…. And he may be able to find me one. I've explored every other place I have lived by car. Here my world is basically the 15 or 20 bock colonial center and maybe the bus route up the Pan Am Hiway between Granada and the edge of Managua…I get car lust every so often but not strong enough to dare drive in this place.. Insurance is cheap at under a hundred bucks a year but every accident is considered a criminal act and some body is either going to jail or going to pay,,,, usually the gringo. There is not a lot of traffic but what is out on the road is a crazy mix of horse drawn carts, Chinese Motorbikes, pedestrians, bicycles, big clunky push carts, stray dogs, drunks and the occasional free range cow…Every body just beeps a lot and trusts in the lord… Most Nicas on bike or at the reins will not turn their heads to see what bus or big truck is coming up behind them. I don't know if it's trust or stupidity. Nicas are not good in traffic… they even bump into each other on the sidewalks. In the center of town on the blocks surrounding the market, the side walks are packed with shoppers, watch repairmen, cobblers, open water meter holes, all manner of vendors blocking with their tables of fruit, towels, coco nuts, and racks of pirated DVDs, baby strollers, blind old beggars (some of whom can see fine), mangy old sleeping dogs, chavalos mixing up concrete, money changers with thick wads of cash, lottery ticket hawkers, and eighty pound abuelas (grandmas) toting 100 lb bags of corn meal or rice on their heads and grasping a suckling pig by the leg. After a while you get to know where the missing sewer grates and other big holes are… I am going to fall into temptation soon and buy my own clothes washer. I use the built in wash board and a bucket to keep my shirts clean. And I don't do a very good job. So I am looking at a Samsung Lavaropadora. Not a USA style automatic but a much cheaper two tub non automatic. They call them Costa Rica style here. Kind of like a wringer machine with out the ringer. They roll around like those old portable dish washers did and drain into the storm sewer. It cost's about $150 but with the 5 bucks a week that I spend at Fernanda's Laundry, it'll pay for it self in no time. Used but nice things here can command 80% of their retail price… My land ladies are living next door now. So far I have had it all to myself. But as a condolence they assure me that we are getting our very own internet cable connection…Yeah, even though I have all these months in vested in bucking my internet addiction. Maybe checking my eMail here once or twice a week, not every twenty minutes. I found that if you leave the internet alone it will leave you alone too... That'll change as soon as I get the hook up here. It's a whole different thing to use it at the eCafe And just how dirty are those key boards and head phones?…..I had a young German back packer sitting next to me shouting into the head set using skype phone last time... PeeWee went into heat at maybe 5 months old and she spent two nights up on the roofs before I got her to the volunteer vets to got her spade…I donated 200 cords to the clinic and an old t shirt. Lucky they were here, PeeWee slept all afternoon and then hit the roofs later…Good as new and not able to add to the giant feral population here… Peanut Butter biz is doing well. I am up to 60 jars a month (10 of which I eat) I am getting new 16 oz standard plastic jars with a new name and label. I am changing the name from Cocibolca to "Smuggler's Brand". I want a peanut in shell with a big mustache and aviator style sun glasses with an old DC3 in the back ground as a logo. It proves the gringo orientation of the product. It has a sexy outlaw quality, and it has the potential for a great fake back story about the founder.. The stuff of folk tale and legend…Cocibolca is so standard for tourist stuff here. I have been playing with special flavor peanut butters and I am real fond of El Vez a Chile crunchy style and Mexi-Candy a spicy honey peanut butter…Both cheap and easy to do. I think I have a lot of regular customers among the ex pat community When the new colonial super market opens here I will have to compete with the three or four brands they carry. So building some brand loyalty with the resident gringos is a priority now. The city is hosting a international poetry festival next week and my best distributor has a vegetarian café right around the corner. We are hoping to sell a lot mantiquilla de mani… I met an couple from from Penn. area. She has a ten acre butter fly farm here. Just 2 kilometers from the cementario. She is also an avid gardener with a lot of garden.. I am planning a visit next week before the dry season takes it's toll on the plant life. It will be dusty and dry by the end of the month. The mosquito inspector came by house to house today. He scattered some anti larva powder here and there and I got a warning to clean my storm drain. It has no real purpose since the remodel but I raked the leaves and dirt out any way….The MINSA guys from the UN only come around when there is a problem in the neighborhood. Some one probably got the Dengue fever. Seems like one or mosquitoes get my hands or feet every night when I'm asleep. I can't sleep inside a mosquito net, makes me feel claustrophobic. The floor fan strategically positioned keeps most of the little blood suckers off me at night.. School has been out since before the middle of Dec, The Purisma and just started up again. Lot's of note books, back packs and school uniforms for sale on the streets. Even the fabric and zippers to sew your own…Most of the jobs out side of tourism here in the Zona Franca (Sweat Shops or Free Trade Zones) are seamstress type jobs so lot's of people can stitch up a pair of Wranglers or Dickie pants… We haven't hade a marching band rehearsal since New Years but from the sounds of it…They're back! Too hard to type and rock to the drum beat at the same time so Hasta Nos Vemos…