Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Fourth of July Nica Style from 2008

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Fourth of July Nica Style

Free Hot Dogs and Burgers yesterday at Kathy's Waffle House to celebrate the 4th. The Granada Chapter of the American Legion hosted the event and the Granada cranky old ex military guys were out in force reminding everybody of how it should be up north and especially here. Lot's of young cute girl friends, cold Victoria beers and FOX News talking points. This crowd leans to the right and has more than a few missionaries. But there are a few lefties here as well. The ex hippie types cut a smaller profile than the hung over SUV driving, real estate investing crowd common at Kathy's.
I believe the fourth coincided with St Anthony day so the school kids band played a concert in the street before toting their San Antonio statue thru town, then they had a disco dance at the school that night, made it seem like the Fourth, even watermelons and bombas…It marks a two week mid year school break too, so my street will be kid free for a couple of weeks…Location wise it is the only negative about my block. We have hardly any porch side late night drunken baccanals and only the occasional street sleeping glue head..
I decided that I am just too lazy to pack up and move and unless some thing excellent comes along I will just stay here. It's a good street, close to places and PeeWee is half way to her goal over being Top Cat of the block…The garden and the country side knows it's the rainy season and most plants are growing as fast as they can, seeds and twigs going green in the garden. The garden is one thing that is special about this place, no Nica house this small would have a garden this big. It would have been paved in with a tin and concrete bedroom for tio juan……
With the storms we cool off some nights clear down to the mid seventies and it feels down right cold.
Avocados, mangos and flies are in season…lot's of all three but the flies are pesky, they and the little cute "cleaner" ants help keep my house keeping together.
I can leave the headless and footless body of a little lizard in the garden and the little ants will take it away bones and all overnight. I saw a video on YouTube featuring a video time lapse shot of ants devouring a dead lizard. Like a Sci-Fi movie from the 50's..
I am lax in blogging because I can get online from my place nowadays that and the power stays on most of the time. I am on line waiting for things to download and watching dvds…Seems I need the quietness of an outage and my lap top on the porch to write…So, the elec company ,those Spanish bastards at Union Fenosa cut the power around 6 am, then the water dried up too, before I could shower, but I have lot's of water stored under the sink for coffee...
The transit strike ran about two weeks until Ortega cut a deal with the drivers. They get subsidized fuel at around $4 a gal reg, but the cost was passed onto to other users so private vehicles now pay just over $5 a gal. There is a burgeoning black market in taxi gas out of 5 gal jerry cans.. Ortega continues to drive the ship of state aground, he has pissed off and lost all his old Sandanista friends and scared the big dollar right foreign investor wing. Since the transit strike there has been protests for democracy and against el pacto….Ortega and Alleman both crooks, both power mad and greedy. For stealing hundreds of millions of dollars Alleman is still technically doing time for his crime and he is trying to renegotiate a new sentence of one month for every million they can prove he took. This is the VP…Noam Chomsky called Ortega just "another right wing opportunist"…It doesn't matter really which political power is in office, It's the powerful families here that really control things on a daily basis the federal gov here is for begging foreign assistance and photo opp's…
One thing to come of the transit strike was no more fancy grocery store… I haven't taken the bus up to Managua since the first of April…Without the cheese, nuts and plastic wrapped breakfast sausage from the LaColonia I eat like a Nica and my mostly vegetarian fare has helped me lose about four inches in my waist…Good News / Bad News is the new LaColonia just five uncrowded blocks from my place is almost completed…Word on the street is they are trying to open by Aug…so maybe around Xmas. About 6 months late so far…

Fruits and veggies one the corner or sold door to door may not always be the top quality but always healthy and easy, I trade the old gals on the corner. I bring sour oranges from the trees in my yard. These oranges are green and very sour. You can use them like limes, the fruit and leaves are supposed to have medical benefits…I believe the street value of these naranas agrias is about three cords a piece but I sell them for one cord each, they were excited to hear that I have cocos and dragon fruit coming. I bought a four pak of garlic from them last week and I was surprised to see that the plastic web tube of garlic was from China. Sold on the streets of Nicaragua for 30 cents US… I guessed that it and most of what Inez sold was local production from north in the mountains….My chile tree is seven feet tall and has hundreds of small round dark green peppers ready to turn red. These always seemed to get picked off by these wren sized blue on blue songbirds as they ripen. This plant produces continuously and I have managed to fill a little mayonnaise jar with the firey little round peppers already…The humming birds have found my iris and the shrimp plant and those nasty crow like black birds come in the garden for cat food but they will eat the tree fall oranges if forced …
The tourist trade seems way down this summer and gringo centric businesses continue to close. Mimi's House and the Costa Rican chicken chain Rosti Pollo both closed . And soon my best peanut butter outlet CafĂ© Melba will close up shop too. She's just having movie nites at her new place next door. The gringo community has a pool to guess which place will be next.. But I hear rumors of a coming gringo owned donut shop, people come here to Granada from all over the world to lose money ..ing a restaurant. .. They have a little chain in the shopping malls of Managua called "American DoNuts", but here in Granada there is only an older woman around the Mercado who sells sugar glazed plump and sweet donuts from a tin tray on her head. She tries, but fresher is better during fly season, get them early. The Nicas hang clear plastic bags of water around to ward off flies. I can't say that it works but everyone has the bags hanging from the window sill or counter tops. The only good thing is a friend and long time Granada gringo is opening his own mini super corner store. It will be a good peanut butter outlet and he all ready has a baker making a heavy whole wheat loaf on an order ahead basis. Spendy at 35 cords but it's probable the best pan integral in town. Hard to get out the door with my profits…. He has tomato juice, Mexican beer and olive oil too, hard to find here in Gringolandia. Anthony Bourdain from cable tv was talking about New York City and how the immigrants brought their food and restaurant styles with them to the new country, like the gringo eateries and soon mini stores here, I guess. There are so many hotels and eateries here that it is impossible for them all to stay open. On the three block walkway called la calzada, there must be 15 places all with service alfresco. The true yardstick of customer service for a place on calzada is how efficiently the staff can't keep the beggars, hustlers and street dogs away from you. Even Fernanda"s Lavandaria where I get my laundry done has turned her front room into another juice bar..
Sony Cable tv here has US tv stars like the Orange County Choppers guys and Julia Luis Drefues doing Spanish language promos for their shows on Latin cable…Me llamo is Mikey, Funny stuff..
I have never visited South or even central Florida before. I was impressed with the area when I visited Ft Lauderdale this spring and lately I have been shopping the online real estate/foreclosure web sites with the thought of buying a duplex or ? In South Fla….Maybe later this fall or spring 09, there are plenty of properties available and I believe the bargains will get better. So far I like near downtown Lake Worth in Palm Beach County or maybe NW Ft Lauderdale. But on the hurricane free west coast with the nicest and by far the cheapest old style homes are found around St Pete's and Clear Water. Under $30,ooo small livable homes near the water? It's twice that here in speculative Granada…and that would be on the lake where 24 hour guard would be necessary… South Fl has to rebound, It's bound to come back. Every Nica I know wants to live in Fla. It amazes me that people can't afford to make a three hundred dollar bank note but they can pay eight hundred dollars rent…Maybe some thing in a detached separate unit? Two old 1920s little Spanish style bungalows in downtown Lake Worth? .It would be nice to have an income from the place in case I want to travel some more…According to a Fla state web site only 75% of Lake Worth's population speaks English, The only people poorer than the Nicas are the Haitians, and there are many living in south Fl. I haven't heard many nice things about them in Fla…Back in the 80s this Carlton Sheets guy had late nite infomercials about getting rich in real estate with no money down,,,, so he has wisely learned in the info super hiway world to offer his core courses for free. I am taking the foreclosure course….. I don't watch tv much since I got online en mi casa…
I have been downloading some better movies and tv shows , it's takes awhile and you are vested when the show finally loads. Daily Show and the Simpson's in English. I watched King Corn and The World According to Monsanto, scary documentaries about the future of food…All the farming programs here in natural because of being poor not "green" subsistence farmers here get new loans only if they plant hybrid seeds and apply the $$ fertilizers and pesticides required by the manufactures. It sounds like the corn may be too big and tough to process by hand and is only suitable for export… From down south looking up the US seems more corrupt and powerful. The US cable channel news conflicts so often with the local opinion and news coverage here. I don't know what will happen here, inflation is around 26% and rice and beans cost more every day…Few Nicas are happy with the country's direction and many are afraid that Ortega wants to be a dictator. I think all politicians wish that they could be absolute life long dictators but here in the banana republic belt its cheaper and easier to do..

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