oncidiumfan's blog

I took the legal paperwork that I'd had notarized at the US Consulate/Embassy to Fed Ex on Wednesday afternoon around 2 p.m. It was in Kannapolis, NC, this morning just before 10 a.m., delivered to my brother's door. Managua to Panama City to Memphis to Charlotte, NC, to Kannapolis which is about thirty minutes or so north of Charlotte.

Lola spotted little Rosario with her grandmother and aunt about a block from my new house and insisted that we needed to go up to them and jump all around. I told them I was in a new house and asked them if they'd like to see it.

The windows slats are fixed and the fake stone tile on the front of the house has been repaired, along with some plaster in the kitchen along the doorway. I suggested that the work guy run the floor tile up the side of the doorway since we don't have more of that strange lime green paint. (I also need to see if the paint is washable since the owner's dogs dried off on the walls and left that tell-tale stain at dog shoulder height.)

She wanted me to buy cuajada and gave me 35 cordobas. I thought it was for her and went across the street to the house that sells various dairy and coffee and found I had to add two cordobas more to get a pound of it. Shrug, I give her more than that in spare change each week.

No, the cuajada appears to be for me. Or I'm the custodian until I can figure out how to feed it back to her slowly. I was telling her (in Spanish) that I don't eat cuajada. She kept saying it was for me.

I've now been here a bit over two weeks and found the warts in the new house as well as the pleasures. Just yesterday, the work guy finally fixed the kitchen sink drainage problem. Most everything left to be fixed is more or less cosmetic, and some of the things I can fix myself if I must.

Marcos Zamorro, who did the notary work for my cedula, drew up the lease, which has the usual stuff in it that I'd expect for a lease anywhere -- don't bring horses inside, don't build fires in the courtyard on the ground.

Met with the carpenter and the new landlord to figure out how to handle the security issues, the wall paint (leaving for now), getting a washing machine (the landlord's aunt sells used ones and I asked, "Do they work?" and we all laughed), what to do about the stove (use the cooktop for now and put the gas cylinder in my cooktop cabinet that's actually rigged for that), what to do about the boxing training bag in the passage way (whatever), and where stuff goes.

The other conversations I had yesterday: report from one guy that the expat on a walker here has been robbed a second time in Jinotega. He's the only one I've know who has been physically attacked for money -- twice here since I've been here and once in Leon. I tell people that this is not a good place for mobility-impaired people. The other friend I talk to fairly often said he and his wife had gone up to the zipline near San Raphael del Norte, which is $15 instead of Mombacho's $50.

My Toastmaster hot air popcorn popper burned out which is what I'd read that that brand does when used to roast coffee, so I went to the Sollentuna Hem for breakfast, briefly saw one of the people connected with that who I hadn't seen in the while. He told me I was losing weight, and I went on to the second hand store to buy another hot air popcorn popper -- the Wearever Popcorn Pumper which seems to have a better reputation for the work than the Toastmaster. Used a tin can as a chimney for the first load, then a glass lamp chimney for the second -- which works better. Was watching a Dr.

Fred's house is new construction -- haven't seen it yet, but talked to his wife just now and they're paying $30K US for the whole house and lot, with a 15 year mortgage with something like $270 a month payments if I heard correctly. Fred and Rosario seem to have the best economic mix for a couple here -- he's got the coffee farm and she has a bank job, and so far, they only have one child. So, they can pay cash for some things and probably her job gives him some cushion against having to borrow too much for growing a crop (he's a coop member).

Fred and the big and little Rosarios have bought a house about two blocks away. As far as Fred knows, this house hasn't sold, but I'll probably be getting new neighbors (or offered the rent of the whole house, which I'm not interested in particularly). The rent before the first of the year was low and the coffee harvest apparently was good enough, so they've saved enough and moved on. Rosario has family (mother and sisters) living across the intersection from me, so they're staying close to family and they're staying in Jinotega where the schools are better than out in the campo.

Spent some time talking to another expat friend who had the same experience with Nicaraguans that I had with one of the gringos -- short term work project doesn't make either of us feel obligated to do long term maintenance of another person.

One of the other expats said of the poor Nicaraguans he knows that they tend to make long range plans as though the money that they're getting now would never go away.

Last night, I got what I think was the basic FSLN political officer's lecture from someone who was an FSLN political officer at 15 while pregnant. And further stories with her husband trying to find the English to translate what she'd just said. Her jefe saved her life by ordering her off a helicopter that the Contra brought down with a surface to air missile. And I found out that Paquita, that wry and ironic old woman, had been the lover of a FSLN fighter before the Revolution and Roberto, whose English is a bit better perhaps than my Spanish, was their son and her only child.

I had one of those problems that becomes more than just one of those problems because my Spanish is still not quite where I need it to be. A clerk punched in an extra nine in a bank card purchase and we had to go through the whole rigamarole of issuing a reversal for it. My automatic alert email was waiting when I got home, and I talked to the bank about what happened and was told that they'd have to hold the money for three to five business days if the company sent a cancellation or a refund. If the bank didn't get that, it would help me contest the charges.

The bid for a soc.motss con lost to Ann Arbor, Michigan, though there was some interest and some votes for Matagalpa. Oh, well. One thing that came up was that the travel would be as long as 16 hours for some parts of the US, though the costs were quite close for someone who lived in Seattle. Obviously, it's closer for people living in Texas and Florida and we may have a mini-con here, but having thought much further about that.