Nicaragua is "N"

Nicaragua (AIP) - There are no ¨Super-Size¨ bags of chips in Nicaragua. Nowhere. Not one bag. I was thinking about this last Sunday when I was asked to help my neighbors learn about American football. A few sample questions... ¨Why are there so many players on the sidelines and why do they get to come back in? That doesn´t seem fair.¨ ¨Why do they get a second opportunity (down) if they fucked up the first?¨ and ¨They know that being fat is unhealthy for you, right?¨ I gave up on explaining Fantasy Football to them after the first hour.

But back on point. The largest bags of Doritos or any equivalent chip can only be found at the supermarkets, mainly located in just two cities in the country, Managua and Leon, and they´re eight cordobas. For reference, 17 cordobas is equal to one dollar. The bag is a little bigger than the bags I used to get at Subway. I think you can get them at gas stations in the states, and they´re called ¨Grab Bags.¨ The point here is that nobody buys a bag of chips thinking that they are either going to eat copius amounts of food in one sitting or that just maybe they will save some for tomorrow. The same goes for milk. The largest quantity of milk you can buy in Nicaragua, again excluding the two major cities, is 1 litre. Give a Nicaraguan a gallon of milk and they will start inviting the neighbors over to help them get rid of it.

Every Nicaragua neighborhood is littered with these little things called pulperias. They´re basiclly one-room Qwik-E-Marts in the front of peoples´ houses. They are usually very small and sell the smallest possible quantities of stuff people use all the time. If you´re sitting at any given house in Nicaragua, you can get up and walk one, maybe two, at the most three, doors down and buy a bag of ice for one cordoba. It´s enough to fit in one hand, so you can take it back and put some ice in everyone´s glass and then it is gone. If you want gum, again you go next door and buy one stick of gum for one cordoba. Gum isn´t sold in packs in Nicaragua. Want some toilet paper? You´re buying one roll. And again with the chips. They´re sold in single cordoba bags that amount to about five chips. In my town of about 25,000 people, I´d be willing to bet that 50% of all transactions of any kind are of the one cordoba variety. And probably 3/4 of all purchases amount to less than 5 cordobas. Imagine a 7/11 attendant having to attend to 17 customers before they had sold a dollar´s worth of product. It´s just about as inefficient as an economy gets.

So why am I going on and on about this? Nicaraguans just do not have bank accounts. It´s unheard of in most parts. What is going to make people think about next month, let alone next year, if they don´t even think about tomorrow? A little money comes in, a little money goes right back out. It´s that simple. It happens that fast. To get Nicas to think about their future, whether it be financially, or any other type of planning that would be beneficial to their lives, is to go against monumental institutional forces that are as firmly entrenched in this country as any volcano, laguna or waterfall. As I teach small business classes to the kids in high school, I´m supposed to stress two things; one, that the idea is far more important than money when starting a business, and two, that every facet of the business must be planned out to a T in order to succeed in a competitive environment. I get the feeling that these ideas rarely take hold with the students, and I´d imagine that their parents would be even less receptive, which is part and parcel of the problem.

The former country director in Uruguay told incoming volunteers that if they really, truly changed one mind then they should go home after two years satisfied with they job they had done. I don´t think he meant for them to find one person open to change and focus solely on that person, but rather, hope for the seemingly impossible, and plan for reality. Affecting the culture of a people comes about only with glacial changes in behaviour. And I don´t believe that 160 volunteers will turn a country of five million people on it´s head overnight, or even in two years. But you recognize the fight is worth fighting, and it´s not ever going to happen if not for the changes in a few people at a time. It´s the old snowball coming down the mountain that started as just a few flakes. I´m a long, long ways from certain what I´m doing here, and how it´s all going to come out in the wash. But I´ll start by making some good friends, building some confianza, and we´ll go from there. And no need for chips next Sunday, we decided to scrap the snacks in favor of some beans and rice.


NJW

Ok, there´s my first post. I´m sorry that it is completely void of funny links. It´s way different than anything posted up until now on this site, but if I want to make any sense I have to write about what I know. And right now it´s not Husker sports or arguments between cities or The Big Bopper, Mr. Belding. Enjoy.