mouseworks

It's poor; the people dress surprisingly well from surplus donated American stuff sold in the local markets (I found a pair of Jones NY pants in Jinotega). Some people still ride horses for transport, not entertainment, and plow with oxen. My traveling companion and I saw horse carts in Managua and ox carts in the country side. Other than those, people rode bicycles and motorcycles and drove twin cab four wheel drive trucks. We didn't see much non-commercial traffic on the road between Managua and Jinotega.

I get the impression that machismo is deprecated by the younger educated generations, but that even that of it which does exist tends to be less obnoxious than the cunt-calling of NYC. Women are different from men in different ways, but the US hasn't ever had a female commandante Number Two, and hasn't yet had a female head of the FBI, much less a female general. The culture seems to have an undercurrent of something that's not European.

http://www.manfut.org/jinotega/rafael.html is about a small mountain town about 15 miles or so from Jinotega, which compares interestingly to http://www.mindspring.com/~tjepsen/civilwar.htm on American telegraph operators.


Women are desired; there's a certain amount of street flirting, but it's very low key, at least in Jinotega which seemed to be full of people hustling in various ways to put together livings (kids selling avocados door to door, women selling fruit in the street, medics running hotels, various lawyers and doctors), but not begging. We did see some begging in Esteli, but then a backpacker hostel and its associated restaurant seem to be an obvious target (one night in the four that we were there).

Every one is wired in the cities. Young girls were in the cybercafes in pairs, possibly on social networks though I didn't look too closely. An hour of time costs about seventy cents. Cell phone towers are prominent landmarks.

Fair number of people were working below their levels of education and we heard that even more people were, too. Most of the people (as in 99.9 percent) don't speak English and what education in English they've had seems to be rather perfunctory. They expected me to speak and understand Spanish, possibly because they assume anyone with dark hair and eyes is local. (I had people in Miami in the airport addressing me in Spanish, too).

The old style of tile roofs are being replaced by locally made metal and synthetic roofs and don't look quite so adorable, but don't seem to collect the bromeliads at the same levels, either. There were bromeliads of the genus Tillandsia on the electric wires, too.