They Say I Hate It Here

Once again, a NL member said that I hate it here in Nicaragua. This seems to be a common theme. Sometimes, but not always, it seems to be inspired by me complaining about something the U.S. government did or is doing. Other times it is just because I describe a problem I am having here.

Now, my opinion is that I do not hate it here nor did I hate it in the U.S. or in Costa Rica. I don't know if Nicaragua is the best place for me to live on the planet (for many years, Bolivia has had a lot of appeal but I have no first-hand knowledge) but I do know it is the best place for me I have ever lived.

That said, to help others decide if they want to live here and to help them deal if they do live here, I try to do the following:

1. Point out differences between living here and living in the U.S. In this case my references to the U.S. are because I have first-hand experience there. Many of my comparisons are likely equally valid for Canada, Germany, ...
2. Explain how you actually can get things done in Nicaragua. It is, well, different from what you might expect.
3. Try to plug Nicaragua into the world. For example, because of Nicaragua's geographic location, it becomes a victim in the Colombia to U.S. cocaine route.
4. Put the Nicaraguan government in perspective. For example, what services you can expect from the government and what obstacles it is likely to put in your way.
5. Talk about what the people are like here.

Now, let's contrast what I did in the U.S. vs. what I am trying to do here. I think this will help put many of my complaints into perspective. I can start off by saying that I would never have attempted to do what I am doing here in the U.S. because I could have never afforded it—financially or time-wise.

In the early 1980s, I started a publishing company in the U.S. It was started with little capital and required no more than a business license and tax permit. As it grew, it required more "accounting overhead" to deal with employees, employee benefits, ... It also established a line of credit and quite a few vendor relationships. Over the next 20 years it grew into a fair-sized business but never one that had significant interaction with government.

Two government interactions that do come to mind are:

1. We had printed a book in Canada. When the 5000 copies arrived at the Canada/U.S. border, we were told that they could not be imported because they did not say "Made in Canada" in them. So, we quickly printed 5000 stickers and hired someone to go to the warehouse, open all the boxes and put the stickers on all the books.
2. The state of California wanted to buy some of our reference cards. We are talking about an order of maybe $200. While we were not in California, the California government had established a policy that they would only buy from vendors who had sent them a copy of their drug policy. At the time we were a 3-person company. So, I wrote up our drug policy so we could sell the products. (Note that what it actually said was that we would not hire tobacco users—which was true—and, should one of our employees get caught using tobacco, what steps we would take to deal with it.)

Now, what am I trying to do here? The "executive summary" is build a resort in a national reserve. This includes building a 2+ kilometer road, running in electricity, drilling wells, attempting to get permission to produce products that are produced nowhere else in Nicaragua, ... I wouldn't have attempted to do all this anywhere in the U.S. much less in the equivalent—a national forest.

If my goal was retirement, I could have moved here, rented a place for a few hundred a month with no rental agreements, credit checks, first and last deposits, ... My residency (which was complicated by the fact that I had lived in Costa Rica for, as it turns out, only two years) could have been dealt with by a lawyer that specialized in residency. Or, if I had a pension, easily done through INTUR.

In other words, what I have been doing here has been seriously complicated by my choices to do more than sit around and, to borrow an expression from the late Miskito Alan, "watch the zinc rust".

So, what do I hate here? Inefficiency. Banks that don't understand service. The dirty air of Estelí. Noise from the neighbors. Much of this gets fixed by, for example, moving to the country. Recognizing that banking on-line takes less time. Getting to pick my neighbors.

Would I trade this for having to take my shoes off to get on an airplane, government spying and knowing that most of my tax money went for killing people around the world and enriching corporations such as Boeing and Haliburton in the process? No, not a chance. Amazing as it may sound, I look forward to the day that our business is open and is contributing to the Nicaraguan tax base.

For those who read here and conclude that Nicaragua is too "wild west" for them, I will suggest Costa Rica. It feels like it is trying to be the U.S. with better prices and no government overhead to support Haliburton, et al. For me, this "trying to be" syndrome is exactly what I didn't like about Costa Rica but, if that is ok with you, it is a pretty easy place to adjust to.