Settling In

So, since my crazy weekend of seaside fiestas life has settled down significantly and started to take on a welcomingly calm rhythm. I can now officially call myself a local as I now know enough taxi drivers to occasionally get free rides and I can no longer leave the house without expecting to run into at least 3 people I know. This change has not only altered my social life significantly, but has changed the pace of everyday life.

One of the very first days that I arrived in Bluefields, I accompanied one of the other volunteers downtown to do a few errands with him and stop by the bank. At the time, I became rather frustrated because doing errands entailed walking around in circles and checking every single shop to see if they had what we wanted. This also meant spending a few mins in each shop chit-chatting with the owners. Not to mention the fact that everything closes between 12 and 2pm, so we also ended up going to a friends place to hang out for an hour while we waited for things to open. Needless to say, I found this a rather odd routine and was somewhat putout by spending 3hrs doing something that typically would have required less than one. Of course, I now understand completely as I am now in precisely the same place the other volunteer was when I arrived. Here's a quick sample of a "short" trip into the city...

I went into town one day to copy keys and get a few food items. Only, when Steph and I arrived at the key shop, we were informed that the woman who normally copies them had gone on vacation for the summer. So, we went up the street to the only other place in town that copies keys. We showed them what we needed and were informed that they didn't have those blanks and we'd have to come by another time. Slightly frustrated, but with no other options, we headed on our way. Since my cell phone had gone missing and one of the people I needed to get in touch with had had their service disconnected, I headed over to their office to see if I could get in touch with them that way. On the way, I ran into a guy we'd met at the pool hall, who did an about-face and walked with us for awhile to chat. Then we came across one of the BSS boys who asked us to come by and say hi later. When I got to the office, the man I wanted to meet wasn't there. I left a message that I had come by and headed back across town. On the way, I passed a mechanic's shop with a pile of used tires out front. Since I may be needing a large number of tires for my construction project here, I stopped to chat with the thoroughly inebriated old man to determine how many tires he had and how much he would want for each of them. Then we noticed that the stationary store across the street actually had real books in the window, so we had to stop and take a look since I had yet to see a bookstore in town. Walking out of there, we ran into another friend who happened to be passing through. We chatted with him for a bit and then ducked back into the key store to avoid spending the rest of the afternoon with said friend. Since we were there, we figured it wouldn't hurt to ask a different employee about the keys we needed copied. He took one look, nodded, pulled a few blanks off the wall and started cutting. Who knows what the woman before had been thinking.

Nearly an hour later we emerged from the key store with a new sets of keys and headed down a few streets to get the food we had come for. Of course, this involved going down to the market to find nuts, to a different store for drygoods, to the only store in town that sells yogurt (when he happens to have it) and another stop at the only place in all of bluefields that sells real chocolate. In each store, we had to go through the same rigamaroll of small talk, comments on the weather, discussions of what we'd been up to recently etc. Then we'd pick out what we wanted and wait 10mins while they looked around the store for their receipts (a nearly unknown item that can often be a serious, but necessary process). Once they found their packet of receipts, we waited while they reverse-calculated the tax so they could write down the price they'd already told us as the final one. Sometimes, we'd also have to wait while someone ran next door to get someone else who happened to be literate enough to write out the receipt in the first place.

Walking out of the last store with all our goods in hand, we were finally ready to go, so we flagged down a taxi and hopped in back. Only, there was already someone in front, so we drove all the way across the city to drop them off in a different neighborhood before we could turn around, come back through the maze of one-way streets that make up the town center and head back towards our house. Only, on the way, we picked up another passenger who was only headed a short distance, but in the wrong direction. So, we drove across the bridge to Santa Rosa to drop them off, drove through the entire rest of the neighborhood just to be able to turn around, then got stuck in a line of traffic while someone stopped in the middle of the bridge to unload their truck and everyone else simply waited since they couldn't go around. 20mins later, we finally crossed the bridge and drove up to the house. Hence, what we had anticipated to be a short (hour or 2 at the most) trip into town ended up taking the entire afternoon.

Welcome to life in Bluefields. =) I have to admit, I'm starting to really love it. There's a pace to life there that forces you to relax enough that simple, personal interactions start to have more and more significance while the larger, stressful issues fade a bit. There's always quite a delicate little balance to be maintained between knowing how much to push to actually make things happen and knowing when to let things take their time. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.