It’s often the case that you can quickly discern the length of stay of foreign residents in a country by their attitude toward locals. I have personally witnessed this in France and in Japan. There is something of a bell curve whereby foreign residents tend to start in a country with a heightened sense of delight — all is wonderful in the newly adoptive country. Then, as reality sets in, one can often observe a souring over those cultural differences that one hadn’t quite zeroed in, in the early days of cultural immersion. Then, sometimes, there is a rebound toward a rediscovery of those very reasons one opted to move to the country. This of course is a gross generalization, but one that at least in my personal experience is reasonably robust.
We are in the first phase. Still charmed by the oh so quaint cultural differences, the beauty of Nicaragua, the friendliness of the Nicaraguan people. But alas there is the creeping reality — tone of those little differences that is raising its
ugly head is the nature of Nicaraguan labor. It is a surprising aspect of our adopted countrymen that they tend to be pretty inconsistent in their service performance. By this I mean that we have had repeated cases of finding exceptionally high skilled craftsmen, in particular in the construction industry. Take, say, carpenters. We could not imagine in the U.S. or Europe having readily available high quality carpenters who can go from a rough idea, explained in sometimes broken spanish (possibly supported by a sketch on the back of a napkin) and deliver such high quality work, at such low prices. That said, we have now had 4 carpenters roll through our house over the course of 6 months. In each case, the previously “brilliant carpenter”, somehow dropped the ball, forgot about us after getting down payment for the timber material purchase, sent a B or C team to do a complex job that was in line with prior work, but this time confounded the less than stellar back up team of carpenters etc. So once again, we find ourselves dealing with a “new team” with a carpenter that comes highly recommended.
The task this time is nothing short of critical. The central beam that supports the roof system in our house has cracked. In fact, it would be better said that it is cracking. Every day we look at it and it seems the crack is spreading, inexorably until the final point when the roof will collapse. We hope not to be having lunch under said roof when that happens.
So we invite our new best craftsman to look at the problem and he proceeds to tell us that we need to completely redo the structure, add a full post in the middle of our sala (not happening!) etc. Then we come to an agreement that the problem is that the beam was simply either too narrow or a “reclaimed wood” with structural flaws that would, or rather finally did, crack. OK, so measurements are made, a proposal drafted, which we accept.
Fast forward a few days and he delivers (by horse cart of course) a huge, beam, triple the size of the prior one. We wonder how exactly he will a) support the roof system, b) remove breaking beam, c) replace with new beam. “Tranquilo” he says — no worries. OK…
Next day a home made scaffold is constructed and erected in our living room, to hold the roof while the current beam is removed. Then brute force is applied to break apart the current beam. We see evidence of that carpentry genius as the ends are carefully “sculpted” to receive the new beam. Peta, ever the practical one, points out that since the new beam is significantly larger than the previous one, and since neither the supporting pillars nor the roof structure is being modified, she is dubious as to how this will all work out. I diligently translate Peta’s concern to the amused carpenter. See, the error in my thinking, is that I am thinking two or three steps down the process, i.e. what will happen once new larger beam is up there. This of course, is my cultural misstep. First, remove beam. Next replace with new beam. Then observe that new beam is creating some drastic pressure on existing roofing system and THEN, only then, figure out a no-doubt brilliant solution. Still, the cat’s out of the bag, I point out that there is a mathematical improbability at play here. He looks. He laughs. He says “you’re right…”, but concludes “tranquilo”…
OK, so tranquilo (best translated as “chill”) is a valuable all purpose recommendation, but still I can’t escape basic cartesian logic and have two options: A) push for a reasonable hypothesis of the path of resolution, or B) go to work on my bamboo stuff and come back once the deed is done, one way or the other. You guessed it, I opt for B.
I return in time to see that something magical has happened, the carpenter has carved out of the new beam enough grooves to account for a bunch of protrusions, basically dealing in a most surprising way with his “obstacles”. With that done, “all” that needs to happen is that a few 5 foot 6 guys have to lift a beam the weight of two volkswagons 3 meters up, somehow balance it long enough for all the lego pieces to fit together. That part, I have to see just for entertainment sake. As picture shows, it all happened. I left once I saw the beam was floating mid air, or at least on the scaffold. So far, so good.
When I return home, I see that the wall that links to our neighbor has a seismic crack. Why the crack? well it appears that while it all looked A okay, there must have been one or two misaligned indentations and, per Peta, they applied brute force to bang, and bang, and bang until the proverbial square peg would fit the round hole, which of course it never did. So while the beam wouldn’t “give”, the wall did. It took an innocent by-stander, not a carpenter himself, to say “ahem… do you think perhaps THIS could be the problem?”. Carpenter and team of accollites look and laugh. Aha, THAT’s the problem. Beam comes back down, gets shaved, goes back up, fits like a glove.
That’s when I come home and notice the big ass San Andreas’ fault on our ceiling. Rafael the carpenter sees my quixical look and arched eyebrow. You know it “tranquilo”. And so as we go to bed, we can sleep “tranquilo”, knowing that somehow, it will all come together, with our beautiful new beam, a job “well done” — even if perhaps with a bit more collateral damage than we would have liked. But since they will fix the collateral damage, what’s the problem?
Tranquilo!
should I make hotel reservations just in case?