Thursday, November 11, 2010

Advice

Nicaraguans LOVE giving advice and its one thing I truely love about the people here. They have no fear about telling you the best way to cure or do anything, but at the same time they also apprecite hearing advice from me the forigener (specially when it comes to gardens..even though i think that they are sometimes better than me at this!).

Well, everyone´s favorite thing to give advice on is cure for sicknesses. Hence, there are men who get on buses and give you cures for everything from asthma to cancer to freakin toe fungus and people buy said cures, books, etc. Really before I came to Nicaragua I had no idea that all of our medical mysteries were actually being solved on 1980´s school buses traveling through the Nicaraguan countryside. (I´m very enlightened now!) Having a cough means that everyone also has advice to give me about said cough.

Yesterday, I went to pay rent which of course turned into a 2 hour long visit with my landlords. And i love visits because not only are they fun to chat about life, but they usually end in food gifting(yesterday was tortilla and queso). So basically my rent covers not only my house, water and electric, but also one tortilla and half a pound of queso. SCORE! Anyway, I started coughing while I was visiting and the grandma of the house prompley starts telling me that I need cinnamon tea and honey, which made me smile because this is EXACTLY what my grandma in the states told me. Then my landlord told me that I needed armadillo oil. Hmm...maybe?

Well, today I went to the post office and bought 4 stamps for one letter (to equal 16 cords!) and got possibley the best advice ever. The man at the post office told me that I needed to drink an entire bottle of flor de caña (the nicaraguan rum). Too bad he also didn´t include a cure for the hangover I might have the next day.....

Now if only someone can advise me how to get rid of the mice in my house!

1 comment:

  1. Bait pest with queso. Cover entire body with armadillo oil to throw off human scent. Wait patiently. When mouse is in view, throw tortilla on top of rodent. Unleash surprise attack on blinded, helpless mammal. Strike ferociously with bottle of rum. Hang by tail in doorway to ward off remaining clan. Congratulations. Now, drink rum.

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