Ah, the Privation!

A question posed on an expats’ group FB page recently got me thinking. “What things available in the States do you miss most here in Nicaragua?”

Well, I have not found smoked oysters, even in La Colonia, the supermarket chain that carries most good imported foods. I miss fresh salmon, too. The frozen fillets at Pricemart and Walmart just do not cut it, and at about $30 a pop, no thanks. The latest flea and tick collars are not yet available here—Seresta, I’m talking—and I have not been to a movie theater in three years. But really, it is difficult to make a list of things that are unavailable here. I found tahini for hummus, turmeric for curries, couscous and polenta. Oh, add horseradish to the list of things I’m still seeking.

I suppose the main thing I am missing right now is decent cable television. I did not have a TV until after my first year, and when I moved to my present house, I had a Claro dish installed. It featured only two of the U.S. networks – NBC and ABC, as well as BBC World news channel, but I was reasonably satisfied with these sources. Just this week, the brain trust in charge of Claro decided to eliminate the networks, so all we have now in the way of English language viewing is BBC. Grrr. I want my Jeopardy!

A few miles north of Las Esquinas lies El Crucero, a mountaintop community bristling with communications towers serving Managua and a wide circumference of population centers throughout southwest Nicaragua. Oddly, El Crucero has few trees. The bald hill tops are in the path of the fumes from the Masaya volcano, and it is supposed that the sulphur and other noxious chemicals render the land less than hospitable. In any event, I heard that an internet provider has acquired a tower to serve "line of sight" customers with receivers on antennae. He’s coming out to see my location this weekend and work up an estimate.

Good internet service might solve my TV-viewing problem. USATVnow.com provides major cable channels to military personnel and expats outside US borders, and if it works as well as I’m told, I can address both my media issues with my own antenna. My present internet service gives me only 10 GB per month, when it is strong enough, which is infrequent. It certainly cannot deliver USATVnow. Stay tuned.

Update:

 It turned out that although Las Esquinas has lost its water service for two weeks, mine was unaffected. This, of course, may change without notice, but for the nonce, I am flush, so to speak.