Jim and I had decided several weeks ago, right after we had unknowingly “donated” our propane tank to an uninvited visitor, we needed to make our home as secure as we possibly could, more so for our own piece of mind than anything else. For the most part, the interior of the house is very secure with metal bars on every window and exterior door. The exception is our laundry room area which once was open to the elements but at some point, had been enclosed…loosely defined as such. There are only several pieces of poorly secured and badly gapping fiberglass which serve as our roof. The door between the kitchen and the laundry area is a hollow core door and is latched with a small slide latch. These measures are not enough to qualify as secure by any stretch of the imagination.
You might think we’re being a bit paranoid with just experiencing only a propane tank being taken and perhaps we are. But in the month we have lived here, we have discovered we are of great interest to the surrounding community…even to the point we have people go through our trash 3x a week – it’s Nicaragua… probably just to see what we wasteful gringos have thrown away that might be salvaged…but that also is very telling as to what we may have recently purchased. We are learning it is best not to advertise to the community at large that we are bringing in to our home new items…even though because we are setting up housekeeping and starting from ground zero, everything is new.
As a result of this decision to insure our security at a higher level, we initially spoke with Don Carlos, our landlord, and asked his permission to install iron bars across the roof area of the laundry room. He understood our concern at the area of vulnerability and gave his blessing for us to go ahead…at our own expense, of course! He said we were free to do anything we wanted to do to improve the house…well, yeah!
We then contacted Luis (through Susanna), a Christian Nicaraguan who helped us secure our night guard and last week, he brought in a man from Jinotepe, about an hour away, who custom makes the security iron gridwork for doors, windows, etc. Apparently, it seems to be both typical and wise to contract with workmen outside your local area as an added measure of protection. The trust factor seems to be pretty low when it comes to that kind of thing. He gave us the estimate for the work which was about 3x higher than we expected (due to the rapidly rising cost of all building materials)…after we recovered from the shock of the expense, we discussed it with Susanna and with Luis, and both of them felt like even though it was a hefty sum and an unplanned expense, it would be a wise decision. Theft is very common…to the point no one thinks much about it except for the one whose items are lifted.
Susanna and Luis thought perhaps Don Carlos would be willing to share the expense with us since it’s something that we obviously can’t take with us when we move but after Jim and I discussed it, we opted to not even approach him on it. After all, he had already agreed to come down $150 per month on our rent and we knew how the laundry room looked when we rented the place. We just didn’t feel right about going to him and asking him for this. So, we gave the man the money to purchase the iron and he told us he would be here first thing Monday morning…yesterday.
About mid-morning on Monday, we got a call from Susanna. It seemed that the man couldn’t come and install the bars as it had rained all last week and the paint wouldn’t dry. He rescheduled for Tuesday morning…this morning. That would have been fine but we finally got an appointment set up with our tutor for noon on Tuesday (he also operates on his own time frame – after all, it is Nicaragua), and so, we had to call him to reschedule our language lesson. He was supposed to call us right back…hasn’t yet happened. Why? Because, it’s Nicaragua.
Well, Susanna called about 8:00 a.m. Seems the workman called and the bus he was taking broke down in Diriambe, a town just outside of Jinotepe. He and his workers were waiting for another bus to come and pick them up. I wondered why on earth they were taking a bus when they were supposed to be bringing the iron work with them…oh, well. It’s Nicaragua. My second thought was we had given this man $400 cash, had no idea where he lived and I was beginning to wonder if we would ever see him actually materialize. Oh, Lynne of little faith.
An hour has passed and as I’m sitting here typing this, Susanna has called again. The workman had called her cell phone and is now waiting outside our gate to be let in! He has arrived! He has two helpers with him and two huge pieces of the iron work ready to be installed plus an arc welder. I can only imagine how they hefted those pieces up on top of the buses! Of course, no one speaks English…and our Spanish hasn’t improved a great deal in the last few weeks so we’re playing charades again. Thank goodness, Margarita is here and of all things, she’s interpreting…mind you, she can’t speak English either but somehow, it’s easier to understand her than it is these three men…or perhaps it’s that she doesn’t show her frustration as openly as these three men! Whatever, I’m thankful she’s here.
They have hooked their wiring directly in to the wiring of the house (It’s Nicaragua) and when they turned on their drill to begin drilling in to the concrete wall, my surge suppressor went crazy on the computer and so Jim and I quickly unplugged everything in the entire house including the refrigerator. Battery back-up is a blessing.
Okay…the job is done, the workmen paid and the pictures taken…much to the delight of the guys who put the metal all together. We gave the boss a little extra for the work and you would have thought he hit the jackpot. He kept thanking us and grinning ear to ear. They installed flashing on the roof to help defray the water that comes in when it rains…hopefully it will work so I can actually hang clothes up on the inside line without having to strategically place them on the line when it’s raining out. If it works, I’ll even forgive them for accidentally burning a part of my clothesline rope…thankfully, there was plenty to spare so Jim was able to re-tie it. I am so glad to get the bars in that I have also managed to not be quite so upset about the concrete patching and painting we now have to do in order to repair the damage they did to the wall while wrestling those big pieces of iron grating up to the roof area. After all, it’s Nicaragua!
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