Liar! Liar!

Kashá lumber for our house.

I saw a post in a local English language newspaper, The Tico Times, recently about slang terms in Costa Rica. The word “vara” caught my eye. Oh, I thought, this should be good.

Vara (in English “Rod”)
This word that is used as a means of measure, in Costa Rica also means lie or liar. Its origin dates back to the time when the metric system was not yet established, so the fabrics were sold by yards equivalent to 0.91 cm, and wood was sold by rods equivalent 0.84 cm.
And as some merchants sought to take advantage of the difference between both measures, those clients who noticed the deception said: “Stop cutting the rod” from where the expression was reduced to saying the only rod [vara].

Ha! I thought, how appropriate. I was one of those who cried LIAR! Repeatedly.

If you buy wood in Costa Rica, nine times out of ten your woodcutter will cut in varas, that ancient and mysteriously created Spanish measurement. But it’s also more than likely he will sell the wood to you in pie, feet.

I have attempted to research the origin of the vara and have been stymied in my efforts. The closest I’ve gotten is through Wiki World and a few obscure blogs related to woodworking. It seems the prevailing thought is that the vara originated in Spain’s northern central province of Burgos, then a power center in the early 16th century. It was calculated with many other

integers (toes? Fingers? palms?) and finally became the accepted norm for a yard. It’s complicated. The trouble is a vara is not a full yard. The actual conversion is somewhere around 32.91 inches. A yard is 36 inches.

Three inches + a fraction is not a lot, you might say, but imagine a house built with thousands of board feet of lumber. I did endless calculations—the calculator became my constant companion. I obsessed over how much money we lost with each delivery, and I argued endlessly with our lumber broker, who, by the way, made us just that. But I knew my stuff, and he hated me for it:

1 vara = 33-1/3 inches = 2.777778 feet
To convert varas to feet multiply by 0.36
To convert feet to varas divide by 0.36
Then add the whole board feet calculation to that mix. Yah, my brain was on fire

In the end, it was hopeless and, bottom line, I lost. I did have a cutoff number of what I was willing to pay, though, and at the end of our ordeal, I came in .10 cents under my board foot cost allowance. After one knock-down-drag-out with the guy, my son, who was visiting at the time, remarked, “Wow, Mom, that was worse than a drug deal going down.” But less lucrative for me as well as the wood cutter, I assume.

Because the Spanish brought the vara to all of Latin America and eventually California, it was used in surveying measurements in Southern California. And San Francisco. The first mayor of that city hired a city planner Jasper O’Farrell. O’Farrell, for reasons no one understands, created 50-vara blocks and 100-vara blocks north and south of Market Street.

My father loved to tell a story from his youth about working for a renowned surveyor in the 1920s; the last remaining guardian, according to Dad, of the measure and San Francisco’s ancient plot maps. When the city updated with new planning, they used this surveyor (and my dad) to re-plot some of the downtown city streets. Dad was the rod holder and often had to enter buildings as much as ten-twelve feet for the surveyor to get a proper reading of where the point used to be during O’Farrell’s time and his vara period of topography. Dad said he never knew how the city changed the maps and who benefited or lost out, but it employed him for an entire summer.

The vara still lives in Costa Rica and many other Latin American countries, but I love the fact that it’s used to call out those using it: Liar!

Costa Rica: A Land for The Indomitable Spirit

I started asking for gotas de valeriana at the local farmacia about three weeks ago; the same pharmacy where I bought the bottle I was running low on. In fact, I started asking about a replacement when mine was only half empty because I was not born to Costa Rica yesterday.

When I asked the nice clerk at the farmacia, she looked in the glass case and then produced valerian capsules. No, thank you, I want the drops. The capsules make my head feel like its going to explode and I find I’m more wired than if I had taken nothing to get to sleep. So, no, those would not work. She then produced linden-flower drops, passion-flower drops, and chamomile drops, but no valerian drops.

“We could order them for you,” she offered.

“Thank you. That would be great.”

But apparently “could” was the operative word, because the following week when I asked for them I got exactly the same routine: the looking, the offering, the ordering from an entirely different clerk.

Yesterday, I was in town and they assured me the valerian drops would be in that afternoon. I did notice it was 2 p.m. when I left the store, but never mind. I asked them to guard a bottle for me. Not to worry, they said. There will be lots. I thanked them very much. Just as I was leaving I remembered and asked about the borax I also ordered. Ah, well, the proveedor brought baking soda instead of borax, so that should be here next week. We all laughed.

I was in town checking the post office, yet again, for a package my brother mailed three weeks ago from the States. Most often those packages take about ten days, but this one contains four credit cards tucked inside a book, plus a fountain pen and some inks. I am very anxious to get these items so, of course, they are taking forever to get here.

The cards have a special history. Our credit cards were hacked sometime back in December and we cancelled them. Replacement cards were sent to our accountant in the States who then mailed them to us. I waited and waited and began to worry that they’d been intercepted. Another care package from my brother was sent to me about a week after the cards and that package arrived in ten days flat. But not the cards. So, I cancelled the cards and had the bank issue new ones. A month and a half later the now cancelled cards arrived.

I had our accountant send the new cards to my brother—the expeditor extraordinaire. I also ordered some special paper from Amazon for my new fountain pen a week later. That arrived yesterday. I now have beautiful paper that does not bleed or feather the ink… but no fountain pen (the photo here is as close as I’ve come to owning it). No credit cards either, and, so far, no valerian drops.

I noticed last night I am just about out.

To reiterate, this is the land for the stalwart personality; not just the intrepid, but also a spunky person of good humor. I have not always risen to the occasion, but I have learned to mask my frustration and anger because if you take out your frustrations on them, clerks and officials will simply look straight past you for the next in line. You will get nothing. Sometimes you get nothing anyway but at least they feel bad for you.

Suspended Disbelief

According to La Nacion this morning, there are four major routes in need of urgent repairs or upgrades. Please tell me this bridge is one of them. I’m no engineer, but I believe this is a unique design among suspension bridges. I know I have never seen one like it before….

 

Moin: Are Limón Dockworkers Crazy?

I read several English-language newspapers every day to get a feeling of what is happening around the country. This past week I read about the proposed billion dollar Moin dock expansion in a publication I have mixed feelings about—the editor’s political views seem diametrically opposed to mine. Anyway, his editorial comment at the end of the article said, and in bold print so I could hardly avoid seeing it: “It’s crazy that the dock worker’s union in Limón opposes the proposed container terminal.”

Excuse me‽ It’s not crazy at all.

Earlier this month there was a tense public information meeting in Limón. The Dutch firm, APM Terminals, presented plans for the modernization. This expansion is necessary, the proponents say, “to remain competitive in a very competitive market.”

And just how does that translate into a language we can understand? I’d venture to say the firm in charge of the overhaul is talking about “cost containment” and “efficiency,” which can both be translated as “mechanized” and hence “a reduction of manual labor.”

Jobs.

Needless to say, there were protests, shouting, slow downs, and strikes by the Moin stevedores, not to mention environmentalists upset about possible damage to mangrove swamps and turtle nesting areas. This protest was fairly subdued, not like some we have seen in the past with burning trucks, fruit left to rot in the tropical sun, and angry mobs lobbing Molotov cocktails at the police.

The article also points to APM Terminals maintaining numerous port installations in China, their positive working relationship with the Chinese, and the fact that the Chinese are looking at Limón for a Zona Franca, a free zone for businesses involved in import-export activities.

Aside from the fact that the proposed expansion will mean a loss of their jobs, the stevedores are aware of the long history of foreign intervention and imperialistic attitudes toward the population of this Caribbean coast. People here have fought long and hard for their rights. Remember, Costa Rica is the original Banana Republic and Limón is where the United Fruit Co. opened for business in 1899.

The mastermind, Minor C. Keith, built the railroad from the Central Valley to the Atlantic port of Limón off the backs of Jamaicans and other islanders, Chinese, and Italian workers. In fact, the first strike in Costa Rica came during the construction of that railway.

Initially, Keith used Chinese labor under contract provisions that would send them home to China after the job was completed. Their salaries were a fifth of the going wage—something Keith would become famous for—and they lived and worked in miserable conditions. Their strike, in 1874, was one of the first in the country.

The Chinese were replaced by black islanders and things went according to Keith’s plans until they got a better offer when Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, began his crazy Panama Canal project. Jamaican workers abandoned Keith for Lesseps who paid five dollars a day, five times what Keith was paying. Keith then imported 2000 Italian workers in 1887 who quickly threw down their shovels and picks.

Before coming to the steaming jungles of Costa Rica, most of those workers were active in farm labor unions in Europe. And why Keith thought organized workers born at the foot of the Alps would work for a pittance in suffocating conditions of the tropics, no one knows. Fortunately for Keith, Lesseps soon went broke in Panama and the Jamaican workers returned.

Once the railroad was completed, Keith branched out into banana plantations— 800,000 acres given to him, tax-free, by the government in exchange for his railroad work. If this sounds to you like the proposed giveaway to the Chinese for their Zona Franca, you are not alone.

Blacks who live in Limón are descendants of the United Fruit legacy. Through oral history, they remember those days and the brutal tactics of the Octopus, as United Fruit Co. became known. Thomas P. McCann, in his book, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit, puts it succinctly: [United Fruit was] a new form of business enterprise: the multinational company …in many instances more powerful and larger than the host countries in which it operated… they bought protection, pushed governments around, kicked out competition, and suppressed union organization.

It sounds very familiar to the multinational companies of today. We can all thank Minor Keith for the business model that brought us Big Oil, Big Banks, and now, Big Terminals.

By 1926 the majority of bananas were grown by independent producers, but, because of the railroad, United Fruit still controlled the docks, the loading, shipping, and marketing of the fruit.

[In the name of brevity for this blog post, I’ll skip a whole bunch of history including Costa Rica leaning toward Communism, a little thing like a Revolution, and the country’s ultimate turn toward Socialism.]

The Costa Rican Central Government finally nationalized the railway and the port in 1966, turning its maintenance over to the Administración Portuaria y de Desarrollo Económico de la Vertiente Atlántica, which is a mouthful for anyone, and is better known by its acronym, JAPDEVA [pronounced hap-day-va]. The people on this Atlantic coast felt proud of their country owning and controlling a port that once was operated by an oppressive and dictatorial multinational corporation.

JAPDEVA is Limón. Or it was Limón until it began negotiating with the Dutch for a 30-year contract for the new terminal, a loss of jobs, and a land giveaway to the Chinese.

So, Mr. Editor, there are many historical and personal reasons the dockworkers of Limón do not support the port expansion. You need to read your history books.

Cacao, Miss Olga, and A New Beginning

 

I read in The Tico Times this morning that a French competition awarded first prize for Latin America to a sample of cacao grown on a farm in San Carlos, Costa Rica. This does my heart good.

When my husband and I first arrived in Punta Uva in the late 1980s, the people here were suffering from the devastating effects of a fungal blight on their cacao trees. When the Moniliasis, or frosty pod rot, hit their crops in 1978, these Afro-Caribbean’s lives were changed irrevocably. No longer did they have the best chocolate in the world, demand and prices plummeted, and they abandoned their plantations letting the jungle grow over. This is how we came to buy our place.

When you talk to the older people in this area, they will likely tell you that the banana companies brought the monilia so they could take away their land. Whether it was that or one-hundred plus years of mono-cropping, the result was the same. The blight, it was felt, was permanent, and until a few years ago no one had been able to develop a resistant variety. It is a hit or miss crop.

Then people began to try different growing methods. According to an article I read a few years ago,“… rehabilitation efforts and those of 400 families in 14 villages stem from a World Bank-financed organic cacao and biodiversity project created and implemented by the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (Spanish acronym CATIE, pronounced Kah’-Tee-Eh), headquartered in Turrialba, Costa Rica.” Before local farmers had planted from seed. This time the farmers were taught to graft new species onto existing rootstock. They were also trained in diversifying their crops so the land was more sustainable. Within a few years, they were getting reliable harvests from their cacao trees.

As expats have settled the area, once famous for its chocolate, they have also either grown the cacao themselves or become buyers of the indigenous tribe’s crops. New businesses have popped up in the area marketing organic chocolates and baked goods made from the new strains.

Before my husband and I built our house, we rented from a woman with a long history in the area. Her family and others like hers were the original cacao farmers. Miss Olga’s mother was born in Punta Uva. Her grandmother was born here, too. She now lives in Limón with a son as she will be 99 years old this February. She always told me she’d live a long life. “My mother lived to be 99 and 6,” she always said.

Olguita flirting with Alan

Olga’s coffee and cream complexion made her look more Spanish than black, and the lack of wrinkles made it hard for me to believe that she was in her eighties when we lived in that little rental house she owned. She wore her curly gray hair tied tightly against her head in two braids at the base of her neck. Olga had a great sense of humor and would flash her gold teeth when the joke was on, and her tales of how it was in Punta Uva when she was a child were a pleasure to listen to.

“You know when my family first come, there was nothing here. We just staked out the land we wanted and started growing things. My father and my mother, they had this place and they give it to me. They give the place you have now to my sister, Casilda, and they give my brother, Bai, the place on up there by Little Bay. Now there’s all manner people here I don’t even know anymore. In the old days we all knew each other, and we was family. I used to ride my horse from Manzanil to Ol’ Harbour, stop off at all the farms them for a drink. We had some good times.”

Outside her front door is the most beautiful Mango tree I have ever seen. It is over fifty years old; she knew, too, it because she remembered planting it. Its solid, twisted trunk divides off into five or six branches. The bare limbs twine up over the house some thirty feet, and a canopy of mango leaves and fruit created a wonderful umbrella of shade for her sea-green clapboard house. She often sat outside under that tree in the late afternoon, resting off after a day’s work.

Her favorite chair was made out of old rusty rebar welded together to form a frame. The plastic caning had long ago worn out. Instead, she fashioned some torn rags tied with some rope in places, some string in others. The cushion was made from an old pair of pants.

In all that, she had a way of holding herself that was regal. Sitting in that chair, her chin tilted slightly as though she were looking down on you, her legs crossed at the ankles, one elbow on the chair frame and her arm raised to express herself with those long bony fingers; she could easily be in any fashionable sitting room in any big city in the world.

She was no rube. She’d been to New York City to visit relatives, she’d been on an ocean cruise, and she’d traveled to the capital, San José, when she had to. She just preferred be on her farm.

Behind the house was an old cacao shed, a relic from the past— back when the pods rolled in and the money was flush.

She tore the drying shed down several years ago, and now it appears there just might be a viable crop again in Talamanca.

Things That Do Not Go Bump in the Night

Every morning before breakfast my husband dust mops the house while I cook breakfast— God, I love that man.  (He also does dishes, but I don’t want to make you too jealous.)

One morning on his rounds he called me outside to our wide porch.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the corner of the veranda.“What do you think made this?”

 “Maybe one of those animals Miss Olga used to call ‘night monkeys.’” I said.

“Well, whatever it was, it shit all over the floor.”

True enough, it had. It also urinated and left behind three half-eaten fruits that looked like small guavas.

We left a porch fan on the next night, but the same droppings and fruit mess were there the next day.  The third night we applied pepper spray to the rafters. Next morning- nothing.

But what was it? Whatever it was, it was quiet. The rafters where it roosted and ate its dinner are right outside our bedroom door. I’m a light sleeper, so anything walking around on the veranda would have woken me, I’m pretty sure… although, my husband tells me I now snore.

Coincidentally, that same week a facebook friend posted a picture of a cute, furry bat on her timeline. It got me thinking. Could it have been a bat?  I was still voting for the marsupial night creature, but started looking into it. According to Costa Rica (dot) com, there are are approximately 1100 bat species worldwide. Of those, 110 live in Costa Rica.

Not many people think of bats as being mammals, but they are. All bats are born with forelimbs that develop into wings, making them the only mammal capable of natural flight. They are covered with fur, are warm blooded, and their babies develop inside their mothers who deliver by live birth. According to the articles I read, most bats have one pup a year that are fully formed at birth.  But their wings are not developed enough to fly until they are six weeks to four months old, depending in the species.

There are megabats and microbats. Megabats are larger than their cousins the microbat, they have a claws on their second toe (I’d call that an elbow, but I’m not a scientist), no belly fur, use their eyes for navigation, as well as echolocation, and largely eat fruit rather than insects.

The Jamaican Fruit bat eat guavas, papaya, and banana. When these are scarce, they will eat nectar, pollen, and a few insects. Guava, huh… my porch was littered with half eaten guava fruits.

Last month, according to The Tico Times, there was a bat conference held in San José where researchers came together to talk and compare studies. “An estimated 650 researchers, professors, and community educators gathered… to hear presentations on new bat species, research on behavior… and to learn how to communicate [their] importance to the public.”

One highlighted bat species was the Honduran white bat. These thumb-sized bats nest in banana and heliconia leaves. The male and his harem of females chew the leaf until it drops over them forming a tent from the elements.  How could anyone think badly about these cute little guys? But it definitely wasn’t our bat.

Photo courtesy_ The Tico Times

The more I looked into it,  the more the Jamaican Fruit bat appeared to be our night visitor. The guavas kind of clinched it for me. Their bodies are about the size of a sparrow but their wing span is quite long, but they barely weigh a thing. These bats actually use their eyes as well as the famed bat sonar to guide themselves through the night skies.

Bats are our friends. They pollenate crops, scoop up thousands of insects that might otherwise ruin our crops, and Jamaican Fruit bats spread fruit seeds throughout the jungle. Scientists are studying their ability to move by echo in the hopes it will help the blind navigate. Lastly, their manure, called guano, is some of the most fertile in existence.

Little side-story. Some expats who lived near us years ago had a colony of bats in the ceiling. Apparently the guano was so thick it slid down the double walls of their house and oozed out a light switch. This is why we bult our house with single wall construction.  But our creative neighbors made lemonade with the situation, bagged up the guano and sold it to some local pot growers.

And just look at that face. How could anyone not love that face? Even with that fleshy nose flap thingy and those claws on its wings.

It’s just too cute.

 

Keeping Food Fresh in the Tropics

Tired of moldy cheese, weevil infested pasta, and soggy chips? My article about keeping food fresh in the tropics is live over at The Costa Rican Times.

Cédula Renewal Wars

Last week my husband and I endeavored to renew our Costa Rican cédulas de residencia, the national ID card.

I called the Banco BCR hotline, BCRCITA (900-003-4639), for an appointment. Aside from the call costing 300 colones a minute, and being immediately put on hold because, “dear customer, all available operators are busy, please be waiting on the line,” the appointment maker was friendly and efficient.

Two years ago, we were in and out in fifteen minutes. This year, the appointment has been the only easy part.

We arrived in Limón 20 minutes early, a good thing because I did not know the Limón Banco BCR had moved. We found the new location, took a seat among the hordes, and listened to the overhead mechanical voice announce ficha numbers and to which booth the holder should report: Ah, setenta tres, posición cinco…. We did not need a ficha, and after about ten minutes a clerk called our name. She asked for our documents.

I have a rule of thumb in this country, known for its obscurantism. When dealing with bureaucrats, I never pull out all my documents at once. If I do, I find they will ask for the one I do not have. Best to present them one at a time hoping my papers exhaust their time, interest, or (insert your own word here).

I gave the clerk our old cédulas and our passports. She asked for proof of payment to CCSS (the Caja), the mandatory government health insurance company. I gave her a payment stub from June. She asked for the actual CCSS carnet, or voucher, which I handed over. I thought I saw her trying to peer over my file folder to see what cards I still held in this poker game, but it might have been my imagination. Then she asked for a letter from the bank ensuring we spend the requisite amount of money each month to qualify us as residents in good standing. I handed over the letter. She read thoughtfully. Then she looked up.

“Entonces, Señora, this letter shows your bank account is linked to your passport number and not your cédula.” There it was, the stickler. I argued my point. The account belongs to my husband and me. Anyone can clearly see that, passport or cédula, we are the same people. I was sent to another booth for consultation. It was there I was informed that a cédula is now required by the good people at immigration.

Our new clerk said we had to return to our bank in Puerto Viejo and a) have the account changed from our passport numbers to our cédulas and b) have our account verified as to our correct information. “The last time you did this was in 2008,” he said. I was aware of that regulation. Back in 2008 the Costa Rican Financial Regulatory Agency – SUGEF – demanded all banks under its supervision update their client account information to bring the accounts into compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism acts. We had complied, but I was unaware that it had to be updated every two years. I asked if he could do this while we waited.

This is when I discovered that Banco BCR branches have information only about their particular branch on their computers; the Limón branch cannot access accounts from Puerto Viejo, ni vice versa.

So it was back to Puerto Viejo for a chat with the clerk there. Indeed, she said I needed to verify our account and she could do that when we brought a receipt for the electricity, or the phone, with our physical address. Catch-22. In my quest for efficiency, I pay all our bills online and the receipts go to our apartado, post office box. “Well,” she said, “you can use the receipt for the property taxes from the municipality.” Later, at home, I checked. The address the municipality used is referenced by Hotel Suerre, which was torn down by the government several years ago.
I took the receipt into the bank the next day and waited for the same teller to be freed up (another rule of mine: always get the same clerk, otherwise who knows what other requirements may pop up). Our clerk was unfazed by the non-reference point in our address. “But your house is close by this, yes?” Yes. “Okay, then we will just use this and make a note of your actual address.” We could have done this any number of other ways, like me just stating our address, but, hey, she took it.

Then it was on to changing our account from the passport to the cédula number. Do not even ask, because there is no option for simply adding another piece of ID; it’s all or nothing. It would have been faster to close out the account and open a new one and it certainly would have saved trees. After a ream of paperwork and fourteen signatures, we were set. Only problem, they had to annul our credit card and close my online banking account (with saved information on at least ten accounts I regularly pay into). Just a month ago I laboriously matriculated to all those accounts, complete with special codes emailed to me by the bank (again, new regulations). Now all evaporated into thin air.

She promised to have our new credit card by the end of the week. At that point I will be able to start a new online banking account. I have made a new appointment with BCRCITA for our cédula renewal in Limón.

When I told our lawyer that we finally complied with all the requirements of the bank and immigration, she said, “Para hoy, Sarita, para hoy.” For today. For today. I take some comfort in that. It is good to remember it is not just expats who are inconvenienced and frustrated by these rule changes and regulations; Costa Ricans suffer the same fate. We are all in this labyrinthine system together.

Ants, and A Mild Case of Insanity

If I can get rid of ants, anyone can.

As those of you who read this blog know, we live in the jungle. I’ve often said our kitchen is one inch from nature; one inch is the thickness of our single-wall constructed house and our native hardwood flooring.

The One Inch precept has made me a fastidious housekeeper. Leave one blob of mayonnaise on the counter, and bugs will arrive to scarf it up. Leave the dishes unwashed overnight in the sink, in the morning they will be crawling with little crawly creepy things like cockroaches, or worse, ants.

I hate ants. I’ve examined my aversion to them, because I don’t hate nature in general; in fact, I am the one who will capture a bug in a glass jar and remove it to the out-of-doors rather than kill it. I have no animosity toward spiders, scorpions, or even wasps. But show me an ant, and I start obsessing about how to exterminate it. I think it is their unremitting self-determination I find so daunting. Frightening, really. That, and their violent relationship with other ants, which reminds me of us. Humans.

I recently heard about a scientist researching cancer, how he based his treatment to target it. Because cancer cells divide rapidly, and tend to hide within the normally dividing human cells, he focused on organisms that use swarm intelligence, and specifically  ones that never give up. Ant colonies. Place anything in their path and they will find an alternate route. They are the squirrels of the insect word.

Last year we had an ant outbreak that just about drove me insane. I scrubbed the counters within an inch of their lives, sprayed them with ammonia or Clean Green. All of which had the effectiveness of water. Ants scattered out over the my counter tops casually bumping noses and sending messages, no doubt about some delectable food find.  Every morning, when all I wanted was a peaceful cup of coffee, I did battle them for fifteen minutes or more. I eliminated bacon from our diet—not a bad thing, I suppose—because the grease attracted them in throngs. Bacon has also become outrageously expensive in Costa Rica, but that is for another post. Or, read my friend’s blog on the subject of increasing taxes on food and other items.

I moved the small compost container (with snap-on, air-tight lid) from the counter to the kitchen table. I quit using the countertop by the stove to prepare any food. And still ants ran roughshod over those work surfaces. I’d find them coming up the side of the counter. I sprayed. I applied poisons— I know, I know—between the counter and the wall. A few days would pass and there they were again like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I’m baaack! Heeeer’s Johnny! [Note: this has been edited due to mass cultural confusion, mixing up Poltergeist’s, They’re Baaack!–my original post– with Nicholson’s cry from The Shining. Just trying to be accurate here] Anyway…a thick stream of them coming up the side of the stove, panning out like river deltas, covering my counter. When I began thinking of things like flame throwers to kill them, I knew I needed a permanent fix.

I went to my trusty Macbook and googled ants + eradicate + traps. Countless sites (here, here, and if you prefer video, here) referred to a mixture of boric acid and sugar. It was purported to work, but I was despondent because I’d tried that a couple of years before and it didn’t work for me. However, I realized, I had made a liquid mixture, as recommended. Hmmmm, maybe if the mixture is dry the ants will track the boric acid to their nest and infect the whole mess of them.

What the hell, I thought, I’ll try it. So I mixed the boric acid and powdered sugar in a 50/50 dry mix and made cocaine-like lines along the back splash of my countertop. It took a day, but I noticed the ants began to focus on the bait. In fact, within two days they attacked it like addicts, snorting up my little lines of white powder. They ate so ravenously I had to replace the thin lines almost every day. I said to my husband, “Well, if this is a far as we get, I’m happy to have them away from my space.” I was able to prepare food on the same countertop; the ants stayed with the bait at the back of the counter, eating and tromping around in the mix. They trailed back up the back splash, through a crack, and disappeared behind the counter.

I left them alone.

The method is not fast, but it has been impressively effective. Within two months I had little to no ants. And because the mixture was up on the countertop, I did not have to worry about the dogs getting into it. This is something to remember: boric acid is poisonous to children and pets, so if you use it, keep it away from them. You can do that by putting the mix in a jar and punching holes in the lid, but my outbreak (and mental wellbeing) required the ants find the bait post-haste. It would have taken too long for them to find it inside a jar.

How does it work? According to Debbie Hadley in her About.com article, How to Make and Use Homemade Ant Baits,

 “Boric acid works primarily as a stomach toxin on ants. The worker ants will carry the bait food, loaded with boric acid, back to the nest. There, the ants in the colony will ingest it and die. The boric acid seems to interfere with their metabolism, although scientists aren’t exactly sure how it does so. Sodium borate salts affect an insect’s exoskeleton, causing the insect to desiccate.”

I don’t know about that, but I know it works. Hadley and others recommend the liquid mixture, but, as I said,  it did not work for me. The dry mix is easy to control, and, once the ants focused on it, I increased the amount of boric acid in the mix. Eventually it was a 3:1 mix, more or less (this is not rocket science), and the ants never stopped going for it. They loved it. I removed the bait when they appeared to be gone. When I saw another small outbreak–probably a new hatch– I replaced the bait. Four months later, none. Zero. Zip.

Hoo-ah!

We haven’t had an ant problem now for about a year, but I can never get lax in my housekeeping. The other day I left some chicken scraps on the counter after making a chicken sandwich with mayonnaise (always a magnet). When I came back after lunch there were about ten ants orbiting the countertop. I squished them with my thumb and then sprayed the counter and the back splash with vinegar, which also works; I’ve written about its excellent properties before.

No more ants…. for now. But I am always aware that they lurk a mere inch from my kitchen.

 

More resources:

13 natural remedies for the ant invasion  by Kimi Harris

How to Stop an Ant Invasion WikiHow

Getting Rid of Ants  The Frugal Life

 

 

Semana Santa, Crime Sprees, US Embassy Warnings, and a Grateful Expat

Yes, it that time again; Semana Santa, Holy Week, in which seemingly all the Central Valley descends on the two coasts of the country. The hotels are full, bars and restaurants are over flowing with customers, and we are staying in for the week. Yesterday there was a steady stream of traffic in front of our house. Where years ago a car might pass once a day, now there is a four-wheeled river.

If you pave it, they will come. I ventured out for some supplies this morning but made sure I did it before seven in the morning, long before the revelers got up to ease their aching heads from the night before.

Of course all this is a boon for business, and it is happening in spite of a US Embassy warning issued just last week advising North Americans to avoid the Caribbean due to recent crime spree. There have been a string of violent hotel invasions over the past several months as well as a drug bust in Manzanillo on March 12.

In that incident a high-speed panga with four (FOUR) 300 horse motors—that’s 1200 horsepower, folks, and a whole lot of speed—carrying about two tons of cocaine was run aground in Manzanillo by the Coast Guard. Four men fled into the jungle and faded into the local population. The white stuff was captured but not the men. But all that said, the Pacific side of the country fares no better; there were several similar drug busts on the Pacific in the past few months. All in all Costa Rica has captured about 20 tons of cocaine this year alone… on both coasts, all headed north to a guaranteed market.

It has always been the assumption of the people on the Caribe that Pacific investors and hotel cartels put out bad publicity about the Caribbean around the holidays. That might have been true in the past, but this time the Caribe has things it needs to address. And I see the government and the police have formulated a plan to fight crime. The idea is to allow people a toll free number (1176) to call and anonymously report crime or suspicious activities. I hope it works.

The only issue I see is that people here are afraid to report because they do not trust their police or the government and they fear retaliation from the criminals themselves. Healthy concerns.

For now, though, it’s nice to see the cars full of people from San Jose coming to the Caribbean to celebrate Easter, and I hope they have a good time. (And as always I hope they clean up their trash when they go.) The small inconvenience to me is slight in comparison to the success of businesses here. May they prosper and give legitimate employment to all the young people who need work to live a life without crime.

Happy Easter. Feliz Santo Domingo. Have a good time, everyone. Play safely and even if it means my house shakes with the bass beat of a local bar, so be it.

On a side note: I still do not understand fireworks on Good Friday, the day it is believed that Christ was crucified, but I’m Buddhist not a Catholic. Just saying.