This isn't Kansas anymore, Toto!

Living in the USA gives us experiences and ways of thinking that are now transparent to most of us. We don't notice the large body of thoughts, values and expectations that are seamlessly woven into the fabric of life...We don't notice it and are not conscious of it.

Unless you travel outside the USA.  Then this hits you in the face point blank.  Here are a few of them that have come up in the last couple of days.

Driving somewhere:  We expect to get in the car, drive and arrive where we intend to go.  Right?  Barring an obvious problem like a blizzard (just to rub it in, I must point out that we don't have that anymore) we think we will get there.

I was driving to David, a town 30 miles south of Boquete to buy some tires for the Beast, my diesel Toyota.  Twenty minutes into the trip, traffic stopped and was backed up a mile.  Everyone was out of their car walking up the road to the problem.

An accident, you say.  No.  A protest.  I thought this was a American tradition but it turns out that the Panamanians have it down.  They simply fell a tree across the road and talk to anyone who will listen.

I turned around and went the long way around...adding over ninety minutes to a 45 minute trip.  Last I heard, the governor of Chirique was on his way to talk to the protesters.  I guess it works!

Now more about electric power than you probably want to know.  

They told us Boquete gets "brown outs."  You and I in the USA know about brown outs--a slight dimming of the lights, a condition rarely if ever experienced.  We must not have that, damn it.

Here, a brown out is best described as a black out.  The voltage drops so low that refrigerators, microwaves, computers all quit running.  Everyone has low voltage protectors on everything.

But this is not all the story.  Here's the part that is too much information, so shut up and learn something.

220V into your house is actually two 110V lines forming two distinct legs of power for your various 11oV stuff.  You probably don't know this because in the USA our power is PERFECT like everything else.  ( I know, you are now writing your list of all the stuff that is not perfect back home, but just stop it.  Compared to the rest of the world, you live in perfection.)

Now, back to the two 110V lines.  Here one side of the 110V may have full voltage and the other side may be low.  This creates a vicious problem to solve with power.  Gringos here actually know this stuff...just to survive.  Every house here has a voltage tester, go figure.

And you thought you had it bad.

I hesitate to bring up hot water in the this blog.  I should dedicate a book to this but here goes.

We Americans love our hot water, yes we do!  We use copious amounts of it and we love it so much that we store it in 50 gallon tanks that always have hot water ready just for you.  We don't even think about it.  It is just the way it is.  No one really ever considers how much that costs but it is expensive.

In Panama (and, most of the rest of the world) hot water is a luxury that only the wealthy use.  It is produced by an "on-demand", normally gas flame, water heaters.  

This is where it gets tricky.  If you take a shower, the first minute or so is hot, then it gets cold for a couple of minutes, then it gets hot for a minute and so on.  Very frustrating.

You try dancing in and out of the shower wet and naked.  Not a pretty picture, is it.

In another blog, I will explain why.  It is too lengthy for this one.

While in the shower, the bottle of gas may run out adding another dimension of discomfort to a cold, wet shower.

Plus, "D" size batteries provide the ignition for the gas flame and they may be used up.

All in all, a hot shower is very rare and a highly prized luxury coveted by most.

So there you have it.  Three examples of how American thinking "just ain't so" down here.

So you ask, "how can you live down there?"  I'll tell you.

This morning I went to a state of the art, hydroponic farm and bought freshly cut, as I watched,  lettuce that was perfect.  3 heads of Romain, 2 heads of butternut and  a head of red lettuce.  Plus a half a dozen red peppers that are as sweet as apples.  

I paid $4.  And, I will have a salad today and for the rest of the week that tastes like desert.

That just one reason.