After spending the last 2 days in rage: white hot, blinding, want to break stuff and throw it through window, rage. The kind of rage that is generated from frustration and the complete and total inability to do anything about anything...
This country has beaten me. I admit defeat. I can not get anything done or completed here.
All that is left is surrender to it...or leave.
After having our builder promise to have the exterior doors installed on Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday...and it wasn't done. (You may remember that our builder has promised to have the doors installed for the last month!)
That's when I snapped. And the rage started.
There is nothing that can move these people along. Nothing!
This is an affront to the American way and it hurts. I'm not saying that this way is wrong but it is disruptive to an old US boy for sure.
So, now, Yella and I are renting a house for the next year. That's right, twelve months...and we are worried that this is not long enough.
There is no way we will get the house finished, much less electricity to it, in a few weeks much less a few months. All that is left, is to accept the inevitable and go with the flow.
But I don't like it...not.......one.......little.......bit.
You can probably read between the lines and see that I have had some serious heart to heart talks with myself. I have had to admit that I was wrong...about most of my research on moving to Panama...on building in Panama...on most everything else about Panama.
How in the hell could I make this big a mistake? It is a mystery to me. A little hint: you can't evaluate another culture from the one you are in. All of my contexts and paradigms of life don't mean anything down here. It just doesn't compute and boy, did I screw up.
Believe it or not, I am still hopeful that we will end up liking it if not loving it here. Panamanians are happy, content people. They have a lot to teach us.
Maybe I will appreciate it in a day or two.
For now, I feel defeated.
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