Of Chicken and Men

“You didn’t know they don’t lay eggs in the winter?”

I looked at him, a bit embarrassed.

“You must learn more about animals. In the winter they expend their energy on growing more plumage; so they don’t lay any eggs.”

He was an old man in a blue bucket hat, with Jewish features, and a quick laugh. He wanted to demonstrate to me the importance of studying animal behavior, so as the chickens approached the patio table where we were enjoying our lunch, he grabbed ahold of a piece of bread and held out a crumb between his thumb and index finger.

“Lets see who comes and gets it first.”

Between the group of chickens, a couple were of the ordinary variety (the type one usually has a clear mental image of in their head) while the rest were Chinese chickens, who have extra feathers on their heads that make it look like they are wearing extravagant “Sunday Church” hats. The first to approach him was an “ordinary” chicken, which is slightly larger than the Chinese chicken, and perhaps, as a result, a little less shy. The old man tried to get one of the Chinese chickens to eat from his palm, but they hesitated.

“It’s because they don’t know you,” he remarked.

Then he began to throw the crumbs out on the patio to see who would grab them first. The old man wanted to show me something about the two Chinese roosters that were in the crowd, which he called “the bosses.” As he threw crumbs at them, it became clear that they would approach the piece of bread but would always be too slow on the uptake; a female chicken would come in and snatch it from them immediately. Not only that, but at times it looked as if they were simply waiting for the female chickens to arrive and take the crumb from right under their beaks.

As the man explained: that was precisely what was happening. “It’s chivalry,” he explained. The more I observed, the more convinced I became that he was right. The roosters would head to the crumb, stand over it, and let out a cluck to announce to the other chickens the food's location, while never reaching down to peck at it. The rooster was instinctively awarding the food to the female chickens, under the assumption that they needed it to produce eggs.

Soon a regular rooster arrived at the scene, larger and more majestic than its Chinese counterparts. The old man explained that this rooster had actually been given to him by one of his grown children, who had had it cooped up inside his family’s house until the animal became too much of a burden. When he threw crumbs at this rooster, it did not hesitate and quickly snatched up the free food without even considering the female chickens around him.

“That’s because he grew up in isolation and was never socialized. It’s not chivalrous. It’s a ‘modern’ chicken.”

21 Things I don't want to forget about Jamaica

1. Listening to Spice sing about her needle-eye "pum pum" at insane decibal levels on a minibus packed with elementary school children.
2. Elementary school kids who are insanely good at adulting; traveling across the city in overcrowded public buses full of peddlers, with their little siblings by the hand.
3. A taxi driver explaining that the reason Jamaicans don't share their marijuana spliffs is because you never know whether or not the person you pass your joint to has performed oral sex on a woman. (He may have been making direct reference to this song.)
• Many Jamaican men oppose performing oral on women and find the practice "unhygienic", although the jury's still out on whether or not they truly abstain in the privacy of the bedroom.
• Other potential reasons that I've heard for Jamaicans not sharing spliffs: Rastas refuse to share their spliff with "meat eaters" (as true Rastas are devout vegans), or perhaps it has to do with men believing that sharing something that has touched another man's lips can be perceived as "gay" (Jamaican men adhere to strict homophobic norms).
4. Jamaican superstars being treated as regular people who seem able to just chill amongst the crowds and enjoy everyday delights.
5. The dance scene: students that dance as part of marching band crews in high school (and have dance offs with rival schools); young adults in crews that perform every night at different dance hall parties; the dance crazes that sweep through the scene (Puppy Tail, the Jamaican Thief, etc.).
6. The sheer amount of playful, mischievous fun that goes into a dancehall "performances" which party-goers take in with critical gusto, as if an audience at a play.
• The staged dispute between a dancer and the DJ (or "selecta") over the kind of music being played.
• A random elderly man pretending to force himself onto one of the young dancers before going into a "Daggering" dance routine.
7. Being called "mi boss", "mi general", "chief".
8. The slow buildup to parties and its different phases of music: starting with ska and rocksteady, followed by roots and dub, 80s dancehall, up to the latest hits by Vybz Kartel and Mavado.
9. The young men carrying huge sound systems on dollies with boxes full of pirated CDs on top, who walk around playing tunes on the street to attract customers.
10. The minutes (and sometimes hours) long shouting matches over an uncalled foul in a pick-up game of basketball, or over the rightful place of Alkaline within the dancehall greats, or over a cab fare. 
11. The sucking of one's teeth to demonstrate displeasure.
12. The night scenes: the Rastas and their nightly dub parties and live musical events; the dancehall scene with it's numerous "yard" parties and after-parties; the uptown nightclubs.
13. The Rasta men at dancehall parties roaming around like popcorn vendors at a ballpark, with trays full of lighters, open packs of cigarettes, gum, rolling papers, and long branches covered in marijuana buds, which they distribute to customers by picking chunks off like grapes and plopping them down into people's palms.
14. The large black plastic bags full of marijuana branches that many small shopkeepers keep stowed away, in case a shopper comes by and asks to buy a little.
15. The Chinese shopkeepers behind the barricaded counter whom the Jamaicans treat with a certain amount of disparaging indifference (calling them "Chin" or "Chinaman"), who set up shop in neighborhoods even the Jamaican entrepreneurs avoid.
16. The unlit spliffs hanging from the mouths of young laborers as they deliver merchandise to the different "wholesale" storefronts.
17. The diversity of hairstyles: wigs, extensions, straighteners, braids, cornrows, dreads... 
18. The complex gradient of English and Jamaican patois spoken around the city, with distinctions between "downtown" and "uptown" patois coupled with the formalized use among the bureaucratic and upper-class establishment of the "Queen's English".
19. The centrality of music to people's every day lives: spilling out from cars, buses, churches, bars, homes, businesses...
20. The Rasta culture of sitting down, smoking a spliff and "reasoning" with a group of friends and acquaintances.
21. The legendary studios and streets in the downtown area that have slowly disappeared or gone into disrepair.

Politics in Nicaragua: The Ugly

On the morning of November 5th, 2012, a group of protesters began to gather in front of the main voting center in the small northwestern town of Ciudad Dario, Nicaragua. A day earlier, on Sunday, the town had gone to the polls to vote for an alcalde. It had been a bright, sunny day, as usual, and the townspeople had woken up early to visit their local polling center, where they had waited patiently in line to cast their votes. Afterwards they had proudly showed off their ink-purple thumbs to their family and friends, proof that they had exercised their civic duty, as they went about their usual Sunday business. Though sporadic violence had become an unfortunate and regular part of previous elections in Ciudad Dario, on this day, it was almost dead silent—except for the soft, ominous murmur (like the sound of the first bubbles in boiling water) of people sitting in plastic chairs on the sidewalk in front of their houses.

I had thought that perhaps this election would be different. The run-up had certainly felt less tense than the run-up to the presidential election a year earlier. Maybe, I thought, the opposition in Ciudad Dario had resigned themselves to losing (even unfairly), like the opposition had in most other parts of the country. By nightfall, however, I began to witness the first signs of a potential battle. All the comedors were closed, which I found odd, but I managed to grab a bite at a place that had leftovers. On the way home, I passed the alcaldia building, which is on the corner facing the town square, and as I kept walking north I came across a group of hooded youth, their faces covered with bandannas. Not a good sign.

Politics in Nicaragua: The Bad

“I know whose going to win the election. I even know by how much,” he said as he sipped on a large bowl of meat soup. It was October 22nd, 2011; two weeks before the Nicaraguan Presidential elections. By that point, it wasn't surprising to hear someone claim to know who was going to win (most people, even in the opposition, accepted the undeniable popularity of the incumbent, Daniel Ortega), but it was the first time I’d heard a Nicaraguan say that he knew what the actual results would be. “Ortega will win with at least 56% of the vote,” he said with a picaresque smile.

I didn't know this at the time, but my friend hadn't just picked the 56% mark by chance. It was the percentage the Sandinista party needed to achieve an absolute majority in the National Assembly. (Voters were expected to vote for a Presidential candidate and a representative in the Assembly; but it was widely understood that most voters voted strictly down party lines.) My friend was a Sandinista, but a pragmatic one, well aware of the current power dynamics in his country. Another friend, a more devout old-school Sandinista, had, a year earlier, expressed his concerns about the possibility of a landslide Sandinista victory in the Presidential elections: “I’m going to start to worry if Daniel gets more than 60%,” he had said.

Politics in Nicaragua: The Good

In 1990, Nicaragua was shocked to find that the Frente Sandinistas de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN), the Marxist-Leninist party that had been in power since their triumph in the popular revolution of 1979, had lost in the first free and fair Presidential election in that country’s history.  The Sandinistas received 40% of the vote, while the loose conglomeration of opposition forces precariously held together by Doña Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, widow to a famous martyred journalist, got 54%.

In the following two decades, while remaining a powerful force in Nicaraguan politics, the Sandinistas failed to win a single presidential election. Daniel Ortega ran and lost three consecutive times.  Support for the party seemed to hover, and remain stuck, around the 40% mark (in 1996 they got 38% of the vote; in 2001 it was 42%). People began to talk about an entrenched minority of diehard Sandinista supporters:  “the 38%” they were called.  Then in 2006, Ortega ran again, and again he got 38%, only this time he won! (The opposition vote was split in two and the runner-up party ended up with just 28% of the vote.)

At last, after more than 15 years, the Sandinistas were back in power.  And since then (curiously or predictably, depending on how you see it), Sandinista support has appeared to skyrocket.  In 2008, the party easily, and controversially, won a majority of the seats in the municipal elections, and in the 2011 presidential elections, Ortega cruised to victory with over 60% of the popular vote. The election monitors found certain irregularities in that last vote, but they did not question the overall results. A year later, Sandinistas now talk of polls that show 80% support countrywide.

Their public support is probably not at 80%, but there is, without question, a growing support for the current government.  Where is this new support coming from and why?  And what are the views of “the 38%”? Why are they so loyal to the Sandinistas?

Politics in Nicaragua: The Scene

Today I start a series on the political environment of present-day Nicaragua.  I begin with the description of an everyday scene that is emblematic of its current political culture.

People had begun to gather at the park since the early hours of the morning.  Mostly women—mothers who, like rocks, had withstood life’s erosions to the point of achieving an ageless quality—dressed in plaid straight skirts and depleted plain-colored v-neck shirts: campesino women.  They assumed their regular pragmatic, cross-armed stance, as they stood waiting in front of and glaring at the town’s alcaldia.

At the entrance of the alcaldia stood two four-foot high jumbo speakers, that now begun playing music at a deafening decibel level.  It was a playlist of around six or seven songs, that would loop round and round for hours and hours until, mercifully, it would be turned off and discontinued at the end of the day.  The songs included an old revolutionary song, the new Sandinista campaign song, and the famous 1990 campaign song celebrating Daniel Ortega as a razorblade-wielding cockfighting gallo. (Eeeeese es Daniel, Daaaniel Orteeega, Es el gallo enavajado que ya tiene preparado el pueblo trabajador.) Groups of volunteers, wearing the newest edition Sandinista party t-shirts (no doubt collected at the last national rally), sat on the steps of the building or on the bed of the pick-ups parked along the street.

The alcalde (mayor) soon arrived from Managua to deliver a loud, rambling, defensive speech to the cheerfully enthusiastic volunteers and the stone-faced waiting women.  The alcalde reminded the crowd of why they were there, which party had made it possible, and how much the government cares about the poor and struggling.  It could easily have been a cheesy, feel-good speech had it not been for the alcalde’s habit of screaming into the microphone, his aggressive gesticulations, and his overall threatening tone.  Once finished, he got back into his Toyota HiLux and drove off.

Finally, the anticipated materials arrived: sheets of zinc used for roofing.  Volunteers helped unload the cargo from the pick-up trucks, while others started taking the names of the women in line and scanning to see if they appeared on the official list.  Groups of bystanders walked by, some whispering to each other: “Look at how they reduce those poor people to public humiliation,” and “They only give the zinc out to people of their own party.”  Throughout the day, the zinc was distributed to the neediest in the community.  “A lot of those people sell them off after they get them,” one bystander says.  But for many, it is a Godsend.  They can now remove their old, crumbling, leaky tile home roofs, and ensure protection against the elements particularly during the intense thunderstorms of the rainy season.

This scene, of poverty-stricken women being given a helping hand while Sandinista propaganda is shoved down their throats, represents Nicaragua’s current political environment.  It is the hallmark of the current populist regime of Daniel Ortega.

In the next post, I will examine the arguments given in support of the Sandinista government.

My Favorite Posts

In honor of reaching my fiftieth post, I've decided to compile a list of some of my favorite writings so far.  Enjoy:

1. my post-modern summer job - When pretending to work becomes work.

2. Game Theory and Tardiness - Something to read while you are waiting on someone.

3. Nicaragua: Names - Why are Nicaraguan names so strange?

4. Valparaiso - Life in a city of squatters.

5. Mexico City - Life in a city of mystics.

6. Bureaucratic Linguistics - When acronyms take over.

7. International School - When pluralism descends into ethnic conflict.

8. Homage to a Friend/Life in Suburbia - The Goodwill bins, mall parking lots, and buddy cop films.

9. Tower of Babel - God reacts to a new skyscraper in Qatar.

10. Radiohead - You are now entering the strange world of indie music.