Living the local life part II

In Nicaragua one needs to worry a lot less about everything. Or is it just that one starts to care less over here? Sometimes opening Facebook and you see all these discussions going on: organic food is the only thing you should eat, become a vegan or at least a vegetarian, do not eat meat, milk is so bad for your health, poor chicken all gathered in a laying battery. There is so much to worry about, if you have everything. But if you have next to nothing and no choice, you do not really care where your food comes from. In the end it is all a matter of perspective and of your basic needs and how to fulfill them.

In Nicaragua you can be happy, if you find someone selling a brokkoli. Then you obviously do not care if it is organic or not. It happens maybe twice a week that someone at the market has brokkoli on offer. Then you just take what you get. Same with other groceries. But is it a misfortune or actually a bliss to have less to choose from? Take eggs for example: Who cares about free-range eggs or laying batterie eggs. The supermarket sells one brand of eggs. One egg is always 5 Córdobas – except when they are smaller, than the price decreases to 4.50 Córdobas. And the best, after buying the egg, you do not need to justify your decision (to one of your eco-vegan-friends).

Same with the meat. Where does it come from? Nobody cares over here, as long as they have enough meat to eat. You go to the butcher, he takes out a chicken breast from the freezer, puts it into a plastic bag and off you go with 500 gram for $3. No questions whether you want organic chicken or cheap chicken or happy chicken or whatever chicken. Of course, eating chicken when living with a Nica family is different. Then you can be 100% sure that you eat a free-range chicken which has run across the whole neighbourhood, got chased by dogs and cats and ate the scraps of your leftover food. It got killed softly by twisting its throat and the feathers were plucked one after the other by hand. Is that what organic chicken is all about and what the Europeans try to reach?

Grocery shopping in Nicaragua is obviously convenient in two ways. First, as you do not know where the food comes from, you can’t really worry about the keeping of chickens, the pesticides on your tomatoes or the antibiotics in your meat. Well, lets say, if you do worry, you end up without food. Second, you do not stand five minutes in the supermarket, comparing prices or origin of the food in order to find the cheapest or healthiest food. There is anyway no alternative in most cases. In the end, shopping in Nicaraguan supermarkets saves a lot of time.

You do not have to search for the organic alternative, you do not have to compare prices, you do not need to look for your favourite brand. Everything is so much easier. And if there is the same product and two different brands, you always know that the American brand is always more expensive than the local one. And then it gets only really expensive when looking at the imported and rare European- and North American-like food: English baked beans, Swiss cheese, American bacon, Italian Parma Ham, Spanish olive oil.

Apart from the fact, that here you anyway do not have the slightest clue where all the food and vegetables come from. Sometimes the tomatoes just look too good to be true, the potatoes are just too big and the carrots too orange. Sometimes I wonder if the tomatoes have ever seen real sunlight, if the carrots ever touched real soil or if apples ever hung on a real tree. Yes, over here the veggies do look like straight out of the factory, but not from a dirty field. I guess, that is just another perspective about things over here.

Back in Europe, everything which looks half rotten or is full of mudd or eaten up from insects is good, because it is – or at least looks – organic. Here it is the other way around, everything which is huge, bright in colour, clean and unspoiled is good food. It looks proper and healthy, so it has to be good. Nicaraguans do not want vegetables eaten up by worms, just because that makes it organic. No, that would look like they do not perform their job well as farmers.