Suicide showers and other things that aren’t like we do it at home

“Your bathroom has an electric shower head,” my host explained.

“Huh?” I observed wittily.

“They’re very big down here. Don’t touch it.”

I took one look and knew I’d be taking that advice very, very seriously. Yes, that’s an electrical outlet — a non-GFI electrical outlet — there above the shower head, poised to commit shocking mayhem to the unwary. (I don’t know what that sticky-outy thing is on the right. Don’t ask me; all I know is I’m not touching it, either.)

Furrydoc emailed after reading yesterday’s post and asked if the B&B where I’m staying has a “suicide shower.” I’d never heard the term, but I knew instantly that, yes, that’s exactly what it has. It’s a small, wildly unsafe, on-demand water heater.

Besides being a threat to life, it heats water only to the temperature of tepid tea.

—–

This post is titled in honor of LarryA’s observation that one thing worse than a rambunctious toddler is a “grownup” tourist who goes to furrin parts, then grouses the whole time that, “This isn’t the way we do things back home.”

I’m not grousing. What, me grouse? But one of the things you certainly notice in furrin parts is that they do things in furrin ways.

Yes, Americans are famously and notoriously surprised at this. One reason I travel even though (have I mentioned?) that I hate traveling is to reality-check myself on how the other — and really much larger — half lives.

Anyhow, since the U.S. is slowly headed for third-world-dom, the knowledge might come in handy at home someday.

—–

Despite quite determinedly not grousing, I must note that one of the more unpleasant manifestations of local furrinness is traffic etiquette toward pedestrians.

Or rather, the lack thereof.

Apparently, local law and custom only require drivers to honk at pedestrians before flattening them. Motor scooter drivers and bicyclists aren’t even required to give that much warning. “Right of way” turns out to be merely a quaint Norte Americano custom.

So far I’ve only been flattened upright against buildings, for which I consider myself highly fortunate.

—–

Sidewalks exist, but nobody walks on them. They’re mostly used for vendors. Where there are no vendors on the sidewalks, there are random holes. This was true in Panama, also. And I don’t mean, like, unrepaired breaks, which would be understandable in poor countries like these. I mean like holes. Put there on purpose.

What purpose, I don’t know. To collect litter, as far as I can tell.

—–

On the plus side there are dogs everywhere. Hotels have resident dogs. Restaurants have dogs. Street vendors have dogs. Streets have dogs. Most of them look alike — as if an Italian greyhound and a dingo got together and populated the nation’s dogdom singlehandedly.

Whatever breed distinctions there once were have been randomized out of them over generations.

Though this place is poorer than Panama, the street dogs seem in better condition (thanks, I’m told, to several private groups with growing spay-neuter programs).

——

English speakers are rare even though this is a city with a fair tourist base. But then, it’s not their responsibility to speak English to me, but mine to speak Spanish to them.

I try. But when I used HowDoYouSay.net this afternoon before ordering dinner at the nearest restaurant, it didn’t give me any phrase for “take home,” and the phrase it gave me for “take out” involved blood, as in taking out a major organ. Hm. I figured maybe not such a good idea.

We pantomimed. And TALKED REAL LOUD at each other in our respective languages. It worked. Not well, but it worked.

—–

I’m writing this Friday night, though it won’t post until Saturday morning. I just heard tubas. Then my host came to the window of my room and said, “They’re burning a cross in the street. It’s either a procession or the Klan.” (Yes, host speaks impeccable, idiomatic English.)

Sure enough. Burning a cross. Okay, I exaggerate; but about two doors down, they had a whopping big dish of incense at the foot of a decorated cross. The neighborhood was smoky and pungent with the stuff.

(Please forgive the terrible quality of these pix. I don’t know how to get this camera to take good low-light photos and things were happening quickly.)

They were doing the stations of the cross down our street.

The procession was terribly, terribly solemn, as you’d imagine, but it was accompanied by a dozen street vendors. When I first saw this guy …

… he was walking just ahead of the Christ statue with the most tragic look on his face — yes, and all that glorious pastel cotton candy over his shoulder. Oh, how I wish I’d been able to get that shot!

The women vendors carried their wares on their heads.

They also carried small folding tables. At each station, they took their woven baskets (or their giant Rubbermaid bins, which I’m sorry, make me laugh with the incongruity of it all) off their heads and set them on the tables.

Why is it usually a female thing to carry large burdens that way? I do see hombres doing it, but it seems to be about 10 times more common among mujeres.

—–

That’s all for now. Tomorrow I play tourist and hopefully get better photos.