nicaragua, piggies + the t-dot SARS scandal

written aug 2019 by annik:

my partner + i live in costa rica. we popped up across the border to nica for a few days to visit lotsa friends + to take care of some biz.

i’ve missed showering all the sweet neighbourhood piggies w love. in chinese zodiac i am! a piggy. oink oink weeeeeeee.

we lived in nica during the political protest last year.
all along the pacific coast, friends + i felt, and were, safe the entire time.

the abrupt loss of ALL tourism resulted in 99% of businesses closing because they couldn’t afford to stay open and pay their staff + overhead expenses w no guests coming through. there were rumours of the whole country being dangerous and travel advisories telling ppl to NOT go to nicaragua.

then there was a rumour that we would stop being able to get supplies in our remote towns. people stocked up w 5-10x more food + water than what they’d normally buy- creating a shortage. creating that rumour to temporarily be real. the shops couldn’t supply that random spike in demand so it took them five days to get stocked up and running normal again. seeing those empty shelves + feeling the fear frequency vibrating all around was the last straw for many ex-pats who were able to go elsewhere… so they left. some of who are back in nica now or they have been back since. the media is a powerful mindfuck!

at the time we all thought this was going to be a 1-2 week situation. the protests ended up lasting 6-8 weeks. the ex-pats who lived there who could afford to not work, and who didn’t get taken over by fear during the supplies rumour, stayed. we all surfed our brains out because no one was around.

grant + i eventually left nica to follow work elsewhere. of the nicaraguans who applied for a costa rican work-visa, 8000 were granted one. thousands were denied.

the tourism crash lasted over a year where no one was coming through. tourism is slowly starting to recover since november and locals are slowly starting to get employment opportunities again. 

i’ll leave this w letting y’all know that nicaragua is safe + beautiful. DEFINITELY go there!

i spoke w a few friends about starting the hashtag #bringnicaback to share experiences w either if you’re in nica now, or sharing your first-hand experience w the misrepresentation of the country’s safety status last year.

as a person raised by punkrock i can smell media lies + corruption from far away haha.

also from experiencing something similar to this before. does anyone remember when canada said no to being an ally to go to war w the USA and they tried (successfully) to ruin toronto by spreading the rumour that everyone in toronto was either in quarantine or dying from SARS hahaha. it worked. toronto was empty. no one was coming. this is the same! it’s ridiculous. ps “SARS times” was a good time. then the rolling stones, ac/dc, the who, rush and many more came to do a benefit festival to bring tourism back to toronto! they called it SARSFEST. (i went w my mama.) and it worked- ppl perceived toronto as normal again after that. maybe we need to throw a sarsfest jungle party in nicaragua to get people there again haha. i’d go.

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thanks for reading and have a great day!

annik xx