Adapting to Life Down Here

This has taken me nearly 20 years, and I am not finished yet. Because the world I left behind has been changing.

I am sitting here, in my pajamas, in front of three laptops, only one of which is working. I just finished reading, for the second time, The Year in Ethereum.

My old brain can barely understand what this is saying, but it can understand one thing: something important is going on here. That most people do not understand in the least.

They are making a new world, that requires new people, to make it work.

When I came down here, in 2001, I was a refugee from Silicon Valley. I had only one thing going for me: my Social Security retirement payments, that came once a month, like mana from Heaven.

I lived with a local family: Marielos and her son Agusto, for five years. In the Central Metropolitan Area, where most of the county lived. It was overcrowded and dangerous, and I wanted out.

I traveled in Nicaragua, the country to the north, and Panama to the south, looking for a good place to live. No luck. Then I saw the Valley of Orosi, moved here, and stayed here.

I was still in pretty good shape and rode my Bicycle everywhere. Then my body went to pieces, and I suffered from Seizures. All of a sudden I would lose consciousness, fall down, and could not get up.

They called an ambulance, and off I went to the Hospital in Cartago! Ray showed up and he had a long conversation with the doctor, in Spanish, and they decided I was having Seizures.

This diagnosis did me no good because it did not tell me what caused them, or how to avoid them in the future. I kept having them, and I came up with my own solution.

If I paid close attention to my body when I was walking, I could tell when I got tired. If I sat down, right then. I would not have a Seizure. I could call a taxi, and it would take me home.