I got used to the lack of addresses in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. We told people we lived in the Casa de Jorge Ramos on Calle Independencia. They usually knew where I meant.
But Managua has upped the game, shunning not only addresses but street names. Beyond a handful of main highways, streets have no names. Finding your way around a city of 2.4 million people without any street names or addresses is like some kind of strange experiment in ingenuity.
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| Alexis Arguello statue - just walk west |
Cuso International’s business cards and letterhead do not have an address for the Managua office, or even a street name. There isn’t one.
Instead, the business card says ‘From the Optica Nicaraguense, go up one block and then one-and-a-half blocks south.’ It’s in Barrio Bolonia, the card says, which narrows the search. And ‘up’ means east, because that’s where the sun comes up.
That’s what substitutes for addresses. Every business, or home, is located in relation to some supposedly well-known waypoint.
I’m working with APEN, the Associación de Productores y Exportadores de Nicaragua. Its address is ‘From the Iglesia San Francisco, 20 varas up.’ (A vara is a largely obsolete Spanish measurement just shy of a yard.)
It can get worse. Some of the addresses refer to reference points that no longer exist. (‘From where the big tree used to be.’)
And standing at a corner in a strange city, without a compass, the whole idea of deciding which way is north is difficult.
Managuans don’t seem to find this strange. But aside from the confusion of people like me, there has to be a significant economic cost. How many deliveries have gone wrong because a driver never could figure out where a store or home was? How many new businesses have failed because customers decided not to take a chance on going three blocks east from the Canal 2 building, one-half block north and then 40 varas west? How weirdly has development been skewed by a desire to locate near a prominent waypoint?
But Cuso volunteers soon learn a basic lesson. Strange is the new normal.
We found a place to live for the next four months, a bedroom with private bathroom in a nice house in a good neighbourhood, with shared living space and kitchen. It should serve nicely.
If you want to visit, come on down. Look for us 40 varas east of the chess academy in Barrio Bolonia.
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4 comments:
Jeez! That's just incredibly weird---I been in some logging camps that didn't really have street names, like in the old Franklin River M&B camp (camp B, now gone, too)---the married quarters were collectively called "Pecker Flats", but that was about it.
How can a city of 2.4 million manage without systematic addresses. Must be an interesting place for the delivery business. I mean, you hafta really know your stuff!
This sounds like an opportunity, where new technology could be used to bypass the common system of street addresses. Use GPS to establish the coordinates of each property and publish those.
Don't they have Google Street?
Hey Anon 6:52 and John's Aghast:
The GPS idea could work well for deliveries.
And while Google Street hasn't hit, Google Maps are excellent for Managua. You just need to make super-detailed notes - walk six blocks, turn right - because there are no street signs.
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