From Peace to Violence...in Hours.

We were driving into San Jose yesterday.

The Men were going to continue work on the house there while waiting for the next instalment of kitchen units from the carpenter...I was going with them to go to the Social Security (Caja) offices to query a rise in our contributions.

First we wanted to check out a DIY emporium for a cooker hood...a quest which made it clear that when developers acquire the rights to land they take no thought for the access thereto.
We finally made it after three dead ends and near heart failure as we thought  we would be going through the toll station twice.

Cooker hood aboard we headed for the centre.
Always a nightmare...this time it was Hitchcock.
Blocked...and not helped by a large bakery van doing deliveries in the lane ahead...it toook half an hour to get to the park by the Merced church on Avenida Segunda, the main traffic artery of San Jose.
There, all became clear...the flags ahead indicated that a demonstration was taking place and that the police had closed the road.

I asked Danilo to drop me there...it would be quicker to walk to the offices which were on that road...while the Men went on to the house.

I caught up with the march which turned out to be people working in and using several out of town hospitals campaigning for money for better services...money which their loudspeaker commentary alleged had been and was being swallowed by corruption by officials and politicians.
Mostly middle aged people, some women with children, only one union leader....a peaceful demo, heading, as I was, for the Caja offices.

The gates were locked on the main road side, but security staff were letting people in by the rear entrance overlooking the gardens so I took a ticket and awaited my turn.

The marchers were outside and the loudspeaker was giving it laldy....you needed to cup your hands behind your ears to have a conversation.

A security guard accepted the petition the march leaders presented, but they were not allowed into the building....and no one from the Caja board of management would meet them either inside or outside, dismissing a march as being no way to negotiate.

I think what was to follow could have been avoided if the Caja board had had the courtesy to meet the march leaders as the demonstrators would then have dispersed.
As it was, the marchers stayed on the road, blocking it completely and San Jose's traffic - which flows like treacle at the best of times - was almost at a standstill.

Query answered I went to have lunch with The Men and came back via the Caja offices just before 1.00 pm, surprised to be following a running file of riot police...plainly these were the reserves as their clear shields only bore a piece of packing tape with their number written on it in ink as opposed to the official 'Policia' shields borne by the front liners.

On Avenida Segunda the riot police had succeeded in pushing the marchers to each side of the road and were holding the line of the pavements. Pedestrians coming from side streets were allowed to cross and cars were starting to come through as the traffic police, the Transitos, brought up a winch lorry to haul the marchers' loudspeaker van away.

I've been at a number of demonstrations in my time and the atmosphere on the pavements...from marchers and onlookers alike... was one of good humoured resignation, broken by cheers and shouts of support for the man in the loudspeaker van who was, by this time, holding forth at length on the iniquities of named politicians and giving it as his view that the current government were trying to run the Caja into the ground as an excuse for privatisation.
He was playing the national anthem when the Transitos applied the chains to his van....and the cheers of support broke into gales of laughter as the winch lorry moved majestically forward and the chains parted, leaving the van where it was.

''Only in Costa Rica!'

I went off. Another winch lorry had succeeded in hauling the loudspeaker van away and people were beginning to disperse.
Everything was peaceful, traffic was beginning to move....the drama was over.

So how was it that some hours later the road was again blocked...riot police were charging demonstrators...and opposition politicians were involved in violent altercations with the police?

Because some officious policeman had rounded up eleven demonstrators for blocking traffic and this brought not only the original demonstrators, but students of the University of Costa Rica and passers by back onto the road to protest at police brutality.
The politicians said they were there to negotiate with the police and thought they had arranged the release of the eleven....the release agreement was denied by the police chief in charge of the scene and protesters started throwing the contents of roadside waste bins at the police.
There were more arrests, jostling, injuries until the street was finally cleared in the early hours of the evening.

How had this happened in a country where people will do amost anything to avoid confrontation?

Corrupt institutions have been a fact of life in Costa Rica for years....but now people are no longer relying on colluding newspapers and television for their information. They have mobile telephones...they have the internet...and despite the draconian criminal defamation laws they are using them to good effect.
Whistleblowers have emerged in government departments....which has brought about a law against divulging 'secrets'...not just those of national security, but the dirty little backstairs secrets of collusion on contracts, ministers 'forgetting' to pay their taxes....with a maximum penalty of ten years in the jug.
The law has been taken to the Constitutional Court, the Sala Cuarto, where it is hoped it will be thrown out...but it indicates the government's response to public disquiet.

The classic Central American government response. Crush it. 

A Day in the Life of....

I thought I'd give you relief from the psychodrama of the kitchen and The Neighbour and describe a fairly normal day....one involving a visit to government offices, a hospital appointment, lunch and a bit of shopping.
That should keep the blood pressure well under control.

Costa Rica's tax authorities have decreed that declarations will be made online.
Fine...except that their programme, endearingly called EDDI 7, uses Microsoft Office, which I do not have installed and am damned sure I'm not paying for.
There is an Microsoft access programme, just for use with the tax programme, which has disabled my computer on all three of the times I tried to download it, so there was not going to be a fourth.

Why couldn't they use an open access programme? Because that way no one would get a pay off somewhere.
Just as, while open access programmes are running well in two hospitals, the President has decided that some expensive programme has to be bought in for the Health Service as a whole.
Accustomed as we are to France, this is all too familiar.

The solution? Go to the tax office in San Jose and ask them to sort it out.

So, off on the bus, foolishly picking the sunny side for the hour's run, and into the office where, as usual in Costa Rica, the security guard acts as first filter. We need counter 12...on the left.

Counter 12 listens and sends us down the hall to 'the kiosk', which turns out to be a bank of computers with a charming man in charge who is simultaneously taking some six people through their online declarations.

While he moves from one to the other we hear alarming details of the tax situation of a bar owner....he has to make a monthly declaration of and pay tax on the supplies bought in...clearly no allowance for ullage here!

Nor the the sacred three percent breakages allowed to professional waiters...which is how I came to enjoy wines served at Buckingham Palace and the Mansion House by the waiters employed at functions who would set their three per cent aside before the evening commenced and flog it later at very attractive prices.
Nothing so vulgar as a label...just a white mark to show which way up the bottle had been lying in the cellar.

Form duly filled out online it is printed up and we take the bus into the centre to pay our asessment at a bank, as people working in government offices do not touch money. That is reserved for the people at the head of government offices.

We get on the wrong bus....a mainline one heading for its garage... and have to pay the full fare for the whole trip...or would have done had it not been for the provision by which pensioners pay nothing or very little for public transport.
It lands us near the head office of our bank where the queues in the main hall look formidable.

The young lady in charge of supervising clients in the use of the automatic ticketing machine...

Transactions under one million colones..
Transactions above one million colones...
More than one transaction...
Elderly, pregnant or disabled clients...

Leads us away into another section where we duly take a  ticket as outlined above and wait for our number to be called.
It is quite restful....people paying their taxes tend to be subdued...unlike the hurly burly of the main hall where little old ladies with ominous sheafs of papers queue jump with abandon and someone is always complaining that he was in the loo when his number was called so it is  unfair to ask him to take another number.
We cough up, get our receipt...and that's done.

Now for the shopping.

The butcher is not far from our house in San Jose...so not that far from the centre. It takes a walk down the pedestrianised central avenue for a few blocks, then crossing the main traffic artery, Avenida 2, and dodging behind the Ministry for Social Security to get to his little shop.
Except he isn't there any more.

The shop is...and a lady of a certain age explains the he was her manager and he has upped and away without notice. As the young lady on the till is also absent, I feel there may be an explanation somewhere....
It might also explain his extraordinary generosity in dishing out extra quarter kilos of meat and free smoked pork chops. It wasn't his money he was throwing away.

Still, the meat is the same high quality....

Having wrestled with the names for cuts of meat I now know that skirt is called cabeza de cecina and ask for some. It emerges from the cold room as a whole piece and the young man now doing the butchery work asks how much I want.
Two kilos.
The price is still the same...less than that of the central market butchers.

I see some butterfly cut steaks..and ask him if he has any better grade.
Yes, he has.
What he calls lomo - sirloin - but which is clearly lomito -fillet.
A kilo.
He cuts and butterflies beautifully, packs up my order and I pay.

Once home I weigh my purchases and discover that I have two and quarter kilos of skirt and one and a quarter kilos of fillet steak.
History repeats itself.
I must take a look at the new girl on the till next time...

At the bakery next door I see wholemeal loaves for sale..not, as usual, in a torpedo shape, but square and decide to buy there rather than take the trek up to the other side of the city where I usually buy bread so buy three.
If they're O.K. that's fine..if not we'll be eating pancakes and potato scones for breakfast until my next trip.

Back into the centre to our new lunch venue.
We had found it a couple of weeks earlier after a 6.30 am hospital appointment for a blood test to be taken on an empty stomach.
Needless to say, Mr. Fly was starving afterwards and we went in search of breakfast but all our usual haunts were just opening their shutters or could offer only a sandwich.

Desperate for hot food he had a stroke of genius. There is a sort of wholesale area behind the central market ...people would be working there in the early hours...the same people would be needing hot food...

Indeed they did. One of the caffs was open...the sort where you sit on stools at the counter...and the smell was inviting.
Hot food...no trouble at all. He was soon presented with a plate of fried fish fillet and 'sweated' potatoes... cooked in stock and then finished in a little chili and tomato for a derisory price.
So we were going there for an early lunch.

A good job we went early...it was packed out a few minutes' later and the takeaway trade was going like a train. We chose our meals, and while they were cooking a little bowl of consomme with finely chopped veg was put in front of us. I  like soup...and I could cheerfully make a big bowl of that my lunch without any complaint!
Newcomers, we had to be inspected by the resident wit among the regulars and teased along with the staff who moved like greased lightning among their pots and pans.
Super food and super ambience...but it will never get a Michelin star...no starched linen.

Time to finish the shopping on our way to the hospital.
Christmas is coming. The first fibreglass reindeer are appearing and shop displays are largely in green, red and gold, while notices everywhere offer goods on part payment.

Even without the shop displays you would know Christmas is coming. The price of tomatoes.... used in the tamales which are traditional for the season....is doubling and the profiteering will soon hit all fresh goods.
Next time out with the car we'll stock up on potatoes and onions in the Plaza Viquez feria.

Shopping bags full, we arrive at San Juan de Dios hospital, where patients are forbidden to enter with shopping bags - whether because of the crush within or the fear of what might be  taken out in them I don't know.
Mr. Fly explains to the security guard that we live in the country and that, with an afternoon appointment he can't be sure to be able to shop afterwards before  taking the bus home.
We are nodded through.

San Juan de Dios is a hospital of many parts, from nineteenth century cloisters and tile, to tip top modern via a bit of art deco and some concrete brutalism. Offices are dotted all over the place, not always geographically related to the departments they serve.
Luckily today we do not have to go to the neurology secretariat, situated as it is next to the morgue, but go directly to the consultation area in a ground floor annexe where the sun never shines as there are no windows.

The routine is as follows.
You have a dossier which contains all the notes of your consultations at the hospital, together with copies of notes from consultations at other hospitals. It is kept in the central archives of the hospital.
Every day, the dossiers needed for the scheduled appointments are brought out and distributed to the consulting areas, where they sit in the reception area.

You arrive at reception and show proof of your identity (your cedula), your affiliation to the national health service (the CAJA) marked on a folding cardboard carnet issued by your local health centre and proof that you are up to date with payments into the CAJA.
You then pass over the carnet which is issued by this particular hospital, noting all your appointments. When they run out of lines they paste paper slips over the pages until...with a busy schedule...the carnet bulges like a politician's wallet.

This carnet is attached to your dossier and, in due course, the nurses working your consultation area will come and collect the completed dossiers, then start calling patients to be weighed and to check their blood pressure....something done as a routine at every medical appointment.

We sit down - every patient must be accompanied - and wait. A whole draft of people are called for the weigh in...but not Mr. Fly.
Another draft goes up...not Mr. Fly.

The matriarch beside him tells him to go and check with the nurse.
He does so.
No dossier in his name in the nurses' office.

The matriarch begins to wind up another matriarch....

'Typical! What do they call this...a system? He's been here an hour....it doesn't take an hour to get a dossier down the corridor...'

The matriarchs send Mr. Fly to the reception area. He returns, to say that they can't find his dossier, have lost his carnet and that he has to see the doctor to get a new appointment.

Fury of the matriarchs who assail the nurses' office.

General muttering.

The nurses pass the buck to the doctor.
Mr. Fly is to stand by the consulting room door and shoot in as soon as it opens....but he begins to tire quickly, so young man is uprooted from his seat by the door by a gentleman who is accompanying his wife and her mother and Mr. Fly sits down.

The door opens. Mr, Fly is propelled to his feet and through the door by the gentleman who steps in front of the next patient in the line in a move worthy of the rugby field.

The door closes.
It opens sharply again and Mr. Fly and his doctor move at speed down the corridor to the reception area.

General murmurs of delight and expressions of appreciation...
'That's Doctor Kenneth for you...patients come first...now we'll see some fun....'

The two men return, Mr. Fly resumes his seat by the door and the consultant sees his next patient.
The matriarchs encourage Mr. Fly that all will now be sorted out.

The tapping of heels announces the arrival of a secretary from reception bearing the dossier and carnet. She enters the nurses' office to a general murmur of
'That's Doctor Kenneth for you..he'll shift them off the their backsides...'
And she taps off again.

The door to the consultation room opens again and Mr. Fly is called.

'That's Doctor Kenneth for you....he knows the man's been waiting....'

With the two shopping bags, I leg it to the reception area to join the queue to make the next appointment..a queue which can take longer than the consultation...and in twenty minutes I am joined by Mr. Fly.

Good news:  all is stable, his appointments have been pushed from three monthly to six monthly intervals and once the oncology department give them the all clear in a year's time they can think about a new form of treatment.

New appointment in the carnet, off we go to get the bus, three blocks from the hospital.

Half way home it pulls into the bus garage which serves the intermediate town. Men rush out with a sheet of cardboard and investigations are made under the bus.
Followed by the hiss of hosepipes on hot metal.
Followed by a bus inspector fiddling with the controls.
Followed by return of the bus driver and a journey home in which the back doors must not be opened.

But we make it.