Surviving Noise Pollution in Nicaragua
Fri, Nov 20, 2009
It’s 7am and the single mother next door has commenced her daily playback of insipid romantic ballads. The Righteous Brothers, Bryan Adams and Bonnie Tyler reverberate through the walls. You reach for the bucket as she plays ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’… over and over and over. Your stomach turns, your eyes fog.
Your nerves reach fever pitch and seizure is imminent. Cranium pounding, you scrabble for the ear plugs, the pillow, the machete. Nothing can drown out the incessant sugary droning, the foaming unchained melodies, and how it must have been love, but it’s over now.
Except it’s not over now. Not yet. One, two, three hours later and your mind has reached a state of splintering agony. You lie there, catatonic, praying for a plane crash.
And then finally, at lunch time, her favourite telenovela airs and she pulls the plug on the torture. It’s like coming up for air. You gasp and tremble. Blood returns to your limbs. One by one your brain cells ping back to life and you find yourself, for the first time in six hours, in a state closely resembling calm.
But the respite is short. Now the moody, wannabe gangsta teenagers across the street have set up their speakers – and they’re pointed directly at your house. A new kind of horror comes crashing in at decibels infinitely more offensive than Bonnie Tyler could ever have dreamed.
The disaffected, misogynistic ranting of some feebly endowed closet-dwelling rapster assaults your ear-drums with unbridled ferocity. The walls shake. Tea cups jump from the shelves, wisely committing suicide.
Suddenly the neighbourhood has been transformed into some parody of an LA Ghetto, young homies assembled around a pick-up truck in baggy shorts and sneers, glaring, watching. This, too, will go on for several hours, until well after nightfall.
So how do you cope with local intimidation? How do you survive acts of anti-social behaviour in Nicaragua? Several options lay open:
1. Call the police. They may or may not show up, but if they do, everyone will know it’s who you has called them. The result? More intimidation.
2. Tell them to turn it down. Such an approach is also likely to invite contempt. Ever had an annoying sibling who won’t leave you alone? Weren’t they worse once they knew how irritating you found them?
3. Suffer the torment. You’ll need the mind of a highly-trained Buddhist monk to survive this way, otherwise you might recoil to the next options:
4. Suicide; or;
5. Murder… which will likely result in a daily skull-fucking of more much literal proportions, as you contemplate life and death from the tawdry surroundings of a Nicaraguan prison.
Having endured serious noise pollution for a week now, I have discovered one further highly effective technique for limiting the abuse. The answer, simply, is fighting fire with fire – musical warfare, no less.
By hooking up my internet-ready lap-top to a powerful boom box, I’m able to access a global library of my own pounding and highly offensive compositions. Played at top volume, it completely drowns out Bryan Adams and the Gangsta rappers.
Of course, I’m not getting any peace and quiet, but at least it’s my noise that’s shaking the house, not theirs. And in the mean time I get to show them what real music – and real public disturbance – is all about. Amateurs.
Anarchy in Nicaragua: Our juke-box is meaner and nastier than your juke box. Bring it on!
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Tags: music, noise pollution
Perhaps the only silver lining within bad travel experiences is that it makes for good stories. You’ve done a nice job of capitalizing on your misery.
Loud music is the most obvious example of the distractions that vie for our attention each day. But there are other forms of media that are starting to do this too. For example, TVs are starting to show up in semi-public spaces like airports, hotel lobbies, and even the back seat of taxi cabs.
While some may see this as a welcome distraction. Others say it’s an invasion of their personal space.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your comment. I agree, misery makes for good stories. And perhaps suffering is the root of all creativity?
Regarding intrusion on personal spaces, I’m with Banksy on this one. Everyone complains about the grafitti in urban environments, but no one ever thinks twice about the giant advertising boards everywhere.
Aren’t those just as nasty and offensive as a teenager with a spray can? Don’t they too amount to a kind of pollution – environmental and psychological?
Now they’ve got public televisions shoving consumerism down our throats 24-7. This is a disturbing and aggressive development. No wonder we have all gone insane.
Thanks again,
Richard
Here’s the answer to the noisy boombox plague:
Ask some poor wretch if he’d like an easy ten- or twenty-dollar bill. Point out the noisy lowlife to him and say:
“This money is yours if you can figure out something so I won’t have to hear that guy’s boombox again. Don’t kill him or beat him up. But do whatever you have to do to silence that Hollywoodized creep!”
Believe me, this is VERY effective. Heard of the VAB’s? I’m talking about the “Vigilantes Against Boomboxes.” Or you can start your own vigilante group.
Reactions, anyone?
Carlos