Leon, Nicaragua

Among the "dangers and annoyances" listed in one of our Central America guidebooks is this word of caution: Unlike Mexico, it says, you won't find many animals on the roads. People are too poor to risk their livestock. But, they warn, drunks wander the roads, day and night. Be careful.

Nicaraguans are poor, but there's no shortage of animals -- goats, dogs, cows, horses, pigs and mules -- wandering Nicaragua's pot-holed roadways. But there are also people, lots of them, drunk and sober. There are few cars and many bikes. Along every road, urban and rural, there are scattered parades of pedestrians, going to work or school or church. They carry groceries, seem impervious -- without umbrellas -- to the pounding tropical rain and pay interest to oncoming cars only when absolutely necessary.

The other day, Paul drove me north from Esteli to meet a Fair Trade coffee farmer he's known for years. Paul drives fast. As he passes cars on blind corners, uphill, in the rain, he says things like, "Don't worry, it's not your time," which are meant to be comforting but are actually terrifying. At one point, we round a turn and see a man passed out on the concrete, dead drunk. Curled up, the highway's yellow line was a guiotine at his neck. His head was perfectly aligned with the right wheel of northbound traffic. Paul deftly avoided the man. "He's going to lose his head," he said. We didn't stop.

Drunks here are like drunks everywhere. But the public reaction to them -- the casual way of avoiding a man's head on the road, not stopping to pull him from it -- seems different. Americans tend to be self-righteous and indignant in the face of such self-destruction. Here, it seems understood. The man splayed on the doorstep, unconscious in the mid-day sun -- his shirt open and a plastic plate of half-eaten food tottering on his stomach -- doesn't illicit the sneers and grimaces he would on a New York City stoop. But there are also none of the pitiful looks, the liberal guilt. There's nothing fraught. There's just a man on the ground.