Amazing Stories

My post about the amazing sights I’ve encountered in Nicaragua got such good reviews I thought that I’d try to set down some of the stories I’ve heard.

 I was on the bus on the way to Mangua from my site when we stopped at Esteli to take on passengers.  I noticed a rare sight in the northwest of Nicaragua, a black man, headed down the aisle.  Another black man was seated just behind me and I figured he was from the Caribbean Coast.  But the man in the aisle looked American to me.  I was hoping he’d sit next to me so we could speculate about which was rarer in Nicaragua, an old gringa or a black man from the States.  But he sat behind me, and the other man and he got into a conversation in English, so of course I eavesdropped. (FYI English is spoken on the Eastern coast of Nicaragua, along with creole and some indigenous languages.)

 The man I thought was American explained that he was in Nicaragua in search of his father.  He hadn’t seen his dad in some years.  He thought he lived on the Atlantic Coast in Bluefields, and so had gone there.  He hadn’t been able to find him, but some people told him they knew his father and that he had moved. So the son started traveling.  He went to the next place where he was told his dad had moved on. Ultimately someone told him his dad was in the north of Nicaragua, and so that’s where he went.  He had no luck.  He was traveling to Managua in hopes of finding out something in the capital city.  The other man suggested that what he should do is take out an ad in a Managua newspaper.  He thought someone who knew the father would read it and tell the father.  The son agreed.  He explained that he liked Nicaragua, had a small business here dealing in computers and cell phones which his girlfriend was minding while he traveled around tracking down his dad. He hoped to find his dad so he could stay in the country.  He doubted he’d want to stay if he couldn’t locate his father. He wanted to live in Nicaragua near his dad. I can go for days without hearing a word of English, never mind an English speaker on a bus, never mind such a story. 

I can relate another, very different story.  As I wrote earlier I am helping one of my counterparts study for a very big English test.  We work for two hours at a time, usually three times a week.  I described this counterpart before.  She is a noisy kind of person with a big laugh.  Anyway, it’s not hard to imagine that sometimes we get off topic.  That happened one day recently because something big fell on the metal roof over her patio.  She jumped and looked scared. “What was that,” I asked.  She said she was afraid it was a bruja, a witch.  She lives in fear of brujaria.  I asked her to explain.  There are witches, she said, many of them all around us, who put spells on people they don’t like.  They can cause all kinds of damage. They are especially feared for turning people into monkeys.  A man in Somoto died during the war years here, killed in action according to his family, but it widely believed that a witch turned him into a monkey and the family concocted the war story to cover up absence.

 I thought she was probably kidding.  She is, after all, a teacher, but she was dead serious.  She has direct experience of the harm they can do.  She lived in El Salvador with her mother for 10 years when she was young.  They witnessed a woman, cursed by a witch, vomit snakes and spiders.   Brujas are a part of Nicaraguan and I guess Central American folklore. But I had no idea how current is the belief.

More stories when I hear them//

Amazing Stories