Two Women, Two Busses

Two Women, Two Busses  

I had to be in Managua last week.  There had been announcements that protestors were setting up a “tranque”, a roadblock on the main highway between north and south. The idea was to force the government to give in to their demands. The tranque stops traffic, but sometimes the protestors let busses through.  There are security issues for volunteers who get stuck in the tranque, and so the day before I left, I called the security jefe to ask if I could travel. I was told it was safe, that there might be a delay, but that the protestors were letting busses through every 45 minutes.

On the bus ride down, I struck up a conversation with a Nicaraguense who was living in the States and had been for 22 of her 32 years.  Romy lives in Washington State and speaks perfect American English.  She travels back to Nicaragua once a year or so to see her father in the north and was taking the bus to Managua to meet up with her mother. As a part of introductory chit-chat I asked what kind of work she did and she said she was a “janitor”, her word, with such candor that I liked her right away.  We talked a lot about the problems of her country and the parts that make it so seductive. She sees improvements. She remembers as a child standing in line for milk, which must have been rationed in the hard economic times after the wars.  But she is shocked that in her father’s town there is no water for days at a time, common in parts of this country. She laughed about the acceptance with which her father’s family deals with the water situation, collecting barrels of water while it’s flowing for future use, while she has gringo outrage that services aren’t reliable.  We talked about education, jobs, tourism, and we exchanged contact information.  Then we came to the tranque.

The situation had changed.  The busses weren’t going through.  Instead we had to get off the bus and walk through the tranque and on the other side get on a bus that would take us the rest of the way to Managua.  Romy sensed danger and asked me if she could go first. (One thing I’ve noticed is that although I feel I can deal with any situation here, however much hubris that statement might reveal, I am an excellent follower and so if some other volunteer or person I trust takes the lead, I happily follow.) Romy took me by the hand, literally, and we walked through the strange landscape of the tranque-- stopped vehicles, people on foot lugging their bags, opportunistic food and drink vendors, and pedicab drivers offering to provide rides to the busses on the other side.  Then we came to the protestors themselves, ex-military guys who think they are owed benefits by the government.  They wore old camo and carried vintage weapons that I imagine had been stored somewhere since the wars in the eighties. Their faces were masked.  They had set up two rows of tires across the highway, one to the north and one to the south.  The tires were scorched looking—they had been set on fire at one time.  Romy and I moved fast.  A man tried to start a conversation with me.  He spoke a little English.  Usually I take time to talk to these guys, but Romy moved me along until we cleared the tranque and found a bus.  We rode together to Managua and she made me promise to text her when I got to the Peace Corps office.  She has the address of this blog site and I hope she looks it up so she can read how much I appreciated her help.

For the ride back home, Peace Corps was advising by-passing the tranque.  This detour amounts an 8 hour ride, instead of my customary 3 ½ hours on the bus. I rode 2 hours to Leon without event and was standing in the sticky heat waiting for the bus for the next leg of the journey when another Nicaraguense started up a conversation in English.  We traveled together for a few hours.  Her story is worth hearing.  She grew up on a farm outside of Esteli.  She is the oldest of several children and traveled to school on foot an hour and a half each way.  In her final year of high school someone suggested she apply for a USAID scholarship to study for two years in the United States.  There were 24 places for 800 applicants and she made the cut, living with a family in the northern mid-west and studying at a college.  She studied business administration and entrepreneurship.  When she got back to Nicaragua, she became an entrepreneur.  She started by arranging for facilities and translators for a non-profit sending a team to work in Nicaragua, and from that beginning, she has developed a good client list.  She’s a networker, she knows how to get things done. For example, she personally visits any facility she books for her non-profits and lets them know what they need to do to get her continued patronage. The rooms better be ready, the food better be good. She accepts that she can’t live with her family all the time.  She travels home when she can.  She keeps a planner like an American, has a cell phone full of contact information and is always looking for a new marketing opportunity.  Me, for example.  In order to help out her aging father, she has arranged for her family to take in tourists who might like to live on a real Nica farm and enjoy the natural beauty in the hills around Esteli—hikes, waterfalls and the like.  $15 per person per night and you can make tortillas with the family and participate in farm life and all meals are included.  I may just go to give it a try and let you know how it is.

I don’t know any people in the capital city, and maybe there are a slew of them like her in Managua, but in my experience she is completely unique.  I have to say it was refreshing to encounter her optimistic, can-do attitude, especially here where I can see the need for people to get things done, to make things happen. So good for you, USAID, keep the scholarships coming. As for me, not too bad for a couple of bus rides over two days.

  

Fumigation, Poets and Gifts

Fumigation, Poets and Gifts

A week ago Friday my second period class was stopped by the fumigators who came to the school to kill bugs.  The high school is loaded with mosquitoes and has been since before school started.  I have been spraying on the hated OFF at home to protect myself before going to school.  (We have prophylaxis for malaria but not for dengue and the dengue mosquitoes are out during the day.)  One day, also before school started, I saw the fumigators at work in houses along the then dry river that runs by the town.  They come in a crew, each worker holding smoking can of dangerous stuff.  The workers tried to protect themselves from the poisonous mist by old t-shirts wrapped on their heads and over their faces.   I wondered then why they were not at the high school—so many kids, so many mosquitoes—as good a use of insecticide as you can imagine.  But whatever the reason, they didn’t get to the high school until Friday morning,six weeks after school started.  (Maybe you are wondering why they didn’t wait until after school.  Keep wondering.)  They moved rapidly, wrapped in their rags like lepers, from classroom to classroom, and we all stood outside and tried not to breathe bad stuff. We reentered classrooms after a half hour, and carried on class, all of us breathing as shallowly as possible.

Class is interrupted for all kinds of reasons.  I understand the need to fumigate.  I understand the need to give kids vaccinations, but this week we had another interruption. My counterpart came to me and asked what I thought about letting a man come into the class to read his poems to the students.  I told her in my view it wasn’t a great idea in an English class, but that she was the teacher and she should decide.  She decided to let him in.  The man was in his twenties, skinny as a rail, dressed in a button shirt and slacks, i.e., dressed for the occasion.  But his shoes were several sizes too large.  They curled up at the toes, and his hair didn’t have the precision cut that’s common around my site. He recited three poems and then pulled from his back pack copies of the three stapled together which he announced were for sale for 10 cords ($.50).  The students didn’t buy any but I was pretty astounded  that the school would let a salesman talk to a captive audience of students.  My counterpart argued that he really wasn’t profiting because he had to pay for the copies, but that was a weak one, and she knew it.  The copies of the three pages cost 3 cords, so the guy’s profit was 7 cords. In her defense, I’ll say she didn’t know the poet would try to self his poems.  Several of the other teachers thought he shouldn’t have been let into the classrooms.  But, like everyone else, he was just trying to make a buck.

Friday, also, in the afternoon I headed over to the house of one of my counterparts.  Her English is too limited to permit us to plan classes in English, but she wants to improve and wants me to come over to practice with her.  I really don’t mind this at all.  She has a three year old and a 14 year old.  Usually, life at her house is noisy and there are always many distractions,.  But Friday I found her sitting peacefully outside under a tree with a friend and the friend’s three year old.  I was offered a plastic chair, however, and after the three year olds were pacified with snacks, we started to speak English.  It’s amazing what you can talk about with a little bit of a language.  We exchanged views on religion.  She doesn’t like the church because, she says, you have to pay for things like baptism. She loves God and the Virgin.  Like me, she likes to go into the church once in a while just to sit.  She asked about my religion. I told her I was raised Catholic but didn’t go to church.  She asked why.  I took a chance and told her I had stopped believing.  She nodded.   Then she turned to the friend and told her in Spanish that I wasn’t a believer.  I put my hand on her arm immediately and in English asked her please not to share my religious beliefs because I was afraid people would think I wasn’t a good person.  She got that right away.

 A while later she said (we were back in Spanish), “I want to give you a present.’ (The verb in Spanish is regalar and it means to give a gift.  We don’t have a similar verb except the awkward “to gift”, but you hear regalar all the time here.) Like the stupid gringa I am I said, “Why?”  Gales of laughter all around.  Who ever heard of someone asking “why” when they were getting a present? I made it worse by adding “It’s not my birthday.”  More hilarity.  I am endlessly divertida to the people around me.  My counterpart went into the house and came back with a pair of her earrings.  I put them on right away and, of course, thanked her profusely.

This is only the most recent example of my struggles to get over the norteamericano rule of reciprocity.  I could argue that my problem with getting without giving is altruistic, people here having so little.  But the truth is that when I eat lunch repeatedly at the house of another counterpart before we start to plan classes, I feel awkward, because I can’t so readily reciprocate and make lunch for her.  It is part of this culture to give, to share, to regalar.  It’s quite lovely and all I have to do is to learn how to do it, too.  And even more, to be happy and comfortable receiving things which are, after all, signs of esteem or fondness or just the giver’s happy pleasure.

Semana Santa

Semana Santa

Semana Santa, Holy Week, is a combination of piety and play.  It also provides a week vacation from school and the opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers to travel.  I spent 3 days in Leon staying with my friend Lisa and she came back to my site in the North for three days to escape the heat of Leon and to get a taste of the simple life.  So it turned out to be an interesting week of contrasts.

First a word about the religious celebration of Semana Santa.  Both in Leon and up here in the North there’s a procession every time you turn around.  In Leon, on Palm Sunday, I stopped on the steps of the cathedral just as the folks were gathered with their palms. The procession featured a very conquistador looking plaster Jesus dressed in red trimmed with gold, hair curled under a red and gold hat, riding a real burro into the cathedral. Later in the day we came upon alfombres in the streets near the cathedral.  Alfombres are large squares on the pavement, religious pictures, made of colored sawdust around the theme of the passion of Christ, sort of like Hopi sand paintings but not as fine due to the coarser medium.  In my town there were processions every night, Wednesday through Sunday, mostly at night but on Easter morning at 5 a.m., too. So Semana Santa is for sure a religious holiday. 

But it is also a week of parties, of drinking, of getting wet at the beach or in a pool or however. (My Spanish professor said he planned to celebrate by letting his hose run over his head, his joke on the Nica insistence on water in this holy, hot time of year.)  Anyone who can afford it travels, if not to the beach then to visit family.  The busses are packed and many don’t run at all on Thursday and Friday.  On Thursday Lisa and I traveled to the nearest big town, Somoto, on our way to the Canyon, but the town was quiet, the market and my favorite eateries closed, and we worried that having found a taxi to take us to the Canyon, we wouldn’t be able to find one back.  That trip reminded me how I’ve learned to wait.  I can wait for an for an hour for a bus without stressing.  I can wait for 2 ½ hours to talk to a group of teachers.  I can return to an office two, three, four times until I can talk to the person I need to see. In this regard I’m thoroughly Nica-fied.  But Lisa from the big city didn’t suffer the waits gladly. On the other hand, her superior Spanish and openness to talk to anyone paid off for us over and over.

I have two favorite Semana Santa memories.  One is floating in a life jacket down the mangrove estuaries at the beach a half hour from Leon.  On the 2 hour float trip we were like a pair of crocodiles, so silent in the water, coming abreast of egrets and other water birds, no other person in sight for the whole float trip except once when a canoe passed us carrying some local people.

 The other memory is sitting in the kitchen of my house on the night we arrived back in my town.  There had been a huge storm, the first rain in 2 months, and not only were the lights out, but there was no water. We had made a trip by flashlight to a pulperia to buy milk and I had real wheat bread and peanut butter from Leon. So we had peanut butter and honey sandwiches with milk for dinner, a rare and wonderful treat, there in the kitchen by the light of my 71 year old host mom’s flashlight.  She was so comfortable with us and with herself that she proceeded to give herself a pedicure while Lisa and I ate. The light from her flashlight lit her face so that she looked like a woman painted by Vermeer, bent over her feet while outside the music of a procession in the next street reached the house, a kind of tuba, horn music, strangely cheerful given the sorrowful reason for the religious procession. 

I watched a bunch of processions over Semana Santa, and finally decided to put my religious scruples aside and joined one in my town. When you are walking you are aware of the quiet, except for a drum beating a slow tattoo, the sound of people’s feet shuffling.  It was very peaceful, very communal, and I was glad I did it. 

Fat City

Fat City

I moved into the house described in the last post, and my life has improved considerably.  It is so amazingly pleasant to live here.  I have a big room with a very comfortable bed.  I eat better already  because it’s easier to prepare food.  I still have to walk a lot, but I don’t feel so strung out from the effort to get places in the heat.  The cyber is 2 blocks away.  I can buy necessaries from any of the half dozen or so pulperias within a few blocks of my house.   These details, though, don’t explain the lack of tenuousness, the solidity, I feel here.  I feel safe and welcome.

I admit that before the move I was getting a little worried about myself.  I have dropped a lot of weight. And it kept dropping out there in the barrio, probably because of all of the walking.  I’m guessing I’ve lost at least 15, maybe 20 pounds in Nicaragua, and although I’m delighted (and wonder why the hell I couldn’t have done this 20 years ago),  I began to feel the weight loss should stop.  Here in town I think it will.

At my new house people drop by.  There is a porch and at 5 p.m., my “host mom”, aged 71, (let’s call her Indiana) and I sit out with the puppies.  We watch the puppies play (I play with them) and folks walk by and say hello and some stop to talk and it’s as pleasant as can be.  Indiana’s grandson stopped in the second day of my stay, an altogether polite and nice guy who just happens to be the assistant to the mayor in town, so we had a long conversation about the needs of the town and what the mayor’s office was doing to address them.  Do you know how long it would have taken me to get this information without my direct source?  He likes traditional Nicaraguan music and when I told him how moved I was by Nicaragua, Nicaraguita, he promised to bring by some CDs so I could listen to more. How did I get so lucky?

Since I wrote the above, about 10 days ago, my comfort has been further enhanced by the purchases I made from my site mate, a health volunteer who has finished up service and is heading home.  With half ($100) of the settling in allowance Peace Corps gives us to buy things we need for the duration of service, I got a little refrigerator, my own pots and pans, a plastic table and 4 chairs, a little book shelf a bunch of wonderful accessories like a garlic press and rubber spatulas and even a little tea pot.  I also got a  plastic chest with five deep drawers. And best of all (no, the refrigerator is the best) is a yoga mat which I am using 5 mornings a week. So, finally after 4 months in my site, I’m not living out of a suitcase.  I am settled, organized, eating right, exercising right and feeling great.  Am I the woman who felt guilt leaving the barrio?

  I have one more purchase to make and I’m done.  I need a fan. Fat City could use a breeze.