Cream Puff

Yesterday, I made my monthly trip to Ocotal, about a half hour bus ride from my site, to do my banking, buy a month’s supply of coffee (Dipilto, famous for its coffee, is located just outside Ocotal), and see what’s up.  Bought the coffee in, of all places, a pharmacy which had, of all things, a small display case of pastries.    The pastries looked good and I had 4 weeks of money in my pocket so I pointed to one I’d never seen before (the lady called it a “lámpara” – lamp), just to try it out, slipped the pastry in its little bag into my grocery sack and headed off for the bus station. I just missed a bus and so found a seat to wait a half hour for the next one.

  All around were the usual vendors selling bus station food: fried chicken and cabbage salad in a bag, Eskimo ice cream, cheaper sorbeta, rosquillas, soft drinks, super sweet hot pink candy, corn bread called masapan. Nothing appealed but I was pretty hungry. I decided to try out the pastry. I pulled it from the bag and sunk my teeth in, and guess what, it was a real delicious eggy cream puff filled with cool sweet (but not too sweet) cream.  Could not believe my tastebuds. A cream puff is a delicate thing to make.  I remember watching my mother make them, sometimes throwing out whole batches because they “fell” in the oven when somebody banged a door or jumped too hard on the floor.  I have made them, cooking the flour, water and butter mixture and then, laboriously, beating in one egg at a time until the texture was sinuous from the eggs.  Cream puffs are very much of the fine French pastry tradition that gives us brioche and napoleons. What are they doing in a pharmacy in a relatively small city in the North of Nicaragua when ovens are expensive to run and oven temperatures a guess?  I wish I knew the answer, and in a month, when I return to Ocotal, I’ll try to find out and let you know.

Today, back in my pueblo, I bought tortillas at the home of Yamileth.  I’ve been buying them there for some time, ever since I discovered by trial and error that they are the best in town. I think I may have written about Yamileth and her family before.  I’ve taught both of her daughters and she gave me a tortilla making lesson.  Today she was, as she always is when I come, standing in the kitchen at the rough wooden counter next to the fire on which sits a comál, a flat dish for cooking tortillas.  She makes tortilla after tortilla, placing each on the comál, turning it while she pats out another tortilla.  She does this from early in the morning until about 2 or 3 when she stops. Her husband is a lovely man, a musician, who as far as I can see does not do much.  Once in a while I see him playing with some musician friends.  He also builds guitars, but infrequently, one since I’ve known the family. In the past Doña Yamileth has acknowledged that is hard for her to stand all day making tortillas, in a labor which starts with making the dough in the early morning.  The kitchen is small and dark and smokey with a packed dirt floor, adobe walls and adobe tiled roof. Chicken have free run.

Today Yamileth didn’t have my 4 tortillas prepared and so I sat down to wait.   We got talking about how she alone is working while the family is at church and her nice husband is sitting outside watching the world.  I took a chance and asked what she thinks about her kids’ futures.  She responded that they need to study so they can do something else besides making tortillas.  I asked if both girls like to study. Too bad, no, they don’t (she made a sad face) but we agreed that with education they had more choices. I suggested that in many houses I saw the same thing, the woman making the little bit of money the family has.  She agreed that life for women was hard here in Nicaragua.

I so wish I had somewhere to go with this, both as a blog entry and as a response to the situation here.  Before coming to Nicaragua, I was willing to teach English but in my heart I wanted to find a way to help women be economically independent which, I guess, Yamilth is in a way.  It’s good for her and her family that she has a skill.  Her tortillas are valued and she sells all she makes.  I guess I think two things.  I’m bothered that she does all the work, or most of it, like many other Nica women, while their men do not. And I say that understanding that there are so few jobs for men or women here.   And I wish she didn’t have to work so hard to make the living.

Finally, I find poignant people’s belief that education will do it for their kids, provide opportunity, a belief we share in the States, and which proves true enough times at home  so people continue to believe it.  But here an educated person often faces a different set of difficulties.  No jobs, just like for the uneducated, poor wages, frustrated ambitions. 

What a decadence, my cream puff.  In today’s newspaper, this information regarding the cost of living, the canasta basica, the  cost for a family of meeting minimum needs: In Guatamala 87% of the people make enough money to meet basic needs;  El Salvador, 60% make enough;  Honduras, 67%; Costa Rica 100%;  and Nicaragua?---- 28%.

I met 2 students on my walk today, nice girls so happy to see me.  Where are you going, I asked.  “Home”.  What are you going to do? “Cook.”  What, I asked.  “Beans” they told me.  Of course, and lucky to have them.