Coming Home

Coming back home after a week away for vacation is always a pleasure.  Usually everything is the same as when I left, but this time there were differences. A sample:

1.      There is a chicken living in my house, a captive chicken as distinguished from the wandering chickens that roam around town.  This chicken is tied up in what used to be the dog’s pen, the dog having been relegated to outdoors where he does fine except when it rains. I didn’t even notice the chicken the night I got back home from vacation, although there was a kind of odor.  I saw her as I was washing my clothes the next morning, standing still, beady eye fixed.  I asked Candida, “Why is there a chicken in the house?” although I knew the unhappy answer. “For sopa de gallina,” she confirmed.  So tomorrow morning the chicken is sacrificed for chicken soup.  Candida will do the sacrificing and I will be, I hope, at school.  Will I eat the soup, if offered?  Of course.

2.      There still was a mouse in my room.  I thought maybe he had gone away on his own since I didn’t see him for a few days before I left. But my first night back he shot across my floor, the big, black mouse I remembered.  I looked up the word for poison in my dictionary and set out to find some, this mouse, for weeks, having failed to abandon my room despite the absence of food there and the nudge of the open door.  He was going to have to die. You can’t buy poison in all the stores in town, only at the store where the lady sells liquor.   She sold me a “pill” of poison for 6 cordabas and for free gave me instructions.  You crush the pill till it’s powder and then you mix the powder with rice.  Only rice will do—I have that on the advice of many people.  Then you put the poisoned rice on the floor and two days later you have a dead mouse. Under the bed, in my case.  You know you have a dead mouse by the smell in your room.  You dispose of the mouse and the poisoned rice in a plastic bag.  End of story.

3.      My friend Marisol planted an herb garden in my absence and she was excited to show it to me.  Her house has a big back area where grow trees she maintains to help feed her large family.  There are banana, plantain, and several kids of fruit trees.  She has a couple of avocado trees.  She has trees whose roots provide traditional Nica favorites like yucca and malanga.  I was admiring the flower at the end of a big bunch of plantains and so she cut down the tree with a machete to show me the flower and, of course, to harvest the plantains.  Where I protested killing the whole tree, she pointed out the stubs of trees all around and all the small plantain trees growing to take their place.  I guess that’s how it’s done.

4.       The kids at school are practicing for the English Song Festival next Monday. Last year I was pretty much a one-woman festival organizer and facilitator, but this year the principal made it plain that the English teachers should do all the work and I could help if they asked me.  I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.  Already there are signs that it will be good.  For one thing, because of a time crunch, last year I picked all the songs and we taught each grade level one song.  This year students are coming up with songs in English they want to sing.—better motivation. Also the Festival anticipated small groups of students performing and that’s happening this year.  The downside is that there’s less emphasis on getting words right and more on getting the accompanying dance routines down. Still, tomorrow I’ll spend an hour tutoring different groups to improve pronunciation.

5.      It’s Fiestas Patrias in my town.  Every town has such a festival celebrating its patron saint. I missed out on it last year except for the hipica (horse parade), which I caught.  I have been looking forward to seeing the rest of the fiesta.  In the bigger places there are extravagant parades with folkloric costumes and masks and the acting out of Nicaraguan legends. Not so in my small town.  Around the park is a food vendor, a seller of cheap plastic stuff for kids and a shirt salesman.  So much for the “feria”, the fair.   A tenth of a kilometer or so down the highway is a carnival with rides.  That I will avoid, but I am told there will be music one night, probably this weekend and I’m looking forward to that. Fiestas Patrias is an event much anticipated.  It’s a diversion from the usual, but I am kind of fond of the usual.

6.      Things have been a little slow at school.  To begin, after vacation, sometimes kids do not return to class right away.  All my teachers are either sick or caring for a sick and hospitalized family member. Because of this I’ve only been able to co-plan and co-teach half my usual load of classes this week. But the slow start to the new semester has been welcome as I recovered from my trip to Solentiname.

That’s what’s new in the north.