Semana Santa on the Atlantic Coast

I have been back from vacation on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua for two weeks but I’ve been exceptionally busy, too busy to write about the trip. When I first started this bog, I had a fear of turning it into a travel log, but I have had the good fortune to see a lot of great sights in this country.  All my visitors have been impressed with the natural beauty of Nicaragua and the visual cacophony that is this country, so that now I can relax and say, “Why not a little travel log?  Y’all come.”

So to begin, there is a tradition in Nicaragua that people go to the water during Semana Santa.  School is on holiday and it’s the hottest time of year.  For that reason my friend Lisa and I, who wanted to see the Atlantic Coast, hesitated briefly before committing to the 10 hour plus bus/boat trip out east.  Would it be crazy crowded?  Would we be able to get back to our sites on Easter Sunday? But we had the same idea.  There are only two week long vacations left before we return to the U.S. and, here in Nicaragua, free time has a habit of filling up.  So we decided to get this trip in. 

We packed light and left at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning from Managua on a bus loaded with people going home to visit their families for the week.  Four other English teacher volunteers were on the same bus, they having a friend in Bluefields, the first stop on the Atlantic Coast.  Bluefields is an interesting little city, the largest on the Atlantic Coast, settled first by the British on land occupied by various indigenous tribes, some of whose communities survive with language intact—the Miskito and the Garufina to name two.  So Bluefieds is a cosmopolitan sort of place, Creole being the main language, but Spanish and English spoken by many and a mix of indigenous tongues as well.  But to get to Bluefields, you have to get off the bus in El Rama because there is no more road.  You load onto a panga, a boat that holds about 12 people, for an hour and a half ride down the Rio Escondido.  We lucked out due to some pushy racing from bus to river port so that we had a panga with a plastic awning.  The ride was screened from the sun.  I have to say that the benches on which we sat, both bottom and back, were the hardest ever.  By the end of the trip I was feeling the pain, on the verge of taking off my life vest so I could sit on it.  Photo attached. Lisa is on the left.

In Bluefields we checked into an amazingly cheap and decent hotel—two beds, fan A/C private bath for $17. per night for the two of us.  We set out to explore the city, looking for something good to eat.  The folks on the Atlantic Coast know about desserts and we sampled our way through cocobread, luscious picos filled with cheese, sugar and, I think cardamom, pito, a spicy ground meat filled pastry, and the and various cakes—all on the first day. People on the Pacific Coast don’t do dessert much.  We have cake (spelled queque) and torta which as far as I can see is the same thing, but those Creoles makes cakes and tarts out of all kinds of fruits and nuts, coconut being the major ingredient.  It makes things moist and rich.

In Bluefields we joined with the other volunteers including my friend Alba who lives close by, for some meals, a trip to a baseball game and a trip to the beach across the lagoon from Bluefields on the Atlantic Ocean.  El Bluff was a great beach destination.  Although not blessed with typical Caribbean aqua water, it has small waves and the warmest water ever.   I stood for a couple of hours just being happy as the little waves splashed on my face and knocked me around a bit, like the gentlest kind of roughhousing.  The baseball game was a great opportunity because baseball is the national sport, but I’ve never had an opportunity to see a professional game here.  The Costeños played a team from Masaya, losing the first battle of the double header but winning the second.  I forgot how nice it is to be a fan, how fun just to sit a give yourself over to something not that important, something for which you have no responsibility. Spectator—unjustly maligned avocation.

After a couple of days in Bluefields, we headed off to Laguna de Perlas, a 45 minute panga ride away on inland waterways to the laguna to the north that gives the town its name.  The other volunteers left on the same day so we were becoming a nice extended group.  We stayed at a couple of places in Lagunas, the first being a little expensive on account of Semana Santa.  Lisa found another place that cut our room cost in half and we moved.  Spent the first day locating a good comedor for gallo pinto (Nica rice and beans staple) but with a costeño addition—cocomilk. Also, naturally, we found the bakery where we made friends with the Creole bakers who were so warm and generous that we ended up using the bakery for the gathering place during our stay.  We met up with another volunteer, Sarah, for whom Laguna de Perlas is a second site, her first having been up near me, and for that reason we are friends. Sarah showed us around and arranged for a tour of the Pearl Cays, famous for being uninhabited and beautiful in the Caribbean way—white sands and clear aqua water.

Unfortunately the tour didn’t materialize.  The day was so windy that the guide called it off. Disappointed, we maybe too hastily hooked up with two Austrian girls who had arranged a tour inside the lagoon to some of the indigenous communities. (A kind of nerdy tour, we joked but what else can you expect from people who read books and volunteer in 3d world countries?) I’ll give you a heads up about how this story ends.  The guide, we later learned, is unscrupulous (details to follow) and should have warned us off because of the weather, but he didn’t, and we headed off expecting a little cultural broadening even if we couldn’t have a glorious beach day.  There were 9 of us in the panga.  It rained hard as soon as we set out and we made the first leg of the trip stooped under a black plastic tarp.  It was still raining at the first stop, a Miskito village where another guide met us to show us  around.  Not much to see but the guide tried to give us some information.  I saw a small sculpture from pre-Comumbian times, of a manatee, a totem figure for the Miskito.  But as we were walking around, feeling pretty obvious, one volunteer said it: “This doesn’t feel right.”  Of course it didn’t.  We are used to being a part of communities not unlike the one we were touring, and it felt bad to be there like a tourist, gawking, even if we politely gawk.

Back to the panga and on to the next stop, this one where  we were told lived a man from “San Francisco”.  The guide said it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him.  We unloaded and walked up a slight hill to behold the biggest, most overdone, monstrous ostentatious house I’ve ever seen in Nicaragua or maybe in the States except for gilded age grotesqueries.  For some reason the guy permited us to use the bathrooms and so I can confirm that the interior of this house was a match for the exteriaor.  We met the man—not as it turned out from San Francisco, but from a town outside L.A., a retired guy who came down to Nicaragua, bought up riverfront land from, he assured us, an unassailable source  (a claim with which his Miskito neighbors begged to differ) and steamed in container loads of stuff from Managua, over Lake Colcibolca down rivers into Pearl Lagoon like some latter day Kurtz where he lives in splendid isolation, not able to leave because of the damage that for some reason happens to his property when he is away.  Why were we here?  “Too get material for blog entries,” we reasoned, no other reason being apparent.  Joe San Francisco’s only connection to the indigenous, it appears, is the wrath he has incurred by building on what he has been told is his land, but the Miskito persist in thinking is theirs. Second possibility:  The tour guide wanted a relationship with a gringo with so much money to throw around.   Third choice:  The guy wanted a relationship with the guide because there was some talk of turning the monstrosity into B and B and anyone who could deliver customers is a valued guy.

By this time, needless to say, people were getting a little disgruntled.  The tour had promised a 30 to 45 minute hike at this point which was not happening because the guide ”forgot his shoes”.  Back in the panga we headed off for the next indigenous community and lunch. The guide told us that some nice lady in a community would make us lunch for about 70 cordobas.  This price had been confirmed repeatedly by the guide, the last time just before we left Joe San Francisco. It rained on us all the way to the next town, a Garifana community, maybe the last in Nicaragua, the Garifana having originated in Honduras to the north. We headed up from the dock and into a hotel where we were seated—maybe the little indigenous lady was cooking in  the hotel kitchen.  I should say that our group was comprised of us volunteers, the 2 Austrian girls and a middle aged couple from Managua, Conny and Mario.  As we waited for lunch seated in a large circle, Conny and Mario broke out red wine and orange Fanta, ordered up, ice, a pitcher and 9 glasses and treated us all to middle-of-the-day sangria (do not mock—try it.) Lunch was delicious, clearly worth more than the 70 cordobas advertized. When the bill came, however, the cost was nearly double.  By this time dissatisfaction with the guide  focused on the bill.  We agreed to pay 100 cordobas each and told the guide he had to supply the rest, some 240 cordobas.

Things were not going well.  The guide was furious.  We had received from him no insight into the different cultures around the Laguna, and so, after a hasty walk to a beach close to the Garifuna town, named Orinoco, we set off for Laguna de Perlas.  The trip was long, maybe an hour and a half, and frankly a little frightening.  The water was choppy, winds high and there was intermittent rain.  The engine cut out from time to time; the boat heeled over in the wind. But we arrived safely back.

That night I was thinking about visiting the guide the next day to explain what he might try in order to keep tourists happy, but I ran into the small business volunteer in town and explained the situation to him, thinking he’d be a better person to talk to the guide.  No way, said our volunteer, he’s the worst guide in the place.  In fact, he said, he “killed” 7 tourists in conditions much like we were in the day before. He went to jail for the deaths.  The volunteer said the guide was only in it for the money.  He wasn’t someone the volunteer cared to work with.  Grim news.

Luckily for dinner our last night Lisa and I tried the famous “rundon”, a Creole dish of fish, lobster, plaintain and yucca in the most incredible coconut milk sauce so subtly flavored I couldn’t tell you what was in it.  Best meal in Nicaragua yet.

This has gone on too long.  But the end of the trip was its own kind of magic.  I ran into Conny and Mario in town and they invited me to drive back to Managua with them in their car the next day.  Lisa and I had been planning to leave on the bus and so when I told her I had the offer, she was elated. The drive back was tough for 4 hours over dirt roads and 4 hours on decent paved roads, but incredibly more pleasant than the bus would have been in the air conditioned car.  Conny and Mario are a first for me, an upper middle class Nica couple who travel and like to talk.  We talked a good deal about language.  We stopped for breakfast (Lisa and I confining ourselves to tortilla and cheese) and they picked up the modest tab. They dropped us at a mall in Managua.  I got their email and received a nice response to my thank you note and an offer to meet up again.

This story will end:  Lisa knows a guy from the Embassy who opens his house to volunteers.  He said we could stay the night. The house is huge—3 bathrooms, a big US style kitchen, a humongous flat screen TV and, best of all, a washer and dryer.  He let us wash our clothes, something I had been day dreaming about—my clothes are so not-really-clean all the time.  The guy ordered take out for us.  The best, though, was the conversation about politics, foreign policy, books.  I hadn’t had one like that in a long time and left the gated, concertina wired, guarded house the next day grateful for the lovely ending to a great trip.  The bus to my site was waiting when I got to the bus station and I got a seat.  Life is pretty sweet.

Infratructure Blues

I just got back from a vacation to the Atlantic Coast for Semana Santa (please see next blog post for details) The trip is an epic journey of somewhere between 13 and 16 hours by bus from mt site.  Half to a third of that time is spent either on bone-rattling dirt roads or in pongas—boats that carry 10 or 12 people. It’s hard to believe that there is no direct road connecting the capital city to the main city of the Atlantic Coast, but there isn’t.  This has gotten me thinking again about the huge need for infrastructure in this country where everything—raod building excepted—is done by hand.

Up here in the north, too, there is simply not enough public space for basic activities.  For example I teach in both the high school and the primary school buildings.  The school buildings are in blocks of 2 or 3 classrooms each, single story brick structures with two doors for each classroom and windows along the long sides to admit air, insects, noise, dirt.  In some of the 2-classroom structures there is no wall separating the two classrooms, but rather a folding wall which someone thought would be a good idea for large gatherings.  This year I have 4 classes each week in one of these structure, but unfortunately the folding wall has been broken since the beginning of the school year in February, the pieces tied together with string and hauled to the side of the classroom. As a result two classes meet in either end of the large space.  The noise is incredible.   We’d be better off outside.  If my fellow teacher has group work planned and I am presenting material, I really can’t be heard above the din.  Or so I thought.  One day I sat on the side and watched my co-teacher present some material as the noise from the other classroom made her remarks unintelligible to me.  But I watched the kids.  Not everyone was listening, but those who were trying to understand could hear her.  I think they were reading her lips. Had this situation happened in the States, either the teacher would have refused to go on or the students would have been put out beyond words. But my kids were cheerful, participating as they could (once again those who chose to participate) paying no attention to the horrific din.  As an aside, no one complains to an authority about the missing wall.  The teachers will say what a pain it is not to have a wall, but no one is marching down to the delegado’s office to demand that conditions improve.  This is how it is for right now, the attitude of both teacher and student says, no use getting upset about it.  Just let it be. Could be the theme song of Nicaragua.

I also teach a community class in Somoto twice a week.  It’s at two in the afternoon, the hottest time of day in this, April, the hottest month of the year. By contrast, this class is taught in the second fanciest facility in town, the Palace of Culture.  However we share the space with 2 or 3 other groups who meet at the same time.  One, a guitar class given by my old English teacher, Profe Ernesto, has an inside room, but my class and an art class share a corridor outside.  Ernesto’s students make a fair amount of noise but it’s not unpleasant noise and I can talk above it.  The artists are a quiet bunch, so the three of us share the space peaceably.  What I note, however, is how unfazed my students are by the sharing.  They appear to have no expectation of a separate facility.  They are used to sharing, making do with what is given.

My little class for the primary grade kids continues at the town library once a week. The library is a hot little room painted a bright yellow.  There is a door and two windows.  During class people come and go.  Kids not taking part in the class visit the library to play games or hang out with their friends.  Usually there is not much problem.  I can’t say the visitors actually respect the class but then they aren’t too disruptive so we go along on parallel tracks, they occasionally sitting down to see what we’re up to, sometimes joining in for a few minutes.  But this week there was a new element. A chainsaw, rarely seen or heard in It this town, was employed by government officials to cut up a big tree that had fallen outside the door of the library. As you can imagine the noise was considerable.  It was impossible to be heard. The librarian tried to compensate by closing the door and shuttering the windows. The noise continued; the heat rose. The kids continued working on their projects, oblivious, not even curious.  Everyone is so used to putting up with things.  Only their gringa volunteer has a problem.

I have described before how all the labor to build things here, with the exception of roads where machines are employed, is manual labor.  The roads, too, are the only exception to the haphazard way things are built.  There are apparently no standards for anything.  Sidewalks, where they have them, start and stop without reason, change levels, contain obstructions or holes.  It’s safer to walk in the streets.  Stairs are built as the builder, often not a professional, sees fit which means that sometimes the steps are steep, the tread narrow, and sometimes they are shallow and wide. I’ve fallen 3 times in Nicaragua, once in a hotel where I was looking at paintings for sale on the wall and didn’t pay attention to the fact that the floor inexplicably dropped a level. (Another time I fell while walking on the impossible sidewalks, the sun in my eyes.) This is all part of what it means to be third world. 

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining. (OK—I admit to complaining about the noise while I teach, but in my favor I can say that it doesn’t surprise me anymore and I recognize that my reaction is a matter of incomplete acculturation.) I am just amazed on how much is to be done here, and how patient and adaptive the people are.

Coffee Hour

Coffee Hour

Coffee hour on the porch has become one my many favorite parts of the day.  I have several favorites and can’t choose among them for top favorite.  In contention are getting up at five and hearing the mad jungle bird calls joining with the roosters outside, buying tortillas and cuajada cheese from people who make them in town, making dinner, reading and listening to music at night.  How coffee hour works is this: at around 5 o’clock I stop working and start the water boiling, rustling around for bread- -masapan or sweet picos-- while Candida, who already  had her coffee earlier gets two plastic chairs to the porch. We sit there companionably, reading (she, her Bible and me something in Spanish, right now an autobiography of Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal) or talking about whatever comes up like the mental development of a girl who passes in the street or the family relations of folks who live close by or the degree of poverty experienced by someone who earns 1000 cordobas per month for a family of three, all topics that came up this past week.  It’s still hot at five o’clock but by six or six thirty it has cooled appreciably.  Other people sit out, too, or stroll past, or, if they are kids, play in the street. It’s as pleasant a way to spend an hour and a half as I can have up here in my site.

Today we were joined by Celia, Candida’s younger sister who is, I’d guess, 65 or so.  She is a tall dignified woman, a retired school teacher and a pillar of the Catholic Church, a kind of lay assistant who speaks from the pulpit and does the gospel readings. Today she come over to sit, wearing a longish straight skirt and a T shirt that says on the front “I like good boys” and on the back “But I love bad boys”. The shirt does not do damage to Celia’s dignity because neither she nor anyone else knows what it means.  To her credit, if she did, she would laugh.  But she might not wear the shirt again.  She doesn’t ask and I don’t tell.

Candida and Celia have something new in common.  Candida’s beloved granddaughter, a fat unattractive woman of 25, is pregnant and her baby is due this week.  The new mom has three months maternity leave, but then must return to work. Who will watch the baby? Her own mother, Candida’s daughter, works and it’s certain that no men in the family are going to babysit, although the granddaughter’s own father doesn’t work. You guessed it.  Candida, the great grandmother, will take care of the baby. Similarly, Celia, who used to live alone, now cares for a six year old grandchild.  Celia’s daughter lives with her husband and the boy’s sister in a small community where it is believed the elementary school is inferior.  So the boy stays with Celia so that he can attend the town school and be tutored by his well educated grandmother.

I asked the two of them tonight how they felt about the changes, actual and anticipated, that having children in the house made. I anticipated some dissatisfaction because both are retired after long, hard work lives and appear to enjoy the lives they lead. Celia said she like having little Freder in the house.  He goes back to his parents on weekends and she thinks that works out well.  Candida has second thoughts.  She is looking forward to cuddling a baby (I’m hoping to get some cuddle time, too), but she hopes the child won’t cry all the time.  She is worried about the impact a baby will have on the business which she relies on for a good part of her income.

But neither said no. That’s the way family works here in Nicaragua.  People pitch in.  It’s not heroic; it’s what you do, always do, at least if you are a woman-- take care of family.  It’s also a part of the individual vs. the community theme—you are defined by family and community.  Your individual self isn’t that important.  Or rather it’s very important, but not in the self assertive way we norteamericanos are used to.  Rather, in the supporting others way.

.

.

Slow Start

We are now almost three weeks into the school year and we still do not have a schedule.  Every night the principal lets teachers know what classes they are going to teach the next day. The sizes and composition of classes change often, if not daily.  For instance, today we had a class of seventh graders and were prepared with a new lesson only to find that all but 6 of them had not received the prior lesson—the class was a new one made mostly of kids who had not had English yet this year and a smattering of kids who had. For me a lot depends on the schedules of my teachers—my own schedule for one, my ability to be adequately prepared, for another, my availability for other projects, for a third.  But there really is no use getting excited about this, calculating how many lost hours of instruction time we suffer.  Nothing matters.  We’ll know when we know and we’ll go from there and that’s that. In the meantime I received a nice visit from the librarian who asked me to teach another primary school class (45 minutes) once a week.  And I have a class in  Somoto for tourist guides and people in the tourist industries, already planned for two afternoons a week. My counterparts want—and need -– an English class to teach them how to speak English.  So there is plenty to do.

A story to illustrate how things are here.  In my school—all schools in Nicaragua so far as I know—there is employee who cleans the public areas, raking and burning leaves, watering plants so they can survive the dry season and sweeping the walkways.  But the inside of the classrooms is kept clean by the students who perform “aseo” twice a day, once during the recess that takes place half way through the morning and once at the end of the morning. The kids and teachers take aseo seriously.  Sweeping all floors, even dirt ones, and mopping any floor that’s tile or concrete is a required job at home and kids who can’t speak two words of English go at the floors with admirable industry. In my classroom today the teacher noted that the top of the whiteboard and the chalk tray were covered in mouse turds. I’d seen them without really registering what there were, not being too tuned into mouse turds, or, more precisely, never having see so much mouse turd in one place.  I think there must be mice above the ceiling and the turds slip down from a gap in the ceiling.  The girl in charge of aseo lost no time sweeping down the turds onto the floor and then sweeping them out the door as waves of foul smell enveloped the classroom.  Happily only the aseo kids and I were there, I not for long.  Que barbaridad, as we say here.

Mangoes are back—so are avocadoes, not plentiful or cheap yet, but available.  How happy is that.  I got a Christmas package from my son 2 months after it was sent and am working on the last of the chocolate bars.  Thanks to an indulgent vacation time—with two sets of visitors and some pretty fine trips—I’ve put back on some of the weight I lost.  I nap some.  I continue the coffee and bread at 4 or 5 in the afternoon routine, sitting out on the porch with Dona Candida and reading or greeting passersby.  As opposed to last year when everything was an effort, pretty much everything is easy.  The change is in me, us, since others report the same tranquillo attitude. More and more I appreciate the virtue in less striving, more hanging out, more taking what comes.

Sights don’t wow me so often, but I still get a big kick out of being here.  For instance, it’s dead- frog- on- the- road season.  I remember this from last year during the dry season, big frogs, as big as your hand, lying dead in the middle of the street.  I’m not sure what went on because there aren’t that many cars that pass.  The frogs look pretty flat.  I wonder if the dryness brings them out looking for water and they die, disappointed and dehydrated in the street.

Also, yesterday on a bus I enjoyed watching the game the driver plays with the comprador, the guy who collects money and helps people on and off with their stuff, some of it stored on the top of the bus.  There is always a tension between serving the people and keeping the bus on time.  The comprador shoves people on with their chickens and children and hauls kids off at the stops so the grandma can move down the stairs a little faster. The he hurries people on and when the last one has just raised his foot to climb into the bus he shouts for the driver to go, go and runs beside the bus grabbing for a hand hold so that he swings on the bus as it’s gaining speed. Sometimes he comes perilously close to being dragged by the bus or failing to get on in time.  That happened yesterday, the comprador running fast and swinging with a final leap to safety and he and the driver laughing their heads off.  Muy divertido, as we say down here.

There are always flowering trees of some hue.  Now they are yellow, lining the highway and brightening the days.  The dry season is really dry.  Every growing thing in my beautiful site is brown and dry, sere really, looking as though it can’t survive. But it will.  The days will get hotter and hotter and drier and drier until one day, on or about April 15 according to lore, the rains will start and by  May the place will cool a bit and the green will return. So will the frogs.

GETTING READY

Every once in while I check out the blogs of other volunteers.  I’ve noticed that after a year of service, bloggers start their entries with an apology.  “It’s been 2 months since I wrote.  I’ve been busy but it’s time to catch up…”  I’m no different.  I used to try to post a blog once a week and now weeks, a month or more, go by and no urge to set it all down.  The  compulsion to write diminishes for some reason.  Why is that?  I think because we are so used to being here, so in the Nica groove, that we don’t see as well as we did when we first got here, or maybe that things seem usual, less demanding of comment. Or maybe it was, in my case, two months of fine vacation. But I went back to school this week and am back in writing mode.

Two things stood out in the first 3 days.  Teachers got their assignments yesterday.  Up till then they did not know what classes they were going to teach.  Surprises came with the announcement.  One English teacher found herself with eight preparations; another had none—she was taken out of the classroom and made a “helper”, not a promotion—I don’t know what it means. These dramatic assignments are accepted without public comment or complaint.  (My counterparts complain to me.)   Teachers just do what they are told.  No one asks for an explanation.  If this happened in the states, the union would be in evidence.

For the week before school begins the teachers are there getting ready.  But that consists largely in making murals, so far at least. The murals are large (6’ by 4’) posters.  The two under construction thus far employ the attentions of 6 or 7 teachers each.  They preach the government ordained motto for the year, “2013-- Year of productivity, blessings and prosperity—in victory!” My Nicaraguan teachers display not a bit of cynicism about the motto contents or its appropriateness in the school.  They set about the mural-making task with good and cheerful heart.  I was at school and there was nothing else to do so I helped out.  On the first day I watched as the letters for the slogan were made out of a foamy kind of paper.  For models, we dug through a pile of letters of all different sizes kept from prior murals.  One person shouted out the letters we needed and 3 of us looked for them—a process that took some time. I was wondering why we didn’t just pull out all the letters of the same size and then from them pick the ones necessary, but no, that’s not how things are done, we had to find the letters in the right size and shape and in the order in which they would appear on the mural.  Then one person traced the letters—again in the order in which they are needed for the motto--another cut them out, a third supervised and the 4^th person, me, held the cut out letters.  The norteamericano in me was impatient as hell.  Why can’t 2 people trace letters and 2 cut them out?  Do we really need a supervisor and a holder?  But no one else was offended and everyone bent to their task with careful attention and lots of joking and chatter, everyone working but kind of enjoying the super-simple task and the fellowship. That we ran out of one color of foamy paper in the middle of a word bothered no one at all: we just continued with another color.

That process took the better part of the morning.  The next day it was time to assemble the murals. With a lot of discussion and some disagreement, the letters were placed on the mural itself, cardboard covered in sheets of glued-on white paper. Then strips of colored paper were cut to form a border.  Finally three people laminated the thing by placing strips of wide cellophane tape edge to edge until the whole mural was sealed and protected.  This work took the better part of the morning.  Teachers in another part of the school were working on the other mural—same slogan—and by noon of the second day both were hung up outside to the universal critique, “Es bonito.” It’s pretty. Two mornings’ work: two murals.

What strikes me is how everyone gets along during projects like this, and generally here in Nicaragua. If one person has a strong opinion of how the mural should be, people back off and let them have their way. No one seems put out that another assumes the boss roll.  Neither does anyone think they are too good for cutting out letters or dabbing their fingers in white glue to affix borders or sheets of white paper. Everyone wants to help.  When a teacher was called away from an arguably more important task to hold the end of the cellophane tape, she didn’t complain at all or ask someone else to do it.  She was glad to help.  You can’t be a notreamericana and not wonder what happens to all the ego we assume must be sublimated to make a mural—or any other project for that matter, like a school or a family.  But there is no sign of hidden resentment or hidden fury.  Makes you wonder if maybe the huge ego isn’t a Western invention.  Gives credence to that theory that maybe competition isn’t the greatest contributor to the survival of the fittest, but co-operation is. Getting along just works better.  Being resentful sets you apart from the group.  And that’s not where you want to be.

Footnote: Today’s La Prensa, the liberal newspaper which refers always to the president as the “unconstitutional” president (I guess there’s some free press here) ran a story mocking the first lady’s initiative for this year to change attitudes to one’s more positive in order to counteract a conclusion held by many that things are pretty bad in Nicaragua (see unemployment rates, poverty, inadequate health care, etc. which is why it’s a third world country and Peace Corps is here.) Themes to be stressed are that we are to live beautifully, live clean, live healthy and live well. This initiative is to be implemented by the schools and it appears that the murals are just the beginning.  I expect we’ll be hearing a lot about positive thinking this year.  There are two views on this effort.  La Prensa thinks it’s just another attempt at mind-control, trying to make it so by insisting that everyone says it’s so. But one person I talked to thought it was a great attempt by the government to get everyone to live a better life.  I tend to go along with La Prensa, but then I remember how people made fun of Ladybird Johnson when she told us to ”Beautify America” by getting rid of billboards and stopping the dumping of trash out of car windows.  Nicaragua needs a first step like that and maybe this is it.

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.

Fiesta de Quinceanos

I had been invited some time ago by a student of mine to her quinceaños party. I was honored to be asked to this event which marks the fifteenth birthday of a girl, her debut of sorts, symbolically her coming of age as a woman.  On several occasions I’ve looked on from the outside as the quinceñera, on the arm of her father, walked through town from the church, where there is a ceremony, to the family’s house where the party takes place. Following in a procession are family and friends, dressed up for the occasion.  But the most amazing of all is the quinceñera who wears a ball gown, often of pink or blue, and a tiara, jewelry, high heels.

 The party was scheduled for the day after the end of the Access English camp at which I was serving as co-coordinator with 2 other volunteers, a camp which the quinceñera had been invited to attend.  The camp was a fabulous opportunity for her, a girl from a very poor community, to meet kids from 12 cities in Nicaragua, study English each day for three hours with the best teachers, visit the shrine city of Nicaragua, Granada (which everyone says they want to visit and precious few Nicaraguans have actually seen), and have crazy fun in the way American campers have fun, so different from the kinds of limited games kids play in their communities. But the quinceñera declined the invitation because she was needed at home to prepare for her party.  I admit to being a little sad about her decision, emblematic as it seemed of priorities, and at odds so with her father’s voiced commitment to me to do everything he could to support her education.

I came to the party with my gift, a pair of earrings some kids I know had advised was a good one for the occasion, but I put a book in the gift bag, a picture book in English, just to remind the quinceñera that she has a mind as well as her great beauty. The guests were assembled listening to music when I scrambled up the dirt path to the house where the celebration was being held. The party was held on the packed dirt area in front of the house although plastic chairs were set up everywhere they could be, around trees and bushes and the wash stand.  The path across from the house was lined with spectators, who were not invited guests but gathered to watch the goings on.  Hand cut pink tissue paper flags attached to strings marked off the area and pink and blue balloons decorated the walls and formed a little arch over the special white cake with blue icing.

When the music was over I and all the students present were herded to the side to have our pictures taken with the quinceñera.  Then the food was served by her mom and aunt, two plates at a time walked from the house and handed to each guest.  I was served early, a small fried chicken drumstick, rice, salad and a tortilla, but I noticed that other people got a rice and chicken mixture topped by a slice of white bread, a meal I’ve seen a lot here for special occasions.  My first guess was that the adults got chicken and the kids rice, but after a while it was apparent that I was among the honored guests who ate chicken. That was followed by some delicious arroz con leche washed down with coke and finally by cake.

I saw something for the first time other Peace Corps volunteers had told me about.  While I was eating my chicken I noticed that a student sitting next to me was holding two plates of rice and bread, hers an her sister’s, but not eating anything.  I suggested to her that she eat, but she said no.  She was not alone. All around were people balancing plates of uneaten food.  I had heard that in some poor country families anyone who is fortunate enough to be offered food away from home is expected to bring it home to be shared with the rest of the family.  I expect that was what was going on here although an alternate theory has it that in the countryside some people are shy about eating in front of strangers.

This observation reminded me of a theory I have been slowly developing about the relative importance of the group in Nicaragua as compared to the individual.  This is hardly a new insight.  What is new, for me anyway, is the application of the group preference to situations in my classes at school or to life in the pueblo.  For instance, the proclivity of kids to copy from each other in class: The whole group functions to ensure that everyone passes, not just the lucky few who understand the assignment or work harder or do the task.  To norteamericanos it is cheating—straight up--because the gringo idea is that each individual rises or falls on his own merits and copying interferes with that goal, but here-MAYBE-it’s an assertion of the emphasis on the common good (passing, not necessarily learning, being the “good”). Another example:  students have pena, that is, embarrassment about being singled out to do something, speak in class, for instance.  Sometimes it is really crippling, the poor student dissolved in humiliation, covering his or her face or ducking his head. One cause, in addition to personality, might be the discomfort about being singled out from the safety of the group.  Another example: my teachers are less inclined to hold individuals responsible for their misbehavior in class than they are to hold the whole class responsible.  For that reason they would rather harangue the class than single out and correct individual students.  This is an extension, also of the reluctance of the school authorities to deal with individual teacher’s weaknesses (e.g., talking on their cell phones during class) in favor of general speeches about values—every tack indirect preferred over the direct.  I wonder if there is also in this theory an explanation of Nicaraguans’ reluctance to travel to see parts of their country.  I always assumed the reasons were habit or finances, but maybe no one wants to look more “urbane” than the others.

It’s funny how you can know something in theory and not recognize it in practice. It’s also funny how understanding the why of something makes it easier to deal with.  School starts in a couple of weeks and I’ll be watching for the individual/group distinction in action.  Meanwhile, my beautiful quinceñera student had her big day in the community instead of her big opportunity at camp.