Hi friends and loved ones!
It´s sort of lame of me to post a group holiday greeting like this, but I figure I haven´t updated a majority of you on my happenings and wanderings in some time... (aka since I moved to Nicaragua last January) and also wanted to wish all of you a very happy holidays! I hope this note finds you well, blessed, and at peace.
Things are wonderful here, I wake up every single day feeling blessed and in complete awe of where I live, work, play, and love. Cusmapa (the little pueblo I live in) has grown to be a second home for me, everywhere I walk I am followed by children shouting ´Adios Profé Callie! ´ and my Spanish has (bit by bit, with much confusion and many headaches and also laughter) improved to the point where I can ACTUALLY communicate with people! It makes all the difference in the world to be able to talk to someone in their native language, and I feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to really learn to speak and listen in another language. I am still teaching the music program, we just had our last concert of the year yesterday, and a wicked dance party to close out the school year. We´re singing Bob Marley and Simon and Garfunkel, and I am that wierd teacher that dances around and giggles all the time! Bet you can´t even imagine that! Ha.
I have about a month of vacation (finally!) and my mom and sister, Cece, are here visiting for the next two weeks! We´ll go to learn how to make tortillas tonight, fresh cheese tomorrow, and are quietly enjoying Christmas with eachother and one of the families I spend a lot of time with here.
I´ve decided to stay here for at least another year. I feel that one year has barely been enough to tap the surface of things here, that I am just gaining the trust of all the kiddos and their parents, and starting to build real friendships and relationships. My roomate, Lauren, and I have so many ideas for projects we would like to start next year! One of the main things I have noticed in my year here is the lack of critical thinking capabilities, the kids don´t have books at school and learn basically by memorization and repitition rather by truly thinking and challenging what they are told about the world. You all know me, and know that this type of knowledge doesn´t fly in my book! The church here seems to be a good social force, but I feel that a lot of the times people are told what to believe and take it at face value rather than thinking for themselves. So, Lauren and I will be teaching a class to high schoolers here at the Fabretto center, with hopes of igniting some sparks of interest in their learning more about themselves and about the world. We are also going to start a knitting group with about 10 of the women who work at the school with us, one night a week in our house... knitting and cookies. Lauren being responsible for the knitting, me baking the cookies. There´s really not a lot of places for women to socialize here so we think it would be a great way to get to know more of the women in town, in a postive environment, and would be fun for them to learn a new skill as well. I am also starting a university choir (most kids study in other towns on Saturdays, and are free during the week, so they have time), we want to teach yoga classes, start a paper making program, some lithography (lauren´s an incredible artist), and scarily enough I will be giving more piano lessons!
SO to cut this ramble short, I am BUSY and finding lots of things to spark my passions. Life is good... slow and quiet days mixed with the breeze in the orange trees in our garden, neighbor children playing and laughing in the streets, snorkling pigs, cackling hens, the sweet tones of reggaeton music floating in from neighboring houses, rain on my tin roof, my horrific (yet improving) guitar picking, students jamming on bongoes and tambourines and anything else they can get their hands on.
I will be back to visit the states in July for Jason´s wedding (!!!!) and my little bro´s 21st birthday, and am hoping to see many of you then! (As my plans after next December still aren´t certain, Lauren and I may stay on longer with Fabretto or we may ramble through Mexico and the rest of Central America for 4 or 6 months...). I would love to hear from any of you, updates on life and how you´ve been the past year. I wish all of you many blessings, and for those of you who´ve been with me as a real part of this journey I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. You fuel the flame that keeps me waking up every day here with a beaming smile.
I miss you, love you, and wish you joyous, joyous blessings.
Cuidate mucho! (Take Care!)
Peace, Callie
jueves, 20 de diciembre de 2007
martes, 4 de diciembre de 2007
Street Cred
When I first arrived in Cusmapa I realized two things:
1) I walk like a gringo. Fast-paced, as if I have an actual destination and am looking forward to getting there on time.
2) Nobody here uses a flashlight at night, and there are no street lamps… yet everyone seems to be able to navigate the cobblestone and riverbeds without spraining ankles and with a consistent knowledge of who passes by.
In order to adapt myself to the culture and to build up my (what I like to refer to as) “street credibility” (some may call it “street cred”) I made two adjustments to my behavior:
1) A conscious attempt at sauntering along at the pace of the snorkeling pigs. I am not allowed to pass any moving object, person, or animal… there are no passing lanes. I have to remind myself that it only takes 10 minutes to walk from one end of town to the other… I have no reason to hurry.
2) I do not use my headlamp or a flashlight of any kind to walk around in the dark, even though I finish teaching at about 7 PM every night and sometimes have to walk back through darkness where I can literally not see my hand 6 inches in front of my own face.
I figure that if I do these two things, people will look beyond my whiteness to see the Cusmapan within.
So I’ve been building up my “street cred” around town, “poco-a-poco” (bit by bit) yet I keep hitting major roadblocks which set me back to the gringaness factor I found in square one nearly a year ago. These roadblocks include but are not limited to the following:
1) The first week I was in town, walking home after lunch for a much needed siesta, a bus horn surprised me and I ran face-first into the mayor’s office sign in front of a bus full of people and the mid-day center of town loitering crowd.
2) Two months ago walking to school with Hannah, we walked by the billiards hall and passed two little children who gawked in fear at our oddness. I giggled and right as I was saying “I just love it when I say hi to kids and they look at me like I’m going to eat them” (aka: making fun of these kiddos who’d just been frightened to death by my friendliness) I looked at the sky and BOOM fell over a small rock in the road and nearly broke my ankle (karma’s a real bitch). When I got to the school the house doctor told me that I should probably “take some ibuprofen, ice my ankle, and stop looking at the clouds while I walk”. Thanks for the stellar advice, doc. I’ll write that one down.
3) A month ago, walking to school with Lauren, head in the clouds thinking about a boy (of all things, seriously?!) I again stepped funny on a small rock and landed directly on my OTHER knee (right after the scab on my left one had finally healed). Lauren, being the kind friend she is, didn’t laugh in my face. She sat with me as I crawled to the curb and angrily fought back tears for a few moments… THEN laughed at me. Or rather, with me. Let’s just say, my knees are not in good shape these days.
4) I kept using the word “bicho” to talk to Facundo (the guy who takes care of our house) about the various bugs we have in our house… because in my Harper Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary “bicho” refers to “a small insect”. My Nicaraguan friend Mayerling recently informed me that the word “bicho”, when used in Nicaragua, actually refers to a “vagina”. I have been talking to our caretaker about my vagina for the past two months. If that’s not a roadblock to building a strong foundation of street cred, I don’t know what is.
5) A moment I like to call “THE KICKER” in my complete lack of street cred in Cusmapa. Walking home from school last week, I passed the soccer stadium where the high school boys were playing a late afternoon pick-up game. Their ratty ball conveniently flew over the barbed wire fence 20 feet in front of me so to the yells of “Oye! Profe Callie! El pelota!” In a moment of absolute stupidity (my excuse being that I was in a riot of a good mood) I picked up the ball and took a bit of a running start to kick it to them over the fence (thinking: “that’s right, girls can play soccer too!”) and… WHIFF. Not even kidding you, I whiffed. With my foot. And a soccer ball. Needless to say, the boys and I were all doubled over laughing and I mumbled something about needing different shoes to kick a soccer ball properly (obviously my Chacos were not the right footwear choice for the moment) and threw the ball over the fence.
So, now I resolve to take the following precautions in order to retain the shred of street cred I may currently possess:
1) I will walk with a flashlight. Because not walking with one down my riverbed of a street is just plain stupid.
2) I will no longer make fun of small children while walking. Karma always bites me in the ass.
3) I will no longer look at trees, animals, or the sky while I am walking. That’s just asking for a skinned knee and a visit to the school doctor (whose motto, as I’ve stated before is “take ibuprofen, and if you don’t feel better in four days… you’ll be dead!).
4) I will no longer talk about insects in the presence of “the Cound” (Facundo’s nickname) as I think we’ve had more than enough conversations on the topic of my vagina. I will spare him the pain.
5) I will invest in a pair of soccer cleats in order to be fully prepared for my next opportunity to drop kick a ball into a field of high school boys. Well maybe not, but I will not soon forget the reality of my complete lack of hand-eye coordination and will try to plan my behavior accordingly.
6) I will continue to laugh at myself and hope that others do as well, with the thought that if we are laughing together they’re not directly laughing AT me… I’m just making other people joyous through my follies.
1) I walk like a gringo. Fast-paced, as if I have an actual destination and am looking forward to getting there on time.
2) Nobody here uses a flashlight at night, and there are no street lamps… yet everyone seems to be able to navigate the cobblestone and riverbeds without spraining ankles and with a consistent knowledge of who passes by.
In order to adapt myself to the culture and to build up my (what I like to refer to as) “street credibility” (some may call it “street cred”) I made two adjustments to my behavior:
1) A conscious attempt at sauntering along at the pace of the snorkeling pigs. I am not allowed to pass any moving object, person, or animal… there are no passing lanes. I have to remind myself that it only takes 10 minutes to walk from one end of town to the other… I have no reason to hurry.
2) I do not use my headlamp or a flashlight of any kind to walk around in the dark, even though I finish teaching at about 7 PM every night and sometimes have to walk back through darkness where I can literally not see my hand 6 inches in front of my own face.
I figure that if I do these two things, people will look beyond my whiteness to see the Cusmapan within.
So I’ve been building up my “street cred” around town, “poco-a-poco” (bit by bit) yet I keep hitting major roadblocks which set me back to the gringaness factor I found in square one nearly a year ago. These roadblocks include but are not limited to the following:
1) The first week I was in town, walking home after lunch for a much needed siesta, a bus horn surprised me and I ran face-first into the mayor’s office sign in front of a bus full of people and the mid-day center of town loitering crowd.
2) Two months ago walking to school with Hannah, we walked by the billiards hall and passed two little children who gawked in fear at our oddness. I giggled and right as I was saying “I just love it when I say hi to kids and they look at me like I’m going to eat them” (aka: making fun of these kiddos who’d just been frightened to death by my friendliness) I looked at the sky and BOOM fell over a small rock in the road and nearly broke my ankle (karma’s a real bitch). When I got to the school the house doctor told me that I should probably “take some ibuprofen, ice my ankle, and stop looking at the clouds while I walk”. Thanks for the stellar advice, doc. I’ll write that one down.
3) A month ago, walking to school with Lauren, head in the clouds thinking about a boy (of all things, seriously?!) I again stepped funny on a small rock and landed directly on my OTHER knee (right after the scab on my left one had finally healed). Lauren, being the kind friend she is, didn’t laugh in my face. She sat with me as I crawled to the curb and angrily fought back tears for a few moments… THEN laughed at me. Or rather, with me. Let’s just say, my knees are not in good shape these days.
4) I kept using the word “bicho” to talk to Facundo (the guy who takes care of our house) about the various bugs we have in our house… because in my Harper Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary “bicho” refers to “a small insect”. My Nicaraguan friend Mayerling recently informed me that the word “bicho”, when used in Nicaragua, actually refers to a “vagina”. I have been talking to our caretaker about my vagina for the past two months. If that’s not a roadblock to building a strong foundation of street cred, I don’t know what is.
5) A moment I like to call “THE KICKER” in my complete lack of street cred in Cusmapa. Walking home from school last week, I passed the soccer stadium where the high school boys were playing a late afternoon pick-up game. Their ratty ball conveniently flew over the barbed wire fence 20 feet in front of me so to the yells of “Oye! Profe Callie! El pelota!” In a moment of absolute stupidity (my excuse being that I was in a riot of a good mood) I picked up the ball and took a bit of a running start to kick it to them over the fence (thinking: “that’s right, girls can play soccer too!”) and… WHIFF. Not even kidding you, I whiffed. With my foot. And a soccer ball. Needless to say, the boys and I were all doubled over laughing and I mumbled something about needing different shoes to kick a soccer ball properly (obviously my Chacos were not the right footwear choice for the moment) and threw the ball over the fence.
So, now I resolve to take the following precautions in order to retain the shred of street cred I may currently possess:
1) I will walk with a flashlight. Because not walking with one down my riverbed of a street is just plain stupid.
2) I will no longer make fun of small children while walking. Karma always bites me in the ass.
3) I will no longer look at trees, animals, or the sky while I am walking. That’s just asking for a skinned knee and a visit to the school doctor (whose motto, as I’ve stated before is “take ibuprofen, and if you don’t feel better in four days… you’ll be dead!).
4) I will no longer talk about insects in the presence of “the Cound” (Facundo’s nickname) as I think we’ve had more than enough conversations on the topic of my vagina. I will spare him the pain.
5) I will invest in a pair of soccer cleats in order to be fully prepared for my next opportunity to drop kick a ball into a field of high school boys. Well maybe not, but I will not soon forget the reality of my complete lack of hand-eye coordination and will try to plan my behavior accordingly.
6) I will continue to laugh at myself and hope that others do as well, with the thought that if we are laughing together they’re not directly laughing AT me… I’m just making other people joyous through my follies.
martes, 6 de noviembre de 2007
AYYYY Mi Amor! Mi Corazon!
A list of heckles I receive every day walking to and from school:
“Ayyyyy mi amor! Mi Corazon!!!!! Mi vida!”
(Translation: Oh, my love. My heart. My life.)
“Voy a casarme contigo y vamos a los Estados!”
(Translation: I’m going to marry you and we are going to the United States.)
“Ayyyy mi muneca….”
(Translation: Oh, my doll.)
“Adios chelita preciosa hermosa (insert smooching sound here)!”
(Translation: Goodbye beautiful precious whitey MWAH.)
“Adios amorSOTA!”
(Translation: Goodbye my LOVE! Straight out of ‘Dumb and Dumber‘.)
“tssst…tssst…tssst….”
(an appalling hissing sound meant to be a romantic attention-grabber)
“Adios, gringo!”
(An enthusiastic exclamation from the mouth of a two-year-old neighbor of mine who must think I am a man.)
And my personal favorite:
“Callie, I love you forever!”
(straight from the mouth of a seven-year-old who isn’t even a student of mine)
These taunts follow me from the moment I leave my house at 7:30 AM until I return at 7 PM. I’ve heard all of the above come from the mouths of my students, their fathers, and quite possibly their grandfathers; from bus drivers, bus attendants, and the owner of the local corner store. Last Valentines Day as I walked home with three rolls of toilet paper and a half-dozen eggs I received quite a few “ay, mi amor!”s, much to my surprise. I can’t think of anything more romantic than buying toilet paper.
I could blame it on the male gender in general, but after talking to a few of my students and friends I’ve found a few other causes for this constant heckling.
1) Boys here learn it from their fathers who learned it from their fathers who learned it from…
(you get the point)
2) Men here are too intimidated to actually have a conversation with women, therefore they choose to inflict a barrage of romantic mumbo jumbo upon them.
3) Men think that the women here actually LIKE this kind of verbal abuse (I’ve assured my Nicaraguan male friends that this is most definitely NOT the case).
4) Alcohol… the town drunk here, a most friendly soul who talks to walls and bricks and dogs (non-discriminating between living and inanimate objects, which I respect) calls me “his love” while asking me to buy him a litro of Caballito (at $1 a bottle and with a picture of a horse on front, comparable to a cross between rubbing alcohol and moonshine)… seriously though, alcohol plays a big role in the fact that men are not comfortable socializing with women on an equal basis. They feel they must be drunk in order to talk to women, and then instead of talking to them as peers, end up insulting them.
5) A major pastime here in Cusmapa, watching telenovelas (cheesy locally produced soap operas) largely contributes to the type of romanticism displayed by the men. Many suitors of mine claimed to love me “at first sight” and claimed to have not thought about another woman since laying eyes on yours truly (including, believe it or not, those I know to have more than one girlfriend). I suppose if I received the majority of my ideas about romance from soap operas I’d have a pretty skewed view on what love actually is. As the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing: “THROW AWAY YOUR TELEVISION.”
A prime example of the “love at first sight” phenomenon occurred today as Lauren and I walked to la Casona (the gigantic Fabretto-owned house in town used for large groups of volunteers) to have dinner with a group of folks from the States who are currently visiting Cusmapa. Marlon (an acquaintance of ours) approached us on the street, flushed and bashful. We know Marlon through his cousin Osmara, one of my high school students. The only time we’ve hung out with him was a few weeks ago at my birthday dinner at Osmara’s house. He studied in the states for a year in a forestry program in Oregon, and loves to practice his English with Lauren and I.
Marlon asked why we didn’t end up having a Halloween fiesta, to which we claimed the reason of volunteer poverty. He wouldn’t look Lauren or I in the eye, which should have been my first clue that something was weird and wonderful in our interaction. He stammered out an:
“I have a dream…”
“Yes…” (Lauren and I both wonder…)
“I have a dream…” (Marlon looks embarrassedly at his shoes. Awkward pause.)
“Um. Like Martin Luther King Jr.?”
(I can really be mean. Like I‘ve said before, I‘m not a good English teacher… or person)
“No.” (The joke went over his head, but Lauren giggles…
I’m glad at least someone finds me funny.)
“I have a dream….”
(Lauren and I look at each other and lean together in a “oh no, oh my, oh goodness, this isn’t going where we think it is” moment of understanding.)
“I can’t tell you.” (I shut off my giggles, and attempt to gain back his confidence by appearing serious and genuinely interested in the profound content of his dream.)
“Oh, come on. What was it?” (I’m such a good shrink.)
“It was about you.” (Marlon gestures at Lauren then looks back at his shoes and blushes and chuckles nervously.)
(Marlon mumbles something under his breath, losing his English speaking capabilities and resorting to an unintelligible Spanglish, which I myself am entirely guilty of speaking the vast majority of the time.)
“Um. Was it a long dream?” (Lauren, the gifted interviewer tries to pry some more information from our suffering friend and looks at me, eyebrows raised in utter disbelief in the ridiculousness of her life. She tries desperately to make the conversation a bit more bearable.)
“I can’t tell you.” (Oh sweet lord, out with it already buddy.)
(Marlon looks at me, then pulls Lauren aside for secrecy… obviously the dream’s contents are meant for her ears only).
I walk out of earshot and look at the sky, smiling. Good lord, I never know what to expect when I wake up every single morning in this country. All I hear from their conversation is Lauren’s awkward laughter as she asks:
“Haha but it was just a dream, RIGHT?” (oh Lord, how she hopes it was)
Then I hear, “…you can come over later… JUST FRIENDS…” and more nervous laughter. I know exactly where that conversation went. Lauren and I hold our giggles as best as we possibly can as she fills me in on “the dream” that Marlon experienced. Apparently in dream-land, Marlon is in love with Lauren. Shocking. And now he wonders if he can come hang out at our house “as friends”. Poor blundering guy.
I gotta hand it to Marlon, he’s the creative romantic type.
At least he didn’t use the
“I’m going to marry you and we’ll go to the United States” line straight off the bat.
“Ayyyyy mi amor! Mi Corazon!!!!! Mi vida!”
(Translation: Oh, my love. My heart. My life.)
“Voy a casarme contigo y vamos a los Estados!”
(Translation: I’m going to marry you and we are going to the United States.)
“Ayyyy mi muneca….”
(Translation: Oh, my doll.)
“Adios chelita preciosa hermosa (insert smooching sound here)!”
(Translation: Goodbye beautiful precious whitey MWAH.)
“Adios amorSOTA!”
(Translation: Goodbye my LOVE! Straight out of ‘Dumb and Dumber‘.)
“tssst…tssst…tssst….”
(an appalling hissing sound meant to be a romantic attention-grabber)
“Adios, gringo!”
(An enthusiastic exclamation from the mouth of a two-year-old neighbor of mine who must think I am a man.)
And my personal favorite:
“Callie, I love you forever!”
(straight from the mouth of a seven-year-old who isn’t even a student of mine)
These taunts follow me from the moment I leave my house at 7:30 AM until I return at 7 PM. I’ve heard all of the above come from the mouths of my students, their fathers, and quite possibly their grandfathers; from bus drivers, bus attendants, and the owner of the local corner store. Last Valentines Day as I walked home with three rolls of toilet paper and a half-dozen eggs I received quite a few “ay, mi amor!”s, much to my surprise. I can’t think of anything more romantic than buying toilet paper.
I could blame it on the male gender in general, but after talking to a few of my students and friends I’ve found a few other causes for this constant heckling.
1) Boys here learn it from their fathers who learned it from their fathers who learned it from…
(you get the point)
2) Men here are too intimidated to actually have a conversation with women, therefore they choose to inflict a barrage of romantic mumbo jumbo upon them.
3) Men think that the women here actually LIKE this kind of verbal abuse (I’ve assured my Nicaraguan male friends that this is most definitely NOT the case).
4) Alcohol… the town drunk here, a most friendly soul who talks to walls and bricks and dogs (non-discriminating between living and inanimate objects, which I respect) calls me “his love” while asking me to buy him a litro of Caballito (at $1 a bottle and with a picture of a horse on front, comparable to a cross between rubbing alcohol and moonshine)… seriously though, alcohol plays a big role in the fact that men are not comfortable socializing with women on an equal basis. They feel they must be drunk in order to talk to women, and then instead of talking to them as peers, end up insulting them.
5) A major pastime here in Cusmapa, watching telenovelas (cheesy locally produced soap operas) largely contributes to the type of romanticism displayed by the men. Many suitors of mine claimed to love me “at first sight” and claimed to have not thought about another woman since laying eyes on yours truly (including, believe it or not, those I know to have more than one girlfriend). I suppose if I received the majority of my ideas about romance from soap operas I’d have a pretty skewed view on what love actually is. As the Red Hot Chili Peppers sing: “THROW AWAY YOUR TELEVISION.”
A prime example of the “love at first sight” phenomenon occurred today as Lauren and I walked to la Casona (the gigantic Fabretto-owned house in town used for large groups of volunteers) to have dinner with a group of folks from the States who are currently visiting Cusmapa. Marlon (an acquaintance of ours) approached us on the street, flushed and bashful. We know Marlon through his cousin Osmara, one of my high school students. The only time we’ve hung out with him was a few weeks ago at my birthday dinner at Osmara’s house. He studied in the states for a year in a forestry program in Oregon, and loves to practice his English with Lauren and I.
Marlon asked why we didn’t end up having a Halloween fiesta, to which we claimed the reason of volunteer poverty. He wouldn’t look Lauren or I in the eye, which should have been my first clue that something was weird and wonderful in our interaction. He stammered out an:
“I have a dream…”
“Yes…” (Lauren and I both wonder…)
“I have a dream…” (Marlon looks embarrassedly at his shoes. Awkward pause.)
“Um. Like Martin Luther King Jr.?”
(I can really be mean. Like I‘ve said before, I‘m not a good English teacher… or person)
“No.” (The joke went over his head, but Lauren giggles…
I’m glad at least someone finds me funny.)
“I have a dream….”
(Lauren and I look at each other and lean together in a “oh no, oh my, oh goodness, this isn’t going where we think it is” moment of understanding.)
“I can’t tell you.” (I shut off my giggles, and attempt to gain back his confidence by appearing serious and genuinely interested in the profound content of his dream.)
“Oh, come on. What was it?” (I’m such a good shrink.)
“It was about you.” (Marlon gestures at Lauren then looks back at his shoes and blushes and chuckles nervously.)
(Marlon mumbles something under his breath, losing his English speaking capabilities and resorting to an unintelligible Spanglish, which I myself am entirely guilty of speaking the vast majority of the time.)
“Um. Was it a long dream?” (Lauren, the gifted interviewer tries to pry some more information from our suffering friend and looks at me, eyebrows raised in utter disbelief in the ridiculousness of her life. She tries desperately to make the conversation a bit more bearable.)
“I can’t tell you.” (Oh sweet lord, out with it already buddy.)
(Marlon looks at me, then pulls Lauren aside for secrecy… obviously the dream’s contents are meant for her ears only).
I walk out of earshot and look at the sky, smiling. Good lord, I never know what to expect when I wake up every single morning in this country. All I hear from their conversation is Lauren’s awkward laughter as she asks:
“Haha but it was just a dream, RIGHT?” (oh Lord, how she hopes it was)
Then I hear, “…you can come over later… JUST FRIENDS…” and more nervous laughter. I know exactly where that conversation went. Lauren and I hold our giggles as best as we possibly can as she fills me in on “the dream” that Marlon experienced. Apparently in dream-land, Marlon is in love with Lauren. Shocking. And now he wonders if he can come hang out at our house “as friends”. Poor blundering guy.
I gotta hand it to Marlon, he’s the creative romantic type.
At least he didn’t use the
“I’m going to marry you and we’ll go to the United States” line straight off the bat.
lunes, 5 de noviembre de 2007
The Not-So-Magic Schoolbus
I consider myself a fairly tolerant person, yet when it comes to bus rides here in Nicaragua I find myself beginning to lose patience with a few essential bus ride factors:
1) the music being rocked over sound systems which belong in Honda Civics with spoilers, not on ancient school buses
2) the absolute lack of safety (though I had some illusion of it until this past weekend)
3) subjection to spontaneous Evangelical sermons
The last four times Lauren and I traveled back and forth between Somoto and Cusmapa we’ve been in the same bus, as there’s only three which ramble back and forth up and down the mountain. Eddy, the wide-mustached driver, seems hell bent (though he may not be conscious of it) on providing the most awful, repetitive music possible to accompany this scenic route. Imagine looking across the misty forests and mountains of Nicaragua and Honduras and being subjected to tunes such as: Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”, a CD which I refer to as “Night at the Roxbury on Crack”, or my newest favorites which I call “Spoken Word Evangelical Style” and “Woman Howling in Spanish about her Failed Romantic Endeavors”. Every once in a while Eddy plays a gem like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or some ranchero (Mexican drinking music). However, the vast majority of the time I find myself groaning as “Night at the Roxbury on Crack” repeats itself for the fourth time. What makes the music selection particularly destructive to my mental health is THE VOLUME LEVEL OF THE TUNES REFLECTS EDDY’S ASSUMPTION THAT EVERY SINGLE OF HIS BUS PATRONS MUST BE DEAF.
It’s not only the bus music selection that sets Nicaragua apart from other countries in this world. Tell a Nicaraguan you’re from the United States and you are bound to be faced with a few remarkable questions:
1) “OH! You must love the music of Michael Bolton!”
2) “Ooooh. Bryan Adams. Don’t you love romantic music?!”
3) “Have you ever heard the song ‘Hotel California’ ?”
If you haven’t heard “Hotel California” lately, you’re bound to hear it within the first two hours you’re in the country. If like myself, you don’t even know what songs Michael Bolton actually sings, you will know soon enough. If Bryan Adams songs bring back thoughts of the mid-eighties, they will now bring thoughts of Nicaraguan friends who enjoy singing the lyrics at the top of their lungs at 6 AM. My favorite part of the random awful selection of US music listened to here in Nicaragua has to be what’s lost in the translation between English and Spanish. Although in English most romantic music refers to human relationships, the Spanish versions most often showcase Jesus as the song’s major theme.
As if listening to Jesus theme songs and “Evangelical Spoken Word” isn’t grand enough, approximately 1/3 of the bus rides also include an unsolicited Evangelical sermon. The first time I experienced this event, I sat wide-eyed and awed (you know those times you feel like life’s so ridiculous that you MUST be in a movie) as the preacher sent fire and brimstone across the vinyl bus seats, praising Senor Dios almighty before he came around to each patron, hand outstretched to collect cordobas. Though I’d like for nothing more than contributing to the construction of another “Dios Poderoso Iglesia de Jerusalem” or “DioZ es el Senor” (literally spelled with a backward S, seen on the front of a Baptist church here in Cusmapa), I normally choose to abstain from the bus pastor’s collection.
My favorite display of public Evangelism occurred nearly four months ago at the bus station in Managua (which apparently is an extremely dangerous place, though after this experience I have my doubts) as Ingrid and I headed home after a weekend in Managua. We curiously watched a pot-bellied middle aged man set up a karaoke machine, wiping beads of sweat off his brow with a washcloth and adjusting the volume so it would be just right (aka: enough to reach the ears of every person within a two block radius). After indulging the audience with a few warm-up elevator music hits, the pastor grabbed his Bible and started praying (now that I think about it, he sounded a lot like the “Evangelical Spoken Word” CD Eddy likes to play so much). Ingrid and I marveled at the exhibit, and the man took a long gulp of water before clearing his throat and beginning to SING. To get some idea of his vocal chord capabilities, you must imagine Josh Groban with the voice of a 60-year-old smoker. Not pretty. Entirely hilarious. Whoever does the Public Relations for the Evangelical churches in Nicaragua certainly iced the cake by flaunting this multi-talented pastor at one of the busiest travel hubs in the country.
I digress. Lauren, Mike and I set off for Esteli in the early morning last Saturday, after a lengthy Friday evening of shenanigans and billiards. The Esteli trip served three purposes:
1) We are unable to cash our paychecks in Somoto (the bank there we refer to as a FAKE bank because they do not take travelers checks OR cash any type of check from a different bank chain) so we must make the nine-hour round trip bus ride to stand in line for two hours to get our monthly stipend. (aka: I will NEVER complain about going to the bank in the States again.)
2) Lauren and I have decided to do our grocery shopping at the nearest store not owned by Wal-Mart, which happens to be a locally owned supermarket called “Las Segovias” in Esteli. It’s also the only place in the Northern part of Nicaragua which sells both wine and coconut milk.
* and they served us free beer on my birthday, which boosts the store’s rating to *****.
3) La Casita, our favorite restaurant in Nicaragua, which sells whole wheat bread, muesli, banana marmalade, and Swiss and brie cheese is located in Esteli. To keep up morale, I find I must indulge in one of their sandwiches and a banana milkshake at least once per month.
The stretch of Pan American Highway between Somoto and Esteli looks similar to the two-lane mountain madness at the top of the Fourth of July mountain pass between Idaho and Montana. While living in Spokane during college, I made this trip dozens of times in my trusty ‘93 Subaru Legacy (which hugs the curves much more successfully than the trusty rusty school buses here ever could) and endured quite a few near-death experiences (mainly due to blizzards, breakdowns of Reghan’s “Budgets” mini-van, and crazed semi-truck drivers). Winding two-lane mountain roads and school buses don’t mix. You get the picture.
This particular bus driver (as we were on an Express bus) drove like a “bat out of hell” (as my mom would say) and I felt more than a little queasy as his Indy 500 attempts at tight corners tilted the bus precariously. Lauren and I sat together near the front while Mike brought up the rear of the bus (this being the first time I’d ever experienced bus-attendant-enforced seat numbers). On a particularly dodgy twist, we passed a semi-truck and just as Lauren and I gave each other a “good god we might die today” look…
“WHAM!” people screaming and the bus lurched as the semi-truck grazed the back 15 feet of the bus. For a good 30 seconds, I thought our driver was going to keep on truckin’ down the highway with a hole ripped through the back of the bus. He finally pulled over and I saw Mike stand up brushing broken glass off himself. He’d been one row in front of the shattered windows. We piled off the bus, my heart pounding emergently. There were no serious injuries, only a shaken group of 20-some people who’d literally seen their lives flash before their eyes. The semi-truck we’d hit kept driving! Scary thought. Lauren, Mike, and I regained our composure and shook our heads in disbelief. The bus attendant began to sweep out the broken glass with the head of a broken broom and some of our fellow bus-mates hitchhiked with passing lorries. Five minutes after we stopped, folks loaded back on the bus and we looked at each other warily before making our way back to our seats. (Yes, we got BACK ON the wrecked bus). Ten minutes later we were still waiting and the man standing in front of Lauren and I reported that the driver had called the police, and we wouldn’t be going anywhere for some time. The three of us got back off the bus, tracked down the attendant to get 20 of our 30 cordobas refunded, and caught the next bus passing on its way to Esteli.
The irony of the situation was that the day before, Lauren asked if I carried my travelers insurance information with me in the case of a bus accident. Truthfully, I’ve never thought about how important it could be to have my medical information on me, but now I am absolutely convinced. I think Mike might take to renting cars rather than relying on public transportation (though I suggested the purchase of oxen and a cart, which would be much more cost effective than car rentals). Any minor sense of safety I felt traveling on the public bus system has been completely shot after that experience, especially seeing the nonchalant reactions of the Nicaraguan’s I’ve told about the wreck. Their flat-line response to hearing about the accident points to one simple fact: there are absolutely no magical crash-free school buses in this country…
Oh, the things we risk and endure just to get a brie and hummus sandwich, a can of coconut milk, and to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart owned Pali.
1) the music being rocked over sound systems which belong in Honda Civics with spoilers, not on ancient school buses
2) the absolute lack of safety (though I had some illusion of it until this past weekend)
3) subjection to spontaneous Evangelical sermons
The last four times Lauren and I traveled back and forth between Somoto and Cusmapa we’ve been in the same bus, as there’s only three which ramble back and forth up and down the mountain. Eddy, the wide-mustached driver, seems hell bent (though he may not be conscious of it) on providing the most awful, repetitive music possible to accompany this scenic route. Imagine looking across the misty forests and mountains of Nicaragua and Honduras and being subjected to tunes such as: Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”, a CD which I refer to as “Night at the Roxbury on Crack”, or my newest favorites which I call “Spoken Word Evangelical Style” and “Woman Howling in Spanish about her Failed Romantic Endeavors”. Every once in a while Eddy plays a gem like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or some ranchero (Mexican drinking music). However, the vast majority of the time I find myself groaning as “Night at the Roxbury on Crack” repeats itself for the fourth time. What makes the music selection particularly destructive to my mental health is THE VOLUME LEVEL OF THE TUNES REFLECTS EDDY’S ASSUMPTION THAT EVERY SINGLE OF HIS BUS PATRONS MUST BE DEAF.
It’s not only the bus music selection that sets Nicaragua apart from other countries in this world. Tell a Nicaraguan you’re from the United States and you are bound to be faced with a few remarkable questions:
1) “OH! You must love the music of Michael Bolton!”
2) “Ooooh. Bryan Adams. Don’t you love romantic music?!”
3) “Have you ever heard the song ‘Hotel California’ ?”
If you haven’t heard “Hotel California” lately, you’re bound to hear it within the first two hours you’re in the country. If like myself, you don’t even know what songs Michael Bolton actually sings, you will know soon enough. If Bryan Adams songs bring back thoughts of the mid-eighties, they will now bring thoughts of Nicaraguan friends who enjoy singing the lyrics at the top of their lungs at 6 AM. My favorite part of the random awful selection of US music listened to here in Nicaragua has to be what’s lost in the translation between English and Spanish. Although in English most romantic music refers to human relationships, the Spanish versions most often showcase Jesus as the song’s major theme.
As if listening to Jesus theme songs and “Evangelical Spoken Word” isn’t grand enough, approximately 1/3 of the bus rides also include an unsolicited Evangelical sermon. The first time I experienced this event, I sat wide-eyed and awed (you know those times you feel like life’s so ridiculous that you MUST be in a movie) as the preacher sent fire and brimstone across the vinyl bus seats, praising Senor Dios almighty before he came around to each patron, hand outstretched to collect cordobas. Though I’d like for nothing more than contributing to the construction of another “Dios Poderoso Iglesia de Jerusalem” or “DioZ es el Senor” (literally spelled with a backward S, seen on the front of a Baptist church here in Cusmapa), I normally choose to abstain from the bus pastor’s collection.
My favorite display of public Evangelism occurred nearly four months ago at the bus station in Managua (which apparently is an extremely dangerous place, though after this experience I have my doubts) as Ingrid and I headed home after a weekend in Managua. We curiously watched a pot-bellied middle aged man set up a karaoke machine, wiping beads of sweat off his brow with a washcloth and adjusting the volume so it would be just right (aka: enough to reach the ears of every person within a two block radius). After indulging the audience with a few warm-up elevator music hits, the pastor grabbed his Bible and started praying (now that I think about it, he sounded a lot like the “Evangelical Spoken Word” CD Eddy likes to play so much). Ingrid and I marveled at the exhibit, and the man took a long gulp of water before clearing his throat and beginning to SING. To get some idea of his vocal chord capabilities, you must imagine Josh Groban with the voice of a 60-year-old smoker. Not pretty. Entirely hilarious. Whoever does the Public Relations for the Evangelical churches in Nicaragua certainly iced the cake by flaunting this multi-talented pastor at one of the busiest travel hubs in the country.
I digress. Lauren, Mike and I set off for Esteli in the early morning last Saturday, after a lengthy Friday evening of shenanigans and billiards. The Esteli trip served three purposes:
1) We are unable to cash our paychecks in Somoto (the bank there we refer to as a FAKE bank because they do not take travelers checks OR cash any type of check from a different bank chain) so we must make the nine-hour round trip bus ride to stand in line for two hours to get our monthly stipend. (aka: I will NEVER complain about going to the bank in the States again.)
2) Lauren and I have decided to do our grocery shopping at the nearest store not owned by Wal-Mart, which happens to be a locally owned supermarket called “Las Segovias” in Esteli. It’s also the only place in the Northern part of Nicaragua which sells both wine and coconut milk.
* and they served us free beer on my birthday, which boosts the store’s rating to *****.
3) La Casita, our favorite restaurant in Nicaragua, which sells whole wheat bread, muesli, banana marmalade, and Swiss and brie cheese is located in Esteli. To keep up morale, I find I must indulge in one of their sandwiches and a banana milkshake at least once per month.
The stretch of Pan American Highway between Somoto and Esteli looks similar to the two-lane mountain madness at the top of the Fourth of July mountain pass between Idaho and Montana. While living in Spokane during college, I made this trip dozens of times in my trusty ‘93 Subaru Legacy (which hugs the curves much more successfully than the trusty rusty school buses here ever could) and endured quite a few near-death experiences (mainly due to blizzards, breakdowns of Reghan’s “Budgets” mini-van, and crazed semi-truck drivers). Winding two-lane mountain roads and school buses don’t mix. You get the picture.
This particular bus driver (as we were on an Express bus) drove like a “bat out of hell” (as my mom would say) and I felt more than a little queasy as his Indy 500 attempts at tight corners tilted the bus precariously. Lauren and I sat together near the front while Mike brought up the rear of the bus (this being the first time I’d ever experienced bus-attendant-enforced seat numbers). On a particularly dodgy twist, we passed a semi-truck and just as Lauren and I gave each other a “good god we might die today” look…
“WHAM!” people screaming and the bus lurched as the semi-truck grazed the back 15 feet of the bus. For a good 30 seconds, I thought our driver was going to keep on truckin’ down the highway with a hole ripped through the back of the bus. He finally pulled over and I saw Mike stand up brushing broken glass off himself. He’d been one row in front of the shattered windows. We piled off the bus, my heart pounding emergently. There were no serious injuries, only a shaken group of 20-some people who’d literally seen their lives flash before their eyes. The semi-truck we’d hit kept driving! Scary thought. Lauren, Mike, and I regained our composure and shook our heads in disbelief. The bus attendant began to sweep out the broken glass with the head of a broken broom and some of our fellow bus-mates hitchhiked with passing lorries. Five minutes after we stopped, folks loaded back on the bus and we looked at each other warily before making our way back to our seats. (Yes, we got BACK ON the wrecked bus). Ten minutes later we were still waiting and the man standing in front of Lauren and I reported that the driver had called the police, and we wouldn’t be going anywhere for some time. The three of us got back off the bus, tracked down the attendant to get 20 of our 30 cordobas refunded, and caught the next bus passing on its way to Esteli.
The irony of the situation was that the day before, Lauren asked if I carried my travelers insurance information with me in the case of a bus accident. Truthfully, I’ve never thought about how important it could be to have my medical information on me, but now I am absolutely convinced. I think Mike might take to renting cars rather than relying on public transportation (though I suggested the purchase of oxen and a cart, which would be much more cost effective than car rentals). Any minor sense of safety I felt traveling on the public bus system has been completely shot after that experience, especially seeing the nonchalant reactions of the Nicaraguan’s I’ve told about the wreck. Their flat-line response to hearing about the accident points to one simple fact: there are absolutely no magical crash-free school buses in this country…
Oh, the things we risk and endure just to get a brie and hummus sandwich, a can of coconut milk, and to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart owned Pali.
sábado, 3 de noviembre de 2007
126 Hours of Rain
Anyelka (of the Jungle Death March, a student of mine and adventure companion) comes to my house this morning offering fresh tortillas, still warm off the adobe oven. We sit at the dining room table and chat for some time, mainly commenting on the weather. You see, today is Saturday and it’s been raining non-stop since Tuesday morning. There’s been a few half-hour breaks here and there but currently we’re going on more than a hundred straight hours of rain. That’s more rain than I’m used to seeing in a whole year, or even five years!
Anyelka tells me that in El Cariso, a community close to Cusmapa, 50 people have been evacuated from their flooded homes and that two houses have already collapsed here in town.
A few days before, we sat at the same table as Jubelkis (Anyelka’s sister) nonchalantly mentioned that one of her cousins died last weekend in the drainage ditch right outside my house. Apparently he’d been in town early morning to buy some cheese and other supplies, walked across one of the wooden plank bridges (which my friend Mike refers to as “rickety planks”), slipped, fell head-first into the concrete riverbed, and was unconscious for a few minutes gulping down rainwater before someone found him and took him to the health center. He died on the spot, a mixture of the concussion and drowning in 6 inches of rainwater. I wonder if anyone at the scene knew CPR? Because of this accident (which has been coming for some time, as the ditch is not covered and is located on a main street where children play unsupervised all the time) people are scared and avoid walking over it
Anyelka earnestly states that her mother’s been with her aunt in El Cariso all week, praying and holding vigil over the boy. The family lost two cousins in the past year. Last April, Manuel, an 18-year-old (who used to be in the same high school choir I currently teach) started coughing up blood and died within 24 hours. Death in Nicaragua- not a foreign event awaiting to take people at age 70 peacefully in their sleep. Death waits around every corner. In a shot given at the health center with an overdose of medication, which killed Anyelka’s oldest sister three years ago, in fungal infections which require pills too expensive for a family to buy, in the inability to provide basic first aid to someone with a minor injury.
Anyelka and I continue discussing the weather, and she informs me that another hurricane is on the way. “Haven’t you been watching the news?” she exclaims, wondering at the insanity of the fact that I don’t spend any of my time watching the three television channels we get here in town. She’s adamant and seems to have her facts straight, becoming the fourth or fifth person in the past day to tell me that there’s never been a rain like this here in Cusmapa (since Hurricane Mitch, which put the pueblo out of contact with civilization for nearly 2 ½ months). I call Lauren (my new roomate) into the room and tell her the big news. I figure that whether or not Anyelka’s news right, we should be prepared for the worst. So we strap on our soaking wet shoes, damp rain jackets, wool socks, pop open our broken umbrellas, and head out into the rain.
“What should we buy?” Lauren asks, her eyes grazing each shelf of our corner pulperia store. The 10 X 15 foot room, stuffed to the gills with essential items such as hair gel, gumballs, Coca Cola, Gustitos (a Cheeto/Dorito mix), sardines, and shortening grows silent in pregnant anticipation. What do the crazy gringas want now? I shrug, wondering if sardines take first prize as the only non-perishable item to be found in Cusmapa.
Four sticks of margarine, two bags of rice, a dozen eggs, a pound of potatoes, a pound of cheese, and some sweet bread later, we pay the store’s owner 114 cordobas (about six dollars) and wade our way carefully downhill (currently downstream) stepping over moss-covered rocks and dodging the current river of rainwater pouring down what once was our street. We pack our pantry (ie: old non-functioning refrigerator) with our hurricane supplies and set to making banana pancakes (because in the face of a storm, what else are you going to do?).
After breakfast and a strong cup of coffee, we turn on our TV (for the first time) to see what Channel 10 (the 24-hour news station) reports about the storm. Twenty minutes into the news-watching all we’ve learned consists of the fact that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are buddy-buddy (big surprise there) and that George Bush has asked the legislature for “TLC” for Central American countries (lord knows what TLC means in Spanish, but we got a big kick out of that one as I‘m sure it does NOT refer to “tender loving care“). We also happen upon a program about fire-dancers, a Frankenstein-looking botox-enhanced mullet-sporting man singing about Jesus Cristo… and in the meantime realize that our roof has a massive leak. Nothing about the hurricane, so we turn off the scary electric box and figure we’ll just weather whatever comes our way.
I read in my Moon guidebook of Nicaragua some months ago about rains “being an excuse” for just about anything but never believed it until now. Public school’s been cancelled since last Tuesday and currently classes are suspended until further notice. We worked at Fabretto all last week but no students came, and to get to and from work was a quest each time. Thursday afternoon, after the strongest of rains hit town, Lauren and I ventured back to the house and ALL the streets in town were flooded riverbeds; we dodged raging waters left and right. Growing up in Montana, I was granted one “ice” day of winter freedom- we never had a single snow day in my 12 years of school! Imagine my thoughts regarding rain days….
A ridiculous concept, right? Wrong.
This kind of weather makes foot travel nearly impossible for many of my students who walk more than an hour to get to school each day. Most of them do not own a rain jacket (though it‘s rainy season six months of the year here) or any other waterproof clothing. My students who did show up last week at school wore sandals and cotton shorts and dresses and shivered constantly. Kids wander around the streets barefoot and wearing little or no clothing; while I’m dressed in the same garb I‘d sport for a day of downhill skiing. Our garden’s been ravaged. Half a banana tree fallen, all the sunflowers satiated and keeling over, roots exposed. I stood in the doorway this morning and watched two chickens unsuccessfully search for a dry place to preen.
I’m struck by how relatively unaffected I’ve been by the storm. Other than dreams of sunshine and lectures I’ve prepared in my mind targeted at global warming nay-sayers, I’m comfortable in my fleece pants with a cup of tea in a draft-free (relatively drip-free) house, guarding all the instruments from the music program (I currently have 9 guitars, a set of bongoes, a jembe drum, and 4 congo drums drying out in my bedroom- as our music classroom’s broken windows let in moisture), and banking on my backup margarine and rice supply to sustain me through whatever tempest comes my way.
And for those in my community who are losing so much more to these rains… crops, homes, family members… I hope, I wish, for blue skies…
Anyelka tells me that in El Cariso, a community close to Cusmapa, 50 people have been evacuated from their flooded homes and that two houses have already collapsed here in town.
A few days before, we sat at the same table as Jubelkis (Anyelka’s sister) nonchalantly mentioned that one of her cousins died last weekend in the drainage ditch right outside my house. Apparently he’d been in town early morning to buy some cheese and other supplies, walked across one of the wooden plank bridges (which my friend Mike refers to as “rickety planks”), slipped, fell head-first into the concrete riverbed, and was unconscious for a few minutes gulping down rainwater before someone found him and took him to the health center. He died on the spot, a mixture of the concussion and drowning in 6 inches of rainwater. I wonder if anyone at the scene knew CPR? Because of this accident (which has been coming for some time, as the ditch is not covered and is located on a main street where children play unsupervised all the time) people are scared and avoid walking over it
Anyelka earnestly states that her mother’s been with her aunt in El Cariso all week, praying and holding vigil over the boy. The family lost two cousins in the past year. Last April, Manuel, an 18-year-old (who used to be in the same high school choir I currently teach) started coughing up blood and died within 24 hours. Death in Nicaragua- not a foreign event awaiting to take people at age 70 peacefully in their sleep. Death waits around every corner. In a shot given at the health center with an overdose of medication, which killed Anyelka’s oldest sister three years ago, in fungal infections which require pills too expensive for a family to buy, in the inability to provide basic first aid to someone with a minor injury.
Anyelka and I continue discussing the weather, and she informs me that another hurricane is on the way. “Haven’t you been watching the news?” she exclaims, wondering at the insanity of the fact that I don’t spend any of my time watching the three television channels we get here in town. She’s adamant and seems to have her facts straight, becoming the fourth or fifth person in the past day to tell me that there’s never been a rain like this here in Cusmapa (since Hurricane Mitch, which put the pueblo out of contact with civilization for nearly 2 ½ months). I call Lauren (my new roomate) into the room and tell her the big news. I figure that whether or not Anyelka’s news right, we should be prepared for the worst. So we strap on our soaking wet shoes, damp rain jackets, wool socks, pop open our broken umbrellas, and head out into the rain.
“What should we buy?” Lauren asks, her eyes grazing each shelf of our corner pulperia store. The 10 X 15 foot room, stuffed to the gills with essential items such as hair gel, gumballs, Coca Cola, Gustitos (a Cheeto/Dorito mix), sardines, and shortening grows silent in pregnant anticipation. What do the crazy gringas want now? I shrug, wondering if sardines take first prize as the only non-perishable item to be found in Cusmapa.
Four sticks of margarine, two bags of rice, a dozen eggs, a pound of potatoes, a pound of cheese, and some sweet bread later, we pay the store’s owner 114 cordobas (about six dollars) and wade our way carefully downhill (currently downstream) stepping over moss-covered rocks and dodging the current river of rainwater pouring down what once was our street. We pack our pantry (ie: old non-functioning refrigerator) with our hurricane supplies and set to making banana pancakes (because in the face of a storm, what else are you going to do?).
After breakfast and a strong cup of coffee, we turn on our TV (for the first time) to see what Channel 10 (the 24-hour news station) reports about the storm. Twenty minutes into the news-watching all we’ve learned consists of the fact that Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are buddy-buddy (big surprise there) and that George Bush has asked the legislature for “TLC” for Central American countries (lord knows what TLC means in Spanish, but we got a big kick out of that one as I‘m sure it does NOT refer to “tender loving care“). We also happen upon a program about fire-dancers, a Frankenstein-looking botox-enhanced mullet-sporting man singing about Jesus Cristo… and in the meantime realize that our roof has a massive leak. Nothing about the hurricane, so we turn off the scary electric box and figure we’ll just weather whatever comes our way.
I read in my Moon guidebook of Nicaragua some months ago about rains “being an excuse” for just about anything but never believed it until now. Public school’s been cancelled since last Tuesday and currently classes are suspended until further notice. We worked at Fabretto all last week but no students came, and to get to and from work was a quest each time. Thursday afternoon, after the strongest of rains hit town, Lauren and I ventured back to the house and ALL the streets in town were flooded riverbeds; we dodged raging waters left and right. Growing up in Montana, I was granted one “ice” day of winter freedom- we never had a single snow day in my 12 years of school! Imagine my thoughts regarding rain days….
A ridiculous concept, right? Wrong.
This kind of weather makes foot travel nearly impossible for many of my students who walk more than an hour to get to school each day. Most of them do not own a rain jacket (though it‘s rainy season six months of the year here) or any other waterproof clothing. My students who did show up last week at school wore sandals and cotton shorts and dresses and shivered constantly. Kids wander around the streets barefoot and wearing little or no clothing; while I’m dressed in the same garb I‘d sport for a day of downhill skiing. Our garden’s been ravaged. Half a banana tree fallen, all the sunflowers satiated and keeling over, roots exposed. I stood in the doorway this morning and watched two chickens unsuccessfully search for a dry place to preen.
I’m struck by how relatively unaffected I’ve been by the storm. Other than dreams of sunshine and lectures I’ve prepared in my mind targeted at global warming nay-sayers, I’m comfortable in my fleece pants with a cup of tea in a draft-free (relatively drip-free) house, guarding all the instruments from the music program (I currently have 9 guitars, a set of bongoes, a jembe drum, and 4 congo drums drying out in my bedroom- as our music classroom’s broken windows let in moisture), and banking on my backup margarine and rice supply to sustain me through whatever tempest comes my way.
And for those in my community who are losing so much more to these rains… crops, homes, family members… I hope, I wish, for blue skies…
jueves, 4 de octubre de 2007
Niblits (Nica Newsy Tidbits)
Oh dear I am a slacker. I haven´t written anything of substance, or given an update of sorts for months! Life here is treating me so well! Things here are busy, yet the days are long and tranquil. I have been teaching three choirs (all different ages), an English class (of 10-14 year-olds), voice lessons, and have even managed to score a night with a family once per week where I give a piano lesson to their daughter in exchange for great company and dinner! I am feeling more and more at home in my community, connecting with my co-workers on a deeper level, and my language has improved drastically. It´s been interesting to have my language capabilities and trust in relationships develop at a similar pace, and I have found in the past months more and more deep conversations with my students and co-workers.
The electricity situation in the country has not improved at all, we are power-less from 7 AM until 3 PM most days… at first I was annoyed with the lack of light, but I have realized that it has freed up time I probably would have spent browsing around on the internet, and have been able to use this time to do MUCH better things. My guitar playing is improving bit by bit (thanks to finding a beginners Beatles book and some Christmas songs with tabs on them), and I have a lot more time to lesson plan, and to engage in any student who happens to pop in to my office. That being said, the power situation is OK for me but is affecting Nicaragua drastically on the economic front. I can´t imagine what the lack of electricity does for businesses around the country, we are blessed in Cusmapa to have less reliance on electricity. Candles are a wonderful, wonderful invention indeed! But I do miss being able to rely on my refrigerator to keep things from spoiling, and showers in the morning…
I spent two weeks in the US at the beginning of August, one week with my dad´s family in Wisconsin at our family reunion (highlighted by dancing to blues bands, card games galore, golf tournaments, great time with cousins, and my new stepsister Emily getting jabbed in the leg with a lawn dart… welcome to the family!). The second week I spent in Montana, seeing my mom´s family and hanging out with friends. It was incredible to see all my loved ones again! The highlights of that week were many barbeques, bluegrass dancing at the Top Hat, shuffleboard, croquet at the Miller´s house, going to Flathead Lake with my mom, Cece, Kate, Tira, and Kayla, getting to see my favourite cousins, lots of laughter, great food, even greater company! It was so hard for me to leave Missoula, a place I feel that will always be my roots and soul. I cried through the entire first two flights back to Nicaragua… but the moment I set foot on this country´s soil again I felt rejuvenated and ready to get back to Cusmapa. That, combined with the amount of incredible little kid hugs I received upon my arrival (and every day since) has lessened the homesickness. But I still crave the sound of banjos, my mom´s hugs, my little sister´s laughter, and the bright eyes of my friends. I am so excited to see all of you again next July!
Since I´ve been back, things are busy and wonderful. There´s been an influx of new Fabretto volunteers (up until this point in my trip I had been the only one). Hannah, who is in Esteli, Mike who is living in Somoto, and Lauren who is my new roomie in Cusmapa! It´s great to have folks to bomb around and travel with, and to have places to go on the weekends. And more company so I can quit doing dorky things like playing Scrabble against myself for fun. (wow, yeah… lame, I know) About a month ago, we had an unprecedentedly crazy weekend in Cusmapa, attended by Josh and Adriana (of JVI clan), and Hannah and Mike. We spent the weekend basically cooking glorious amounts of food and drinking rum… plans to hike on Saturday were thwarted with a late night Friday, spent carrying on and dancing and playing cards. The food highlights included fresh pineapple, alfredo, the best cuajada (fresh cheese!) I have ever tasted, French toast, banana bread, mojitos, and CALZONES (something I never thought in a million years I would eat in Nicaragua). Lots of giggles and ridiculousness. My new roommate Lauren arrived this week and I can already tell we are going to be great friends. She seems like a really compassionate, driven, mindful, artsy type and we are settling into living together and enjoying each other´s company.
For those of you who read the twisted ankles and toothbrushes story, my ankle is feeling a bit better these days. I fell again last week (yeah, I know) which made for a nasty return to the swelling and more pain than I had initially experienced… but it seems to be healing. I went to the school doctor (the same one who told me after the scorpion sting incident that I would ´feel better in a week´) and I think he basically told me what I needed to do to get better was to QUIT FALLING. Which I totally agree with the fellow. It´s difficult, however, to quit falling when I constantly want to be looking at the trees and clouds and the man riding past me on his horse carrying a machete, and the little kids playing in the street. I don´t want to be constantly looking at my feet, I feel like if I do that I will miss what´s really going on in the world! I told the doctor that and he sort of looked at me like I was nuts. It´s true though! I want to look at the clouds while I´m walking sometimes, darnit! So I have been very careful each step the past few weeks and have not noticed a single thing walking too and from school, I am too busy pondering my muddy stinky feet.
A bit of exciting news, I found out last week that my high school choir will be travelling to Spain in March! Apparently there´s a big Georgetown University event (the bigwigs at Fabretto are alumni) and it will be in Madrid, and they want to have Coro Fabrettino sing at the huge banquet of the weekend. Intense! Also, Fabretto has a sister organization in Barcelona, and donors from some beach town in the south of Spain, so we can make it into a tour and travel all over the place singing for people who´ve donated to the organization over the years. EXCELLENT! I am so excited for the trip, it´s sort of overwhelming to think about it now as I know it will be stressful… but I am hoping to get more chaperones in on this adventure so I am not running all over the place the whole time I am there. So that´s my sweet travel news, which means I may have to spend part of my planned vacation time (in January) doing practices with the high schoolers for the trip. But… for a free trip to Spain I guess I could probably manage that.
I am getting ready to have a slew of visitors the next few months! My buddy Evin from college gets here in a few weeks, Katie AND Pat are coming for Thanksgiving (Katie´s one of my best friends from high school and Pat was the last choir director in Cusmapa), then my family will be here for Christmas (and Cece and Cory might stay an extra week so we can have some sibling adventures!!!), then Steph is coming in February for two weeks! AND hopefully Reghan will quit her job and come live with me for a couple of months next Spring. It will be wonderful to get to show all these folks around my home, to have them meet my students and friends and get to know the community.
I am headed to Managua this weekend to do something I never thought I would do in my lifetime… see the Black Eyed Peas in concert. There´s about 10 of us going to the concert, so I think it should be a great time. Hannah, Lauren, and I will also be helping our friend Karlita celebrate her birthday this weekend with margaritas and dancing! So my days of being a hermit here may be officially over, moved to a new phase of having constant company… good stuff! I´m glad to have had the alone time at the beginning to have to really get through things myself, but it feels great now to have some real support and great friends here. Josh and James have also been ´brewing´ some wine type beverage, which sounds very sketchy, and we may get our first taste of that this weekend. We are also planning on going to Leon (a great cultural center of the country, and an hour from the beach) for my birthday here in a couple of weekends. Lots and lots of things happening! Goodness all over the place!
On that note I must sign off, but I send all of you many blessings, and hope all´s well in the rest of the world!
Celebrating 9 months of living in Nicaragua, and loving every moment! And all of you! Love, Cal
The electricity situation in the country has not improved at all, we are power-less from 7 AM until 3 PM most days… at first I was annoyed with the lack of light, but I have realized that it has freed up time I probably would have spent browsing around on the internet, and have been able to use this time to do MUCH better things. My guitar playing is improving bit by bit (thanks to finding a beginners Beatles book and some Christmas songs with tabs on them), and I have a lot more time to lesson plan, and to engage in any student who happens to pop in to my office. That being said, the power situation is OK for me but is affecting Nicaragua drastically on the economic front. I can´t imagine what the lack of electricity does for businesses around the country, we are blessed in Cusmapa to have less reliance on electricity. Candles are a wonderful, wonderful invention indeed! But I do miss being able to rely on my refrigerator to keep things from spoiling, and showers in the morning…
I spent two weeks in the US at the beginning of August, one week with my dad´s family in Wisconsin at our family reunion (highlighted by dancing to blues bands, card games galore, golf tournaments, great time with cousins, and my new stepsister Emily getting jabbed in the leg with a lawn dart… welcome to the family!). The second week I spent in Montana, seeing my mom´s family and hanging out with friends. It was incredible to see all my loved ones again! The highlights of that week were many barbeques, bluegrass dancing at the Top Hat, shuffleboard, croquet at the Miller´s house, going to Flathead Lake with my mom, Cece, Kate, Tira, and Kayla, getting to see my favourite cousins, lots of laughter, great food, even greater company! It was so hard for me to leave Missoula, a place I feel that will always be my roots and soul. I cried through the entire first two flights back to Nicaragua… but the moment I set foot on this country´s soil again I felt rejuvenated and ready to get back to Cusmapa. That, combined with the amount of incredible little kid hugs I received upon my arrival (and every day since) has lessened the homesickness. But I still crave the sound of banjos, my mom´s hugs, my little sister´s laughter, and the bright eyes of my friends. I am so excited to see all of you again next July!
Since I´ve been back, things are busy and wonderful. There´s been an influx of new Fabretto volunteers (up until this point in my trip I had been the only one). Hannah, who is in Esteli, Mike who is living in Somoto, and Lauren who is my new roomie in Cusmapa! It´s great to have folks to bomb around and travel with, and to have places to go on the weekends. And more company so I can quit doing dorky things like playing Scrabble against myself for fun. (wow, yeah… lame, I know) About a month ago, we had an unprecedentedly crazy weekend in Cusmapa, attended by Josh and Adriana (of JVI clan), and Hannah and Mike. We spent the weekend basically cooking glorious amounts of food and drinking rum… plans to hike on Saturday were thwarted with a late night Friday, spent carrying on and dancing and playing cards. The food highlights included fresh pineapple, alfredo, the best cuajada (fresh cheese!) I have ever tasted, French toast, banana bread, mojitos, and CALZONES (something I never thought in a million years I would eat in Nicaragua). Lots of giggles and ridiculousness. My new roommate Lauren arrived this week and I can already tell we are going to be great friends. She seems like a really compassionate, driven, mindful, artsy type and we are settling into living together and enjoying each other´s company.
For those of you who read the twisted ankles and toothbrushes story, my ankle is feeling a bit better these days. I fell again last week (yeah, I know) which made for a nasty return to the swelling and more pain than I had initially experienced… but it seems to be healing. I went to the school doctor (the same one who told me after the scorpion sting incident that I would ´feel better in a week´) and I think he basically told me what I needed to do to get better was to QUIT FALLING. Which I totally agree with the fellow. It´s difficult, however, to quit falling when I constantly want to be looking at the trees and clouds and the man riding past me on his horse carrying a machete, and the little kids playing in the street. I don´t want to be constantly looking at my feet, I feel like if I do that I will miss what´s really going on in the world! I told the doctor that and he sort of looked at me like I was nuts. It´s true though! I want to look at the clouds while I´m walking sometimes, darnit! So I have been very careful each step the past few weeks and have not noticed a single thing walking too and from school, I am too busy pondering my muddy stinky feet.
A bit of exciting news, I found out last week that my high school choir will be travelling to Spain in March! Apparently there´s a big Georgetown University event (the bigwigs at Fabretto are alumni) and it will be in Madrid, and they want to have Coro Fabrettino sing at the huge banquet of the weekend. Intense! Also, Fabretto has a sister organization in Barcelona, and donors from some beach town in the south of Spain, so we can make it into a tour and travel all over the place singing for people who´ve donated to the organization over the years. EXCELLENT! I am so excited for the trip, it´s sort of overwhelming to think about it now as I know it will be stressful… but I am hoping to get more chaperones in on this adventure so I am not running all over the place the whole time I am there. So that´s my sweet travel news, which means I may have to spend part of my planned vacation time (in January) doing practices with the high schoolers for the trip. But… for a free trip to Spain I guess I could probably manage that.
I am getting ready to have a slew of visitors the next few months! My buddy Evin from college gets here in a few weeks, Katie AND Pat are coming for Thanksgiving (Katie´s one of my best friends from high school and Pat was the last choir director in Cusmapa), then my family will be here for Christmas (and Cece and Cory might stay an extra week so we can have some sibling adventures!!!), then Steph is coming in February for two weeks! AND hopefully Reghan will quit her job and come live with me for a couple of months next Spring. It will be wonderful to get to show all these folks around my home, to have them meet my students and friends and get to know the community.
I am headed to Managua this weekend to do something I never thought I would do in my lifetime… see the Black Eyed Peas in concert. There´s about 10 of us going to the concert, so I think it should be a great time. Hannah, Lauren, and I will also be helping our friend Karlita celebrate her birthday this weekend with margaritas and dancing! So my days of being a hermit here may be officially over, moved to a new phase of having constant company… good stuff! I´m glad to have had the alone time at the beginning to have to really get through things myself, but it feels great now to have some real support and great friends here. Josh and James have also been ´brewing´ some wine type beverage, which sounds very sketchy, and we may get our first taste of that this weekend. We are also planning on going to Leon (a great cultural center of the country, and an hour from the beach) for my birthday here in a couple of weekends. Lots and lots of things happening! Goodness all over the place!
On that note I must sign off, but I send all of you many blessings, and hope all´s well in the rest of the world!
Celebrating 9 months of living in Nicaragua, and loving every moment! And all of you! Love, Cal
lunes, 27 de agosto de 2007
Twisted Ankles and Toothbrushes
If there was a Cusmapan newspaper, I’d certainly be writing a letter to the editor thanking the gracious driver and assistants of “el Pizote”, the rundown and re-painted (with Rastafarian tendencies) late 1970’s North American school bus that runs the early-morning route between Somoto and Cusmapa.
I decided to stay overnight in Somoto, eager for the company of my Fabretto co-workers and in dire need of a night of being social in English. I knew full-well that the Friday night would probably end with little sleep, as I needed to take the 6 AM sleepy-eyed bus back to Cusmapa for a 9 AM choir concert on Saturday. Nonetheless, I decided dealing with the early morning would be a small price to pay for a bit of the good times. I played cards with Mike (one of the new volunteers), Oliver (my Peace Corps buddy), and two of Oliver’s Nicaraguan neighbors. We carried on jabbering and singing along to cheesy love songs until the wee hours of the morning. I knew the 6 AM wake-up call would come all too soon…
I slept lightly and awoke at 4, 4:15, 5, 5:30 to the fog-muffled sounds of pre-dawn Nicaragua. Roosters crowing, women dramatically relaying their latest string of life-inflicted barbarities on the way to set up produce stands at the market, taxis passing to and fro beeping at pedestrians in mock warning. At 6, I pulled myself out of bed and wrestled with whether or not I had time to shower (a 10 second match halted with the reflection that I hadn’t showered since Tuesday) and jumped in the ice cold garden-hose stream (what heavenly water pressure!) for just enough time to get soapy and endure a bone chattering rinse. I popped my pajamas back on and grabbed my carton of carrot-orange juice from the fridge, assuming I had at least 10 more minutes (as it was 6:06 and the bus normally doesn’t pass by the house until 6:15 at the earliest).
A too-close for comfort horn blared, and suddenly thrown into panic mode I made a mad dash for my backpack, oversized blue plaid umbrella, and with toothbrush still in mouth, ran full-speed out the door.
I forgot about the front steps.
As quickly as I’d congratulated myself for being ready to leap to action at a moment’s notice, I was brought down and a soul curdling pop resounded from my ankle. I immediately looked up to make sure the bus hadn’t yet passed, and seeing it rambling 30 yards away, burst into tears. An older man who happened to be walking by must have seen me fall then reach my arms out to the bus in desperation. “SUAVE! SUAVE!” (slow down!) he yelled at the driver, then grabbed my arm and got me to my feet and up the steps of “el Pizote” while explaining to the bus driver that he’d seen me take a fall. I never even got a look at this man’s face, he came in and out of my morning as quickly as I took that leap off the stairs. Through my streaming tears, I realized I hadn’t breathed in what felt like 10 minutes (but must have been more like 20 seconds) and started gulping the air desperately, trying to calm myself down.
I stretched my leg and propped my ankle up on the seat in front of me, figuring that maybe if I levitated it the throbbing twisting would cease. The bus assistant (I want to call him a “runner” for some reason, as his duties include running in and out of the bus during the whole route, tossing firewood and crates of tomatoes and rucksacks full of rice and beans onto the roof and giving his hand to aid teetering old ladies and gringas crying with an umbrella in one hand and a carton of juice and toothbrush in the other) asked me if I was ok and I tearfully asked him if he thought we could find a place along the way to buy some ice. The next stop, he set off out on a “hielo” search and the concerned driver regarded my foot like a chicken about to be beheaded- “it’s not the bone” he declared as he grabbed my ankle and gave my foot a good tug. I winced. “No, no es tan serio” (No, it’s not really that serious… though at the time I felt like I was lying). No luck with the ice at the first 3 stops on the pulperias lining main street Somoto. Finally, at the last chance pulperia on the way out of town the runner appeared triumphant with a block of ice just as my seatmate produced some sort of icy hot salve remedy and told me it would help. I spread the miracle salve on my ankle and winced with the 2 lb block of ice jostling against my tendons… watching the countryside pass slower than I’d ever imagined it could.
I noticed more wildflowers than I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve taken this trip dozens of times in the past 7 ½ months. Shooting stars, buttercups, and a red-antennae laden mad-haired flower straight out of the world of Dr. Seuss. I sat in the front seat and watched people’s eyes as they boarded the bus and wondered at their brightness and hollowness, smiled through gritted teeth at the 4 and 5-year-old chatterboxes off for a Saturday outing with Grandma, and shifted in my seat multiple times before I realized I was sitting on my toothbrush. Finally, about two hours into the trip, my foot couldn’t stand the ice any longer, and having turned into a full-body cramp from the awkward raised leg position, I decided to ditch the ice and see how it felt to put a bit of weight on my foot. I knew by then it wasn’t a sprain- I’ve gone through that nastiness before (falling on a sidewalk, of course. How the hell do I manage to hurt myself doing such run-of-the mill things and not on adventures where it would at least be a good story?!), and though the ache didn’t go away I no longer felt the twisting hot poker in the depths of my ankle. I paid the runner the standard fare (20 cordobas, or about $1.10) and tried to give him some money for the ice, which he politely refused. As the bus slowed to let me off at my corner (between the cemetery and the Catholic church) I slowly made my way down the stairs and the driver ever-so-kindly reminded me “not to fall” again. I’ll try to keep that in mind.
I shuffled my way to my house, using the ridiculous umbrella for a cane substitute, wrapped my ankle, took a good dose of Ibuprofen, and stopped to ponder the morning for a moment. In that moment where I lay so vulnerable on the side of the road I felt even more desperate than during the scorpion sting episode (then I had resigned my life to the fates and let venom run its course) and I wonder how long I would have sat there dimly bemoaning my minor injury if the bus had just passed right by… if not for the faceless gruff-voiced man who grabbed me under the armpit and a crinkly eyed driver who slapped me back to reality and the mustachioed runner who grinned with the first-prize trophy of an ice block… I might have sat alone curbside in a small pueblo in Nicaragua and peered from behind a curtain of self-pity at a desperate world.
Instead I sit here, awestruck once again at the grace of humanity and laughing to myself about the unbelievable spectacle I must have been this morning when I hobbled sobbing onto “el Pizote”, the bespectacled gringa with a bright-pink toothbrush and umbrella- prepared to face the world one torrential downpour, cavity, or twisted ankle at a time.
I decided to stay overnight in Somoto, eager for the company of my Fabretto co-workers and in dire need of a night of being social in English. I knew full-well that the Friday night would probably end with little sleep, as I needed to take the 6 AM sleepy-eyed bus back to Cusmapa for a 9 AM choir concert on Saturday. Nonetheless, I decided dealing with the early morning would be a small price to pay for a bit of the good times. I played cards with Mike (one of the new volunteers), Oliver (my Peace Corps buddy), and two of Oliver’s Nicaraguan neighbors. We carried on jabbering and singing along to cheesy love songs until the wee hours of the morning. I knew the 6 AM wake-up call would come all too soon…
I slept lightly and awoke at 4, 4:15, 5, 5:30 to the fog-muffled sounds of pre-dawn Nicaragua. Roosters crowing, women dramatically relaying their latest string of life-inflicted barbarities on the way to set up produce stands at the market, taxis passing to and fro beeping at pedestrians in mock warning. At 6, I pulled myself out of bed and wrestled with whether or not I had time to shower (a 10 second match halted with the reflection that I hadn’t showered since Tuesday) and jumped in the ice cold garden-hose stream (what heavenly water pressure!) for just enough time to get soapy and endure a bone chattering rinse. I popped my pajamas back on and grabbed my carton of carrot-orange juice from the fridge, assuming I had at least 10 more minutes (as it was 6:06 and the bus normally doesn’t pass by the house until 6:15 at the earliest).
A too-close for comfort horn blared, and suddenly thrown into panic mode I made a mad dash for my backpack, oversized blue plaid umbrella, and with toothbrush still in mouth, ran full-speed out the door.
I forgot about the front steps.
As quickly as I’d congratulated myself for being ready to leap to action at a moment’s notice, I was brought down and a soul curdling pop resounded from my ankle. I immediately looked up to make sure the bus hadn’t yet passed, and seeing it rambling 30 yards away, burst into tears. An older man who happened to be walking by must have seen me fall then reach my arms out to the bus in desperation. “SUAVE! SUAVE!” (slow down!) he yelled at the driver, then grabbed my arm and got me to my feet and up the steps of “el Pizote” while explaining to the bus driver that he’d seen me take a fall. I never even got a look at this man’s face, he came in and out of my morning as quickly as I took that leap off the stairs. Through my streaming tears, I realized I hadn’t breathed in what felt like 10 minutes (but must have been more like 20 seconds) and started gulping the air desperately, trying to calm myself down.
I stretched my leg and propped my ankle up on the seat in front of me, figuring that maybe if I levitated it the throbbing twisting would cease. The bus assistant (I want to call him a “runner” for some reason, as his duties include running in and out of the bus during the whole route, tossing firewood and crates of tomatoes and rucksacks full of rice and beans onto the roof and giving his hand to aid teetering old ladies and gringas crying with an umbrella in one hand and a carton of juice and toothbrush in the other) asked me if I was ok and I tearfully asked him if he thought we could find a place along the way to buy some ice. The next stop, he set off out on a “hielo” search and the concerned driver regarded my foot like a chicken about to be beheaded- “it’s not the bone” he declared as he grabbed my ankle and gave my foot a good tug. I winced. “No, no es tan serio” (No, it’s not really that serious… though at the time I felt like I was lying). No luck with the ice at the first 3 stops on the pulperias lining main street Somoto. Finally, at the last chance pulperia on the way out of town the runner appeared triumphant with a block of ice just as my seatmate produced some sort of icy hot salve remedy and told me it would help. I spread the miracle salve on my ankle and winced with the 2 lb block of ice jostling against my tendons… watching the countryside pass slower than I’d ever imagined it could.
I noticed more wildflowers than I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve taken this trip dozens of times in the past 7 ½ months. Shooting stars, buttercups, and a red-antennae laden mad-haired flower straight out of the world of Dr. Seuss. I sat in the front seat and watched people’s eyes as they boarded the bus and wondered at their brightness and hollowness, smiled through gritted teeth at the 4 and 5-year-old chatterboxes off for a Saturday outing with Grandma, and shifted in my seat multiple times before I realized I was sitting on my toothbrush. Finally, about two hours into the trip, my foot couldn’t stand the ice any longer, and having turned into a full-body cramp from the awkward raised leg position, I decided to ditch the ice and see how it felt to put a bit of weight on my foot. I knew by then it wasn’t a sprain- I’ve gone through that nastiness before (falling on a sidewalk, of course. How the hell do I manage to hurt myself doing such run-of-the mill things and not on adventures where it would at least be a good story?!), and though the ache didn’t go away I no longer felt the twisting hot poker in the depths of my ankle. I paid the runner the standard fare (20 cordobas, or about $1.10) and tried to give him some money for the ice, which he politely refused. As the bus slowed to let me off at my corner (between the cemetery and the Catholic church) I slowly made my way down the stairs and the driver ever-so-kindly reminded me “not to fall” again. I’ll try to keep that in mind.
I shuffled my way to my house, using the ridiculous umbrella for a cane substitute, wrapped my ankle, took a good dose of Ibuprofen, and stopped to ponder the morning for a moment. In that moment where I lay so vulnerable on the side of the road I felt even more desperate than during the scorpion sting episode (then I had resigned my life to the fates and let venom run its course) and I wonder how long I would have sat there dimly bemoaning my minor injury if the bus had just passed right by… if not for the faceless gruff-voiced man who grabbed me under the armpit and a crinkly eyed driver who slapped me back to reality and the mustachioed runner who grinned with the first-prize trophy of an ice block… I might have sat alone curbside in a small pueblo in Nicaragua and peered from behind a curtain of self-pity at a desperate world.
Instead I sit here, awestruck once again at the grace of humanity and laughing to myself about the unbelievable spectacle I must have been this morning when I hobbled sobbing onto “el Pizote”, the bespectacled gringa with a bright-pink toothbrush and umbrella- prepared to face the world one torrential downpour, cavity, or twisted ankle at a time.
miércoles, 22 de agosto de 2007
American Blackout
I recently watched “American Blackout”, a documentary film depicting the utter racial discrimination faced mainly by African Americans and Latinos during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. I suspected fishy happenings in Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004) but never knew that the actions of the election directors in these respective states were so blatantly undemocratic.
How was front-page news not made when Jeb Bush , Governor of Florida, and Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State, hired a private firm to create a list of 90,000 supposed felons (using misdemeanor records from the state of Texas, of course) in order to blacklist these “criminals”? Choicepoint, the privately contracted company, was informed that names on this list only needed to be 80% matched in order to block a registered voter from casting their ballot in the 2000 presidential elections. So in the state of Texas if you had a misdemeanor charge and your name happened to be John Smith, a registered voter in the state of Florida by the name of John Smyth could have been cut out of voting. No questions asked. Choicepoint was ASKED SPECIFICALLY to provide an UN-VERIFIED list of banned “felons”. Turns out that 97% of these American citizens whose civil rights were destroyed were INNOCENT. How ironic that not only were 75-80% of those listed as apparent “felons” African American, but also that statistically African Americans tend to vote 9 out of 10 times for a democratic candidate! This black list (pun intended) blocked approximately 90,000 legitimate American citizens from voting and the state of Florida (as we all know) went to George Jr. by a mere 537 votes.
Do the math.
The documentary also followed sketchy happenings during Ohio’s bit of the 2004 presidential elections in which election machines were pulled in dozens of inner city precincts in which thousands more citizens were registered to vote than the 2000 elections. Camcorder footage shows empty gymnasiums in the suburbs contrasted with people in the inner city areas who waited in the rain 4 hours to cast their ballots. How can the Elections Committee of Ohio possibly explain the numbers when “Blackout” clearly shows that machines were ONLY pulled from the poorer areas of Ohio’s larger cities (in areas where registered voters were up 27% from the 2000 elections); NO machines were pulled from suburbia? Logical? Only because the Republican government was well aware of the lengths it needed to go to in order to keep their puppet in power. Embarrassing? YES.
Last but certainly not least, “Blackout” follows the story of ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (of Georgia), a progressive African American woman dedicated to pulling the truth out of war-mongering politicians on the hill, who was sacrificed and labeled as “un-American” for asking questions about 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the debacles of the past two presidential elections (she started asking these questions back in 2000 and to this day has not been dissuaded from her quest for truth). The Republican powers that be banded together to force McKinney out of office when her truth-telling went “too far”. Where are we as a democracy when we’re chucking politicians like McKinney out of power? When did it become un-patriotic to ask questions which DESERVE answers?
It almost seems like the Republican leaders of our country have something to hide!
Let’s do some justice to honest politicians like Cynthia McKinney who are actually working for the people rather than the system, who believe in democracy in its truest sense. Let’s start asking REAL questions and DEMANDING answers. 2008 will not be another regression to the pre-civil rights days. Take action and believe in change!
Let’s get those insurgents off Capitol Hill!
How was front-page news not made when Jeb Bush , Governor of Florida, and Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State, hired a private firm to create a list of 90,000 supposed felons (using misdemeanor records from the state of Texas, of course) in order to blacklist these “criminals”? Choicepoint, the privately contracted company, was informed that names on this list only needed to be 80% matched in order to block a registered voter from casting their ballot in the 2000 presidential elections. So in the state of Texas if you had a misdemeanor charge and your name happened to be John Smith, a registered voter in the state of Florida by the name of John Smyth could have been cut out of voting. No questions asked. Choicepoint was ASKED SPECIFICALLY to provide an UN-VERIFIED list of banned “felons”. Turns out that 97% of these American citizens whose civil rights were destroyed were INNOCENT. How ironic that not only were 75-80% of those listed as apparent “felons” African American, but also that statistically African Americans tend to vote 9 out of 10 times for a democratic candidate! This black list (pun intended) blocked approximately 90,000 legitimate American citizens from voting and the state of Florida (as we all know) went to George Jr. by a mere 537 votes.
Do the math.
The documentary also followed sketchy happenings during Ohio’s bit of the 2004 presidential elections in which election machines were pulled in dozens of inner city precincts in which thousands more citizens were registered to vote than the 2000 elections. Camcorder footage shows empty gymnasiums in the suburbs contrasted with people in the inner city areas who waited in the rain 4 hours to cast their ballots. How can the Elections Committee of Ohio possibly explain the numbers when “Blackout” clearly shows that machines were ONLY pulled from the poorer areas of Ohio’s larger cities (in areas where registered voters were up 27% from the 2000 elections); NO machines were pulled from suburbia? Logical? Only because the Republican government was well aware of the lengths it needed to go to in order to keep their puppet in power. Embarrassing? YES.
Last but certainly not least, “Blackout” follows the story of ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (of Georgia), a progressive African American woman dedicated to pulling the truth out of war-mongering politicians on the hill, who was sacrificed and labeled as “un-American” for asking questions about 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the debacles of the past two presidential elections (she started asking these questions back in 2000 and to this day has not been dissuaded from her quest for truth). The Republican powers that be banded together to force McKinney out of office when her truth-telling went “too far”. Where are we as a democracy when we’re chucking politicians like McKinney out of power? When did it become un-patriotic to ask questions which DESERVE answers?
It almost seems like the Republican leaders of our country have something to hide!
Let’s do some justice to honest politicians like Cynthia McKinney who are actually working for the people rather than the system, who believe in democracy in its truest sense. Let’s start asking REAL questions and DEMANDING answers. 2008 will not be another regression to the pre-civil rights days. Take action and believe in change!
Let’s get those insurgents off Capitol Hill!
viernes, 20 de julio de 2007
back in the us of a
goodness gracious i haven't sat down to write in a long while... where to start?
i got back last week from a 2 week long adventure in the us of a; one week with 20 of my high school choir kids in DC and the other split between katie and dundas (in DC) and my gramma, aunt and uncle, and cousins in ohio. what a whirlwind! some of the highlights from the trip:
- airport hassles, we'd filled out the wrong forms and when we arrived at customs in the us had to fill out different forms for ALL TWENTY kids. insanity ensues, including a few security officials barking at me in english and my answering them in spanish without thinking about it. ridiculous, and i would not recommend offering to be responsible for getting 20 people who don't speak english through customs. not exactly the greatest highlight of the trip, but it definitely stands out in my mind as a lesson. i will never complain about going through customs again, so long as i don't have 20 teenagers in tow.
- lenin, norman, and magda getting interviewed by "telemundo", apparently one of the largest hispanic television stations in the area, meeting the ambassador, chumming it up and getting stuck yahda yahda-ing when all i wanted was to make my way to the wine table! (my god i don't care if you were the previous nicaraguan ambassador to the states just give me some shiraz).
- as we arrived at our dorm at georgetown after our first concert at the nicaraguan embassy, brian (who started the music program here and was on the trip to help chaperone) turned to me and said "um. i lost the key to the common room." (where we had forced all the kids to leave their room keys because then we could be "responsible" for them). i shook my head. typical. after going to the front desk at another dorm to beg the poor work study students to unlock one of the kids' doors, we walked back into our dorm building and could hear yelping from above. figuring it was the kids causing a ruckus, disregarding the fact that the elevator wasn't working, i tromped up the stairs to the 7th floor while preparing a lecture in my mind. when i got up to our floor, i was informed that the elevator was STUCK with 5 of the girls inside. the doors were cracked just enough to peek through and take a picture (i, of course, was absolutely cracking up at the whole situation and not really the sympathetic person you'd want in control of things at that moment). we called a security guard, and 5 minutes later a 7 foot tall black man came bursting up the stairs screaming "EVERYONE OUT OF THE HALL. I MEAN IT KIDS! NOW!" i was a bit shaken and trying not to laugh in his face (he was super intense) and tried to tell him "they're from nicaragua, they don't speak english" as he yelled in the elevator "PUSH THE RED BUTTON. DO YOU HEAR ME?! PUSH THE RED BUTTON!" i could tell he was just scaring the absolute daylights out of the girls. with his brute strength, our incredible hulk of a security guard managed to single handedly pry the doors apart and the girls came flooding out in a rush of tears and exclamations. we had a 10 minute reunion in which i held fifteen year-old roberta as she sobbed into my shirt, and let her cry a bit before asking "but won't your mom think this was hilarious?". she nodded through her tears. and contrary to my revised thoughts on the elevator (i took the stairs the rest of the week) and my expectations of the kids (you'd think they'd be a little wary of it after that experience) bright and early the next morning they piled on the elevator one after one without appearing the least bit tentative. lesson learned?!
- hitting "the toombs" (infamous georgetown bar) with karla (the other fabretto chaperone, and my best girl friend in nicaragua), and marveling at the ridiculousness of the frat boys. speaking in spanish about a guy sitting next to us who turned around and retorted with a haughty spanish remark. ooooops. having a guy offer to buy me a drink, taking a shot with him and talking to him for about 10 minutes, turning around to talk to karla for a moment and having him run out on me BEFORE paying the bill... complaining to the bartender and his reply "oh that happens all the time here. you're in georgetown!" my thoughts on the situation: if that ever happened in montana someone would get their ass kicked! needless to say, the cute bartender took pity on me and ended up buying me the drink. closing down the bar as i talked to the bouncer about children’s' art and what an important effect it has on the world. ha! what a teacher nerd. when i get tipsy i talk about my students... lordy.
- a night of sharing music with a group of teenage musicians from serbia and a children's choir from the DC area. a very low-key event, potluck style, forcing of kids to sit together even though they weren't able to talk (somehow laughter still rose from those tables, clinking and bouncing off the high vaulted church ceiling). each group performed, then the director of the DC choir (who's just a TAD bit more experienced than i am!) had picked out a song for the kids to sing together called "one song". she passed out sheet music to the 80-some kids and a few adults, and as magda and i joined their voices i felt a lump in my throat and couldn't stop the tears... "if we all sing one song, one song of love, one song of peace, one song to make all our troubles cease, just imagine what tomorrow could bring... if we all sing one song"... their voices rose and fell under her expert direction, and though my kids don't speak english they were smiling and obviously impacted. the pianist taught the kids and the audience some sign language, and then they performed the song with full instruments and movements and i just stood there wishing i could bottle the moment, the harmony, how simple life can be when we are willing to work together towards a common dream. after the song, a man i'd met earlier came up and introduced himself as the "drum instructor" for the DC choir. he was from west africa, a mountain of a man with a monumental smile and mischievous eyes which shined as he helped to pass out 40 jembe drums and handfuls of other random percussion instruments to all the kids, who'd sat in a clump at the front of the church in chattering excitement. the man led a 20 minute jam session and i watched his lack of inhibitions spread through the kids as those who started to play tentatively gained more and more confidence and were soon wailing away on the drums with abandon, grinning from ear to ear. my students allowed the innocence of their short childhood to shine through in these minutes, leaving me breathless and skipping around gleefully. when kids are jamming together and creating together, all sorts of good energy comes forth! what a burst of loving kindness! easily my favorite moment as a music teacher yet.
- a day at the museums... my favorite part being at the beginning of the "evolution" exhibition in the museum of natural history where gabby (one of the volunteers state-side who'd basically organized the trip for us) and i talked about how the kids were unable to learn critical thinking with the current educational system in nicaragua (she grew up there) and how the church influences so much of what people unquestioningly take to be true: ie: that evolution was falsified by scientists. we asked a few of the boys at the beginning of the exhibit whether or not they believed in evolution, to which they answered "no. because that's not the way it was". and left it at that. gabby smiled at me slyly and proceeded to explain the exhibit in great detail (i swear if you see it you will not be able to believe in anything OTHER than evolution as the reason we're here now) punctuating certain points. by the end of our time with the dinosaurs the boys looked at gabby and i and admitted with sheepish grins that "maybe" they had been mistaken, and that "maybe" they should think for themselves about things like that instead of just believing what the church says. (YES! SCORE ONE for critical thinking!). beyond that, the kids were in awe of the museums, they'd never seen nor expected to see anything like them. we also went to the museum of air and space, which was incredible. the sheer size of the rockets which propel shuttles to the moon, i have this lovely image of ileana bending over a railing to touch a shuttle rocket with her mouth wide open at the sheer grandeur of the object, turning to me as if to exclaim "can you believe THIS?!".
- saturday night at a piano bar with katie (after she brought me some chicken curry! amazing!) where we made our way to the piano and didn't leave for the rest of the evening, singing at the top of our lungs to every single song... until she slipped the piano man a sheet of paper which read "my friend callie came all the way from nicaragua to hear 'i've got friends in low places' and she'd love to sing it with you" therefore rendering me helpless to resist singing in front of the 300 some people in the bar... gulp! actually it was awesome, probably one of the better renditions i've ever done of it (most assuredly better than at cousin erin's wedding, regs?!). then taking a taxi back to georgetown (about 8 blocks) because katie insisted i couldn't walk and balking at the cost: $8. WHAT?! that could get me from managua to masaya by taxi! outrageous! i could never take taxis around in the us after being in managua so much, where you can go anywhere across the city for less than $2.
- a day spent at the international children’s arts festival (basically the reason we came to the us in the first place), singing on a stage which framed the capitol building. mainly, the highlight being singing our own version of bob marley's "one love" (translation of my spanish words being: here's a song for people who are fighting, we are asking you why, why? there's no politician in this whole world, who can take care of our future?). right at ya george bush! bam!
a 50 foot by 30 foot lego model of the us (you could build and contribute parts, and the kids spent about 2 hours playing there... you can never be too old for legos!), starting to paint a mural (as we watched other very artistic kids creating paintings for bill and hillary clinton, bill gates etc.) then having a woman come over to us FREAKING out because we weren't "art olympiad winners" and we weren't supposed to TOUCH the paints... i got a good laugh out of it. i hope bill clinton got some stick-figure drawing which says "nicaragua" and "coro fabrettiono" on it! ha! all the girls got henna tattoos, and we all had our names written in arabic. there were peace workshops, and an art gallery of children's paintings from all over the world. incredible stuff! peace through art! one love indeed!
- the last concert of our trip, on a side stage at the kennedy center (an impressive giant of a building, with 70 foot tall ceilings and hefty chandeliers... red curtains and all). we spent an hour testing the sound system, another hour listening to the serbian group (the same ones who'd performed with us at the church earlier in the week) tweak their instruments. we were finally set to go backstage when i turned around to talk to my aunt kelly (who was there with my cousins michelle and josh and my uncle david) and did a triple take. my DAD walked up the aisle. a tearful reunion in front of all my kids ensued with me proclaiming "es mi papa! es mi papa!" and them (confused by me as usual) laughing and pretending they knew what was going on. my dad surprised me! the concert was short and definitely our best of the week, and i was elated afterwards as we walked to a local italian restaurant for a "reception" with the president of the org's dad. i got to share dinner with my dad and other family, and felt extremely joyful. the kids started to sing (we took over the upper balcony of the restaurant), guitars were brought out of nowhere, and we were treated to an hour-long concert. we also performed a rousing version of "one love" (which the president's dad claimed to be his "new favorite song") and the kids were jovial and basking in the light of their success. an excellent evening.
- dropping everyone off at the airport! i don't know if i've ever been more relieved in my life. hugs all around, and promises that i'd actually return to nicaragua... saludos sent to my dad. i took a 20 minute taxi ride to my dad's hotel (right outside of DC) and met with my aunt and uncle and cousins and had breakfast then we hit the road for the 8 hour drive to ohio. they apologized furiously for making me drive with them (and i'm thinking "are you KIDDING! this is LUXURY! we have AIR CONDITIONING!). we ended up singing disney and show tunes for the last 4 hours of the trip, which i think made my uncle david ponder jumping out his childproof window... but made aunt kelser (the tone deaf version of maria from the 'sound of music') extremely happy, and passed the time well.
- time spent with gramma kay in her apartment in ohio, mainly playing scrabble or telling stories and talking about old pictures. we did some shopping and went to lunch, and played and played and played scrabble. gramma invited her two friends mert (age 92) and nancy (age 88) over to play with us for an afternoon which was very exciting. actually the best part of being there ended up being a trip to gramma's physical therapy appointment, where i got to meet her therapist (who she told me "he's SO cute. but he's married. and his wife's having a baby in two weeks") and took some candid photos of her workout (which she claimed not to want but later was so funny about). i admire her so much, she's going through her 8th knee surgery on her left knee and just refuses to be confined to a wheelchair. she wants to walk! her determination and the manner in which she perseveres in her health issues inspires me greatly. we also had a great discussion on "why jesus isn't my best friend" and i think we came to a good understanding that i can think jesus was a pretty awesome guy, but believe that there have been other prophets like him in our world, that he's not the only one. but gramma's pretty persistent that jesus is HER best friend, and not only that, but after i'd spent an hour or so showing her how to put digital pictures on her computer she exclaimed "oh! you can just do so much with the internet! i just thank jesus every day for the internet." i nearly had to sit down for fear laughter would crumble my body. "yes. yes, gramma. jesus did invent the internet."
she retorted cheerfully "well, he sure did help us find it!". oh jesus, finder of the internet... maybe someday we CAN be best friends.
- an extended weekend in DC with katie and dundas- hookah bars, sushi, birthday celebrations (with lots of beerpong, yummy pizza, and carrying on), eastern market, feasting on ben & jerry's, lots of giggles and catching up. dinner date with margo including an adventure to a super sketchy safeway to buy taco supplies, some ice cold blue moon and guinness, and all sorts of excellent conversation. linz's sister giving me a killer haircut, time spent decorating katie's ridiculous house for the parties (with both fourth of july and cinco de mayo decorations), incredible weather, awesome people...
- taking the 2 hour metro/bus trek to the dulles airport only to find that my flight to nicaragua had been cancelled due to an apparent hurricane occupying the air between DC and central america. the woman helping me at the TACA (read: super sketchy central/south american airline) being called to an urgent meeting and deserting her post as camera crews from local news stations showed up to interview folks in line who'd each come to the airport with an average of 8 bags... carrying their lives in duffel bags and tupperware containers. i turned to the pilot standing in line behind me who'd been on the phone with one of his buddies asking about the "hurricane" and asked him what the heck was going on. he shrugged his shoulders "dunno, but there sure as heck isn't a hurricane anywhere between here and nicaragua. they're totally lying to us." i just started laughing. of COURSE they would lie to us, rather than just saying there's a problem with the plane... my lovely airline helper came back after 20 minutes and looked flustered and told me i'd have to come back at 3 AM the next day. um. no. if i chose that program i'd either be 1) stuck at the airport for the next 14 hours, 2) stuck paying for an airport hotel, or 3) stuck paying for a taxi from adam's morgan neighborhood to dulles at 2 AM (read: at least 60 bucks). i ended up rescheduling my flight for the next available afternoon flight (i had two choices: 5 AM or 5 PM flights) and headed back into the city the same way i came. katie was working, and i don't have a phone... so i borrowed someone's cell phone on the bus and left her a message, giggling and shaking my head in utter disbelief. seems like my luck in nicaragua with transportation followed me all the way to DC. i ended up taking the metro to the right spot but got off on the wrong side of dupont square, walked 6 blocks with all my stuff and ended up at a park i'd never seen. i decided that rather than despair i'd do the only thing that made sense at the time, which of course meant picnicking at the park with the turkey sandwich i'd brought for the plane. i ended up talking with a homeless man who shared my bench, our conversation speckled with his observations about the changing city he'd called home his entire life as he carefully rolled cigarettes and politely refused the other half of my sandwich. he smiled to the skies and remarked on the weather being incredible (which it was- breezy, sunny, the perfect afternoon) as i watched the other park patrons- a gothic garbed couple tangled under a tree sharing headphones, a tailored-suit sporting businessman walking his groomed poodle, a woman in stirrup stretch pants and a mesh tank top engaged in a heated argument with whoever happened to be occupying her 10 foot radius. i wondered if any of these people smiled to the skies in the same way as my bench companion. as he used his long dirt-filled fingernails to smoke his 5th cigarette down to the roach and put the remnants securely in the pocket of his duct tape patched down coat, i wanted to thank him for praising such small happinesses, for still looking to the skies with reverence and thanks even though he'd so obviously fallen on hard times. instead, i smiled at the sky, smiled at him, and walked on with a lighter step to find my way.
i got back last week from a 2 week long adventure in the us of a; one week with 20 of my high school choir kids in DC and the other split between katie and dundas (in DC) and my gramma, aunt and uncle, and cousins in ohio. what a whirlwind! some of the highlights from the trip:
- airport hassles, we'd filled out the wrong forms and when we arrived at customs in the us had to fill out different forms for ALL TWENTY kids. insanity ensues, including a few security officials barking at me in english and my answering them in spanish without thinking about it. ridiculous, and i would not recommend offering to be responsible for getting 20 people who don't speak english through customs. not exactly the greatest highlight of the trip, but it definitely stands out in my mind as a lesson. i will never complain about going through customs again, so long as i don't have 20 teenagers in tow.
- lenin, norman, and magda getting interviewed by "telemundo", apparently one of the largest hispanic television stations in the area, meeting the ambassador, chumming it up and getting stuck yahda yahda-ing when all i wanted was to make my way to the wine table! (my god i don't care if you were the previous nicaraguan ambassador to the states just give me some shiraz).
- as we arrived at our dorm at georgetown after our first concert at the nicaraguan embassy, brian (who started the music program here and was on the trip to help chaperone) turned to me and said "um. i lost the key to the common room." (where we had forced all the kids to leave their room keys because then we could be "responsible" for them). i shook my head. typical. after going to the front desk at another dorm to beg the poor work study students to unlock one of the kids' doors, we walked back into our dorm building and could hear yelping from above. figuring it was the kids causing a ruckus, disregarding the fact that the elevator wasn't working, i tromped up the stairs to the 7th floor while preparing a lecture in my mind. when i got up to our floor, i was informed that the elevator was STUCK with 5 of the girls inside. the doors were cracked just enough to peek through and take a picture (i, of course, was absolutely cracking up at the whole situation and not really the sympathetic person you'd want in control of things at that moment). we called a security guard, and 5 minutes later a 7 foot tall black man came bursting up the stairs screaming "EVERYONE OUT OF THE HALL. I MEAN IT KIDS! NOW!" i was a bit shaken and trying not to laugh in his face (he was super intense) and tried to tell him "they're from nicaragua, they don't speak english" as he yelled in the elevator "PUSH THE RED BUTTON. DO YOU HEAR ME?! PUSH THE RED BUTTON!" i could tell he was just scaring the absolute daylights out of the girls. with his brute strength, our incredible hulk of a security guard managed to single handedly pry the doors apart and the girls came flooding out in a rush of tears and exclamations. we had a 10 minute reunion in which i held fifteen year-old roberta as she sobbed into my shirt, and let her cry a bit before asking "but won't your mom think this was hilarious?". she nodded through her tears. and contrary to my revised thoughts on the elevator (i took the stairs the rest of the week) and my expectations of the kids (you'd think they'd be a little wary of it after that experience) bright and early the next morning they piled on the elevator one after one without appearing the least bit tentative. lesson learned?!
- hitting "the toombs" (infamous georgetown bar) with karla (the other fabretto chaperone, and my best girl friend in nicaragua), and marveling at the ridiculousness of the frat boys. speaking in spanish about a guy sitting next to us who turned around and retorted with a haughty spanish remark. ooooops. having a guy offer to buy me a drink, taking a shot with him and talking to him for about 10 minutes, turning around to talk to karla for a moment and having him run out on me BEFORE paying the bill... complaining to the bartender and his reply "oh that happens all the time here. you're in georgetown!" my thoughts on the situation: if that ever happened in montana someone would get their ass kicked! needless to say, the cute bartender took pity on me and ended up buying me the drink. closing down the bar as i talked to the bouncer about children’s' art and what an important effect it has on the world. ha! what a teacher nerd. when i get tipsy i talk about my students... lordy.
- a night of sharing music with a group of teenage musicians from serbia and a children's choir from the DC area. a very low-key event, potluck style, forcing of kids to sit together even though they weren't able to talk (somehow laughter still rose from those tables, clinking and bouncing off the high vaulted church ceiling). each group performed, then the director of the DC choir (who's just a TAD bit more experienced than i am!) had picked out a song for the kids to sing together called "one song". she passed out sheet music to the 80-some kids and a few adults, and as magda and i joined their voices i felt a lump in my throat and couldn't stop the tears... "if we all sing one song, one song of love, one song of peace, one song to make all our troubles cease, just imagine what tomorrow could bring... if we all sing one song"... their voices rose and fell under her expert direction, and though my kids don't speak english they were smiling and obviously impacted. the pianist taught the kids and the audience some sign language, and then they performed the song with full instruments and movements and i just stood there wishing i could bottle the moment, the harmony, how simple life can be when we are willing to work together towards a common dream. after the song, a man i'd met earlier came up and introduced himself as the "drum instructor" for the DC choir. he was from west africa, a mountain of a man with a monumental smile and mischievous eyes which shined as he helped to pass out 40 jembe drums and handfuls of other random percussion instruments to all the kids, who'd sat in a clump at the front of the church in chattering excitement. the man led a 20 minute jam session and i watched his lack of inhibitions spread through the kids as those who started to play tentatively gained more and more confidence and were soon wailing away on the drums with abandon, grinning from ear to ear. my students allowed the innocence of their short childhood to shine through in these minutes, leaving me breathless and skipping around gleefully. when kids are jamming together and creating together, all sorts of good energy comes forth! what a burst of loving kindness! easily my favorite moment as a music teacher yet.
- a day at the museums... my favorite part being at the beginning of the "evolution" exhibition in the museum of natural history where gabby (one of the volunteers state-side who'd basically organized the trip for us) and i talked about how the kids were unable to learn critical thinking with the current educational system in nicaragua (she grew up there) and how the church influences so much of what people unquestioningly take to be true: ie: that evolution was falsified by scientists. we asked a few of the boys at the beginning of the exhibit whether or not they believed in evolution, to which they answered "no. because that's not the way it was". and left it at that. gabby smiled at me slyly and proceeded to explain the exhibit in great detail (i swear if you see it you will not be able to believe in anything OTHER than evolution as the reason we're here now) punctuating certain points. by the end of our time with the dinosaurs the boys looked at gabby and i and admitted with sheepish grins that "maybe" they had been mistaken, and that "maybe" they should think for themselves about things like that instead of just believing what the church says. (YES! SCORE ONE for critical thinking!). beyond that, the kids were in awe of the museums, they'd never seen nor expected to see anything like them. we also went to the museum of air and space, which was incredible. the sheer size of the rockets which propel shuttles to the moon, i have this lovely image of ileana bending over a railing to touch a shuttle rocket with her mouth wide open at the sheer grandeur of the object, turning to me as if to exclaim "can you believe THIS?!".
- saturday night at a piano bar with katie (after she brought me some chicken curry! amazing!) where we made our way to the piano and didn't leave for the rest of the evening, singing at the top of our lungs to every single song... until she slipped the piano man a sheet of paper which read "my friend callie came all the way from nicaragua to hear 'i've got friends in low places' and she'd love to sing it with you" therefore rendering me helpless to resist singing in front of the 300 some people in the bar... gulp! actually it was awesome, probably one of the better renditions i've ever done of it (most assuredly better than at cousin erin's wedding, regs?!). then taking a taxi back to georgetown (about 8 blocks) because katie insisted i couldn't walk and balking at the cost: $8. WHAT?! that could get me from managua to masaya by taxi! outrageous! i could never take taxis around in the us after being in managua so much, where you can go anywhere across the city for less than $2.
- a day spent at the international children’s arts festival (basically the reason we came to the us in the first place), singing on a stage which framed the capitol building. mainly, the highlight being singing our own version of bob marley's "one love" (translation of my spanish words being: here's a song for people who are fighting, we are asking you why, why? there's no politician in this whole world, who can take care of our future?). right at ya george bush! bam!
a 50 foot by 30 foot lego model of the us (you could build and contribute parts, and the kids spent about 2 hours playing there... you can never be too old for legos!), starting to paint a mural (as we watched other very artistic kids creating paintings for bill and hillary clinton, bill gates etc.) then having a woman come over to us FREAKING out because we weren't "art olympiad winners" and we weren't supposed to TOUCH the paints... i got a good laugh out of it. i hope bill clinton got some stick-figure drawing which says "nicaragua" and "coro fabrettiono" on it! ha! all the girls got henna tattoos, and we all had our names written in arabic. there were peace workshops, and an art gallery of children's paintings from all over the world. incredible stuff! peace through art! one love indeed!
- the last concert of our trip, on a side stage at the kennedy center (an impressive giant of a building, with 70 foot tall ceilings and hefty chandeliers... red curtains and all). we spent an hour testing the sound system, another hour listening to the serbian group (the same ones who'd performed with us at the church earlier in the week) tweak their instruments. we were finally set to go backstage when i turned around to talk to my aunt kelly (who was there with my cousins michelle and josh and my uncle david) and did a triple take. my DAD walked up the aisle. a tearful reunion in front of all my kids ensued with me proclaiming "es mi papa! es mi papa!" and them (confused by me as usual) laughing and pretending they knew what was going on. my dad surprised me! the concert was short and definitely our best of the week, and i was elated afterwards as we walked to a local italian restaurant for a "reception" with the president of the org's dad. i got to share dinner with my dad and other family, and felt extremely joyful. the kids started to sing (we took over the upper balcony of the restaurant), guitars were brought out of nowhere, and we were treated to an hour-long concert. we also performed a rousing version of "one love" (which the president's dad claimed to be his "new favorite song") and the kids were jovial and basking in the light of their success. an excellent evening.
- dropping everyone off at the airport! i don't know if i've ever been more relieved in my life. hugs all around, and promises that i'd actually return to nicaragua... saludos sent to my dad. i took a 20 minute taxi ride to my dad's hotel (right outside of DC) and met with my aunt and uncle and cousins and had breakfast then we hit the road for the 8 hour drive to ohio. they apologized furiously for making me drive with them (and i'm thinking "are you KIDDING! this is LUXURY! we have AIR CONDITIONING!). we ended up singing disney and show tunes for the last 4 hours of the trip, which i think made my uncle david ponder jumping out his childproof window... but made aunt kelser (the tone deaf version of maria from the 'sound of music') extremely happy, and passed the time well.
- time spent with gramma kay in her apartment in ohio, mainly playing scrabble or telling stories and talking about old pictures. we did some shopping and went to lunch, and played and played and played scrabble. gramma invited her two friends mert (age 92) and nancy (age 88) over to play with us for an afternoon which was very exciting. actually the best part of being there ended up being a trip to gramma's physical therapy appointment, where i got to meet her therapist (who she told me "he's SO cute. but he's married. and his wife's having a baby in two weeks") and took some candid photos of her workout (which she claimed not to want but later was so funny about). i admire her so much, she's going through her 8th knee surgery on her left knee and just refuses to be confined to a wheelchair. she wants to walk! her determination and the manner in which she perseveres in her health issues inspires me greatly. we also had a great discussion on "why jesus isn't my best friend" and i think we came to a good understanding that i can think jesus was a pretty awesome guy, but believe that there have been other prophets like him in our world, that he's not the only one. but gramma's pretty persistent that jesus is HER best friend, and not only that, but after i'd spent an hour or so showing her how to put digital pictures on her computer she exclaimed "oh! you can just do so much with the internet! i just thank jesus every day for the internet." i nearly had to sit down for fear laughter would crumble my body. "yes. yes, gramma. jesus did invent the internet."
she retorted cheerfully "well, he sure did help us find it!". oh jesus, finder of the internet... maybe someday we CAN be best friends.
- an extended weekend in DC with katie and dundas- hookah bars, sushi, birthday celebrations (with lots of beerpong, yummy pizza, and carrying on), eastern market, feasting on ben & jerry's, lots of giggles and catching up. dinner date with margo including an adventure to a super sketchy safeway to buy taco supplies, some ice cold blue moon and guinness, and all sorts of excellent conversation. linz's sister giving me a killer haircut, time spent decorating katie's ridiculous house for the parties (with both fourth of july and cinco de mayo decorations), incredible weather, awesome people...
- taking the 2 hour metro/bus trek to the dulles airport only to find that my flight to nicaragua had been cancelled due to an apparent hurricane occupying the air between DC and central america. the woman helping me at the TACA (read: super sketchy central/south american airline) being called to an urgent meeting and deserting her post as camera crews from local news stations showed up to interview folks in line who'd each come to the airport with an average of 8 bags... carrying their lives in duffel bags and tupperware containers. i turned to the pilot standing in line behind me who'd been on the phone with one of his buddies asking about the "hurricane" and asked him what the heck was going on. he shrugged his shoulders "dunno, but there sure as heck isn't a hurricane anywhere between here and nicaragua. they're totally lying to us." i just started laughing. of COURSE they would lie to us, rather than just saying there's a problem with the plane... my lovely airline helper came back after 20 minutes and looked flustered and told me i'd have to come back at 3 AM the next day. um. no. if i chose that program i'd either be 1) stuck at the airport for the next 14 hours, 2) stuck paying for an airport hotel, or 3) stuck paying for a taxi from adam's morgan neighborhood to dulles at 2 AM (read: at least 60 bucks). i ended up rescheduling my flight for the next available afternoon flight (i had two choices: 5 AM or 5 PM flights) and headed back into the city the same way i came. katie was working, and i don't have a phone... so i borrowed someone's cell phone on the bus and left her a message, giggling and shaking my head in utter disbelief. seems like my luck in nicaragua with transportation followed me all the way to DC. i ended up taking the metro to the right spot but got off on the wrong side of dupont square, walked 6 blocks with all my stuff and ended up at a park i'd never seen. i decided that rather than despair i'd do the only thing that made sense at the time, which of course meant picnicking at the park with the turkey sandwich i'd brought for the plane. i ended up talking with a homeless man who shared my bench, our conversation speckled with his observations about the changing city he'd called home his entire life as he carefully rolled cigarettes and politely refused the other half of my sandwich. he smiled to the skies and remarked on the weather being incredible (which it was- breezy, sunny, the perfect afternoon) as i watched the other park patrons- a gothic garbed couple tangled under a tree sharing headphones, a tailored-suit sporting businessman walking his groomed poodle, a woman in stirrup stretch pants and a mesh tank top engaged in a heated argument with whoever happened to be occupying her 10 foot radius. i wondered if any of these people smiled to the skies in the same way as my bench companion. as he used his long dirt-filled fingernails to smoke his 5th cigarette down to the roach and put the remnants securely in the pocket of his duct tape patched down coat, i wanted to thank him for praising such small happinesses, for still looking to the skies with reverence and thanks even though he'd so obviously fallen on hard times. instead, i smiled at the sky, smiled at him, and walked on with a lighter step to find my way.
viernes, 15 de junio de 2007
Walls
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all of this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action, it is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but murder. - Albert Einstein
I learned today of the U.S. Army's construction of a three mile long wall dividing Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods within the city of Baghdad. I'm not a military strategist, I've never even played a game of "Risk", I didn't play with plastic soldiers when I was a tyke... but i can't help but being struck speechless. Words about stone walls fail me. They seem to me such an ancient component of human existence, a component of our collective history marked by pain, war, death, conquesting emperors, greedy kings, sacrifice, and separation. A barrier between mankind and...mankind? Back in the days of King Arthur and his valiant knights we humans built protective walls around our cities, a security measure to protect against pillaging rogues and raging armies. Given the weapons of the day, the sword and bow, the boiling hot tar and launched boulders, these meters-thick walls provided a sensible barrier from the traitorous outside world. Nowadays the sensibility factor runs thin, and these barricades serve to separate, to contribute to the rift of inequality in our world.
Already having been deeply disturbed by the construction of the "necessary" triple-fortified section of the "Wall of Shame" being built upon 700 miles of the U.S./Mexican border, this bit of news about Baghdad leaves me unnerved. Are we reverting to another Feudal Era in which the kings of our world believe that we must enclose our world in walls in order to remain "secure"? What does the word "secure" refer to? Closing out our perceived enemies, showing them we'd rather spend millions of dollars on concrete and chain link and barbed wire than on creating programs in their country to benefit the poor? Building the wall in Baghdad amidst thousands of people protesting throughout the city crying desperately for the division to STOP? Bush slaps the face of Congress for their attempts at holding his administration accountable for their deception, lies, and greed. Put Mr. President on the defensive and I suppose that's the knee-jerk reaction we should expect to receive. "Oh yeah, look at me now. I can do whatever I want. You think I’m causing civil war and destroying a country? I'll show you civil war."... Mr. Bush would do well to remember the words of his predecessor, Bill Clinton "A world without walls is the only sustainable world... If the world is dominated by people who believe that their races, their religions, their ethnic differences are the most important factors, than a huge number of people will perish in this century." Clinton wasn't perfect, but he recognized the pointless endeavor of imprisoning humans within man-made (and unsupported) confines. Bush's puppetry act becomes more and more translucent as he continues to support policies which lead to the construction of barriers and the deaths of innocent people. Stone by damned stone.
The jackhammers begin to tear away at freedom and block by block a "temporary" barrier appears in our backyard, between neighbors, across Mexico, in Baghdad, pervading our lives. What happens when we become so accustomed to this barrier that we forget its presence, we forget that we were ever truly free to speak of justice and truth and equality, we forget that we were ever allowed to dissent? Will we lose sight of things that once were our unalienable rights as Americans? will we forget? Bush has succeeded in facilitating mind-blowing acts of radical patriotism while creating a society in which we seem to have forgotten our roots. Who are we to morally impose ourselves on other countries? Who are we to say democracy is the only way to live? YES. It could be the most comfortable, safe, and freeing way to live... but does that mean the rest of the world must follow in our footsteps? Has this command been directly handed down by GOD (the one and only true GOD, of course) to Mr. Bush himself to justify a Napoleonic conquest of the world? Does our country as a whole live and breathe by and pray to this same one God our President claims to act under? Are our hands guided by a war-mongering spirit?
From what i know of Americans, I say NO.
Do we line our own suburban neighborhoods with thick cement walls? We cannot be silent and expect peace to pervade the world and to suddenly appear in our government's foreign policy. There are many Americans who have not been silent a single day about the terrible consequences and injustices of the Iraqi War and I thank them from the depths of my heart. There are also Americans like me... who are waking from a slumber rubbing our eyes and wondering "what the HELL happened to our country?" Those of us who claimed to "never get involved" with politics because we didn’t know where to start, scared that once we start to know our hearts will break, and aware that once we have this knowledge we will never be able to step back into our secure bubbles of nightly-news induced reality. We can no longer be numb to the statistics of the dead, unable to see visions of the flag-draped coffins... and yet we continue to be fed self-righteous lies by politicians who claim to be looking out for the lives of our brothers and sisters across the world.
The director of the factory in "Brave New World" (Adolus Huxley) quotes his forefather Our Ford in a frightening statement "History... is bunk".
Have we come to a point that we're so wrapped up in our actions and reactions of the moment that we are unable to look at the past with any type of intelligent reflective thought? Have we removed ourselves so far from reality that we cannot notice the parallels between our current situation and feudal times, times of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War? Do any of these historical events ring enough bells to create a fury of action, do they stir our lives enough that we begin to realize that we're the ones who must take responsibility for changing the doomed course of our country's policies? Have we already forgotten the slippery slope that was Vietnam, and how suddenly our boys overseas were being lost by the hundreds and by the thousands, how the death tolls mounted and mounted to a 58,256 name-long black granite cry to the heavens....
I've experienced this monument, this memorial to a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam. a bitter sob caught in my throat, I wanted to drop to my knees and wail "WHY?" angrily at the skies, to shake the White House on its foundations "WHY WAR?". Blurred eyes searching the heavens for an answer, fingertips tracing letters- each one a prayer of peace on my lips. The Vietnam Wall. Another wall of our history, another wall for which so many boys died needlessly, another wall which divided a country and families and lives forever.
I looked though the iron bars of the White House, choked on my thoughts- it's so small. For the amount of destruction the decisions made within those walls have created, it should be a palace, a small country, a ridiculously giant theme-park adventure complete with flashing neon signs and a "Bombs Over Baghdad" theme park. If one saw the President's lair out of context, it wouldn't be much of a statement of power. I can't bring my mind past it's color- set against a "true-blue dream of a sky" (e.e. cummings), forged of the purest white... where's the spattered blood of the world?
Certainly not on our hands, for we are the purest form of freedom and democracy that exists on this planet, and our actions come with oh-such-good intentions. Adolus Huxley wrote, "Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them". Good intentions matter not when they lead to the murdering of tens of thousands of civilians, they matter not when they lead to the death of one innocent person. Stacking our things around us as protective individualistic walls, we are able to feel that we own our own part of the world, and our prized collection mounts with the dust of years of inaction and spiderwebs woven from a life of closed eyes. But, we have our own little lives, our own museums, monuments to our fleeting lives, and we continue to hoard and justify our miserable mizery. Thing by damned thing.
Reading these utopia-based books leaves me wondering what point we've come to in our world... I live in a small town on a mountaintop in Nicaragua where 80% of people struggle to eat every single day yet own the same amount of high-tech electronic mumble jumble as my friends back in the states- giving up their daily rice and beans for a sugary dose of daytime drama and farcical news. Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "The sound shivers though the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world". Big Brother constantly keeps the spoonful of sugar within arms reach. Just when we're ready to make a movement toward thinking in terms of freedom and breaking free of societal constraints, there he is dangling shining objects in front of our oogling eyes, enabling us to forget the pain of reality and the necessity of being awake and fully alive. We are being spoon-fed day after day in our educational systems, in our institutions, in our media... with symbols and repeated key words and new things to wish and dream about possessing. Spoonful by damned spoonful.
Did anyone else catch the ironic news of the construction company building the US/Mexican border fence being fined for hiring illegal immigrants to build the wall? What about first-hand accounts such as Michael Finkel's short story entitled Desperate Passage in which he describes an ill-fated venture with a group of Haitians crammed in the hull of a boat named Believe in God? Of the desperate measures those from the poorest country in the Western hemisphere must go to in order to have some hope of a life? What are we saying about our own standards and values if we can't understand that people from these countries, if given any chance or opportunity of having a future, would rather live in the warm circle of their own families than existing on the outskirts of our society?
One of the men in Finkel's story, a Haitian named David, speaks of his stint as a drug dealer in Naples, Florida and his fear that upon returning to the states he will return to this lifestyle in order to afford a North American lifestyle. "In America, he mentioned, there is shame in poverty -- a shame you don't feel in Haiti. 'People are always looking at the poor Haitians who just stepped off their banana boat' he said." the words "illegal immigrants" are just as emotionally and politically loaded as "terrorist" or "insurgent".
What if we were made to look into the eyes of every scared shitless "illegal immigrant" who'd left their home and family in search of the mirage of the US? For our façade of glory? Would we be able to regard them as an equal human and still justify building an eyesore of a fence between the Americas? What if we had to look into the eyes of every mother and father in Iraq, of every “insurgent” brother or sister who'd ever lost someone due to "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? Would we be able to believe in their freedom if we had to brush away their tears, if we were deeply aware of their humanity, if we inscribed every name of an Iraqi casualty on our new wall in Baghdad and traced our fingertips across the letters, the alphabet in a foreign hand yet our own hands connected on a deeper level, aware of the significance of each character, each letter, each pair of eyes?
Would we drop our gaze to the ground and pick up another stone? OR would we cast our stones aside and reach out to grasp our brothers and sisters to honor the lost and help them re-build their world rather than continuing to destroy it? In 1984, George Orwell writes, that if the average citizen "were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore...the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs".
Bombs and walls. Fear and hatred. Self-righteousness. Possessions. Lies. We cast the stone.
We dangerously mock history.
Will we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, spoonful by damned spoonful until we become so engorged and addicted to ourselves that patriotic tears of glory arise with the news of another "insurgent' death?
Will the shining objects in our lives continue to lull us into a nightmarish dream-world in which we forget the reality of freedom and justice?
Will we avert our eyes and continue to cast stones?
Or will we fall to our knees in fumbling clarity and mourn for our war-torn world?
My question is not who will cast the first stone
For as Jesus told us we have all sinned.
My question is, who's humble and valiant enough
to put the first stone back where it belongs
in the arms of Mother Earth?
As Robert Frost wrote:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down.
This something Frost refers to, the deepest part of ourselves, the collective soul of our world, refuses to be silent.
My last question: when will we finally take a moment from our own diversions to stop, to consider, to release that something, to break walls, to break the hand of the spoon-feeding institutions, to rebuild our own world, to remind ourselves of what freedom once was, to regain the glimmer of hope in our eyes?
Put your stone down, return it to its Mother.
Embrace your own selfishness.
Embrace your neighbor.
Let love travel through these walls
and shatter them into the useless rubble .
Let them become a part of history,
a part I hope we'll never again be trained to ignore.
sábado, 2 de junio de 2007
discoveries
last week as i sat outside the casona sharing a beer with my peace corps buddy oliver i started noticing floating spots of light flashing in the darkness of the garden spread out in front of us. in general i would take this to be a sign of impending eye doom seeing as major eye issues tend to run in my family and seeing flashing spots of light is not a good sign from normal eyes, however oliver informed me that there were LIGHTNING BUGS all over the place in cusmapa... which i had never noticed before that very instant. how in the world i missed such a glorious little insect for nearly 5 months when every other bug in the town seems to have found its way into my life or my bed or my pants is beyond me. my faith in the bugs of cusmapa is entirely renewed, because i don't know much about lightning bugs but i have a completely romanticized childlike fascination with them. like i wonder if when the power goes out i could catch a jarful of them instead of using my headlamp. they would make for much softer lighting, of that i am sure.
discovery #1: lightning bugs are the COOLEST BUG EVER. i want one for a pet.
things in my life here have not slowed down remotely, but after an incident last week in which the entire nicaraguan passport system crashed overnight leaving me and 13 kids and their parents standing in a non-airconditioned office in somoto wide-mouthed in utter shock of our bad luck and the irony of the situation (i really had a "michael shut your mouth, we are not a codfish!" mary poppins-esque look on my face, you could have fit a 12" submarine sandwich in there and i would not have noticed). anyways after that shocking turn of events (and by shocking i mean not very shocking at all, sort of like a game of chutes and ladders with much bigger stakes, or like getting a "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card instead of landing on free parking) i basically threw my hands up in the air and surrendered myself to the powers that be. if this trip is meant to happen for my kiddos, it will happen and there's nothing more i can do about it. thank goodness the system crash finally brought our president down here into the mix and magically the system's up and running today (monday) when last friday i was told it would be another month before new passports would be renewed. the way he said it made it sound like the machine that made the ACTUAL passports themselves had just decided to take a haitus and that we just had to be patient with the thing because vacations are important things. great news though, my utter lack of control has made me feel a bit better about this whole blasted situation; and has also led me to a few realizations and new experiences i would not have expected... the first of those being the lightning bug discovery.
discovery #2: planning for chutes and ladders type events to happen on a consistent basis is a good way to make sure you don't end up wide-open-mouthed in a government office or making voodoo dolls of lawyers.
my third discovery of the week involves fabretto's new volunteer up in cusmapa, ingrid, who's in her early forties and is from madrid, spain. she is lovely and i'm really excited to have another companera up there (i mindlessly referred to her as a gringa as in "wow it's going to be great to have another gringa up here" before i knew that 1) gringa is a word only used to discuss folks from the US of A, 2) i insulted her by using this word... this was the same day i met a guy from utah and said "oh i was born in utah, but i'm not a mormon! hahaha" to which he most solemnly replied "i am." DAMN. i put my foot in my mouth even when i speak my own language!). ingrid has made it her goal while she's here that i will speak better spanish and actually corrects me when i make mistakes (which is something everyone else is either too polite to do, or they just like me sounding like an idiot... either way my spanish is not improving). yesterday she told me "i've noticed that you have trouble with the verbs SER and ESTAR" (which are basically the two forms of the verb "TO BE" in spanish... the most important verbs out there) and proceeded to give me a grammar lesson. i think i've been under the impression that my spanish is much more proficient than it actually is, because i am able to communicate with people... but like david sedaris writes, it's likely that i've gone from speaking like an "angry baby" to rambling like a "podunk hillbilly".
discovery #3: my spanish, which i'd thought to be at the level of at least a preteen, has currently dropped to the late toddler years (which i'm told is a very important time of brain development, so i have that going for me, right?!). though a woman today asked me if i was from spain after we chatted for a minute... maybe it's the current euro mullet i have going on (result of cutting my own hair and not using a mirror) and thick rimmed glasses style combo i'm apparently currently sporting.
my fourth discovery (well not really a discovery, since its something i've known for quite some time) is that it's HARD to break a HABIT. for example, i'm staying in managua right now with 13 of the kids and 11 of their parents and we had to be at the migracion office this morning at 8 AM (meaning we'd have breakfast at 7 and that 6 AM would be the ABSOLUTE EARLIEST anyone would have to think about waking up). yet... at precisely 4:30 AM (after i'd sweated my brains out for 5 hours trying to sleep and had moved myself outside to sleep on a sheet on the ground only to wake up a few minutes later with ants crawling all over me... and had finally fallen asleep inside for an hour or so) EVERYONE in my room except me was shuffling around, showering, and getting themselves ready for the day. i vaguely remember looking outside at what i knew was a very early morning sky and asking one of the mom's "que hora es?" and her responding "5" and me turning over and mumbling "porque?" (WHY? which in this situation seemed an extremely valid question). i ended up sleeping until 6 AM and feeling like a SUPER late riser. then when i asked why everyone woke up this morning so early nobody could give me a straight answer other than "it was hot". when i told karlita about my early morning wake up call she said "what do they think, that they need to be up making tortillas or something?!" which sounds insensitive but since karla's nicaraguan i guess she's allowed to say stuff like that.
it's the truth though, i was thinking that for the majority of these mothers this 5 day trip to managua will be the longest vacation they've ever had away from the daily cooking, cleaning, washing, child-caring that goes on nonstop for most if not all of the years of their lives. i wish i had the money to take them to do something really fun! the women are so cute, they tisk tisk over everything and don't seem to be satisfied with anything (ranging from the cleanliness of the sheets to the quality of our food... (to their kids' hair before the passport picture) that isn't starch clean or infused with lots of good-ol cusmapan beans and salt. i have a feeling that my kiddos are going to starve when i bring them to the states, because if they don't like the food we've been eating the last few days they most certainly won't like the food there! and being kids too makes it even harder, i remember being about 13 years old and only liking VERY specific types of foods. we shall see. thing is that i know most of the women here are used to going to bed around 10 and waking up at 4 or 5 to make tortillas, start the day's pot of beans, and feed the animals before their kiddos are up for the day demanding attention. and the concept of vacation just doesn't exist- you're either working or with your family or your work is your family... not a lot of planning for the trip around the world in my new sailboat type of moments around these parts. i also believe that for some of these parents this might be their first trip to managua (lord knows i've been here enough times for all of us combined) because i feel like i'm supposed to be a leader here and i have NO clue what i'm doing. people wait for me to make the first move, it's like i'm responsible or something. yikes.
i had a moment this morning in the migracion office where i was getting frustrated with people asking me questions about the ONE FORM i had each of the parent/kids fill out for their passports... when one of the mom's walked up to me and asked me if instead of signing it she could just put her initials on the form because she DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE. OH. i'm an asshole. of course they have questions if they can't read or write on the form, and although my spanish is sketchy at best i at least know the letters and the general gists of questions.
discovery #4: although they will complain about being tired all day, every group of nicaraguans i've spent the night with makes a point of getting up before it's light out to make sure they're good and squeaky clean for the day... even if it means just sitting around for 3 hours until breakfast. go figure.
discovery #5: vacations are not universal.
discovery #6: reading and writing abilities are a GIFT i will not take for granted.
my seventh discovery: i really miss my family. all these kiddos are so close to their parents, and i think being around them and not having my parents around leaves me looking like a lost little kid tugging on pantlegs asking "MOMMY?!" hopefully yet peering time after time into the faces of strangers. i want to hug my family.
discovery #7: i really am still a child.
my eighth discovery: i finally found something that i REALLY miss about americans. we are overzealous about thanking each other, sometimes to the point of exhaustion but every now and again it is really important to be told that what you're doing matters and to have people be verbally thankful of your efforts. i've found that to be very difficult these past few weeks as i've been running around like mad trying to collect all these papers and not having a clue what is really going on and literally i have not had one parent or child say a simple "GRACIAS" to me the entire time. the ENTIRE time. sometimes it seems more like they're waiting for me to make a mistake, to falter so they can titter about it. the thing is, i can see that they're thankful in their eyes... and i guess the other thing is what do they REALLY have to thank me for? i'm taking their kids on a choir trip that's basically a fabretto PR tour... their kids will be the face of fabretto in the states. it's not like i'm giving them scholarships to go to college or anything spectacular like that. i can only do so much...
discovery #8: as cynical as i am, i really do miss some things about the states.
i saw my first nicaraguan rainbow on our bus ride down here yesterday and pointed it out to my seatmate miriam expecting her to shrug it off (which is what happens 99% of the time when i point out a natural event to someone here which i consider to be particularly miraculous) but instead she seemed absolutely delighted and we marveled at it for a few brief moments until the highway took our bus around a hill and it was POOF gone. hope lingers.
discovery #9: miracles happen in EVERY MOMENT of every day. miracles ARE universal!
discovery #1: lightning bugs are the COOLEST BUG EVER. i want one for a pet.
things in my life here have not slowed down remotely, but after an incident last week in which the entire nicaraguan passport system crashed overnight leaving me and 13 kids and their parents standing in a non-airconditioned office in somoto wide-mouthed in utter shock of our bad luck and the irony of the situation (i really had a "michael shut your mouth, we are not a codfish!" mary poppins-esque look on my face, you could have fit a 12" submarine sandwich in there and i would not have noticed). anyways after that shocking turn of events (and by shocking i mean not very shocking at all, sort of like a game of chutes and ladders with much bigger stakes, or like getting a "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card instead of landing on free parking) i basically threw my hands up in the air and surrendered myself to the powers that be. if this trip is meant to happen for my kiddos, it will happen and there's nothing more i can do about it. thank goodness the system crash finally brought our president down here into the mix and magically the system's up and running today (monday) when last friday i was told it would be another month before new passports would be renewed. the way he said it made it sound like the machine that made the ACTUAL passports themselves had just decided to take a haitus and that we just had to be patient with the thing because vacations are important things. great news though, my utter lack of control has made me feel a bit better about this whole blasted situation; and has also led me to a few realizations and new experiences i would not have expected... the first of those being the lightning bug discovery.
discovery #2: planning for chutes and ladders type events to happen on a consistent basis is a good way to make sure you don't end up wide-open-mouthed in a government office or making voodoo dolls of lawyers.
my third discovery of the week involves fabretto's new volunteer up in cusmapa, ingrid, who's in her early forties and is from madrid, spain. she is lovely and i'm really excited to have another companera up there (i mindlessly referred to her as a gringa as in "wow it's going to be great to have another gringa up here" before i knew that 1) gringa is a word only used to discuss folks from the US of A, 2) i insulted her by using this word... this was the same day i met a guy from utah and said "oh i was born in utah, but i'm not a mormon! hahaha" to which he most solemnly replied "i am." DAMN. i put my foot in my mouth even when i speak my own language!). ingrid has made it her goal while she's here that i will speak better spanish and actually corrects me when i make mistakes (which is something everyone else is either too polite to do, or they just like me sounding like an idiot... either way my spanish is not improving). yesterday she told me "i've noticed that you have trouble with the verbs SER and ESTAR" (which are basically the two forms of the verb "TO BE" in spanish... the most important verbs out there) and proceeded to give me a grammar lesson. i think i've been under the impression that my spanish is much more proficient than it actually is, because i am able to communicate with people... but like david sedaris writes, it's likely that i've gone from speaking like an "angry baby" to rambling like a "podunk hillbilly".
discovery #3: my spanish, which i'd thought to be at the level of at least a preteen, has currently dropped to the late toddler years (which i'm told is a very important time of brain development, so i have that going for me, right?!). though a woman today asked me if i was from spain after we chatted for a minute... maybe it's the current euro mullet i have going on (result of cutting my own hair and not using a mirror) and thick rimmed glasses style combo i'm apparently currently sporting.
my fourth discovery (well not really a discovery, since its something i've known for quite some time) is that it's HARD to break a HABIT. for example, i'm staying in managua right now with 13 of the kids and 11 of their parents and we had to be at the migracion office this morning at 8 AM (meaning we'd have breakfast at 7 and that 6 AM would be the ABSOLUTE EARLIEST anyone would have to think about waking up). yet... at precisely 4:30 AM (after i'd sweated my brains out for 5 hours trying to sleep and had moved myself outside to sleep on a sheet on the ground only to wake up a few minutes later with ants crawling all over me... and had finally fallen asleep inside for an hour or so) EVERYONE in my room except me was shuffling around, showering, and getting themselves ready for the day. i vaguely remember looking outside at what i knew was a very early morning sky and asking one of the mom's "que hora es?" and her responding "5" and me turning over and mumbling "porque?" (WHY? which in this situation seemed an extremely valid question). i ended up sleeping until 6 AM and feeling like a SUPER late riser. then when i asked why everyone woke up this morning so early nobody could give me a straight answer other than "it was hot". when i told karlita about my early morning wake up call she said "what do they think, that they need to be up making tortillas or something?!" which sounds insensitive but since karla's nicaraguan i guess she's allowed to say stuff like that.
it's the truth though, i was thinking that for the majority of these mothers this 5 day trip to managua will be the longest vacation they've ever had away from the daily cooking, cleaning, washing, child-caring that goes on nonstop for most if not all of the years of their lives. i wish i had the money to take them to do something really fun! the women are so cute, they tisk tisk over everything and don't seem to be satisfied with anything (ranging from the cleanliness of the sheets to the quality of our food... (to their kids' hair before the passport picture) that isn't starch clean or infused with lots of good-ol cusmapan beans and salt. i have a feeling that my kiddos are going to starve when i bring them to the states, because if they don't like the food we've been eating the last few days they most certainly won't like the food there! and being kids too makes it even harder, i remember being about 13 years old and only liking VERY specific types of foods. we shall see. thing is that i know most of the women here are used to going to bed around 10 and waking up at 4 or 5 to make tortillas, start the day's pot of beans, and feed the animals before their kiddos are up for the day demanding attention. and the concept of vacation just doesn't exist- you're either working or with your family or your work is your family... not a lot of planning for the trip around the world in my new sailboat type of moments around these parts. i also believe that for some of these parents this might be their first trip to managua (lord knows i've been here enough times for all of us combined) because i feel like i'm supposed to be a leader here and i have NO clue what i'm doing. people wait for me to make the first move, it's like i'm responsible or something. yikes.
i had a moment this morning in the migracion office where i was getting frustrated with people asking me questions about the ONE FORM i had each of the parent/kids fill out for their passports... when one of the mom's walked up to me and asked me if instead of signing it she could just put her initials on the form because she DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE. OH. i'm an asshole. of course they have questions if they can't read or write on the form, and although my spanish is sketchy at best i at least know the letters and the general gists of questions.
discovery #4: although they will complain about being tired all day, every group of nicaraguans i've spent the night with makes a point of getting up before it's light out to make sure they're good and squeaky clean for the day... even if it means just sitting around for 3 hours until breakfast. go figure.
discovery #5: vacations are not universal.
discovery #6: reading and writing abilities are a GIFT i will not take for granted.
my seventh discovery: i really miss my family. all these kiddos are so close to their parents, and i think being around them and not having my parents around leaves me looking like a lost little kid tugging on pantlegs asking "MOMMY?!" hopefully yet peering time after time into the faces of strangers. i want to hug my family.
discovery #7: i really am still a child.
my eighth discovery: i finally found something that i REALLY miss about americans. we are overzealous about thanking each other, sometimes to the point of exhaustion but every now and again it is really important to be told that what you're doing matters and to have people be verbally thankful of your efforts. i've found that to be very difficult these past few weeks as i've been running around like mad trying to collect all these papers and not having a clue what is really going on and literally i have not had one parent or child say a simple "GRACIAS" to me the entire time. the ENTIRE time. sometimes it seems more like they're waiting for me to make a mistake, to falter so they can titter about it. the thing is, i can see that they're thankful in their eyes... and i guess the other thing is what do they REALLY have to thank me for? i'm taking their kids on a choir trip that's basically a fabretto PR tour... their kids will be the face of fabretto in the states. it's not like i'm giving them scholarships to go to college or anything spectacular like that. i can only do so much...
discovery #8: as cynical as i am, i really do miss some things about the states.
i saw my first nicaraguan rainbow on our bus ride down here yesterday and pointed it out to my seatmate miriam expecting her to shrug it off (which is what happens 99% of the time when i point out a natural event to someone here which i consider to be particularly miraculous) but instead she seemed absolutely delighted and we marveled at it for a few brief moments until the highway took our bus around a hill and it was POOF gone. hope lingers.
discovery #9: miracles happen in EVERY MOMENT of every day. miracles ARE universal!
lunes, 14 de mayo de 2007
paperwork, punishment and parasites
magda and i have been collecting all the documents the kiddos need to get their passports and visas throughout the past month or so (ever since we found out that the DC trip was actually happening). this whole process definitely has made me realize how lucky i am to have been born in the US because for us to travel ANYWHERE in the world really doesn't take more than a passport... here to GET a passport itself costs about $100 US (of course the kids can't afford this, fabretto is paying for that) and beyond a passport, to go anywhere outside of the country you need to apply for a travelers visa. just to have an APPOINTMENT with the american embassy in managua costs $100. put those two costs together with the amount of traveling, paperwork, etc. and it basically costs an average family's YEARLY INCOME to get a passport and a visa to go to the US (not even including the actual travel to the US itself). ridiculous, meaning that i'd guess about 3% of the people here get to travel outside the country in their lives.
at first i'd been under the impresson that if we were able to collect these papers (original documents, birth certificates of both parents and kids which becomes a bit difficult when some parents were born about 10 hours away by bus and there's no such thing as a telephone signal or fed-ex here) we'd be well on our way to reciving passports. i found out that we needed to deal with a lawyer... and it's all been downhill since then. apparently these kids need a "special letter" in order to get their passports in the first place, even though one of each kids' parents will be accompanying us to the migracion office. this wouldn't be such a big deal but 1) fabretto's lawyer is located in MANAGUA and 2) for whatever reason a LOT of the kids were blessed with ENTIRELY different names than both of their parents... meaning the lawyer needs MONTHS to fix the problems on their birth certificates (though for some reason she's able to fix some of them in a few days... something which i do not understand in the least). so i brought all the paperwork we've collected thus far to managua last friday in hopes of meeting with the lawyer and getting stuff sorted out... hoping to return to cusmapa on sunday. HA!!!! what a ridiculous hope that was. i ended up finding out that 6 of the 20 kids that didn't have passports just simply COULDN'T go on the trip.... that there was nothing i could do, if only i had a freaking TYPEWRITER and could fix the type-o's on their birth certificates, those one or two mistaken letters that are ruining this opportunity. i also found out that for about 4 of the kids who had problems, the lawyer could fix things... but needed me to return to cusmapa, go to the civil registration office, fix the birth certificates, and bring them back to managua. something i am both willing and capable of doing. i finally ended up getting back to cusmapa WEDNESDAY after a lot of waiting around, worrying...
thursday i spent all day in the civil registration office. walking into this 10 X 15 foot room the first thing i noticed were the 3 bookshelves on the wall which appeared to hold ALL the important documents in Cusmapa's history. dated, numbered, PAPER information... though Lenin (the assistant) had a computer to use... everything else was CATALOGUED. of COURSE Panchita (the mom of one of the girls who's going on the trip, and the ONLY person in Cusmapa who's capable of finding things in that mountainous mound of paperwork) was conveniently in Managua for the week. Lenin and I had to find 60-some documents, the first 15 or so of which he looked up and just shrugged his shoulders like "OH WELL" when he couldn't find them, and told me they must have been "repositioned" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean). about 40 documents into the search i was beginning to get really frustrated because we were NOT having any kind of luck, and it was rapidly approaching 5 PM. at that very moment of exasperation the POWER WENT OUT. one of those moments where tears jumped to my eyes but i found myself laughing anyways. he couldn't type out any of the documents without his computer, so we ended up looking up the rest of the documents and marking them in the books with pieces of paper so that we could find them the next day. Lenin also informed me at this point that he couldn't do the new birth certificates, that i'd have to wait for Panchita to get back (NEXT monday or tuesday) for her to help me. i walked back to the school to try to find magda, and we looked through our collection of parent identification cards to find those she needed to take to Las Savannas the next day to track down their birth certificates, but it kept getting darker and darker and we were left with no ability to see names on the cards. just then, a huge clap of thunder and it started a DOWNPOUR of rain. at this point, there were no tears... more just laughter as i NEEDED to bring my computer home to work on organizing our info for a parent meeting the next day. so i stuck my backpack in a plastic bag and said a quick prayer of "why am i stupidly bringing out this electronic equipment into a nicaraguan rainstorm?!" and decided to take my chances. luckily the rain let up after a few minutes, so my computer was just fine.
i got back to my house to find that there were about 15 people staying the night, and since we hadn't had water the whole week things were in a disasterous state of filth. dishes everywhere, people everywhere. my friend arturo watched me make a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich and told me i looked "worried" then said, "we have NO LIGHT and i've heard it's not coming back until Sunday!" in a jolly tone and i just shook my head. I NEED LIGHT. the boys were all jovially eating dinner and sharing beers, but i just wasn't in the mood. so i locked myself up in my room and started writing a letter by candlelight to one of my buddies, trying to calm my worries down a bit and to let go of things that i was so OBVIOUSLY unable to control. about half-way into my letter the lights flickered and CAME BACK ON! i was giddy happy, and ran into the living room parading around and whooping, which the guys got a huge laugh out of.
friday i spent the morning searching through more books, and unable to find at least 15 out of the 60 documents we need for the kids visas, i returned to school to plan our parent meeting. i got there and wasn't expecting to see magda but apparently she'd gone all the way to Las Sabannas only to find that the woman who did the registration papers there was WORKING IN SOMOTO till monday. typical.
i spent a few hours putting together some info on the documents we still needed, and sorting out why the 6 kids who couldn't go so i could talk to their parents, then jorje and i hiked up to the public school to find the director to ask if our permission for the kids to miss school had been approved. SOMETHING FINALLY WENT OUR WAY! the director was there, and very kind, and wanted me to know that not only was it OK for the kids to be missing school, but he thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them, and wanted me to tell the kids that their tests would be rescheduled to before our trip so they didn't have to worry about anything while they were gone. the parent meeting was supposed to start at 3 PM, and at 3:15 there were approximately 3 parents there, so I waited for another few to show up, and since magda wasn't there I just started right in. i'm pretty sure there were a lot of blank faces in the crowd and many of them didn't seem to understand what i was talking about (i don't blame them! i barely understood myself!). after the meeting (which most of the parents ended up showing up to at about 3:45) i had each of them come talk to me about the paperwork their kid still needed, and how we could go about getting it. some of the parents just told me flat out that it would be "impossible" to get their original birth certificates, and i told them that if this was the case their kid could not go on the trip. what a predicament. there were also a handful of the choir kids there who came to talk to me about problems with their papers and i hated not being able to really explain to them why they couldn't go, why some kids' problems were getting fixed and theirs weren't. a few of them seemed really bummed out, and others reacted with a "i didn't want to go anyway" type of attitude. i felt devistated, really sad, and helpless- i wish there was something i could do. i kept telling them that i wished i was a lawyer so i could do something more about it, but that i couldn't. two of my favorite girls in the choir, belen and aleyda came and talked to me individually and it ended with them having to leave because we could both sense that the other was about to burst into tears. it was awful. especially because aleyda's one of the cousins of the family i hang out with all the time, and her brother died last year- and he'd been in the choir and had gone to the states in 2004 when they travelled to chicago and colorado... YUK. i knew this was going to happen, but it didn't make things any easier.
i've also been feeling sick for the last week or so (i think my intestines are finally realizing all the yucky parasites they've fought and are giving in a little bit). but i woke up saturday morning and felt like absolute hell. i had told a group of nurses who were visiting Cusmapa for the weekend and didn't speak any Spanish that i'd show them around, so i put my best healthy face forward but the whole day i felt like i was going to pass out. i probably drank about a gallon of water, and took some pepto bismol, and just felt worse and worse. this morning i woke up in a cold sweat at 7 AM and tossed and turned for a few hours, ate some bananas (felt like i had to eat something, but it was not a good idea) then went to bed until 3 PM (something i haven't done since i've been here... but i just felt exhausted and feverish). i started taking some prescription meds my mom sent with me but i am still feeling terrible, and just thinking it's SO typical that my body would choose this moment in time to break down.
cindy and magda are headed to managua tomorrow for cindy's surgery and will probably be gone till wednesday, and i need to get this paperwork done with Panchita as soon as she gets back (i'm hoping she'll be there when I visit this evening- though she was also in managua for a surgery on her little boy who i think has some sort of cerebral palsy) and then head to managua myself... BEFORE tuesday if at all possible. my body is failing me, something which does not happen often. i'm so bad at being sick, because i've been so lucky and healthy for most of my life... i'm just praying that these meds kick in soon cause there's no way i could make it to managua in my current state.
things have got to go up from here, eh?!
at first i'd been under the impresson that if we were able to collect these papers (original documents, birth certificates of both parents and kids which becomes a bit difficult when some parents were born about 10 hours away by bus and there's no such thing as a telephone signal or fed-ex here) we'd be well on our way to reciving passports. i found out that we needed to deal with a lawyer... and it's all been downhill since then. apparently these kids need a "special letter" in order to get their passports in the first place, even though one of each kids' parents will be accompanying us to the migracion office. this wouldn't be such a big deal but 1) fabretto's lawyer is located in MANAGUA and 2) for whatever reason a LOT of the kids were blessed with ENTIRELY different names than both of their parents... meaning the lawyer needs MONTHS to fix the problems on their birth certificates (though for some reason she's able to fix some of them in a few days... something which i do not understand in the least). so i brought all the paperwork we've collected thus far to managua last friday in hopes of meeting with the lawyer and getting stuff sorted out... hoping to return to cusmapa on sunday. HA!!!! what a ridiculous hope that was. i ended up finding out that 6 of the 20 kids that didn't have passports just simply COULDN'T go on the trip.... that there was nothing i could do, if only i had a freaking TYPEWRITER and could fix the type-o's on their birth certificates, those one or two mistaken letters that are ruining this opportunity. i also found out that for about 4 of the kids who had problems, the lawyer could fix things... but needed me to return to cusmapa, go to the civil registration office, fix the birth certificates, and bring them back to managua. something i am both willing and capable of doing. i finally ended up getting back to cusmapa WEDNESDAY after a lot of waiting around, worrying...
thursday i spent all day in the civil registration office. walking into this 10 X 15 foot room the first thing i noticed were the 3 bookshelves on the wall which appeared to hold ALL the important documents in Cusmapa's history. dated, numbered, PAPER information... though Lenin (the assistant) had a computer to use... everything else was CATALOGUED. of COURSE Panchita (the mom of one of the girls who's going on the trip, and the ONLY person in Cusmapa who's capable of finding things in that mountainous mound of paperwork) was conveniently in Managua for the week. Lenin and I had to find 60-some documents, the first 15 or so of which he looked up and just shrugged his shoulders like "OH WELL" when he couldn't find them, and told me they must have been "repositioned" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean). about 40 documents into the search i was beginning to get really frustrated because we were NOT having any kind of luck, and it was rapidly approaching 5 PM. at that very moment of exasperation the POWER WENT OUT. one of those moments where tears jumped to my eyes but i found myself laughing anyways. he couldn't type out any of the documents without his computer, so we ended up looking up the rest of the documents and marking them in the books with pieces of paper so that we could find them the next day. Lenin also informed me at this point that he couldn't do the new birth certificates, that i'd have to wait for Panchita to get back (NEXT monday or tuesday) for her to help me. i walked back to the school to try to find magda, and we looked through our collection of parent identification cards to find those she needed to take to Las Savannas the next day to track down their birth certificates, but it kept getting darker and darker and we were left with no ability to see names on the cards. just then, a huge clap of thunder and it started a DOWNPOUR of rain. at this point, there were no tears... more just laughter as i NEEDED to bring my computer home to work on organizing our info for a parent meeting the next day. so i stuck my backpack in a plastic bag and said a quick prayer of "why am i stupidly bringing out this electronic equipment into a nicaraguan rainstorm?!" and decided to take my chances. luckily the rain let up after a few minutes, so my computer was just fine.
i got back to my house to find that there were about 15 people staying the night, and since we hadn't had water the whole week things were in a disasterous state of filth. dishes everywhere, people everywhere. my friend arturo watched me make a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich and told me i looked "worried" then said, "we have NO LIGHT and i've heard it's not coming back until Sunday!" in a jolly tone and i just shook my head. I NEED LIGHT. the boys were all jovially eating dinner and sharing beers, but i just wasn't in the mood. so i locked myself up in my room and started writing a letter by candlelight to one of my buddies, trying to calm my worries down a bit and to let go of things that i was so OBVIOUSLY unable to control. about half-way into my letter the lights flickered and CAME BACK ON! i was giddy happy, and ran into the living room parading around and whooping, which the guys got a huge laugh out of.
friday i spent the morning searching through more books, and unable to find at least 15 out of the 60 documents we need for the kids visas, i returned to school to plan our parent meeting. i got there and wasn't expecting to see magda but apparently she'd gone all the way to Las Sabannas only to find that the woman who did the registration papers there was WORKING IN SOMOTO till monday. typical.
i spent a few hours putting together some info on the documents we still needed, and sorting out why the 6 kids who couldn't go so i could talk to their parents, then jorje and i hiked up to the public school to find the director to ask if our permission for the kids to miss school had been approved. SOMETHING FINALLY WENT OUR WAY! the director was there, and very kind, and wanted me to know that not only was it OK for the kids to be missing school, but he thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them, and wanted me to tell the kids that their tests would be rescheduled to before our trip so they didn't have to worry about anything while they were gone. the parent meeting was supposed to start at 3 PM, and at 3:15 there were approximately 3 parents there, so I waited for another few to show up, and since magda wasn't there I just started right in. i'm pretty sure there were a lot of blank faces in the crowd and many of them didn't seem to understand what i was talking about (i don't blame them! i barely understood myself!). after the meeting (which most of the parents ended up showing up to at about 3:45) i had each of them come talk to me about the paperwork their kid still needed, and how we could go about getting it. some of the parents just told me flat out that it would be "impossible" to get their original birth certificates, and i told them that if this was the case their kid could not go on the trip. what a predicament. there were also a handful of the choir kids there who came to talk to me about problems with their papers and i hated not being able to really explain to them why they couldn't go, why some kids' problems were getting fixed and theirs weren't. a few of them seemed really bummed out, and others reacted with a "i didn't want to go anyway" type of attitude. i felt devistated, really sad, and helpless- i wish there was something i could do. i kept telling them that i wished i was a lawyer so i could do something more about it, but that i couldn't. two of my favorite girls in the choir, belen and aleyda came and talked to me individually and it ended with them having to leave because we could both sense that the other was about to burst into tears. it was awful. especially because aleyda's one of the cousins of the family i hang out with all the time, and her brother died last year- and he'd been in the choir and had gone to the states in 2004 when they travelled to chicago and colorado... YUK. i knew this was going to happen, but it didn't make things any easier.
i've also been feeling sick for the last week or so (i think my intestines are finally realizing all the yucky parasites they've fought and are giving in a little bit). but i woke up saturday morning and felt like absolute hell. i had told a group of nurses who were visiting Cusmapa for the weekend and didn't speak any Spanish that i'd show them around, so i put my best healthy face forward but the whole day i felt like i was going to pass out. i probably drank about a gallon of water, and took some pepto bismol, and just felt worse and worse. this morning i woke up in a cold sweat at 7 AM and tossed and turned for a few hours, ate some bananas (felt like i had to eat something, but it was not a good idea) then went to bed until 3 PM (something i haven't done since i've been here... but i just felt exhausted and feverish). i started taking some prescription meds my mom sent with me but i am still feeling terrible, and just thinking it's SO typical that my body would choose this moment in time to break down.
cindy and magda are headed to managua tomorrow for cindy's surgery and will probably be gone till wednesday, and i need to get this paperwork done with Panchita as soon as she gets back (i'm hoping she'll be there when I visit this evening- though she was also in managua for a surgery on her little boy who i think has some sort of cerebral palsy) and then head to managua myself... BEFORE tuesday if at all possible. my body is failing me, something which does not happen often. i'm so bad at being sick, because i've been so lucky and healthy for most of my life... i'm just praying that these meds kick in soon cause there's no way i could make it to managua in my current state.
things have got to go up from here, eh?!
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