An Election Plea from the World Community

I write to you from the top of a mountain in northern Nicaragua where I currently live and teach music and critical thinking. I've been here nearly two years, and have seen first-hand the effects of American foreign policy in Central America. We warred with Nicaragua in the 80's and left its' people and economy crippled. Many of my students remember the Contra War because they have older brothers or sisters who lived through it or fathers who were lost forever guerrilla fighting in the mountains. One would imagine Nicaraguans to hold bitter vengeful thoughts of Americans, but that's not the case. My students do ask me daily about the war in Iraq, and one asked me yesterday afternoon "Are we at war with Venezuela?".

My students are not ignorant. This question came from a general perception we've lived up to as far as the rest of the world is concerned. We are a warring people; we meddle in the lives of others without permission. I know this to be far from true, but how can I claim it isn't so when a Spanish friend asks "How the f$*% did you elect Bush a SECOND time?! Wasn't he bad enough the first time?!" and I shake my head. It frustrates me how much our country, my country, embarrasses me. I can no longer watch Bush’s puppet act (no TV news… no loss) but imagine our wide global community having a shared laugh or two over the imbecile we’ve chosen to rule our empire for the last eight years.

When I first found out who the contenders are for the current election I laughed contentedly and thought to myself "no contest!". Now, as the time grows nearer, I am not so sure. I feel a growing wariness about the way things are shaping up, probably due to the dread I feel thinking about Bush's round one and two in office. The idea of his legacy being carried further and further into the future is almost too much to handle.

I simply cannot believe that there are people, intelligent people, who do not see through the dog and pony act of McCain and Palin. Are women who supported Hillary Clinton (a brilliant, moderate, eloquent, experienced politico) ACTUALLY considering giving their democratic vote to Palin (the rifle-bearing, book banning, radically Christian, politically inexperienced hockey mom) because we “feel she understands us”? Where do we get the remotest idea that this woman represents the American woman? Everything I’ve read about Palin consistently leads me to the conclusion that she’s being used as a pawn, a pretty one at that, to sway the evangelical and female voters of our country.

I'm not sure how to say this, because I want to scream it to the world:
"WE NEED CHANGE!!!!!"

If there's one person who can sit down and look at the facts of the last eight years without thinking, "our country has really gone down the drain", I urge that person to send a rebuttal with points covering: defense spending, health care, education, the economy, and general well-being of the American people.

For the sake of our world community, let’s open our eyes. What do we want out of our lives? Do we want to be forever behind walls, dominated by fear of the “other” attacking our “way of life”? There are ways to live beyond fear. Empathy, diplomacy, moderate policies based on fact rather than speculation, and true leadership will lead us to this place. Sticking to our rusting guns will not.

A plea from your fellow world citizens:

VOTE OBAMA!!

I’m traveling 16 hours round-trip to the Nicaraguan/American embassy and spending 20% of my monthly volunteer stipend to do it. You can too.

Coloring Between the Lines: A Raging Commentary on the Nicaraguan Education System

Education in the “developing world” frustrates beyond belief.

Imagine sending a child to public school only half-day to a school that does not have an outhouse, or books, or a science lab, or encouragement towards your child’s creative capabilities. Picture the disadvantages to women in this education system in which boys are constantly encouraged to be participative leaders and women are kept humble and quiet (*side-note: just like the Virgin Mary).

In Nicaragua, the government cannot (or chooses not, either way you look at it) afford for children to attend school full-time. Therefore, kids here go to school in shifts. Grades 1-3 and 7-8 have class from 7:30 AM till 12 PM and grades 4-6 and 9-11 attend school from 1 PM until 5:30 PM. This means that a child receiving an education here gets less than half of the class-time as a child going to public school in the United States. Beyond that, teachers are given a 10-12 page guide outlining their teaching themes for the ENTIRE school year and then thrown to the wolves (and by wolves I mean teenagers). This outline (I have personally only seen the guide for the teacher of 10^th and 11^th grade history) has suggestions like this:

Week 1 Lesson Plan:

1) World War I

a. Causes

b. Effects

c. Long-term consequences

Anyone who has ever taught or thought about teaching can look at this outline and see a major fault in the fact that, if given to a teacher in a place in which doing research is nearly impossible… the teacher is likely to use one or two sources and make up the rest, missing many important facts, or brush over the whole theme with a few sentences like “yes the Holocaust was important because a lot of people died and Hitler is now in Hell”.

Case in point: when Lauren and I taught about Hitler and Gandhi in a leadership section of our Critical Thinking class, I’d estimate that 80% of our students had never heard of EITHER of them. GHANDI. HITLER. These are high schoolers we are talking about. We’re currently working on simple math word problems and I am consistently shocked to find that many kids who will graduate high school within the next two years do not know how to do SIMPLE math (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division). The logical reasoning simply does not exist.

I will tell you why.

Picture learning everything you’ve ever been taught in school through the following method:

1) Teacher uses meager outline to create lesson plan.

2) Students do not have a book, and are lucky to have a guide for the class.

3) Teacher writes his/her ideas and notes on the board.

4) Student copies these ideas and notes.

5) Student studies these ideas and notes.

6) Student regurgitates these ideas and notes for a test/quiz.

And what happens next…

7) Student entirely forgets what they’ve learned.

8) Student does not learn to formulate their own ideas, to come to conclusions based on what they’ve learned or read… their ideas are the teacher’s ideas and their conclusions are the teacher’s conclusions.

Can you imagine graduating from high school with the type of semi-illiteracy that leaves you unable to spell simple words? I’ve seen teachers here write in Spanish substituting “b” for “v” and leaving the “h” and “s” off of multiple words. Some of these teachers graduated from COLLEGE and can still not spell. It’s culturally considered so unimportant that I often see students spell their name differently every single time they write it (that may or may not be due to the fact that the name which appears on their birth certificate is not spelled correctly either).

Here’s where the lack of creativity comes in. Children are encouraged to be “just like” all the other students – no skies painted green here. Rather than art class, they are given cartoon Bugs Bunny or Winnie the Pooh drawings and told to color between the lines. When Lauren tried to create a giant paper mache fish last year and let the kids paint it, the project turned quickly into the teachers painting one side and students painting the other- one of the teachers commenting “let’s see who does it better” then not allowing a student to paint on the “teacher” side. I may be wrong, but isn’t the whole point of education ‘trial-and-error’?! If kids are never allowed to formulate their own thoughts, images, or beliefs about the world… they will stay silent and stagnant forever.

More than that, this school in reality only functions three or possibly four days per week because at least once per week there exists a holiday (and therefore days off for teachers) such as:

Day of the Starving yet Un-Spayed Dog who Bites Neighbors but Who Cares Because He has his Rabies Vaccination

Day of the Construction Worker who only Works Drunk on Sundays Beginning at 8 PM

Day of the Cheesy Argentinean Soap Opera Watched by 5 out of 6 Million Nicaraguans Country-Wide Regardless of Age

Day of Loud Reggaeton Played at 6 AM by Neighbors Every Day of the Year

Day of Machismo (aka: Men Rule the World Since the Beginning of Time and Forevermore Day)

Obviously these holidays do not TRULY exist, but you get the idea. Although the official embassy website only posts 11 national holidays per year, I tell you without exaggeration that the NATION of SAN JOSE DE CUSMAPA celebrates more than 70 holidays per year. That’s about 20% of all existing days. If the holiday happens to fall on a weekend, we would never dream of celebrating it on a weekend, we celebrate it either the Friday or Monday that falls closest to the day of fiesta-ing. Therefore every 1/5 school days which could potentially aid children towards their future development is wasted as a “dia feriada” (free day!!).

And, last but not least, the most infuriating thing about Nicaraguan education is…

Drum roll please….

Machismo.

Yes, the macho culture here spills into all corners of society, leaving no teenage girl un-turned. Last month I had a look at our enrollment here at Fabretto and the difference between the amount of girls in 7^th and 8^th grade and the amount of girls in 9^th thru 11^th grade disturbed me greatly. Younger girls and boys post nearly equal enrollment numbers, but after 8^th grade something… though I know not what… happens at this age which causes girls to drop out of school like flies. Maybe it has something to do with the following examples:

1) Cece’s first day in English class, the teacher calls her up to the board and asks her to read a paragraph out loud while the boys in the class (seated on the same side of the room) repeat her after every sentence. The girls in the class are entirely excluded from this activity.

2) Our friend Mayerling’s experience with evangelical parents who pulled her out of school after 9^th grade because they were “convinced that if she stayed in high school she would get pregnant” (yes, that’s very logical). Mayerling wanted to return to school so badly that at age 14 she saved up her own money, working her way until she had enough to buy a school uniform and notebooks to return to school. Her mother, though supportive of Mayerling, never said a WORD to her father about the situation. Now Mayerling, at age 23, still has not finished high school and is stuck living with her crazy conservative parents in a household in which she’s not allowed to wear pants, earrings, has to go to church every night against her will, cannot go to parties or dances, and cannot have male visitors, even if they are just friends.

I think it’s perfectly possible for children to learn a wealth of knowledge about the world without access to books, a science lab, and even outhouses. I even think children can learn a lot in just five hours per day of class, with a teacher who cannot spell (when it comes down to it, that’s not THE most important thing). But a culture and country (government and catholic/evangelical supported) in which half of the population is STIFLED to the point of silence and un-education will never succeed.

And I will never respect a teacher who does not encourage children to color the sky whatever color they darn well choose to.

How do I feel nostalgic and heartsick for a place I haven't left yet?

When children's voices lifted in quiet song on a windy Sunday afternoon choke tears in my throat, and swarms of dragonflies floating through branches in my orange tree leave me longing and breathless?

Mid-afternoon sun-filtered through holes in a tiled roof, in the arms of someone I'm slowly tearing myself away from yet constantly pulled toward lances through me leaving profound holes in my heart.

A pink-dressed student rushes towards me for a twirling hug shrieking "mi Callie!", her smile writes arpeggios filled with graceful treble notes.

How can I remain open to life here while braced for heartbroken goodbyes?

Low Tide

Take a moment to think of all the times throughout your day you turn the faucet and are guaranteed clean fresh water. Water availability does not concern the blessed of humanity living in developed countries. On the other hand, in struggling countries such as Nicaragua, water constantly trickles across the thin line between life and death.

Facundo, who takes care of our house (yes, we have a “security guard” in a town of 1,500) lives in the small nearby community of el Imirez. At age 40 Facundo’s grin rings toothless and his two-room house shelters 12 people (four adults, eight children). His youngest, Larry, made the hour-hike-three-hour-bus ride to Somoto to the nearest hospital twice last year due to stomach parasites you and I in America will never worry about. The issue goes beyond lack of early childhood nutrition (which certainly exists in places like Imirez where people subsist on ground corn tortillas and rice donated by USAID projects) to much deeper and more serious issues. Lack of preventative health care and the non-existence of clean drinking water lead children like Larry down a malnourished road where survival, simple survival, matters most.

For Christmas last year, Lauren and I bought Facundo’s family a $14 water filter from a Nicaraguan run Potters for Peace business. The filter, sized to hold about four gallons of water in a clay barrel, will last their family for more than five years. Facundo’s family can now collect water from the community well and run it through the filter, secure that parasites will not seep through the filter’s silver alloy shell. He tells Lauren and I with a wide smile that the family’s water filter is the pride of their small village, that neighbors come by for a glass of clean water or just to marvel at the “miracle machine”. While this type of solution works short-term, it does not solve the long-term issue at hand.

Luckily Facundo’s family lives in a community with a well. Others are not so fortunate. In Aguas Calientes (where Osvaldo’s grandmother lives), about 3 hours further down the mountain, habitants must carry their family’s water supply in plastic barrels from the local river. More than backbreaking work, my heart breaks each time I see a small barefoot child weighed down lugging a fifty-pound container of water back to her family’s one-room adobe home, instead of playing or attending kindergarten… knowing full well that the water may make her family sick.

In Cusmapa, water’s non-availability writes an entirely different story. The majority of households here own a 5-foot-wide by 4-foot-deep “pila” or cement storage tank for water. The city gives water once per week; it trickles through rusty faucets to fill these meager holding containers. If the week’s water supply runs dry, the house’s inhabitants must survive without water until further notice. The pila’s faucet provides the house’s only plumbing. Families use pila water for bathing, washing dishes, washing clothes, washing the floor, drinking, and cooking. Though I’ve heard rumor that water received from the town of Cusmapa is technically filtered and safe for drinking, it comes from the closest river at the bottom of the mountain. I’ve splashed around in that river and consciously not dunked my head. Yet thousands of people in the area DRINK water pumped directly up the mountain from that river. Not for want, but for absolute necessity.

I began writing this with a nag in the back of my mind, whining about our own house’s lack of water for the past 18 days (though Cece and I have only been back in Cusmapa for 10 days)… but thinking about it more thoroughly I realize that at no point during this time have we been TRULY without water. We have access to drinking water, water for the dump-flush method of toilet flushing, and water for cleaning dishes. It’s a minor inconvenience to someone like me, who lives in Nicaragua with the support and resources provided by a larger organization. I do not fend for myself here by any means. I am not forced to send my 11-year-old sister out every morning at dawn to stagger up the mountain loaded down with barrels of river water.

Every day I live here I learn more about conservation and the importance of not taking what we consider to be basic life essentials for granted.

Next time you brush your teeth, gulp down a glass of cold tap water without a thought of the repercussions, flush a toilet, or take a hot shower, think of the action on a deeper level. Consider how blessed you are to live in a place with access to these resources, do not take them for granted. Take what actions you can to ensure that others do not live to survive, rather live to thrive.

Airports

I sit with Doña Helena and her cheery 5-year-old daughter from Managua to Atlanta. Helena, a native Nicaraguan tells me of her 20 years of life as an immigrant in Tennessee and her Mexican husband who works construction. She’s stressed about his current lack of work, and speaks of the US economy in its downward spiral towards crisis. Helena explains the division between Hispanics and whites in her town, choosing her words carefully. Her daughter, a native US citizen, only speaks a few words of English. The bubbly little one informs me that she can fly airplanes, and gives me a sly corner-of-the-mouth grin as she points to groups of people in the advertisements of Sky Magazine. “These aren’t my friends” she states, referring to an ad of white bikini-clad models sitting on a floating dock. I'd venture that "irony" is not on her short list of English vocabulary words.

Focused in tunnel vision in a brisk clip along a moving walkway, travelers move in herds through the Atlanta airport. I walk for twenty minutes, sauntering down the corridor and they pass me like water over a boulder. I don’t make eye contact with a single person. The sterile fluorescent lit air feels fabricated and stifling. A stars-and-stripes banner welcomes me to the glory of the United States of America and I am shooed through customs without a second glance.

My second flight finds me with Ron, a 50-some-year-old electrical engineer who talks of the six years he spent during his twenties teaching English in Thailand, Taiwan, China, and Japan. He believes in the importance of young people getting out in the world and the understanding of other cultures. I am warmed by his encouragement.

Everyone here whines about gas prices and debates continuously about the upcoming election.

I want a turkey sandwich but can’t stomach paying $7 for a few slabs of bread.

I will see my mom and Cece in four hours!!

Los Chunches: The Debut

Hannah wrote a fantastic blog highlighting the glorious events of a recent weekend we spent in Esteli. Read it if you are interested in the following: the debut of our Nicaraguan jam band, or drinking beer in grocery stores.
Here's the link:
http://www.thetulipsshouldbebehindbars.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Want Ad

Wanted:
Music Teacher for 123 Adorable Nicaraguan Children.

Requirements:
Kind (though some general teacher sternness pays off)
Flexible (of body-yoga, mind-learning el Espanol, and spirit)
Fairly Musically Apt (ie: ability to sing or play an instrument)
Conneseur of Rice and Beans
A Lover of Travel and Unexpected Adventures
Willing to Travel by Chicken Bus
A Navigator of Torrential Rainstorms and Puddles
Patient, Patient, Patient
Good at Playing Doctor to Little Kid Cuts and Scrapes
Willing to Reason with Teenagers
Able to Laugh in the Face of Very Frustrating Situations
Ignorer of Men on the Street Making Romantic Comments
Accepting of Hair Gel, Bare Feet, and Soy Products
Able to Entertain Self throughout Lengthy Periods of Power Outages

Ability to Move Hips in Latin Dance Style a Plus.

Other Pluses:
Not Concerned about Filthy Feet or Showering Every Day
Acceptance of Large Beetles
Craving of Rum and Cheap Pilsner by the Liter Bottle
Enjoyment of Cheesy Late 80's and Early 90's Music (ie: Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton)
Willingness to Sleep Inside a Mosquito Net
Ability to Haggle with Taxistas

Currently accepting new Music Director in San Jose de Cusmapa, Nicaragua.
Please respond ASAP.
Your new roommate will be a crafty artist and excellent chef.
Adventures shall abound!

Now who has the cojones to respond to this Want Ad?
I figure better posting it here than in a Penny Saver.

Arriba las Mujeres del Mundo!

Tonight we shall celebrate the free women of the world.

After a talk with Xiomara about the injustice suffered by our single female co-workers in the organizing and executing of school celebrations for Mothers/Fathers/Children's days, we decided to take matters in to our own hands.

Esteemed guests include:
Lauren, myself, Kate, Mike (our token male of the group, who will most likely be forced to wear my feather boa and possibly a fake mustache), Mayerling (the most bodacious and vivacious of our Nica female friends), Brenda (who is married, but at age 25 still doesn't have kids, which qualifies her as a free woman), and Xiomara (who's about as free as they get, and strikingly resembles an Egyptian princess).

We celebrate women our age who, especially in a country like Nicaragua, defy all norms.
Women whose power and strength streams from every pore.
Women who I admire deeply for their independence and perseverance.
Women who are just plain awesome.

After a week of torrential rains (a lightning bolt hit so close to our house on Wednesday that it blew a fuse in our living room light) the time has come to "disfrutar" the weekend.

More (and pictures, to be sure) to come Lunes.

Dreams

I am SO excited for my July visit to Montana...
but can tell I am subconsciously nervous about things
because I keep having dreams about
Jeb
and
George JR.
of the Bush family.

Frightening thought, right?

In brighter news I am also dreaming of lattice-topped apple pie.

Gramma and Ozzy!

Osvaldo's Gramma!

Osvaldo and I rode horseback eight hours last weekend to meet his nearly 100-year-old grandma, who lives in a tiny community called Aguas Calientes (hot waters).

We leave at 5:30 AM after my queasy attempt at drinking a cup of coffee, packing the horses, and strapping on spurs (as he puts them on, I think “holy god, I am insane… what the hell am I doing right now?). I nearly launch myself off the horse 25 times in the first ten minutes, feet slipping out of the holster trying to trot along to keep up with my (apparent, who knew?) cowboy boyfriend. I slowly gain confidence as my body found the horse’s rhythm, and our gaits begin to match rather than jolt. One of Camello (my horse- a donkey/horse cross named: Camel)’s llantas (horseshoes) falls off within the first hour, so we made our one stop on the way there to pry off and pound back on the broken piece. Camel could not be a more perfect name for this donkey/horse- he’s good natured, but lazy as all get out (Oz calls him a crybaby). Every time I stop paying attention for more than 20 seconds he stops dead in his tracks and takes a good kick to the side to keep trucking down the road.

I have no idea distance-wise of how far Aguas Calientes is from Cusmapa, but it’s a good amount further than Angel 3 (maybe even twice as far, it’s apparently 5 ½ hours walking just to get there, and took us 4 on a horse). The road up to El Cariso (a small community we pass through about 2 ½ hours into the trip) is by and far passable by truck, but the last 1 ½ hours was pretty much down a boulder-laden creek bed. Along the road, we go by three large groups of people working on bettering the road, children and adults and ancianos (old folks) of all ages, in all sorts of garb, hacking away with shovels and sticks and whatever other tool available in order to try to make their community accessible (I would imagine) to ambulances and food supplies (which Fabretto sends out weekly). My horse trips more than a few times, and as I peer over some steep drop-offs I realize that all standing between me and a freefall down the mountainside was: Camel, some burning fields, and a thin strand of barbed wire. Miraculously enough an AMBULANCE (a 4 x 4 type) rambled past us as we descended from El Cariso. I cannot begin to speculate on how long it takes an ambulance to get to Aguas Calientes and back out again, the amount of jolting endured during the trip, or even how long it takes to answer an emergency call there…

In reality, the trip does not take as long as I had initially imagined (by the reactions of my friends here- whose doubts as to my physical ability to make the round-trip up and down the mountain in one day caused me a bit of pre-trip anxiety). The morning ride through lifting fog and birds greeting the day leaves both Osvaldo and I silent and pensive. We sight many birds- one called the Guardabarranco, which is the national bird of Nicaragua, has translucent sea foam feathers and a forked tail nearly two feet long which ends with circular shaped feathers. It’s the most beautiful bird I have ever seen. It’s planting time in the rural farming land here, meaning that slash and burn practices are in full effect, filling the valley with a layer of smoky haze. This does not stop the birds’ song from greeting the new day.

Upon arrival, Osvaldo’s gramma is bathing herself in an open air bucket shower, without regard or worry of the presence of any other person. Though small and ancient, she moves with determination and quiet assuredness that the world is good. She walks out of the bathing area in a white slip, using a cane to help her see, and stops in front of my (giant) shadow to simply ask me if I was “paseando” (just “passing by”) before going inside to change. I talk to one of the uncles about the farming life, about his kids’ education and how much Fabretto gives to the people in his community. He is a small man (much smaller than Osvaldo, who’s about 2 inches shorter than I am), thinly mustached (as most of the men in Nicaragua who attempt facial hair are), and his sandal-adorned feet are callused with years of farm work and rock-strewn mountain paths. His bright-eyed enthusiasm nears the point of ecstatic when talking about his son, Jader, who started high school this year and the new opportunities Jader has for learning (with Fabretto’s rural outreach high school program, SAT).

Osvaldo summons me inside and I enter his gramma’s room in the back of the house, which holds a low cot, a single open-air window, and a small wooden chair. She holds a wide-toothed comb in one hand, and wears her best bright pink floral print ‘70’s style polyester dress. I kneel in front of her cataract-clouded eyes and she envelops my hands with hers, crooning a “mucho gusto” (nice to meet you). When she asks me where I come from and I answer “Los Estados Unidos” (US), her face lights up delightedly and she exclaims “OY! Es MUUUY lejos!” (Oh! That’s VERY far!) then giggles for the next few minutes about the prospect of somebody traveling THAT far just to meet her.

I sit alone with her and we chat for a good 40 minutes, through many stories of the history of the Muñoz family, Osvaldo’s father’s 8 brothers and sisters, where she’s lived and traveled (never farther than Managua), about moving the family from the house there in Aguas Calientes to Cusmapa during the war in the ‘80’s because there was too much fighting on the frontera (the Honduran/Nicaraguan border is very close) and they were forced to leave the house empty, abandoned to the armed forces. We have a long conversation about how she’s progressively become more and more blind. At the beginning, she’d gone with her son to a doctor in hopes of fixing her vision, but found that he could not do anything to help. She tells me that losing her ability to see is the worst thing she could possibly imagine, as a 3-year-old grandson snuggles up on her lap, she runs her fingers across his hair and looks into his face, smiling, as if she can see his every molecule. She looks at me so intently at times that I forget about her blindness.

She’s had a few surgeries in the past decade which have kept her alive, but now has decided to stay in her little corner of the world, no matter what may come. Her favorite thing in the world, now that she’s decided to stay put, she muses, is “sitting outside to feel the breeze in my old bones”. In short, she is beautiful. She reminds me of Osvaldo in her easy-going, calm, patient, careful, direct, sincere manner. Her eyes glitter with the bliss and ache of nearly a century of life. I carefully eat every word she utters with a golden spoon and sip the details of every wrinkle and gesture and toothless smile like an elixir of blessings.

Osvaldo and I want to swim in the famed “Rio Negro” (Black River) so we take his nephews, Jader and Walder, down a path to splash around in a few pools amidst many a boulder. It’s a miracle that there’s water there at the tail end of dry season. We enjoy an incredible (though hazy) view of Cusmapa in the background. I watch Osvaldo play with his nephews, his smile wide and his eyes kind and playful. He leaves me to nap on a huge boulder while he bathes the horses, the warm rock soothes my muscles and the sun spins me into a lucid dream state where I imagine of the great elations and tribulations of living this close to the earth and so far from the running madness of the outer world.

Back up the hill to gramma’s house we meet another uncle and more cousins, and are served a duck and yucca soup (!) with lime and fresh tortillas to ready us for the trip back. Gramma tells me that she hopes I come back to visit, and as she and Osvaldo say goodbye, she cries silent tears and waves a time-warped hand, sending us off with a quiet “buen viaje” (good trip).

The first part of the trip back (up to El Cariso) was HOT and a bit miserable (I also think poor Camello nearly has five heart attacks) but after the road levels out and the clouds returned we trot along without worry or hurry. We hold hands and hum to each other and talk about all sorts of things (mainly the magnificence and luck of our small happiness together). We stop at a small stream to stretch then watch the sun set as we ascend the final mountain from El Angel to Cusmapa.

This is my perfect day.

I think I'm turning Chineeese I really think so...

Some funny tidbits of the last few weeks- identity-wise:

In a bus from Somoto to Cusmapa I set next to a 50-year-old-ish man who opened his eyes to ask me:

“You live in Cusmapa, right?”

to which I answered:

“Yes.” He then continued to inquire about my identity:

“And you are Chinese?”

I nearly spit out a gulp of water on his face, and incredulously replied:

“Um. No. I am from America. I am american.”

He pondered on that for a moment before stating with great conviction:

“Ahhhh. But whenever you walk by my house, I say to the children… ‘There goes the Chinese lady.’”

At this point I (as I do a lot here) looked around the bus to see if anyone else was paying attention… really, was this guy TELLING me that I am Chinese? Really?

Of course nobody else was there to share in my shock and awe at the situation.

I turned back to my fellow Cusmapanian and said, voice wavering with laughter:

“My family is from Ireland and Germany, not from China. I am american.”

And he nodded his head in agreement, before responding:

“Yes, but your ancestors are from China.”

Now that I cannot argue.

Lesson one of my identity, thanks to a Cusmapan who probably looks at my round smiley face and assumes I am from an entirely different planet.

----------------------------------------

One of Lauren and my students, Rimen, has an incredible attitude.

He came to chat with me one day (after missing his piano lesson, then getting angry at ME for not being able to teach him on his own time). Lauren was out of the country visiting her family. He asked,

“Is it true that Lauren is older than you?”

I replied, “Yes, she’s about a year older than I am.”

He looked mighty confused.

“But if she’s older, than why are you fatter?”

(Thanks?)

Ah, yes, Rimen… you are the reason I teach critical thinking.

A + B does not ALWAYS = C.

------------------------------------

One afternoon I was chatting with a few of my little chiguines (of about 7-years-old) and they were asking all sorts of questions about my family:

They: “Is it true that your dad is dead?”

Me: “Um. No. My dad is alive.”

They: “Oh. Then what’s his name?”

Me: “Daniel”

They: “Your DAD is DANIEL ORTEGA?” (the president of Nicaragua).

Me: (laughing hysterically) “Yes, of course, my dad is Daniel Ortega.”

They: (mouths open wide in shock)

Me: Broma! Broma! (I am JOKING!)

------------------------------------------

Things I have learned about myself this month:

Older people are fatter than younger people.

My father is the president of a Central American country.

I am Chinese.

Stay tuned to find out what the Nicaraguan people teach me next month about my identity.

Reflexiones on Being Profe. Callie

Sometimes the flavor of frustration

coppery and quick to strike, pumps

through every nerve ending with venomous intent

a spasm of anger recoils my smile

to pursed lips screaming for an undisturbed

moment of breath.

Like a toddler who can taste feelings

before knowing how to categorize them;

I am thrown for loops by teenage laughter

snide ironic comments that can only be

bent by the hasty mouths of 16-year-olds.

There are a finite number of times I can utter a stern

“silencio”

before I feel my head expanding and contracting

with intended patience

mauled into a clenched jaw

and disappearing smile wrinkles…

My sparkle funneled, a channel of molten negativity

I sense my energy in these moments

suckling parasites, thriving in darkness

hatching plans for how to breed

battling for power over my well-being.

Other times

I taste pure golden sunshine

and gulp the mischievous spark of youth

like it still belongs to me

and I want to congratulate

these little bastards

for challenging me to my wits end

I see the battle waged

between teacher and student

as a parody, a commentary of irony

my karmic fate.

Inner smiles and sly winks abound

and joy radiates from my grounded core

energy flows freely in these moments

when a single word or note gives me goose bumps

and smiles make my soul fly.

Pensamiento Critico

I'd like to share the following reflexion I just received in the notebook of one of my "critical thinking" students, Elvia, in response to the following question:

Que significa medioambiente? Cuales son las cosas y lugares mas importantes en la vida y porque? (What does "medioambiente" (translated as nature and culture mixed) mean? What are the things and places that are most important in life and why?)

Medioambiente para mi es el medio donde todos podemos recrearnos. Es un lugar donde
(medioambiente for me is the medium where we can do recreation. It's a place where

sentimos un ambiente de paz, de tranquilidad, donde podemos reflexionar y concentrarnos sin
we feel an air of peace, tranquility, where we can reflect and concentrate without

que nadia nos moleste. Es el lugar donde mas sentimos seguros, es algo natural, es toda la
anyone bothering us. It's the place where we feel the most safe, it's something ntaural, it's all the

naturaleza que nos tenemos. Es algo que no podemos fabricar con nuestras manos pero si
nature that we have. It's something that we cannot make with our hands, but yes

podemos cuidar y proteger podemos ayudar aunmentarlo.
we can take care of and protect and help to make it better.

Las cosas y lugares mas importantes en mi vida es todo lo natural, es lo puro y todos los lugares
the things and places that are most important in my life is everything natural, pure, and all places

que ayudan a la gente y no destruyen a las personas.
which help people and don't destroy people.

Pretty profound for a 15-year-old, huh?
My students constantly blow me away and give me goosebumps and proud teacher teary eyes.

April Showers Bring.... Jules and Justin!

I am ECSTATIC.

My cousin Julie, one of my biggest supporters throughout the last 15 months I have spent here in Nica, arrives on FRIDAY with the ever so marvelous Justin :) They're coming almost exclusively to see what life's like here in Cusmapa, to meet my friends and family and students here, to know my loved ones and to bear witness to the hardship and joys people in my pueblo live every day. I am so blessed to have these two in my life, and cannot wait to watch the sunset and drink tea and manifesto and learn and love and live with them until May!

I had an incredible journey through Costa Rica for nearly two weeks with Kayla, Marcy, Jessica, and Harley (all Missoula buddies of mine)- we frolicked the beaches on the Pacific side and the rainforests in the Carribean. Activities included- beach tours by microbus (aka: party-bus), boogie boarding at sundown, watching baby sloths clamber in branches right at head-level, hooting and howling at monkeys at sunrise, ribbiting at tree frogs, marveling at flowers of all shapes sizes and colors, pirating a snorkel trip (poor other tourists didn't know what was coming), reggae sing-alongs with taxi drivers, blowing fireballs, meeting a wide array of some of the craziest and kindest people I've ever met traveling (Manfred the Austrian scuba diver/dead fish collector/short-shorts wearing drunkard being the main event), looooong busrides over mountain passes through driving rainstorms at night, watching smoke rise from the mouth of an active volcano, lots of Flor de Caña (Nicaragua's specialty rum), bike rides through the rainforest interrupted by pizza and beer pit-stops along the way, galloping down the beach on my misbehaved horse, Rubio, eating LOBSTERS, salsa dancing with waiters, hanging with the rhastas... the memories go on and on and on. Needless to say I am suddenly afflicted with both a dire need to get the heck out of dodge and see more of the world and it's many marvels yet with one side of my heart stuck here in a place where one word from one student or one "Adioooos Pues" from a teetering old man on the street makes my heart melt.

Life continues to overflow with such goodness, that I am often left breathless.

ARRRRR Matey!

So... after a two-week beginning of the school year in which I fell into bed every night "deader than a doornail" (as my mom would put it) I am taking an already-needed vacation.

The kids have tests in the public school, so no class here at the oratorio... and I refuse to sit around for two weeks and do nothing. Therefore, I will frolick the beaches of Costa Rica with Kayla, Harley, and Marcy (three zoo-town folks) and enjoy nearly two FULL weeks of sunshine and giddiness!

Schooooool's.... out... for... the rest of March!
I'll try to update y'all on what the school year looks like, my classes and the awesome women's knitting and tea group Lauren and I have started in the house... but for now, I leave that behind as I set sail for the playa.

Adioooooos, Pues.

Statistics of Note

I just found out that 3% of Nicaraguans currently go to university...
and 0.6% of Nicaraguans complete university.

In times when I question what Fabretto does here, I need to rememember statistics like this.
We may not be perfect, but the amount of students who've graduated from our program that are currently in college FAR surpasses these percentages.

We have so much work left to do...
But, for the moment, siento orguilloso.
I feel very, very proud of my community here in Cusmapa.

Chigüines (Little Ones)

Incredible
how being crushed
changes
to a melted
joyful
light
with one
six-year-old
smile.

Changes

I take people for granted. People I see day-to-day consistently, people who help me with countless things, people who are patient, dedicated, and passionate about life.

Magda is one of these people... my closest co-worker for the past year, my confidant, the rock in the music program, the hardest worker here at Fabretto, the one who brings people together, the eloquent one in staff meetings who brings us all back to what we're really focused on: kids.

Magda's leaving Fabretto.

She told me this morning, it's something she's been thinking about for years. She's stayed because she had no other option, and because of the kids. But these two reasons only work for so long, they do not sustain someone working in one place forever. If one constantly hears from the top-down that their actions are not producing the type of "results" expected, that their work isn't "enough", and has every ounce of work they're doing minimized... one is bound to leave.

Magda says BASTA (enough), and has chosen to take care of herself and Cindy finally, rather than focusing on others. She tells me the decision has killed her inside and that she can't sleep, that she hasn't been able to sleep for weeks thinking about our students.

I want to be angry at her, I do not want to understand.
I do not want this to be my reality right now.
I want her to stay. I am selfish, but I need her.

But how can I be angry when she has made this decision out of a respect for herself, when she is following what she believes she needs to do to take care of her family? I do understand the frustrations she must have faced in the past seven years working for Fabretto- things here are hopelessly unorganized and it's difficult sometimes to keep pushing on through the administrative mess we're faced with as teachers on the ground level.

Fabretto losing Magda is a tremendous blow. Not only to the music program, to the students, but to the organization as a whole. Magda is one of those people who can be counted on at any given moment to drop anything to lend a hand. She is one of the kindest people I have ever known. I know she will not be leaving Cusmapa, that we will still be friends, that she will still come to visit the Oratorio, that she will guide me whenever I need help.

All things go.
I just wish that all things didn't go at the same time...
because as it is now, I feel like everything is crashing down at once
and I am completely helpless in stopping the fall.

sounds

barking snorkling piglets cows loOOwing clopityclopityclop

gouchos and horses outside my bedroom window chicharas

RRRREEEEEEEE droning the sunset deafening TA TAH springing
TA TAH tin roof rains “adiOOOSSSS pues” with a pat on the head

“YIEEEEEE!!!” shrieks of neighborhood soccer playing

in the street wind rattling closed doors cacophonous drum beats
vibrating office doors the prrradum prrrradum

heartbeat of laughing earth teenage secrets
jembe drum marathons nintendoesque frog-song

peAwpeeeawwwPEW after torrential rains
toe-tingling thunder ocean waves in the moonlight

“adios callie!” ten times in a row from sarita
my 2-year-old neighbor mariachi serenades

boogie boarding yowlps mountaintop blues harmonica

gigglejamming “RAMA!RAMA!RAMA!” branch ducking

on top of the bus gggggrrrrOW! frankie fachento’s fachentoish growl

“sounds of silence” during power outages lit
by flashlights dona miriam mmmmaammashumladum hums

“ave maria” chico the robot “dElete.dElete.dElete the file.”

thanksgiving clanking of wine glasses belly laughter painted faces
WE ALL LIVE inayellowsubmarine singalongs in managuan taxis

jairo’s los angeles gangster accent clinkclink of the cordoba

throwing game on every street corner jinglejinglejingle “eskImoOOooo!”

of the ice cream man oliver’s obnoxious

“BUENAS” enthusiastic cesar’s “MUY BIEN, gracias a dios!”

marlon’s doodling cantitos pedro’s fist-pumping-

air-guitar-marathons

to deep purple breeze in the orange blossoms

waterfall roars roosters self important cock-A- dOOdle-OOOO-h-ing

neighborhood radios rattling boMbaDOMbom

boMbaDOMbom reggaeton bass

hipswishing cumbia cracklecracklecrackle wood

burning in adobe stoves sizzlesizzleYUM fresh tortilla dough

and popopopop roasting coffee beans bouncing marimba
mallets offbeat clap (pause) (pause) clap of little ones

popopop mustard seeds in hot oil dangledongledangledongle

church bells on a lazy sunday morning WHOOOONNNNK
WHOOONNNNNKKKKK bus horns tell time better than watches

swishswishswish splashsplash laundry on cement washboards

“yo quiesiera que todo el mundo fuera feliz como yo soy

en mi pueblo” ranchera guitaron BOWBom. BOWBombombom

BOWBom. BOWBom. BOWBom.
BOWBombombom. flamencoguitarlickselectricpassionsteelstring

shuffleshuffle footsteps on the graveled streets scrufflescruffle

YOWLPARRRRRARAR scrufflescruffleYIIIIIYI! dog fights at midnight

“daledaledale!!!” “suavesuavesuave!!!” bus lingo TOC TOC (giggle)

TOC TOC TOC visiting chiguines at the front door d

on coundo’s silent wheezy joyous laughter chelemancho’s joyous

“bueeeeNNNAAAAASSSsssss!” orangeshakingbranches thumpthumpthump

as they hit the ground TSSST TSSST MUCHACHA

down the gauntlet of mainstreet OYE! shweeeeettweet weeeeeeet

yow! whistle language “soooothe me I want some sugarinmy bowllllll”

fin.

Reflections on Ortega

(Photo from The New York Times)

“Arriba, los Pobres del Mundo!”
(Upwards, the poor of the world!)

School-bus-yellow letters backed by fuchsia proclaim as a solemn President Daniel Ortega raises a fist to the skies in apparent solidarity with his Nicaraguan people. These billboards scatter throughout the country, featuring Ortega as a casually clad everyday Joe in a pair of khaki slacks and a white polo; his receding peppered hairline and signature caterpillar moustache marking him as the politician at the people’s level.

I do not claim to be knowledgeable about the political situation here in Nicaragua. I speak from the level of the people, the campesinos in the countryside (the voiceless) and the taxi drivers of Managua (who I find to be some of the most politically opinionated and vocal individuals in the country). I speak from my personal experiences here throughout the past 13 months, from what I notice that holds everyday people prisoners to poverty and what the government seems to be doing and not doing about it.

What say the Taxistas of Nicaragua?

I love striking up political discussions with taxi drivers. Though we do not have taxis here in Cusmapa (it would be ridiculous if we did, as walking from one end of town to the other takes less than 10 minutes), every time I travel in bigger cities (mainly Esteli and Managua) I chat up every single driver I possibly can about their political opinions. Ninety-five percent of taxi drivers (in my unofficial count) I have ever talked to about Ortega are violently opposed to the man, angry that he’s in office, and would probably kick him in the teeth if they ever encountered him in a dark Managuan alley. I’m sure their main beef with Ortega has something to do with the spikes in gas prices this past year (we’re now up to more than $4 per gallon country-wide), but there’s also a real feeling of desperation I sense while talking to these men. In the current taxi market prices, I travel from one side of Managua to the other, a 40 minute ride for $2 US.

Ortega was re-elected in 2006 with 38% of the vote (he also served as the first true “democratically” elected president of Nicaragua with the FSLN party- the Sandinista National Liberation Front- in 1984). To learn more about this election, visit http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/ortega. Most of Ortega’s support comes from the Northern part of the country, the area where the Contra war was fought, the area with the least education and the most poverty.

In a 2007 CID-Gallup survey published in the Managua daily newspaper La Prensa, “Ortega's approval level had dropped significantly, 26% of Nicaraguans having a positive image of his handling of the job, 36% a negative impression, and the remaining a neutral impression. The poll also indicated that 54% were still optimistic about Ortega and the government, in particular the health and education policies. Additionally, 57% of Nicaraguans believed the country is on the "wrong track", and only 31% believed that the country is on the "right track". Sounds pretty similar to the political situation we have in the United States, minus the optimism in the healthcare and education sector. If anyone told me they were optimistic about the Bush Administration’s health and education policies I think I would be forced to rudely laugh directly in that person’s face.

Ortega’s policies are based on “moderate democratic socialism” and strongly influenced by his Roman Catholic beliefs. In 2006, though Ortega was not President, as an influential member of the parliament he pushed the Nicaraguan government to ban ALL abortions in the country, regardless of medical emergency or issues with sexual or inter-familiar violence (for more information, see Human Rights Watch: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/10/01/nicara16987.htm or the BBC’s report on Nicaraguan’s Ban on Abortion http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6161396.stm). Ortega’s administration doles out 6-year prison terms for any persons aiding in providing emergency abortions- as in the famous 2003 case of a 9-year-old Managuan girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather (for more information on Rosita’s case, see http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/nov/07111904.html). For me personally, this is the kicker. Though the anti-abortion law was approved on many societal levels (as demographics according to a 1995 census label 89.6% of Nicaraguans as Christians and this number continues to grow with Evangelicalism ever on the rise), I will never understand how forcing a raped child to have a baby could be considered “right to life”.

Ortega’s main diplomatic ties include Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thus, the Bush administration linking Ortega to socialism, fanatical leftism, and (GASP) … TERRORISM. Let’s just keep it simple at saying the US and Ortega are not good ol’ boy Yale buddies. In fact, before the 2006 Presidential election, Georgy’s little brother Jeb (fondly refered to as “Jab”) took out a full-page spread to bash Ortega, threatening Nicaraguans with what would happen if he were to be elected. A choice sample of Jab’s accusations: “Daniel Ortega is an enemy of everything the United States represents. Further, he is a friend of our enemies. Ortega has a relationship of more than 30 years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terroism.” Ironically enough, after Ortega’s victory, Bush phoned him in congratulations. You’ve gotta love diplomacy. In a July 2007 speech, Ortega retaliated, refering to George Bush as “the world’s main tyrant” and challenging his policies which promote war-mongering while in reality taking away money that could be used as aid for promoting health and positive growth in developing countries. Apparently Bush and Ortega have reconciled their differences in one single phone call, (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN0827392320070108) agreeing to work together on the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the development of “free market democracies” through the U.S. Millenium Challenge Account. I’m sure if Bush backs these policies, they’re ultimately beneficial to the poorest of the poor here in the countryside (insert painful sarcastic eyebrow raise here).

What say the Campesinos of Cusmapa?

Truthfully, not much. People here in the countryside are too focused on the day-to-day survival of their famlies to engage themselves in nation or worldwide politics. The furthest Cusmapan political opinion goes is the flying of the Sandanista flag and houses painted with colors of whichever party the family supports.

The news our pueblo recieves on the two television channels mainly involves reporters shoving microphones in the faces of people who have just been though a near-death experience, asking them how they feel and what happened. I suppose it’s this type of disconnect between what’s important in their country and the world and what’s locally sensational drives news worldwide, not just here in Nicaragua. We do not receive newspapers here, I’d even dare to say that 80% of people in Cusmapa have never SEEN a newspaper. Even if they had, the newspapers in Nicaragua have a bit of world news but mainly showcase features like a woman slowly undressing herself one article of clothing at a time to give you the weekly weather forecast. Brilliant engagement of the population, says I.

Here’s what I’ve seen at the campo (countryside) level of changes in the past year since Ortega’s election…
1) Families in the poorest communities are currently each being given one pig and one bull cow.
2) Electricity outages last year were from 7 AM until 3 PM until the celebratory month of December, when magically the blackouts ended.
3) Water shortages still permeate the countryside- last year during the dry season we went two weeks without water and people reacted like it was a NORMALITY.

These are the three main things that come to mind when I consider Ortega’s influence here on the pueblo level. I’m happy to have electricity again, it makes for less excuses when it comes to the work-day, and less headaches trying to teach keyboarding lessons. The water issue affects all levels of society- people are unable to grow vegetables or fruit, unable to drink sufficient amounts of clean water to sustain health, and are cooking and cleaning and bathing with parasite-infested water on a daily basis. This ultimately leads to much sickness and contributes to the prison of poverty. My question remains: what kind of sustainable development is he providing by giving famlies a MALE cow (which cannot even be used for providing milk) and ONE PIG (fattened up and eaten during less than one week’s time)? I believe these gestures placate the people into believing that Ortega’s working for lasting changes for the poor. They’ll vote for him in future elections because of the week of pork they received. I’m doubtful of his motives, to say the least.

So, while I do not agree with Jab Bush about Ortega’s status as a “terrorist”, I am reluctant to promote him as bringing upward the poor of the world. He’s yet to prove to the people on a local level that he cares enough about health and education to make lasting changes that truly benefit the PEOPLE of Nicaragua.

Weekends in Cusmapa

The couple pics get creepier and creepier.

Don't look so happy Burt!

What's with this Flat Stanley business? Bet he likes cross-dressing too.


While there is certainly no “normal” to any weekend I spend here, there are quiet and lovely moments during long weekends spent in this pueblo. Saturday mornings I wake up early with the roosters and Lauren clinking coffee mugs in the kitchen. In this way I rise most days, with first thoughts of a cup of steamy gasoline- the black gold which starts every day. Normally Lauren and I sit quietly enjoying the morning tranquility, watching steam rise off the patio bricks as sun filters through the orange tree branches into our kitchen windows. This Saturday we have a slew of guests- Stephanie, Mike, and Kate are all here visiting for the weekend. During the week Lauren does a vast majority of the cooking because 1) she’s GREAT at it, 2) she likes it, and 3) well…. I suppose that about covers the reasons. Point being, Saturday mornings I am unofficially in charge of brunch. Most of the time I make a big batch of banana pancakes but lately I’ve taken to zucchini bread (with freshly chopped nutmeg and loads of almonds and raisins).

Wandering in and out between the breakfast table and the patio, I stretch as if I were a cat in my past life, breathing in deeply and soaking up the golden morning’s light. I like to bring a book out to the hammock, pretend to read for a few minutes, and take naps off and on while pondering the clouds. When we have visitors, late morning often involves a stroll around town to buy dinner supplies- tomatoes, onions, garlic, flour, eggs… and whatever kind of beverage sounds right for the occasion. This Saturday’s dinner menu (because Mike is fabulous) includes rosemary foccacia bread and calzones with a mountain of fillings- olives, pineapple, fresh basil and spinach (from our garden), beer-fried onions, cuajada (fresh cheese), queso seco (literally: “dried cheese” which is basically cuajada that’s been aged), zucchini, summer sausage (thanks to mom’s Christmas gifts), and some wicked marinara sauce courtesy of Kate Fanale (our very own beard-painting maestro). Lazy Saturdays often also mean a game of Scrabble which includes much lollygagging and usually some snacks.

This late-morning Saturday I help Chelemancho (the gardener, “Cusmapanian of the Month” himself) plant garlic, melon, zucchini, cucumbers, snap peas, and green beans. He’s so pleased with how our garden’s coming along- we’re about to harvest a round of spinach and lettuce and also have carrots, red onions, tomatoes, bok choi, celery and eggplant sprouting like mad. I love getting my hands muddy! The smell of earth, our dark musty mother, and dirt under my fingernails… things I cherish. I walk out the front door every day and think “my god, the plants have grown overnight!” Plants really are miracles. A community garden could do so much good in a place like Cusmapa if it had the right structure and support. Chelemancho shows me pictures in a photocopied gardening book to inform me that it’s perfectly normal to put a bit of liquor on your plants and in the soil in order to deter pests. We chuckle gleefully about all the drunken ants and beetles we’re going to have in the garden. Marcos, one of our students, helps me plant the garlic cloves one by one, telling me all sorts of information such as: melons like growing in sand. I’m not sure if that’s true or not but either way I’ve become fairly good at nodding my head and “ooooh”-ing in a way which generally convinces people that I believe what they’re telling me. It’s a talent I’ve picked up in this last 13 months of only picking up 5-70% of what people say to me. I make presumptions about what they’re saying, so I assume they’re allowed to make presumptions about what I’m thinking.

Some little ones come over to draw for a bit… we have 5-7 groups of kids who come over on a regular basis, especially when we’re around for the weekend. This Saturday Jobeling and her five siblings visit for a few hours and marvel over an illustrated guide to the animal kingdom (probably the best book we have in the kid books sector) while coloring and giggling. The main groups of visiting kids are look something like this:

1) Anyelka (13), Jubelkis (12), Tonio (8), Jader (6), and el Pipe (Luis) (3)
2) Aleyda (14) & Marlon (9)
3) Marcos (14) & Christian (12)
4) Jobeling et al. (I know few of their names but mostly they’re things like: Hamilton (pronounced am-IL-ton) and Hanjel (I think they meant Angel)

I must digress into a lovely story about Jobeling’s family… which illustrates a grand sentiment I feel on a daily basis here: that of being a circus side-show. As a good friend of mine, Katie Meyer once wrote “sometimes I feel like I’m a discovery channel show”, and there is no better way to describe the feeling one gets being a gringo living in Cusmapa. The first time Jobeling and her siblings came to the house, Lauren caught them trying to climb our fence to get maracouyas from one of the trees and invited them in to the yard to search for whatever fruit they could find. The next time they came over was while my mom and Cece (sis) were visiting, when we’d had an absolute revolving door of kids in and out the entire day. Lauren and I were sitting outside reading and knitting and the kids came and just sat together in a bunch and silently open-mouth stared. We tried over and over to get a response but to no avail, so finally we started joking around with them a bit. The conversation between Lauren and I went something like this:

L: “Do you think they know we’re witches?”
C: “Hmmmm. I don’t know. But witches do love eating small children for lunch.”
L: “MMMMM. Yes, you’re right. Children are very delicious to eat.”
C: “Yes, especially the little ones. I’m hungry.”

It sounds bad (and looks bad I suppose, when written in this context) but we were laughing the whole time and I assumed the kids realized we were joking. I left the patio for a moment to get a drink of water and came back to see poor Jobeling crouched in the corner, back to the wall, bawling. Turns out Pedro (our dreadlocked dread-inducing friend- every child here thinks his hair is made of snakes) came home and caught on to the joke, and tried to get in on the giggles, but instead told Jobeling it was “lunch-time” while she was backing up into a corner in which she could not escape. Thank god for Lauren, who pulled herself together enough to calm the kiddo down because Pedro and I were laughing and laughing (as was Jobeling’s little brother). I suppose I learned my lesson about being sarcastic here… especially when I’m already a national geographic spectacle who does not go to church.
So Jobeling finally overcame her fear of the white witches and brought her brothers and sisters over to the house for an afternoon of drawing. When they leave, we hike up to the “mirador”, my favorite place in town to watch the sunset over the mountains of Honduras. This Saturday we see all the way to the ocean, there are some estuaries which curve in and out of the shoreline and the sun sets directly behind them, reflecting brilliant light. I love the sunsets here, when the “chicharas” sing the dusk with a monotone buzz I feel droning through every bone in my body. They say the sun sinks faster in Nicaragua. Rushing toward the horizon, it caresses the mountains with its last scarlet rays.

We visit Anyelka’s family’s house with the whole gringo parade to bring them a photo album full of pictures I’ve taken this past year of the kids. It’s wonderful to watch them all pour over the photos, with Luis emphatically exclaiming “YO!” and any other name of a person he recognized. We’re trading Blanca Clementina (mom) clothes washing for some wood we purchased to help repair their roof before the rainy season (it was collapsing), so we chat with her and Nicholas (dad), and leave the house with four of the boys noisily leading the way. Here comes the DANCE PARTY segment of the weekend, induced of course, by Marlon. Marlon’s one of the best dancers I’ve ever seen, he has entirely original interpretive Napoleon Dynamite-esque moves. Eight of us whirl around the living room to folk music from the Atlantic coast, the four of us “old ladies” wheezing and jigging and the little boys giggling and moving madly. We kick the boys out at 8 PM, the general curfew for kids to be out of the house; and though many protests and puppy-eyes are given, rules are rules!

Saturday night normally means fiesta time in Casa de los Mangos, especially when there’s visitors involved. Calzones are a party in my book, and though our oven runs out of gas and the dough is a bit under-cooked, they are delicious. We enjoye a bit of Toña, our favorite national beer (of the two available, which actually taste the same and are made by the same company) and sit around the dining room table chatting until Kate breaks the ice by painting on her best “Inigo Montoya” (of the Princess Bride) moustache and soul patch and sashaying into the room (much to the delight and surprise of our Nica friends). Soon we are all mustached and wrapped in gypsy scarves… a sort of Arab pirate themed troop of characters. When Steph oompa-loompas into the room with the most realistic goatee I have EVER seen I immediately drop to the floor and hold myself for a good minute to try to stop my bladder from the ultimate pants-peeing laughter. Osvaldo ends up as a spice-trader/karate-kid/zen master with a lovely curly moustache. Kate kindly makes me a little bit more feminine than last weekend (I was told my last weekend’s goatee made me look a bit too much like my little brother); I parade around for the night with a thin but chic moustache. Lauren gets the happy bushy intellectual eyebrows and a soul-patch that is the envy of any tattoo artist. Mike, the last and reluctant victim of the face painting parade, ends up looking like a dashing young Burt Reynolds. In fact I think he should grow out a thick moustache, the look suits him so. This face painting goes on for a few hours, over which I nearly pee my pants 5 times as and my mouth and stomach ache with broad smiles and belly laughter.

Sunday morning brings copious amounts of fruit salad- cantaloupe, watermelon, bananas, and pineapple- to be exact. Since our gas tank for the stove still reads E we have no coffee to lift my morning. As on many Sunday mornings, I end nap on the patio for nearly three hours after breakfast, soaking up the warmth of the sun-soaked bricks. Osvaldo whispers in my ear to wake me at 2 PM to go for a hike. We pass the school, where Magda’s giving a Sunday afternoon guitar lesson to Jeffery, the brilliant boy who makes any teacher’s work worthwhile. Soccer league games and adolescent boys fill the stadium. The older men watch and chew the fat on the sideline, their horses roped to a chain-link fence. Osvaldo takes me to Mano del Diablo, a beautiful cliff rock formation overlooking the valley below our mountaintop. We sit for a moment to marvel the view before taking a path over a barbed wire fence to explore some more giant boulders and crumbling cliff walls, winding scraggly trees reaching toward skies. We share exceptional moments discovering the twists and turns of the non-existent path, finally ending up at the local laguna. We decide to make a cup of coffee at Osvaldo’s house and I chat with his mother about the weather as we listen to Silvio Rodriguez and watch their chickens cluck their way across the packed-mud of the yard. Osvaldo jokes about the family’s “guard” dog “la Chelita” (the whitey) who was purchased for security but licks and loves anything walking. Osvaldo’s mom is absolutely shocked to learn that I take my coffee “amargo” (bitter: without a half-cup of sugar), and asks me if I think it will rain. Though it has not rained in months (since November), I feel the pressure of the sky- I do not know at this moment, but I sense the longing for rain in the Earth, that energy that passes between sky and earth in the moments before an exhalation of nature’s tears.

Osvaldo’s promised a visiting friend that he’ll play some folkloric guitar music, and since the guitar I have at the house has no chords (and I can’t find the three sets I bought in Managua last week) we end up walking around for an hour searching for a guitar to borrow- finally finding one a mere block from my house. I sit and marvel as his fingers work their way across the chords and let my eyes wander to the tips where electricity becomes melody and melody becomes passion. Finally Benjamin (a whole other story, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who flat out gives me the creeps) leaves and Osvaldo and I gaze at the stars, whispering into the misty darkness until the first droplets fall. He leaves, for the up-teenth time and I catch a fistful of tears in my throat thinking about how he’s become a joyous part of my life...

Luckily I have Steph and Lauren to distract me. We eat dark chocolate and play cards until the wee hours of the morning, then lay in bed and yell at each other through the walls about the current stank which permeates our bedrooms. It’s a bit of a rotten fish smell, and we think it may be rats dying in the wall from some poison Facoundo sneakily placed there last week. He’s always hiding things in the rafters- I’ve found a slingshot, a bike chain, some large nails, a sandwich bag of beans, a boot, and the sole of a shoe, among other things stuck away to hide above normal sight-level.

I dream of powdery snow (though I do not miss winter) and wake with a rumbling unhappy stomach (something which happens consistently to me every couple of weeks for 24 hours), and gaze outside at the rising mist, ready to embrace a new day. Welcome to my weekend-time: kids running in and out in general chaos, music and laughter, face painting, gardening, sunshine soaking, a bit of feasting and fiesta-ing, talking about the weather, sunsets, family visits, hiking and exploring, cloud pondering, whispers, and above all else, la vida tranquila de Cusmapa.

Dia del Amor y Amistad

I would never, ever, in a million trillion years have been able to predict the happenings of this Valentines Day... which happened to be Pedro's (my Spanish roomate) last night in Nica. The night started out innocently enough, with Tona beers at our hotel in Managua, sitting around the pool and enjoying the evening breeze. Osvaldo joined us, and we soon decided to head out on the town for some dinner (as Pedro and I traveled from Cusmapa that morning and hadn't eaten anything since 6 AM). Our boss, Kevin, told us of a restaurant called the Routa Maya which sounded like a great place in theory, but the moment we arrived, we realized we were mistaken.

Upon arrival at any place where there's a live concert and people are:
1) Approximately 20-30 years older than I am
2) Sitting down
3) Dressed fancily
I generally tend to get out of dodge as quickly as I possibly can.

Osvaldo, Pedro, and I agreed that the 200 cordoba asking price was not enough to see the infamous romantical singer staged at the Routa Maya and we instead headed to El Plato de Oro... also known as the mysterious Chinese restaurant in the middle of Managua.

We ordered more beers and some WANTONS which Osvaldo had never tried... upon arrival of the appetizer the song "Wanton-a-mera" was air-guitared, bongo played on the table, and included lovely Ranchera-esque vocals. The wantons were sketchy, some sort of unidentifiable meat... but man I was HUNGRY and they were CRUNCHY. Yum.

Our waiter seemed entirely confused by the whole situation (IE: the working in a restaurant situation) and didn't speak to us the entire evening... I am not sure whether the issue was his lack of Spanish or my slurred Spanish or Pedro's dreadlocks or the air-band we had going in the back corner. Either way, when he brought us out plates of chow mein and chop suey... it took us a few moments to realize that we'd been served the SAME DISH. Yes. With the exact same taste, exact same ingredients. I called our waiter-friend over to the table and asked... "No es lo mismo?" (It's not the same thing?!?!) and he replied "No, uno tiene camarones, y el otro... no." (No, one has shrimp and the other doesn't"). Oh, thank you for your observation, good sir... but I think I was refering to the difference between chop suey and chow mein. He did not seem to get the drift.

Needless to say, we finished off our strange slippery Chinese cuisine, and after a few photos with the giant painted urn display we scooted our way out the door.

Pedro decided he HAD to buy some cigarettes, so we went back into the Routa Maya. The woman singing was seated like a matriarch and her red robes flowed across the stage. Pedro ran off and left Osvaldo and I in the lobby, and she started singing "OJALA" which is probably one of my top 5 favorite songs ever. Osvaldo and I proceeded to sing the entire thing at the top of our lungs (I am sure to the delight of the fancy audience), then Pedro returned from his mission and we danced a bit with the door attendant and went to...

Yet another fancy bar. Who takes me to these places in Managua anyways? Last time I went out there with Karlita on her birthday she ended up on stage at a sushi disco where everyone was speaking English and she was taken by a Chinese man with a glass of red wine to do a strange birthday dance which included kimono wearing and her bending over to have him pretend to spank her. Very, very strange. This time, we ended up at La Familia Goodoy. Carlos Mejia Goodoy is a famous Nicaraguan singer, mainly does folkloric and revolutionary music. The concert was 160 cordobas to enter, but we sweet talked the girl guarding the door into letting us in the back area. We bought a couple of beers there, then went outside to "have a cigarette" conveniently where the music could be seen. It was AWESOME! We were right behind all the seated old folks, nodding to sleep in their chairs. I proceeded to dance by myself (silly boys wouldn't dance with me) for the next hour, loving every moment of it.

We went back to the hotel after the concert and sat around the pool listening to Pedro's ROCK music and sipping some of the fancy rum we don't treat ourselves to very often. The hotel clerk came to ask us to turn the music down and Pedro replied: "what, you don't like the song? I can change the song?!" then proceeded to change the song and turn up the volume. I don't think we made friends with the poor chap, but he was a good sport.

And thus leaves Pedro, who hopefully will be returning soon to indulge in more adventures in fine Nicaraguan cuisine, who engages me in dance parties of all kinds, and who I have hug-a-thons with at 5 in the morning while eating ham sandwiches. Dia de la amistad indeed!

Cusmapanian of the Month: Febrero 2008

“buENNNNNAAAsssss!” Maximo, the happiest man in Cusmapa choruses as he briskly walks past our front door into the budding garden. Lauren and I giggle because every time he greets us, he sounds like a car whizzing past “vvvvvrrrOOOOOOOmmm!”

Maximo, known as “Chelemancho” or “el Chele” by his fellow Cusmapans, is the 40-some-year-old thick-mustached school gardener, and has Lauren and my vote for “Cusmapan of the Month”, our new feature series here on blog-land.

Chelemancho’s area of expertise, horticultura (gardening), is showcased day-after-day here at the school. He teaches students (and us gringas) about a variety of plants and their medicinal properties, and practical uses as well. According to Chelemancho, if a small cactus is placed in front of your computer screen, it will absorb the powerful and dangerous UV rays emitted from the computer, protecting you from certain doom. Chelemancho also believes that if Lauren and I drink the tea made from flowers of a plant he’s cultivated in our garden, we will be “flying airplanes for three days”. He sprinkles laundry detergent and chili water throughout our vegetable patch to deter pests and parasites. The dirt excavated from our yard to build a compost pile is currently “frozen” though it has been unearthed for over 3 months (and the temperature here never gets below 50 degrees). Chele claims that the earth must sit in the sun for six months or one year before being used for gardening purposes. He also presented us with some type of sketchy fruit wine which apparently has the power to solve all of our intestinal issues. AND he politely informed me the other day that once our beets and tomatoes come in, if we eat a plethora, we can consume all the oil our hearts desire and it will have no negative effect on our bodies.

Chelemancho lives on the edge of Cusmapa, in a large cabin-like structure (owned by a gringo ex-Peace Corps volunteer who got married to one of our co-workers then ditched town, but not before buying a significant amount of property) which overlooks the valley and communities below, offering the best sunset lookout in town. Chele’s “screened” porch includes a variety of entry points for hungry mosquitoes, a single hammock for napping purposes, a handful of halved Coke containers with sprouting flowers, and in baby-blue paint the word MANCHO stomps across one wall. He tells stories of the olden times in Cusmapa, where during the rainy season our half of town was cut off from the rest because there was no bridge. For a few months of every year, he used to live off the land and read gardening books in languages he does not speak.

Chele has recently taken to sporting a navy-blue and white checkered blazer, complete with shoulder pads. We believe the blazer may have previously been owned by an obese NASCAR official. It gives Chele this robotic gangster look that’s simply marvelous.

What we love most about Chelemancho is his constant state of glee. He is, perhaps, the jolliest man we have ever met. Even when describing the hardships of life, Chele meets the world with a grin, eyes crinkled at the sides, moustache corners tickling his rosy cheeks. Yesterday, he arrived at our house completely sweaty and out of breath, wheezing: “I’ve been riding my bike so much lately that now whenever I walk I am exhausted!” and with a chortle, trotted off to water our plants.

Lauren decided to collect leaves from our banana tree to dry them for book-making purposes. Chele, busy as usual planting eggplant and strawberries, sprung from his gardeners stoop when his watch alarm beeped at 5 PM on the dot, exclaiming, “Y ahora, estoy alegre para estar un dia mas viejito!” (translation: “and NOW, I am happy to be one day older!”).

Entonces, Chelemancho wins the award for “Cusmapanian of the Month: Febrero 2008” for his unlimited knowledge of the plant world, unrivaled sense of style, the best and fullest moustache we have seen in years, and for his revolutionary philosophy on aging. Now we are off to drink flower petal tea and “fly airplanes” or maybe find a few cacti to absorb the death rays being transmitted by our laptops.

Hats off to you, Chele. May your 5 PM alarm continue to beep-beep for decades to come.

If you want to see my recent photos...

you can check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/callie.monroe

Enjoy!

El Pizote (Written March 2007)

Fixed gaze out the plastic-laden rippling with time
cracked glass, fingers tracing the crooked rusty window-frame
sweat-stuck to the seat, gulping greedily for any breath of fresh air
I think of the children back in the States
who smeared their fingers across these sticky seats
twenty years ago,
Pestering the exhausted bus driver,
throwing wads of paper, envious
of the cool kids, the 8th graders and high schoolers
who always commandeered seats in the very back rows.

I take a gander at my companeros smashed against each other
“The people on the bus go up and down!” sings through my head…
Though they don’t seem to bounce much,
mouths in straight lines, fixed eyes, leaning, balancing, a sweaty mass.
I scoff at the “40 passenger maximum” inscribed on a silver plaque.
The department of transportation would have a heyday
with the 120 plus pasageros inside
plus daredevils perched on the roof with burlap bags of onions and coffee.
Who needs “oh shit” handles when you have 50 pounds of veggies to hang on to?

How many suburban neighborhoods has this old rambling wreck
of a once canary-yellow monstrosity witnessed?
I think it probably enjoys it’s sweet revival as “El Pizote”,
the lifeline between the middle of nowhere and the town closest to the middle of nowhere.

Cream with screaming burnt orange racing stripes,
as if the “road” from Cusmapa from Somoto up and down mountains was a go-cart track
and not a dried up river bed of
boulder-dodging
5 MPH
brakes screeching
shock-breaking
dust-laden
yellow-brick road.
I’m sure not in Kansas anymore,
though I just discovered the only grocery store within 4 hours is owned by Wal-Mart
and “Eye of the Tiger” blasts as we bump along
and the kid sitting across from me sports a shirt with stars and stripes flying proudly
which certainly adds an ironic kick to the situation.

A rainbow of tassels on the stick shift flutter in the breeze
an arc of letters calls out a blessing on our voyage “Dios bendiga esta bus y sus pasegeros”.

God bless “El Pizote” indeed,
Without this voyager the pirate of the northern mountains,
I’d have no peanut butter,
and Wal-Mart would be out a full 50 cordobas per month.

A loud “NO FEAR” sticker on the rearview mirror in fearless bold font
would warrant skepticism as turns are taken at remarkable speeds,
but I’m positive it’s just for show.
I know driver and he doesn’t speak a word of English
beyond the necessities of “Hello” and “I love you.”

What more do we really need to say?

Two Important Updates

1) Refering to the "street cred" blog... just thought you all should know that a couple of weeks ago I spent an afternoon moving giant bus tires with all the men I work with at the school. I was covered in oil and dirt, but they were obviously impressed with my manual labor capabilities. So I think that probably covered my street cred building for the month.

2) A miracle of an update... little 7-year-old Cindy (who had surgery last May on her foot, and hasn't walked since she was a year-and-a-half years old) is now full of attitude and walking MORE than the doctor thinks she should be able to. She's been prancing around in circles throughout her house, pushes Magda (her mom)'s hands away... wants to be completely independent. She's talking now about starting DANCE classes. She's entirely inspiring.