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.