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.

Yet another unexpected joy...

This is love:

to fly toward a secret sky

to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

First to let go of life.

Finally, to take a step without feet.

- Rumi

Cece on Christmas Eve

Nothing in the world like spending Christmas with my little sister in Cusmapa, Nicaragua.

Blowing bubbles and listening to Pink Floyd under breezy orange trees and buttery sunshine.

Goggles worn as sunglasses... life doesn't get better than this.

Feliz Navidad!

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

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.

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.

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.