My Street in Diriamba

During my training I am living with Adriana, a single woman in her mid 50’s who is raising her two grandchildren, Oracio (15) and Adriana (10).  They remind me of my own grandchildren of the same age: Sammy who is loves sports and has his first girlfriend (just like Oracio) and Tess who knows that she will be a big girl soon but still enjoys playing in the carefree way that 10 year olds love to do (just like Adriana).

Adriana is a hard working woman.  She sells clothes out of the house (both new and used), has an import business for radios and radio parts, sells ice (she freezes it in plastic bags and folks stop by to buy it) and once a week she makes about 50 nacatamales, which she sells for a little over a dollar each.  There is a lot of family in the neighborhood: on our side of the street next to us is Adriana’s brother Vicente and his wife Tina with their adult son Dennis.  Vicente is very overweight and doesn’t do much all day, which really irritates Adriana (“He just sits around and gets fat” she says with disgust).  Tina and Vicente make Nicaraguan tacos (nothing related to Mexican tacos) and chocolate covered frozen bananas.  They also sell ice and because there is a school a block away, they do a pretty good business selling the “chocobananos” to the students. Next to Tina and Vicente is the aunt: Quecha (pronounced Kaycha).  She is the matron of the street.  In her early 80’s, she and her husband Edmund lived in the states for a few years during the war but didn’t like it and are happy to be back here with family and familiarity.  Quecha is another hard worker: runs a small shoe store out of her home and makes 200 nacatamales every week to sell to any taker. 

Across the street lives Magali, a single mom (lawyer) with two sons: Pedro (12) and Pablo (8).  Magali is a cousin but I have lost track of how she is related.  Her sons are the sweetest boys.  One morning I saw them walking to school together in their uniforms and Pedro had his arm around his little brother’s shoulder – it warmed my heart.  Next to Magali is Elena from El Salvador with her handsome Argentinian husband and their gorgeous 6-year-old daughter, Belen.  Of these 5 homes, the doors are always open and people and kids (and dogs) move back and forth from house to house very freely – like a big family.  The final house is a bit mysterious.  Apparently a woman and her adult daughter live there with their dog and 20 cats.  I have seen the daughter come and go a few times: she walks in a very erect position and speaks to no one.  I like to think of this home as the Boo Radley house of our neighborhood. 

Aside from all the things that get sold out of the homes here, there are also venders walking up and down the street at all times of the day selling bread, tortillas, newspapers, tamales, etc.  The venders all have their way of advertising their products and it is often a kind of sing-songy chant.  Some musical anthropologist could have a blast recording what venders shout out in the streets here. 

At night people gather on the sidewalk in front of Quecha’s house and sit in plastic chairs and shoot the breeze.  Venders walk by with their wares on the heads, kids play in the street while their parents and grandparents yell at them to be careful (Cuidado!) when cars or mototaxis go by or yell at them to return to base camp if they wander too far into the next block.  Tonight little Adriana and Belen and another cousin who does not live on our street played house with their dolls in front of Magali’s house.  After they cleaned up, they started a chasing game and were eventually joined by Pedro and Pablo – I find them so much fun to watch. 

I sit and listen and get about 40% of the conversation.  They talk fast and when it is really important, they seem to drop their voices to a mere whisper.  Magali’s mother often stops by and she is full of funny stories.  I know this because she holds their attention when she talks and when she finishes they all laugh.  I look forward to the day when I too will get the joke.  The conversations are usually about the weather (we are having record breaking heat these days so it is a legitimate topic) and where to get the cheapest products – mostly food.  People are walking by all the time: families, lovers, boys, girls, moms with kids, old folks with young folks – it is an endless parade of entertainment for me.  Occasionally there is a conversation in hushed tones is about someone who just walked by or when “Mrs. Radley” goes in or out, there is usually some comment about her. The main purpose for sitting out there is to sell the nacatamales so that is also happening the whole time we are together. 

I have attached some pictures of a few of the venders as well as the house that Adriana and her friends made today. 

Adriana is the one on the right with the glasses. 

The last door on the left is the entrance to my house.  

In the background on the right you see the plastic chairs in front of Quecha's house. The woman in the blue/green blouse is Adriana.  On the left you see the girls playing and  Magali standing in her doorway.  

Reading Hemingway in Nicaragua

Before I left for Nicaragua I spent a fair amount of time thinking about what author I was going to read during my two years in the Peace Corps. In Honduras from 2005 to 2007 I read everything Phillip Roth had written except Portnoy’s Complaint and Goodbye, Columbus. I thought about reading William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Saul Bellows, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and several others, but I never made up my mind and left without either buying or downloading many books.

A week or so ago, about halfway through my three months of training, I was in Managua at the Peace Corps office. There is a volunteer’s lounge with a large library of books to pass around. I found Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Within a few pages I was hooked and decided I’d be reading Hemingway in Nicaragua. A Moveable Feast  is his memoir of being young and broke in Paris in the Twenties. However, he wrote it in the late Fifties, thirty years after the events took place and just a couple of years before he killed himself. Hemingway never got to be really old. He ended his life when he was sixty-two, but he is remembering his life of poverty when he was much older, rich and famous. He wrote this about his younger, poorer self:

It was all part of the fight against poverty that you never win except by not spending. Especially if you buy pictures instead of clothes. But then we did not think of ourselves as poor. We thought we were superior people and other people that we looked down on and rightly mistrusted were rich. We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.

I read these words on a five-hour bus ride from Managua to Nueva Guinea where I was going as part of my training to observe and work with volunteers who had already been in the country for a year or more. I was traveling with Deb and five other aspirantes, which is what Peace Corps calls volunteers in training. When we left Managua every seat on the bus was taken and three young men were standing in the aisles. Although the bus was billed as an “express” it took on more passengers in every town of any size. When it seemed impossible for any more people to get on, five more would be packed in. I was experiencing this typical Central American bus trip with my head full of thoughts of poverty and wealth, age and youth. I think it is a safe bet that I was the wealthiest person on the bus. Although some of the other volunteers come from families as solidly middle class as I am, they are young and in debt from having barrowed to pay for college. I may also, very well, have been the oldest person on the bus. So, I’m a rich old guy, relatively speaking, living like I’m poor, reading about a rich old guy writing about himself when he was young and poor. It is not exactly symmetrical, but it resonates. I certainly have some of the young Hemingway’s attitudes: it is better to buy pictures than clothes, the rich aren’t to be trusted, and there is a certain superiority to living cheaply and well.

This next part is me, having finished A Moveable Feast in three evenings, trying to write like Hemingway.

I wake up early in Hotel Nueva Guinea. It is five thirty in the morning and I’m sitting outside on the balcony. The sun is just rising. The air is full of moister and dust and seems luminescent. Deb is still sleeping. The town won’t be sweltering for another two hours. Below me in the streets people are passing by on bikes and motorcycles. The taxis are running. Some people are walking by purposefully, on their way to work or to catch a bus. Many dogs wander the streets. All of them are skinny and beat up. There are cows, horses too, but I haven’t seen any pigs or oxen so far today. The chickens and roosters are so common I don’t pay them much attention. On the opposite corner a young man in a red tee shirt is sitting on the curb. He is very engaged with his cell phone. I think he is waiting for a friend or a ride to work.

Nueva Guinea is pretty torn up. It seems that a major project is underway to pave the streets. Many intersections are blocked with piles of dirt. We have been driving around in a big, white, Peace Corps Toyota and it is hard to navigate around all the construction. On a physical level Nueva Guinea is rundown even by Nicaraguan standards. The Moon Guide says there is really no reason to visit here unless you want to see what the end of the road looks like, or words to that effect. Nonetheless, it is busy with people doing what people do everywhere.

The young man in the red tee shirt wanders off around the corner for a minute or two then returns. I think perhaps he went to pee. Maybe he works in the store on that corner and he is waiting for his boss to arrive and open up for the day.

An old man with a cane passes by. One side of his body is stiff in the manner of someone who has had a stroke. Earlier, I saw him out the bathroom window, going in the opposite direction leading a boney white horse. Where did he leave the horse?

Briefly, a guy wearing a lime green tee shirt and riding a red bike stops and talks with the young man waiting on the corner. He rides off, but returns right away on foot. Now two of them are waiting together. Where did he leave the bike? They are good looking boys. One is thin and the other one is sturdy. Although it is not yet sweltering they pull their tee shirts up and expose their bellies. Before long a big, open sided soda delivery truck stops on the corner in front of the store. Nothing gets said, but immediately the two young men start carrying cases of bright orange, vivid red, and dark brown sodas into the store. The Fanta orange in particular catches the light and glows. They work for twenty minutes. The truck leaves. The bike reappears. The young men ride off together, one on the seat and one standing. That may have been a day’s work. They might have earned a dollar apiece.

Now I’m reading Hemingway’s Boat, a biography by Paul Henderson that takes as its focal point the fishing boat the Hemingway owned and loved for thirty years. It is a great read.

My Nicaraguan Journey Begins

My Nicaraguan Journey Begins

We have been in country about 7 ½ weeks and it feels like time to get some first impressions documented before it all becomes second nature and we forget that it was a novelty when we first experienced it.   Unfortunately, I started this entry about 5 weeks ago when things were still quite fresh but now the newness is already starting to fade and things that seemed unique are starting to feel natural. 

We are more than half way through with our Peace Corps training and it has been a great experience thus far.  In Honduras we had center based training, which is being phased out in Peace Corps.  Basically we spent all our days together in a training center.  In Nicaragua, we use the community based training model.  All twenty-one health volunteers are distributed to 5 different communities where we work daily with a language and cultural facilitator, as well as our host families.  Married couples are separated and community integration is the buzzword.  It is definitely a boost to our Spanish – we both slipped back a few levels since leaving Honduras and we are slowly climbing back up to where we were 8 years ago. 

Some of the things that were remarkable initially but have become more common place: a couple of cattle in the back of a pick up truck, pigs in the street, pick up trucks full of bananas, 3-4 people on a bicycle, no hot running water, families on motorcycles, mototaxis jam packed with people, saying hello to strangers, two year old playing with matches while sitting in his grandmother’s lap, 270 eggs stacked neatly in someone’s living room (I just happened to notice when I walked by), Catholic processions in the streets (especially during Holy Week), evangelical amplified singing and preaching, and nursing babies in public.

We just finished our practicum week where 7 of us were sent to a town called Nueva Guinea to work with some health volunteers and sharpen our skills and abilities to do presentations about health issues in a variety of settings.  We prepared presentations (called charlas) about family planning methods, nutrition, and HIV/AIDS for people in hospital waiting rooms, maternity homes, urban and rural schools, health centers, a youth group, and in a pool hall.  I was teamed up with Rosalyn (from Georgia) and Ethan (from Connecticut) to give our charlas.  Rosalyn and Ethan are both recent college graduates and the three of us had not spent much time together until this week.  We had a lot of fun and did good work.  I am attaching some pictures of our practicum week so you can see us in action.  We had a relaxing river day, which was lovely.

On May 13^th we will find out where we will be living for the next 2 years.  It is fun not knowing but we are really looking forward to having this news and looking at the map of Nicaragua with renewed interest.  We will keep you all posted. 

If anyone wants to send us a letter or a package, this is the address:

Debby Drew and/or John Kotula

Cuerpo de paz
Apartado postal 3256
Managua Nicaragua
Central América

Sending love to all of you, Debby

Our Team in action - Rosalyn, Me and Ethan

Ethan and Rosalyn

Our practicum week gang at the pool hall

A refreshing day at the river