Death in Nicaragua

In memory of Oscar Roberto, may he rest in peace

In January after I returned from my holiday vacation, our neighbor died.  John was away so I participated in all the Nicaraguan death rituals without him and sent him a letter detailing the events. He suggested I post the letter on the blog, which I am finally doing.  I am including an orientation to the people I mention in the letter for clarity’s sake. 

Cast of Characters:

Don Oscar – our 66 years old neighbor

Tulita – Oscar’s wife

Juan José Viales – our neighbor and father of our landlord – we are part of his family here. He is in his mid 80s

Mercedes Viales – Juan José’s wife – in her late s 70s

Nubia – Daughter of Juan José and Mercedes.  Our “family” also

Michelle – 7 year old granddaughter of Nubia – lives in the same house

Litzel – another neighbor who lives between Tulita and us.  She has two daughters, Angel and Alanis who spend a lot of time with me.

Juan Carlos and Ruth – our landlords and good friends

Arturo – a sort of crazy guy who has been harassing me a bit in the street over the past weeks.  Yells “Gringa Gringa” and wants to kiss my hand and tell me I am beautiful

Carolina – Nubia’s daughter, Michelle’s mother and part of our “family”

Arling – Tulita’s 10 year old granddaughter whom she has been raising because she was born when her mother was 15.

Hugo and Yadira – a couple we are friends with who live around the corner; somehow related to the Viales family

Argentina – Litzel’s aunt – lives next door to us.

Written January 15, 2016

Late Wednesday night Don Oscar died in Managua. They brought his body back to Chinandega and as soon as the car pulled into the street at 1:30 AM, Don Juan José heard it and he and Doña Mercedes got out of bed and went down the street to sit with the family for several hours. 

Yesterday morning they were setting up the tents and chairs in the street and people started visiting throughout the day.  I checked with the Viales family and they planned to go later when the weather cooled down.  I went over around 5:30 with Juan José and Mercedes.  The big room was all cleared out with chairs around the edges.  In the far corner was the open coffin with flowers surrounding it extending halfway around the room.  Each arrangement had a big ribbon on it declaring who had sent it.  Don Oscar had a gauze cloth over his face and was holding a rosary.  There was no receiving line.  People came and went and sat in the chairs, either inside or outside, and visited.  The grandchildren were running all over the place.  There are three little grandsons ages 4-6 and one minute they would be running around with pretend guns in their hands and the next minute taking a few seconds to visit their grandfather.  The little girls were the same: playing and laughing and running around and then taking a random moment to check in with their abuelo.

Oscar and Tulita had 5 daughters, one of whom died of a congenital anomaly when she was 13. Three of the daughters were there with their kids and the fourth is in the States and did not come, but one of her sons was there.

We sat inside for a while but then decided to move outside where it was cooler.  Eventually Nubia and Michelle joined us.  I also saw Litzel and her family as well as Juan Carlos and Ruth.  They kept putting out more and more chairs in the street and at one point I stood up and looked at the crowd – about ½ the block was full of chairs and people. There must have been 200 people there. Some folks arrived with bags of food and there were trays of sodas, coffee and sandwiches being distributed throughout the evening.  The atmosphere was so comforting.  Everyone made an effort to find Tulita and her daughters and give them a hug and most people paid a visit to Don Oscar.  There was also lots of loving and hugging and general caring among all the visitors with each other.  We left at 9 o’clock but I know for a fact that the family stayed up all night to keep vigil.

You will never guess who showed up at the wake/visiting time: Arturo, the crazy guy who has been annoying me with “Gringa! Gringa!”  He was dirty and barefoot but somehow seemed to belong.  When they were passing out drinks and sandwiches, he grabbed a large plastic bag and took on the job of collecting all the trash from people when they were done.  I asked Nubia if he was a family member and she said is a neighborhood orphan and grew up in the neighborhood where everyone took care of him to some degree.  He has no home.  That humbling information caused a rapid readjustment of my feelings towards him.

The Mass was scheduled for 8:30 this morning and I made plans to go with the Viales family.  At 7:30 the drums and trombones of the typical procession were heard in the street.  I opened my door to see a leader with a cross and a bunch of neighborhood people following him on their way to get Oscar.  Soon after Carolina and I went down to the house with Juan José and Mercedes and watched while the coffin was loaded into the funeral wagon.  All the grandchildren carrying the flower arrangements lead the procession to the church. 

After the mass everyone flooded to the front of the church to hug and kiss the family members one more time.  As the family left the church, the nuclear family units hung closely together with mothers clutching their beloved children.  Little Arling left with tears streaming down her cheeks as she clung to her weeping grandmother.  Carolina got a bit tearful in the church too and I wondered if she was feeling sad anticipating the deaths of her own grandparents.  I certainly was.

Once we were all outside, the slow almost 2 mile walk to the cemetery began.  At first the family units walked together with arms around each other but gradually the kids disappeared into air-conditioned vehicles that were following the procession.  Fair enough: it was really hot and that family had already been up for 2 straight nights.  Tulita walked the whole way to the cemetery and a lot of it arm in arm with her own mother who must be in her 80s.  There are some strong women in this country! Juan José and Mercedes did not go to the cemetery.  Carolina walked part of the way and then left to return to work.  I walked with Litzel and her girls and was happy to have my umbrella (for sun protection) and my bandana (to wipe off the sweat). The best part of the walk to the church was the mariachi band that accompanied us and played lovely mellow music the whole way. 

At the cemetery I joined Hugo and Yadira under a shady tree and noticed they had their bike helmets.  Clearly, they had not done the walk and had just arrived by motorcycle.  There was a lot of commotion around the gravesite and when I finally asked, Hugo and Yadira explained that the hole was not wide enough for the coffin so they had to dig wider to fit it in.  Apparently they had already lowered the coffin so I don’t know how they were managing that task and I decided not to look.  Eventually we got the word that they would not be prepared to close the vault until 2 this afternoon so people started leaving.  The family will stay until he is securely in the ground.  I felt bad for them: exhausted, hot, hungry, thirsty, and sad. 

I shared a cab back home with Litzel, her dad Juan and the girls.  On the way out of the cemetery we stop at the graves of Juan’s mother and grandfather.  His mother died when he was 7, two years before his grandfather died.  She died in childbirth and although the baby girl survived, her 19 year old sister knew nothing about caring for a newborn and she only lived 3 months.  The word is full of so many stories. 

While I was sitting last night with Nubia and Argentina, they both asked me if we honor death the same way in the states.  I told them that the visiting hours take place in a funeral home and that there are certain hours for visiting, not like in Nicaragua where it is in the home and people can come and go for 24 plus hours. I also told them that many people opt to be cremated and how families choose to honor their dead varies a lot from family to family.  Argentina told me that she heard there are African countries where the tradition is to bury the person without a coffin.  She found that quite alarming. 

Postscript written March 9, 2016

After I wrote this letter, there were 9 days of prayer meetings at Tulita’s house.  About 30 people came each evening and we sat together for an hour after which a small snack was served.  On the ninth day, a car with loudspeakers drove through the neighborhood several times announcing the final prayer meeting for Oscar.  Chairs were set up outside and well over 200 people were there to pay their final respects to the family.  When the service was done, meals and drinks were distributed to everyone and we all went into the house to hug Tulita and her daughters one more time.  Forty days after Oscar’s death, there was an evening mass for him at our local church. 

The family seems to be adjusting as well as can be expected.  Tulita will go to Florida next week for 10 days with one of her sisters and visit her daughter.  She is looking forward to that. 

An Old Guy And The Youth Culture Of Peace Corps

El Viejo

     Another volunteer, Danica Liriano, recently asked me if I would write something for the Diversity Committee about "ageism". This request got me thinking, even more than I usually do, about being the oldest volunteer in Nicaragua. (Every new volunteer group causes me a little nervousness that someone might show up and take the title away from me!) Let me start by saying I have not experienced anything that felt like prejudice or even stereotyping based on my age. In fact, I have felt very accepted and valued by my training group, my sector, my site mates, and Peace Corp staff. I think, I've made some great friends, maybe some life long friends. In my case, if I'm lucky, I might have these people as friends for ten years!

     So, I don't see the dynamic as being "ageist" in the sense of being discriminatory. That being said, there is a pretty pervasive assumption of youth in Peace Corps. I have felt like I had two cultures to adjust to; the Nicaragua culture and the youth culture of the organization. There is a default setting, where norms and expectations are based on everyone being in their twenties, since I haven't been in my twenties for forty years, it can be a little disorienting. I'll realize that something is going on that makes me feel out of step, then I'll think, "Oh yeah, that's because you're older than the parents of everybody else in the room!"

    Let me give some examples.

    The whole language of host families doesn't work for me. During training I lived with Reyna and Pedro, a great couple in their early fifties. There was no way I could think of them as "mom" and "dad". We turned it into a kind of running joke about the "hijo" being older than the "padres", but the assumption of youth was built into the vocabulary in such a way that I felt different when the topic of the people who were hosting us came up. "Dueno" and "duena" or "amo" and "ama" might have worked better for me, but my Spanish isn't good enough to know for sure what the connotations of these words are.

    Soon after arriving in Chinandega, the Volunteer Support Committee announced an outing. The summary of the invitation was that the group would go to Leon, stay at a hostel, climb a volcano, go boarding, camp out overnight, and descend the next day. My reaction was, "You mistake me for a much younger man!" Here's my idea of a great outing in Leon: stay someplace air conditioned, have a leisurely latte in front of the cathedral, go to the top of the cathedral, go to the art museum (world class if you haven't seen it!), take a nap, look for a cultural experience in the evening, and end the day with a game of Oh Hell. (I got to add that while this outing had no appeal for me and made me feel a little invisible, my wife, Deb Drew, who is only two years younger than me, was very excited by it. She went and had a great time.)

      Our site mate, Zach Moore, came back from his COS conference and was very enthusiastic about the focus on post Peace Corps planning. He said they had workshops on things like resume writing, networking, government job searches, etc. I turned to Deb and said, "There's no way in hell I'm sitting through two days of career planning! I've had a career! I'm retired for Christ's sake!" She said, "Calm down, honey. You don't really need to worry about that now. Its two years away." I said, "But... but... if I have to sit through that, they have to hear about organ donations, living wills, and pre-paid mortuary services!" She patted my hand.

    The young volunteers are much more sexually active than I am. In my opinion this is as it should be. It is biologically determined. The survival of the species depends on young guys taking every opportunity that comes their way to spread their seed and young women fertilizing as many of those eggs as possible. The biology is not hip to the fairly new phenomena of birth control. So it keeps going, “Procreate, procreate, procreate, you little bastards!” To me, the biology says, “Take it easy old guy. You’ve done your part. Put your feet up. Take a load off.” I’ve heard more than once that making love is the Peace Corps hand shake, that may be an exaggeration, but there is that kind of energy buzzing around, and sometimes it is like a fly annoying me while I’m trying to nap in my hammock.

I haven’t been drunk in forty years. A couple of times a week, I have a beer or two or on a big night a couple of rum drinks. What I’m after is a little relaxation, a slight blurring of the sharp edges. Being around people who are drinking to drunkenness, until they pass out, until they throw up, until the bouncer threatens to throw them out is so culturally discordant to me that I’d be lying if I said I was acceptant of it, but here I am in a setting where it is not at all out of the norm.

Here’s how technologically inept I am compared to volunteers in their twenties: I had no idea what a “#” was or what it could do. I’d heard the expression used, but it went right over my head. Polly Wiltz had to explain it to me and she did it without condescension! (I still haven’t used one. #can’tteachanolddognewtricks.) It seems like every week someone expects me do be able to do something technologically that is a struggle for me. For example use Brigit, SurveyMonkey, and all that shit you can do on Google, File a grant on the Peace Corps website, order medications online, etc., etc. Actually, I like learning all this stuff, but that is the point; I have to learn it and in the youth culture of Peace Corps it is assumed that everyone already knows how to do it.

    None of the above is meant to say that anybody is doing anything wrong. Rather, my point is that when you're in a minority, in my case being an old guy in an organization where most people are much younger, you may have to be assertive about getting the majority to be inclusive of what you need. For example, I'm going to have to say, "So, look, what is my COS conference going to consist of, because there is no way in hell I'm sitting through two days of career planning!"