The best students ever

Yesterday I was at home all day recovering from the flu. In the afternoon, I was surprised when 4 of my English students showed up at my front gate. I usually have class on Thursdays and they had planned a surprise party for Teacher's day. So because I wasn't in class, they decided to bring the party to my house. They brought me little gifts, a loaf of bread to make sandwiches and a bottle of coke. We sat around the table on the front patio, ate, chatted and laughed. I think I have the best students ever!

Sorry for the lapse in writing! I've been a little under the weather but am hopefully on the mend!

Currently I'm drinking orange-papaya juice out of aplastic bag with a straw, which definitely has to be one of those quintessential Nicaragua experiences... One of the things that I'm going to miss when I'm in Chicago... But there's so many things I'm excited about seeing, eating and doing in Chicago that I don't think I'll have too much time to think about my juice cravings...

Last week my favorite bus entertainment gave a little concert in the 119 on my way from Puntos to the centro. It's a duo, consisting of a boy about 12 yrs old with a guitar and agirl about 10, probably siblings... He strums the melodies of popular ranchera songs and the girl sings in a crooning voice that expresses a sadness that I hope she hasn't experienced yet in her life. One of the songs is Puño de Tierra, which means fist of dirt, that's about dying. My friend Tere says she wants a mariachi band to play this song at her funeral. The boy harmonizes with the girl while he's playing his guitar, and it really makes the ride a lot more enjoyable (you forget about the heat, that you're sticking to your seat, or that there's a bar sticking into your back).

Speaking of Mariachis, doña Esmeralda took all of the ladies (and one of the men) from the office out last week to celebrate Doña Thelmita's birthday in the Rotunda Bello Horizonte. The Rotunda is a traffic circle lined with fast food chicken restaurants, where mariachi bands ask you if you want them to play you songs. One of the groups played 4 songs for Doña Thelma as we sat outside of the Tip-Top chicken joint drinking beers, and she cried... We then went to a bar where a lot of people from the atlantic coast hang out and ate fish soup in coconut milk broth. It was amazing!

Little Snippets

1. Fruit vendors. Every morning, I buy little baggies of cut up fruit from a woman at the bus stop in front of the Police station. From about 6:30 in the morning, she expertly wields her knife and cuts through the thick skin of a pineapple like it was butter. The fruit salad usually includes watermelon on the bottom, then pineapple, then banana then either cantelope or papaya. It's really an ingenious business. Who wants to buy an entire watermelon, lug it home, cut it up and then transport it with you wherever you're going? This way, you pay 5 cordobas for a variety of fruit already cut for you. Great deal!

2. Folklore. This is the traditional dancing of Nicaragua. For many events, groups of girls and teenagers will perform the dances in costumes like those in the picture... long wide dresses and flowers in their tightly wound hairbuns. The steps are simple, calculated and involve holding the ends of the skirt and swirling them around as you turn. Or having the ends of the skirt drawn in to the hips as you step ball change on one side. The event in the picture above is from the International Day of the Child event we had a couple of weeks ago.

3. Garbage. People throw it everywhere. Out of bus windows, on the floor of their house, into the lake. The little girls in my house in the barrio used to throw their used fruit peels, cookies and wrappers all over the floor, with the idea that someone was going to clean up after them, (ie, Ana). In the centro, people do the same, throwing their garbage everywhere... It makes for dirty streets, sticky floors and general pollution.

4. Fritangas. These are also everywhere... Little sidewalk eateries, sometimes just a table set up in front of someone's house, and some an entire restaurant in an actual building. The typical fare is carne asada, pollo asado (grilled meat or chicken), that comes with gallo pinto (red beans and rice), cabbage salad, fried plantain chips, and sometimes fried cheese. When I don't feel like cooking, I usually eat something here.

Play dates

I finally can listen to Chicago Public Radio at the centro with our new turbonet!!! So I was listening just now to The Story, and they were interviewing a stay at home dad. The interview accentuated for me cultural differences in child raising between Nicaragua and the states. First, the phenomenon of stay at home dad. I would say that more common here is the stay at home grandpa. Even unemployed dads, like the dad in the story, usually find somewhere to be besides the house taking care of kids all day, even if it means hanging out with buddies at the local convenience store. Also, the dad in the story mentioned setting up play dates. The play date I think is a unique north american phenomenon. Here, kids are always on play dates. They play in the streets together all the time, play in the house with their cousins or neighbors, play soccer on the basketball court... There is no need to set up a date because there are always friends nearby. Another example of how in Nicaragua, it's really the whole community that raises the kids, as opposed to the states where kids are isolated in their houses much of the time and have to arrange special times to play with their friends.

Siuna

Although the very back seat of the school bus was the coveted location of the cool kids in elementary school, it's not the best for a trip across Nicaragua. The overnight trip to Siuna took 8 hours and the pavement turned to gravel halfway through. My butt and back felt every bump! We arrived at 4am and went straight to the house where all the doctors live right next door to the health center.

In the morning Eduardo showed me around the city. It reminded me of being in the Wild West... lots of horses, houses made of wood planks like Little House on the Prairie and set up on stilts that prevent flooding during the rainy season. There are more horses than cars, and pigs roam around the streets (there was a pig hanging out eating garbage behind the health center... see picture). We saw the old gold mine which is full of water now(see picture) and ate at a little eatery across from the airport (which is pretty much just a strip where the 15-seater airplanes land.)

On Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party with Eduardo's doctor friends and then to the disco, which is the best disco I've been to yet in Nicaragua! They played socca, palo de mayo, merengue and reggaeton... so mostly music from the Atlantic Coast, which has significant African influence (now you see why I liked it!). There was also an act by a guy imitating a famous gay Mexican ranchera singer which was hilarious. The next morning we walked 4 km through greenery and farmland to a river where we went swimming (although most of the community uses it to wash clothes by scrubbing them on the rocks).

I wanted to go all the way to the coast, but the trip to Puerto Cabezas is another 14 hours away by bus... My body was not up for that ride!

Media bias

So I happened to be on the Chicago Trib website today and came across this editorial, dated June 2nd, about the Eric Volz case in Nicaragua http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0602edit3jun02,0,5369321.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed. The 28 year old was accused of murdering his Nicaraguan girlfriend and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Honestly, I have no idea about whether the guy is innocent or guilty. But I have to say that this editorial is part of the media manipulation that Volz' family has been pushing across the US to try to free him. They are capitalizing on the ignorance of the American public about the situation in Nicaragua, raising up alarms that a communist Sandinista country is unjustly imprisoning innocent Americans. Also, saying that local hatred for Volz is "fueled by anti-American sentiment" is ridiculous. San Juan del Sur is a tourist town that thrives on American dollars. They warmly accept Americans to stay there and spend their money that helps to provide a living for their residents (although I don't think that American retirees buying up the coast and building huge homes in the second poorest country in the hemisphere is that laudable).

I read a couple of months ago in El Nuevo Diario that american journalists have been harassing residents of San Juan del Sur, witnesses and family and friends of the victim, trying to get them to change their position or say something to Volz' innocence. The article said that residents were sick of this harassment and wanted these journalists to stop bothering them and let them grieve in peace. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the guy killed his girlfriend and is trying to manipulate the media to show his innocence.