Zambulléndome

(lit. "my diving-in")

The reason I did* Nicaragua and the reason I'm now doing India is that I must.* I've been a student for much (though, perhaps too proudly,** not all) of my life, and anyone with a lick of sense know that studying a place in the abstract is entirely different from actually having been there, done that, smelled and tasted it. So to continue studying, I have to have a real point of reference. Therefore: diving in. Getting in over my head. Not being able to step out the moment I'm not comfortable with it. Because those who live there have generally two options for mental escape: movies and sleep.*** And neither lasts very long. So being there is important for the very non-textbook reason of figuring out how to deal. With fear, with poverty, with those pathologies that are easily forgotten for those who don't have them but are all-consuming for those who do.

This is no longer about Nicaragua; it's about me.**** I hate getting wet. Not in the purely physical sense...but partly that. I'm pretty disengaged in general, and it's really this metaphorical "splashing around" that brings me to reality. Travel is a great way to do it, even though one can scoff and say that tourism is far from most everyone's day-to-day reality and that maturity (for example) is based on how far one goes emotionally and temporally, not physically.

I suppose it has to do with identifying one's own weaknesses and addressing them. I've found mine and this is right for me.


*I wish there were a better verb, but there ain't.

**I worked for two years. It was probably enough to get me where I am now, but it's not going to carry me much farther.

***I don't count alcohol & its cohorts, becuase they aren't nearly so good at this, despite what people say.

****Sorry. But the hammocks, the gallo pinto, and Momotombo will still be there.

Yesterday

I really wanted to finish this right after getting back from Nicaragua. This was a complete project when I originally conceived it: Nicaragua was the hardest place I've ever had to adjust to...and I guess there was something thrilling about the process, because in two days I'm heading off to India (generally considered an order of magnitude more mindbending than Nicaland by those in the know). So now with the new trip looming (and a shiny new antimalarial prescription in hand*), the Nicaragua experience seems so far away. But I still remember it vividly. It was anti-urban, really: no business districts, no bookstores, no newcomer-aiding infrastructure--and I guess that's something that excites me about my upcoming tour of India. The cities are supposed to be very urban, unlike Managua, which was little more than a collection of small towns and the occasional shopping mall.

So I'm putting yesterday in the past now--for good!--and looking to the future. Ai-yi-yi.

*(OK, it's waiting for me at Costco, but I'm picking it up real soon-like)

Xalteva

It's pretty. It's Nicaraguan.

William Walker and Water

William Walker was an eccentric American who--bored with life in the temperate zone--conquered Nicaragua in the 1850s and attempted to have it admitted to the Union as a slave state.

Since then, a whole mess of crazy shit has gone down. The United States has in various substantive ways interfered in Nicaraguan affairs about a dozen times, most famously in the contra-Sandinista affair, which you may recall as the biggest blot on Reagan's administration. (Nicas generally recall it as a decade of terror in which the Sandinistas, a leftist pro-literacy and pro-development group which toppled 50 years of dictatorship, were slowly and bloodily brought down by rightist rebels funded by the United States.* Again, I don't know how they forgive us.)

Nowadays, U.S. influence is more politically subtle. I'm writing a paper on the IMF's advocacy of privatizing the Nicaraguan water supply (i.e. selling the public water system to foreign--American--companies), which may make drinking water unaffordably expensive. Stay tuned.

*Reagan's argument was that the Sandinistas were sympathetic to communism and therefore bad.

Vulgar

One day, I was practicing the alphabet with some of the kids because they were clamoring for stickers and wanted to show off that they could recite the whole thing without even knowing what they were saying.* After having them practice by pointing to letters at random, I decided it would be good to work on pairs of letters that sound similar. So I pointed at C and S, N and Ñ, B and V. No problem.

Then I pointed at Q and K and suddenly one of the more precocious (read smart-alecky) students starts shouting "Don Miguel vulgar!" and all the kids are hooting and tittering,** and for days I had no idea what set them off...until I went to Quinta los Chavalos (the other school, where I taught English to college students) and one of the teachers there kindly explained to me that "cuca" is apparently an extremely offensive word for penis. The learning never ends.


*It's pretty easy to say something that sounds a lot like a-b-c-d-e-f-g... without really making any connection between the forms you see and the sounds they represent. As I (coincidentally) began studying Hindi a month ago and have been forced to learn an entirely new alphabet for the first time since I was two, I can unexpectedly sympathize with them.

**Wouldn't "Hooting and Tittering" be an awesome name for a folk-rock band?

Ugh

In the ever-helpful guidebooks, the tourist in Nicaragua is counseled to be prepared to encounter a lot of bugs. Particularly hovering over (and landing upon) one's food. "Nicaraguans, one will note, have taken to passing one hand slowly back and forth over their plates when not actively engaged in eating. Drnks are often covered with a napkin; straws are tucked within the glass. Nicas will stop using a straw after a fly has landed on it. Visitors would be well-advised to do the same."*

Being somewhat public-health-obsessed, I heeded this advice; I'm proud to report I was only caught ill twice in six weeks. Wow!

The thing is, bugs are everywhere. They're part and parcel with the blazing heat and languor-inducing humidity. It makes walking around on a normal day a rather repulsive affair. It strikes me as rather amazing that, given the oppressive climate, Nicas are so enamored of dancing. In open-air clubs. For hours and hours.

I need to go shower.


*An almost-actual quote, reconstructed from memory.

Tranquilo

It's a mantra. Like "whatever" or "mañana" or "hakuna matata," it means that urgency is not important, things will work out. Why bother? Why worry? Just chill, man. Jeez. I was going to write this a few weeks ago, but...todo tranquilo. Have a beer. It's cool. We'll talk.

Secondhand

I was told early on that Nicaragua operates on a re-sale economy, and after keeping my eyes open, it seemed to me justifiably so: reuse and repurposing were everywhere. The local and intercity buses were often still covered in English, Arabic, or Korean text from their previous lives. Repair shops for everything from shoes to refrigerators covered the street. Handicraft vendors were said to go from town to town buying in markets and selling in others, from anywhere to anywhere else. Very little American-style profit was to be made, because very little new anything was available anywhere but in the ritziest shops.

Randy

Mr. Wood not only personally encouraged me to take a shot at exploring Nicaragua, he also co-wrote this--generally agreed to be the definitive guidebook--proving his rather expansive knowledge of the country.

Randymon, this R's for you.

Peace & Quiet-time

Considering it is a country best known to the outside world for its counter/revolutionary wars, Nicaragua is big on peace. Ometepe is (as previously mentioned) the "oasis," but the rest of the country is in on it too. Banners everywhere proclaim the country's opposition to foreign wars (U.S.-Iraq is the flavor of the era), and the people are quite proud of the domestic reconciliation that was achieved after the return to democracy in 1990.* Even the national seal (prominent on the flag) features a rainbow, which was explained to me at the National Museum as a symbol specifically of peace and hope. Nicas talk about their "peaceful nature" on regular occasion, and I suppose that assertion is reconcilable with their history; anger in particular has little to do with peaceability, and there's a lot to be angry about.

Peace, however, should not imply quiet.** Nicas are a raucous bunch, but there isn't a lot for them to channel their energy into. Dancing, yes. Political action, of course. But one of the uncomfortable truths of my stay there was that there is just too much leisure time available. The people who work, do work very hard. But there aren't a lot of jobs available. So there is a lot of TV-watching. And drinking. And sitting around. These three things I find fine in moderation, but in bigger doses they bore me. (The fact that reading isn't popular is...well, not endearing to me.)

But that's pretty much what there is to do after dark*** in a place like Granada. Occasionally there are performing arts or other diversions for getting people out and mingling, but apart from the bars--where it's just not easy to meet people--there's not much of anywhere to go. So you stay in...and you sit, watch, drink, talk. Or, if you're me, you start flossing two or three times a day. There is time to kill; there is oral hygiene to perform.


* Much credit is given to Doña Violeta--President Violeta Chamorro--the first woman to lead the country and a gifted rapporteur.

** (However, the lack of stereo equipment does.)

***After dark! The sun rises at 6 in the morning (immediately after which the atmosphere is heavy with an unsleepable heat) and sets at 6 in the afternoon. I soon found myself (and heard similar stories from a number of acquaintances) rising at 5:30 every morning and going to bed at around 9.