14-day-old post

The other morning I hopped off the truck from Rama by the bridge, my usual stop, just as I’ve done for the past two years. I put on my backpack, nestled my sack of food on top of my shoulder, and walked up the cement walkway to my little house on stilts. I had left the key with a friend, and ended up sitting on my front porch with Pancake and my inherited smelly dog waiting for her to come home from work and let me in.

Until that day, I had been out of site for two straight weeks. I worked, of course, but I also went to Estelí, I went to Teotecacinte, I went to Managua, and I went to Granada. I bought presents, I sweated, and I said a thousand confused goodbyes to the amazing people that I have depended upon for the past two years, and who, in the coming weeks, will one by one slip back into whatever life they left behind 27 months ago.

And now, with only 14 days left to pack, sell/give away my things, and say my goodbyes, I alternate between feeling really excited and terribly sad about the prospect of going home. The whole situation is overwhelming. How do you say goodbye to a whole town?

I will miss:

·         Living in a place where delicious things, like mangoes, avocadoes, pineapples, grapefruit, oranges, sugar cane, papayas, coconuts, lemons and cocoa beans, are given freely as little tokens of affection when you pay someone a visit.

·         Close friends that live close by. I grew up in a place with very few kids my age within walking distance, and even though I don’t ever see myself living in a development, I was always jealous of the kids who had neighborhood friends. Living in Kukra has given me the chance to feel like part of a community, and I will definitely miss the culture of visiting whomever I want whenever I want and always being welcome.

·         Pancake.

·         Knowing that, if I get hungry and I don’t feel like cooking, there will always be a plate of gallo pinto and a cup of coffee waiting for me at Doña Nena’s house.

·         My softball friends, for being strong and sassy and stubborn and for somehow finding the time to maintain the household, take care of the kids, and still go practice everyday during softball season. They refuse to allow their men to keep them in the house, and I love them for it.

·         My little house on stilts.

·         Leaf-cutter ants. They are, hands down, the most interesting insects in Nicaragua.

·         Roosters that predict the weather. If they start crowing at 2am or some equally ungodly hour, rain is on its way.

·         Living (well) on just over $200 per month.

·         Panga-rides to Bluefields.

·         Coconut-based everything.

·         My Peace Corps friends. I have tried so many times to find that solid group of active friends who will drop everything to go for a hike at a moment’s notice—first in high school, then in college, and every summer in-between. Maybe it was the experience that brought us together, or maybe we just lucked out and got stuck with a bunch of freakishly compatible people, but whatever the case, I really feel like we will be friends for life.

·         Looking up while I’m taking a bucket bath and seeing banana leaves, the branches of my avocado tree, and the sky.

I will not miss:

·         The smell of burning trash, that filthy, putrid stink that penetrates all your clean clothes and makes your throat hurt.

·         The petty jealousies, gossip, and feuds that come along with small town life.

·         The phrase “si Dios quiere,” which allows you the freedom to do what you want without it ever being your fault. Will I see you at the meeting tomorrow? Will you be baking bread this week? Will you do that thing you said you were going to do? The answer is always the same: “Si Dios quiere y nos presta vida,” (If god wills it and gives us life). It’s a great response when you don’t want to do something, and I guess it’s a nice idea, but it’s also easily my #1 peeve around here.

·         The machista culture, in which men can do what they want (with whoever they want) and their “woman” is still expected to wash the clothes, cook the food, clean the house, take care of the kids, and not ask questions.

·         My leaky roof, my rotting floor, and my inability to really do anything about it.

·         12-hour bus rides to Managua.

·         The mosquitoes in my house, which are no longer deterred by even the strongest version of DEET-ridden bug repellent.

Get ready, Dairy Queen blizzard. Here I come.

floods.

can't get back to site if the river floods so high that it overtakes the bridge that is normally like, 60 FEET ABOVE IT. From the blue barn, it's another ten yards to the edge of the riverbank, and water is waist-high walking across the bridge. Some guys took advantage and started ferrying people across in a giant dug-out canoe.

Somebody put their bike there to monitor the rise and fall of the water, too. Rainy season, man.

Tonight, I'm in Rama.

pancakes

A few months ago, Pancake started to get what Nicas call a "mondongo," which is the equivalent of a spare tire/muffin top/whathaveyou. She got fat, she started eating a lot, and I decided she was pregs.

And she WAS.

The night before last, Pancake waited until I came home from Bluefields (on the day of Palo de Mayo) to have her babies in the corner of my bedroom on the towel that I put down for that specific purpose-- three tiny brown striped kitties with their eyes closed.

Meet Tulululu, Reggae Ninja, and Mango Ghost!

Wet bed.

I don’t know what people have told you, or what they’ll maybe tell you in the future, but let ME tell you something important.


Painting your floorboards with motor oil is a terrifically bad idea. The worst, actually.


The oil takes days to soak in, the floor turns sticky and black and collects cat hair and ruins your mop, and everytime you walk on it your shoes make that annoying thuck thuck thuck sound of walking through mud. It’s not pretty.

You ask: Why would somebody do such a thing? Because. When your roof is made of 30-year-old asbestos, heavy downpours cause gallons—we’re talking MANY gallons—to soak everything within your tiny wooden house until the rain stops. It gets so bad that you actually have to sleep under an umbrella with a plastic tarp draped over the top of your blankets. And then, all that wet stuff molds. And guess what else? Once the rainy season starts, it rains EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

On a particularly damp morning, after a bout of pouting and stomping around, desperation reared its ugly head and I took everyone’s brilliant advice and…yeah. You know the rest.

After about five days of continual wetness, when I couldn’t take it anymore and the floor began sprouting white mold, the sun came out. The SUN! It was amazing. I scrubbed the floor with bleach, and then with disinfectant, and then I did the smartest thing yet. I skipped town. Seven hours and a very sore bum later, I arrived in a town that I formerly knew only as the halfway point between Rama and Managua.

Let me tell you about Juigalpa. It is a town centered around a huge Futurist-looking cement church and a park with trimmed hedges and shade trees, where they play soothing music from 5 until 8pm for people enjoying a nighttime stroll. There are interesting tile mosaics everywhere, depicting scenes from the bible in a way that I’ve never seen in this entire country—lions and ostriches and Fascist-looking men reaching for things they can’t quite grasp. It’s a magical land where trees are planted intentionally, where the ATM is hilariously slow, and where the used clothing store had the two incredibly specific articles of clothing that I walked in looking for, IN MY SIZE, for under $5.

The doorknob to my hotel room broke this morning and now can’t be opened from the outside, but the roof is sound and tonight I won’t wake up tormented by the faucet of water that soaks my mattress on a nightly basis.

I think I’m ready to come home.

licky carn islan

40 minutes on a panga to Bluefields, 6 hours on a boat called the Captain D to Big Corn Island, and a 25-minute panga ride to Little Corn Island, and our vacation began. Words can't describe how beautiful it is there, or how badly we needed time to loaf on the beach, eat good food, and momentarily forget about everything that stresses us out. Photos below, and a more detailed update to come.

LAND HO! at the prow of the boat

kids on "Picnic Center" beach on Big Corn

 Lindsey and I snorkeling off Little Corn--we saw sharks! I inhaled water! It was magical.

 Our little bamboo rasta cabaña

Sunset on Big Corn

amoebas

New friends, alive and well (but not for long!!) in my intestines. Hoo ha!

happy place

When I first arrived in K-Hill back in August of 2010,I lived in near constant fear of half the population of my little town-- the MEN. This also applied to male dogs, who bark louder and are generally more threatening than lady pooches. I sought refuge from all things masculine in the company of women, avoiding bars, certain street corners at night, the stadium, the soccer field, and the school when it was in session. When I had to pass by these places, I did so with my head ducked and my eyes focused intently on whatever happened to be on the ground in front of me.

And then, one day, my line in the sand got blurred-- I joined the women´s softball team, and suddenly was obligated to enter the stadium, four huge walls enclosing a space that is constantly chock full of the loudest, cockiest, mouthiest boys K-Hill has to offer. It's not too hard to imagine-- they're baseball players. Duh.

Every time we had practice, I would get dressed and walk to the front entrance, where I would peek my head inside to see who was around. If the boys saw me, conversation would stop and suddenly the place would be singing with Creole come-ons-- "Come on in, honey, we don't bite!" Not usually anything totally obscene, but definitely unnerving coming from the mouths of strangers. I'd check for women, even just one to sit with, and generally found none. I'd repeat this process of creeping and peeking at 15-minute intervals until someone eventually showed up for the practice. Afterward, I would run back to my house and lay low until I had bathed and changed out of the hotpants my teammates gave me to practice in.

It's pretty amazing how things change over the course of twenty odd months.

This afternoon, after a particularly rough day during which my mantra was the seemingly simple "be nice," I ran home, threw on some shorts and a tee shirt, and made my way to (you guessed it), the stadium. Not much has changed about the place since I arrived except for the fresh coat of baby blue paint on the walls. It is still a den of testosterone, the exact same men and boys (now two years older) still come practice everyday, and I am still almost always the lone woman amidst a bunch of dudes. Except now, this is my favorite place in town, the place I go to when small town petty drama becomes overwhelming.

The boys are in the finals of the playoffs, and as I entered the gates a pack of them was walking out. "Der's my pritty wyte gyal," said L, smiling his usual shit-eating grin. I laughed, slapped hands with some former students, said hello to everyone, and sat down amongst them to put on my sneakers. A few stuck around to chat with me and keep me company as I ran laps, but most of them went on home. I guess I'm not such a novelty anymore. Sometimes the boys run with me, and sometimes they include me in their warmup or their workout. If I'm lucky, someone sticks around long enough to hold my feet while I do crunches. On Sundays, they come to my games and cheer me on, shouting advice and encouragement (and the necessary cat calls), as my teammates and I play.

Inside of those sky-blue walls, I am screened off from the perpetual stare of the people-- no one inside would dare call me fat and grab at my stomach, comment on the "stains" that I'm getting on my face (freckles), or tell me that my feet look dirty for the millionth time. Men don't tear you down the way that some women can, you know? And anyway, inside the stadium we're all at about the same level of filthy/sweaty/disgusting.

After my run today, I lay down on the grass and stared up at the palm trees and the clouds while some younger boys practiced catching fly balls in the outfield. The bar next door pumped out reggae music, and I lay there for about twenty minutes just enjoying the breeze and the sound of people having fun on a nice day. When the grass got too itchy I made my way back home, cutting through people's yards to avoid the running commentary about my sweaty self and my red, post-run face. My boys can be total pains in the neck and they still manage to make me cringe sometimes, but they are consistently positive and welcoming. They say what they want to me, but they say it to my face and there's something really nice about that. I always leave with sweat on my forehead and a big, exhausted smile.