My first couple of days in Nicaragua

I found this school Hijos de Maiz on the Internet after looking for Spanish Schools on the Internet. The basic criteria when I googled for schools was that the schools were located in a rural or natural setting. After a couple of different combination of words and searching through different web pages Hijos de Maiz popped up a couple of times. I read the website and it was professional but not too professional that it looked like it was for the masses. The plane ticket to Managua during this time of year was next to nothing, $200 (more than I would spend on gas in a month in the states probably). I have always wanted to try and learn another language on a practical level, and after spending part of this past year in Costa Rica I have been able to form better relationships, but I have never been able to say what I want or explain myself clearly. With that being said, I decided to head for Nicaragua.

There was a catch to the cheap flight I purchased, It arrived from Ft. Lauderdale to Managua after 12:00 am in the morning. By the time I was outside of the airport it was nearing 1:00 am. I speak simple spanish well, and when I asked the taxi cab driver outside to take me to a place to sleep he said he new of one. Reservations or having a place to stay is not something that I plan, I usually do not show up on the day I say I will and nor or would I want to adhere to a schedule, thus it would not be as easy to go with moment. So arriving in downtown Managua at an odd hour without a plan definitely made things interesting. To make a long story short I did not stay in Managua. The places this guy knew of were either full or the people did not want to work to show me to a room. Not really important because it made for an interesting ride to the town of Esteli in the middle of the night. Esteli was where I was to get the bus to the spanish school in the small town of El Lagartillo, population 117 people. I did happen to email the spanish school a couple of days before I left the states and let them know the approximate week I would be coming and if they had space for me. They said of course and looked forward to me visiting.

Well the following day after getting a couple of hours of shut eye in some in whole in the wall I was off on a bus ride to El Lagartillo in a 1980's style school bus right out the states, and for all I know it was the bus I rode to school in elementary school repainted. I got to the station early and I could not believe that each parking spot was labeled with its destination. Departure time came and I had not asked anyone where the bus was because I was confident it would be parked in the appropriate spot. I started to get a little concerned and I ended up turning my head to the other side of the terminal and seeing a bus leaving with the words El Sauce on the back of it, and that was the name of the final destination town on the route. I jumped up and started to run. I did not want to be stuck in Esteli another day, the early bus left at 7:00 am, which I did not try to make, and the second and last bus was at 1:00pm. I ran the bus down from behind and jumped in the door as we went down the road.

The trip to El Lagartillo was a rainy, hilly, bumpy, long and most of all adventurous. Anyone and everyone you wanted to meet was on the bus. Yes I was the only gringo on the bus or as the Nicas say, Cheli. I asked the bus driver to let me know when to get off because signs are not something common and specifically in the country side. I jumped off where the driver told me to, and there I was in the middle of nowhere, nothing uncommon for me and actually kind of peaceful. I have to admit it was peaceful because I knew there would be a final destination, hopefully. Luckily there were two other people who got off the bus also. I asked the Senora if this was the way to El Lagartillo and she said yes. The walk was a mile along a quiet rolling dirt road with cow pasture and a few trees here and there.

I made it to the town of El Largartillo with the help of Hemberto, a gentleman who rode up behind me on horseback. He asked to help me with my bag, and believe me I was not going to say no. He helped me for the majority of the mile but he left me to walk the last 5 minutes on my own because he was heading to the small hilltop area are of pajarito. Once I got into the town of El Lagartillo I kind of made my way through as though I knew where I was going. I had not realized it at the time but I had made it all the way through town without knowing it. There was an initial sign at the beginning of town indicating that Hijos de Maiz was located in El Lagartillo but nothing afterwards. After not finding any formal setting for the school I decided to ask someone and they said the office/library was located in the primary school. Upon entering the classroom there was a lady playing with some kids and I asked her if this was, la escuela de hijos de maiz. She said yes and asked me to wait a short while and then she would take me to my host families house.

Wow, I thought this was easy. They had been expecting me, so it was not a complete surprise that I was in there. In 15 minutes we were off and walking to Deysi (28) and Marios (37) house. They had three kids, Eneyda 11, Marito (Mario Jr.) 9 and Carolina 2. The house comprised two bedrooms, a kitchen and of a open area with everthing from freshly harvested corn, beans, insecticides for plants, buckets for milking, machetes, rudimentery dining room table, a hamock and personal living items. The house was made of wood with a concrete floor (some areas dirt). The roof was a combination of metal and the clay style adobe roof tiles. The house was a basic rectangle with a front door, no windows and a basic angular pitch lengthwise with a separate pitch and roofline for the kitchen area so the smoke from the wood style stove could escape without pouring into the main portion of the house. I did not find out about the bathroom (latrina) and the shower until I really had to use them.

I was shown my own room, a single bed that resembled the beds at a summer camp I used to attend as a kid, Camp Powhatan. Thinking back, the beds at camp were in better condition because they had a mattress and the wires below that held the matress were just a little firmer. The bed I had was more or less like a hammock with some pieces of card board atop the wire so the foam with not go through and a blanket and a sheet. The exterior walls of the room were made of wood and the interior walls, one made of plastic (imagine a trash bag cut open and pulled taught or a tarp) and the other a tapestry more or less. There was no door, the opening may have been wide enough for my shoulders to slide through and there was a piece of fabric to pull across like a curtain if you wanted your "privacy" . Ok so that meant the other 5 people slept in the other room. This kind of made me feel uncomfortable but this was obviously something that had been set up, so there was no problem. As you could imagine I quickly realized the family I was staying with was not well do by any standard. I will spare you the details of the other 4 people who lived in the house while I was there but the basics were there was a family relative named sandy, 13, who stayed at the house to attend school in El Largartillo and then there was this young couple of 17 and 18 who lived in Las Lajas (this remote country farm area outside of El Largartillo) who just had a newborn baby the day before and stayed in the house the week that I was there. I am better of not telling you anything as that will tell you more of the story if you just use your imagination. Fortunately, I can tell you that I was nothing near shocked because of my recent experience of living in the same type of environment in Costa Rica with 10 people in a house.

I sat down and chatted with the family and we learned a little about each other while we waited for dinner time. In the meantime I made my way to the local one and only pulperia (store). This was when I realized, there was no electricity in town. I was oblivious. I bought some onions, tomatoes, potatoes, coffee, sugar, and pasta for the family to help out with the next couple of meals. Little did I know that the majority of all meals consisted of tortillas, beans, cuajada and maybe some rice. All of the before mentioned foods are locally grown besides the rice. The bean harvest consists of two seasons and the beans they eat take an hour or less to boil vs. the packaged beans which are probably no less than 6 months to a year old when eaten and take twice as long to boil. The tortilla production consists of an almost daily process of boiling the maiz with ash or something similar, washing the transparent skin outer off the corn, grinding the corn, then the formation of the tortillas and finally the cooking of the tortillas on the wood stove. The the whole process is an overnight procedure and something that I woke up to every morning (not to mention the roosters). The tortillas were made fresh everyday and one of the main staples of their diet. The cuajada (salty cheese) was made more on a weekly or twice a week basis and was made with freshly squeezed milk mixed with salt (for a preservative) and a substance that makes the milk coagulate and thicken and then basically form an amorphous substance that in the end resembles fresh Mozzarella. With that all said, the majority of the work in town is tending to their own crop of corn, beans and cows if they are lucky enough to have them. Not to forget that most everyone has chickens and when a little meat is needed, when the time is right, off goes the chickens head and plucked clean for the eating.

After dinner on the first night Mario and I had time to talk and share stories. His family had housed many students and enjoyed sharing their home with students as it was a way for them to earn a little money, share their culture and learn about other cultures. Mario informed my that his family was the poorest in town and the government or NGO (not sure) had an ongoing project to help the poorest of the poor. The government had given him one cow, one pig, one rooster and five chickens. Besides the corn and bean fields he tended to on his father's land he had some fruits and vegetables growing in his backyard. I also learned Mario had been in the army fighting against the Contras (U.S. financed) for 18 months prior to the end of the war in 1990 and then involved with some other more clandestine type of army that opposed the Re-Contras (Sects or groups of the Contra who did not want to disarm or disband).

The program and school of Hijos de Maiz was formed to help the local community and also share the past history. The Contra/Sandinista war had a huge impact on the small town of El Largartilla and the Las Lajas area but in real numbers the Contras killed 8 people from El Lagartillo in 1983, 7 were Nicaraguan and 1 was a Swiss gentleman, all of whom sided with the Sandinistas. I can not say the town of El Lagartillo is anti-American but I can say after being in other places in Nicaragua the school system teaches what happened in the past, so it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that when a U.S. led and financed army tries take over their country they are not going to look fondly on Americans. Over 20 years have passed, but the history is still history, and the kids currently in school are learning how the United States government acted and this affects the perception of how most all Nicaraguans think of Americans.

After getting the tour around town the following morning and seeing the memorial of the 8 people that died I was starting to get the essence of some of the history and that there was far more to learn than what I had realized when I embarked on this trip. The most interesting part of El Laragartillo are the people. The people are are all laid back campesinos who live life day to day. Everyone is related, and yes cousins have been known to fornicate with cousins and have kids. I think there was something like 3 families or so in town. Most homes consisted of the same general set-up of Mario and Deysi's house but were made out of brick with the letters FSLN (Frente Sandinista Liberacion Nacional) spray painted on the outside of them. Everyone literally helped everyone whether it was watching someones kids, getting firewood, milking the cows, making tortillas or getting the horse ready. Usually none of it was done without some type of payment. There was a town care that was donated but other than that the general means of transportation was horseback and foot. Most people of El Lagartillo come from the even more remote country area of Las Lajas. The primary and secondary schools in El Lagartillo have brought people into the town.

This is only a small tidbit of my experience in Nicaragua for the first two days. Oh yes I could not leave you without telling you about the bathing and bathroom experience. There reason I have left this for last is because i did not shower or take a crap until 2 days after being in town. I finally made my way behind the house and foundnd two separate metal enclosed areas, one was the shower area in which you had to fill up cold (real cold) buckets to wet yourself, then lather, and then rinse and pour more water on yourself. This was a reminder of how things were when I was in Africa. I did not know Nicaragua was the second poorest country in Latin America but after my experience and without researching the information I would not doubt it. And the bathroom experience was not really that bad. Imagine a port a potty with a big whole dug in the ground. You just sat on a square box made of concrete and bombs away. So the stories of the rest of the trip will be for another day. I can not possibly write about the other past 15 when I can barely finish describing the first two and who knows what is to happen with the next 8 to come.