Thoughts on a Wednesday

Mid-week update from Managua.

The rainy season is shaping up to be wet, humid, and yes, still hot.
Big news from Ciudad Sandino: the government is paving the road down toward my school. It will be nice to walk on but currently looks like a war zone.
Buzzed hair is a gift from Dios.
I have been downloading podcasts from All Songs Considered. They are great and eclectic morsels of music that I miss so much.
Will beans for every meal of the day get old? You would think so. But, no, they don't.
Getting hugs and greetings from kids all the time at school is still not old. I love it, especially when I don't have to be dictator of the class room.

The Flood

A coworker of Michael and Amber swears the rainy season always begins officially on May 22^nd. That is the day that every year the rain begins. This year was no different. Friday night we were inundated with lightning, thunder, and more rain than a Midwesterner could imagine. I’ve seen rain, lots of it. I’ve slept in it, sung in it, danced in it, and I’d never seen rain this. We were visiting friends, Joe and Kelly, when the rain started and lasted a few hours. The road flooded and Joe set out about 6 buckets under leaks in the roof to catch the dripping sometimes streaming water. When we got home around 11pm we found our whole street dark and wet. The power was out everywhere. I stepped through the doorway into a huge puddle of water. Apparently the patio in the back had flooded. Most of the house had been filled with two to four inches of water. Amber was the only one home that evening. She did what she could to save stuff on the floor: laptops, guitars, books, etc. Not everything could be saved and everything was hot and damp. The power didn’t come on until midday on Saturday. That night was one of the muggiest, stickiest, grossest nights of sleep...ever. My bed was wet from water dripping from the roof. The temperature all night never dropped below the upper 70s or lower 80s. It was so humid that my sweat saturated everything and glistened in the middle of night. I devoted most of Saturday to cleaning and drying. Oh, and I almost forgot, the rain must have agitated the creepy crawly inhabitants in the house. In the middle of the night I woke to Michael yelling because a mouse fell on him from the rafter above his head. Gross. It was the night from hell. Luckily, everything is basically back to normal, still hot and humid, but under control. We also unclogged the blockage in the drain. No more floods—I hope.

In other news, things at work last week were really good. I started taking the first graders to the computer lab instead of staying with them in the class room. This is way easier for me because the lab teacher is in charge and all I have to do is help and watch the kids. Also, I started helping the phys ed. teacher coach volleyball. As you’ve probably realized from previous posts, I don’t feel particularly qualified for this position. However, it’s been really good to work side by side with my Nicaraguan coworker instead of coaching alone. The kids I’m meeting too are really great. I have had really good conversations with them and am building confianza with them. (Confianza means trust but also a sense of comfort, closeness, and mutual respect.)

This weekend is shaping out to be pretty low key. My stipend was exhausted early this month so I’ve been laying low and relaxing at home. This morning I watched one of my favorite movies, A River Runs Through It. I recently read an article about a new movie coming out that reminds me on of A River Runs Through It, called The River Way. I’m interested in reading the book. Have any of you read it? I recently read Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis both by Frank McCourt. Currently I am reading Middlesex. I’m about 100 pages in and find the descriptive prose to be poetic and very imaginative.

Happy Mother´s Day!

This post is dedicated to my mom on the occasion of Mother’s Day. Here in Nicaragua Mother’s Day is celebrated later in the month, the 30^th I believe. But in actuality the whole month of May should be for mothers because they are so damn great. The other day I was talking to mom and she asked me to blog about directions in Nicaragua. Let me explain. So I’ve been told, after The Earthquake in the 70s or 80s (I don’t remember) Managua was almost completely destroyed. The city was built back up but no one bothered renaming the streets. Some say the U2 song, Where the Streets Have No Name, refers to Managua. So, having no street names makes giving directions a little more complicated. Good luck using Google maps here. For example, my address is from the Cristo Rey rotunda, two blocks south, and half a block down. Then when you get half a block down you look for the second green house on the right or just go house to house asking where the gringos live. The cardinal directions here in Managua are a little different too. North, south, east, and west are known as al lago, al sur, arriba, and abajo (to the lake, to the south, up, and down). Lake Managua is north of the city, south is still south, and up and down refer to the sun going up and down, east to west. It took a little getting used to and I have to constantly reorient myself wherever I go in the city. Sometimes directions are incredibly long or are given from a landmark that doesn’t even exist. For example, some directions are like three blocks toward the lake from where this restaurant used to be then two blocks up.

In other news…Work has been up and down. I suppose that’s not really news but has come to be common knowledge. It’s really tough working with the little kids. The first and second graders are wild and nunca no me hacen caso. My soccer and baseball afternoons have petered out. No one really comes anymore. One little fourth grade kid still comes almost everyday. He lives around the corner from school and I think he’s just really bored and looking for something to do. He follows me around and sits near me while I read my book at lunch. Sometimes it’s really endearing and other times it’s just annoying. I have started helping out the phys ed. teacher who is coaching volleyball in the afternoons. It has been good to actually accompany someone in their work, to learn from them, and be able to ask questions. So often at work I’m put into a situation empty handed and unsupported and expected to make things work. I usually do alright but I don’t think the students nor I particularly thrive in these situations. One surprising thing is that the kids, when I’m not in class with them, love me. They attack me with hugs and salutations. I am often self-conscious because I’ll be walking by a class and kids will yell out the window to me. Sometimes I feel more like a distraction than a help.

The Day the Music Died

Last night I had a test of detachment. I was fiddling around with my ipod and out of ignorance I accidentally synced my ipod with my computer and erased almost all of my music. I couldn’t believe it. I had spent years collecting this music. I had over 7,000 songs from friends all over the world—all gone. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

In light of this I have invited myself to take a step back and take the long view. This is not the end of the world and it gives me good reason to look at my life a little bit. I live here in Nicaragua and am confronted with realities of poverty everyday. That doesn’t mean I actually see it. For sure it’s always there but I don’t always choose to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open to it. I am reminded of a short story I read in college by Flannery O’Conner: A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the story, as in many of her stories, she uses violence as a catalyst for her character’s dynamic growth, and more importantly for grace to enter their lives—to experience metanoia, personal change, realization, or enlightenment.

Poverty is violence, and so if my life were like an O’Conner short story I would be changing and growing daily. But truthfully, I feel like I can get stuck or numbed by the day to day violence of poverty.

There are some days when it hits me hard. I can’t ignore nor forget certain imagines burned into my memory. Last week I was walking from my house to Metro Centro to catch my bus to Ciudad Sandino. It was 6:05AM. I went to cross the street and saw out of the corner of my eye a homeless man. Actually, all I could see was his bare ass and him wiping himself. It shocked me. What brings a man to defecate like that out in the open? That same day, on arriving to Ciudad Sandino, I was walking from the bus to school and saw two more things that shocked me. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Save the Children ads on TV showing images of dirty naked children looking for your daily donation of 60 cents. I think one of those kids lives near my school. He stood by the road wearing nothing but a dirty cloth diaper, and his little hands clutching barbed wire. He looked up at me with red expressionless eyes. On the next block a group of four or five shirtless and raggedy men were sitting around on the ground passing a bottle of Guaro or cheap dirty liquor. A bottle of this stuff goes for about 2 dollars a pop and even the cheapest and most desperate college freshmen would turn their noses up at the stuff. These men were getting drunk at 7AM as their kids were heading to school and their wives and girlfriends to work. When I left school at 4PM they were still where I left them.

These experiences are not unique to this one day. There was something about the concentration of the events, all happening within an hour, that shocked me out of my stasis. It’s not easy to see suffering like this on a daily basis but it certainly puts my ipod woes into perspective. I hope I never become too accustomed or dulled to the realities around me, but perhaps I can use these experiences as catalysts for personal growth, enlightenment, and metanoia.

Swine Flu

Everybody's talking about it. Thought I'd let you all know. We're going to be OK here in the JVI Nica house. We have masks.

I think the rains are coming soon. It hasn't rained a drop since December. The rainy season starts this month. We heard thunder today which is a good sign. I'm not sure it will be better in the rainy season. It will certainly be less dusty but also much more humid. We shall see. In other news we had a three day weekend this weekend because of the May 1st celebration of workers. We had a good time seeing some friends and relaxing. I have a meeting this coming week with the teachers and parents of the first grade. The topic is discipline, which these kids have none of. Oh, and by the way today is my 5 month anniversary of being in Nicaragua. I am adjusting well and getting pretty used to life here. El español está mejorando día por día.