[Vision2020] Fourth communication from Dave Barber, Villa El Carmen, Nicaragua

[Louise Barber]

            Villa El Carmen  [VEC] the MUNICIPALITY is an area of XXX
kilometers (sorry, I have the number but not here) that stretches from the
Pacific shore to maybe 15 miles inland, with VEC the VILLAGE  roughly in the
middle.  To date I´ve seen the Pacific only from a distance of maybe 10
miles from the top of a hill, in car.  Over 30,000 people live here,
according to the alcalde [mayor].  The village VEC has around 3000 people,
including the 'suburbs,' such as the area where I am staying, called the
colonia, built largely by the owners themselves as part of a project funded
largely by Canada.  These houses--and I think they're typical--are of two
basic sizes:  20x20 feet and 20x35 feet.  The design and materials are
basic:  concrete block, corrugated metal roofs, wall material flimsier than
our sheetrock.  Ceilings are of light plastic blocks, about a yard square,
resting on supports; when I enter my 7x10 bedroom, the act of opening the
door pushes air into the room so that the ceiling blocks rise and fall and
it sounds like a wind has rattled the house.  No house here has a second
story or a basement.

            The electricity is pretty reliable--last year, I´m told, it was
not.  Three times in the past two weeks there have been outages of 1-2
hours, and I live in fear of not having my electric fan functioning in my
windowless bedroom.  The lighting here is all bulbs from the ceiling--I
don´t know about the other 2 bedrooms.  If I can do it without being
insulting, I want to leave this family--Ana, Mario, and their niece Aura--a
good reading lamp.  Aura is in effect the child of Ana and Mario; her
mother, Mario's sister,  is in Costa Rica with two younger siblings, and I
know nothing of her father.  In effect it´s Mario, and he´s great at it.
Ana and Mario are otherwise childless.

            In many ways, as you'd expect, life here is primitive by
American standards.  Nobody has hot water.  The water supply is OK at least
in the colonia, but though there is a shower in the house, the water
pressure does not allow showers, exactly.  'El agua no sube,' I was told the
first morning. Instead, you fill a large pail outside and take it into the
shower stall and use a bowl for pouring. Physically it´s the most refreshing
time of the day.  I shave using a 1 1-2 x 3 inch cosmetic mirror borrowed
from Ana.  There is no bathroom sink and no mirror in the whole house (don´t
know about the other bedrooms).

            Mario and Ana are among the professional elite in the town,
being education administrators and former teachers, and they have the
basics, though in old, creaky forms:  a gas stove, a refrigerator,
microwave, washing machine (no dryer), microwave, blender, TV, CD player and
radio.  (I bless the blender--with it Ana makes various full-fruit juices,
often with orange and sugar to taste:  we have cantaloupe juice, pineapple
juice, papaya juice, tamarind juice, even carrot juice and a juice with the
huge local version of BEETS.). They have a car, which like all the cars here
is a well used ex-taxi.  It has bad shocks and only one headlight on normal,
which is interesting on these roads.  Driving is supposed to be the most
dangerous thing you can do in Nicaragua, and I can see why.  But Mario is a
good driver.

            VEC the municipality has seven schools that go from K to 11, the
full range here.  There are about 3750 students in these schools, total.
There are also 30 or more satelitos, small elementary schools in the more
rural areas.  I am to sped a day at each of the 7 large schools and have
seen three already.  I teach English at the local school, Instituto Gustavo
Carrion Zamora, to the seniors, on Tuesday and Thursday. The school has a
computer lab, funded by the national government so that it can offer
computer certification to adults as well as a tool for students.  It´s
air-conditioned!  This is the only Internet connection in town, and no other
school has the connection, which costs $400 monthly (that's 7200 cordobas),
far beyond the capacity of any school to pay for itself.

            The school principal, Alba Sequeira, has graciously offered me
use of the computer, so I have two reasons to go to school--three if you
include the air conditioning.  (At its coolest this area feels like mid-80s,
at its hottest over 100, and humid though not so humid as Georgia, say.
There will be no running here, or fast walking; any movement is exercise.
When not moving myself, I am always seeking moving air.

            But I always walk to school, about 3/4 mile away, since the
first 2 days when I took the packed school bus with the regular English
teacher.  Her name is Ruby Ribgy, and she comes from Bluefields, a former
English colony (I think) on the Atlantic coast.  She is the only person I
have met in town who speaks near-fluent English. Ana, who learned her
English a decade ago at the American Language and Culture Program at UIdaho,
is probably still pretty fluent, but she almost never uses English with me.
I asked her not to, before coming, in an unguarded moment.

            When I leave this house I am walking on a dirt road (thank God
it´s the dry season--they call it summer, defying the laws of meteorology,
because it´s hottest in Feb-March-April).  This street has about 20 houses
on it, all structured like Ana and Mario´s, with ten feet between them--just
room for a car, of which there are only two on this street.  At the end of
the street, about 150 yards (if I go the other direction, in 50 yards I am
at an incline and a local dump site), I am at another, wider dirt street.  I
turn right, walk past a bus stop, turn left, walk around a curve and over a
small but sturdy bridge which is the pride of the current alcalde.  He is
given credit for getting it built, and now buses and trucks can roll over
it; before it was built last year vehicles had to take a much longer way
around this particular gulley.

            Then another long stretch, until I reach the town's central--and
only paved--street.  It is paved with interlocking concrete blocks about
1-foot square.  So far on an ordinary day I will have been passed by a
couple of ex-taxis, a bus, a pickup or two, a horse and rider, a wagon drawn
by one or two cows.  The cows of this area have wide horns, folds of hide
handing down from the neck, and big oval ears just like the cartoon ears of
Dubya, but more horizontal.   A herd of about 12 is driven down these
streets twice 

daily.

            When students ask me how Nicaragua is different and what I like
about it, I sometimes mention how I like it that the people and the animals
all live together.  In my home town, I say, only dogs and cats live in town;
the roosters, chickens, cows, and chanchos (pigs) live in farms, usually
penned it.  Here all the animals roam free in town except horses and some of
the cows.  I can sit in the back yard for half an hour and see roosters,
chickens, and pigs all stroll by me as well as dogs and an occasional cat.
These animals live off the land, which includes being composters for
people´s garbage scraps put in the yards.

            The dogs are a puzzle to me.  They are mostly small to medium
size, docile, sweet, and scrawny.  I may be wrong, but to me they embody St.
Paul´s idea of love, at least some of it.  They are not proud, they do not
bark much, neither do they beg; they expect nothing, nor do they want to
smell my hand or my crotch.  I´ve seen only a couple with collars.  There
are lots of them, and they must have a place to call home, but only a couple
of times have I seen anyone TOUCH a dog.  I hesitate to be the first, not
wanting to set a precedent or find out that they´re really vicious curs.
But they me homesick, reminding me of my Lucy, that highly privileged black
beast.

            Here at the edge of the main street, I have already passed at
least two stores.  I say 'at least' because I am discovering more family
businesses all the time.  A couple of blocks from Ana and Mario´s, a family
owns a freezer, and they store and sell packaged ice cream cones and
sandwiches and popsicles.  Various women--girls usually--walk around selling
warm tortillas, and one girl has cornered the market on cajetas, a delicious
soft candy.

            But here on the main street there are a couple of stores in
every block:  

one-room affairs with a motley assortment of goods.  I know where I can get
shampoo and paper goods, where I can restore my electrolytes with Gatorade,
where--only one place in town, evidently--I can buy a newspaper, Nuevo
Diario or La Prensa.  Today I bought a white shirt, for 65 cordobas--that's
about $3.75, and I probably got what I paid for.

            Like all people Nicas must have their downsides, but so far I
have seen only one:  there is a LOT of noise here.  Acoustics in the schools
are terrible!  In the neighborhoods noise is constant; in a warm climate the
doors are all open (one front and one back) unless it´s windy (dust here is
everywhere), and music and voices mingle from house to house like a stew of
sound.  But it´s a happy noise.  There seems to be very little anger here,
and the children don´t fight, or cry, only yell.  The music is loud, and
emphatic.  Nobody seems to mind the noise.  I think the roosters have
trained them, as they are training me.

            I am constantly struck by everyone´s friendliness to me, as well
as their civility to each other.  Obviously they see me as a curiosity, but
I have seen no hostility anywhere.  Fears that they would see me as a CIA
agent have not materialized.  Of course, I come with the seal of approval of
the local school authorities, and all the local children have seen me and
heard my broken Spanish.  (By the time I leave here I will have talked to
most of the classes in seven schools, some 3500 students.)

            But most important, I come connected to the past contributions
of the Moscow Sister City Association and the schoolteachers of the city.
MSCA has sent various loads of school supplies and has funded house
constructions, wells, and other projects needed by this community.  MSCA
funded Ana´s semester in Moscow in 1998.  It funded the visits here by
Connie Larson and recently Meghan Beard and Katrina Nelson.  Meghan and
Katrina are still sharply in the memory of people here, whose faces light up
at the mention of their names.  I had this experience a few days ago meeting
three women by a river last week, and buying my shirt today.  My
predecessors hare largely responsible for the response I´m getting here.

            Even the strangers I meet will often initiate and always return
a greeting:  Buenos dias, Hola, or--the most common greeting--Adios.  A
warm, informal, physical closeness is the atmosphere:  adult to adult, child
to child, adult to child. I am largely included in the mix.  The children
blow me away.  Apart from their amazing physical beauty--they are always
reminding me of my two grandchildren who combine Korean and Caucasian skin
tones--they have the brightest smiles ever seen.  They are shy--often i have
to smile first, and then they light up like the most enchanting thing in the
world has just happened to them.  (As I type the little girls next to me are
staring transfixed by my typing.)  Then they keep the contact.  Kids at
school are always saying to me, 'Hello DAYvid, how AAHRE you?'  Yesterday I
sat down to write some notes on a bench outside, and was immediately
surrounded by a dozen ten-year old boys who just wanted to look at what I
was doing--no purpose, just curious.  Today while I was waiting to get into
the computer room, a class of 7th graders lined up and one girl said hello
and then went down the line of children naming each one for me, so I could
say 'Hello, how are you?'  When a class was leaving a few days ago, a girl
put her hand on my shoulder and said 'GOODbye, DAYvid.'

            Now I have to close out and go to a school ceremony, delayed by
the death of a relative of a teacher, for Valentine´s Day:  EL Dia del Amor
y la Amistad.    I suspect I´ll probably add to my collection, from a
previous school, of 250 Valentine´s Day cards.  I hope my Hotmail account
works this time.  Ya veremos.  We´ll see.  In Mario and Ana´s house is a
live but incapacitated iguana, waiting patiently to become dinner tonight.
Tomorrow the principals of the seven schools are taking me to the areas of
Masaya and Granada, and an active volcano.  Every day this world is new.

 

Love you all,

Dave

 

 

 

 


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.441 / Virus Database: 268.18.2/692 - Release Date: 2/18/2007
4:35 PM
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20070218/6d080a59/attachment-0001.html