[Vision2020] Dave's final letter from Nicaragua, Part I

[Louise Barber]

Letter 16 (March 26, 2007)

Dear All --

            This is the last letter from here.  I head out Wednesday and
arrive home Thursday.  Recently we´ve been to Leon, the only main tourist
center in the Pacific zone that I hadn´t seen, and toured Managua, but this
letter is about other stuff.

            In Nicaragua I have developed one vice and one virtue.  The vice
is winding down in the late afternoon with a beer.  Three times in the past
week after walks I have sauntered over to the Kiosko Chinchilla, which
serves Victoria cerveza.  It´s good I´m leaving soon.  The virtue is that in
Nicaragua I´ve perfected the art of hanging out.  Hanging out has always
seemed a suspect activity to me; it lacks purpose and focus, and it seems to
be usually practiced by the very young in front of TV sets.  But here it s
especially a part of life´s rhythm.

            The first time I had a beer at Chinchilla the woman who runs the
place was not communicative, so I hung with myself.  The second time she was
friendly, having discovered that her daughter Meyling is my student.  The
third time she was not there but her niece was.  The sobrina had nothing
much to do, and she came to my table and sat.  I had been walking for two
hours and had come to see the sun go down, something I can´t do at Mario and
Ana´s for the trees.  I had an hour and a half to wait.  We hung out.  Lots
of silence, intermittent talk.

            Her name is Italia, she is in her mid-20s, and like many women
here she is a bit overweight.  She has a seven-year-old son but she is not
married.  She does not go to the schools on Saturday and Sunday which are
open to adults.  Schooling is not her thing, she says.  What hopes and plans
does Italia have for her son?  Many, she says, but she can´t name any.
Would she work somewhere else if she had the chance?  Yes, but she doesn´t
see that happening, with her lack of education and training.

            Mario says that most young women in Nicaragua are married with a
child before the age of 20.  Premarital sex is enthusiastically discouraged
here, so when kids do it anyway and the girl ends up pregnant, a swift
wedding can be relied on.  In Nicaragua even therapeutic abortion is
illegal.  Italia sounds like the norm, except she doesn´t even have a
husband.  (Mario says that irresponsible fathers and husbands are a big
problem here.  Neither Roberto nor Aura have a relationship with their
fathers, though both are living and Aura´s lives near Villa El Carmen.)
Italia has a job, sort of, but it doesn´t look very challenging.  She has
nowhere to go in her life except through raising her son.  This may be fine
and good, may be all she expects out of life, but it seems like altogether
too much hanging out.

            A few nights ago the electricity went out shortly after sunset.
Ana and Mario were still out, and Aura was watering the dust.  I went out to
sit on the front step, feet in the street.  Evenings without electricity are
a bother indoors, but outdoors it´s lovely because all the house lights are
off, and most houses have glaring light bulbs outside, perhaps to keep the
bugs from coming inside through the always open doors.  In the total dark
you can see the stars really well where the trees let you.  Orion was almost
straight up, and from this angle I could see the Big Dipper reclining toward
the north; I could even see the North Star, just above the horizon.

            Two kids came by kicking balls.  We tossed the half-flat balls
back and forth.  Other kids wandered by.  Eventually there were 8 or 9 of
them, all between the ages of 4 and 8.  They had nothing to do either.  They
sat down; we hung out.  They wanted to see if I really could speak English.
One girl asked if I could say UNO in English, and I could.  Then she and a
younger boy counted off one through ten.  (That surprised me--they must be
starting them earlier with English now.)  Then we got into serious stuff:
where I´m from, when I´m going home, how I´m getting there, animals, food,
siblings, weather.  It was peaceful and odd:  a bunch of children,
fascinated by the strange--and I, the strange--sitting surrounded in the
dark, straining to understand their Spanish, and suddenly hearing two of
them reel off one through ten.

            Afternoon, walking by a park on the east side of town, I see six
little girls playing.  I´ve never seen them before, but they know me.  I am
the Gringo, the one who 'habla ingles.'  They don´t seem threatening or
hostile so I approach them, and we talk a little.  They are 5-6-7 years old.
I say goodbye and walk away, but half a block later they come running after
me.  They want to introduce themselves, want me to know their names.  The
ringleader says 'I´m Rosalia, this one´s Carolina, this one . . . 'They jump
around and giggle.  'Soy David,' I say, and all six repeat it together.
DAAYveed.  Something about this is very touching, little Nicaraguan girls
announcing themselves to the gringo world.

            Most of the children here seem to know Hello and Goodbye, but
they´re fuzzy on the difference.  I am often greeted with Goodbye.  Probably
a confusion with Adios, which works at either end coming or going.  It
reminds me of Latino Night last fall at UI, when several of the speakers
began their remarks with Goodnight everyone.  Buenas noches a todos.

            Many--most--of my mistakes in Spanish I never realize.  Often
people are kind enough to correct me.  But sometimes it seems like my
progress in learning Spanish is that the time gap between saying something
wrong and realizing that I´ve said it wrong is narrowing.  Learning a
language is so slow.  Verbs are impossible.  Spanish gender differences are
a bitch.

            It would seem it would help in learning another language to be
able to forget your own.  Spanish keeps trapping my students into English
errors.  PADRE means FATHER and MADRE means MOTHER but PADRES means PARENTS
(and PARIENTES means RELATIVES).  They think that in English PARENTS are
FATHERS.   HERMANOS means not brothers but SIBLINGS, so they´ll write I HAVE
FIVE BROTHERS, THREE VARONES (or MACHOS) AND TWO MUJERES (or HEMBRAS).
Somehow, in ME GUSTA BAILAR (I like to dance) they got the idea that GUSTA
means TASTE in English, so it comes out, ME TASTE DANCE.  (They´re also weak
on sticking in the TO for infinitives.)  Slow going for us all.

            I have an appointment to hang out with the alcalde, Nestor
Gutierrez soon.  This letter may have a Part 2.  Some time, anyway, there´s
a part 2 in your future, like it or not.

            Love,

            Dave

 

 

 


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