Nicaragua

Veintiseis de Julio

2007-07-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Sunset over Granada:

(Click to enlarge)

Veintisiete de Julio

2007-07-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Today, the Rhythm in the Barrios volunteers (armed with giant construction paper ties, john lennon sunglasses, and a wig made from a showercap and cottonballs) put on a musical performance to introduce the school kids to musical instruments! We went to two schools – one along the highway and one in the jungle at the bottom of a volcano (a one-room school). The kids absolutely loved the show ~

(Click to enlarge)

Veinticinco de Julio

2007-07-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today, I biked around to all the barrio schools of the city with my camera. My assignment was to capture Rhythm en los Barrios in action so the organization could use the photos to raise money for the program! They will put the photos in a calendar and on the website, etc. to inform their donors about the success of Ritmo en los Barrios. It was great for me to be able to do this because exactly a year ago I had a vision of using my photography in this way and here I am – living my vision.

This trip is very confirming that everyone has the power to do nearly everything they dream up.

Veintiquatro de Julio

2007-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Almost every day near sunset, the boys from our street stand beneath our balcony calling out , “Chepe!! Chepe!”, to see if Adam is here to play baseball with them. They use the street as their field, telephone poles as bases, they hit a tennis ball using their fist as the bat, and usually play barefoot.

Rainy day details:

(Click to enlarge)

Veintitres de Julio

2007-07-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today we printed out several of the photos that I have taken of the locals. We will be on a mission for the next two weeks to search for these people and give them the photos of themselves. It shouldn’t be hard. It’s a small town and everyone is “same-time, same-place” around here. We’ll find the bread man cycling down the street around 6pm, the kids in the marketplace will be at their parent’s vegetable booth all day, the neighbor boys are always sitting on the curb down the street, and the barrio children are always playing outside in the dirt. They will all be thrilled to have photos of themselves, I just know it.

But since I didn’t take any photos today, I shall post some images I took several weeks ago of a school parade.

Veintidos de Julio

2007-07-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

Cemetario de Granada

The rich people at sunset:

The poor at sunset:

Details of the dearly departed:

(Click to enlarge)

This was taken of me:

Taking this photo:

And this is Mauren, a fellow artist and volunteer:

Veintiuno de Julio

2007-07-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

Laguna de Apollo is a fresh water lagoon with crystal blue water and colorful fish surrounded by mountains and giant stones that are perfect for jumping off.

Dying for a swim, Teddy, Adam and I get on our bikes and begin our trek thru a busted barrio called La Prusia. Along the way, we ask a few locals which is the best route to the laguna.

You’d think we’d have learned by now not to ask the locals for directions.

“Este camino es mejor. Es muy facil,” says one amigo, while the next fellow says, “No. Este camino as muy DIFficil. La otra ruta es major.”

In the end, we had chosen an UPHILL dirt road that led to a perilously rocky DOWNHILL hike to the lagoon. Et maka no sins. But oh well – it was a good workout.

Even though the oxen herding hombre warned against it, we left our bikes tied to a tree at the top of the hill because the downhill hike was too narrow and hazardous to take them with us.

At last, we arrived at the Laguna! It felt like we had found a secret place, for there was not a soul around (besides a local family playing in a small wooden boat around the bend). For an hour we swam, attempted a few photos with my underwater camera, and passed the pair of goggles back at forth to marvel at the fishies.

The sun was starting to set on us, and since that’s the way scary movies begin, we packed up our stuff and began the hike back to our bikes, sharing the path with a few angry oxen along the way.

Our bikes were safe and sound so we flew the whole way home – DOWN HILL! J This time I peddled and ADAM rode the pegs (probably a cultural faux pas – but it was fun!)

Later, we find out that a few friends of ours were recently robbed at machete point on the exact same trail …. And I was worried about seeing SNAKEs! Ha.

Dievinueve de Julio

2007-07-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Viva la Revolucion!

On July 19, 1979 the Sandinistas revolutionized Nicaragua by kicking out a lousy dictator (Samosa) and placing Daniel Ortega as el presidente. (If you want the details, look it up). Every July, a portion of Nicaragua gathers in its capital city Managua, waving black and red Sandinista flags to celebrate the 1979 Revolution.

Despite several warnings, we ventured to Managua ourselves.
At 3pm we hopped on a capital-bound express bus and traveled for an hour alongside the parade of free buses transporting fanatic Sandinistas, also on their way to the rally.

As soon as we arrived at the plaza, I did a quick headcount and arrived at the figure 8,198,210 hundundred bizgillion people. I could have crowd surfed for DAYS.

The gathering had the air of a funeral. Even while the national anthem was playing and the flags were waving wildly, few people smiled. In fact, most people looked pretty callous and rough hearted. At first, I hid my camera under my jacket due to all the drunk mofo’s stumblin’ around startin’ trouble, but pretty soon I was sitting atop Adam’s shoulders with my back against a palm tree snapping the sea of red and black flags until the sun went down.

The darker the sky got, the drunker the people got.

So we decided to skip out fast before the tidal wave of belligerents was released.

We started heading toward the field of free buses, hoping to catch one back to Granada, but found out that they weren’t leaving until midnight!

Hell Na. We are NOT getting trapped for 5 hours in this cantankerous crowd, pumped on politics, spoilin’ for a fight.

We start weaving in and between the maze of busses (and some muchachos pissing in the grass), lookin like some stupid gringos, “A Granada?? Saliendo ahora? Qual autobus? Quando va a ir a Granada?”

In our search, we happen upon a stream of cars exiting the area and (breaking my No Hitchhiking after Sunset rule) we stick out our hopeful little thumbs to hitch a ride back.

Unusually, we were ignored by every passing car – so you can stop biting your nails now, Dad.

In FACT, you can start thanking your answered prayers because at that very moment we were approached by a shadowed man with a giant drum attached to his chest – “Hola!” he says. “Ustedes viven por la calle Santa Lucia, si? Ustedes connocen Lilly? Yo trabaje para ella, se recuerdo?”

YES! YES we DO live on Santa Lucia Street and YES we DO know Lilly and YES We DO remember you from the very first day we arrived.. And How the heck do we get home??

“Follow me,” he says.

And as we follow our friend Huicho in the dark, across town, through the 8,198,210 hundundred bizgillion people, he kindly scolds us for venturing to Managua on the craziest day of the year. “Managua es muy peligroso.”

(This trip made us ever grateful that we randomly chose Granada to live in instead of Managua. Granada es no muy dangerous. In fact its one of the safest towns in Central America.)

Huicho led us to the buses returning to Granada and as soon as we hopped on the bus, it took off town-bound, leaving the raucous multitude behind.

Riding home, we felt a sort of Santa Lucia pride, for all of our traveling companions were nuestro vecinos (our neighbors) from our street! Not only was the bus heading back to Granada, but it dropped us off right in front of our house! Buses here don’t do that.

Viva la Revolucion!

Diecisiete de Julio

2007-07-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

Our bus broke down this morning.

FORTUNATELY, we had two bikes between the three of us (Adam’s and Teddy’s, with myself standing on the pegs of Adam’s bike).

UNFORTUNATELY, it’s all UPHILL to the school and these bikes are plain cruel on even a slight incline.

We cycled uphill with our thumbs out for a bit, and then hitched a ride on an 18 wheeler for the remainder of the trip, tossing our bikes on the bumpy platform bed of the truck.

The trip home is always fun, coasting downhill on Adam’s pegs under a canopy of trees, dodging the potholes and the oncoming busses.

It’s even more fun in the rain holding a guitar.

I hadn’t yet taken photos of Adam’s 3rd grade choir class, so I hopped on the back of his bike this afternoon with one hand on his shoulder and the other holding a guitar tied in a clear plastic bag. As we zipped thru town, the warm rain soaked us head to toe, temporarily blinding my eyes so I couldn’t be a back-bike driver (“watch that pothole!” “don’t run into that kid!” “you’re going the wrong way on a one way road!”).

It's very freeing to not care about running make-up, messed-up hair and wet clothes.

We made it to the school, tucked down a muddy road and Adam taught the most adorable kids ever how to sing Cielito Lindo along with his guitar.

Tonight as I lay in bed in the dark, my smell sense magnified, I realized nothing around me, including myself, has had a proper cleaning in months. When water availability is sporadic, clothes, sheets, floors, dishes, and bodies don’t get cleaned as often even though they get dirty and smelly much faster here. Everything, including myself, smells like musty mildewed dirt and when there isn’t much one can do about it… being clean becomes less and less important. Going to bed with dirt caked to my feet, like the kids do in the barrios, doesn’t bother me anymore. Eating with dirty hands or with a spoon that’s still a bit crusty from breakfast isn’t as gross as it used to be. Putting on a shirt for the 9th time that has been rained on, sweat in and used as a napkin is no big deal. And falling asleep with my face in a pillow that smells like rotten egg just reminds me that, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter.

Dieciseis de Julio

2007-07-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Haahahah

Today after Adam’s guitar class we visited the neighbors next to the school. They have a few pony-sized pigs that we wanted to meet. Only the smaller of the two pigs was out and about, but there was a handful of dirty barefoot kids walking over mud and broken glass, who posed silly for the camera.

They were literally playing in pig sty.

Quince de Julio

2007-07-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

Up at 6am to begin our journey home. Es muy difficil viajar por los domingos porque no hay muchos autobuses, entonces viajabamos todo el dia. Because we chose Sunday to travel (buses run less frequently), it took us all day to get home.

Another rainy day; we load on the boat and say goodbye to the island.

In Rivas, a major bus intersection, we encounter this kid:

He has the strangest obsession with poking as many people as possible.

I think it may be a distraction for him, maybe from his hunger, or some insanities in his head. He may even do it to satisfy his need for human contact. He is quick, but feels no need to be stealthy and will often stand right beside his victim and tap away. He usually goes for the head.

Although it is clearly not his goal, the poking could make quite and interesting social experiment. Watching the way each person reacts to this unexpected intrusion into personal space is admittedly fun to observe. Some are embarrassed, some laugh, some look annoyed, while others become infuriated and poke him back. Some even punch him.

While we sat on our steamy bus (we actually got a seat this time!) waiting for it to leave, we watched the Poker out the window for 30 minutes. Several times, a few young kids would climb inside the bus and make their way down the middle aisle in order to sell bottled waters and cokes.

Kids at work, man. They’re everywhere here. In the United States kids won’t even get hired until they’re 14 or more. While here, and in many other countries, kids are working as soon as they can walk and talk. You can’t quite call it child labor, because when you’re fighting poverty everyone has to pitch in, but still – they’re kids.

This is Rojalia and she doesn’t seem to mind too much. She gave me a seashell.

Catorce de Julio

2007-07-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

I woke at 5am to watch the same sun rise, but alas the sky was covered shore to sky with dark rain clouds … equally as beautiful.

After paying for our meals and nightstay, we decide to walk along the shore to the next town – in the rain. The beach was nearly abandoned, besides a few locals washing laundry in the lake, a few kids bathing, and a few Spanish cowboys.

Also, fitting the eerie mood of this gloomy shore perfectly, a few ugly vultures peck at the eyeball of a dead fish.

We walked for three hours along the lake, then through the muddy roads canopied by green trees dripping dew and drops all the way. We were drenched and happy as we hola’d the locals and marveled at the butterflies.

We hiked uphill for 300 meters to the next nights accommodations, The Finca Magdelena which, located on the side of Volcan Maderas, was Heaven.

This finca (farm) needs no artificial fertilizers due to the rich volcanic soil. It is completely self-sustaining, so all the food we ate was from their gardens and the water we drank was filtered directly from the mountain springs. Heaven, indeed.

After sunset, Adam and I sat on the porch with our Toña’s (the Nicaraguan beer of choice) and named as many of the world’s countries as we could think of, then went to bed.

Trece de Julio

2007-07-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

After a bumpy bus ride, a cramped mini-shuttle ride, a rickety boat ride, an expensive truck taxi ride, and a bit of walking… we end up on Isla de Ometepe. It is the only island in the world with two volcanos – one of them quite active (we heard it “burped” on Tuesday).

After a little hike to find the cheapest hostel, we end at a quiet cabana renting hammocks for $1.85 a night. We settled in and spent the evening watching the sun set into the giant golden lake at the foot of a massive volcano.

Doce de Julio

2007-07-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Another trip to the Mercado.

Although it’s not the place for Child Labor Activists or Claustrophobic Germ-a-phobes, we can’t get enough.

The vendors are here every single day – they don’t even close up shop when it rains.

There are more kids than adults running around.

This drunk fool sucked on my face.

Taxi, Taxi, Taxi, HORSE, Taxi, Taxi

Another amazing face.

Diez de Julio

2007-07-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

Another guitar class. Teddy and I got to know a boy in the class named Aniel who lives in a boys’ home down the street from the school. He started doing hard drugs at 13 and was sent to live in this boys’ home to straighten him out. He’s very bright and is picking up the guitar really quickly.

~ Sometimes, when we’re across town and don’t feel like riding our bikes home or catching the bus, we hitchhike. Nothing is illegal here – including riding in truck beds.

Adan and I are writing a song about Nicaragua.

All our babies in one lap.

Nueve de Julio

2007-07-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

Every Monday and Tuesday, Adam teaches guitar at La Epifania, a small school in one of the poor neighborhoods.

Ritmo de los Barrios (Rhythm of the Barrios) brings musical education to the kids who otherwise would not experience the joy of learning an instrument. Adam also teaches choir on Wednesdays and Thursdays and a few other volunteers teach flute, percussion, and piano. The program is fairly new which gives the volunteers completely open criteria for lesson plans.

The most common problem we’ve encountered is the lack of structure in the schools to begin with. There seems to be no kind of schedule or curriculum and the kids are often running around aimlessly, so its difficult to keep the kids attention sometimes. Other than that Adam loves it.

During our bike ride home today, we stopped at shack full of kids for some photos. The photos always start sad and solemn, as the kids are not used to having their photos taken…

...but always end in huge smiles and giggles as they LOVE seeing the photos on the little digital screen of my camera…

Later in the day we went to our favorite place to find a bunch bustling Nicaraguans – El Mercado. It’s an outdoor marketplace where one can find absolutely anything and everything.

At the market, one can also find any and every kind of person.

Siete de Julio

2007-07-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

These kids put on mini parades at dusk every so often in order to earn a few Cordobas. Its wildly entertaining.

A girl on Calle Atrevasada, the major market street. Always busy.

An afternoon rainshower on our street. A horse and a neighbor.

Seis de Julio

2007-07-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

Seis de Julio?

Even putting our heads together we cannot always remember what day of the week it is.

Today was another crazy day getting the café in order. The mock opening was postponed until tomorrow, as expected, because of course tables haven’t shown up and it still looks like a construction site.

The film crew, however, did record a bit of the boys preparing food in the kitchen today. All the white people had their panties in a bunch because they didn’t want the café represented in its current disarray, but Adam and I argued that it is a perfect way to represent the café because it is REAL.
“ But the boys can’t even wash their hands because there is no running water,” everyone whined. “They aren’t wearing their aprons because they haven’t been delivered yet. The food isn’t completely fresh because the refrigerator isn’t working, and the kitchen counter hasn’t been installed yet….”
“EXACTLY!” we hollered. “This is exactly what it’s like trying to open up a restaurant in Nicaragua… the film crew should be recording this chaos.”

At least the bathroom is painted. Its taken me 4 days to salvage the awful cement work the boys did and since we had only a tiny bit of three colors left over (piss yellow, cotton candy blue and dried blood red) I was about to refuse all credit for slaving away on it. I didn’t want my name attached to some nasty paint job.
But then I dug deep into my Carol Fox box, remembering how to do great things with minimal, even unfavorable resources, and I created a masterpiece to be (somewhat) proud of.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make a perfect swirl???

Well let me tell you, every single person who walked thru that café today, curious about the girl painting in the bathroom… THEY think its easy to paint a giant freaking SWIRL.

“Oh, aquí. Tu necesitas pintar más aquí. Allá, tambien. Y aquí. Tu SWIRL no es perfecto.”

Every 5 minutes a different spanish stranger pokes their head in with some futile opinion. GeeZe! Let a Muchacha paint a bathroom! Finally fed up, I lock myself in with the paint fumes and complete my project in peace.

The original artist:

She used a lot of swirls throughout the café, so I attempted to replicate a part of her theme.

On our walk home tonight, we passed our neighbor who repairs bikes in his living room. He is very handsome, probably in his mid/early/late twenties/thirties/forties, and is always zipping up and down our street testing the bikes he’s just fixed. He has the ripped, energetic body of a twenty-year-old, the young bright wise eyes of a thirty-year-old, and the creases and crows feet of a forty-year-old. We pass each other several times a day and never exchange more than smiles and “hola’s.”
Tonight, as we walked by him he smiled and added to his smile a meek word…
“Mangos?” he asked us, shyly extending a worn potato sack in his hand.
“No. no..” we instinctually replied, having grown accustomed to refusing the many pushy offers to buy things from street vendors every day. We kept walking.

But during dinner tonight, pondering the bicycle repair man, I realized something.

I do believe our neighbor wanted to GIVE us some mangos. I think he was bashfully attempting a friendship with us in that moment and, looking back, it must have seem like we snubbed his generosity. I haven’t stopped thinking about this all night.

We must make this right. I think tomorrow when we inevitably pass him on the street, we will finally introduce ourselves to this kind man and find out who he is and what he is like.

Here are a few of our other neighbors:

Cinco de Julio

2007-07-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

No electricity, yet again.

Sometimes having no power feels romantic and prehistoric, reducing me to my essence in a most welcome way.

Other times, when the romance of the situation fades, having no power feels downright irksome.

Currently, I feel a bit of romantic irk.

A bit in between, I suppose; for right now our room is nearly dark as the last bit of dusk settles away and the hum and twang of Adam’s guitar is the only sound filling this space. Nico the kitten lies with a full belly in the crook of his arm as they both sit on the bed with no expectations for the rest of the evening.

If only our whole day was this tender.

Only a few blocks away from our house, at Café Chavalos, chaos abounds. Frantically, a disorganized, unequipped group of people are getting ready for a big, big weekend with no lights and no running water.

A crew from LA has been filming a documentary about the Café Chavalos venture, which they will be entering in the renowned Sundance Film Festival. Tomorrow and the next day the crew will be filming a mock opening of the restaurant.

The irksome part: without running water, the floors cannot be mopped, the paintbrushes cannot be rinsed out, the dishes cannot be washed, the toilets won’t flush, the cement-removing acid on the bathroom floors cannot be soaked away, the hands preparing the food cannot be sanitary, and of course the food itself cannot be prepared and cooked.
Without electricity, the power drills won’t work to bore cavities for the stove’s gas hoses, the kitchen appliances won’t function, the bathroom cannot be painted in the dark, the menus cannot be printed, the refrigerators cannot preserve the food and, of course, none of the lights or fans will switch on, not to mention the power needed for the film crew’s lighting and recording equipment.

In 24 hours the building needs to look like a fully functioning restaurant and it still looks like a construction site.

Beyond the ”outages”, numerous exasperating issues have thwarted the opening of this café. As I’ve mentioned, theft is a colossal problem in this country, and the café is no stranger to the slide of hand. As soon as something is scratched off the “to-get” list (a coffee maker, cleaning supplies, a hammer, table cloths, ladders, etc.) it disappears. Even Adam and I wasted an entire afternoon searching for and lugging around a ton of cleaning supplies (the right supplies are very hard to find here) only to discover a day later that they were stolen during a late-night robbery.

Also, months ago Lilly ordered a $1000 worth of kitchen equipment from a company in Managua and, when she hadn’t heard from them, she called only to find out that the salesman had run off with her check and never put the order in.

To the theft and the power outages, add the Nicaraguan concept of time, and you’ve got an absolute mess that is literally out of control.

If a delivery man says he will bring the dinner tables today, he really means he will bring the dinner tables sometime this month (we still have no tables). If the repair man says he will fix the stove this morning, he really means he will stop by randomly sometime this week until someone is there to unlock restaurant. If Lilly tells the Chavalos Boys (the cooks-in-training and the sole purpose of this cafe) to meet at the restaurant by 7am to begin prepping the food, they will think that she really means to straggle in sometime before dinner time. No one owns a watch and no one wishes they did.

Training the Chavalos boys is a complicated matter all together. Lilly is a brave woman to be schooling a bunch of psycho-delinquent teenaged boys how to run an upscale restaurant. The most difficult part is remembering where they came from. They grew up in the barrios (neighborhoods where the poorest families reside) with houses made of tarp and aluminum and little access to clean water and food. For example, in their homes there are no refrigerators. Because they do not know the difference between a freezer and a cooler, they have been known to put loads of fruit needed for the next morning into the freezer overnight! Also, in their homes there are dirt floors. Because they dump buckets of water to clean everything there, they have been known to clean the entire kitchen by spraying it from top to bottom with a powerful blast from the nearest garden hose. Also, in their homes the family owns only one knife. Because that one knife is used for everything from killing the dinner chicken to cleaning under fingernails, the boys have seen no problem with using the restaurant’s fancy $80 Global cooking knives as ice picks. Also, in their families, the main goal is the big picture of survival. Because the goals of food and shelter require an immediate day-to-day mentality, concepts such as detail work, future consequence, planning ahead, and aesthetics are beyond their understanding. Adam and I spent the entire morning crouched on the floor of the café’s bathroom painstakingly chipping hardened cement from elegant stone work (using butter knives!) because the boys were so sloppy in their attempt to cement the bathroom walls. This afternoon even, the boys wanted to test out the new stove after the gas was hooked up, so they put a pot on the burner, a little food in the pot and stirred away – with the stove’s delivery plastic still wrapped all around it! Needless to say it melted the blue plastic right to the stainless steel. No common sense, I tell you!

They also completely lack business sense and have no concept of profit. For instance, when Lilly was teaching them basic food cost mathematics, the boys were absolutely appalled to find out that the menu was charging the customer a whole 10 cordobas more than they spent on the materials to make the meals. “How do you expect me to pay your salaries?” she would ask them. I think they understand now.

Adam and I have adopted the frustrations because it has become our project too, but when it is exactly out of our hands, we can really only grin, bear it, toss our watches over our shoulders and pick up a butter knife.

Cuatro de Julio

2007-07-04T16:06:00.000-07:00

There exists in this country nearly no moral conscience when it comes to stealing something that doesn’t belong to you.

I asked Lilly today, “How do you know who you can trust in this country?” I wanted to know when she hired guards and cleaning ladies is her gut reaction a good enough judge of character?

“No.” came her quick reply. “ You can’t trust anybody,” she said and proceeded to tell us a few stories of very close friends and companions of her who have robbed her blind.

We are exceptionally careful and aware when we have our laptop or camera out of the house, but when even the grandmas steal, its exhausting keeping an eye on everyone.

Here there are no laws.

Infants even ride on motorcycles, something you would never, ever see in the United States. When Dad’s gotta steer and Mom’s holding on to a giant fruit basket and maybe another kid, Baby’s just gotta hold on tight. It’s insane, but definitely nothing that would make headline news, like Britney Spears and her SUV baby-on-lap fiasco.

Here the only law seems to be: Do whatcha gotta do to make do.

Dos de Julio

2007-07-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

“Well, she’s finally been baptized,” said a friend of ours when he ran into Adam at the Mercado today. “And they always send the men to get the meds.”

It was true. I had sent Adam to market and I had been baptized - in my own vomit.

I still haven’t pinpointed what I ate or why it had to return, regurgitated before my eyes, but at this point it doesn’t matter because even thinking hurts all over.

We spent the weekend in San Juan del Sur, a glorious Pacific-side beach a few hours south of our town. Our own little inlet, seemingly private and surrounded on three sides by giant rock mountains was straight out of Island of the Blue Dolphins. It was absolutely imaginary and well worth the 2 hour bus ride there.

HOWeVER. It was NOT worth the crazy 3-hour jarring, potholed, jam-packed, sweltering bus ride/hitch hike through town/cramped five-people-in-the-back-seat cab ride BACK.

As soon as I got home, I ate a hard boiled egg (don’t ask what possessed me), took a short nap and woke up hanging on to the toilet, moaning like a monkey.

Over the next hour, I told Adam to “listen to some music or something” and I barfed 12 times.

When I was sure I’d barfed up my soul, I collapsed on the bathroom floor and made Adam bring the bed to ME, since I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to drag myself the entire 7 feet across the room. So there I slept, on a mattress on the floor by the bathroom through the whole night without moving.

This morning, I wake up and attempt to drag myself to the bathroom and can’t even pull myself to sit on the pot. I’m so lightheaded I nearly pass out – so back to the mattress where I stay put for the entire day, muscles aching like I’ve never felt before, fever of 103 degrees, a twisted up stomach, and an amazing boyfriend by my side the whole time. – well except when I sent him for Gatorade and soda crackers.

Long story, short: I survived by putting some ice in my armpits and some kittens in my lap.

Veintiocho de Junio

2007-06-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

This morning Adam, our housemate Teddy, and I walked a half an hour to one of the schools where Adam teaches music. The small 3-room school tucked down a dirt road is painted light blue and white and has a single swing set which is also painted light blue. As we round the corner we hear reggaeton, a popular type of music that sounds like Latin rap, attempting to project through the speakers of a very small boom box. On the sidewalk four young girls dancing clearly in ways they had seen on television. The small audience sits in miniature chairs around the performance and is very attentive for young elementary children. They are having a Maestro Felizidad (Happy Teacher Day) celebration All of the kids are dressed nicely. Some of the girls are even in frilly purple and yellow dresses.

Here, many aspects of life are nice on the outside; the clothing, the homes. But as we get to know the locals, the poverty becomes more apparent. In the main neighborhoods of Granada, the colonial homes, rows and rows of them, with their beautiful ironwork and colorful facades are just that – facades. Behind the giant double doors, bright red, blue, yellow, green, one enters into a meek cinderblock room with a dirt floor and a few wooden rocking chairs for furniture. Though the children are dressed nicely, they are seen in the same outfit nearly every day.

Off of the main paved roads are several dirt roads where the majority of the poor Nicaraguans live. One of Adam’s schools is located down one of these dirt roads near our home. This afternoon we walked down this road to visit the students (who weren’t there due to a short winter vacation) and got to see several of the shacks and the families who occupy them. The homes on the dirt road haven’t the colonial facades. Some have no facades at all.

Every day, as Adam puts it, is Take Your Kids to Work Day.

Veintisiete de Junio

2007-06-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

Today Adan and I were not home much. We went on several errands and worked on the Café until dark. Lilly and Donna (project coordinators for Building New Hope) stopped by the café to see that we were still sanding and painting and cleaning. Pleased at our initiative, they invited us to dinner. We went to my least favorite street in the whole town, Calle Calzada which, frequented by foreigners and large groups of dopey white teenagers, feels like church camp in Europe or something. It definitely doesn’t feel like Nicaragua.

As we sit at our outdoor table amidst a swarm of irritating foreigner kids buzzing in twangy English, a young Nica catches my eye. He sits across the narrow road and silently with his hazy red eyes, begs for leftovers. I notice him as I swallow my last bite. As the swarms buzz away, the young man inches slowly and humbly across the road. The waiter is clearing plates and refuses to look up at the young man who is kindly requesting the half-eaten pizza crusts that are buried under oily napkins. As the young man meekly extends his arm toward abandoned scraps, the waiter zips in and snatches the plate, adding it to the pile in his arms and shaking his head at the pitiful beggar. I sense his embarrassment and though I’ve always felt more compassion for those who ask for food over money, I know there is nothing I can do for him at this time. I intend to buy him a plate of his own but realize that we haven’t a centavo on us, and I cannot bring myself to ask Donna to buy him some food. At that moment, I feel choked because I cannot help this very hungry person and I am certain that, back at home, my kitten has just died.

When we get home, Adam looks me in the eyes and says quietly, “Do you want me to go upstairs and check?” I stand in the kitchen and wait for him to return, already knowing what he will find between the toilet and the adobe wall. When he came back downstairs, he made a ‘nada’ gesture with his hands and a single click sound with his mouth; he reached for a plastic bag, and disappeared back upstairs.

I don’t feel as much relief as I thought I would. I feel, instead, a hallow frustration and a dull ache of failure.

We went from 4 cats to 2 cats in one day. Aries is missing in action and we fear she may have fallen off the balcony and gotten swept away with the trash on the curb. We cannot think of any other explanation, for she was in our room the entire night and when we woke up, she was no longer in our room. She was no where to be found.

Veintiseis de Junio

2007-06-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Between the toilet and the adobe wall of our bathroom, barricaded into the corner by various jugs filled with water, lies Salvadora. Every 30 seconds, I peer around the wall, hoping to see her lying perfectly still.

I hope to find her dead.

Several hours ago, my lean was very slow and calculated, preparing my emotions for what I might find. I would wince my eyes and let one see before the other as I would tilt myself into the view of her.

Yet as the hours, twenty-four of them, have passed with her lying on this blue tiled floor, I’ve had time to consider the alternative to her living through this hell. With that in mind, I now habitually and obsessively bend around the corner in the middle of every minute, hoping to witness her during or after her final breath.

At first it only happened once an hour. She would be bundled in a cooking pot next to my side of the bed, swaddled in dishrags to keep her bones warm, sleeping deeply, when slowly her eyes would open. Her cedar brown eyes would widen and widen, making way for her enlarging pupils and the devil behind them. Next, her tiny pink nose would turn white and begin to confirm the rapidly increasing breaths, in and out, in.out.in.out faster and faster. Next, all of her tiny limbs would become unnervingly stiff and force her to coil awkwardly right out of her pot and onto the cement floor. She would twist and writhe in silence, often folding as if there we an invisible string tied around her neck, tying her skinny body into knots. After a few seconds she would begin a growl that grew and grew until it was a piercing shriek of tremendous agony, many moments long. She would seize and tremble, contort and wail until, after 3 minutes, the devil would leave her. She would take a tiny gasp, release a petite meow and fall right back asleep, exhausted.

First, this took place once an hour and lasted a short time. But over the past two nights, these fits began occurring every 10 minutes…. on the dot. The volume of her wail now amplifies through the house and through the night. Ruling out demonic possession, we have decided she has either been trying to pass an awful infection or has been dying for the past two days.

Observing this suffering, I come upon a dismal dilemma: Shall I continue feeding her? For a short time, she was looking very much alive and healthy, sucking eagerly from the syringe, but as she deteriorates, as the disease takes over, she is recently only in two conditions: seizing or sleeping. I wonder if, by feeding her, I am keeping her alive only so she can suffer. I decide to keep feeding her, but do so less and less frequently, as it gets difficult to get a sleeping kitten to swallow.

Most terrible is the fact that there is absolutely nothing that we can do. There is only one animal clinic in this entire town and the veterinarians are volunteers who come to Nicaragua only for sporadic weekend trips. There is no veterinarian this week and no one cares about dying kittens because there are too many mouths to feed as it is. I fight a few disturbing ideas to help terminate her distress. I think of lifting her frail body and setting her gently into the depths of the toilet water, knowing she would be too weak to argue. I think of swaddling her in plastic, or simply holding my finger over her tiny nostrils.

I obsess mentally over her condition and what to do about it, concluding only that, at this time, I am as helpless as she is. I am left to battle against my attachment to this wee being. I do not simply give her permission…

but I command her to die.

Veintiquatro de Junio

2007-06-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

(This is Adam's account of our day, he captured it better than I could, so I re-posted his entry here):

I went over to our manager’s house yesterday…

“Hey, Adam, can I ask you a favor? The vet found this black cat in the street. It looks pretty sick and malnourished. Could you ask Sydney if she could take care of it tonight and then tomorrow you can take it back to the vet.”

“Sure..”

I peered into this small water tin and inside three little dish towels lay the skin and bones of a small black alien with white boots and a white nose. Its ochre green eyes filling half of its comparable oversized skull.

Sydney showed up at her house and we took it home. She fed the little soul some baby food mixed with soy milk through a syringe only to get about half of it into its tiny little mouth.

We all slept.

6:00 am another feeding.

8:00 am one more feeding. We take her/him to the vet. The gatito is not looking good, barely able to keep its head up, it can’t even stand up, its feet sprawling like a black spider web.

The vet looked at the little kitten with the hardened eyes of a doctor who had seen a million animals come and go, in and out of the hospital in more ways than one.

You see in Nicaragua, the cats have their own city, built on the rooftops of tattered houses they play, breed, eat and shit. Nature’s way…cats on top, people inside, dogs on the streets. Cats have a gestation period of 64 days which means that they can become pregnant, give birth, raise their young and get pregnant again all within three months. Usually a liter is comprised of about 3-8 little ones for a maximum of 24 cats a year or a minimum of 9. Either way, the cat population is a double edge sword for those with weak hearts. A liter half passed is both a blessing and a problem depending on how many cats you are already caring for.

For our little one, our care is only part of the solution because we are going to find it a home in the United States. For other little ones, it is to the rooftops to fight for their bony little bodies.

The vet emptied its bladder manually, he gave it a few CC’s of antibiotics, and sent us on our way. We returned home with the knowledge that it was a little girl with stomach worms, fleas, cuts and bruises, and a small chance to live.

As we approached the door to our guest house, she began to yelp incessantly. We took her inside and laid her on a table and the most incredible thing happened
She started to convulse, legs twitching, head throbbing, eyes blinking, all of it with sudden yelps, cries rising from the fight with el ladron de la vida. Sydney broke down instantly, the suffering of something so small, helpless, scared, unresponsive tearing at a heart so large, unconditional, sensitive and bursting with hope.

“Adan, Adan we have to take it back to the vet. Maybe he can do something.”
The walk back was tormenting, “I don’t think it is a good idea, baby,” I replied, only to realize that doing something was better than sitting there watching the whole thing happen.

We put her in the water tin, left our guest house and returned to the vet as quickly as possible.

I swear the cat died.

We arrived disturbed and uncertain. The towels were still pulsing, warm to the touch…all good signs of life.

The doctor administered some saline solution and some cortisol. The cures at the vet were hydration, electrolytes and adrenalin. The cures at home are swaddling, syringe feeding baby food each hour, and promising her love if she would only live.

Right now it is 12:32 pm and Salvadora is alive. She is aware, fed, pooped, played and full of life. I think she saw the light, got scared and ran the other way. We saved her and she saved us from witnessing the passing from life to death. I have seen rocks get crushed, I have seen insects flip over and cease from moving, I even seen aquarium fish fight for their dorsal balance only to lose their brilliant color. I have never witnessed a mammal lose that which it has gained over a million years…the warmth of its blood.

Sydney is getting ready for bed. Nico is sleeping in his box. Aries is trying to eat some beads. Salvadora is breathing steady

Vientidos de Junio

2007-06-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

We are currently taking care of four orphaned kittens:

Meet Nico. He is equivalent to a human toddler. He is super needy and will only stop his incessant crying if someone is holding him. He sounds like a deflating squeaky toy and he looks like a cross between a gremlin and Quasimodo. He is SO annoying with his constant need for affection, but one cannot help but love him, especially when he latches onto our pants like velco and climbs all the way up to our shoulders. This is actually a very flattering photo of him. Be not fooled.

Meet Linda ("pretty" in Spanish) Linda is the equivalent of pre-teen. She's like a thirteen-year-old girl going thru puberty.. her voice has even changed! Her meow is 3 ocataves lower and nothing about her is kitten like anymore. She’s not whiny and is easy to please. She spends all day climbing trees and chasing butterflies.

Meet Aries. He is the equivalent of a an 8-year-old boy. He was found drenched on the pavement after a giant thunderstorm. He was dragging his back legs behind him because for some reason they had very weak muscle and had no form to them. The vet made him makeshift casts out of masking tape, which he wore for a few weeks. His legs now function perfectly and his only flaw is a bit of skiddish shyness. His fur is incredibly soft and he is very loving to the other kittens.

Meet Salvadora. We’ve named her this because she is very sick, but we are going to save her. She was also found abandoned and is clearly malnourished and very ill. She has giant eyes that remind us of the eyes of starving children in Africa. She will look and feel healthier soon, I hope. We are feeding her with syringes and keeping her swaddled in a dish towel.

Diecinueve de Junio

2007-06-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

So, here we sit with the wind loud in the trees of the garden beside us. The garden is right now a wall of black without even a touch of light to make out where it begins and ends. Adan hovers a mini flashlight over his reading and i soon will do the same for there is exactly nothing else that can be done in this large house in this small town with no electricity and no running water. We are not irritated and instead have adjusted in these two weeks to the uncertainty of everything.

We cook in the dark, we read in the dark, and sometimes when the water works but the lights do not, we shower in the dark. And when the lights work but the water does not, we cook with dirty hands, empty our intestines without flushing the toilet, sweat through our clothes and crawl into bed with no showers.

When there is no electricity and no running water there is absolutely nothing to do but idolize the universe. Across an unfathomable expanse, the stars can be seen for lightyears and one cannot help but bow with a novel respect. When there is no light and no water, there is nothing to do but look at the stars, talk about the stars and take photos of the stars through the ironwork of our balcony.

When there is no light and no water there is nothing to do but kiss in the dark. There is absolutely nothing to do but rediscover the texture of one another’s lips in a pitch black kitchen.

There is exactly nothing to do but sit on our balcony and listen to Spanish humming from the dark sidewalks, nothing to do but listen to our neighbors creak in their rocking chairs and purr in melodic conversation. With no electricity, there is nothing to do but shine flashlights on spiders and marvel at the acute angles of their many skinny legs which create Spiro-graphic shadows on adobe walls.

There is nothing to do but write by candle light, play viola on the balcony, search for kittens with flashlights, swing in hammocks in the pitch black garden, and feel completely content with the uncertainty of everything.

Dieciocho de Junio

2007-06-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here, the elderly have phenomenal faces, a story in every line.

Diecisiete de Junio

2007-06-17T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today we did the tourist thing and took a boat tour around the Isletas, which is a cluster of tiny islands that people live on with amazing monkeys and colorful birds. You can click on the pictures to see them closer! (You've gotta see the baby's face under the umbrella... lil cabbage patch cheeks.)

Dieciseis de Junio

2007-06-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

After our morning Spanish lesson we search for Lilly to help out in the café and when she is nowhere to be found we fall asleep in hammocks reading sad and bizarre books. It is a blessing and a curse having no cell phones. Adam gets a haircut, I make him shave his gotee into a skinny Mexican moustache and then we find an internet café to let the family know we’re still alive.

We then search for nocatamales (a special Spanish dish served in banana leaves, that we hear are quite good). We walk the whole town, with folks telling us to go 4 blocks west, then four blocks east and when we finally give up our search, a big ass NOCATAMALES sign falls at our feet.

We sit outside the restaurant and chat with the street kids until the restaurant owner wildly waves his hands at the children as if shoo’ing flies and sends them all away. We didn’t get a chance to tell him that they were not bothering us. We went on drinking our mimosas and taking photos of the electric blue and black sunset clouds, simultaneously bright and dark.

Quince de Junio

2007-06-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

Catorce de Junio

2007-06-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

I refuse to focus on the distasteful aspects of this experience, however they must be noted for my future memories of the complete encounter.

For example, It’s really quite hot here and the only relief is a nice cold shower or three. Even a brief rinsing grants immense liberation. HOweVer, devilish water shortages hold hostage even DRIPS of deliverance and I am left to my sticky swelters, fiddling with the faucets in vain hope – all day long.

And….. I can’t think of anything else that bothers me right now. We came here with really low expectations in the area of comfort and convenience, so we’ve got it pretty good. So I guess that’s the end of my complaining.

We’ve just returned from a movie night with some foreigner friends of ours and discussions about how much worse it could be make me forget my other grievances. Things ain’t so bad.

Trece de Junio

2007-06-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

Standing in the regadera fria con cervesas frias, nosotros practicamos nuestro espanol y discutimos sobre quien es bossier. Due to a water shortage todo el dia, Adan no pudo flush el inodoro earlier y no pudo lavar his crapped-in panties. Entonces, nuestro habitacion huele muy terrible. Mi amiga, Jen, y yo fuimos nadar en la picina a una hospedaje.

Later in the evening, we met Francisco, a Nicaragua native who is our age, in the square while I was hoping to take sunset photos. He spoke with adan while I zipped around and captured a few moments and faces.

Doce de Junio

2007-06-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

Today, I hiked Volcano Mombacho. I took in all the Amazing views and snapped many photos of the landscape and our town from above.

I went with Jen, a volunteer, who is ready to leave Nicaragua and never come back. She’ll leave behind her kittens and her English accent.
“oh its absolutely boilin”
“it cost a biddy fortune.”
“a great big pot and a titchy one.”

She can’t stand Nicaragua and complains about it constantly. Maybe I’m just on a New Experience high, and by the end of my summer here, I too will be ready to leave Nicaragua and never come back. But I really believe the experience is ours to create.

We can either dwell grumpily on all the power outages, the lack of decent healthy food, the outrageous heat, the lack of organization… or we can focus on the unique way of life, the new culture, the laid back atmosphere, the glorious and most welcome rain showers, the colorful buildings and the friendly people. We could either isolate ourselves in our apartment, avoid the busy streets, and ignore the neighbors ....or we could search for adventure, CHOOSE the busy streets, and meet our neighbors, and actively seek ways to serve the country. Its going to be what we make of it.

Running to my Spanish class in 100 degree heat, boilin’ sun, mid-day… I could have turned a ditch into a lagoon with the sweat dripping from me today. Laguna del Sydney. Now I understand why no one is in a hurry.

Well, except for these three little ninas.

Diez de Junio

2007-06-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

His name was Yader.

“Mmm comida….” Pacing around the outdoor tables, pesky as a fly, he asks again and again for leftover scraps from abandoned plates. “Sientase.” We have him sit with us and we offer him my plate. Shoveling with both hands, he takes brief brakes to answer our questions. Though he clearly wanted to continue his quest for food, he took the time to explain that his parents cannot work due illness (asthma & feet issues) so he has to fend for himself and his sisters. He’s fourteen.

He has to fend for himself too.

We went to the Mercado today. Lost in the maze of booths selling everything from bras to matches, mangos to soaps, we found ourselves in the raw meat section where flesh cut who-knows-when sits under a sweaty sun blood-soaking wooden tables. The meat is swatted by a rolled up newspaper in a vain attempt to keep the flies from first dibs. I hold my breath until I find my way out.

Ocho de Junio

2007-06-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Today we got filthy. Paint dust and dirty water filthy.
Café Chavalos is a restaurant that is opening to help the barrio boys with jobs as cooks. It is a program that gets very troubled teenage boys (drug addicts, murders, theives, etc.) off the streets by offering them chef training and jobs at the Cafe. Adam and I spent all day painting, sweeping and sanding, laboring for the good of the kids. It was great to be working so hard, doing the difficult annoying tasks, knowing that it is all part of a big picture to help Nicaragua.

We just watched a late night street soccer ball game. They had been playing since sunset, and are still playing. The street is not blocked off and cars still pass thru the middle of their games.

More children playing in the streets.

Siete de Junio

2007-06-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

We visit a few schools in the barrios.

And brave the rain with the locals.

And of course my camera cannot resist the beautiful Nica children.

Seis de Junio

2007-06-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Its 3am in Granada. The most thunderous rain pours roads into rivers and I am awake. I’ve been jumping out of bed every few minutes for the past several hours, battling with the mosque net, nervous to miss a thing. Inspiration above restoration. It’s hot, yes, but I am awake because the bright balcony keeps pulling me to it with sounds and lights waving right in. I take photos thru the night.

Almost involuntarily.

I take photos into the Morning.

Still unsure of the actual time, we get out of bed.

I slip on a dress so I can spy from the balcony all the morning goings on in Nicaragua. Traveling fruit vendors yell down the street what their wheel barrows are offering today, donkeys click-clop down the road dragging wagons of nothing, bicycles hold full families front, back, and middle.

Cinco de Junio

2007-06-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

Its midnight in Granada. The light is a golden wet glisten upon the streets of this bright town, and I am here to testify that rain waters from night clouds in Nicaragua turn greens into verdes and yellows into amarillos, blues into azules, and reds into rojos. I’m here to testify that midnight rain water in the darkbright streets of Granada, Nicaragua turns life into vida.

I am. I am right now in this moment and don’t know about the next moment and don’t care about the last. I am.

I sit cross legged on a stone floor that looks cold, but feels hot. I sit nude.

Turquoise adobe surrounds me in the dark, while the smallest light from the bathroom glows through the wooded beads of the curtain, spraying a fan-shaped shadow through the room.

After several glorious moments, nude with shadows, I get up and take a crap. A crap that wakes up Adan who, from beneath the makeshift mosquito net asks, “…. You okay baby?” To which I reply, “Oh. Never. Been. Better. (insert sound effects) I feel amazing and I hope you get a crap like I just did.”

The mosquito net falls on him and he groans. We fix our duct tape rig and I return to my moment. Here on the sticky stone floor, heavy in the eyes but leaping inside. I’ve already shot my first 50 photos from our barred-in balcony and foresaw hundreds of future photos on the 45 minute drive from the airport in our Spanish-Lesson Mobile driven by Marlon.

I’m about to take my third shower in one hour, battle the heat with my drips, and crawl under the mosquito net with my incredible Adan, my brilliant adventurer, fearless friend, and confident soul mate… who turns life into vida.