My family had a few more trials and tribulations than usual this morning, but unfortunately such is life. Jenifer asked me if the fan worked through the night after Douglas had tried repairing it, but I had shut if off after it had gotten angry like the previous night. "¡Que vergüenza!" How embarrassing, she exclaimed. Jenifer had that on her mind when one of the balloons from last night's fiesta popped, making joyful backyard play turn in a snap to a crying fest with her boys. With the umm, mature language that comes out of the four-year-old's mouth sometimes I forget he is only four. Until he throws a crying tantrum. There is a disconnect between the language about sex and swearing he has been exposed to and picked up on and the emotional maturity of his actual age... And on top of figuring out how to discipline her son, Jenifer had to bring the stroller again on our walk to drop me off, meaning we had to go the long way still with plenty of rocks, people, and garbage along the way. Even if I do not know what to say or how to support her, I am learning so much about parenting in such a short amount of time, and I so admire her strength as basically a single mom for ninety percent of every day.
When we got to the circle of families at Don Martin's house, our group was trying to figure out why Jennifer's, Don's, and Kira's families did not hear about or were not invited to my dad's despedida last night. One thing is who knows how well or how long, or even if these families knew each other before our little St. Luke group decided to show up and hang out in this neighborhood for a couple weeks? With the party we just hoped there was not intentional exclusion. It seemed to be a rather impromptu, spur-of-the-moment thing, but it
would have been nice if there were some reconciliation within the
community. We also wondered, especially as we were this community's first delegation, if there were a sense of competition between families for best accommodations, most welcoming atmosphere, most delicious food, etc. and we hoped that would not drive wedges in the community. We really did just show up in these people's homes and interrupt their lives and schedules for two weeks, in good faith to make meaningful connections and better understand how our host community lived, and community dynamics are indeed a part of it that we perhaps had not really thought about (at least I hadn't). But many of the families were reaching out to the others, it seemed, to make plans for a beach adventure on Sunday (family day!), and hopefully nobody would be left out of at least having that option.
Another slight kink in the day was that we were planning to go to church as a delegation, but while the Cathedral website told Meredith it had 9am services every day, apparently there would not be a service today. She was as perplexed as we were, and while she was picking us up, Francisco was running around León looking for other churches but there were only afternoon services that we would not be able to make. That was unfortunate, but it did give us some more time to hang out at the PML office instead and do a little lesson planning for a morning next week that we would spend with the kids at Gotitas.
It turned out to be quite fortuitous that we had this time at the office because we got a visit from the great Tim Owen and his wife! He is a Spanish teacher in the Hopkins district where I went to school, as is Paul in my delegation, so when we heard a knock at the office door and a "Hola, soy Profesor Owen," ¡que sorpresa, what surprise! I never had a class with him, but I had helped organize and attended some of the Spanish Club events where he taught some merengue and salsa that helped me fall in love with Latin dance. I had his sister, Profe SOL (If you're reading this, ¡hola Profe!), for class and knew she was very involved with PML and she had led a delegation from Hopkins earlier in the summer, but it was a funny world collision that Profe Owen showed up in Nicaragua when I had not seen him in Minnesota since high school.
After the funny blast-from-the-past and an unsuccessful trip to the cyber for a few (the internet was out for at least this block apparently), our crew headed out for our first cultural adventure of the day, a trip to the central market! Meredith gave us some advice about what to keep our eyes open for: "If you haven't noticed, they have a huge black market for Hollister, American Eagle, etc., so feel free to stock up on your back-to-school clothes. I guarantee nobody else will have that shirt..." There may have been some excitement about the prospect of knockoff brand items, but many of us were also hoping to find snacks, souvenirs, and woven hammocks.
We spent about a half hour at the artisan market outside, where we wove in and out of stalls, examined small trinkets, and bartered for what we actually considered taking home. My closest friends and family know this about me, but I rather hate shopping in the U.S., but I really enjoy markets in new and different places. I do not barter for sport as some do, as I would rather pay a perhaps slightly higher price from a nice vendor who is selling something of good value and quality. I managed to find a couple things that called to me for my momma and my boyfriend back home in that half hour our group had in that section, and then we all moved on to the clothing market. I did not really need anything, so I just wandered with a few of the others and kept my eye out for a beautiful hammock to take back with me to be my lasting souvenir and last resort for a possible unfurnished apartment down the road.
The busy streets of the market area were further crowed by stores and stalls spilling their wares and a different dance or pop beat out onto the sidewalks. And then suddenly we stumbled onto a gorgeous outdoor air mall! The Spanish-style tiled roof would abruptly slope down and cut off in large squares to create courtyards of sorts, and there were aisles and aisles of clothes, shoes, bags, sporting equipment, and more.
While I find markets fascinating to observe people and customs, I generally have a rule to not take pictures, or at least be obvious about it, because this is people's livelihood and normal way of life. It is not a people zoo. But I did sneak a couple to give you all a small taste of the outdoor air market.
Here's Chris taking everything in.
Jennifer and me (Thanks Photographer Paul!).
It was interesting that Jennifer, and I were on the receiving end of shop owners calling out to advertise and encourage purchases, but Paul said he never got approached as we did. We were all just browsing, but the kids wanted to buy a soccer ball for their neighborhood, which was sweet of them. And they enlisted Francisco, native Nicaraguan, to help them drive the price down once they figured out what they wanted.
They were successful in their purchase, and then we all met back at the cathedral at 12:15 to take our microbus to Pizza Roma, where we were the only customers except a table for two. Why were there hardly any people at lunchtime at this restaurant? It certainly was tasty food we discovered, but it was perhaps beyond the means of many Nicaraguans. Need to keep that in mind. We certainly had enough space to spread out a little bit, and our group split into an adults' table and a kids' table, and while Meredith the anciana (ancient one, she's all of 26) joined the adults, Francisco and I bummed at the kids' table to share stories and sustenance.
Back to the oficina de PML we went after we had been fed for a couple cultural activity lessons, the first one being piñata making! The PML secretary Carolina is secretly an expert piñata maker, we learned, so she would be our instructor. She even made the goopy glue from scratch at home.
Carolina and Meredith demonstrated our day one task: shaping the piñata with paper mache. We would come back in a couple days to do the outer design.
Carolina's homemade yucca dust glue to cement the newspaper strips.
What's more, she decided to turn our learning experience into a competition. We split into six pairs, and because she had two piñata designs for us, three teams would do the cara de payaso, clown's face, and the three other teams would do tomates, tomatoes. Here, Joy and Luci teamed up to do a tomato.
I actually got to pop off to Meredith's computer and left my dad in the capable helping hands of Francisco so I could blog that at least we had all survived so far, and that ended up being the only real-time Nica blog post I could do while we were actually there. But I did run out to snap a couple of photos of the piñata preparations as well.
Francisco would still be a great addition to our team for the decorating day as well because that would be after my papa left our delegation - thanks guys, for making the actual shape of our tomate!
With our paper mache set to dry for a couple of days, our next cultural activity instructor arrived to attempt to teach us some baile foklórico, Nicaraguan folkloric dance. She was extremely patient with our gringo feet as we learned basic pasos, steps, and then brief chunks of choreography she started to string together. Our main goal was to function well enough to not embarrass ourselves too badly at the despedida next Thursday night, our farewell party with our host families. We hoped to provide some entertainment and show we have been trying to work hard, but with choreography memorization and a part in the partner turn where it seemed Leif would somehow end up on the floor and got us all giggling for the next half of the dance.... we had more work to do. It was fun to imagine doing this dance with us women in long flowy skirts and guys in hats, but we would have to wait until our dress rehearsal next week to see what our rented costumes would look like.
Meredith got us in action here.
We stuffed as many pasos into our brains and muscle memory for that hour and a half, and then we voted to do a little salsa with the remaining half hour. Going back to my days with Profe Owen at Hopkins High School, I just love the rhythm and sass of salsa and was excited to share that love with the rest of the St. Luke crew. The internet had ceased to function, though, as Meredith and our instructor were searching for some salsa music, and luckily I had a few salsa songs on my phone locked away in the back of the office, Don was able to hook my phone up to the speakers, and we got some queen of salsa herself, Celia Cruz, to be our salsa lesson soundtrack.
Ever humble, Francisco was not one to boast about his salsa abilities, but he could definitely rock the rhythm and turn combinations, and it was fun to see ballet dancer Kira picking it up quickly with his lead. I got to dance with my papa for a bit as the rest of us got the basics down and attempted Fran's patterns.
If only we could dance the night away... but we returned home to our families, and I realized I had to say goodbye to my dad! He had to leave el domingo, Sunday, so he could make it back home to work on Monday, so I would not see him again until I got home with the rest of the delegation. We did some stuff-transferring, everyone said their goodbyes to dear Darrell, and I helped translate his oral thank-you to his host mama.
While my dad was sadly figuring out how to spend his final night with his family, the rest of us planned how to spend Family Day with our families! Most families still wanted to take the day off and go with their delegates to the beach, and Paul's and my family still had some logistics to make that work. We took our long walk home with a couple kids in tow and Diddier, the oldest, riding on the back of a neighbor girl's bike.
Diddier and Diederich, like every night without fail, followed me into my room when we got home, and this time, the two-year-old thought it would be hilarious to just run in, grab something from my bag, and run out laughing. Ugh haha. We horsed around so I could distract them from investigating my things, and I also gave them a squishy baseball my dad had passed along, so of course we ran outside to play with it immediately. Diddier did not really understand the concept of "suave" when playing catch, or when we would encourage "nice and easy" throws in English. So he got me running a little bit, which was totally fine until it got dark, the baseball hit a rock, made it through the minimalist barbed wire fence, and was not to be seen until morning despite a ten-minute hunt with flashlights.
After a snack he still wanted to play, so he grabbed a platillo, a frisbee, which in his home was a cardboard circle covered in tin foil, and we tossed it back and forth by the side of the house that was slightly more well-lit. He threw it crazily as he did the baseball, but when it was his turn to catch, he would shut his eyes and turn his back, so I guess the catching instinct will have to come with time. Generally it helps to keep your eyes open to be able to catch things. He seemed to still be having fun at least!
I kind of like how family and friends just stop by sometimes, and tonight we got a visit from Jenifer's cousin Jimi while she was cooking so that he would fix my fan (apparently it had broken again). But él es bien serio, he is quite serious, and perhaps I am an intimidating person, but he did not even say hi to me. But it was fun to observe how the boys looked up to him and how he kept them in line, and further, how the only smile I had ever seen float across his face appeared when he bust out a baby voice to talk to Diegmar, the seven-month-old! I was happy to get a second smile out of him when I asked him what he liked to watch on TV as he was changing the channels and adjusting the antenna. He replied, "Cualquier cosa (whatever), pero más películas... (but more movies)" and found some dramatic movie on TV to settle into. Further conversational success from this stoic man: he asked me what my age was and was surprised (as many are) that I am the same age as his cousin, my host mama, Jenifer!
Jimi hung out with us for a little while and por fin, finally, we all enjoyed some gallo pinto (Nica's version of rice and beans and its own spices), bananos fritos (fried sweet bananas), and a type of queso that Douglas's mom had made. Diederich, my buen ayudante, my good helper, ran after me to do the dishes, and he just did not want to stop. He took his sweet time, and he even grabbed his toy sheep, toy horse, and a couple of coins by the sink to wash too. So cute, and a positive use for his energy (parenting revelations!).
This was just part of the long process of getting the kids to bed, and as Jenifer sang Diegmar to sleep in her rocking chair, we settled into the night as well. New knowledge of the night:
- Dulces, sweets and candy, are pretty cheap, but helados, ice cream, is not. It is hard to conceptualize or measure poverty, but this tradeoff scenario hit me: for un pobre, as Jenifer said, how are they going to afford or justify a $3 ice cream for each person when that is the total cost of una cena, a dinner, for the family?
- Enoc, another one of Jenifer's cousins, the jokester, outside of his normal job (I don't know if I ever learned what his real job is...) is a volunteer for the cruz roja, the Red Cross.
- Jimi, Mister Serious, is basically a pro soccer player! But he also has gallos, roosters, about which I perhaps naively asked, "What for?" "¡Son para pelear!" - They're for fighting! While some people walking down the street with a chicken or rooster under their arm are just taking it to the market, cock-fighting is still a very real hobby or sport or whatever you want to call it.
- There are no mosquitos here. I had noticed this before, especially within the context of being warned about possibly needing to sleep under mosquito netting. And coming from Minnesota, where these pests can be joked about as being our state bird, it was refreshing to not have to take any extra precautions to protect my precious blood here. "Pero en la casa de la Jessica sí, sí hay. Son horribles, y le pican a través de las pijamas," Jenifer said. She is lucky to not have mosquitos in her house or neighborhood, but there are in Jessica's house, and they are horrible, even biting you through your pajamas! Perhaps I will have to ask Paul for the lowdown on that.
- While we may see Nicaragua as a pretty traditional, patriarchal society, and it is in many respects, at least in this family the strong female role extends beyond the home. Jenifer is looking forward to the day, soon, when she will graduate from college in one year with her law degree, and because Douglas is a bus driver and can therefore drive anywhere, she wants to move to more of the northern region where there are more opportunities to be a lawyer. She could find job postings and applications online like I am doing back at home, and they could move while the boys were still young if it works out.
- Jenifer has a lot of curiosity about what the people are like in the U.S. One blunt question she asked, still in a very respectful manner, was, "¿Hay personas con piel morena?" - Are there people with darker skin? Given her only experience with estadounidenses, United Statesians, is with our delegation, and she would probably see an overwhelming number of white people broadcasting from the U.S., this is quite a valid question when you think about it. We had had some good talks about immigration from Latin America and the Latino population in the U.S., but now I got to conjure up my public school education and history knowledge to explain how people came from Europe, wiped out much of the Native American populations, forcibly brought people from Africa over and made them slaves, and are now semi-accepting of immigrants and refugees from all over the world. After a day of learning about some traditions in Nicaraguan culture, I just had a lot of threads to tie together about my culture in a conscientious way in a very short amount of time. Phew.
Well, that's all, folks. Apologies for the lack of pictures today! Thanks for sticking it out with me to the end if you did :-)
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