a bit about my first few weeks in Bluefields.
Alaskans have 100 words with which they speak about snow. The same should be true for describing the many forms of rain in Bluefields, Nicaragua. Though, more likely they would be shared among the diverse languages spoken here; Creole, Spanish, and the indigenous tongues of Miskito, Rama, Garafuna (hailing from West Africa destined for slavery, they never encountered that harsh reality, freed just before reaching land by the blessing of a shipwreck). Today´s rain is persistent and steady against a gray sky, perfect for a Sunday without much to do. I most prefer the days where I awake to a bright blue sky and from time to time, to cut the strong sun, a dark cloud travels quickly across the sky giving way to three minutes of pelting rains quickly turning our dirt roads into knee deep mud trenches. At these times, children run shirtless into the roads to roll in the puddles and young boys glide down along the green algae that builds up on the sides of the roads as if they´re skateboarding.
I live with a fantastic family in barrio San Pedro, which is a one hour hike from the center of Bluefields. Bluefields is the largest city on the Atlantic Coast but is just small enough that I manage to run into someone I know everytime I leave the farm. The facvt that I stick out like a sore thumb pairs well with my good memory for faces. My host brother and I drew a map of Bluefields and its barrios and colored it in with my water colors. It includes his grandmothers house, where I am going to meet them for Sunday lunch. Leaving the centro for my barrio, I make sure to smile at everyone I see as insurance that people are looking out for the gringa. I wish I could reward the few men that don´t call to me or hiss as I pass, or that I could punish those people who make me feel unsafe here. Building trust here is hard and the effort of having to look out for my personal safety can be tiresome at times.
Each day I wake with my wonderful host family at 5am. We live on the Demonstration Farm, La Finca Demostrativa, purchased less than a year ago and still very wild. FUNCOS (Fundacion Cosecha Sostenible) is building an office and workshop space there before building a house for the family. We temporarily live among the two bare rooms that currently have roofs. I have gotten used to the complete lack of personal space but appreciate the immese feeling of safety I feel when I lay down to sleep.
The family of five begins stirring just as the sun is rising, shortly after 5am. I stay in bed lazily for a bit while I listen to them brushing off their beds, folding their bedding, and sweeping the floor. The room is transfrormed by the time I am up. Usually Maritza, spright and intelligent 9 year old, sits down on my mat the very second I flutter my eyes. We make breakfast, a true Nica farmer´s breakfast usually consists of rice, beans with yuca or banana or cohauda cheese. The leftovers are lunch and the rest is turned into gallo pinto for dinner. Our temporary kitchen is outdoors, various wooden benches and counters and fire pit for cooking. We often play a game of checkers before breakfast and then take turns bathing by bucket. I have learned to enjoy that first cold bucket I pour over my head and learned and have gotten used to having wet hair all day as a result of the humidity. Mornings are long and lazy when we wake at 5am and begin work at 8am. Such a contrast to my mornings on the run in Boston. In the evenings I gather my laundry, scrubbing mud from my clothes over washboard frees the dirt from under my nails. Feeling utterly refreshed, we gather as the sun goes down. I taught the 12 and 14 year old boys, Samuel and Juan Gabriel, to play chess, which we play at the rate of 3- 4 games a day. We indulge in an hour of radio before bed. I translate Reggae songs and Christian rock, love and God being the dominant themes of both. We make our way to bed by 8pm, 7pm if we´re particularly tired or sick. Last night, recovering from a night out, we actually fell asleep at 6pm, a personal record, I´m sure.
Those days of intense pelting rains followed by bright sun perfectly epitomoze the deep contrasts I´ve encountered in Nicaragua thus far: LIKE, the great focus people have to be clean, to wash daily, to spend hours daily cleaning clothes, EVEN THOUGH, from my vantage point, it´s the trash and dog feces littering the sidewalks and contaminating rivers, rather than the mud and sweat that give me reason to shower meticulously each day.
Alaskans have 100 words with which they speak about snow. The same should be true for describing the many forms of rain in Bluefields, Nicaragua. Though, more likely they would be shared among the diverse languages spoken here; Creole, Spanish, and the indigenous tongues of Miskito, Rama, Garafuna (hailing from West Africa destined for slavery, they never encountered that harsh reality, freed just before reaching land by the blessing of a shipwreck). Today´s rain is persistent and steady against a gray sky, perfect for a Sunday without much to do. I most prefer the days where I awake to a bright blue sky and from time to time, to cut the strong sun, a dark cloud travels quickly across the sky giving way to three minutes of pelting rains quickly turning our dirt roads into knee deep mud trenches. At these times, children run shirtless into the roads to roll in the puddles and young boys glide down along the green algae that builds up on the sides of the roads as if they´re skateboarding.
I live with a fantastic family in barrio San Pedro, which is a one hour hike from the center of Bluefields. Bluefields is the largest city on the Atlantic Coast but is just small enough that I manage to run into someone I know everytime I leave the farm. The facvt that I stick out like a sore thumb pairs well with my good memory for faces. My host brother and I drew a map of Bluefields and its barrios and colored it in with my water colors. It includes his grandmothers house, where I am going to meet them for Sunday lunch. Leaving the centro for my barrio, I make sure to smile at everyone I see as insurance that people are looking out for the gringa. I wish I could reward the few men that don´t call to me or hiss as I pass, or that I could punish those people who make me feel unsafe here. Building trust here is hard and the effort of having to look out for my personal safety can be tiresome at times.
Each day I wake with my wonderful host family at 5am. We live on the Demonstration Farm, La Finca Demostrativa, purchased less than a year ago and still very wild. FUNCOS (Fundacion Cosecha Sostenible) is building an office and workshop space there before building a house for the family. We temporarily live among the two bare rooms that currently have roofs. I have gotten used to the complete lack of personal space but appreciate the immese feeling of safety I feel when I lay down to sleep.
The family of five begins stirring just as the sun is rising, shortly after 5am. I stay in bed lazily for a bit while I listen to them brushing off their beds, folding their bedding, and sweeping the floor. The room is transfrormed by the time I am up. Usually Maritza, spright and intelligent 9 year old, sits down on my mat the very second I flutter my eyes. We make breakfast, a true Nica farmer´s breakfast usually consists of rice, beans with yuca or banana or cohauda cheese. The leftovers are lunch and the rest is turned into gallo pinto for dinner. Our temporary kitchen is outdoors, various wooden benches and counters and fire pit for cooking. We often play a game of checkers before breakfast and then take turns bathing by bucket. I have learned to enjoy that first cold bucket I pour over my head and learned and have gotten used to having wet hair all day as a result of the humidity. Mornings are long and lazy when we wake at 5am and begin work at 8am. Such a contrast to my mornings on the run in Boston. In the evenings I gather my laundry, scrubbing mud from my clothes over washboard frees the dirt from under my nails. Feeling utterly refreshed, we gather as the sun goes down. I taught the 12 and 14 year old boys, Samuel and Juan Gabriel, to play chess, which we play at the rate of 3- 4 games a day. We indulge in an hour of radio before bed. I translate Reggae songs and Christian rock, love and God being the dominant themes of both. We make our way to bed by 8pm, 7pm if we´re particularly tired or sick. Last night, recovering from a night out, we actually fell asleep at 6pm, a personal record, I´m sure.
Those days of intense pelting rains followed by bright sun perfectly epitomoze the deep contrasts I´ve encountered in Nicaragua thus far: LIKE, the great focus people have to be clean, to wash daily, to spend hours daily cleaning clothes, EVEN THOUGH, from my vantage point, it´s the trash and dog feces littering the sidewalks and contaminating rivers, rather than the mud and sweat that give me reason to shower meticulously each day.
The work is hard but every instruction I receive at the Demo Farm is followed by ¨tranquilo.¨ I cleared a piece of the jungle with a machete, pick axed the ground and double dug rows, bancales, for the Demo Farm´s huerto, garden. I rain down sweat while I work, and then rest when my blisters begin to pop. The construction crew that arrives each day to work on the house never tires of crooning to me from the roof while I work solo down below. Earlier in the week myself and the entire family spent the afternoon wading through the contaminated river that runs through the farm, scraping leaves from the bottom and cutting through vines and branches to allow the water to flow freely through. I was glad for the experience to help me overcome my fear of snakes, though holding my breath that i´m not soon plagued by a parasite. There is nothing I do at the farm that the 9, 12, and 14 year old children can´t do. The work also includes our daily chores of chopping wood, starting fires to cook our meals, washing clothes over a wooden washboard. Because working in this heat with such inadequate resources means we work harder, we also relax more, much more. I am often exasperated at the pace at which we work but have to remember that our warm days are not going anywhere... there isnt the same pressure farmers have at home.
I break up each week that I spend on the farm visiting an urban farm project started by a wonderful Swiss extranjero who runs a drug prevention program for people about my age. She eploys her good will and psychology background and I bring the farm expertise. I cherish every minute I spend with the folks at this farm. I also get to speak Creole, which puts a smile on my face after weeks speaking only Spanish. The other night I help up a sign reading¨Blaze up my youth, Big up GLB¨ as one of the farmers got up on stage for Dia de la Autonomia del Bluefields. The day celebrates the rights of the Creole and Indigenous groups and their autonomous right over this region following colonial rule. Bob Marley is a pillar here and the people celebrate with drumming, marching, dancing, reggae. It made for a terrific Halloween weekend.
I speak Creole and Spanish. Learning Spanish has meant studying grammar and listening. Learning Creole means street talk and thick accents. In Spanish I describe things as nice, sweet, pretty and hope that my personality comes through in my actions. Speaking Creole means speaking forcefully with emphasis and attitude. Both languages were built on the foundations of love. Maritza writes me love letters, and my encounters on the street don´t progress far without talk of amor. The children I live with come home each day asking me to translate Creole they hear from classmates. What does it mean, live up homie¨, they ask. It´s hard to believe I go days without speaking English but am impatient nonetheless for the day I am fluent enough to dream in Spanish.
Things that make me feel at home here.
Plentiful and creative uses of bikecarts, of course. I am, in general, a fan of wheels, all sorts. Pulling fresh, clear water from the ground with a wheel gives me joy. Waking up this morning to chickens crowing and an hour of American Christmas songs set at full volume in the house next door made me laugh.
Things that make me weary.
Machismo, gangs, starving chickens and parasite infested dogs, children kicking dogs, dancing always means with a partner, a night out in Bkuefields means slow dancing or grinding to reggae in dark smokey bars, biting ants, snakes in the grass, tarantulas and cockroaches, working hard to converse, being misinterpretted, christian rock, boots stuck in the mud.
Things I don´t take for granted.
fresh and clean well water, two months free of food and water bourne illnesses and Dengue Fever, the terrific children i live with, the handful of extranjeros working for a renewable energy company who live down the road, the opportunity to speak creole, the opportunity to learn how to farm using machete and stick, Rondon a Carribean coconut fish soup and bread made with coconut milk, delicious tortillas cooked on clay plate over wood fire, radios set at highest volume at all time of day.
I break up each week that I spend on the farm visiting an urban farm project started by a wonderful Swiss extranjero who runs a drug prevention program for people about my age. She eploys her good will and psychology background and I bring the farm expertise. I cherish every minute I spend with the folks at this farm. I also get to speak Creole, which puts a smile on my face after weeks speaking only Spanish. The other night I help up a sign reading¨Blaze up my youth, Big up GLB¨ as one of the farmers got up on stage for Dia de la Autonomia del Bluefields. The day celebrates the rights of the Creole and Indigenous groups and their autonomous right over this region following colonial rule. Bob Marley is a pillar here and the people celebrate with drumming, marching, dancing, reggae. It made for a terrific Halloween weekend.
I speak Creole and Spanish. Learning Spanish has meant studying grammar and listening. Learning Creole means street talk and thick accents. In Spanish I describe things as nice, sweet, pretty and hope that my personality comes through in my actions. Speaking Creole means speaking forcefully with emphasis and attitude. Both languages were built on the foundations of love. Maritza writes me love letters, and my encounters on the street don´t progress far without talk of amor. The children I live with come home each day asking me to translate Creole they hear from classmates. What does it mean, live up homie¨, they ask. It´s hard to believe I go days without speaking English but am impatient nonetheless for the day I am fluent enough to dream in Spanish.
Things that make me feel at home here.
Plentiful and creative uses of bikecarts, of course. I am, in general, a fan of wheels, all sorts. Pulling fresh, clear water from the ground with a wheel gives me joy. Waking up this morning to chickens crowing and an hour of American Christmas songs set at full volume in the house next door made me laugh.
Things that make me weary.
Machismo, gangs, starving chickens and parasite infested dogs, children kicking dogs, dancing always means with a partner, a night out in Bkuefields means slow dancing or grinding to reggae in dark smokey bars, biting ants, snakes in the grass, tarantulas and cockroaches, working hard to converse, being misinterpretted, christian rock, boots stuck in the mud.
Things I don´t take for granted.
fresh and clean well water, two months free of food and water bourne illnesses and Dengue Fever, the terrific children i live with, the handful of extranjeros working for a renewable energy company who live down the road, the opportunity to speak creole, the opportunity to learn how to farm using machete and stick, Rondon a Carribean coconut fish soup and bread made with coconut milk, delicious tortillas cooked on clay plate over wood fire, radios set at highest volume at all time of day.
It's amazing and comforting to see how similar your experiences are to my own. From determining your level of saftey and integrating with the family into the work day, to the love of Bob Marley and language. It's still funny for me to think how drastically different our part of the world is from where we are now, and how much of the world does not live like Lower Merion, or anywhere else in America.
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