capricho: idea o propósito que uno se forma sin razón aparente. 

I am now a resident of Granada, Nicaragua. I paid rent and moved into a lovely room yesterday, and then slept like a piedra. Capricho, caprice, the whims of the world, have come together in harmony to find me again wandering the colorful streets of this charming city. To quote Sr. Ruben D. (el famoso poeta Nicaraguense), “art (life) isn’t a collection of rules, but a harmony of ‘capricho’.” It sure seems that way, for good and bad. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my independent travel in Leon, and left with the same high spirits I entered with, although much more sleep deprived. Saturday morning, I arrived to the Laguna de Apoyo, a freshwater lake in a volcanic valley. My backpacked-laden stumble off my bus coincided with another bus carrying Rachel, an acquaintance from high school who I was meeting up with, and we headed down the valley together. Interesting tidbit: the bottom of this shimmering blue, glassy and peaceful lake is the lowest point in Central America. It’s up and over a crater from Granada, but so isolated and breezy, it’s easy to forget you’re in Nicaragua (the sweaty, dirty Nicaragua, that is). It is so clear you can see your toes while swimming, which I did for half an hour out to the center of the lake. I was the interloper on a party of Peace Corps folks, so that was a bit awkward, but they were all quite nice and welcoming. It was an interesting perspective into the Peace Corps presence here in Nicaragua, which is actually huge: 180 of ‘em. Most of this group are were nearing their completion of service, so they offered a very acute insight into Nicaragua, having been here for over two years (I felt like I was fresh off the boat compared to these rugged travelers). Also, compared to many of their housing situations and hometowns, Gigante seems a breeze. All in all, they made me feel content to continue my stay in Nicaragua, as I have much to learn. Although I’m pretty confident in my Spanish at this point, their quick accents and expressions made me feel a bit stammering. 

Yesterday, I hopped on a bus up and over the pass to arrive once again in Granada. Walking with my backpack, I saw the city with fresh eyes. It really is, contrary to my first impression two months ago when I was fresh out of the States, a lovely city. It is colorful and clean and wealthy, characteristics I only see now that I’ve had some more Nicaragua to compare. I left my stuff in the magazine office/house and went to check out some housing options. I decided last weekend that in addition to my magazine and newspaper duties, a couple days a week, I would volunteer with an organization called Esperanza Granada, tutoring high school students in English. This not only plugs me in with a volunteer community here, but the volunteer coordinator, a friendly and warm British woman named Paulina, helped me find a place to live. (My original plan was to live in the free room in the house/office of the magazine and newspaper. My roommates being my bosses and incidentally, two men, so it could have been less than comfortable.) 

Paulina gave me three places to stop by. One was closed, the other without vacancy. Capricho worked it’s magic hand, and I landed in the third, a red house three blocks from the center of town. I’m renting a room, but it’s much more like a homestay than anything, and I really quite enjoy it already. A Nicaraguan woman in her fifties lives with her 22-year-old daughter and 8-year-old granddaughter in this home; right next door, live her daughter and husband; various other uncles and nephews and nieces stop by frequently. It’s a bustling place, colorful and clean. My room is small but with a double bed, a fan, and a dresser to place my belongings. Unpacked, backpack stowed, I feel a sense of place. There is another room-renter, a fellow volunteer from Esperanza, who is nice and speaks good Spanish as well. Candia is la mamá, and has been renting to volunteers for over five years. She’s very motherly. “I’m going to go email my family to tell them I arrived safely,” I said on the way out the door last night. “Tell them you’ve already found a family here!” she says. Cute. 

The food situation is a little awkward, as my rent doesn’t include it but she’s invited me to eat with the family twice already. Apparently Tim pays more a month to get dinners, so I think I’ll broach that awkward topic and try to get something figured out.

I went to a new grocery store in town yesterday to stock up on what I thought would only be oatmeal and bananas. Let me preface this by saying with the exception of the store in Leon, my experience with Nicaraguan grocery stores has been the hot, stuffy Palí in Rivas that is rarely stocked, and besides isn’t stocked with much I eat anyway. I arrived at the La Colonial in Granada to a red-brick facade and a spacious parking lot. Walking through the automatic doors, I entered United States of America, a little embassy inside Granada. Air conditioned, bright, spacious; this grocery store was AMAZING. Hands down, the best grocery store in Latin America. Maybe one of the best I’ve ever been into. Not only does it have every American-like amenity I could ask for, like peanut butter and wheat bread, it also carries elusive and wonderful Latin American things like dulce de leche, guava jelly, and local Nicaraguan coffee. (Actually, it doesn’t have GoLean Crunch, or any Kashi products. This is fine, as I will resume my addiction to such products when I arrive home and could probably use a break. But, I’ll have you know…this store is such that the possibility of Kashi glimmered briefly in the back of my mind.) In the midst of my exhaustion and simultaneous over-stimulation with all things American (Ragu pasta sauce! BEN AND JERRY ICE CREAM!), I gaped at the shelves for the better part of an hour. Confounded with the store’s glamour, I stumbled out of there with a very expensive, random assortment of goods. My bounty included mushroom pasta sauce, wheat noodles, top ramen, and what I realized later, was a $7 box of banana-nut Post cereal. (Although I did so enjoy it this morning.) I will have to plan and budget my groceries a little better. For example, to forgo the cereal, you can get a three pound bag of oatmeal for two dollars. Cha chiiiing. 

I have yet to begin work on the magazine, as the editor has been a bit flighty or busy, so that may not happen until Wednesday or Thursday. This is fine, as I’m using the time to brainstorm, and tomorrow will begin my volunteer duties, tutoring at a high school about fifteen minutes outside the city. Today I had orientation for two hours in the morning. There are about 35 volunteers living here, most of which live in the volunteer houses. The organization seems very well run and the staff seems happy. Tomorrow evening there is a ‘volunteer social’ so I look forward to that. 

Right now, I’m sipping an ice cream, coffee concoction in an internet cafe while it pours thunderously outside. Although I miss the sweeping blue beaches of Gigante, right now I’m pretty happy with life, with the capricho that landed me justo aquí.

I left little Giant Beach, all my things condensed once more into my backpack.

I am now the ‘content editor’ (a title I bequeathed upon myself) of Between the Waves magazine, Nicaragua’s best (well, only) English-language magazine, as well as a contributor for the Nicaraguan Post. This may seem a bit abrupt, and indeed it feels that way. My life has accelerated exponentially in the past week, days containing so much more now than it did at my quite, peaceful repose at Brio. Less than a week ago, I went to Granada for a night to interview for this job (and interview the editor myself). As this is what some may call a dream job (for my aspiring writerly self), I decided it was time to leave Gigante and relocate to some big city life. Not two days later, I up and left. My finding of this magazine, and my timing to get the job, was all quite serendipitous, and proves that however much you plan your life out, life will get in the way of itself, turn things upside down and change. Ultimately, what will be, will be. This week has been a lesson in relinquishing control and following my gut. 

My departure from Gigante was certainly bittersweet, however. My students were all very sad to learn I was leaving them (abandoning them!) without lessons. It was easy to forget how frustrated I had been with Yara, who shows up to class 50 minutes late everyday, when she showed up to my fiesta de despedida in her Sunday best (and on time!). Indeed, on Tuesday evening, I invited all the students to Brio for a little goodbye party, expecting them to eat the million Chips Ahoy I had carted from Granada, play a little Simon says, and head on home. I clearly still have a lot to learn about Gigante. My class attendance had diminished over my stay in this pueblo, so I thought I was inviting the 12 or 15 regulars that still come to class. Ohoho. Every kid who had ever come to class for even one minute came running when they heard of a party–and some showed up who had never once set foot in English class. On the one hand, it was incredibly overwhelming and not at all fun to have thirty 11-to-15 year olds yelling ‘give me water, please’ and ‘Megan. Megan. Megan!’ amid general rousing Spanish chatter. Less so when they decided to turn on reggeton for a dance party and the cheers turned to ‘profe dance with me!’. After two hours of this, I finally sent them home with a lot of tired hugs. It was, however, certainly tangible proof that I did something in Gigante. Forty kids show up to say goodbye to you and you’ve done something… even if only a forth of them learned any English at all. There are a few that I will miss… that I do already, in fact. Ana and her sister Nancy brought me lobster and chicken dinner, which I attempted to share with everyone; Selena arrived all dressed up in a skirt and with a bag of corn; and little Leana danced with me. 

I told them I would come back, and I fully intend to fulfill my promise. I plan to be in Granada for at least a month, to get settled in my new, powerful position (I kid) and then re-evaluate in November. 

I told Juan I’d come back as well. Juan and I really started to get along quite well my last several weeks there; he was the one who advised me to go to Granada to meet the editor rather than swirl myself into a tizzy at Brio. After the ridiculous student goodbye party, Juan, Jackie and I went to a local restaurant for dinner. The two gringos who live in Gigante came by, as well as Nestor, my gay friend (yes. There is one gay person in Gigante). I sort of felt like part of a community. Now this will be quite trite, so forgive me; it was the very same restaurant I went to at my first night in Gigante, when I was scared and alone. The same table, the six-person wood table in the foyer, listening to the sounds of the beach. Sitting at the very same table, not even two months later, chatting with friends in Spanish, and saying goodbye to a place that I’ve grown quite fond of… that’s change.

In a very random decision that I made quite decisively (no more flip-flopping Megan!), Wednesday morning I hopped on a bus to León and am now wandering in northerly parts of the country. I really have actually progressed–I took a bus three hours north to Managua, switched bus stations (taxi across town) and seven hours later, found myself in lovely Leon. Unbeknowdest to me, Wednesday was the holiday of León’s patron saint, so the city was full, sidewalks crowded with celebrating students and families. I had met a fellow on Ometepe, ran into him in Gigante, and then saw him here–small world. So, we walked around together in the evening and watched the various parade’s around the city. (The focal point being the giant virgin dolls carried through the streets. Catholicism can be downright bizarre.) A firework show capped off the evening, as we watched at the foot of the town’s center cathedral. 

Leon is the university town of Nicaragua, so it is full of students and vibrancy. There are also more shops and American-type things here than I’ve seen in months. For example, the grociery store sells cheddar chex mix and there is a Payless Shoe Source blocks away from my hostel. I actually relocated hostels for tonight, and am in a very cheery place with lots of travelers. Last night found me in a very boring, empty hostel run by an abuelita. Walking back last night, I was as close to robbed as I’ve been in any of my travels. Rather than bring out my whole purse, I just had a little bag with my cell phone, cash, a key, and my watch, and a dude came by on a bike and tried to grab it out my hand. It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to react, only with reflex tighten my grip, and apparently it was strong enough on the bag that he didn’t succeed in grabbing my little bolsa. Actually, a great lesson in awareness with no consequences, so I’m rather grateful it happened in such an innocuous way. 

I’m exhausted right now. Today was a floater day, wandering through the streets, reading, sitting in plazas. In fact, I sat in a wonderful plaza dedicated to the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Diario and read, you guessed it, my book of Diario’s poems. How perfectly perfect. 

In this sort of wandering travel, by yourself, time and space are both condensed and long, meandering. More happens in a day here, but it’s a sort of disconnected happening. I’m in a tired haze, so I shall write more later. Just thought I’d check in with you, bloggero. I shall arrive in Granada on Sunday and figure out my living situation then. It’s complicated, but, to apply the lessons of my week, it will all work out.

How are you? Swell, thanks.

And today $25 arrived in my bank account. I hope this will be a moment I remember for many years to come. As in, I remember my first paid article, said in a nostalgic tone while accepting the Pulitzer (ha). Or perhaps, hopefully, I remember when I got paid $25 an article when I’m receiving that amount for each word (that actually doesn’t happen). In any case, I am officially a freelance writer. Hoodeewhoo for me. Today it was the first feature article on the Brave New Traveler (online travel mag) website. Heyooo.

Where’s the ball? my students scream to me (in Spanish, oh well.)

Oh no! Where’d it go? I respond, mock shock and concern.

The current took it down the river, says Leana with a giggle, thinking that I couldn’t see that she was actually sitting on the ball, floating with it between her legs. 

I took off down the river, in search of the ball, while the five girls laughed behind me.

Tuesday was river day. My morning English class and I took a field trip to the river down the road. It was splendid and honestly the most rewarding three hours I’ve had in Nicaragua. Just plain fun. At ten en punto, we congregated at Brio and began our trek down the hill and along the road to the quebrada about a mile away. Trying to practice English en route sounded like this… Look! A butterfly. But. Er. Fly. Butterfly. Look! A frog. Look! A puddle. Pud. Dull. Mud. Lot’s of mud. Look! A rock! Rocccck.

The river is knee high in most places, so I wasn’t sure how the whole ‘swimming in the river’ thing would go. All doubts disappeared when we arrived and the kids jumped in with a big ballyhoo and scream. A soaring tree with great giant roots formed a little shady pond upstream of the road, and there we swam for close to three hours. I initially surveyed the water from dry land a bit skeptically—who knew what lie beneath the muddy surface? But, as any good teacher does, I finally gave in when my students started chanting my name. Clambering up on the roots, I counted to three, prayed for no snakes, and jumped (or plopped) into the pond. Chilly, muddy, dirty, and just lovely.

After a quick swim, we got out and, nestled in the roots of the regal tree, had a picnic. 

Leana and Martha whipped out their little plastic purses full of crackers and soda, and Nancy, the oldest at fifteen, opened her plastic bag to reveal a wonderful lunch of rice, fried plantains, and lobster. Now, I know how much lobster costs around here. I tell ya, when Nancy handed me a plate of lobster (on a glass plate, brought just for me) and Leana offered me some of her coke, my heart just about melted.

After lunch, we had jumping contests from the roots (mine were a bit more like tumbles rather than jumps given that the pond didn’t exceed four feet) and tossed the ball around. We played Simon says, river style: Simon says swim. Simon says splash. Simon says dive. Their level of excitement was beyond any previous moment, and it was contagious. I splashed and played and sang ‘little green frog’ with ‘em, screamed accordingly when Martha dove and grabbed my feet, pretending to be a crab.

I will admit, I don’t know what exactly goes into this river, so swimming (and, well, playing a hold-your-breath contest) in its murky water for three hours was not perhaps the healthiest choice. However, I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy myself. After all—this was it. After everything, after all the mishaps and mistakes, I came down here, started teaching English classes; now I was standing on an ancient tree root, in a rainforest, about to jump into a cool river pond full of my students, in a small town by the beach, in Nicaragua. So, meh. Oh well if my skin felt itchy and tight for two days afterwards. (And if I felt a little nauseous that night. Whatever.)

The river is right off the road, so cars and bikes passed by frequently, drivers gaping at the spectacle. However, these stares were different. For the first time, I didn’t so much feel like a gringa, a strange outsider who must be checked out top to bottom. These were my students, this was our fieldtrip, and—perhaps I’m wrong—I felt like I belonged to something.

(Later that afternoon, I went for a run and said hi to some older students and their families. Those stares were of the strange outsider sort, and one of my students even ignored me, so who knows how much progress I’ve really made.)

Jaime just stopped by. When are you leaving Gigante, chica? I don’t know. I was going to leave tomorrow. But clearly I’m not doing that. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m in a puddle of indecisiveness, and me no like it. I’ve spent my week waiting on my various options to call me back or email me back. It’s been an interesting lesson in patience, in the ability to enjoy myself rather than pacing up and down the stairs and checking my email thousands of times.

Any local I talk to, including Juan, says that I’d be crazy to stay through October. I won’t have classes because the infrastructure falls apart in the rain. September has proved much more mild in the rain department than I initially thought, so who knows what the case really is. But, my decisions are made much more difficult by these breakthroughs with my students, such as on river day. Some days, those days when no one shows up or when they do and seem to have backtracked in English land, I’m easily frustrated and say things like “how can you not know how to say cuatro?” which is really not a good thing to say in my encouraging English teacher role. 

But, there are moments, few and far between, when I believe I’ve really started something here. River day, for example. Handing me a plate of lobster. When I ask what you want to eat and I hear “I want fish” rather than “I’m fine, thank you.” It’s a rare occasion, at least in my life, that one person alone can do something tangible. Why would I leave that behind? For all the frustrations of teaching and living here, in the middle of nowhere, there certainly are things that would keep me here. If nothing else, the follow through, of kids counting on English class and it departing with my departure.

I miss cities. I really do. I miss options, restaurants, cafes. Variety. The anonymity of walking a city street. Anonymity at all. Chocolate bars. I want to see more, cover ground (what ground and why, I don’t know).

On the other hand, there is a wonderful familiarity here. On Wednesday, I spontaneously grabbed the green learners board and went surfing for the first time in a month. And I managed—get this—to place both feet on the board and stand-up-ish for a whole second. Seriously. Alone on my beach. Horray. I stop, lay on the beach, in warm sand, clear blue sky and a toy plane flies overhead, far away from my earth bound self, and I’m here.

I guess that what it comes down to. Being where you are.

Happy birthday, Nicaragua, round two. September 15, 1821, ganó su libertad desde España.

And in 1979, the Sandanistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in the name of Nicaraguan sovereignty. In the name of f— you, United States, we don’t need your imperialism breathing down our neck, we are independently independent, Nicaragua (with lots of dependence on the Soviet Union, too).

Happy birthday, and I sit drinking a coca-cola, living in an American-owned hotel, teaching English to students who can’t write their own language correctly.

Students come to class in ripped, thin clothes; holes in shirts and shorts, hand-me-downs from a long-forgotten person. Smiles and bellies. They always ask for water.

Pressed school uniforms, white colored shirt, navy pleated skirts, black shoes. Pressed and clean hides holes, stains, and thin spots on the shoulders.

Beach-front Gigante shacks. Families awake every morning in hammocks in zinc shacks overlooking a brilliant ocean (does it matter) and cook bananas over a wood fire and hand wash their clothes and bathe in muddy rivers.

Rain pounding on roofs, it seeps in on the cement floors. Mud creeps in, too, lots of it. Floods.

How do you know when you’re poor? What is poverty? When you’re so rich in something else, but rich in poverty, does it compensate? 

Whose land is this, anyway? Do they own their beach-front property? Whoever does will sell the land, make a killing, and move inland, away from beauty but towards cheapness. Is there dignity inherent in this beauty, of a shack next to a hotel and grain fields on fire as the sunlight descends onto stalks. 

An old woman smiles, no teeth, and waves to me on my runs, friendly, grandmotherly. A sullen (or shy), beautiful 17 year old girl doesn’t have a front tooth and doesn’t get English and doesn’t talk much. An 11-year-old writes ‘te amo Megan’ on a food bingo card. I later see her bathing in the muddy river (trash floats by).

Tourists arrive.

A Nicaraguan worker from an American development nearby says, of President Daniel Ortega’s policies, “we’re a poor country. We can’t antagonize the United States. We need their help.”

Help is here. Help is arriving on surfboards and in trucks, ready to invest in boats and buy Nicaraguan beer. And take pictures, too. Help will build beautiful, lush resorts on beautiful, lush beaches. Help will employ Nicaraguan laborers—horray—and then they will be dismissed once construction is complete. Dismissed, in favor of qualified workers, to trek inland while to the victors await the spoils.

Good jobs come to the area but they can’t work them because they aren’t educated. Or they don’t want to work that hard, it’s a different kind of hard work, trust and respect for the (gringo) boss, don’t want to change. You can’t make someone participate in change—for good or bad.

When you can buy a t-shirt of Che or Sandino for five dollars (the shirt was made in China, sent to the U.S., and arrives here); when the menus are in English and Spanish; when it’s too expensive for Nicaraguans to live on Nicaraguan beaches.

Beaches once the backyard of the poor. They bathe in cold muddy rivers, or their oceans, their waves. Beaches soon the playground of the rich.

Wealth arrives, certainly. It becomes more expensive to live here. Nicaragua peeks through resorts and designed cities. (A company or man wants to buy Gigante, buy it, and build a resort town with planned avenues. No mud, pristine perfect paradise, and Nicaragua pokes through cracks and looks down on it from leafy banana trees. Buy a town [and all the people in it]. Juans says it won’t happen.)   

When wealth arrives, you know you’re poor. A five-star hotel and then a shack is a shack. Or did you know all along but it didn’t matter because you couldn’t do anything about it? Because it was the way it was it was it was…for generations? Mom pops gramps and abuelita, all on our land by the sea, in our corrugated zinc paneled home by the bright blue ocean. The sun descends into view from behind corrugated zinc panels and sinks (or swim) into the ocean and a sunset is a sunset is a sunset, from the bright hotel on the hill or the shanty on the sea. The family prepares for a party in an abandoned brick church and neighbors come by with balloons, smiling and dancing; a woman prepares food over a fire.

Y tú mama también. (Mexican movie.) A moment:

A group of three travels to the coast—unspoiled paradise meets sandy beaches, alone. They encounter a fisherman and his family who take them out in his boat to explore the surrounding coves. They eat with the fisherman and his family, dance, drink, enjoy their hospitality and generosity. The fisherman sells them fried fish. Two daughters, a beautiful wife, he has lived here, fished, for four generations. The narrator informs us that next year, the beach will be purchased for a tourist hotel. The fisherman will try to offer boat tours but will lose all business to his competitors, endorsed by the tourist board. He will try to find work. He will leave his home, go to the city to search for work, and finally return to work as a janitor at the hotel. “He will never fish again.” 

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don’t cry baby don’t cry
Don’t cry

-p.simon

In one of those random acts of the world converging, today my tutor from my online TEFL certification class sent me the link to a particularly interesting article. It’s almost a direct response to what I was musing about yesterday: spelling. 

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403092&c=1

If you’re interested. In my very unique and isolated situation here in Nicaragua I quite agree with the author’s point of view: meaning is more important than arbitrary spelling.

But, for those learners of English as a first language: shouldn’t we institutionalize new spellings before we unleash them upon first-graders? English should change and adapt and be flexible, but the first-grade classroom is not the place to implement such changes. I think it’s a good conversation to have–what constitutes good English? The French have an entire academy dedicated to the purification and perfection of their language… nudge, nudge English. 

I thought the comments to the article were equally as fascinating, and I must say, I agree with most. My favorite:

According to Dr Smith here, “It does not make any difference to the meaning of a sentence if you spell ‘their’ as ‘thier’ or ‘there’.”

Oh really? How about “Let’s shoot there son” versus “Let’s shoot their son”?