Masaya and Piropos

So much to update you all on. I´ll start with my weekend trip to Granada and Masaya, which I think was about two weeks ago. It was a blast – hung out with my friend Liz who had been in San Ramón for a bit, her friend Rose and three of their friends from their community, which is about an hour southwest of Managua.

We all met up with Meredith for dinner, one of my friends from Grinnell who is working in Granada as a coordinator of a volunteer organization. I think we were all feeling like we needed a break from gallo pinto, so we grabbed some pizza. Liz, her friends and I went to a club and danced essentially the whole night, left at around 12:30 am and caught a cab. I thought we were going back to the hostel but we ended up going to the lake near Granada, to another bar there and danced some more. We returned at 4 am and I experienced one of the scariest car rides of my life. I won´t describe it here – I don´t want to worry my parents. Met up with Mer for breakfast, saw her sweet pad, and don´t you worry Mer, I have the photo right here to prove our reunion actually occurred.Mer and me in the central plaza of Granada. (We were looking at the flip-out screen of my camera.)

Piropos
I´ve gotten used to people yelling, Chelita preciosita, mi amor, I love you, bye (yes, they say bye here as a pick-up line. As I mentioned a while back, here they say adios as a ´hi´ in passing, so because adios means bye in English, they´ll switch it up sometimes and use that as well. The same applies for ´Te amo.´ I´ve heard I love you a lot as well.) . I usually don´t respond, pretend like I didn´t hear or don´t speak Spanish, and keep on walking without maintaining eye contact. On one occasion, I failed to demonstrate complete disinterest, which sparked a series of events that I will discuss.
A man down the street owns a few buses, one of which was being repaired. Starting about three weeks ago, every time I would walk by the bus (heading to work, come back from work for lunch, going back to work after lunch, and come home from work for dinner), the crew of mechanics working on the engine would whistle and one mechanic in particular led the group in these serenades. I didn´t even know what any of them looked like because I always avoided glancing, so as not to fuel their fire. One day when I was walking back to work after lunch, their boss was standing outside checking up on them. When he noticed me, he told me that I had an admirer and referenced the very expressive mechanic, I laughed and told the boss that I knew. The mechanic yelled at me as I was walking away, Te amo mi amor. The next day, I was trying to text my friend Liz as I walked by the bus. Once he noticed I had a phone, he yelled after me to give him my number. As usual, I kept walking.
I told Doña Marfa about this admirer and she told me that she knew one of the mechanics working there, and that if it was the same mechanic that she knew, that he was a very respectful, sweet, thoughtful guy. A few weeks ago she popped a tire and a young man stopped to help, gave her his carjack and then with her until she could find another tire; he told her he worked as a mechanic down the street. She told me that when we walked by the bus on our way back from Juana´s house, she´d check him out and tell me if it´s him or not. So we walked by and we almost walked completely past the bus when I heard, ·Mi amor give me your phone number.· I didn´t respond and kept walking with Marfa, but she turned around. ·Son, this girl lives in my house and I´m responsible for her. I don´t give her permission to give her number to people like you.· Silence passed and it seemed like she had physically hit him. We kept walking. Earlier I had explained to her that men in the US that whistled and catcalled were considered rude, and she said that here, there´s a type of catcall that is rude but the majority is not. – Marfa, does he have bad manners?- She laughed and nodded. We ate dinner at home; as she was cooking, she said, ¨Well, when we walk back to Juana´s house, I´ll just doublecheck in case it really is him.¨ Apparently she was having second-doubts. When we walked back, she yelled at him to come over; he hesitantly walked towards us. ¨Do you remember me?¨ she bluntly asked him. He nodded without looking her in the eye, ¨Of course. Did you forget my favor so quickly?¨ She immediately apologized and explained that she couldn´t see well and that he had been neatly dressed when she initially met him, so he looked different now that he was all dirty; she also said that it was her job to protect me so she had to be cautious about boys. ¨So you like my daughter Marissa?¨¨Yes, I really like her – I love her. Don´t you worry though, she´s good – she never stops when I say things to her.¨ He asked her if I was free to meet up this weekend and she said yes, and that we were going to Selva Negra (a popular forest in the area) tomorrow and invited him to come with us. He couldn´t but said that he could give us a ride back. She nodded and then told him that she didn´t have a cellphone but that I did, and prodded me to give him my number. So after all of this, Doña Marfa made me give my number to the guy who I had been avoiding. He coyly turned to me and asked, ¨Oh, you have a cellphone?¨ As if he didn´t know.
Somehow we made plans to meet up on Sunday to ´pasear´, or joyride. It was a 3-person date – we drove around and ended up at a bar, where we got rather tipsy and then had a group discussion about why I didn´t like this boy or Nicaraguan dating rituals. During this conversation, he asked me to marry him and told me that he was poor but that he could provide for me. All I could do was laugh. As we were leaving, Marfa introduced me to a former representative to the national government, whom she had worked with on the Sandinista campaign. He asked for my e-mail address and my number, promising me a photo of Sandinista.
Luckily that was the last of the mechanic, although I ended up feeling a little guilty for being so blunt with him. However, that was definitely not the last of the Nicaraguan men. I might even say that it was the beginning.

My job is awesome

Yesterday was a pretty rewarding day to be working in the tourism industry – a coworker and I created two new tours for the brochure that I made, so today we did a run-through of the first one. In the morning we hiked a hill that has a view of the city, and then we caught a bus to a nearby town that has a gold mine that was abandoned because it flooded. We had to cross a river to get to the mines = this photo shows a bit of the precariousness involved.

I think something like 600 people died total, including mining deaths and deaths related to the flood. In some parts of the mine, the water goes up to around 4 feet. Needless to say, I had water in my shoes for the rest of the day. We saw a few bat corpses hanging from the walls, a few live bats, snake sheddings, a tarantula, and a cave crab inside the mine. I felt like Indiana Jones, seeing the bat skeletons, covered in cobwebs. I’ll add photos of them. I carried my camera in a plastic bag and held it on top of my head so it wouldn’t get wet. We continued down the passageway of the mine for about 30 minutes, but someone heard rushing water further on and thought it wasn’t smart to keep going, so we headed back. We ate lunch outside the cave. My host-mom packed me some cheese, avocado, a boiled banana and a potato-like thing, Delenia’s mom packed her a bunch of tortillas, and we bought cuajada at a store before embarking on the mines, so we had an eclectic picnic between the four of us that were there. The three people I was with were all tour guides, although we were missing the other 10 guides who were supposed to come.

We saw this lizard while waiting for the bus that never came to take us back to San Ramón. We walked half the way and then hitched a ride with a group of people.

After the mines, we returned to San Ramón and hiked to Finca La Leonesa, a ranch that also has mine ruins on its property, where we received a tour. We saw a few different mine shafts, the abandoned and destroyed house of the owner, and walked a lot. The trails were really slippery and muddy, as it had started to rain, and we were climbing up and down hills so it felt a little dangerous, but we all survived and I was the only one to actually fall. When I fell, we were on our way back from seeing a waterfall on their property and I slipped on moist rocks. After this tour, we walked up the hill and crossed a bridge, which consisted of three felled trees and wire on either side. I initially assumed the wire was barbed wire, since that’s the only type of wire I’ve seen down here (and there’s TONS of it), so I didn’t think they were very useful rails until I discovered that you wouldn’t puncture your hand by using them to balance yourself. I was slightly concerned about falling since my shoes were covered in watery-mud, but it was fine.

Today we did the second tour package that my coworker and I created: this included going to Finca La Hermandad, a shade-grown coffee cooperative that has primary rainforest (I think cloudforest is also applicable but I´m not sure) and is trying to promote itself as a tourist site, but doesn´t have the resources right now; a waterfall called La Lima; a tour of the town; and a visit to a jewelry workshop run by a few women from a nearby community, in which they make jewelry from local seeds. We weren´t able to do all of it today because it was raining and the truck we had access to didn´t have gas for a while, but we did the most important parts.

I´ll have you know that I wore the same pair of jeans from yesterday, even though they still weren´t dry and there was mud caked around the ankles. That was one of the best wardrobe decisions I´ve made on this trip.

In the morning I left with a few of the guides for El Plomo once we found out that the truck didn´t have any gas. The workshop was closed so we stopped by the house of one of the artisans, who then opened up the workshop and explained what they did. We left pretty quickly and headed out to Salto La Lima, a somewhat nearby waterfall. We walked down a dirt road for a while and then turned to the left, ducked under barbed wire, and walked through muddy pasture to the river. We had to walk up the river to get to the waterfall and the rocks were ridiculously slippery - I had to bring my less-athletic shoes because my other pair was still soaked from the day before, and they had no grip so I ended up taking them off and gritting my teeth while stepping on rocks and twigs and thorns. I thought we were going to go swimming but the current at the waterfall was really strong, so we hung around there for a bit and then headed back. At this point, it started to rain. The route was already precarious and ¨thrilling¨without rain, so the extra water definitely intensified the experience. Salto La Lima. My friend Delenia was thinking about jumping in but we discouraged her.

There were a few moments where I imagined what my funeral would be like. At random parts of the river, someone strung barbed wire across so we had to duck under barbed wire while balancing on these slippery rocks. As I´m recounting this outing, it doesn´t sound nearly as... adventurous as it felt. It started pouring once we got back to the pasture. I put on my sandals and every few steps the mud would engulf one of my sandals. Once we got back to the dirt road, I was grateful not to be walking on rocks but instead we had another problem - pure mud for the majority of the walk back to town. Cows and horses often take this path and they loosen the dirt, so with the rain it just became a muddy river. Içm pretty sure that we´re going to cut the trip to Salto La Lima since the center would be responsible for any injuries, and I´m sure there would be injuries.

Yet again we returned to Casa del Niño soaked. I thought we definitely weren´t going to Finca La Hermandad since it was raining so hard, but Theresita said that we should all return at 2 pm (it was 12pm at the time) so we÷re energetic for the hike. I went back home and ate lunch, and during this time it began pouring even harder than before. I was just happy I was inside, but I was beginning to hate the rain. It knocked down our clothesline and launched all my newly-washed clothes into the dirt.

So we went to Finca La Hermandad, equipped with boots, and hiked through the rainforest in the rain.

A view of the coffee plantation at Finca La Hermandad.

It actually was really awesome, although I fell once and almost fell countless times since it was so muddy and the paths were so slippery. There was one point where I had a streak of almost-falls, so everyone was giving me advice on how to climb up this one part and someone warned me not to grab onto the tree for support because it had spines, and when I lost my balance, my hand immediately went for the tree so I had to force myself to not grab onto it and just hope I didnt slide back down the hill. I couldn´t help but laugh at how ridiculous it seemed, hiking in primary rainforest in the pouring rain. The ride back was pretty cold, needless to say. We were all in the back of the truck with the wind blowing in our faces. Thankfully it had stopped raining by this point. Yet again, we were all soaked and I was caked in mud.

I am pretty darn sore from the past two days, and am relishing in not being wet right now as I was either soaking or walking with mini-lakes in my sneakers for around 6 hours yesterday and 6 hours today.

The coolest part is that this was for my job!

Masaya, tortillas, more on mosquitos, and pregnancy

Lots of updates. Masaya was great – I spent nearly the entire time shopping. Before I talk about Masaya though, I have to talk about the bus system here. Or mainly the bus stops.

At the more popular bus stops, people standing at the stop will accost the bus, wielding an assortment of food products and shouting about them. They’ll take advantage of any window spaces and shove their products up to the windows to catch the attention of the people in the bus. The people will either walk around with their arms almost completely vertical to have their food be eye-level with the passengers, or they’ll have bowls with their goods and rest them on their heads. (This is a really popular means of carrying things – I see people carrying stacks of wood on their head in San Ramón all the time.) “Onions, onions onions onions,” “Chancho con yuca chancho con yuca chancho con yuca,” (pork and yuca, tradicional Nicaraguan food)“agua helada agua helada agua helada.” The food will range from bagged produce (like onions, garlic, tomatoes) to prepared cooked meals and desserts. The first time this happened on the way to Masaya, I was in awe – one guy selling produce climbed on one of the tires of the bus to better grab the attention of the passengers. A bus employee tried to swat him off the tire but the guy didn’t get down until the employee pushed him off.
Some will enter the bus at these stops and then walk down the aisle selling their goods. Often they’ll ride the bus and sell their products for some amount of time and then get off at a random stop, whenever people stop buying their food.
I’m sure there’s other stuff to do there but I didn’t know of anything else, so after I found myself a hostel I went to back to the market, which I had discovered initially when I first got off the bus. The bus station is located directly behind it, so you’re forced to enter the market, which consists of corrugated tin and plastic bag ceilings and wet/muddy ground. I bought 10 pairs of shoes in this market, which is pretty ridiculous considering I was only traveling with my school backpack, so I had to shove all of them in there.
A 12-year old boy from a “gang” (okay, a group of about 6 younger boys) stole fruit from me on Saturday afternoon. I was walking back from shopping and had bags in one hand and then this weird fruit that looks like something from a Dr. Suess book. (The fruits are green and look like limes but have soft pink insides, and grow on branches. They’re sold in bunches so it looks like a bouquet of pom-poms on sticks.) This guy approached me and said, “Can I have a branch?” Before I could respond, he said, “Or the whole thing?” and attempted to grab them all from my hand. I immediately recoiled and grabbed the majority of the fruit back from him, but he was left with one branch. This was the first time I’d ever been “mugged”, and I had some alien fruit taken from me. This actually scared me, too! I would have given them the fruit (and I eventually did), but to have it forcefully taken from me offended my sense of self. This shock at being affronted quickly mixed with a sense of guilt – these boys likely lived on the street (which was confirmed when I left my hostel the next morning) and when anyone resorts to stealing food, it probably means they’re having some bad times. I didn’t even want the fruit. When I left the next morning I saw them sleeping on the stoop of the building next door, using cardboard as blankets. I dropped the fruit by the head of one of the boys, likely the one that had approached me the day before.
Going back in time, on Saturday night I wandered around until I saw a restaurant with a neon-light sign as I figured this was a sign of establishment. I wanted to live it up, be waited on, and not have people attempt to talk to me at dinner. It’s rather ironic because I ended up eating dinner at this Mexican restaurant with a fellow solo English-speaking traveler, who was using the money saved from graduating college a year early to backpack from Guatemala to Panama.
On Sunday, I went shopping and then left at around 9 am because I wasn’t sure what time the buses stopped running.

I got back at around 2 pm to find my host-mom sitting at the kitchen table with Chago, my host-brother who lives across the street, and a piñata. Or rather, the two of them were making a piñata of a traditionally-dressed Nica girl, except Marfa decided to make her a “chela”, with blonde hair and green eyes.

All of Friday night I helped my host sister, who’s a lawyer that works in property rights and workers’ advocacy, with a Power point presentation for a talk on Saturday about the benefits of unionizing, so I asked Marfa how it went and she said that no one showed up. Apparently this was one of the few jobs that my sister had received that gave her a paycheck, and because no one showed up she doesn’t get paid. This morning at breakfast I found out that her primary job, working as a land and employment lawyer for a farmers’ cooperative, is all volunteer. Apparently she couldn’t get to work yesterday because she didn’t have enough money to pay for transportation, which costs about $0.50.

Last night, I crawled under my mosquito net and discovered a mosquito waiting for me inside. I spent about 5 minutes attempting to kill it – it’s really hard once the net is set up because you only have soft vertical services to smoosh them against, and they usually fly away before your hand can even get to them. So once I couldn’t see it anymore I gave up trying to search for it. I quickly discovered I had bigger fish to fry –a beetley-pill-bug type thing clung to the inner walls of my mosquito net. I stared at it for a while and it didn’t look like it had wings so I tried to grab it to put it outside my net. It didn’t have wings but it jumped, and it jumped right at my head. I tried to smack it but instead I hit my face and quickly discovered I had given myself a bloody nose. All sorts of things happen out here.

The mom of a friend of mine makes and sells tortillas. Many women have microbusinesses in which they sell food here; they’ll make cuajada (a really popular cheese that from my experiences so far, you only eat with tortillas; my host-brother’s wife makes cuajada, and it seems like almost every other house sells it, too), tortillas (my next door neighbor makes tortillas, so every morning I hear her pounding out the dough), fast-food at night-time, etc. I found this out when I was working with another friend to create a new tour and she was telling me that the tour of San Ramón stopped at my friend’s house so that people could learn how to make tortillas. So yesterday we were supposed to do a run-through of one of the new tours that we had made but of 13 guides, only 2 people showed up so we ended up not going, but instead I went to my friend’s house and made a tortilla, which was pretty sweet. I don’t understand how they can work in that environment all day though – they use a wood-fired stove, which creates TONS of smoke. I could barely stand outside of the building because the air was so dirty, let alone in it. Her mom then fed me lunch, which consisted of a glass of Coke and two tortillas with cuajada.

We haven’t had water for the past week, which, for us, means that our hose doesn’t work. The ironic part is that we run out of water when it starts pouring –we lose water when water comes. The rain either moves around the tubes in the water purification center or the center has to shut off the pipes to reclean the new water. Either way, when we get a lot of rain, we don’t have any water. And I feel like most of the time, we don’t have water. The water that we currently have in the bathroom exists as a thin film on the bottom of the big green bathing bucket, which I have come to be sketched out by as I spotted little worms in there yesterday. I asked Marfa about the “little snakes” (I didn’t know how the word for worm) in the bucket and she nodded and said that they must be mosquito larvae, and nonchalantly said that she should empty that out. I think they’re still there. I’ve also made allies with a spider, who I am hoping will help me in my quest to kill the mosquitos in my room. In mosquito-related news, today was the second time I’ve seen a fumigation car go by. It’s this white truck with a giant motor in the back that spews out this gas to kill mosquitos. It’s really loud, but the sound of the truck is the only warning you have that they’re fumigating. I didn’t even know what it was the first time I saw it and Marfa essentially dragged me inside, telling me that it was dangerous to breathe the fumes. I wonder if everyone else outside knew that.

It seems like pregnancy is an entirely different thing out here. My host brother came over and was looking at pictures that I had stuck on my mirror, and there was one of me wearing a dress that came in above the hips (an empire dress?), standing with my family. He told me, “You look really pretty here – you look a little pregnant,” as if looking pregnant was a part of my looking pretty. I’ll blame the pregnant-looking part on the style of dress since it doesn’t curve into the waist. I thought it was interesting though, that in the US it’d be an insult for someone to say “You look pregnant in this picture,” whereas here it’s either a comment or a compliment. My host-mom was looking at pictures that I had and asked me if someone was pregnant in one of them. I laughed and was surprised that she had asked that since in the US, if the person isn’t pregnant someone could take offense at the thought. Yesterday I was wearing a shirt that was the same style as the dress, where flows below the chest. I was standing next to my friend Delenia (whose mom makes tortillas), who was sitting down, and she put her arm around my waist, rested her head on my stomach, and rubbed my belly with her other hand. I think I laughed and then she said that she heard the baby kicking, and pretended that I was two months pregnant. I had no idea what that even meant – I was learning about pregnancy from a fifteen-year old. I’ve realized that pregnancy is somewhat a taboo subject in the US, from my experiences here. It seems like almost everyone past the age of 18 either has a kid or is pregnant – I’ve started asking new friends that I make if they have any kids, since it’s so common.