The Last Waltz, Adios For Now, Muchisimas Gracias

The Last Waltz, Adios For Now, Muchisimas Gracias

The rain's been coming down pretty hard as of late, falling at its pleasure at all hours of night and day.  A few weeks back, an especially strong afternoon rainstorm rolled in as Cully was coming home on the 1:30ish Mariano bus.  The road was a river, and as he disembarked, Miriam was there to meet him with a raincoat and a smile.  She had fought her own torrent of water to get to the bus stop - ideally situated at the bottom of a hill frequented by every cow in El Tololar - and thus had been standing in a feces flow for the better part of 15 minutes. They hiked in shin-high water up the hill and made it to the house with a mostly-dry computer and minimally soggy groceries. 

The storm roared on all afternoon, and the first 1/2 hr after arriving home was set aside for sweeping water of the patio, shifting Olle's bed out from under a leaky roof, and monitoring the multiple trickles springing from Miriam and Cully's ceiling.  The electricity flickered but stood fast, yet ironically the water shut off.  The clothes drying on the line had got soaked for the third day in a row, the flies were seemingly everywhere, and it had been another rough day of schooling on the home front.  It was a seminal moment; was it time to get annoyed and just frustrated at the general dreariness of the situation? Or, just laugh in the face of aggravation?  In the end a third option was decided on, one that included popcorn, cloistering in a room, singing a few songs, and having a frank conversation about the challenges and learning's of living in Nicaragua for a year. 

We often take things for granted when they are a part of our everyday life.  These things become almost like background noise - maybe it's your neighbor starting their car every morning, or the mini-mart cashier you say hi to on your evening commute.  We don't pay much attention to them, but they are comforting in their commonness, their normalness. They make us feel safe because they are always there, present but not intrusive.

Here in Nicaragua, there are plenty of things we will miss; some that we've taken for granted, others we've just gotten so accustomed to being around.  We'll miss (some of us will) the chirping sounds of myriad lizards in the beams above our beds, every chirp a sign that we can sleep knowing that lizzy will eat the night bugs.  We'll miss the majestic views of smoking volcanoes (Telica, San Cristobal) all around us, and the cows, horses, and trees that serve as living, munching, growing images, framing the landscape.  We'll miss the children in their white and blue school uniforms, walking to and from school down dusty or muddy roads or across wide pig-inhabited, green peanut fields. 

We'll miss the sound of Carlo or Aquiles sharpening their machetes the night before a big chopping, slicing or cutting job.  We might even miss the "thunk, thunk, thunk" sound you hear on the chicken bus, produced by an errant branch whacking each window frame as it quickly approaches and then smacks you - mooshed up against the side due to the large woman's behind taking up 3/4 of a seat meant for no more than three 7-year olds - upside your head.  

It'll be hard not to be able to fist bump the bus terminal attendant who goes out of his way to connect with us as we board the bus to El Tololar, or the smiling old man with glasses who sells us our "La Prensa" newspaper at the far-end of the terminal.  Oscar, the gentleman who runs our favorite venta (small stores inside houses) will be missed; he always smiles and comments about how excellent Harlan and Olle's Spanish has become.  It will be hard to find a place in Boston to buy enchiladas as good as Alma's little comedor, which doesn't look like much but tastes like fried heaven after a long, dusty bus ride. 

We'll miss the impromptu stop-bys at our house throughout the week by any number of friends; Beto, Adilsa, Yader, Fernando, (usually with his most recent work of art) Marden, Miriam, Carlo, Chico, Don Leonel, Yessica, Denis, the baseball boys, Belkes, Franklin, Maynor.  Miriam will miss her special times cooking with our friend Ivania, and the extraordinary time we've had just to be together as a family.   We'll miss the people the most; their stories, smiles, and openness to others.

As of this writing, none of us will miss the flies, gnats, mosquitoes, biting ants, mangy, barking dogs, water shortages, or the incessant dust and dryness in the winter followed by equally incessant rain and summer mud.  We won't miss the 2-4 am rooster cacophony, followed by the 5-7 am rooster cacophony (well we might, in a "that was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience" sort of way). We likely won't miss our pee bucket, or having to use a latrine for #2 for a year, or only having cold, usually dark, dank outdoor showers.  "Missing" might not be the correct word for how we'll feel about not having to dodge or smell roadside cow diarrhea after a storm - what do these bovine eat anyways? More fiber, por favor.  We just won't feel too much nostalgia over no longer having to wipe white mold off the handle of our kitchen knife after only a two-day absence or needing to scrub pink/green mold off our room doors after one too many days of unshakeable humidity.    

We had always been told that before peanuts (mani) came to town, the only previous destructive crop that had frequented these parts was cotton.  Both mani and cotton (algodon) have their own stories  which you can read more about in previous chapters.  Tempate trees represented another foreign effort (this one by Austria) to cultivate, grow and harvest a non-native, questionably beneficial product.  This was in the early 90s, and it seems that the Tempate strategy  (as is often the case with many well-intentioned but misguided non-indigenous money-making schemes) started off strong.  Tempate definitely gets the environmentally- friendly nod over both cotton and peanuts, planted as it was with the goal of producing bio-fuel from its seeds.  An added , perhaps unexpected advantage of the Tempate seed - as relayed by locals - is that if you mix the juice from seven seeds in one liter of water, it is very useful as a remedy for both kidney problems and incontinence.

Tempate may have ultimately had very positive environmental and economic returns but for a pesky worm. This omni-present little guy  began devouring the tree's seeds by year three. A noble attempt was hastily made to plant another tree - called Nin - next to the Tempate.  Nin has naturally occurring anti-worm repellant properties and seemed just the tree for the job.  But Nin, too, promptly succumbed to a different insect plague, leaving both the Austrian investors (and the Nicaraguan farmers they had given hope to) with nothing but a novel, slightly acidic, pee-suppressing juice - made from the few trees that remained - as their profit. 

Last Saturday morning's events are a great example of how a typical weekend day often unfolds for our family in El Tololar.  It started with roosters - of course - and then an extended stretching time for Miriam and Cully, both of whose body's have required regular exercise to combat their painful bed and soccer-induced cramps and sores.  During exercises, Mimi the cat could be seen along the fence-line playing with an injured bird.  Not five minutes later, the bird - now dead - was behind our stove being batted around by Dark Paw, the kitten we had gifted to Don Leonel four days earlier.  Dark Paw, along with our other kitten Dusty - so named for her obsession for sleeping in our dust bin - both resisted living elsewhere and  returned long enough to pee in the kitchen corner and ravage the poor dove. 

After Cully had managed to scoop the mangled bird out of the kitchen, feathers flying everywhere, a sizeable scorpion appeared on the kitchen wall, not far from where Miriam was bleaching our mold and spider-ridden suitcases as we prepared for our return home.  We killed him, just as Olle returned from playing with Rachel, our five-year old neighbor who he graciously and patiently plays with on many occasions.  Rachel had apparently informed Olle that she no longer wanted to play, following his revelation that her kitten Figaro - whom she was supposedly looking for- had in fact died more than five months ago. 

The rest of the morning's events included Cully stepping on a giant ant hill as he tossed the pee bucket contents not far from where Grey, our neighbor's puppy, was sipping water out of the kitchen sink outflow pipe, milk-flavored this day as Cully had inadvertently tossed sour milk down the sink rather than in the backyard garbage hole.  Grey had a bad looking gash on her side, likely from either a dog fight or from being launched into the air by a cackling Rachel.  Later that day, in the same milk canal, one could find Miriam and Carlo's pigs wallowing, an activity that has resulted in the side of the house (including the nearby shower) smelling increasingly like a genuine sty.   

Here in El Tololar, it's easy to forget that being connected to everything through the internet is the norm back home.  It's definitely not here.  There is no internet at our house or anywhere nearby, so we have grown accustomed to living without being wired.  We no longer check our phones every five minutes for that telltale buzzing sound that foretells an incoming email. It's really cool to be unlinked, even if only for a year.  And yet, it's also hard not to be able to connect with family and friends on a regular basis. So we try our best to hold the two in tension.

Before we arrived 10 months ago, there were a lot of things to be scared or worried about, and even now as we leave, we know we have been protected supernaturally.  Living with children in an environment with minimal access to healthcare is not easy, and something parents here just have to deal with.  A day has not gone by in Nicaragua where Miriam and Cully have not thought - with some apprehension - "Where the heck are Harlan and Olle and are they all right?"  Besides the scorpions, tarantulas, snakes, and disease-infested fly presence, we have succumbed to many undiagnosed rashes, ailments, and peculiar disorders.   Then there are the stories of dangerous encounters that we hear about, or see etched on others people's mugs.  Both Larry and Alicia, for example, have scars on their faces from running full speed into barbed-wire fences, Larry's having barely missed scarping his eye out.  Harlan and Olle cross and run near barbed-wire fences every day....and jump out of trees, play near rusty nails and broken glass, and....Thank God they are safe!

There came a point, about a month a half ago, when collectively we kind of hit our local food threshold.  It started with a stab at eating less beans, brought on by a rather rapid and unexpected increase in daily, frijole-induced flatulence.  Even the sight of beans began to make us nauseous at times, and soon rice, platano chips, and various sweet drinks began to join the food strike.  It came in waves, and we have eaten beans and many local foods since, but legume-isitis is apparently a thing.  We'll definitely miss the Nicaraguan food after we leave, but we won't mind having a few burgers and a pizza pie or two in between.

Conversations about mosquitoes and the diseases they carry - while you are actually in the process of getting stung by mosquitoes - can be unnerving.  We recently had a final conversation with our 97-year old friend Maria Jerez.  As we conversed with Maria - on a patio surrounded by mud, standing water, and other excellent larvae breeding grounds - she kept shifting in her chair, complaining about the severe pain she had in her joints from a bout three years back with Chikungunya, an extremely dangerous mosquito-borne illness that produces awful symptoms akin to or worse than its more famous disease cousins Malaria and Dengue.  As Maria talked, we couldn't help but imagine what poison our legs and arms were being injected with.  We've had similar conversations with Denis (joint pain in his hands from Chikungunya), and Aquiles - who can't move his right arm at night in bed, a gift from the same sickness several years back.

At times, we have conversations about what we have actually accomplished since we arrived last September 1st in El Tololar.  It can be hard to quantify results when you haven't had a specific job title or description.  Yet this predicament has forced us to look deeper into our daily lives, exploring and mining for the experiences and moments that have made a difference for others, and for us.  So following a post-dinner family meeting under our rancho not long ago, we came up with the following catalog of accomplishments.  Each and every one of them has been made possible because of the Tololamos team, the great people of El Tololar, and your unwavering financial and emotional support.  THANK YOU!

·         We built a house: Actually, Aquiles, Nestor and Carlo did, but many of you helped provide the funds for the house - about $6,000.  As of this morning (June 30th) the house - a darned pretty one we might add - has been passed onto our friend Miriam.  Her family will live there, an asset they would never have been able to afford on their own.

·         A horse: For about $160 (the price of a room for one night in a not very nice NYC hotel) we bought a horse for Ivania after her previous horse died.  The new horse has enabled her to continue bringing food to the school to sell to students each day, providing an invaluable income to her family.

·         A plan: We assisted Wilmar in developing the first business plan for his computer business.

·         A business:  We provided $500 as an initial start-up investment in Wilmar Quintero's computer business.  That investment, along with other support and a lot of sweat equity on his part, enabled Wilmar to launch his computer business (repairs and sales) in León.  Wilmar's ultimate goal is to make enough money to be able to bring his wife Mariella (currently working 16 hrs a day in Managua) to El Tololar. They want to live together with their daughter Rachel as a family.  As of today, Wilmar's business is still a work in progress.  He's had to shift locations and focus more on selling than repairing.  We're rooting for him big-time.

·         Another Business: We invested $200 in training and capacity-building for our friend Belkis, also wanting to start a business in León so that she can actually live together with her son Leo.  She's now self-employed as a massage therapist, and things are looking up!

·         Scholarships: Thanks to your financial support, we are sustaining five high school students and two university students with scholarships.  With just over $2,000 a year, these students (all promising students in tough economic circumstances) receive a monthly stipend that allows them to stay in school (transportation, food, books) or pursue their career dreams at the university level.

·         Micro-Investments: We gave small Christmas gifts of money to a few local families. They weren't much ($50 bucks each) but in one case, that small investment made the difference between having to quit their small business - and being able to continue on.

·         Guide Training: Our friend Yader - in training to be a tourist guide - needs practice, especially with foreigners so he can practice his English.  We hired Yader (paying out about $150 total) to be our guide on several hiking excursions (including the deliciously fun but grueling hike we did up Volcano Telica in early April).

·         Cash-For-Work: Instead of chopping our hands (or heads) off with a machete, we hired Carlo - and sometimes Larry and Aquiles - to cut our lawn and do other jobs around the house.  They are much better at it then us, and besides, they needed the cash.  So we invested in them (about $150 bucks total), and by extension helped support the local economy. By comparison, the average annual salary in Nicaragua is about $1,200.

·         Cash-For-Life: There are a group of very smart people who have spent years researching the best ways to help people who are in tough economic circumstances.  Their results are far from definitive, but they have come to the conclusion that simply giving people cash is the best way to help them. Why? Because people know their needs, and those living on the edge generally spend money on the things they need the most.  These researchers feel that we could save a lot of money - and bureaucracy - by giving money, instead of implementing complicated programs laden with lots of red tape.  Our family feels that smart NGO's like Tololamos and others actually do a great job of identifying problems and dispersing funds in a equitable way with minimal overhead.  But just to test out these researchers theory, we made multiple, discrete cash outlays to various families - totaling about $800 - with no strings attached.  These people were extremely grateful, and we feel confident the money is going to necessities much more than desires.  

·         Bed-For-Work: We hired Yader's Dad Yader to make us a bed, hoping it would be a vast improvement on our first bed, dubbed by some "the world's most uncomfortable bed."  It never quite lived up to the hype from a comfort standpoint, but at $100 it is beautiful, and provided Yader with much needed income to support his family and bed-making business.

·         Bike Dreams: We provided Miriam and Carlo with $300 as a down payment on a motorcycle.  It's hard to say just how impactful a motorcycle can be for someone, but it can really make a huge difference.  Just think about how hard it is to get by where you live without a mode of transportation. Then add that thought to the following equation: Dirt roads + minimal public transportation + long distance to school x very few resources = I could really use a bike. So a bike is huge...

·          Helping Health: Your donations and material aid resulted in over $1,500 to support the local health clinic.  This included basic amenities like chairs for waiting patients and electric fans, to a variety of medical supplies including antibiotics, bandages, glucometers and much more.  For an insufficiently stocked local health outpost serving thousands of people each year, these contributions have been immensely valuable.

·         Clothes Encounters: Many of you donated clothes, valued at close to $1,000 in total.  You provided t-shirts, shoes, sneakers, pants, hats, sweatshirts, dress-shirts, and socks to local families, scholarship recipients, and students at Rebekah Rivas Elementary School.  A well-made piece of clothing goes a long way here - clothes take a beating so strong fabric is highly prized - and your donations won't wear off anytime soon.

·         Barking up the Right Tree: Donations from Harlan and Olle's School - Go Tucker! - toward the nursery (vivero) project led to $702 dollars raised through an old-fashioned coin drive.  That is enough money to buy 10,000 seeds, 6-8,000 bags, hire workers to fill the bags, improve the irrigation system, pay for someone to watch and care for the saplings, publicize the project, and offer tree varietals and planting advice to anyone in the community who wants them.  Wow! 

·         Does Compute: Many of you (including good old Tucker School parents and families) donated over 20 devices, valued at over $1,000, (laptops, smartphones and tablets) to be used by Tololamos in a variety of ways, including as gifts to high-performing students in local schools. 

·         Play Ball!: Between donations of soccer balls and baseball equipment (gloves, balls, hats) you helped provide over $500 worth of sports gear to a previously, very austerely outfitted baseball team and to several local elementary school gym classes.

·         The Human Race: As told in our last chapter, we helped put on the first ever race in Tololar to support the education, health and environmental work of Tololamos.  In all, thanks to you we raised about $2,000 and initiated what we hope will be an annual event fostering a more intentional community mind-set about the importance of health and exercise.

In addition to the financial and material support you all provided, your support of Familia Lundgren over the past year also allowed us to take part in so many great activities in the community. Here is a snapshot, in rhyme:

We helped plant yucca, in Nestor's field nearby

Sowing seeds, cultivating, and dodging cow pies

The corn harvest happens, once every year

And so in January, we cut maize from ear to ear

We served as judges in a battle of some singers

These students were real artists and man there were some ringers

We taught English class, twice a week for an hour

Some students learned a little, with others we were "wow"ered

(* for the purposes of rhyming, we feel that make-up words are cool)

We helped Adilsa at the library, learning Dewey Decimal

It may be kind of passe, but that system is no bull

We had a big Thanksgiving Dinner, as a way to thank our peeps

Miriam cooked a giant batch of pasta, people seemed to like it heeps

We instigated soccer games, every Sunday afternoon

They became a huge event, from September until June

Twice a month we showed a flick, different films every time

Everyone was welcome, and it didn't cost a dime

Most of all this year, we learned anew to love our neighbors

That we may be different on the outside, but our souls are just like theirs

Year Summary by Harlan Ray Keith Lundgren

This year has been an amazing mix of fun, sadness, hardship and learning.  I think in the end I will come away with a good experience.  In the end I have seen rewards, such as after hundreds of times going out to practice baseball with the group of boys, and after enduring months of teasing, the last Saturday here I made the Tololar baseball team.  We beat a neighboring community, Los Positos, in a big two games.  I have seen many rewards but am super excited to see the end.  It has been a good, hard year.

Summary by Olle Winslow Lundgren

In Nicaragua I have felt a lot and learned a lot.  One of the things was I learned how to respect other people and to respect the culture.  I have felt sad, happy, and missing the states.  This year has been hard.

Quote from Miriam

To feel understanding
Real
under standing
You must stand, for a long time
in the shoes of another person's life

It can be a tug,
a drudge
pulling us out of all sense of comforts
zones and placements

OH but to understand to really Understand
IS A GIFT.

So what do you say on the other side of everything? When you are looking backwards at hundreds of experiences and emotions, ready to return from whence you came? How can you encapsulate, in a paragraph, just how deeply, and painfully, and graciously, and thankfully you have felt during the past year? It can't be done justly, so perhaps simply noting the few key words that have been our allies and friends this year will suffice. 

We've learned what it means to have grace for ourselves and others.  We've experienced a deep connection with the other.  We've come to understand on a deeper level the power of community - a community that includes our new friends here and all of you back home.  We've had the opportunity to take a big risk, and are now reaping the rewards in so many ways.  We've seen faith in action, and we've felt acceptance.  We've had a chance to live a dream, in the midst of all its messiness, pain, and complexity.  We've witnessed the kindness of strangers, and seen strangers change into friends.

Today, we finalize this last update from the Camino Real Hotel in Managua, the same hotel our first update came from exactly 10 months ago. 

Last night, a farewell party was held on our behalf on Don Leonel's dusty patio/soccer pitch.  Sixty of our closest friends from the past year showed up, and we danced way into the night.  There were some beautiful comments made by lots of people - including Harlan and Olle, in Spanish - and lots of tears shed.  It was like we were trying to suck the marrow out of each moment, knowing that our time - for now - was up.

This morning we woke up at 5:15 am and over the course of the next hour, people started arriving, appearing from across fence lines, behind trees or out of the blue.  We were all tired, but every family member and friend showed up to say one final goodbye.  They brought a carreton (horse-drawn carriage) and we piled our 11 bags on top.  All the kids pushed and pulled the cart down the dusty road to the bus stop.  Twenty minutes and many tears later, we boarded the Mariano bus to León for the last time

Tomorrow, we leave a life we've loved, at times loathed and learned so much from.  We leave Nicaragua, for now.  Our goal is to return every year, continuing to build relationships with our new family and friends here.  In addition, we have been asked to join the Board of Directors of Tololamos. Thus, we are excited about investing our time, money and souls into this truly special little part of the world.   

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you ALL for being with us on this journey, every step of the way. 

We'll send an update once we've got settled back home in August (we're spending July with Miriam's family in Utah then driving back to Boston in late July) letting you know what it looks like from the other side and keeping you updated on the work of Tololamos in El Tololar. 

Enjoy your summer, your family, your friends...and your strangers.  Learn from the people you don't know, seek out those who are different, and search for community in even the most unlikely of places...it's there!

Que te vaya bien

Miriam, Cully, Harlan and Olle

P.S.  Click here for a compilation of photos from the past year.

The Chicharron Guy, Goosebumps, Run Forrest Run

The pepper, tomato, onion, banana, potato ladies can be found throughout Leon, but they tend to concentrate at bus terminals.  They seem perennially happy as they board increasingly crowded buses, selling plastic bags filled with 5 - 10 of each type of vegetable, each bag usually selling for 10-20 cordobas (we are currently at just shy of 30 cordobas to the dollar).  We have our favorites, like the young mother we buy our bananas from most days we take the Lisandro Santiago bus home to El Tololar.  At 10 cords, her bananas are priced right, and as long as we eat them within 2 days, they are quite tasty.  Some days we forget and buy our bananas elsewhere, and our vendor friend is always taken back and a bit miffed at us that we don't need yet another bag. 

In addition to the staple vegetable/banana ladies, we've made other food-based friends during our travels both through Leon and in El Tololar.  There are the fellas that sell us our fruits and other vegetables in the market that abuts the bus terminal.  We mainly buy from this one guy, but inevitably interact with his neighbors as well in halting Spanish, generally about soccer.  Harlan is often wearing some type of soccer shirt, and the guys get a kick out of ribbing him about his favorite team or player.  Our guy and Miriam seem to have a sort of cuisine connection, as she spouts out what we need (una bolsa de cebollas, tres pepinos, cinco zanahorias, dos sandias, y un ayote) and he moves like lightning, filling our shopping bags in rapid succession with our provisions for the week.

Other food friends include the ice cream guy (we generally have had our fill of sweets by the time we encounter him on the late bus but from time to time splurge on a cone), the soda lady (she sells soda (gaseosa) until the last cat is hung, often unaware that the bus has left the station, forcing her to disembark and walk back with a bucket of empty bottles perched precariously on her head), and, for lack of a better word, the "sweet, unhealthy cake" lady.  She is one of our favorites and although we have yet to buy even a smidge from her due what appears to be cakes made of pure sugar and fat (they are therefore probably delicious), we love watching her shuffle down the aisle, cracking jokes with a dead-pan face that slowly turns to a mischievous grin.

Our all-time favorite is the chicharron guy (he sells bags of peanuts and fried, dried pig's skin. We rarely buy the chicharron but love fist-bumping and talking with him every time we meet him on the bus - he's got a son in Miami).  He arrives in Leon every morning at about 5:00am, works the buses and streets all day long, and takes a late evening bus to the nearby city of Chinendega, arriving home around 9:00pm.  He has three kids, and works seven days a week exclusively to support them.  You can tell he's a selfless guy, he genuinely cares about other people, and if he lived in our town, we'd definitely have him over for dinner.  Despite the transient nature of our relationship, we consider Jose Manuel to be our amigo bueno. 

Most of the t-shirts worn in Nicaragua seem to be donations from the USA.  The majority are written in English, and they can be comical when worn by an unsuspecting Nicaraguan who likely doesn't grasp a particular slogan's significance.  There was the skinny tri-ciclo (3 wheeled-bike taxi) driver who haggled over a client's fair wearing a shirt that read, "Of course I'm right, I'm Italian!"  Or the giant, neck less weightlifter who looked like who could squeeze you in two. Somehow his countenance just didn't seem quite as scary when wearing a bright pink, incredibly tight t-shirt inscribed with the Finding Nemo quote "Just Keep Swimming."

Miriam and the boys came home last week to witness a gross yet impeccably-timed series of events.  First, they walked into the kitchen to find a large, dead rat on the floor (like, this was big) and our cat Mimi meowing proudly nearby.  Miriam grabbed it by the tail and began carrying it outside when Mimi ripped it out of her hand, took it behind the fridge, and began munching on its head.  Once the skull was gone, Mimi dragged the dismembered body out, clearly even prouder than before.  However, when she least expected it, Miriam snatched the body and again  began carrying it outside.  This time, right as she crossed our patio threshold to go outside, down came rolling off the roof the answer to our previous query about where our hen had been laying eggs, one dropping and cracking right in front of Miriam and the headless rat.  The egg roll moment must have been some sort of prophetic sign, and we are continuing to try and divine its deeper meaning.

Moments in life can be so fleeting.  We often see something happening and say to ourselves, "Oh, I'm too busy to experience that right now. I'll do it later."  But guess what, there usually isn't a later; later can just be a synonym for never.  Take the gorgeous, giant, white flower that bloomed one morning last week on the edge of Aciles yard, about twenty yards off the edge of our patio.  The flower was part of some type of cactus, and it opened wide to greet the 5:30 am sun.  We breathed and gazed in its beauty, and then said we'd go over later for a closer look.  But life happened, and by the time we thought of it again, it had wilted and withered away in the hot late-morning sun.  Do it..., whatever it is, NOW!

We've written on several occasions about the guadabarranco, Nicaragua's national bird.  They are stunningly beautiful - check out a picture here - and at times it can be unreal that there are so many of them living right near our house.  Many seem to congregate these days behind our home, in the trees that separate our yard from Adilsa's beans and Don Leonel's corn, and we recently found out why.  While heaving our usual daily double bucket combo (one pee, one garbage) into our waste pit one morning, low and behold what should fly out of a hole in the side of the ditch but a guadabarranco.  We had noticed a series of openings lining the hole's perimeter, and had thought they belonged to an iguana, or were perhaps the work of a dog digging for extra food.  But true to their name, the "guarder of the banks" had in fact been watching over our garbage hole, because someone needed to protect it from all those mangy dogs for sure.  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our sanitation bird is the discrepancy between its beauty and its surroundings, like a diamond in the rough.  Don't you just love when that happens? When something exquisite sprouts out of the most unlikely of places, astounding us while making us test our preconceived notions of how the world operates.    

Carlo and Miriam came by bearing five eggs last week, the work of our hen Malam, who has also begun laying eggs in the brush pile in their front yard.  Despite where they came from, they assured us the tiny eggs would be tasty - and they were! We got talking about what it was like a year ago, before we had arrived.  What did they expect our family to be like? What were they most nervous about? It turns out a few things.  First, they were embarrassed.  They knew we were a "wealthy" family from the US - we had paid them to build us a whole house for goodness sakes - and they felt we wouldn't understand the poverty they lived in.   They wondered if we would even be able to stay for a whole year, as life is so different in El Tololar vs. Massachusetts.  They told us about the last day before we arrived.  They were all running around like crazy, cleaning the house, cutting the yard, and putting the final touches on our home.  They didn't know us from Adam, but were willing to open up their lives to us, to take a chance on some strangers.  More than nine months later, we have collectively learned so much about each other; outsiders have become friends, the "other" has become "one of us." 

Update on Malam the Hen: After laying a few eggs at our house and then deciding Carlo and Miriam's dump was a better place for eggs, Malam has subsequently found a boyfriend, the big white, totally vain rooster who crows at all hours of the morning around our house and walks around thinking he's God's gift to poultry.  Somehow, our sweet Malam has taken a liking to him and they can now be seen sauntering around the yard together. They truly are an odd couple, and their union has resulted in Malam exploring other sleeping accommodations and leaving poor Pagi to roost all by her lonesome. Update #2: Turns out Malam had in fact been sleeping under a giant pile of brush that Carlo and Miriam had been piling up in preparation for a big burn.  After they torched it last Saturday (we made sure Malam wasn't fried) she lost her digs and has now taken to roosting once again on our patio.

Goosebumps are found, mostly on arms, all around the world.  They have a universal nature about them, and they don't distinguish between sex, religion, culture, or ethnicity.  Thus they are connective, binding, and relational. They tend to appear either during really frightening moments, or when some experience (listening, seeing, touching, feeling) or emotion is so visceral that it goes beyond the norm, touching a part of our soul that rarely gets touched.  Last week we had a party at Adilsa's house to celebrate four birthdays (Miriam, Harlan, Belkis, and Mariella) and to honor all the mothers in our midst (May 30th is the day in Nicaragua).  Before the party, we put on a song written by Tololamos Exec. Director Tyler St. Claire (he's kind of a jack-of-all-trades).  You can listen to the song here if you'd like.  As soon as Tyler began to sing, giant goosebumps appeared on both Adilsa and Cully's arms.  The bumps spoke for themselves, relaying in an instant so much about Tyler and his impact in the lives of others.

 

 Miriam and Cully have wanted to run a half-marathon every since hearing of the 11 1/2 laps that Tyler and Wilmar had run a few years back in the peanut field.  They knew they couldn't run it the day of the Tololamos race (last Saturday, more on that to follow) so decided to do it last Wednesday night.  They started at about 3:50 pm, meeting friends Yader and Fernando after one lap, and continued running for 13 laps.  It was a hot day (it kind of always is here) and after about lap five they were both feeling heat exhaustion.  But the sun began to go down, it got a little cooler, and they pushed on.  By the time they were done, they were completely spent. Yader, on the other hand, looked like he could go on forever and in fact did do an extra 14th lap just for kicks.  It wasn't easy, but they did the half marathon.  The cost? That night up through midnight both Cully and Miriam felt pretty ill, experiencing regular bouts of vomiting and nausea while they watched an early summer lightning storm roll in.  

We attended a ceremony at the local Catholic church in El Tololar last week.  It was the one-year anniversary of the death of our good friend Beto's grandmother.  We just missed meeting her before she passed, but we hear she was an amazing, caring, and powerful woman when she died at 100 (if you are that old in Nicaragua, you likely don't know exactly when you were born, but 100 seems like it was at least in the ballpark).  We entered the church, already sweating, and were ushered up to the front row.  There was a new priest up front, and he took the opportunity of seeing the family of gringos up front to begin peppering his homily with a variety of English words.  It turned out to be much shorter than most of the other 2-3 hour affairs we have attended at the church, and before we knew it we were outside eating sweet cornbread and drinking sodas, the requisite prepared refreshments for all the parishioners.  Prior to exiting the sanctuary, we had the chance to hug two of the woman's daughters (both in their late 70's or early 80's).  Both of the women we already knew in passing from riding the bus, but our attendance on this day clearly meant something special, and it felt good to support and connect in a meaningful way.  That feels good to all of us, doesn't it? Encouraging others in a time of need, and getting to know once strangers in a more profound way in the process.

Preparations leading up to the first annual Tololamos Carrera (race) last Saturday morning went according to plan - mostly - and were not unlike planning for a typical 5k race in the states.  First, three of us - really Cully and Miriam watching Yader - spent the morning before the race hacking weeds with a machete, raking leaves, and kicking cow pies off the race course.  Then, we borrowed Yader's Grandpa's oxen and hauled 50 rental chairs from Marisela's store to Don Leonel's patio.  Later in the day, Miriam went to Ivania's to help make 200 enchiladas and 200 fruit juices, while Cully and the boys helped begin positioning the items we would need for the big day close to the race course/peanut field.  Harlan interrupted us once during the day to see if we had an extra baseball kicking around, noting that his buddies had resorted to using a sour yet surprisingly hard lemon as their ball.  That night, we held a big final prep meeting at our house to finalize any last minute details, ranging from how much toilet paper to place in the latrines to where to place the bathroom signs.

Race morning dawned without a hint of rain in the sky, and by 4:30 the whole peanut field was a hive of activity with Telica volcano smoking in the distance.  Some volunteers were laying down chalk lines, others hauling water buckets, and still others carrying tables and chairs over barbed-wire fences to the rim of the peanut field.  La Doctora and three other representatives showed up from the Health Center, as did a group of awesome Spanish and Nicaraguan Volunteers carrying drums, tambourines, and face-painting supplies.

Miriam had made an excellent sign directing people to either Don Leonel's or Wilmar's latrines when nature called.  Unfortunately not long after posting a cow walked by and ate the sign, causing minor consternation on the part of runners with nervous bowels. In the end the first race for Tololamos went of amazingly well, and all told we had close to 300 attendees.  We had a 100-meter dashes in the 5-7 and 8-10 age groups. Next there was a one-kilometer lap for the 11-14 year-olds, followed by a 200-meter open dash.  The main event was a 5k (about), 5-lap race around the peanut field, won handily by our friend Marden who clocked in at about 6 minute miles.  Miriam and Cully were spent from their previous 13 lap event, but Harlan and Olle both entered the one-lap and finished respectably.  The race was the first ever in El Tololar, and really brought the community together around heath, education, and the environment. And, thanks to many of you, we were able to raise almost $2,000 for the work of Tololamos in the community. Thank you so much!!! If you'd like to see some photos and videos from the race, click here. For your viewing pleasure, we've even included a photo we took just yesterday of a scorpion eating a lizard on the side of Adilsa's house.

Save it in the Cloud, Yes Miriam-Sensei, The Magic Hour

The island of Ometepe is a jewel in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America. Ometepe means "two hills" in the local Nahuatl language (the indigenous population who once inhabited the island). It is comprised of two distinct sides connected by a rather thin strip of land about 3/4 mile wide in the middle.  It is a giant land mass that takes 4 plus hours to circumnavigate by car, truck or microbus, and slightly more by motorcycle, many of which are rented by tourists and subsequently smashed, due to the uneven roads and poor driving skills.  Each side of the island is adorned with its very own volcano, really not "hills" at all, Concepcion on the left as you look at it from the port city of San Jorge, and Maderas on the right.  We were staying on the Maderas side, so decided that we had to hike that particular - now dormant - volcano. Concepcion, on the other hand, is definitely not dormant and continues to smoke, gurgle, and bellow vapors on a regular basis.

We had been told that getting to the top of either mountain was a serious task, and that although Maderas was shorter by about 230 meters (1,394 in total), it was not easy to summit. We've hiked our share of mountains and volcanoes as a family so weren't concerned and as we headed out through the gently rolling cow pastures with our guide Anuar, we figured we had it in the bag.  Anuar's knowledge of the flora and fauna was impressive and there didn't seem to be a stone he didn't know about - including the one in the middle of a cow pasture that he said a giant boa lived underneath.  He showed us petroglyphs ( made 1,200 years ago by the Nahuatl) and told us that the bright blue chickens we saw on the fringes of farmers fields had been so painted to avoid being attacked by eagles, who apparently found blue an unsavory flavor. 

We came upon a family of Capuchin monkeys as we ascended.  They are more aggressive than their larger monkey relatives the howler, who we heard howling their eerie, haunting, yet beautiful bellow our whole way up.  Evidently the Capuchin do not like people - or anyone invading their space - and one flustered male started throwing sticks at us to be sure we moved along.  We saw tons of trees, including the giant Guanacaste (the national tree of Costa Rica) and the huge Ceiba (the Guatemalan national tree, and one of the star attractions in the movie Avatar).  Who knew trees could act?

We passed coffee plantations - one of which had been left to fend for itself when its owner died suddenly and thus was a bit worse for wear, sporting frail, broken leaves  - and came to a small river, which we found out was the principal water source for all the surrounding towns.  From the river, the trail went sharply up to the right, but that's an understatement.

In the states when we make trails on steep inclines, we generally employ the switch-back method, whereby the trail zigzags its way up, minimizing the incline one has to hike. Not so on Maderas;  there they take a "most direct route approach," fashioning paths straight up the mountain, regardless of steepness.  It was this trailblazing technique that made our hike difficult, as the next two miles up consisted of non-stop, hand-over-hand climbing on wet, slippery rocks, roots, and mud.  We were stinky and sweaty in no time, and marveled at how Anuar could stop, smoke a cigarette, and then continue on past us at a rapid pace, as if energized by the fumes in his lungs. 

We finally did reach the top, where we were gifted with a panoramic view of...clouds (Maderas houses one of the few cloud forests in Nicaragua).  But Olle and Harlan (kudos fellas, you earned that hike) were transfixed by actually being in a forest of clouds, and could have cared less that on that day there were no spectacular views to be had.  We opted for not taking the additional 3 hour add-on which involved hiking down into the crater lake that sits at the top of Maderas, and thus were able to descend to our hotel in a respectable time, completing the total hike in about 8 hours, albeit "surfing" much of the way down due to the mix of slippery trails, steep ravines on either side, and sneakers with no souls :).        

In the USA when a teacher is sick, a team of substitutes stand at attention, ready to take over duties for the day.  They fully understand - as do the students - that they won't be taken very seriously, but are generally able to administer some semblance of schoolwork, hand out bathroom passes, and admonish the occasional spitball shooter for the better part of 45 minutes.  Nicaragua doesn't have such a safety net, and when a teacher is sick, the kids are sent home for the day.  This, plus hiatuses from school due to excessive dust (especially in El Tololar during the dry season), torrential downpours, lack of electricity, and any of a variety of lesser-known holidays and teacher training days, means that students aren't getting schooled as many days as they should.

Last Wednesday, Miriam walked Harlan and Olle to school while Cully spent the day in Leon, looking to obtain gainful employment for our return trip.  They followed our usual route, passing several peanut fields, dodging cow, horse, and pig patties, and arrived at school 45 minutes later.  Olle's 4th grade class was running amuck, and Miriam soon found out from the headmaster, Samir, that Olle's Profe (Teacher) was home sick.  Samir suggested that Miriam could take over duties and at least play some games with the kids and in true Miriam fashion, she jumped - or danced - at the opportunity.  They started outside with stretches and jumping jacks, then moved inside for English class.  English went well enough, as students shouted out words (palabras) they knew and soon they had formed several  categories which they turned into basic sentences. Ding ding, class dismissed.  

At this point Miriam was informed by 25 students that it was time for PE. Thus they went back outside, held PE which included kickball, races, and tag, and then re-entered the classroom for a valiant attempt at a math lesson.  Unfortunately, only about half the students actually made it back into class and despite her best efforts, ten minutes into an attempt to teach the relatively new "lattice" multiplication technique, the remaining students had vanished, several remarking on their way out that it was now time for recess.  But big props to Miriam, 4th grade Profe in a Nicaraguan School, if only for a day.    

Random thought for the day: From a distance, it can be hard to distinguish whether you  are looking at a chicken's head or butt, until they decide to raise either body part and continue pecking at insects.

The rainy season has started, bringing with it a resurgence of ants (the dreaded hormigas) into every patch of ground, floor, grass, or garbage.  They have essentially encircled our house, as they had up through November, again building mini-cities, food depots, and possibly exercise gyms, as they are definitely fit and ready to bite.  We do our best to keep up with the daily hordes that stream onto our patio - often in search of Harlan and Olle's snack remnants - but we end each day on the losing side.  Yes, we have our little victories in some of the smaller skirmishes, like when Cully took down a large hill outside our shower with a frenetic blast of chemicals from our over-worked spray bottle, but we've got no shot at winning the war;  they reproduce like rabbits.

Speaking of rabbits, we finally came up with a solution for Rainer our white hare.  Rainer's hatred of Cully had grown so severe that the two could not be in the same space without Rainer attacking his lower extremities and Cully leaping, shrieking or running as if he'd just seen a ghost, or a mouse.  After several calls, the local Purina food and pet supplier in Leon managed to get a shipment of white rabbits - why, oh why is it always the white ones with pink eyes - and Cully stopped by one rainy afternoon to choose Rainer a mate.  The trip from Managua to Leon must have put a good scare into them - that and being in a small, stinky cage surrounded by weird humans - and their collective shaking and twitching made it difficult to determine who would be the best fit.  In the end, "being female" was our only real requirement.

The nice woman who helped Cully lifted the animal up to gendertruth ( a new but useful word, no?) its identity, and promptly plopped her in a box, where Shaky proceeded to wet the carton and the floor around her.  The employee made extra holes and loosely lined the box with plastic, all the while sneezing and likely wondering why with such allergies she had chosen to work so closely to animals, and 140 cordobas later Cully was walking toward the bus.  The ride home went smoothly enough, except for the fact that the downpour outside required that all the windows be closed, resulting in the always popular "sauna bus."  Rainer, henceforth forever housed in a hutch at Miriam and Carlo's house, definitely became the happiest rabbit on the block upon meeting his new mate; it was clearly love at first sight. As a bonus, Rainer's evil glares and feints at Cully now somehow seemed less angry and intense.

Our chickens Malam and Pagi are growing quickly, continuing to spend their days clucking and pecking over an area that spans across our yard and spilling over into Adilsa's, Aciles, and at times Esteban's patios.  Up until recently, no one had definitively gendertruthed either Pagi or Malam, but there was a growing consensus that Malam might actually be a rooster. This reality was hard for us to swallow, as it produced visions of boisterous, ear-piercing cock-a doodles every morning at an uncomfortably close distance to our house.  Were we ever relieved one night when Harlan, walking back from the latrine, asked why there was a broken egg laying directly underneath a roosting and clearly perplexed Malam.  Now that Malam is officially a hen, our new problem is finding where she has been laying her eggs, as three weeks later we only have the one cracked shell as proof.  We have tried to create other comfortable roosting places, and Olle is in the process of designing an egg-catching hammock to place under her current perch. But our best guess for now is that she is laying eggs on the thatch roof of our patio, a place she flies awkwardly to most days in search of insects.  As of yet, we've had no whiffs or wafts of rotten sulpher, but we're just waiting.

We've done a lot of things here in Nicaragua that we couldn't have anticipated before coming; planting and cultivating yucca, attending "the day of the dead," pursuing a life-size replica of Jesus down the street, and eating dried pigs blood delicacies as a snack (okay this was once, only Cully, and he didn't like it!).  But marriage counseling in Spanish was definitely not our list.  Yet somehow, last Thursday night we found ourselves imparting post-nuptial advice while seated at the dinner table, eating gallo pinto (rice and beans).  Clearly our credentials were lacking in several categories (fluency in native tongue and accreditation at the forefront) but in the end, the two and 1/2  hour session seemed to prove fruitful.  Much of our counsel focused on some of the communication skills we have learned to employ and found useful over our 13 years of marriage.  And while our conversation spanned multiple different angles and levels of their relationship, our advice could all be summed up with just two basic guidelines. First, when providing feedback to your partner, don't use the pronoun "you." This comes across as accusatory and it is better to start with "I feel like..."  This was definitely a new concept for our squabbling couple, as was our second, seemingly more obvious piece of advice, to not wave, point your finger, and vociferously gesticulate in the other person's face while calling them names.  They appeared to really appreciate most if not all of our suggestions, and we can only hope that our Spanish was sufficiently clear so as to help and not exacerbate their problems.

Many of our bus rides to and from Leon can be quite monotonous, although each one seems to hold some sort of interesting cultural, language, or weather-related incident.  Last Friday's bus ride back to El Tololar on the 4:30 pm Lisandro Santiago bus involved an interesting blending of several different chicken bus-related phenomena.  First, by the time we pulled out of the Leon station, the bus was packed to the gills.  This left Miriam and Cully, as often is the case, standing while Harlan and Olle sat squished between a variety of different body types and sizes.  Next, Harlan had been feeling pretty sick all day and a bouncy, sweaty, bus ride wasn't doing his stomach any favors.  Opening his window helped at first, but as a legitimate monsoon downpour started we were forced to close it.  Next, a small boy near the front began to cry as we turned down the dirt road to Tololar, and as he was passed among family members and to the next seat buddy, his screaming began to reach fever pitch.  At one point during the commotion, Adiac - the buses' outspoken and jovial cobrador (money collector) yelled from the back, in between making change for someone's fare, "Put him on a breast."  This comment as one would expect set off a variety of responses from other passengers, and it was only when the young boy and his flustered family disembarked that the bus quieted down.  The rest of the ride was much more sedate, except for Harlan's continued tummy problems and the venerable river rushing down the middle of the road, transforming Lisandro into more of a ship captain than a bus conductor.

Francisoco Martinez, Cesario Juarez, Kevin Castillo, Mayerling Escato, Dariana Urbina: these five students and many others were recent recipients of some of the clothes donated by many of you.  We collectively thank you very much.

You know those rare moments when you are engaging in some type of activity, and the stars somehow align, allowing you to go farther or longer or achieve more than you ever thought possible?  Harlan had one of those days not long back, while running in our peanut field.  He had set out to do a respectable six laps, which already would have bested his previous farthest run in his entire life, the five laps (miles) he had done the week before.  He was feeling good and before he knew it, five turned to six and six to seven.  It was early evening, and a soft, steady, warm rain began to fall, cleaning the air of dust and making for the ideal running conditions.  Eight, nine, ten, Harlan was still running strong.  In the end, he experienced a magical, almost transcendent moment, reaching 12 miles and more than doubling his longest run ever.  It's cool, right? When we realize that we can so often achieve much, much, more than we ever thought possible.  Way to go Harlan.

Olle recently invented an interesting game, made possible only by the abundant supply of flies occupying our house. The game requires 2 players (minimum) and two matar moscas (sticky sheets of paper that flies land and die on).  There are several variations, but really all you need is one player in the kitchen, for example, the other on the porch.  Each watches their matar mosca and calls out the updated # of flies whenever one lands and gets stuck. The highest # of dead flies wins.  On an extremely hot afternoon or dreary, rainy morning, it can be an excellent way to pass the time.  Thus far, our kitchen is beating our patio, by a lot!

In the middle of a flurry of activity this past Sunday - which included cleaning up from the previous nights rain storm, teaching class to the boys, attending to Harlan and his upset stomach, and making popcorn for the nights showing of the movie Sandlot - Carlo and Miriam dropped by, carrying a small, black, plastic bag. Inside, they dropped onto the ground not one but two coral snakes they had found (next to a pair of scorpions) in a pile of wood near their house.  Coral snakes are considered the most venomous of any snake in Nicaragua and even these small ones, a foot long at best each, could have ended any of our days.  Living near so many potentially dangerous animals can be a bit unnerving, and we thank Carlo for making things even a little safer. 

Thanks to all of you who have donated to the work of Tololamos through our upcoming running race on June 3rd.   If you haven't had a chance to learn more or consider donating to the event, please check here.  The cool thing about this race is that originally we thought it was going to be really small, with only 40 or so participants, as running, running events, and even exercise are definitely not a big part of the culture.  But thanks to some awesome publicity by Tololamos staff and volunteers, and a groundswell of interest by the public, we already have 150 participants more than a week and 1/2 before the race and are pretty sure with families, spectators and others, we will have 300 attendees.  It's a testament to the great work of Tololamos in the community in the areas of health, education, and the environment, and we thank you so much for helping make a real difference here in El Tololar.