Carlos knows his corn. Really. Our neighbor Carlos and his wife Miriam (yes, that’s her name too!) live kitty-corner across a field of weeds, 2 barbed-wire fence crossings, 1 pig, 2 chicken coops, and a latrine from us. As far as we know, our home will go to Carlos and Miriam when we leave, as it is on their property. When we arrived, one-inch high corn seedlings were barely visible in the field that surrounds our house. Now, six weeks later, the corn stands 6 feet high and takes up an area of about 40 yards by 20 yards, situated stage-right as you look out from our thatched-roof patio.
It’s a pretty small cornfield by local standards, but will provide enough corn for Carlos and Miriam to feed their animals for a part of the year, and make local corn tortillas and other maize-based culinary delights. Miriam works as a teacher at the local secondary school, a 25 minute walk from our house by the local road, a 20-minute walk by short-cut through the volcano-framed peanut field, or a 10-minute bus ride – depending on how much it rained the night before. Teachers here (like everyone who lives in the village and not unlike teachers in the US) are paid a paltry amount when compared to the incredibly important role they play in cultivating the lives of children. Miriam is the family’s principal breadwinner, and Carlos finds odd jobs and tends the garden during the growing season. They live on the edge and like most people here, don’t have extras for any entertainment or additional education or job-training opportunities.
But damn, Carlos knows his corn. The other day, he asked to borrow some of the chemical we recently purchased to murder (okay, just kill) the biting ants that are ever-present in the volcanic soil that surrounds our house. Apparently said chemical also works on worms (and wasps, spiders, various beetles) that can lay eggs in and eat the corn. Carlos probably has something like 1,000 stalks of corn. We said he could borrow as much chemical as he needed, but he said he only needed it for one stalk. We walked over with him and sure enough, down in between the leaves of one stalk were tens of tiny worm eggs. He sprayed the chemical and handed back the bottle. Only one stalk had eggs (out of 1,000 plus!), he knew it, and that was all he needed.
Using the bathroom(s) near our house is always an experience. We have generally 3 choices: A. The actual bathroom at our neighbor Adilsa’s house, replete with lighting, a sit-down toilet, a sink, and soap. Adilsa has said we can use her bathroom anytime, but she often has a lot of people staying there and at times it seems like an imposition. B. The latrine at Miriam and Carlos’s house. Of the two latrines it’s closest to our house and generally the cleanest. But, it sits in the open without any bushes or trees for privacy. At night it’s ok if you have a head lamp, don’t mind walking near the pig and make sure to not look down the hole, but during the day the door opens in full view of a hammock that Miriam and Carlos often frequent in the afternoons and at times on the weekends. Especially when they have visitors, it can take a lot of courage to walk over, say ‘Hola’, enter the latrine and then exit soon thereafter to a group of smiling faces. C. The latrine at Wilmar’s. From the outside it looks just like Miriam’s and has the advantage of being semi-secluded by small trees. It seemed like the best option when we arrived and even has a broom to sweep the floor when needed. However, during a recent sweeping session we found that the handle was infested with termites, giving the Miriam-Carlos latrine option the lead at least for the time being.
The bus stop near our house can be pretty muddy, especially during or right after a rain storm. That wouldn’t be so bad but the mud is usually mixed with loads of cow poop. This makes the intersection a haunt of various pigs (big and small) that live nearby, most of whom have two-pieces of wood forming an X around their neck as a way to keep them from getting through a neighbor’s fence and eating their corn. Sometimes, after a real heavy downpour, the pigs like to wallow in the muddy, poopy bus tracks that form in the center of the road. Getting to the bus stop involves taking a short-cut through the fence at the corner of Carlos’s corn, then walking down a dirt-road with knee-high weeds, a fair bit of horse droppings, the occasional iguana or small gecko, ants (always) and depending on the day, either one or two of Don Lionel’s skinny, white horses. Their is another barbed-wire fence at the end of the short cut that is pretty low but can be a challenge to get over without ripping your grocery bags when returning by bus from a Leon shopping trip.
Last weekend we were coming home from a walk. Olle needed to use the bathroom, and Cully needed to go buy eggs at the Venta. As we came to the bus stop intersection, about 50 cows were walking past the stop and on to a nearby field to graze. We were definitely at a crossroads, as we needed eggs (one direction) but Olle really had to use the facilities (the other direction). Our compromise was that Cully would get eggs, and Olle would wait till the last cow passed (a calf), and then follow behind him until he came to the bathroom trail. Somewhere we have a great photo of a nine-year old following the herd.
We brought the game ‘UNO’ with us from the states and it was unknown in Nicaragua. Maybe someday ‘ONE’ will catch on in the states. Bananagrams (Spanish-version) was also new to our neighbors and we have played several games, losing quite badly as expected but at times managing to write words like ‘taco’ and ‘hola’.
Our house is situated on Miriam’s property and the larger area includes houses for many of the patriarch, Don Lionel’s, family. There are about seven houses on the larger property, and an amazing array of fruit trees, especially at Don Lionel’s. He has a ginormous grapefruit tree that you can climb and “shake” fruit from whenever you get a craving. He also has at least two types of guyava tree (one with a fruit most comparable in size to an apple but much tarter, the other with small, greenish-yellow skin and a pink, seedy, inside). We haven’t yet taken a real liking to either. There are lots of other trees in his yard, including a ‘nancita’ tree (with really small, tart yellow fruit that all came down a couple weeks ago), a coconut tree, and at least ten papaya trees. Don Lionel says the papayas should be ready at the end of November and December. Some of the green fruit are huge and December can’t come soon enough to try them.
Fruit, like a lot of things on the property, are sort of communal. You can pick a guayava whenever you want from anyone’s trees and they are more than happy to share. If you get a craving for a specific flavor, it seems that there is always a bush or tree to match. Take spiciness. Last Sunday, Adilsa showed us a small bush not far from Wilmar’s latrine with tiny green, orange and red chilis. The red ones are ripe, and as Harlan found out the hard way, despite there size they should not be chewed and swallowed directly unless you are looking for stomach pains for multiple hours afterward. Picking the chilis also requires care, and on several occasions while picking we have found ourselves standing in the middle of a long, line of biting ants.
We met a woman named Maria just before church last week (a memorial service for a woman who had died seven months ago) who was incredibly sweet and said that after the service we had to stop by her house and try ‘repochetas’. At the time we didn’t know what they were but were game to try a new food. We were a bit tired and had been prepared to go home directly after the service for several reasons. First, Miriam and Olle had been eaten by mosquitoes while Adilsa introduced us to one of several local types of pear trees prior to the start of the service. Second, we had just sat through a long, very hot, two hours in Spanish that included multiple fly-bys by bats at the front of the sanctuary, no breeze whatsoever under the tin-roof building, and thirty-plus sessions of rising and sitting, rising and sitting with the rest of the congregation. Lastly, the chili pepper Harlan had decided to eat on our way to church had begun to take it’s effect and the regularity of his stomach complaints was increasing.
We arrived at Maria’s house and instantly recognized it as the place the Lisandro bus (we call the two main local buses by their driver’s names, the other being the Mariano bus) often stops to allow the ‘cobrador’ (the guy who collects money on the bus) to get off and order tortillas with ‘cuajada’. Cuajada is a local, homemade salty cheese that can be bought from a family on motorcycle who comes near our house weekly, or from one of the many small markets or ventas that many people set up in their house as a way to make a little extra money. Cuajada is a bit of an acquired taste, but doesn’t need to be instantly refrigerated and we have found it to be a delicious accompaniment and much-appreciated addition to the daily meals (mostly lunch and dinner) of rice and beans.
Maria and her daughter sat and talked with us (they absolutely were smitten with Harlan and Olle) while the daughter’s husband Carlos made us repochetas. They brought out cups of soda (Harlan has taken a liking to a local, bright red soda called Rojita, generally considered by the rest of the family to be the worst soda ever made) and plates of piping hot repochetas, deep fried tortillas filled with creamy and crispy cuajada and topped with more, locally made white cream sauce. Harlan’s stomach improved markedly after the meal, likely no thanks to the Rojita. Our family also decided then and there that our new favorite food is repochetas. We are looking forward to purchasing the ingredients this week from Marias in the hopes that we can recreate Carlos’s delicious, cheesy treat.
Food here can be a love-hate kind of thing. It’s easy to love rice and beans, and it’s easy to be a bit sick of them after five meals straight. Nacatamales are different and a less-frequent treat (at least for Miriam and Cully -Harlan and Olle haven’t warmed up to them yet). Last Saturday the nacatamale guy sold his food off the back of a truck with a loudspeaker. This week, his truck must have been in the shop. But that didn’t stop him. At 5:45am he showed up on the edge of our yard, without a speaker but with a voice loud enough to know what he was selling. This time he was on horseback, the nacatamales, wrapped in banana leaves and strapped to the side. Miriam and Cully were already up with the chickens doing our exercises and it didn’t take much prodding to find 60 cordobas (about 2 dollars) to order two giant nacatamales to be put aside for dinner.
Living in Nicaragua, you really come to like lizards. There are green and black iguanas that hang out in the trees and wood piles of some of our neighbors, and then the hundreds of smaller, gecko-type lizards. They generally hang out in the rafters and mind their own business, eating a steady diet of spiders, gnats, moths, flies, and other insects that would otherwise have the run of the house. They don’t usually come down to the floor level, thanks in large part to our adopted cat dulce who supplements her morning cat food with crickets at night and lizards during the day. Normally you know when a lizard is above you in two ways. First, they make a pretty loud clicking noise. Second, and thankfully less frequently, they poop. It’s not as common, but at different times the Lundgren family has likely all been hit by a ‘gecko-bomb’ at least once.
The water-flow challenges at our house have increased over the past week, in line with the arrival of October and the busiest of the rainy months. In general, the small rain and thunder storms that pop up most afternoons are not a problem if the rain comes down slowly. October has brought more deluges though. The rain-sweeping we do as a team helps, but generally fails to keep the water from going into our bedroom. If the rain is really heavy, there is a spot in the ceiling in each of the bedrooms that leaks onto the beds. Saturday Aciles, Wilmar, and Beto came over to help install a gutter system on the edge of the roof. After several attempts at shifting the angle of the gutter (basically a piece of sheet metal bent to the correct shape), a nasty looking lightning storm appeared on the horizon and dropped all we needed and more to test the new system. In general it seems to be a success, and we are so thankful to our friends for their help.
Friends have been helpful in so many ways. For the first 6 weeks we lived here, we did dishes outside, in the same sink we use to wash our clothes. That is not normal, but it just took a while to get a sink up and running in our kitchen. For 2 days this week, our friend Aciles has worked tirelessly to build us a sink, inside. Sinks stations here are made from scratch and except for the aluminum sink itself, Aciles built the sink foundation. He built two brick walls on either side of the faucet, then put a layer of cement over those. For the top, he used pieces of rebar and a wood frame to build the place where the sink will sit. He used a cool local, tool called a caliche to pour cement in hard to reach areas. He dug a hole in the brick wall for the water from the pipe to flow outside Wala! We finally have a sink.
Miriam has intermittently played all sorts of roles since we arrived: cook, clotheswasher, pilates/yoga teacher, gardener, soccer and baseball player, etc. In another life she also could have easily been a doctor or a nurse. Take last Saturday. A soccer game had just started at Don Lionel’s. Not five minutes in, Miriam came walking down the path with her hand on Leo’s head. Leo, one of Harlan and Olle’s best friends here, had run into the low roof that juts out from the corner of Don Lionel’s house. He had a small but rather deep gash on the top of his head, and it was pretty bloody. Miriam took charge, ordered different ones of us to run and get hydrogen peroxide, gauze pads, band aids, antibiotic ointment. She was cool as a cucumber, keeping Leo and his Mom calm as well. In the end it was agreed that stitches were not necessary and that liquid band-aid and a slight shave of the head would work the best. Leo didn’t participate in the rest of the soccer match – which turned out to be a marathon, two-game affair – but he was ready to go the next day thanks to Miriam.
Today is a slow morning, and we are hoping to have neighbors over tonight to watch a movie on our patio. Miriam made six batches of popcorn for yesterday’s showing, which was canceled due to the rain storm. Two of the popcorn bags were eaten by one of the many, oft annoying, dogs that frequent the area (and our kitchen if we don’t lock it). Carlos was over earlier to start ‘macheting’ the lawn. Every bit of work can be helpful to he and Miriam, and we are going to pay him for six hours work to finish cutting the lawn tomorrow. Harlan and Olle are playing next-door with Leo. The rain has come in force the past week which is awesome for all the farmers. Carlos just walked by, checking his corn for worms.
Corn update: Two days ago, we had a very rapid but strong thunderstorm come through at about 5pm. The entire storm only lasted 20 minutes or so but for a hairy five minutes the wind was intense, our two hammocks swinging around and around like pinwheels. Miriam spent the storm next door at Adilsa’s as she got caught there while helping her bring her clothes in from the line. The tall corn near our house suffered the most, a large swath of it bending steeply towards our house. Carlos was out checking it even before the storm ended. The initial diagnosis was not good, and there were fears that a fair bit of the crop may have been lost. But yesterday, all day long, there was Carlos, tenderly attending to each stalk. He took a shovel, pulled up nearby dirt, patted it around the base of each stalk, and pressed it down with his feet. That, plus a bright sun, helped most of his corn to rise again. In fact, that one storm knocked corn over all across the region. Yesterday and possibly again today, our family is having the chance to participate in helping to give new life to corn, one stalk at a time. We are helping in Don Lionel’s field, wearing long sleeves to avoid being cut by the sharp corn leaves. It feels good to help, and it’s a powerful education for all of us, to understand more viscerally how close our Nicaraguan family lives to nature, and to the edge of having and wanting.
We wanted to extend a huge thanks to everyone who has supported our trip financially, through prayer, good thoughts, or simply an interest in this journey. As we learn Spanish and plug in more deeply here, we will share more stories of how your involvement is making a difference in people’s lives, especially ours!
Spolier Alert: Ivania, from our last update, is hopefully getting a horse soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment