JAWS, Roadside Jesus, Doggie-Paddling - Lundgren Family Update #15

JAWS, Roadside Jesus, Doggie-Paddling

Driving home from dropping our good friends off at the airport in Managua, we stopped at a little Comedor – basically a kind of small, street-side restaurant that serves up plates of chicken, rice and beans, with the occasional entree option of beef or pork. We were all pretty famished and the heaping plates not only looked good but were tasty, rating pretty high on our local food barometer. We’ll give it three out of four estrellas (stars). Prior to eating, we asked where the bathroom was and were ushered in through a small door connected to the restaurant. The bathroom was tiny, and strangely situated in the corner of what looked like both a garage and a church worship hall. There was a station wagon, hearse-type vehicle in front of the bathroom, and the rest of the long, narrow room was filled with white fold-up chairs, a make-shift altar and a bathtub that must have been for baptisms. In Nicaragua there exists such a fluidity and connection between all sorts of spaces. Back home it seems that the boundaries between places and properties are delineated much more clearly, but also more rigidly. Here, for example, the inside of your house is not so removed from your front yard, a restaurant and a church can almost be one in the same, and the place you buy your food staples is the front living room of someone’s house. There’s something inviting and welcoming about this approach to living with others that resists being defined or limited, something that is not readily measurable. It seems to say, “come on in and let’s talk and get to know each other without bringing our preconceived baggage, because guess what, yes this is my house, but it’s also my restaurant, my business, and the place I worship.” “I am many things, and have many layers and so do you, so let’s get to know each other.” Welcome!

Volcanoes evoke power and strength while inspiring fear and trepidation. But usually they are far away from us, standing only as silent witnesses and seers to the devastation they once wrought and the destruction they might unleash again at any time. They are also creative forces, breaking down and building up, covering and then unearthing. Nicaragua has something like 26 volcanoes, a good portion of which are considered active, including Telica and San Cristobal -the country’s largest mountain at 1,750 meters – both of which are always watching us when we walk to school, or run, or ride the bus to Leon. Masaya is both the name of a small city south of the capital Managua and of a large volcano, one of the more active ones in Nicaragua. It is so active, in fact, that you can actually look down into the enormous crater and see red hot lava, spurting, frothing and looking every bit as mean as you would expect thousand some odd degree lava to look. Either because it’s so spectacular (or possibly so dangerous) each vehicle that drives up the mountain gets 5 – count em five - minutes to explore the crater’s rim. We drove up last Tuesday at just past 4:30pm, passing a panorama of volcanic rock and magma residue from previous eruptions, nine of us spilling out of our absurdly large micro-bus rental (the only size that would fit our party was a 16-passenger Toyota Hiace) as we raced to make the most of our cinco minutos of viewing time. Approaching the rim we peered over the fence, expecting a rush of red liquid to engulf us and our van, Pompeii-style. Instead we were greeted by a gorgeous crater and farther in, deeper into the its gut, we saw lava - real, live lava. It was a pretty special experience, and it was a true bummer when the park guard/stopwatch lady began waving her hands that our time was up. But it’s all good because now, we’re all lava whisperers.

“We might see Jesus on our walk home,” remarked Cully as we left our friend Ivania’s house after having dropped off some donated clothes that many of you have been kind enough to send. Thank you!

In fact we had seen Jesus on our walk to Ivania’s, replete with a crown of thorns, a purple robe, and of course a cross. He had been standing idly under the porch of one of our neighbors, surrounded by cows, waiting to begin his march to the church. We caught up with him almost in front of Yader’s house, now being carried by four strong men (including Yader and his brother Fernando). A women was standing in front of Jesus reading some words we couldn’t hear, and as the small procession of some thirty-odd people passed us, we saw the afternoon light shining down and reflecting off the cross. All along the dirt road, people were sweeping and raking garbage and leaves and then burning them, cleaning the road for the procession and leaving a dry, earthly fragrance in their wake. Others were setting up chairs and throwing water on the road so that Jesus and his bearers could stay semi dust-free. The procession continued past us, a small but committed band of followers, proving very adept at dodging oncoming trucks (two), motorcycles (three) and a herd of cows (like thirty). Their walk to the church was hot and dusty and not without obstacles, but they persevered with a faith you could sense but not see. We are told the same parade plays itself out every Friday at about 4pm up until Easter, and there is a good shot we’ll see the Via Crusis play out again.

Lake Nicaragua is the largest body of water in Central America and depending on your viewpoint, it can look like a real ocean, at times even sporting mini-waves that you could almost ride. It spans much of the southern part of the country, and has all sorts of cool places to hike, swim, kayak, and just chillax. The city of Granada (one of the oldest colonial cities in Central America) sits on the lake’s shore and it’s not hard to find a guide who will take you on a tour of Las Isletas, some 365 small islands that stretch out from Granada’s shores in a mini-archipelago. Most of the islands are pretty tiny but what they lack in size they make up in panoramic excellence as they are framed by cool sounding volcanoes like Mombacho. Lots of the islands are home to Nicaragua’s rich and famous (there are a fair few of them, including the Pellas family who has interests in the national beer (Toña) and the national rum (Flor de Caña)) and you can meander through and among the islands on a motorboat or by kayak. We took the motorized option for a 1 1/2 hour tour which we were pretty happy about, especially after we found that the lake is home to the Lake Nicaragua Shark, a relative of the saltwater bull shark. This crazy fish has figured out a way to leave the ocean, swim up a nearby river and literally ‘leap’ into the lake. They get up to 5 meters in length, and are considered one of the more aggressive types of sharks. AND THEY’RE IN A LAKE! But for anyone coming to visit, don’t worry, there have been very few attacks:)...so far.

In December, a new handmade bed arrived in our front yard, hauled by Yader, Fernando, and a horse. The same trio delivered a new dining room (our open-air patio) table a couple weeks back, but this time out of the blue. Like, who does that? Just delivers a new table to your house, unannounced and ready to eat off? The Valdivia Rivas family, that’s who. Perhaps they realized our need when we had them over for dinner in January and attempted to fit eight people around our dinky coffee table. Or it may have been during one of our monthly movie nights, when they marveled how our little mesa could balance four 3-liter bottles of black, red (the nasty stuff), orange and green sodas, 10 bowls of popcorn, and a DVD player. Either way, the freshly delivered table, made by Yader’s dad Yader, is massive in comparison, handcrafted out of black pine and currently used to eat, play cards, fold clothes, and study on. Now our problem is our chairs, which in comparison to the table make our entire family look like little munchkins when we eat.

It only seems fitting that our most recent injury happened to Harlan, who severely jammed his left index finger while wave riding at Pone Loya Beach. We think his finger rammed into his brother Olle’s hip, as if Harlan was pointing at Olle to move aside to allow for a smooth ride to shore. Miriam splinted it with a popsicle-stick thing, but given its location near his growth plate, we decided to seek a doctor’s advice. Miriam and Harlan’s medical consult adventure involved making a series of appointments with multiple doctors and offices. The first clinic they tried had no orthopedic doctors on hand, while the second they found only by chance after receiving three sets of conflicting directions. There they made an appointment with Doctor Rafael Cruz for the next day at the Ruben Dario Clinic (Dario, a poet, is given almost Saint-like status in Nicaragua), but in the meantime followed a lead to the Centro de Imágenes Diagnósticas San Sebastian where they were told they could get the finger x-rayed. Unfortunately, prior to x-rays they were required to actually have a medical consult and thus had to leave the deliciously air-conned office, cross the street, and wait for one hour to be seen by Dr. Carlos Lopez. After a quick examination of the digit, Miriam and Harlan re-crossed the road to get the x-ray. The chickens then crossed the road again to get to the other side and have the x-rays read by Dr. Lopez, who diagnosed a break after reading the x-ray, then re-re-referring them to yet another doctor who was said to be equipped with the proper casting materials. They were at this point almost done, only needing to pay for the third time, visit another doctors office across town where the diagnosis was changed from break to jam, and pay for the fourth time in about three hours - Easy-Peasy. In the end, Harlan’s finger could be found wrapped securely in the popsickle sticky thing, gauze and tape, exactly as Miriam had dressed it in the first place. But on the up side, Miriam and Harlan were successful in virtually geo-mapping every orthopedic-related office in the Greater Leon area in record time.

One Sunday morning, we had a cow break. The usual early rising animal suspects are our cat, rabbit, two juvenile chickens, Adilsa’s two dogs, Don Leonel’s 2 or 3 horses, Miriam and Carlos’s 5 pigs, the occasional errant rooster, a once in a while wild skunk, and one or more of our neighbor Esteban’s nettlesome dogs. But bovines never swing by our house. On this particular day, we were holding school at our home, rare for a Sunday but necessary in order to catch the boys up with the school they missed (they weren’t complaining!) during consecutive visits by beloved friends. We noticed a cow grazing nearby, and didn’t think much of it until Carlos came through our patio, shooing it away. Whatever it was munching was clearly off limits. Next Aciles came by, tossing rocks and using a stick to motivate her to mooove on. He did this twice, and then Harlan and Cully, in the middle of Chapter 30, Unit 4 of Math Class – Solving One-Step, Real World Problems - decided to put their learning to the test. Harlan grabbed a broom and Cully a couple rocks. Using a team approach, they came at her from opposite sides, the wildly waving broom and flying rock combo doing the trick initially. She came back four more times during math class, twice with the intention of eating Adilsa’s nearby nascent banana plants, and each time she left for five minutes before returning. Only when Adilsa returned on her motorcycle and brought down the hammer (don’t mess with Adilsa when a cow is eating her garden) did Bessie move on for good.

We used to like dogs...really. In fact, prior to coming to Nicaragua, we liked them a lot. Both Miriam and Cully had dogs as pets growing up, and still have fond memories of playing fetch, being met at the door by a wagging, slobbery friend, or going on long walks with a faithful companion by your side. Things have changed for a couple reasons. First, dogs are literally everywhere in El Tololar. They are usually scrawny, not well cared for at all, and pretty stinky. They’re scrawny because they are lucky even to get leftover table scraps, and thus are always scrounging for food. This means that on any given day, 5-10 different dogs are lurking at the edges of our yard, waiting for the right opportunity to make a dive into our garbage pit, where admittedly they probably find some pretty good chow. We still try to shoo them away when we can, but it’s tiring grabbing a slingshot and a rock ever half hour so they often have free reign in our hole. Existing in a constant state of starvation also makes them desperate, and often downright mean. About 1 am on a recent full moon night, Cully awoke to hear a whole lotta shaking going on in the kitchen. Rainer our rabbit had thankfully slept outside under Aciles latrine that night as he is wont to do, so the kitchen commotion was all the more perplexing as we were sure (pretty sure) we had locked our kitchen door. Not. Upon opening our bedroom door, two of Esteban’s dogs (oh, how we loathe them) sprinted out of our kitchen with either very guilty looks or sly grins, fortunately only having eaten six eggs. Doggy desperation for food also leads to aggressiveness, and there are times when it’s not a stretch to ponder that they could easily jump from egg/scrap eaters to human flesh eaters. On a recent 3:30 am walk to Ivania’s house, in fact, Miriam almost experienced this dietary shift first hand as she was all but eaten by literally every dog that lives along the dusty road between our homes. Few of them, and certainly not Cujo the giant, black, ferocious killer dog, were at all dissuaded by her shouts and swings with the long, hard broom handle she was carrying. Result – no more morning walks to Ivania’s to cook enchiladas for Miriam, as clearly walking softly and carrying a big stick only worked for Teddy Roosevelt.

Before we left Boston, we partnered with the boys’ school (big props to Tucker Elementary!) to do a computer drive for Earth Day. The drive resulted in some 15 donated computers and smartphones, and earlier this week two were given to the top performing students at Lechecuago Secondary School. It’s hard for us to truly appreciate the value of a second-hand computer, but to an aspiring student here with very little money, they are a game changer. Each computer came updated with lots of software, including Rosetta Stone (English), and the two recipients were over the moon. Cully was asked to give a short speech in front of the 400 student auditorium, and lets just say he’s got some more Spanish studying to do :). But, it was edifying to see one of our favorite expressions (Small Investment = Big Impact) play itself out once again here in Nicaragua.

One of the flagship programs for Tololamos is the Vivero (tree nursery) Project. It’s first year was 2013, when they planted some 10,000 tree saplings and donated more than 8,000 to any community members who wanted them. This year, the project is ramping up again and we have been fortunate to be a part of it. We helped fill some of the more than 6,000 planting bags with soil, then last week we helped plant seeds in the bags. The planting part is a lot less labor intensive than the filling part, and it has been an education in horticulture for all of us. One the first day, we helped plant some 8 different species of trees, including ones with cool names like acacia amarilla, madero negro, cortez negro, and laurel macho. We subsequently helped plant four additional types of seeds, including orange, tamarindo and both red and yellow marañon, the seeds of which Miriam and Adilsa gathered together from trees near our house earlier this week. The project is a great example of a Public-Private Partnership, as the seeds and bags are donated by the Ministry of Forestry, while the funds and the labor are provided by Tololamos. The cool thing is, more trees means less dust, healthier soil, cleaner lungs, less chronic health problems and ultimately a more productive local ecosystem. If all goes well, the saplings should be ready by the end of May. Come swing by and get one if you can :)

Up until early this year, there was a sizeable market near the Cathedral (the largest in Central America) in Leõn. The market filled a whole street and stretched from the cathedral (the Spaniards ensured there was one every couple blocks) almost all the way to Calvary Church, a few blocks east. Then one day, as with the the post office, it just disappeared. Poof. It was a bit perplexing, because there were hundreds of vendors there, serving everything from shoes, to jewelry, to all sorts of comida tipica (local food). Actually, a part of the market remained as the tens of small Ferreteria (hardware) stores that lined one side of the street were still there. Naturally, we were curious what had happened (this was how hundreds of people made their livelihood every day for goodness sakes). After a bit of searching, we found our answer. A whole new indoor market had been built in a massive space next to the old street market (not readily visible from the street) and there you could find familiar faces and smells, all watched over by a Mary and a Jesus statue, each supervising the daily transactions from on high. One more thing about market places; why is it that stores selling the same stuff (shoes, bikes, clothes, hardware) all congregate in one place? Kind of like the Burger King/McDonalds/Wendy phenomena, stores with the exact same stuff (at least Mickey D’s and BK have the Big Mac and Whopper to differentiate themselves, and Wendy’s has that stuff they call chili) sit next to eachother all throughout Leõn, seemingly relying on luck and the caprices of their clients to shop with them instead of their next door neighbor. An economist would say it’s because of economies of scale and concentration, but we’re not so sure...

Lessons we’ve learned, Part I:

A) You’re not supposed to stick cotton swabs in your ear they say, but come on, we all do it, right? The thing is, usually, if you’re successful, they come out yellow. Here the yellow is coated in black, from orifice dust, so you should use a second Q-tip to make sure you get the wax.

B) Always shake out your shoes before putting on, both because it will keep your freshly laundered socks a little cleaner, and it can prevent scorpion bites.

C) Sweeping is useless. The floor will just get dirty again, so why sweep at all?

D) Sleeping (or trying to) is also useless at times. Inevitably, at that precise moment between wakefulness and slumber, Murphy will make sure that either a rooster will crow, a dog will bark, an errant bug will hit your mosquito net, or (much more rarely) an earthquake will shake you awake. It’s a given. Sleeping pills do help, but only a little.

E) Still trying to figure out what is harder, the rainy or dry season. If you were a mathematician, would this equate: gnats + ants + flies + sweeping water at midnight + moldy rooms and clothes + pig-infested puddles + power outages = crazy heat + no water + constant sweat + more scorpions + wind-driven dust + allergies.

Thanks for Reading!

Making Out with Strangers, Maria Hirez, Sex Education - Lundgren Family Update #14

 Pulperias are stores, often tiny ones, that sell all sorts of things you might need in a pinch: ice, eggs, rice, beans, soda, hammocks, cheese, milk. They are like mini-marts, but usually operate out of someone’s house and so you get the bonus of buying your victuals while saying hi to grandma in the nearby rocking chair, “Buenos Dias, Abuela!”, or seeing a lone teenager at the back of the store working on their homework assignment in the fading afternoon light. On a recent run by Pulperia Stefany, a small beach-side shop not too far from our house, a serious logging procedure was underway. In fact, it was a de-logging operation as ten men were cutting down a tree that was growing out of the middle of Stefany. Who knows why the little market allowed a tree to remain in her midst for so long -perhaps the owners just liked trees - but clearly the time had come to cut it out. And so the men chopped, cut, pulled and lowered, using big tools and a lot of teamwork. Watching the activity going down that morning brought a thought to mind; we are sometimes like Stefany. Little things start to grow inside us, like tendencies, insecurities, anger, or fear. We let them grow because they’re small and we think we know how to manage them. But they get bigger and bigger, and soon grow through the roof, breaking things and shattering our sense of self in the process. But we continue to let them stay, because now removing them is a lot of hard work and energy, and besides, it requires the help of others - and we just don’t like to ask others for help. But imagine if we could live without the tree through our roof, the hole in our heart, or the pain in our soul. Imagine if we could enlist the help of friends, some sweat equity, and a lot of hard work, to uproot the trees that hold us back in life. Thanks for the lesson, Stefany.

Transitioning to a new environment can be hard. We recently spent almost two weeks at the beach near our house with some really awesome friends (Thanks Anthony’s, Mardi, Chris and Jen). They blessed the pants off us, pampered us, and cooked us really great food. We will never be able to thank them enough. But the beach environs were so different than our house in the village that at first the change was a bit jarring, but in a good way: “you mean there aren’t any tarantulas here, really?”, we said. “We don’t have to wash our laundry by hand?” “We’ll be eating more than just rice and beans, do you really mean it?” The whole experience was amazing, and perhaps there was only one element that reminded us of our village home. Cully and Miriam woke up on successive nights in their gorgeous bedroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They each heard some squeaking and scurrying, all too familiar sounds that could mean only one thing... Ratones!...but where? Confounded, they looked up at a star-lit shadow on the wall. If you’ve never seen it, the apparition of mice marching to the light of the night, when projected in just the right way, can be really scary, particularly because the tiny mice look like giant, man-eating rats. We never found the mice, just their shadows, but a plethora of poops on the porch confirmed it wasn’t a dream.

The reverse transition, from beautiful ocean-view to hot, dusty village life is also difficult. Upon returning from our stint at the beach we were welcomed by a slew of new friends that had taken up residence in various quiet corners, dark places, and hard to reach nooks in our house. We awoke a sizable scorpion when opening our kitchen window while we whacked another hiding underneath a suitcase in Harlan and Olle’s room. Miriam encountered a good size mouse near the suitcase scorpion, and not long after a large tarantula on the wall near our pee bucket. Some giant feces were also sitting on top of our mosquito net, an indication that the iguana we had previously seen under our roof was likely still there. Lots and lots of dust from two weeks of blowing wind needed to be swept out (we have found it’s hard to sweep dust with any efficacy when the wind is blowing), while cobwebs in our rafters and bugs in our clothes required removal. The considerable cleaning operation, plus the realization that we were back to a life full of wind and dust, and lacking in water, gave us a moment to consider our local friends and neighbors, who have to deal with these situations every day and every season.

PO Boxes are very useful when you are living overseas. In fact, since we’ve been here we’ve received all sorts of packages and goodies from friends and family back home, all addressed to: Familia Lundgren, Apartado 324, León, Nicaragua, Central America. Most boxes have actually arrived, albeit with travel times ranging from 1 ½ weeks to 2 months. Recently, that may have changed, at least for a moment, with the curious case of the disappearing post office. Last week on one of our weekly trips to León, Cully stopped by the post office to check on the latest arrivals. He was greeted by an almost entirely empty building only occupied by several women sweeping and washing the floors. It turns out the post office had up and moved without notice, pushed out by the rather angry owner of the premises who seemed miffed by the deterioration that had occurred to her rental property over the many years of occupancy by the PO. She kindly directed Cully to the new location, located 4 blocks east and 1 ½ blocks north, where Cully promptly encountered several rather disoriented looking workers, clearly out of place in the new, much tinier environs. The women who gives us our mail, known as the ‘package lady’ to the Lundgrens, was at the bank and noone knew when she would be back. Perhaps more disconcerting was that PO Box 324 was not among the wooden boxes that had been stacked rather haphazardly near the entrance. It seems that in the hurried move, 324 had gone on a walkabout and had yet to return. A second trip to the León PO by Familia Lundgren didn’t produce any better results, and we can only hope that someday soon, when ol’ 324 has had enough sightseeing, she’ll return to her new home.

Our chickens are growing up quickly, fueled by a daily diet of trigo (wheat seeds), cooked rice, insects and spiders. Our chickens are also getting tough, because they have to fight the dogs, other chickens, and our bunny, all whom try to eat their food every time we cast it on the ground near their coop. As they’ve grown, they’ve also taken to roosting on one of the three eucalyptus beams that span the top of our patio. In general the new beam-roosting technique is great, except when they choose the beam that sits above our mini dinner table (measuring 28 L x 18 W inches, and standing 2 feet high) as that inevitably results in playing musical-meal-chairs to avoid the intermittent droppings.

“That dog just peed on our clothes”, quipped Miriam one morning as a nearby dog sulked away after marking his property. “Was it Sally or Fuera?”, asked Cully. “No, it was one of Esteban’s dogs”, replied Harlan. “Then he’s going down”, said Cully, as he reached for his trusty slingshot, used to scare away a variety of animals, mostly dogs and nosy chickens, on a frequent basis. “No, I like that dog, he’s a good one”, said Harlan. “I don’t care who he is,” answered Cully, “he can’t be peeing on our clothes.” Harlan’s further imploring did little to deter Cully, who launched a piece of concrete in the dog’s general direction, missing wildly as usual and likely only emboldening the dog for future apparel peeing sessions.

We recently attended a mass at the local Catholic church, the fourth such service we’ve attended since we arrived. This one was the one year-out memorial service for Rosa, the wife of Mariano, our favorite driver of the green and white 6:55am bus from El Tololar to León. Memorial services are common here, and generally follow the same program: start 30 – 45 minutes late, women sit in pews while men stand idly in the rear, sermon that can’t be heard by the always sweaty priest, the casual appearance of bats, snakes or dogs in the sanctuary, and several worship songs with a somewhat out of place zydeco beat. This service was enhanced further by its occurrence in the middle of the dry, windy season, thus accompanied by loud, beam creaking gusts and waves of dust entering the church through the long, open windows on either side. Congregants generally dress to the hilt, even if it’s not on a Sunday, and it’s always surprising to see how people can look so beautiful and put together when their reality is dust, dust, dust. At the end of the service, it is customary to go up front and pass on condolences to the family members. Our good friends Kelly and Imran Arshad from Canada were visiting us at the time, and several of us walked up front to pay our respects to Rosa. Nicaraguans are so gentle, kind, and accepting that it seemed totally normal for us to walk past a line of nine sitting women who we didn’t know while hugging and kissing each one on the cheek. They accepted the actions of strangers, even if we weren’t necessarily following local protocol, genuinely receiving our awkward embraces and ill-timed kisses in a mutual gesture of humanity and connection. They made us feel a part of their community.

But sometimes, especially when you’re meeting Donia Maria Hirez for the first time, hugs aren’t met with quite so much openness. Cully and his amigo Imran (from Canada) had dropped the kids and wives off at Rebekah Rivas elementary school, where the Lundgren and Arshad children were attending school one Monday morning. They walked to a nearby, somewhat dilapidated house where 97-year old Maria Hirez was said to live. In fact the Lundgrens had passed by her house previously but only her son had been home. For some reason, he reminded Cully of his own cousin Randy, who lives far away in Vermont. You know how that happens sometimes? Two people, from totally different contexts and worlds, remind you of each other? Sometimes it’s because of their looks, but it’s more often because of their souls. Randy has a really good soul, and so did Maria’s son.

This time, Maria was at home, sitting in a chair with a walker in front of her. Her son (never did get his name, we’ll call him Antonio) ushered us in, and Cully quickly walked over to Senorita Hirez. After the church hugging/kissing experience from a few days before, he felt confident that giving a big hug and smooch at first greeting was the way to go. But upon leaning in, Maria pushed away and was having none of it. She quickly explained that it was not her custom, partly because she didn’t grow up that way, but also because she was mostly blind (cataracts) and couldn’t see who was this embracing/smacking stranger. After the initial shock Maria warmed to us, especially to Imran, who she asked to repeat her name at least four separate times. Imran has always been good at languages and even though he had been in Nicaragua for less than a week, his vocalization of Maria Hirez clearly rolled of his tongue and pleased Maria, who kept saying that Imran’s pronunciation was far superior to Cully’s. Antonio confirmed the high caliber of Imran’s Spanish, as did her nephew Santos, who was sitting off to the side, chain-smoking and drinking a local moonshine at 10am in the morning. They talked for a good twenty minutes, with Maria either reminiscing about the good old days or dismissing Santos with a wave of her cane every time he made an inebriated wisecrack. The conversation then shifted to the actual purpose of their visit….jicaro carvings. Until her eyesight had deteriorated sharply over the past couple years, Maria had been an exquisite carver and artist of jicaro, a strange, hard, green fruit that can’t be eaten but can look absolutely beautiful as a bowl, a cup, a spoon, or even a Christmas ornament. Maria asked Antonio to open up several bags of her past work, scattering the now dusty but ornately carved tableware, each piece replete with intricately etched lines, leaves and flowers. Before we left, Maria felt the need to show us how she worked and despite Antonio’s reticence, he set her up with a freshly picked jicaro fruit, a file and a machete. Watching a nearly blind, 97-year old woman work a piece of fruit on her lap with a dull blade and shaking hands is scary stuff, but Maria worked it like a boss, demonstrating her still in-tact artistic skills by engraving a beautiful flor and hoja on the fruits’ side. She erupted into tears several times, generally when speaking about her grandson who never visited her or her husband who had died four years earlier. She always ended with the phrase, “But thanks be to God.” Imran purchased some of her art, she threw in a few spoons as gifts, and we left to her saying thank you and reciting the phrase, “It’s just me, a 97-year old woman and my four frijoles.” We never quite caught the significance of her four beans...

Our awesome friend Tyler, Exec. Director of Tololamos, once taught sex ed. Classes here at the local secondary school. Way to go Tyler. Our boys are learning more about the birds and the bees, through a Wild Kingdom (remember that show?)-type methodology. It’s not part of the curriculum Miriam is teaching them for school, but Harlan and Olle are nonetheless taking class, daily. Chickens and Roosters have been the most consistent teachers, supported by the occasional cow or horse coupling, but recently dogs have stole the show, thanks largely to Adilsa’s dog Sally going into heat. Not less than five local guy dogs have begun to seek out Sally, with Fuera (her best friend) even receiving a name change in the process. Sorry humpy! Poor Sally spends most of her time running away, but because she is such a people-dog and always hanging out near us, we often have to shift our views during conversations with family members. Adilsa even rolled her eyes during a recent meeting, noting that freshly-monikered humpy was in definitely in love, but that Sally clearly wasn’t.

The visit by Imran, Kelley, Sage, Xavier and Jai Arshad has marked the fifth group of people that have visited us from North America since we’ve been here (Miriam’s parents, The Anthony Family, DeLeonardis’s, Mardi Fuller, and The Arshads). One of our goals when we came was to share our story and the community of El Tololar with our friends and families back home. This blog is one vehicle, and visits by family and friends is another. Each person that has visited us has been a huge blessing in their own way, sharing themselves and seeing the hearts of the people that we love here. Thank you all so much, and thanks to each and every one of you who is following our journey. Sometimes, many times, we feel like you are here with us, sharing a plate of rice and beans.