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.
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