International
Development is really about working collaboratively to determine and deploy
resources to solve problems and improve lives. The development
organization we are partnering with here in El Tololar - Tololamos - is
small, especially compared to some of the giant US-based organizations
that exist; but they are also really smart, for three reasons:
1. They listen to the people around them - the beneficiaries of their projects.
2. They always incorporate lessons learned into future programs.
3. They adapt to a constantly changing world.
Take the case of the water pumps they have installed in several locations around El Tololar over the past few years. Last week, along with local Tololamos representatives Wilmar and Beto, Familia Lundgren had the opportunity to visit two of the homes where pumps (and water irrigation capabilities) have been installed. Quite a vetting process went into identifying the candidates (depth of well, total area to be irrigated, types of crops, access to sufficient electricity sources, distance from transportation, potential of system to increase economic situation of family, etc.) and both families we visited started out as stellar candidates.
The first family had quite a lot of land (5 manzanas - equal to about 12 acres). We arrived on motorcycles - three on each - and were ushered into their backyard (basically across the street from Rebekah Rivas Elementary School where Harlan and Olle attend) by a guy with a stick meant to shoo away their reportedly ferocious dogs. They never materialized, and we came upon the owner brushing his teeth, surrounded by about 200 bees and wasps, none of which were given a second look by the locals. He had lifted the pump out of the sixty-meter well and while he fetched the heavy contraption (it looks kind of like a mini, meter-long, silver torpedo) Beto began testing the electrical connections. He then hooked up the pump, set it in a nearby deep water basin, and hit the power switch on the electrical box. A bird had made a sizable nest on top of the box and even though we were hungry, we weren't prepared for fried bird that early and were relieved when the electricity buzzed to life with no shocks or zaps. The pump worked perfectly, humming and pumping water just as advertised. So what was the problem?
Further conversation with the family - interrupted three times by four, ornery geese looking to stake out their territory - revealed that the current dry season had been especially severe (we can definitely attest to this) and the water-level in their well had dropped so low that the pump, even when sitting on the bottom, just couldn't find enough water to pump. So it would either shut off, or start to fry itself trying to pump thin air. But there is more to it than that, as we soon came to find out.
All across El Tololar, water levels have been slowly dropping in the underground aquifers, a process that has sped up with changes to the local climate; longer dry seasons followed by ever shorter and less reliable wet seasons. The low water levels, however, have been exacerbated by other, semi-sinister actors, who have come onto the scene as of late. Two very wealthy families have bought up huge tracts of land in El Tololar. Subsequently, they have installed state-of-the-art, extremely expensive water systems and begun planting various crops, including sugarcane, crops that can have very high water requirements. They have paid for the water (at subsidized rates it's not much for them) and received the blessing of the local water committee, a few of whom likely made a nice bonus on the deal. Actually, according to some of our neighbors, it is more than 'likely' that the water officials are making a pretty penny from their job. In fact, ever since a potable water system was installed in El Tololar, some 15 years back, the same 3-5 people have been on the committee, and financially, they are all doing very, very well.
In life, everything is inter-related and it is rare that any one thing is the sole cause of anything, but it's hard not to see the clear impact that money and power - and corruption - are having here in El Tololar. The wealthy, out-of-towners get their water, and the locals watch their wells run dry; corrupt local officials make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of the community. Of course there are many layers to this story, and one is that we in the 'developed' world use water to our hearts content - playing our own role in depleting global water sources. Let's face it, our droughts (except perhaps Californians ) haven't yet reached the point where we can't take a bath, wash our clothes, or have a fresh glass of water.
But the times they are a changing, everywhere, and the day will come when the whole underground aquifer here in El Tololar will dry up. Or, perhaps closer to home, that inhabitants of Anytown, USA, will have much larger sacrifices to make than skipping a few days of watering their lawn. A solution? Use less water, and plant more trees. How can we help? For starters, initiate a 'bucket' day at your own home: fill up several buckets of water one morning (2-4 gallons a person), and that is all your family gets all day for washing clothes, cooking, showering, brushing teeth, drinking, etc. Try it, it's fun, and a great lesson.
The water pump (bomba) at the second house actually worked fine as well. The reason they want the pump removed is in some ways for much more practical reasons. The owner of the home runs a motorcycle-repair shop in his front yard. His business keeps him busy enough and he just doesn't have the time to make use of the system to irrigate his land; plus the fact that one of his wells is also dry.
So Tololamos is addressing these two problems head on, speaking with the owners, listening to their challenges. They are coming up with solutions that make sense, possibly redeploying the pumps in other locations with deeper wells, or with people who have more time to allocate. They are fixing, repairing, spreading and digging for answers and solutions that can only be found with hard work, common sense, sweat equity, and local ingenuity.
It was always kind of a when and where, not an if question. "When would Miriam get stung by a scorpion?" Turns out it was last Tuesday night, about 6:20pm, as she was in the middle of cooking a delicious pasta dinner. She had reached for our dish drying towel - one she had already used that very evening several times to no ill effect - when WHAM, a not insignificant scorpion's tail stroked her right index finger. Adilsa was just coming over to see if we wanted to play the locally popular card game of casino, and she, Cully and Miriam congregated in the kitchen around the cursed towel. A flip of a fold revealed the aggressor, and it only took a few wallops to put it down - permanently. First Miriam's finger and then her hand swelled up, and within 30 minutes thee wath thalking thort of thunny, because her tongue too had begun to swell, a calling card of sorts that scorpions often leave with their victims. The pain was pretty bad, and somehow she managed to pick up and drink her wine successfully while dealing, and ultimately winning the game of casino. She was better the next morning but 24 hours after the strike she still had a swollen finger - Bad Scorpion!
About a week after our cat Dulce died, we acquired another one, thanks to the generosity of Johanna, supposedly one of Adilsa's cousins - really, is everyone in this community related? Cully had met Johanna one morning at the boy's school and they had struck up a conversation about cats as Cully ate one of Johanna's freshly made enchiladas. It turns out that Johanna had an extra feline lying around, and if he stopped by that afternoon, he could have it. Cully brought with him the resident animal expert Olle, who gave a thumbs up when Johanna's daughter brought out the gray and white cat that, ironically, already possessed one of Miriam's nicknames - Mimi. Olle carried Mimi home with Cully across several peanut fields, in a bag and during a rather ferocious windstorm, and she has been with us ever since - except perhaps for the very first night when she scaled our concrete wall at midnight in order to get out of our room. Mimi soon started to get plumper, and most bets were that she would have three babies. Two Sunday's back (after Olle had already divined that her suddenly heavy breathing must signify something) she did in fact give birth to three kittens underneath our bed, our whole family having the rather rare opportunity (even 78-year old Don Leonel has never seen a cat in labor) to see the births unfold in all their raw, beautiful, grouse glory.
Sometimes it's the mundane that can really annoy- like getting dirt on your wet feet while putting your sandals on post-shower; or having bugs in your coffee because you forgot to turn your mug upside down the night before. Removing chicken poop from your shoes is bothersome, as is getting the dirt off the bottom of the pee bucket you are trying to clean and bleach. It's no fun when no matter how hard you scrub, you complete your bucket shower only marginally less etched in dirt than when you started or when your freshly-washed clothes are sitting on an ant hill and not the line, because a huge gust of wind blew them away. Getting your pants stuck on a barbed-wire fence happens almost daily (although our fence-crossing skills have improved heaps since we arrived) and it can be just plain uncomfortable when you have to peel your leg skin off of the 100 degree vinyl school bus seat. Getting semi-electrocuted is kind of a bummer as well.
Our electricity system, like many here, has been, for lack of a better word, Jerry-rigged (Thanks, Jerry). We have tapped into Miriam and Carlos's water and electric systems, both having been extended to our house from theirs. It seems to be a common practice here, and the system-sharing approach has worked smoothly, us paying them approximately half the bill every month. Our outlets usually work pretty well, but for two issues. First, most of our plugs just won't stay in the outlet to charge something. Our remedy is usually finding a small chunche - (a 'thing, in the local vernacular) like a book of matches, a tube of chapstick, or a bottle top. By squeezing the items between two plugs, the pressure is usually sufficient to hold both in place. Second, the electric current emanating from the outlets is a bit unpredictable, and we all have been 'zapped' several times. In fact, it's become commonplace enough that last week when Harlan yelled from his room in pain, our response went like this: "Was was that a scorpion?" "No, I think he just got electrocuted." "Oh, okay cool."
We had heard stories of men and boys, ghost-like apparitions, coated in thick black oil, terrorizing innocent bystanders, families and entire villages across Nicaragua during Semana Santa (Holy Week). But the stories were so far-fetched, it was hard to believe they were actually true. On Thursday we waited for them, not knowing whether to hide or face them. We locked up our valuables, and even moved our soap inside from our outdoor shower, as we heard that soap was a sought after, post-ritual cleaning product. Thursday came and went with no sign of them.
On Friday, in the company of 75 other pilgrims, we began to see the black figures, lining the dusty main road into El Tololar. We were part of the Good Friday Via Crusis procession, walking from the Pre-School Teacher's house (on this day the heavy structure with Jesus on top was staying at her house) to the church, located downtown. We started with a short prayer, and began to walk, stopping at every house that had put a cross and flags - many of them ornately designed - outside their house, representing one of the stops Jesus made on his way to his crucifixion site. Each house with a cross it seemed was also required by tradition to give every pilgrim a plastic bag of fresco (local, ice-cold drinks that come in a wide variety of flavors and colors including chia, pineapple, cacao, banana, orange, tamarind, and melon). By the time we had reached cross #3, Cully had taken over Jesus-carrying duties - along with three, strapping young chaps from the village - and Miriam and the boys were following behind, singing, needing to use the toilet, and carrying an ever-increasing load of icy but quickly warming drinks.
The cross ( metal and filled with concrete) was heavy, and new porters would step in from time to time to spell weary bearers. The temperature was also heating up rapidly, and soon shade became pretty hard to come by. Apparently one woman - who we later found out broke her leg the following day while swimming at the ocean - felt the procession was actually moving too quickly. In order to decelerate, she took to walking at a snail's pace, directly in front of Cully and the other front hauler. She neglected to inform the people in the rear of the abrupt slowdown, and it was all Cully could do to stop from tripping over her and upsetting the whole cart, by this time adorned with lots of bouquets of beautiful flowers.
By the time we reached the church, everyone was sweating profusely, and most people were carrying 3-4 extra frescos, finding it humanly possible to ingest the approximately 10 drinks allotted to each marcher. There, also, we encountered the greatest number of men and boys in black. The origins of the tradition are a bit hazy, but the result is that up to thirty males, ranging in age from 17-40 (some people just can't stop) smear their bodies in thick, black oil. They fabricate elaborate headdresses out of old boxes, or put on masks - Darth Vader made an appearance, as did a pregnant King Kong - and march with sharp sticks, following the Via Crusis but also terrorizing young children at their homes.
The combination of hot sun, copious chemicals on their skin, dehydration and likely alcohol consumption can and has resulted - this may come as a shock - in multiple hospital visits over the years. Somehow though, the whole experience, (opposing forces, heat, exhaustion, the weight of the cross) as manufactured as it may have been, imparted to us and our fellow walkers perhaps a better understanding of what Jesus experienced, many moons ago.
Sometimes, it feels good to be anonymous; to go about our business in our own private bubbles; to stay apart from others. It can feel like we have more control of what we do, when we can just be alone with our family in our house, or drive inconspicuously to the store at night, buying what we want, the cashier really the only other person who knows what we're doing. It's not like that for Familia Lundgren in El Tololar. Being the resident gringos, everyone both knows who we are and what we do. They know when we are going to Leon, because they see us take the bus. They know when we've been shopping, and how much we've bought, because we come home with big bags of stuff. They know when we leave our home, because they see us walking as a family down the dusty streets. Sometimes, it can be aggravating to lose your anonymity. But, in the end, it is part of being in community. When we know each other, we can help each other. We can be support systems because we understand what our neighbor is going through, and some of the challenges they face. We can go from being self-centered to other-centered. That's where the goodness is found.
People here are geniuses at finding ways to extend the lives of things. Take hammocks, for example. Since we arrived, we have always had two hammocks hanging underneath our patio. They - like our shopping bags and Harlan and Olle's beds - are made of this stringy, nylon material that is actually incredible strong. The boy's Tijera (scissor) beds are still going strong 8 months in, and the colorful bags we use to do our shopping are frayed for sure, but still work for hauling groceries from Leon twice a week. The hammock that hangs in front of Miriam's verdant garden (currently sporting tomatoes, swiss chard, and a second round of succulent volunteer watermelon) finally bit the dust last week, a gaping hole opening up first near where a butt hangs and finally along the length of the hammock. But there is always more use in things - like the second-hand clothes so many of you have donated - and this hammock has gone on to serve as a punching bag, basketball hoop, watermelon-holder and sled. The next time something breaks, rips or spontaneously combusts in your house, try your hand at being a true Nicaraguan (many of you surely already are) and fixing it. You'll be helping the environment and enhancing your problem-solving skills. Buy new only as a last option, an option that a lot of people here don't have anyway.
Harlan has a goal, to juggle a soccer ball with his feet 100 times before we leave here. He's been practicing with Cully, most late afternoons when the hottest of the hot is over, underneath Don Leonel's grapefruit tree. He hasn't got there yet, but the goal is in sight. Setting goals is great no matter what your age, and Harlan is learning to keep his eyes on the prize.
Mangoes are starting to hit tables pretty hot and heavy and with at least seven types of mangos to choose from, it's hard to go wrong. They are all delicious, the only variety we haven't liked thus far is Mango Liso, an exceptionally stringy version that requires access to floss almost immediately after eating. Although delicious, mangoes also can cause skin allergies and Cully spent a good one and 1/2 weeks scratching a deep red, poison ivy like, mango-induced rash. Miriam and Olle also recently had allergies. We think theirs were heat-induced, as 100 degree plus heat, combined with sweat and dust, can wreak havoc on your skin.
We continue to hold our movie nights, once every three weeks or so. Last Sunday was the first ever premier in El Tololar of the movie Secretariat. Everyone here either has a horse or knows one, and word must have got out, as we had our biggest showing yet (twenty-two people not counting us). Olle had already seen the movie a few times, and wasn't a big fan of all the stuff that happened in between the races. So he decided, what the heck, I'll try and build a circuit in the kitchen. Grabbing batteries, a lightbulb, electrical wire and a knife, he had at it on the concrete kitchen floor, cutting, connecting and taping in between quick Derby, Preakness and Belmont peeks. Ultimately, his circuit didn't work, but he gave it a shot. Often, that's the most important part, the process, not the result.
When we were kids, we heard stories about Africanized Killer Bees invading the US from Mexico, perhaps much like the current administration views immigrants. In actuality, these bees are legit, and we witnessed them on multiple occasions this past weekend. First, Don Leonel informed us as we were returning from a run in the peanut field that we should avoid walking by Paula's house (two down from ours) because some Afrikanas had set up shop in her son Larry's bedroom. Perhaps they chose wisely, as Larry (the world-class soccer player) is literally the quickest person we've ever met and thus the only individual who could outrun them in a pinch. Ignoring Don Leonel's advice, we walked over to Paula's with Miriam and Carlos and from a safe distance, observed some hundreds of bees swarming in and around Larry's room. Our short conversation resulted in us collectively considering a variety of assault plans on the bees, with options including starting a fire IN Larry's room to smoke them out, building a fire just outside his door, fumigating the room with gasoline or sterilizing it with a local insect killer called Ciperimetrina. We left the conversation to make dinner, and later found out that hard-core, 78-year old Don Leonel had thrown caution to the wind himself and gone in with a tank of chemicals attached to his back. He had disinfected the whole room, despite suffering from frequent allergies to bee stings; don't mess with Don Leonel.
The next day, while we were preparing for home school, we heard a loud, humming noise, emanating at first from somewhere near Esteban's house. The buzzing decibel level increased as it went by our house - our imaginations going wild about what the killer bees might do to us - and then stopped at the corner of Carlos and Miriam's house. There, the Afrikanas set up shop, just outside an old tree stump. We watched from a distance as the droning noise slowly died down. When we looked again, and they were gone. Our neighbors told us they tend to increase this time year, and we hope the approaching rainy season will end their swarming activities.
A smile so often begets a smile, doesn't it? Miriam has a great smile, and she's been sharing it around El Tololar. In spite of the challenges of living here - and there are many - she finds a way to share a big SENYUM (Smile) everywhere she goes. And a smile is all the more important when you are trying to make contact with someone in a different language, and when you come from different cultures. When our family gets on the local bus, for example, people are often either confused as to why we are there, or perhaps too shy to strike up a conversation. But a big smile, followed by a Como Estas?, can go a long way in building relationships. And smiles work both ways; on many a hot, sweaty, dusty day, it has been a cheery smile from a stranger that has lifted our spirits and made us new.
1. They listen to the people around them - the beneficiaries of their projects.
2. They always incorporate lessons learned into future programs.
3. They adapt to a constantly changing world.
Take the case of the water pumps they have installed in several locations around El Tololar over the past few years. Last week, along with local Tololamos representatives Wilmar and Beto, Familia Lundgren had the opportunity to visit two of the homes where pumps (and water irrigation capabilities) have been installed. Quite a vetting process went into identifying the candidates (depth of well, total area to be irrigated, types of crops, access to sufficient electricity sources, distance from transportation, potential of system to increase economic situation of family, etc.) and both families we visited started out as stellar candidates.
The first family had quite a lot of land (5 manzanas - equal to about 12 acres). We arrived on motorcycles - three on each - and were ushered into their backyard (basically across the street from Rebekah Rivas Elementary School where Harlan and Olle attend) by a guy with a stick meant to shoo away their reportedly ferocious dogs. They never materialized, and we came upon the owner brushing his teeth, surrounded by about 200 bees and wasps, none of which were given a second look by the locals. He had lifted the pump out of the sixty-meter well and while he fetched the heavy contraption (it looks kind of like a mini, meter-long, silver torpedo) Beto began testing the electrical connections. He then hooked up the pump, set it in a nearby deep water basin, and hit the power switch on the electrical box. A bird had made a sizable nest on top of the box and even though we were hungry, we weren't prepared for fried bird that early and were relieved when the electricity buzzed to life with no shocks or zaps. The pump worked perfectly, humming and pumping water just as advertised. So what was the problem?
Further conversation with the family - interrupted three times by four, ornery geese looking to stake out their territory - revealed that the current dry season had been especially severe (we can definitely attest to this) and the water-level in their well had dropped so low that the pump, even when sitting on the bottom, just couldn't find enough water to pump. So it would either shut off, or start to fry itself trying to pump thin air. But there is more to it than that, as we soon came to find out.
All across El Tololar, water levels have been slowly dropping in the underground aquifers, a process that has sped up with changes to the local climate; longer dry seasons followed by ever shorter and less reliable wet seasons. The low water levels, however, have been exacerbated by other, semi-sinister actors, who have come onto the scene as of late. Two very wealthy families have bought up huge tracts of land in El Tololar. Subsequently, they have installed state-of-the-art, extremely expensive water systems and begun planting various crops, including sugarcane, crops that can have very high water requirements. They have paid for the water (at subsidized rates it's not much for them) and received the blessing of the local water committee, a few of whom likely made a nice bonus on the deal. Actually, according to some of our neighbors, it is more than 'likely' that the water officials are making a pretty penny from their job. In fact, ever since a potable water system was installed in El Tololar, some 15 years back, the same 3-5 people have been on the committee, and financially, they are all doing very, very well.
In life, everything is inter-related and it is rare that any one thing is the sole cause of anything, but it's hard not to see the clear impact that money and power - and corruption - are having here in El Tololar. The wealthy, out-of-towners get their water, and the locals watch their wells run dry; corrupt local officials make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of the community. Of course there are many layers to this story, and one is that we in the 'developed' world use water to our hearts content - playing our own role in depleting global water sources. Let's face it, our droughts (except perhaps Californians ) haven't yet reached the point where we can't take a bath, wash our clothes, or have a fresh glass of water.
But the times they are a changing, everywhere, and the day will come when the whole underground aquifer here in El Tololar will dry up. Or, perhaps closer to home, that inhabitants of Anytown, USA, will have much larger sacrifices to make than skipping a few days of watering their lawn. A solution? Use less water, and plant more trees. How can we help? For starters, initiate a 'bucket' day at your own home: fill up several buckets of water one morning (2-4 gallons a person), and that is all your family gets all day for washing clothes, cooking, showering, brushing teeth, drinking, etc. Try it, it's fun, and a great lesson.
The water pump (bomba) at the second house actually worked fine as well. The reason they want the pump removed is in some ways for much more practical reasons. The owner of the home runs a motorcycle-repair shop in his front yard. His business keeps him busy enough and he just doesn't have the time to make use of the system to irrigate his land; plus the fact that one of his wells is also dry.
So Tololamos is addressing these two problems head on, speaking with the owners, listening to their challenges. They are coming up with solutions that make sense, possibly redeploying the pumps in other locations with deeper wells, or with people who have more time to allocate. They are fixing, repairing, spreading and digging for answers and solutions that can only be found with hard work, common sense, sweat equity, and local ingenuity.
It was always kind of a when and where, not an if question. "When would Miriam get stung by a scorpion?" Turns out it was last Tuesday night, about 6:20pm, as she was in the middle of cooking a delicious pasta dinner. She had reached for our dish drying towel - one she had already used that very evening several times to no ill effect - when WHAM, a not insignificant scorpion's tail stroked her right index finger. Adilsa was just coming over to see if we wanted to play the locally popular card game of casino, and she, Cully and Miriam congregated in the kitchen around the cursed towel. A flip of a fold revealed the aggressor, and it only took a few wallops to put it down - permanently. First Miriam's finger and then her hand swelled up, and within 30 minutes thee wath thalking thort of thunny, because her tongue too had begun to swell, a calling card of sorts that scorpions often leave with their victims. The pain was pretty bad, and somehow she managed to pick up and drink her wine successfully while dealing, and ultimately winning the game of casino. She was better the next morning but 24 hours after the strike she still had a swollen finger - Bad Scorpion!
About a week after our cat Dulce died, we acquired another one, thanks to the generosity of Johanna, supposedly one of Adilsa's cousins - really, is everyone in this community related? Cully had met Johanna one morning at the boy's school and they had struck up a conversation about cats as Cully ate one of Johanna's freshly made enchiladas. It turns out that Johanna had an extra feline lying around, and if he stopped by that afternoon, he could have it. Cully brought with him the resident animal expert Olle, who gave a thumbs up when Johanna's daughter brought out the gray and white cat that, ironically, already possessed one of Miriam's nicknames - Mimi. Olle carried Mimi home with Cully across several peanut fields, in a bag and during a rather ferocious windstorm, and she has been with us ever since - except perhaps for the very first night when she scaled our concrete wall at midnight in order to get out of our room. Mimi soon started to get plumper, and most bets were that she would have three babies. Two Sunday's back (after Olle had already divined that her suddenly heavy breathing must signify something) she did in fact give birth to three kittens underneath our bed, our whole family having the rather rare opportunity (even 78-year old Don Leonel has never seen a cat in labor) to see the births unfold in all their raw, beautiful, grouse glory.
Sometimes it's the mundane that can really annoy- like getting dirt on your wet feet while putting your sandals on post-shower; or having bugs in your coffee because you forgot to turn your mug upside down the night before. Removing chicken poop from your shoes is bothersome, as is getting the dirt off the bottom of the pee bucket you are trying to clean and bleach. It's no fun when no matter how hard you scrub, you complete your bucket shower only marginally less etched in dirt than when you started or when your freshly-washed clothes are sitting on an ant hill and not the line, because a huge gust of wind blew them away. Getting your pants stuck on a barbed-wire fence happens almost daily (although our fence-crossing skills have improved heaps since we arrived) and it can be just plain uncomfortable when you have to peel your leg skin off of the 100 degree vinyl school bus seat. Getting semi-electrocuted is kind of a bummer as well.
Our electricity system, like many here, has been, for lack of a better word, Jerry-rigged (Thanks, Jerry). We have tapped into Miriam and Carlos's water and electric systems, both having been extended to our house from theirs. It seems to be a common practice here, and the system-sharing approach has worked smoothly, us paying them approximately half the bill every month. Our outlets usually work pretty well, but for two issues. First, most of our plugs just won't stay in the outlet to charge something. Our remedy is usually finding a small chunche - (a 'thing, in the local vernacular) like a book of matches, a tube of chapstick, or a bottle top. By squeezing the items between two plugs, the pressure is usually sufficient to hold both in place. Second, the electric current emanating from the outlets is a bit unpredictable, and we all have been 'zapped' several times. In fact, it's become commonplace enough that last week when Harlan yelled from his room in pain, our response went like this: "Was was that a scorpion?" "No, I think he just got electrocuted." "Oh, okay cool."
We had heard stories of men and boys, ghost-like apparitions, coated in thick black oil, terrorizing innocent bystanders, families and entire villages across Nicaragua during Semana Santa (Holy Week). But the stories were so far-fetched, it was hard to believe they were actually true. On Thursday we waited for them, not knowing whether to hide or face them. We locked up our valuables, and even moved our soap inside from our outdoor shower, as we heard that soap was a sought after, post-ritual cleaning product. Thursday came and went with no sign of them.
On Friday, in the company of 75 other pilgrims, we began to see the black figures, lining the dusty main road into El Tololar. We were part of the Good Friday Via Crusis procession, walking from the Pre-School Teacher's house (on this day the heavy structure with Jesus on top was staying at her house) to the church, located downtown. We started with a short prayer, and began to walk, stopping at every house that had put a cross and flags - many of them ornately designed - outside their house, representing one of the stops Jesus made on his way to his crucifixion site. Each house with a cross it seemed was also required by tradition to give every pilgrim a plastic bag of fresco (local, ice-cold drinks that come in a wide variety of flavors and colors including chia, pineapple, cacao, banana, orange, tamarind, and melon). By the time we had reached cross #3, Cully had taken over Jesus-carrying duties - along with three, strapping young chaps from the village - and Miriam and the boys were following behind, singing, needing to use the toilet, and carrying an ever-increasing load of icy but quickly warming drinks.
The cross ( metal and filled with concrete) was heavy, and new porters would step in from time to time to spell weary bearers. The temperature was also heating up rapidly, and soon shade became pretty hard to come by. Apparently one woman - who we later found out broke her leg the following day while swimming at the ocean - felt the procession was actually moving too quickly. In order to decelerate, she took to walking at a snail's pace, directly in front of Cully and the other front hauler. She neglected to inform the people in the rear of the abrupt slowdown, and it was all Cully could do to stop from tripping over her and upsetting the whole cart, by this time adorned with lots of bouquets of beautiful flowers.
By the time we reached the church, everyone was sweating profusely, and most people were carrying 3-4 extra frescos, finding it humanly possible to ingest the approximately 10 drinks allotted to each marcher. There, also, we encountered the greatest number of men and boys in black. The origins of the tradition are a bit hazy, but the result is that up to thirty males, ranging in age from 17-40 (some people just can't stop) smear their bodies in thick, black oil. They fabricate elaborate headdresses out of old boxes, or put on masks - Darth Vader made an appearance, as did a pregnant King Kong - and march with sharp sticks, following the Via Crusis but also terrorizing young children at their homes.
The combination of hot sun, copious chemicals on their skin, dehydration and likely alcohol consumption can and has resulted - this may come as a shock - in multiple hospital visits over the years. Somehow though, the whole experience, (opposing forces, heat, exhaustion, the weight of the cross) as manufactured as it may have been, imparted to us and our fellow walkers perhaps a better understanding of what Jesus experienced, many moons ago.
Sometimes, it feels good to be anonymous; to go about our business in our own private bubbles; to stay apart from others. It can feel like we have more control of what we do, when we can just be alone with our family in our house, or drive inconspicuously to the store at night, buying what we want, the cashier really the only other person who knows what we're doing. It's not like that for Familia Lundgren in El Tololar. Being the resident gringos, everyone both knows who we are and what we do. They know when we are going to Leon, because they see us take the bus. They know when we've been shopping, and how much we've bought, because we come home with big bags of stuff. They know when we leave our home, because they see us walking as a family down the dusty streets. Sometimes, it can be aggravating to lose your anonymity. But, in the end, it is part of being in community. When we know each other, we can help each other. We can be support systems because we understand what our neighbor is going through, and some of the challenges they face. We can go from being self-centered to other-centered. That's where the goodness is found.
People here are geniuses at finding ways to extend the lives of things. Take hammocks, for example. Since we arrived, we have always had two hammocks hanging underneath our patio. They - like our shopping bags and Harlan and Olle's beds - are made of this stringy, nylon material that is actually incredible strong. The boy's Tijera (scissor) beds are still going strong 8 months in, and the colorful bags we use to do our shopping are frayed for sure, but still work for hauling groceries from Leon twice a week. The hammock that hangs in front of Miriam's verdant garden (currently sporting tomatoes, swiss chard, and a second round of succulent volunteer watermelon) finally bit the dust last week, a gaping hole opening up first near where a butt hangs and finally along the length of the hammock. But there is always more use in things - like the second-hand clothes so many of you have donated - and this hammock has gone on to serve as a punching bag, basketball hoop, watermelon-holder and sled. The next time something breaks, rips or spontaneously combusts in your house, try your hand at being a true Nicaraguan (many of you surely already are) and fixing it. You'll be helping the environment and enhancing your problem-solving skills. Buy new only as a last option, an option that a lot of people here don't have anyway.
Harlan has a goal, to juggle a soccer ball with his feet 100 times before we leave here. He's been practicing with Cully, most late afternoons when the hottest of the hot is over, underneath Don Leonel's grapefruit tree. He hasn't got there yet, but the goal is in sight. Setting goals is great no matter what your age, and Harlan is learning to keep his eyes on the prize.
Mangoes are starting to hit tables pretty hot and heavy and with at least seven types of mangos to choose from, it's hard to go wrong. They are all delicious, the only variety we haven't liked thus far is Mango Liso, an exceptionally stringy version that requires access to floss almost immediately after eating. Although delicious, mangoes also can cause skin allergies and Cully spent a good one and 1/2 weeks scratching a deep red, poison ivy like, mango-induced rash. Miriam and Olle also recently had allergies. We think theirs were heat-induced, as 100 degree plus heat, combined with sweat and dust, can wreak havoc on your skin.
We continue to hold our movie nights, once every three weeks or so. Last Sunday was the first ever premier in El Tololar of the movie Secretariat. Everyone here either has a horse or knows one, and word must have got out, as we had our biggest showing yet (twenty-two people not counting us). Olle had already seen the movie a few times, and wasn't a big fan of all the stuff that happened in between the races. So he decided, what the heck, I'll try and build a circuit in the kitchen. Grabbing batteries, a lightbulb, electrical wire and a knife, he had at it on the concrete kitchen floor, cutting, connecting and taping in between quick Derby, Preakness and Belmont peeks. Ultimately, his circuit didn't work, but he gave it a shot. Often, that's the most important part, the process, not the result.
When we were kids, we heard stories about Africanized Killer Bees invading the US from Mexico, perhaps much like the current administration views immigrants. In actuality, these bees are legit, and we witnessed them on multiple occasions this past weekend. First, Don Leonel informed us as we were returning from a run in the peanut field that we should avoid walking by Paula's house (two down from ours) because some Afrikanas had set up shop in her son Larry's bedroom. Perhaps they chose wisely, as Larry (the world-class soccer player) is literally the quickest person we've ever met and thus the only individual who could outrun them in a pinch. Ignoring Don Leonel's advice, we walked over to Paula's with Miriam and Carlos and from a safe distance, observed some hundreds of bees swarming in and around Larry's room. Our short conversation resulted in us collectively considering a variety of assault plans on the bees, with options including starting a fire IN Larry's room to smoke them out, building a fire just outside his door, fumigating the room with gasoline or sterilizing it with a local insect killer called Ciperimetrina. We left the conversation to make dinner, and later found out that hard-core, 78-year old Don Leonel had thrown caution to the wind himself and gone in with a tank of chemicals attached to his back. He had disinfected the whole room, despite suffering from frequent allergies to bee stings; don't mess with Don Leonel.
The next day, while we were preparing for home school, we heard a loud, humming noise, emanating at first from somewhere near Esteban's house. The buzzing decibel level increased as it went by our house - our imaginations going wild about what the killer bees might do to us - and then stopped at the corner of Carlos and Miriam's house. There, the Afrikanas set up shop, just outside an old tree stump. We watched from a distance as the droning noise slowly died down. When we looked again, and they were gone. Our neighbors told us they tend to increase this time year, and we hope the approaching rainy season will end their swarming activities.
A smile so often begets a smile, doesn't it? Miriam has a great smile, and she's been sharing it around El Tololar. In spite of the challenges of living here - and there are many - she finds a way to share a big SENYUM (Smile) everywhere she goes. And a smile is all the more important when you are trying to make contact with someone in a different language, and when you come from different cultures. When our family gets on the local bus, for example, people are often either confused as to why we are there, or perhaps too shy to strike up a conversation. But a big smile, followed by a Como Estas?, can go a long way in building relationships. And smiles work both ways; on many a hot, sweaty, dusty day, it has been a cheery smile from a stranger that has lifted our spirits and made us new.
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