The island of Ometepe
is a jewel in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central
America. Ometepe means "two hills" in the local Nahuatl language (the
indigenous population who once inhabited the island). It is comprised of two
distinct sides connected by a rather thin strip of land about 3/4 mile wide in
the middle. It is a giant land mass that
takes 4 plus hours to circumnavigate by car, truck or microbus, and slightly
more by motorcycle, many of which are rented by tourists and subsequently
smashed, due to the uneven roads and poor driving skills. Each side of the island is adorned with its
very own volcano, really not "hills" at all, Concepcion on the left
as you look at it from the port city of San Jorge, and Maderas on the right. We were staying on the Maderas side, so decided
that we had to hike that particular - now dormant - volcano. Concepcion, on the
other hand, is definitely not dormant and continues to smoke, gurgle, and
bellow vapors on a regular basis.
We had been told that
getting to the top of either mountain was a serious task, and that although
Maderas was shorter by about 230 meters (1,394 in total), it was not easy to
summit. We've hiked our share of mountains and volcanoes as a family so weren't
concerned and as we headed out through the gently rolling cow pastures with our
guide Anuar, we figured we had it in the bag.
Anuar's knowledge of the flora and fauna was impressive and there didn't
seem to be a stone he didn't know about - including the one in the middle of a
cow pasture that he said a giant boa lived underneath. He showed us petroglyphs ( made 1,200 years
ago by the Nahuatl) and told us that the bright blue chickens we saw on
the fringes of farmers fields had been so painted to avoid being attacked by
eagles, who apparently found blue an unsavory flavor.
We came upon a family
of Capuchin monkeys as we ascended. They
are more aggressive than their larger monkey relatives the howler, who we heard
howling their eerie, haunting, yet beautiful bellow our whole way up. Evidently the Capuchin do not like people -
or anyone invading their space - and one flustered male started throwing sticks
at us to be sure we moved along. We saw
tons of trees, including the giant Guanacaste (the national tree of Costa Rica)
and the huge Ceiba (the Guatemalan national tree, and one of the star attractions
in the movie Avatar). Who knew trees could act?
We passed coffee
plantations - one of which had been left to fend for itself when its owner died
suddenly and thus was a bit worse for wear, sporting frail, broken leaves - and came to a small river, which we found
out was the principal water source for all the surrounding towns. From the river, the trail went sharply up to
the right, but that's an understatement.
In the states when we
make trails on steep inclines, we generally employ the switch-back method,
whereby the trail zigzags its way up, minimizing the incline one has to hike.
Not so on Maderas; there they take a
"most direct route approach," fashioning paths straight up the
mountain, regardless of steepness. It
was this trailblazing technique that made our hike difficult, as the next two
miles up consisted of non-stop, hand-over-hand climbing on wet, slippery rocks,
roots, and mud. We were stinky and
sweaty in no time, and marveled at how Anuar could stop, smoke a cigarette, and
then continue on past us at a rapid pace, as if energized by the fumes in his
lungs.
We finally did reach
the top, where we were gifted with a panoramic view of...clouds (Maderas houses
one of the few cloud forests in Nicaragua).
But Olle and Harlan (kudos fellas, you earned that hike) were transfixed
by actually being in a forest of clouds, and could have cared less that on that
day there were no spectacular views to be had.
We opted for not taking the additional 3 hour add-on which involved
hiking down into the crater lake that sits at the top of Maderas, and thus were
able to descend to our hotel in a respectable time, completing the total hike
in about 8 hours, albeit "surfing" much of the way down due to the
mix of slippery trails, steep ravines on either side, and sneakers with no souls
:).
In the USA when a
teacher is sick, a team of substitutes stand at attention, ready to take over
duties for the day. They fully
understand - as do the students - that they won't be taken very seriously, but
are generally able to administer some semblance of schoolwork, hand out
bathroom passes, and admonish the occasional spitball shooter for the better
part of 45 minutes. Nicaragua doesn't
have such a safety net, and when a teacher is sick, the kids are sent home for
the day. This, plus hiatuses from school
due to excessive dust (especially in El Tololar during the dry season),
torrential downpours, lack of electricity, and any of a variety of lesser-known
holidays and teacher training days, means that students aren't getting schooled
as many days as they should.
Last Wednesday, Miriam
walked Harlan and Olle to school while Cully spent the day in Leon, looking to
obtain gainful employment for our return trip.
They followed our usual route, passing several peanut fields, dodging
cow, horse, and pig patties, and arrived at school 45 minutes later. Olle's 4th grade class was running amuck, and
Miriam soon found out from the headmaster, Samir, that Olle's Profe (Teacher) was home sick. Samir suggested that Miriam could take over
duties and at least play some games with the kids and in true Miriam fashion,
she jumped - or danced - at the opportunity.
They started outside with stretches and jumping jacks, then moved inside
for English class. English went well
enough, as students shouted out words (palabras)
they knew and soon they had formed several categories which they turned into basic
sentences. Ding ding, class dismissed.
At this point Miriam
was informed by 25 students that it was time for PE. Thus they went back
outside, held PE which included kickball, races, and tag, and then re-entered
the classroom for a valiant attempt at a math lesson. Unfortunately, only about half the students
actually made it back into class and despite her best efforts, ten minutes into
an attempt to teach the relatively new "lattice" multiplication
technique, the remaining students had vanished, several remarking on their way
out that it was now time for recess. But
big props to Miriam, 4th grade Profe
in a Nicaraguan School, if only for a day.
Random thought for the day: From a distance, it
can be hard to distinguish whether you
are looking at a chicken's head or butt, until they decide to raise
either body part and continue pecking at insects.
The rainy season has
started, bringing with it a resurgence of ants (the dreaded hormigas) into every patch of ground,
floor, grass, or garbage. They have
essentially encircled our house, as they had up through November, again building
mini-cities, food depots, and possibly exercise gyms, as they are definitely
fit and ready to bite. We do our best to
keep up with the daily hordes that stream onto our patio - often in search of
Harlan and Olle's snack remnants - but we end each day on the losing side. Yes, we have our little victories in some of
the smaller skirmishes, like when Cully took down a large hill outside our
shower with a frenetic blast of chemicals from our over-worked spray bottle,
but we've got no shot at winning the war;
they reproduce like rabbits.
Speaking of rabbits, we
finally came up with a solution for Rainer our white hare. Rainer's hatred of Cully had grown so severe
that the two could not be in the same space without Rainer attacking his lower
extremities and Cully leaping, shrieking or running as if he'd just seen a
ghost, or a mouse. After several calls,
the local Purina food and pet supplier in Leon managed to get a shipment of
white rabbits - why, oh why is it always the white ones with pink eyes - and
Cully stopped by one rainy afternoon to choose Rainer a mate. The trip from Managua to Leon must have put a
good scare into them - that and being in a small, stinky cage surrounded by
weird humans - and their collective shaking and twitching made it difficult to
determine who would be the best fit. In
the end, "being female" was our only real requirement.
The nice woman who
helped Cully lifted the animal up to gendertruth ( a new but useful word, no?)
its identity, and promptly plopped her in a box, where Shaky proceeded to wet
the carton and the floor around her. The
employee made extra holes and loosely lined the box with plastic, all the while
sneezing and likely wondering why with such allergies she had chosen to work so
closely to animals, and 140 cordobas
later Cully was walking toward the bus.
The ride home went smoothly enough, except for the fact that the
downpour outside required that all the windows be closed, resulting in the
always popular "sauna bus." Rainer,
henceforth forever housed in a hutch at Miriam and Carlo's house, definitely
became the happiest rabbit on the block upon meeting his new mate; it was
clearly love at first sight. As a bonus, Rainer's evil glares and feints at
Cully now somehow seemed less angry and intense.
Our chickens Malam and
Pagi are growing quickly, continuing to spend their days clucking and pecking
over an area that spans across our yard and spilling over into Adilsa's,
Aciles, and at times Esteban's patios.
Up until recently, no one had definitively gendertruthed either Pagi or Malam, but there was a growing
consensus that Malam might actually be a rooster. This reality was hard for us
to swallow, as it produced visions of boisterous, ear-piercing cock-a doodles
every morning at an uncomfortably close distance to our house. Were we ever relieved one night when Harlan,
walking back from the latrine, asked why there was a broken egg laying directly
underneath a roosting and clearly perplexed Malam. Now that Malam is officially a hen, our new
problem is finding where she has been laying her eggs, as three weeks later we
only have the one cracked shell as proof.
We have tried to create other comfortable roosting places, and Olle is
in the process of designing an egg-catching hammock to place under her current
perch. But our best guess for now is that she is laying eggs on the thatch roof
of our patio, a place she flies awkwardly to most days in search of
insects. As of yet, we've had no whiffs
or wafts of rotten sulpher, but we're just waiting.
We've done a lot of
things here in Nicaragua that we couldn't have anticipated before coming;
planting and cultivating yucca, attending "the day of the dead,"
pursuing a life-size replica of Jesus down the street, and eating dried pigs
blood delicacies as a snack (okay this was once, only Cully, and he didn't like
it!). But marriage counseling in Spanish
was definitely not our list. Yet
somehow, last Thursday night we found ourselves imparting post-nuptial advice
while seated at the dinner table, eating gallo
pinto (rice and beans). Clearly our
credentials were lacking in several categories (fluency in native tongue and
accreditation at the forefront) but in the end, the two and 1/2 hour session seemed to prove fruitful. Much of our counsel focused on some of the communication
skills we have learned to employ and found useful over our 13 years of
marriage. And while our conversation
spanned multiple different angles and levels of their relationship, our advice
could all be summed up with just two basic guidelines. First, when providing
feedback to your partner, don't use the pronoun "you." This comes
across as accusatory and it is better to start with "I feel
like..." This was definitely a new
concept for our squabbling couple, as was our second, seemingly more obvious piece
of advice, to not wave, point your finger, and vociferously gesticulate in the
other person's face while calling them names.
They appeared to really appreciate most if not all of our suggestions,
and we can only hope that our Spanish was sufficiently clear so as to help and
not exacerbate their problems.
Many of our bus rides
to and from Leon can be quite monotonous, although each one seems to hold some
sort of interesting cultural, language, or weather-related incident. Last Friday's bus ride back to El Tololar on
the 4:30 pm Lisandro Santiago bus involved an interesting blending of several
different chicken bus-related phenomena.
First, by the time we pulled out of the Leon station, the bus was packed
to the gills. This left Miriam and Cully,
as often is the case, standing while Harlan and Olle sat squished between a
variety of different body types and sizes.
Next, Harlan had been feeling pretty sick all day and a bouncy, sweaty,
bus ride wasn't doing his stomach any favors.
Opening his window helped at first, but as a legitimate monsoon downpour
started we were forced to close it. Next,
a small boy near the front began to cry as we turned down the dirt road to
Tololar, and as he was passed among family members and to the next seat buddy,
his screaming began to reach fever pitch.
At one point during the commotion, Adiac - the buses' outspoken and
jovial cobrador (money collector)
yelled from the back, in between making change for someone's fare, "Put
him on a breast." This comment as
one would expect set off a variety of responses from other passengers, and it
was only when the young boy and his flustered family disembarked that the bus
quieted down. The rest of the ride was
much more sedate, except for Harlan's continued tummy problems and the
venerable river rushing down the middle of the road, transforming Lisandro into
more of a ship captain than a bus conductor.
Francisoco Martinez,
Cesario Juarez, Kevin Castillo, Mayerling Escato, Dariana Urbina: these five students
and many others were recent recipients of some of the clothes donated by many
of you. We collectively thank you very
much.
You know those rare
moments when you are engaging in some type of activity, and the stars somehow
align, allowing you to go farther or longer or achieve more than you ever
thought possible? Harlan had one of
those days not long back, while running in our peanut field. He had set out to do a respectable six laps,
which already would have bested his previous farthest run in his entire life,
the five laps (miles) he had done the week before. He was feeling good and before he knew it,
five turned to six and six to seven. It
was early evening, and a soft, steady, warm rain began to fall, cleaning the
air of dust and making for the ideal running conditions. Eight, nine, ten, Harlan was still running
strong. In the end, he experienced a
magical, almost transcendent moment, reaching 12 miles and more than doubling
his longest run ever. It's cool, right?
When we realize that we can so often achieve much, much, more than we ever
thought possible. Way to go Harlan.
Olle recently invented
an interesting game, made possible only by the abundant supply of flies
occupying our house. The game requires 2 players (minimum) and two matar moscas (sticky sheets of paper
that flies land and die on). There are
several variations, but really all you need is one player in the kitchen, for
example, the other on the porch. Each
watches their matar mosca and calls
out the updated # of flies whenever one lands and gets stuck. The highest # of
dead flies wins. On an extremely hot
afternoon or dreary, rainy morning, it can be an excellent way to pass the
time. Thus far, our kitchen is beating
our patio, by a lot!
In the middle of a
flurry of activity this past Sunday - which included cleaning up from the
previous nights rain storm, teaching class to the boys, attending to Harlan and
his upset stomach, and making popcorn for the nights showing of the movie Sandlot - Carlo and Miriam dropped by,
carrying a small, black, plastic bag. Inside, they dropped onto the ground not
one but two coral snakes they had found (next to a pair of scorpions) in a pile
of wood near their house. Coral snakes
are considered the most venomous of any snake in Nicaragua and even these small
ones, a foot long at best each, could have ended any of our days. Living near so many potentially dangerous
animals can be a bit unnerving, and we thank Carlo for making things even a
little safer.
Thanks to all of you
who have donated to the work of Tololamos through our upcoming running race on
June 3rd. If you haven't had a chance
to learn more or consider donating to the event, please check here. The cool thing about
this race is that originally we thought it was going to be really small, with
only 40 or so participants, as running, running events, and even exercise are
definitely not a big part of the culture.
But thanks to some awesome publicity by Tololamos staff and volunteers,
and a groundswell of interest by the public, we already have 150 participants
more than a week and 1/2 before the race and are pretty sure with families,
spectators and others, we will have 300 attendees. It's a testament to the great work of
Tololamos in the community in the areas of health, education, and the
environment, and we thank you so much for helping make a real difference here
in El Tololar.
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