Hare-Raising Tales, Painting By Numbers, One Bad-As% Hombre

We love Don Leonel.  He is a supremely unique, hard-working, caring, personality, kind of like the Godfather, and at times possessing an accent eerily similar (albeit in Spanish) to Marlon Brando.  Conversations with Don Leonel can and do happen almost anywhere around the Rivas compound, but his favorite place to relax is in his backyard, underneath several papaya trees, swinging slowly in his hammock while listening to the radio.  On many occasions we have come upon him there, and quickly launched into discussions on any number of topics.  A recent conversation, typical of most in length and breadth, hit on the following disparate yet somehow connected subjects: sharks, constellations, gangs, horses, motorcycles, dogs, cats, Donald Trump, the invention of flight, Daniel Ortega, the Silk Road, the Nile River, immigration and crocodiles. Thishombre is a walking encyclopedia, adding new pages to his book every day.

But Don Leonel is more than a talker, and his wisdom has not been easily gained, instead slowly emerging as a result of a very difficult life; he definitely went to the school of hard knocks.  He was one of 9 siblings, all but he and his older brother Feliz have since passed away.  He grew up in El Tololar, moving to different locations within the community as they suited his growing family (8 kids) at any given time.  He worked long hours, clearing fields of sugar cane and cotton with only his sweat and a machete, walking to the fields (now most workers take motorcycles) for 1 ½ hours each way, every day.  His younger siblings slowly passed away over the years, succumbing to a usual set of infirmities and accidents that effect so many here; run over by a tractor, unintentionally shot with a gun, alcoholism, and kidney failure.  He has contracted malaria more time than he can count, and has been witness to most of the trials and tribulations that have hit Nicaragua in the past half century or more; earthquakes (the 1972 one killed 60,000), volcano eruptions, war.  In the midst of it all, Don Leonel has persevered, raising a family of amazing individuals who themselves are fighting to endow Nicaraguans with more opportunities - the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Don Leonel is still going strong, as evidenced by the way he nonchalantly decided to break his mare a couple weeks back. Seated sideways and behind her on a cart, he navigated through multiple fence lines and through several corn fields, his body jostling as pieces of wood flew off the back. The horse was frightened, and to heighten the tension, her foal kept running in front of the cart, threatening to spill the entire load of wood, including Don Leonel.  Somehow, he managed to steer her successfully to his house after his third wood-gathering trip. We can’t be sure but think we heard him let out a couple yee-haws as he rounded the final corner.

As scary as Miriam’s scorpion bite was, we recently heard that Aciles also once got stung by a big scorpion.  The injury produced the normal pain at the site, numb tongue, and in his case, dizziness and a headache.  Strangely, the prick created an additional side effect that must have been downright alarming at the time but when told by a healthy Aciles, came across as absolutely hilarious.  For a brief period after the sting, Aciles, despite his most strenuous efforts, evidently could only manage to walk backwards. His reverse ambulation and other side effects corrected themselves rather quickly, but stories of a retreating Aciles are now part of Rivas family lore.

Normally when you order a hamburger, you get a hamburger - not necessarily in Nicaragua. Here once you’ve made your initial choice, you need to further specify if you want your hamburguesa made out of beef (a solid option) chicken, or pork. Are we missing something here?

As the previous hambur-graph was being written, Aciles called us over to his house to see the zorro (possum) he had cornered in his tree. Different dictionaries we’ve consulted have alternately translated zorro as either skunk or fox, so finding a treed possum was a surprise.  Aciles, definitely a pacifist and someone who wouldn’t willingly kill a flea (or tarantula as we found out previously) explained that the Nicaraguan version has a pretty basic diet; chickens, eggs, and possibly kittens.  With our two chickens roosting yards away and our three baby kittens not much farther, we were ok with him doing what needed to be done, as long as we didn’t have to watch.

It’s kind of like clockwork – the rain starts and the electricity stops.  It hasn’t really started full force, but the evening of April 24^th we experienced our first rain since November.  It wasn’t a deluge, but it produced enough liquid to wet the ground, leak water onto Olle’s bed, and produce some beautiful lightning storms, which knocked out power for most of the night.  Here, the clocks also work with respect to bugs; the rain starts and the bugs start biting.  Over the last week or so, we have definitely seen the fly, gnat and even mosquito populations increase, some of them graciously joining us for our morning exercises (aww, you shouldn’t have, fellas), others landing on us during mealtimes.  The most invasive bugs are the ones that come out at night, congregating around our two patio lights and in our kitchen, as if it was some sort of insect rave.  Literally hundreds of little black bugs fly to the lights after even the slightest whisper of rain, get fried, and fall to the floor, where they make for crispy snacks for our two chickens. The other nighttime bug variety we call the kamikaze, a giant beetle with a faulty navigation system that somehow always manages to land in your drink, smack you in the head, or land in a plastic bag, where it produces a vibration so loud we often think we have a pet rattlesnake.

Miriam and Cully recently read an article in the La Prensa newspaper as we drove home on the 4:30pm bus.  The article’s headline was that some seventy percent of Nicaraguans want to stay in their country, and not immigrate to other destinations, the two most popular being the USA and Costa Rica.  The article went on to say that in fact almost 75% of those polled like Daniel Ortega, and think he is managing the country in the right direction.  Unless you have been residing under a rock, if you are living in Nicaragua you know this is not accurate.  It is interesting, though, that Ortega won this past November’s elections with a similar ratio of victory.  But really, it’s not hard to achieve such great polling #’s when your family owns (or has close ties to) virtually every major, successful company in the country, including the entire Fourth Estate.  What can we do? At the very least, question authority and power, for where they reside, often so does their cousin, corruption.  Ask the tough questions, and force those in control to be accountable for their actions.

We all love paint, don’t we? It can transform the most lackluster wall or ceiling into a work of art. In the states we general don’t think much about what paint actually costs but here in Nicaragua, it can actually be the single most important determining indicator of wealth.  That’s right, your blue, yellow or green house means you have more money than your neighbor.  In El Tololar, it doesn’t mean you are rich (no one is) but it means you have at least some disposable income.  We live in a yellow house (at least on 3 sides) and so we are rich, not that this was ever a question.  Adilsa painted half her bathroom with a 3-times, watered down mixture of water and red paint, her lavatory sporting a dull, peach color that still brightens things up.  So she has more than some of her neighbors, but not much more.

But the income/wealth/poverty scale doesn’t end with colors.  The next step down is the house made out of brick, but then covered with concrete, often a luxury for finishing walls.  Farther down the local housing spectrum is the brick and mortar homes with tin roofs – there are many – followed by houses made from slabs of corrugated metal.  The poorest of the poor live in shacks, cobbled together with metal, pieces of wood, and worn plastic tarps.  Families in these houses definitely live on the edge.  In fact, Aciles’ two beautiful daughters, Gabriela and Cindy, live in such a house with their mother, not far from the secondary school. A variety of events took place, some of them due to a corrupt legal system, which led to Cindy and Gabriel living in such abject conditions. And Cindy, the youngest, lives in fear. She has recurring nightmares. And why? Several years back, a drunk man in El Tololar entered a house by cutting through the thin plastic sheet that surrounded it. He kidnapped and then killed the child; and so Cindy is scared.  She wishes instead she could live within the safe, concrete walls of her father Aciles' house.

One of us, not mentioning any names, recently got sick, like really sick.  The infirmity started innocently enough – we all pegged it on a fish taco. The first night the fish all came back up with a vengeance, but that wasn’t the end of it.  The next three days were spent fighting through a variety of daily activities (including hiking a volcano), the gut’s ability to fend off waves of nausea strong enough to mitigate the worst effects, but never quite kicking the bug.  Three nights after contraction (if in fact it was the fish taco) the flood gates opened late one Sunday night.  The experience gave new meaning to the term “coming out both ends,” and was exacerbated by the fact our victim had to break a sacred rule; don’t poo in the pee bucket.  In fact lots of hygienic rules were breached that night and into the next day, including rule # 13: don’t let the chickens and dogs in your garbage pit after dumping your full buckets of puke.  But we made it through to live another day.  Our three baby kittens, still sequestered under a bed with eyes closed, may have found the whole evening terrifying, however, wondering what in God’s name the big wide world had in store for them when they finally left the safety of the cozy, under-bed area.

Cully took a walk to our friend Elio’s house last week.  Elio is the Cuban man who married a local woman from Tololar about 13 years ago, and has been here ever since.  He is a very generous man, and because he lived in the states for many years, he is better off than most for sure.  He owns a truck, enough said.  But he has helped many, using his truck to take very sick people to the hospital in Leon, helping to start agricultural cooperatives, and sharing his own brand of Nicaraguan/Cuban hospitality with many.  On Cully’s walk to Elio’s home that fine morning, he counted more than twenty Guadabarrancos, the beautifully adorned national bird with an insanely long tail. For comparative purposes, that’s like walking to the corner store and seeing 20 Bald Eagles chirping at you, in the span of 20 minutes; holy Moses that would be cool.

Everything is connected, here and where you are; take the story about water we told recently.  We neglected to mention one additional problem related to the water here – or lack thereof.  In addition to the changes to the local climate, the copious, illegal use of water with impunity by a few local wealthy families, and the corrupt practices embedded in the local water committee, there is the problem of contamination.  Insecticides and fertilizers that are spread on the local crops are just looking for somewhere to go when they have done their sterilization and killed off the pests.  Naturally, they seek water.  Some pozos(wells) are protected with an outer core that prevents groundwater from getting in, but the process to protect them is expensive, and most are not covered.  Thus chemicals seep into the wells, people drink, people get sick, and people die, often from kidney disease, affecting it seems every family in El Tololar.

Contamination of water sources can also happen when the local public water system is down, and people need to haul water up from their natural wells.  They often use a team of bueys (oxen), tie a rope to a bucket, and direct the bulls to walk away from the well, pulling the bucket up to the surface.  During the process, the oxen poop on the rope, and the poop goes back into the water on the next haul.  Feces and water shouldn’t mix, and waterborne health problems persist.

When cute, fuzzy animals change their happy tune, it can be really quite scary.  Take our frustrated rabbit Rainer.  We have had Rainer for close to seven months, and all that time he has lived without a mate.  For some time we thought he would get by as a loner, and as noted previously,  he has tried his darndest to pretend our cat Mimi is a rabbit.  Last week, however, Rainer's libido problems finally spilled over into violence, his full wrath being directed at Cully.

 It started with a few, relatively innocent nips to the feet one morning, followed by a more aggressive feint at the legs several minutes later.  Then, soon after breakfast, as Cully was walking into his room to feed the cat, he turned around to see a large white bunny, airborne and with teeth bared, literally flying at his left leg. In that split second, Rainer managed to both claw Cully's foot and make a good-sized bite into his leg.  The action was so seemingly random that a first thought was that we had a rabid rabbit.  Harlan and Olle quickly sequestered themselves in the room, while Cully, now holding a broom handle, found himself stuck in the kitchen. Every time he tried to get out the bunny was there, jumping and biting at the broom.  He finally crawled out the window with his broom, and walked into the field near the house.  Our Neighbors Don Leonel and Belkis heard the commotion. They came over and like everyone else since (except Cully) had no problems with the conejo (rabbit), petting him one minute as he charged Cully the next.

The bunny attack was certainly magnified in Cully's mind due to the fact that he had worked at a rabbit farm as a teenager- which had only big white bunnies with pink eyes (like Rainer) - and thus there was clearly some PTSD happening. In the end, the PTSD manifested itself in several ways.  At different times throughout the day, Cully could be found either sitting on top of our dining room table, cowering in a corner or once, jumping onto Miriam's body and almost knocking her over, nearly breaking his finger in the process.  As of this writing, we are oscillating around our next move, giving Rainer away - so Cully doesn't have to live in constant fear of another rabbit mauling - or finding an embra(female rabbit) so that Rainer can finally sew his oats.

Last Sunday, as we walked by Miriam and Carlo's house (his name is Carlo, not Carlos as we have been writing), we saw a mid-sized pig sprawled out on a table in their front yard, her neck slit.  We naturally inquired a bit more and found that this dead pig was the last of the brood of five that Miriam's pig Carmello had given birth to back in December.  Miriam had since sold the other four, and was in the process of fattening this one up to sell at market, where at its current size she could have gotten about $55. But this little piggie will definitely not be going to market.

It turns out that the pig had gone for a morning walk - they are all largely free-range pigs here in the village - and never came home when Miriam rang the noon lunch bell.  She went looking and found her, lying on the ground, strangled by her leash which had wrapped itself consecutively around and around a small tree and a banana plant in Adilsa's back yard, choking her to death.  It was really sad but Miriam took it in stride.  Then she, Carlo, Wilmar, and their cousin spent the rest of the afternoon getting the mini-sow ready to eat.  This included pouring boiling water on her skin to loosen the bristly hairs prior to shaving off, cutting holes to string rope through her legs, hoisting her up a nearby mango tree, slicing her skin into sections for dried pork skin, and cutting her meat into portions for consumption.  It was a long, pretty gross process.  But that's how you dress down a pig, and later that night, we had more pork for dinner.

Harlan recently joined the "I got stung by a scorpion club", making him the fourth and final Familia Lundgren entrant into the exclusive group. He had just got out of the shower, a rare soothing hot shower as we had just checked into a hotel on the island of Ometepe (more to follow next update on this beguiling place).  He used the towel that hung nearby to dry, and then as he went to put it around his waist, got stung on the elbow.  His response indicated something bigger and badder than a wasp or a spider. Sure enough, a dark spot on the flip side of the towel revealed a scorpion.  Harlan's elbow swelled, he had trouble closing his hand, and had a bit of tingling on his tongue.  At the time of this writing, he seems to be improving, but remarked that he officially no longer likes scorpions; neither do the rest of us

Earlier this week, we had the chance to be a part of another computer give-away ceremony at the El Tololar Secondary School.  This Tololamos project  started in 2011 and has been an instrumental motivator for students and their families in El Tololar and surrounding communities.  Each quarter, Tololamos gives out a computer to the top, performing students in the school. So few people have access to computers, and receiving a refurbished computer with all sorts of software (including Rosetta Stone for English) is truly a gift.  We were honored to participate, and watching one father of a computer recipient stand up to speak and then break down in tears said so much about his gratitude and the real value of the project.  Harlan and Olle felt a little weird standing up in front of a courtyard full of students staring back at them, but the ceremony provided a real-life education to them about the value of computers as tools of education; it turns out they are not just for gaming, who knew?

: Killer Bees, Boys in Black, That was Shocking!

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.

Dream a Little Dream, Super-Human Kids, Dirty Like You Read About

Not long after we first arrived, we all had a chance to ride Don Leonel’s horse on several occasions. He would proudly put a saddle on the small white caballo ( name for male horses, yegua for females) and gently help hoist one of us up. We would ride in circles, or figure-eights, around his yard, slaloming in and around various coconut, grapefruit and peach trees. A few months later, Miriam and others helped nurse the same horse back to health after he was bitten on the neck by a vampire bat. Since then, the horse has largely remained idle most days, tied to a tree in the corner of Don Leonel’s yard with a rope around his neck that always seems just a bit too tight for our liking. His main period of utility comes during the planting season in August and September, when he is connected to a plow to cultivate and prepare the soil for maize. One of the problems with stallions here is that if you don’t watch them like a hawk, they can go vagando – wandering – looking for other equally aimless females. The best way to minimize this wanderlust is castration, a procedure that immediately lessens their lecherousness.

A problem develops though in that horse castration here can be akin to civil war era medicine, where both the tool and it’s bearer at times (at times because in the right circumstances and when money is not an issue, very qualified Veterinarians are present) lack the education and cleanliness to ensure the job is accomplished in good order. Such may have been the case with this horse (as usual in Nicaragua it is exceedingly difficult to actually ascertain the name of any animals so we will call him just “horse”). We only learned of the operation when we saw horse’s legs covered in blood one morning. We found out that he indeed had been castrated the day before, and indications were that he was healing quickly.

Things took a turn for the worse a few days later when horse stopped eating though, and last Monday, while Miriam was helping Adilsa categorize books at the elementary library, Adilsa informed her that horse had died the night before. Aciles and Chepe had been commissioned to dig the grave – not an easy job in sun-baked volcanic soil- and just like that he was gone. All that remained was his tree, his rope, some stray poop that hadn’t been raked, and various mounds of leftover food. He left so quietly, it was almost like he had never been there. But that’s life here, and people don’t get too attached to anything. They enjoy things when they are present, yet are ready to let them go when there time is up. It’s not a bad philosophy.

There are these little fluffy, white pod-like things that have been floating around El Tololar recently. Some type of seed, now and again they come drifting past you. If you are lucky, one might even land on you. Olle has dubbed them “Dreams,” which is actually a pretty great name if you think about it, and maybe these white floaters are not so different from our own dreams. They often come flying in and out of our lives, something we think about from time to time but often neglect because they are hard to grasp. They can be ethereal, hard to quantify, and even if we could catch them, we just don’t know how to plant and water the seed that grows inside them. But what if we made the extra effort to snatch them up out of the air, letting that cottony, soft, smooth idea tarry in our hand, growing from a seed and gaining form and definition every day, turning from just a fleeting ambition into a concrete, achievable, actionable concern. What if…

Just before Christmas, we watched as Carmelo the pig gave birth to five piglets. Last Monday night, we ate her. We actually consumed her on several occasions, first in the form of adobado (a delicious pork dish prepared slightly differently depending on the Central American country you happen to be in, in Nicaragua with yucca, onions, garlic, peppers, and orange and lemon juice) then as fresh chicharron (pork rind) and finally asado (grilled) on a makeshift spit/barbecue we built in our backyard out of bricks left over from the construction of our house. Carlos and Miriam had hoped we could be present at slaughter time, but fortunately (were we ever relieved we already had plans) we needed to go to León that day. Nonetheless, upon returning we received a blow by blow recap of the way it all went down, Carmelo first receiving a knock on the head with the butt end of an axe, followed by a knife to the throat. From there they hung her up to bleed her out, skinned her, and sold her off piecemeal (head and feet included) to an assortment of neighbors, most of whom had been previously warned that some serious ham was coming down the pipeline in short order.

 It’s weird to be talking about animals like this, especially ones you knew and saw on a daily basis every time you went to the latrine, but that is life here. Pigs are not pets, but a vital way for a family to make money, and Carmelo provided much needed funds in her passing. Still, it was a bit tough to engage in a conversation with neighbors two Sunday’s back when six giant strips of pork skin were hanging in the background, smiling at us, drying in the sun. Likewise, it was awkward when our neighbor Miriam came by with the freshly prepared adobado. She came upon Cully in the kitchen in his boxers after having just bathed and our Miriam still in the shower, then weaving and dodging her scantily-clad way back to our room in the midst of Miriam and Carlos’s elaborate pork presentation and hopeful anticipation of a positive appraisal by us. Perhaps it was Olle who said it best, that the adobado was second only to the Pizza Hut in Leon :)

There is a magical place a few hours from our house called Selva Negra. The words mean “Black Forest” in Spanish, and the founders and owners of the giant nature reserve are from Germany, arriving in Nicaragua many years back with the intention of creating a bio-sphere akin to Germany’s famous forest, albeit in a lot hotter climate with a whole different set of wildlife. We spent one afternoon there on the way back from our foiled Honduran border crossing attempt, and it almost felt like we were in a dreamworld. We sat by a lake sipping unbelievably - grown and roasted on the premises - delectable coffee (Harlan and Olle sipped delectable cokes), had a scrumptious meal, and then embarked on a multi-hour hike into the woods.

Selva Negra has a variety of trails, and we chose one that passed an absolutely beguiling German-architecture inspired church in the middle of the quiet forest. From there we continued on, deep into the old-growth forest, listening to a panoply of bird calls and animal noises. We chose the trail that promised at least the possibility of both monkey and Quetzal sightings. We missed the monkeys but were tracking a pair of Quetzals, beautiful red, green, white and blue birds with insanely long tails that are almost a thing of legend due to their elusiveness. We hunted them for close to an hour, every so often hearing their unique shrill, in the process being led onto secondary and tertiary trails deeper into the massive forest. In the end we were granted only one brief glimpse, a colorfully adorned Quetzal swooshing overhead then quickly disappearing. But, our circuitous route provided one bonus experience we’ll likely never forget.

Walking together on the soft, earthy trail, we stopped to listen for monkeys. All of a sudden, we heard a rustle in the leaves ahead of us. We froze, and watched as no less than thirty White-nosed Coatis (Pizotes in Spanish) crossed the trail directly in front of us. Pizotes look kind of like a raccoon, but with longer snouts and tails, and we were literally transfixed as the family (or herd, pod, gaggle, whatever word you use for a group of Coatis) crossed the trail, one after another, not even seeing us as we stood there like statues. The final Pizote that crossed was almost white in color (most are grayish-brown) and when the crossing was over, we just stood there, grinning with glee. We felt that kind of happiness you get only when you’ve witnessed something downright awe-inspiring in nature, some deep connection with the wild part of our souls that our house-bound, city-living, connected to metal and concrete bodies don’t feel very often.

We’ve got a problem with scorpions. We’re not sure if it is the location of our house, situated at ground zero for regular scorpion rendezvous or possibly the palm-thatched roof to our patio, providing a dry, dark place for alacránes (the local name for the ubiquitous Bark Scorpion). Whatever the reason, we’ve got a problem. In the rainy season (up until November) we saw them less, maybe once every two weeks. Now, and really in the last few weeks, the count has skyrocketed. It is not uncommon to have multiple sightings in a day, and what’s all the more baffling is that our neighbors seem to be very surprised that we have seen so many. Our problem got real on a recent Sunday morning when Olle, who normally wakes up first, started crying as he was trying to put on his clothes. We rushed over to unlock his door, which we have to lock most nights from the outside because of the powerful, door-blowing wind. He had definitely been bit or stung by something, a red mark evident on his chest, but we couldn’t find anything. Only a few minutes later when Miriam was engaged in a second, more vociferous clothe-shaking session did we see it, a tiny guy (fortunately), about the width of a nickel, happily curled up on the sleeve of Olle’s shirt. We killed him with gusto, and if you’d like, you can check HERE for a picture of the little fella, along with some other photos from the past few months. Due to Olle’s toughness and the scorpion’s diminutive size, we made it out with just a few tears.

Harlan, too, dodged a scorpion-bullet the following day. He had just arrived at school and was looking for a pencil in the zipper pocket of his backpack. Thankfully, he looked before he grabbed, as a sizable scorpion crawled out, clearly confused as to how he had arrived at Rebekah Rivas Elementary School. The scorpion definitely rued the day, as really the last place you want your maiden backpack voyage to end is in the midst of a gaggle of Nicaraguan sixth-grade boys, several of whom were more than happy to assist Harlan in terminating Scorpio right then and there.

We thought the skinny, brownish, speckled dog who lives at Adilsas, one we’ve dubbed both Fuera and Humpy on different occasions, actually was Adilsa’s pet. It turns out, he is in reality our neighbor Miriam’s dog, although even she doesn’t seem to be aware of this. Even more disconcerting then humpy’s obvious lack of domicile is the fact that recently he’s gotten a case of the bite-sies. First he bit Esteban’s niece, then Beto was nipped on the leg while riding his moto. Most recently Beto’s son Michael, playing one Saturday morning with Olle and Rachel was bit by humpy, right on the pompis (butt). Michael, only four-years old, became both the first butt-bite victim and another patient of Miriam’s, who doctored his behind with loving kindness, hydrogen peroxide and some band-aids. Biting dogs can be a problem, though, and while Michael’s rear has healed up nicely, Humpy aka Fuera will need to be dealt with in the strictest of ways if he keeps this up.

“It’s kind of incredible, we still have water at 9am,” remarked Miriam one recent Sunday morning. Water has been particularly sparse around El Tololar over the past two months, and we generally have water from when we wake up at 5:15 until about 8am or so, when the taps run dry. Weekends seem to be even worse, with Sunday usually being the driest day of all. We’ve learned to manage the water scarcity, but recently the big tank that serves most of El Tololar broke. Generally when that happens, it can be a solid four days without water. In fact, as of this writing we are on day seven without water with no agua in sight. We are fortunate living as we do on the Rivas compound, as they have an electric, well-fed tank of their own that almost always has water (electricity outages not withstanding). Thus, in a pinch, we can usually shower, get extra water for washing dishes or clothes, or even for watering the garden. Most people are not that lucky and when the Big Tank goes on the fritz, they have to travel back in time. They saddle their horse or yolk their ox, tie a long rope to a relatively small bucket, and hoist pail after pail of water up to the surface, often from depths of up to 80 meters. You do that a few times, and you really begin to appreciate water. A few family’s wells have dried up long ago, and they have to rely on the kindness of strangers for water. The Rivas family is incredibly generous and over the course of last weekend, various bottle-toting neighbors stopped by to fill up.

Going without water has lots of secondary effects that go beyond not being able to shower, wash your clothes, or that other important thing...oh yeah, drink. We witnessed this first hand in connection with the Vivero (Tree Nursery) Project. April is the hottest month in El Tololar, and most days it breaks 100 degrees, easy. Nascent trees need lots of TLC, and at least double daily dosages of water. The recent water outage meant Denis, the man responsible for taking care of the seedlings, was in a bit of a pickle as his pozo (well) was also dry. His only option was to use nearby pozo and bring buckets of water by horse cart back to the plants, but he lacked a long enough rope to haul the water up eighty meters from the aquifer. We happened to be in León that day, and said we’d bring the rope to Denis in a taxi (Larry the amazing soccer player’s dad, Paolo, has a taxi and at times we call on him for a ride).

 Like most voyages in Nicaragua, this one proved to be an adventure. We met Paolo a block east of La Union supermarket as the road was closed due to construction. He drove us past Beto’s office where we picked up the eighty-two meters of rope from Wilmar, who had just procured it. Our goal was to get back as quick as possible so that Denis and his son Erickson could start hauling water but Paolo wanted to show us his house, his pig, and his other son. Having taken care of that errand, we headed straight to Tololar, that is until Paulo’s first wife and our neighbor, Paula, called asking for a ride so that she and her co-worker, La Doctora, could attend a funeral, tragically for a young boy who had been killed in a freak hunting accident the night before. We turned around, headed back to León, and waited for them at the bust stop. They finally arrived, and we managed to squeeze all eight of us into the little taxi, Familia Lundgren plus our friend Leo in the back, Paulo at the helm, and Paula and La Doctora mooshed in the front, alternating mutual cheek placement for maximum comfort. Despite our delayed arrival, we handed the rope off to Denis, hoping it was in time for him to make several thousand seedlings very happy that afternoon.

Cully had the chance to visit a fascinating gentleman named Mario at his small finca (farm) last week. Mario was one of the trailblazers who helped make Cerro Negro - the nearby active volcano that people surf - a real tourism project. In fact, according to Mario, it was his son who first attempted to board down the volcano. You can imagine how early conversations about the prospect of surfing may have gone: “Hey, check out that hot, narly-looking, active volcano over there! Yes, the one over there that could erupt any minute. I was thinking, what if we grab some wood planks, throw some aluminum on the bottom for strength and better glide, and launch over the wicked-steep side? Really, what could go wrong?” But Mario is about much more than surfing volcanos, and his own personal history includes a stint fighting with the Sandinistas some forty years back under the pseudonym La Puma. Now his farm boasts perhaps a greater variety of animals than any other finca in Nicaragua. In fact, in Cully’s short time there, he encountered the following types of fauna:

- one giant parrot who almost bit his finger off

- two medium parrots who tried to speak, unsuccessfully

- three small parakeets, one strangely bald

- one deer who looked like he needed a friend

- one huge owl who wouldn’t stop looking at Cully no matter where he went, clearly ready to tear his head off

- ten rabbits, five dogs, several iguanas

- two geese, the male whom feigned attacks on Cully on at least four occasions

- ducks, chickens, turkeys, and lots of their babies

And a partridge, this one choosing a mango tree over a pear.

Mario is not only an animal lover but also a visionary. In addition to he and his wife’s efforts to make Cerro Negro one of the premier tourist destinations in Nicaragua, he is in the process of building a huge pool on his property. It really is an ingenious business idea – the only other public pool we know of is ten miles away in Telica - that has potential, especially once we get water back! Perhaps what struck Cully most about Mario was his deep love of humanity. Near the end of their conversation, Mario, talking about why he is on this earth, said, “We are not here to do things alone. We are here on earth to address physical, emotional, spiritual and economic needs of our families and our community. Our community is big, it is really the whole earth. And we are all brothers and sisters, no matter what our color or religion.” Maybe we can all learn a thing or two from Mario.

As we approached one year without having our teeth cleaned, we decided it was finally time to go see the Dentist. First, we made a series of appointments for the whole family, one right after another. We arrived on time and in general the cleanings went well. They took twice as long as the Dentista had said they would, but the experience – and quality of care – was even better then expected. We were especially excited that she used the little sucky contraption that suctions up all your drool, saving us from having to rinse and spit every five minutes. However, closer examination of both adult’s teeth revealed two cavities for Cully, and the need for a new crown for Miriam.

One week later we were back at her office for round two. The procedure on Cully’s mouth was largely successful, even though one filling took a solid 1 ½ hours to complete (what the heck was she doing in there?). The only negative outcome was that some of the leftover cavity filling material remained in between a few teeth, making flossing virtually impossible in some locations. Miriam’s routine went well enough, except that for some reason she was not permitted to move her jaw or body for close to two hours, resulting in a quasi lock jaw situation and cramping in her lower extremities, both which cleared up quickly. The larger issue was that the cap that she went in for never happened, the Dentist instead choosing to fill the tooth as if it were a cavity. Hopefully, it will all come out in the wash...

It wasn’t supposed to be that arduous, but with the thermometer pushing 103 degrees, every step began to feel like it was through concrete. Actually, our steps were only through dust, but a lot of it and with every pace, a mini dust bomb of talcum-like powder would go off around your feet, rising quickly as it stuck to you our your hiking buddy’s legs, arms, neck and lungs. We had caught the 7am bus out of El Tololar, heading to the town of San Jancinto. There, our friend and guia (guide) Yader had planned for us to begin our ascent of Volcano Telica. If you ever want a Nicaraguan hiking guide, we can highly recommend Yader, who was so conscientous that he engaged in not one but two separate reconassaince missions prior to our hike, just to make sure all would go smoothly, which it did...mostly.

Including Yader’s brother Fernando, a budding artist and also possibly a future guia, our group of six left the hot-spring tourist town of San Jancinto and headed up, first through fallow, dusty fields of corn and beans. Along the way - when we could see through the clouds of dust - Yader introduced us to a variety of Nicaraguan wildlife. We learned that the national bird, the guardabarranco (translated “the guarder of banks”) always builds its nest’s in dirt overhangs and banks such as those we were passing, a sly move except for when its main prey, big snakes, enters and eats it. We passed the nests of correcoyote wasps, hanging conspicuously in nearby trees and according to Yader, not dangerous unless provoked, and then very dangerous! We had multiple glimpses of the relatively rare Alma de Perro (soul of the dog) bird, as well as parrots, beautifully adorned orioles, and a bizarre, road-runner looking bird that even Yader had never seen. We stopped for lunch under a giant mango tree, and witnessed Yader and Fernando do their best Laurel and Hardy impersonation as they simultaneously tried to set up a hammock (unsuccessfully), sling-shot shoot iguanas, and dodge a giant hill of ants that had begun to dive into the pork their mother Myra had freshly grilled that morning. The hilarious set of events finally ended with Fernando tripping over the pork and Miriam laughing uncontrollably.

The hike wasn’t all laughs though, and after two extended stops to beat the heat and consecutive water breaks every five minutes, we arrived at a huge field, situated on a giant, grassy plain rimmed with palm trees, just below Telica’s massive crater. We gathered wood for the night’s fire, and then headed straight up to the crater, and huge billows of sulfuric gas. The Lundgren family all began to cough as we approached the crater, but it didn’s seem like a huge deal at first. Miriam and Olle, though, felt the worst of it and they decided it was best to head down. As they descended, Miriam’s lungs tightened up even more and it was clear that without help, things were going to get a bit dicey. It was then that Super Olle arrived, leaving Miriam and sprinting at full tilt across the volcanic field, retrieving her inhaler at light speed and returning in time to save the day. Olle, you are a superhero!  

The rest of our trip up Telica was in comparison non-eventful, except for a few things. First, we encountered a giant, animal, sniffing and grunting outside our 3-person tent for a good half the night (later found to be a resident, semi-wild horse). We also had the almost out-of-body experience of crawling on hands and knees to the actual edge of the crater, taking turns holding Yader’s hand while we each peered into the red lava fire and listened to the roaring power of the belly of the earth. During that experience, Harlan made the astute comment that, “ I hate it when it gets windy when we are near a crater on an active volcano”, and of course he was right. Lastly, upon arriving back home the following day, we all agreed that due to the combination of heat, sweat, and dust, we likely were dirtier than we had ever been in our lives, and that is not easy to do!  

Que Te Vaya Bien!

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!