I am officially homeward bound. This past Friday I said goodbye to La Prusia and I have begun my travels back to Guatemala and then back to Jersey, hopefully in time to catch one last snow storm.
Originally, I was going to stay in La Prusia for an additional week. When I first showed up there I thought that I would have a hard time packing up and leaving that place, but my honeymoon phase was short lived. At first, I loved it. I was helping out with the kids for a couple hours before a few more of hard and honest manual labor. There were only twelve of us volunteering, few enough to feel like an intimate community but enough to keep the conversations fresh. And the balance between English speakers and Spaniards was even.
That lasted a couple weeks, but suddenly there were four more of us. Then six more. Then nine more. Our quick meetings at night turned into Spanish shouting matches. Those who didn’t speak Spanish natively were at a serious disadvantage as topics were rarely translated and our opinions were asked for even less. As Mitch and his half-finished dreadlocks would say, “You speak English. You don’t matter.” Even when we went out, we English speakers would just pathetically follow along as we all went to the same two bars, complaining over and over again how lame they both were. Many would say that we were all a family, but I certainly did not feel part of it.
My one room house shrunk dramatically as six men and one unfortunate Catalonian girl competed for bathroom and kitchen use each morning. At night, I would wake up with my nose running or my stomach hurting and I would be sweating, always sweating. Sometimes I’d find Rufia, our stray kitten, sleeping above my face on my mosquito net. Other times, I’d wake up from her attacking my feet. The Spanish guys always picked on Chris, the South Carolinian, for… well… just about everything he did – hanging his clothes outside for too long, putting a bit of water in the garbage with his coffee grinds, breaking the washer, the way he’d say “What the fuck?” or “Nice” all the time, or just because he was American. The discomfort of it all started getting to me.
Mostly, though, I just found myself unsure of whether my volunteer work was actually doing good for the community. Casas de La Esperanza’s idea with the houses was to give the Prusians a chance to own their own property, to help build something that was their own, and to instill them with a sense of pride and dignity. It sounds good. But the way they live in La Prusia is different than how we live in the States, or in Spain. In “the first world,” we have ideas of security, of the future, of saving and investing. For a lot of us, today and tomorrow are safe, but we have to worry about the day after tomorrow, and the day after. Here, life is more day to day, maybe even meal to meal. It sounds horrible to us, living without security, and I thought it would seem so desperate. It doesn’t. The people here have their own way of survival, their own way of making life work. Their way, however, is much more present-oriented. That’s why they buy things – chips, TVs, speakers – that we think they don’t need; there isn’t a guarantee for tomorrow. These people, though they don’t have well-rounded, healthy diet, aren’t going to starve to death. They can afford rice and beans, they have clean drinking water, and they live in an area rich with fruits and veggies, which the local kids can aptly identify and pick. They’re also good ad catching the occasional iguana. By building the houses, we’re hoping to give them some security and have them not worry about losing the land they occupy but do not own. If they lost their land, they’d literally pack up their house and move it somewhere else. Once again, sounds bad to us… worse than bad, unimaginable. But my gut feeling with these people is that they’d find a way and life would go on. To me, it just didn’t seem like the houses were the best thing we could be doing. In the first project, Casas just finished building a soldering school where between about 15 young men are enrolled in a 10 month course that, when they finish, will leave them certified and with a skill to sell. They are working for themselves and the NGO made it possible – this is how it should be.
So for those reasons, I’ve decided that I’d be better off spending the last few weeks I have in Central America on the road toward Guatemala and then my last days with the good friends I made in Xela, Guatemala. Saying goodbye to the volunteers was a lot easier than I thought it'd be, and also much harder to the Nicaraguans.
I am glad to say that I am ready to come home. I’m ready for the next step, whatever that may be. I’m ready for my transition back to everyday life in Suburbia, NJ. I’m looking forward to looking at the mundane with new eyes. I’m anxious to see if I can maintain the clarity I have right now of my values and my drive to live them when life isn’t so exciting. And mostly, I’m just really looking forward to some chocolate chip pancakes.
Eggs, Birthdays, and Crashing Cultures
There’s a messy tradition in Nicaragua. On someone’s birthday, that person’s friends and family get to smash eggs on his/her head. The more eggs, the more luck for the coming year/ the more you are loved, or so they say.
This past week, two of us had birthdays – myself, and the new Australian guy, Derrick. Since I’ve been here, only Aleman, a Prusian guy, has had a birthday and a few of the girls got him twice. None of the volunteers had celebrated and I didn’t know what to expect. Since it was a Nicaraguan tradition, I was mostly worried about the Nica guys waiting for me, hiding in trees or behind rocks, waiting to slam dunk an egg on my skull. On the morning of my birthday, I woke up to Fernando, one of my Spanish roommates, telling me he had made me eggs. Lo and behold, there were scrambled eggs waiting for me on the table outside. Wow. That was unexpected, I said to myself, thinking that the only eggs I’d be getting would be on my head. Halfway through my plate, Laticia made her way down from the yellow house to wish me happy birthday. She did a horrible job hiding the egg, but I thought it’d be best to get the volunteer attack out of the way. Instead of the top of my head, she landed an eggy left-hood across my right temple and the egg splattered all over my face, the table and the bench. “Felicidades, Tom!” she shouted as I walked over to the tap and washed myself. At least that’s over with. Just gotta watch out of the damn Nica guys now.
When it’s our turn to cook dinner, we get the day off from volunteering to go shopping in town and do what we have to do to the meal ready. I signed up for my birthday thinking 1) I’d prepare an awesome meal with a dessert that would make La Prusia dessert history 2) I’d get to call home and to talk to Julie as well and 3) I’d spend as little time with the Nicaraguans that day to avoid an all-day egg assault.
I decided to make veggie chili with milkshakes and crepes stuffed full of melted chocolate and bananas for dessert. I started cooking at 2. Kim, Derrick’s girlfriend, and Christina, the Canadian who jokes that I’m her only friend at the project helped me dice up my tomatoes and veggies. The tomatoes stewed for about three hours, the other veggies and soy meat substitute joined in after they were fried up. I decided to be merciful on the Spaniards and made it mild (they don’t like spicy food, apparently). As three huge pots of chili were simmering, I rushed to cook about 50 crepes, melt down the chocolate, mix it with the bananas, and then get the milkshakes ready. Dinner was ready early for the first time in a long time.
Since I cooked, it was my job to dish out the food. I noticed Julio, another Spaniard, recording with his camera, but I just figured it was his last week and he was just trying to take in the remaining moments that he could. I didn’t think anything of it. There was chili to be served. Then out of no where, I was ambushed from behind with three eggs, which dripped over my chest, back, and ears and quickly started drying. I found myself frustrated and, unexpectedly, hurt by it. I yelled at them in Spanish, half-joking, that they were all assholes and that they weren’t Nicaraguans, but they didn’t care. Most of them told me the food was delicious, but complained to each other that it was inedibly spicy. I was glad. I stuffed myself full of chili, crepes, and milkshakes and didn’t talk much to anyone. I had asked that we play poker that night for my birthday, but since it was one girl’s last night, everyone followed her down to “The Rocks” to have one last Coke. I stayed back, partly not wanting to get egged again but more because I was in a fuck-all-of-them mood. Alone, I restrung the guitar, and sat there and thinking about home.
Derrick and Kim came back early and Derrick said he would get very, very angry if he got egged and said he hoped it didn’t happen. Derrick, now 28, has been traveling for seven months now with Kim. He’s already an experienced architect and, since coming to La Prusia, has worked tirelessly analyzing the house designs, looking for ways to make them sturdier and easier to build. He is a good worker, experienced and competent, but because of his diligence and lack of Spanish abilities, has made almost no effort to get to know the Spanish volunteers nor the Nicaraguans. I assured him the attack wouldn’t happen, assuming/hoping that being egged was a sign of some kind of friendship, something that I hoped I actually had.
Thursday, the day he feared, came. He made it until dinner time without being egged. Then, Laticia decided to send her felicidades again. He took it in stride, washing off and not getting angry. He thought that would be it. He was wrong.
That night, we went out to send off Fernando, Julio, James, and myself. Mitch and I were sitting at the bar inside when we heard glass break in the street. The waiters ran toward the door, but we just sat there, assuming someone at our table knocked over a bottle. Minutes later, Annah and Fernando came inside, visibly upset and rambling on and on. Apparently, Mula – encouraged by a buzzed Julio – snuck around behind Derrick and cracked another egg on his head. Derrick, enraged, stood up, turned around, and threw a glass “at Mula’s face,” according to Annah. Video evidence shows it hitting the ground at his feet. Immediately after, Derrick was so embarrassed that he grabbed a cab home by himself, leaving Kim behind. Mitch and I tried telling them they were wrong for breaking the egg on him when they didn’t know him well. We said you never know how someone’s going to react to something, especially when you don’t actually know them. They said it was out of friendship and tradition, because we’re all a family. We said it wasn’t their tradition. We said that they weren’t his friend and that they just wanted a laugh. They said it was the tradition here and that when you’re in a country you should abide by their traditions and practice them too. The conversation didn’t get anywhere.
I thought back to my birthday and thought, I probably would’ve thrown a glass too.
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