Halfway Mark in Nicaragua

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates. My time in Nicaragua shoveling cement, dodging street dogs, and hiding from the brutal sun has flown by and I just realized that I'm 4 weeks into my 8 week stint here. With my trip almost at the 5 month mark, I've been a bit more reflective lately and I thought I'd share a couple things I've been thinking about. Here goes...

Cultural Fat-ass-ness?

In my first or second week here, I was sitting at our communal table outside the house shooting the shit with Chris, a 25 year old guy from South Carolina who is both southern and anti-southern in many regards. We were talking about food and I made a comment about how I liked that I ate a lot less in Guatemala than I would have at home. He said something along the lines of “Well it’s just our culture,” and that we can’t really help it. Some people would say that we are products of our environments, but I can’t stomach that idea. There’s no hiding that at home in the States we chronically eat A LOT more than we ever need to. Here, most of the Nicaraguans I’ve met typically eat beans and rice with a cup of coffee for their meals. Us volunteers are usually given a generous helping of rice, beans, sometimes fried or boiled plantains, and a variable third dish that is either a saucy meat and veggie dish or some kind of potato puree. After six hours of shoveling cement and sweating my chest hair off, I usually down seconds or thirds before I’ve realized that I’ve eaten anything at all. For dinners, we cook for each other four nights a week. Spaniards like good food, and since most of the people I live with are from Spain, I consistently eat delicious dinners that leave me impregnated with a food baby. In Guatemala I lost 20 lbs eating less but still a healthy amount; here, they’re quickly being put back on. I eat when I’m not hungry and I eat more than I need to when I am hungry. I believe that overconsumption of, well, everything I guess is not only a personal problem, but a societal one as well. Since early on in my trip, I’ve told myself that I’d come home conscious of how much I really need to eat and try my best to resist stuffing my face with spaghetti and meatballs, Chinese food, and half-conscious late-night cookie binges. But I really wonder if Chris is right. Am I destined to be an overeating fatty?

“La Mula” – Danny “The Mule”

They call him “Mula,” mule, because 1) he’s as strong as a damn mule and 2) because he’s as stubborn as one too. The first time I met him I was trying to dig a ditch by striking the ground with my cast iron rod. He silently relieved me of my duty, slamming the rod into the ditch and quadrupling my production speed without breaking a sweat. He was no taller than 5’4” wearing a backwards baseball cap over a bandana, long denim shorts, and sandals. Later on, I was sent to sift sand with him and I decided to let myself sound stupid and try to talk to him. We didn’t talk about much: what we were doing, baseball, and how other English speaking volunteers usually can’t/don’t try enough to speak Spanish.

I learned that Mula was one of the few La Prusia guys to hang out with the volunteers and, before long, I was subject to the same jokes as the other volunteers, which usually involved him calling me a “puta maricon,” more or less a fucking fag, telling me “a la verga,” literally to the dick (they love the word “verga” here), and flipping me off, all the while smiling. I’d hear my name called at the construction site, I’d look, and there he’d be with the middle finger standing proudly by itself and directed at me. It didn’t take me long to realize we’d have the same conversation every day.

A couple times, when we were all walking down into Granada to go out for a few drinks, Danny and I would be separated enough from the group to have our own conversation… or as much of a conversation as I could have. We went from talking about his volunteer girlfriend leaving from Granada and him being sad to him talking about how he liked Sandra – one of the Spanish volunteers – in a matter of sentences. The next week, he couldn’t decide between Sandra and our new Canadian volunteer. Now our conversations would cover three topics: baseball, Sandra, and me being a “puta maricon.”

Sometimes I feel bad because there is so much to learn, see and experience outside of La Prusia that he has not and most likely will not get to experience. Other times, I look at him with envy. Maybe ignorance is bliss and he’s better off not knowing some things. Maybe he’s better off keeping things simple, flipping off his friends and talking big about his next female conquest.

Construction

My first week with Casas de Esperanza, I decided to mix things up and take a couple hours of tutoring followed by three hours of construction. On those first few days, I thought the second halves of the day would never end. My hands got cut and torn open by shovels, pick axes, hatchets, and cast iron picks as dug, picked, chopped and stabbed dirt, rocks and roots to make the foundation trenches for the first houses of the new project. Putting sunscreen on in the morning was the worst as the cream seeped into the little cuts and torn blisters covering my hands. The muscles in my arms gave out before my will did as I dropped cinderblocks and couldn’t pick the ground anymore. I had thought that I was in decent shape, but my body told me otherwise.

Surprisingly – or not surprisingly at all – I quickly caught up to speed. Each day that I dragged myself out to the construction site at 7 am, I found myself less and less uncomfortable. My blisters hardened, my cuts ceased to sting, and my body began lasting the entire six hour work day. Now, I’m a cement mixing, cinder block carrying, root chopping champion… well, not really… but I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a few short weeks ago.

But really though, when you think about it, that’s how anything in life is. I hear people say “I wish I could dance,” “I wish I could play guitar,” or “I’m just not good with languages.” That’s really all just bullshit. We’re each capable of doing whatever we want to do; it’s only a matter of putting ourselves out there day after day through discomfort, failure and limited results. You just have to sacrifice pride with a confidence that you’ll be successful when all is said and done.

A Call with the ‘Rents

A call home is always a potentially traumatic experience. No matter how old you get, how independent you feel, there is always a part of you that wants to say “Mommy! Daddy! Look how good I did!” and to have them say, “Great job, son/daughter!”

I called my parents last weekend for the first time since I left Guatemala nearly a month before. I don’t know what I expected from home – maybe just a little excitement to hear from me. It was about 3 o’clock there. Angie, my 10 year old sister, answered, shyly mumbling into the receiver. “Huhlo? Hi,” is all she said, followed by some mumbled words as she went to get my dad the phone. He gave me the usual, “Helloooo? Sonny Boy!” followed by a big hybrid yawn-snort. There was so much I wanted to talk about: a week in El Salvador, my new volunteer site, my work, the people I was meeting, the weather, Nicaragua, how it compared to Guatemala, how much I missed Guatemala, and home for that matter. I don’t think any of that came up. He tried to wake himself up but I could tell he was still half-asleep as my phone call meter racked up Córdobas. I asked to talk to Gina, my 15 year old sister. She blurted out a couple sentences at supersonic speeds before she ran from the phone, leaving me mid-question. Luckily, my mom got home as my Dad was heading out the door with Gina for some basketball practice. She asked me a few questions about how I was doing, where I was, etc., but all that turned into talks of potential jobs I could get when I came home, not exactly the happy conversation I was looking for.

We hung up, and I walked out of the glass phone booth with a weird feeling in my stomach. Why weren’t they happier to hear from me? Why couldn’t any of them just talk to me? I was hoping to surprise them, but even a phone call from Sonny Boy couldn’t snap the routine.

Down here, I feel like I have my head on straight; everything seems in perspective. Friends and family are most important. Always pushing myself to grow and learn new things, a close second. Right now, I know I’m not in “the real world,” but the ideals I have right now feel more real than anything I’ve felt before. Here, it’s easy for me to keep them in sight: I like the work I’m doing, I’m with cool people, I feel myself growing every day. At home I know it will be a different story, and probably a more boring one… which is not a bad thing as much as it is a matter of fact. It’ll be mundane, familiar, and more routine. The big question for me will be whether I can keep these values in mind and my spirit fired up when I have to make the effort.

Picture Galleries!

I've finally started uploading all my pics from Guatemala and will be caught up (hopefully) with where I'm at now by next weekend.

Check'em out at picasaweb.google.com/Tom.F.Barrett