La Primer Semana

12 May 2006

I´ll apologize that my blog is missing such bells and whistles as photos, links, a more interesting graphic layout, but I´m a bit clueless with the technology and lack the motivation to figure it out, especially not now while I´m on the road. At least I know how to type and I will do my best not to bore ya´ll to tears with my stories.

While I am not foolish enough to forsake my country and the countless privileges it offers, nor am I naive enough to think that I could actually leave my country behind (mi patria follows me around like a little grey cloud), I will say that I found it to be especially satisfying that I exited the country from Houston, Texas, the home of our great leader,the Decider--GW. ¡Adios, tonto! I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua around 9pm on the 8th. There is nothing more intimidating than landing in a foreign country, alone, at night. Thankfully I made fast friends with another solo traveler, a woman from England who was returning to Nicaragua after a year in NYC. She was familiar with the so-called ropes and I followed her lead through customs and out the door to a hotel across the street. We enjoyed a cold beer at the patio bar of our lavish hotel...the likes of which I will not be seeing again on my trip, and parted ways. In the morning I took advantage of the breakfast buffet, packed my things and headed out to the highway in search of a taxi. In many ways, this trip is like a series of little leaps of faith, it´s like jumping off the high-dive, or out of a plane, or out of a lava tube into the ocean...your sensible self asks, what the f´in hell are you doing? While the less-sensible, more adventurous part of you says, tranquila, this is going to be fine. When I hopped in the back of a taxi on the highway outside the Managua airport and asked to be deposited at the bus station, I just sort of took a deep breath and hoped for the best.

Of course, as I´ve learned over and over this week, this is going to be fine. The people of Nicaragua are kind and generous, willing to suffer my insufferable Spanish, always wanting to visit, always eager to hear why I am here, why I chose Nicaragua, and what my plans are. And so here I am, spending my fourth day in Léon, about an hour and a half north of Managua. Léon was once the capitol of Nicaragua and is probably most well known as a Sandinista stronghold, having played a crucial part in the revolution during the late seventies and early eighties. (If you are unfamiliar with the Sandinista Revolution, I enourage you to take a bit of time to read up about it. Not only is it an incredible bit of Central American history, it is also a shameful piece of U.S. history). This was the reason that I came, but I learned that it has other great features. It has the third largest cathedral in Latin America (Peru 1st, Mexico City 2nd), an incredible art museum, a beautiful 19th century theater, is an hour from the Pacific, and is home to several different universities. I have met lots of people while here, including Camilo and Cesar, who gave me a tour of the theater (reminded me so much of the Gothic and the Bluebird) Ruth, a trabajadora in my hostel who has made me feel welcome, Salvadora who talked politics with me last night while I ate dinner, and Norman and Marta who gave me a walking tour of the city, which focused on landmarks important to the Revolution. I was going to leave two days ago but keep extending my stay as I find that the longer I´m here the more I discover and the more comfortable I become. I´ll stay through tomorrow, when I will take a day trip to the ocean and then I leave Sunday (for sure) to head north to the city of Estelí.

While I am enjoying myself immensely, and really starting to settle into this lifestyle, it has also been a difficult week. At times I am horribly lonely, wishing for nothing in the world more than home. It´s incredibly hot here...in the high 90´s and this gringa walks around like an old lady, constantly sopping sweat from her brow. It is always difficult at first to become accustomed to the food in a new country, since not only are you faced with trying to figure out who makes the good food versus the bad--the struggle faced my any kind of traveler, but you also have to try to figure out what everything is, how to order it, how to eat it, is it safe, etc, etc. Slowly but surely, I am getting better at choosing. It´s also good to find the market or the supermercado where you can buy some things that are more like home.

So here I am, in the middle of Central America, quite far from home in distance and very far from home in all other ways. Lots of people think I am crazy for doing this, myself included at times, but everyday day, several times a day, something happens which makes it worth it and makes me realize why I am doing it. I am doing it because I want to live more and fear less. I am doing it because I want to see with my own eyes how people other than my people live. I am doing it because I want to have a better understanding of the interconnectdedness between the U.S. and the other Americans with whom we share this hemisphere. And regardless of any of my intentions, for better or for worse, I am humbled. So much so that it´s even difficult to write all this down for fear of not being able to convey the reality of this experience. I will try to do so more in future blogs as the ideas settle in my brain a bit more.



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