Chapter 2 : Welcome to Nicaragua

I arrive in Managua and am greeted by a late 20 early 30 something man named Omar and his five year old daughter. They lead me to the secret cash machine zone where 2 out of three machines reject my withdrawal request. Luckily the third machine works – I have cash and am ready to get on my way. We wander out to the truck where Omar’s wife and tiny baby are waiting in the heat – I feel a bit guilty about my cash machine fiasco

I am certainly in a developing country …there is no doubt about that…on the drive to Granada from the Managua airport there was no sign of what I would call a city – I think Managua is probably more of a city but it was nowhere in view. We drive through about half an hours worth of country side precariously passing the slower trucks buses and bikes along the way.

Eventually, the road side landscape changes from predominantly trees and fields to a solid row of buildings complemented by the odd large bill board. Omar gestures at the landscape and says “Massaya” – we’ve already established that I am useless at Spanish so he keeps it simple. Massaya is a small city about half an hour out of Granada (If I go back, I will tell you all about it).

Another half hour of country side and we reach Granda – I clearly didn’t do enough research because it was not at all what I was expecting – beautiful colonial buildings, check, second biggest city in Nicaragua – no check. From the front seat of the car I am completely focused on the colorfull buildings and the people on the sidewalk. When I finally reach my homestay family and walk over to the language school, I look up at the sky line, which consists mainly of single story homes packed wall to wall along the streets and the odd church tower. The churches are by far the tallest buildings in town. As I take more time to explore the city I am relieved by its totally human scale – the hustle, bustle and noise are met with equal parts peace and slowness. It is a relaxing town. And so far easy to navigate, although I can only claim to have explored about two streets in the five days I’ve been here – plus central park (which is a big public square) plus a few odd blocks here and there.

I am really digging the slow pace of this trip – I am so used to trying to rush and see everything in a city in a few days – here the story is different – I did feel a bit of stress after my first day, at not having ventured out of a one block radius of my homestay, but that was easily remedied with a ten minute walk into the centre of town and back home again before it got dark.

So far my days have gone like this –
1.) Go to bed around 9
2.) Wake up around six and try to sleep with the noise of the house till about seven
3.) Go to the language school (which is also a school for children from low income families) and volunteer with the kids for a few hours (two hours attempting to teach the alphabet in Spanish (which I realized after the fact I had taught wrong) and two hours playing with them in very awesome and ancient looking park across from the school.)
4.) Walk a block to my homestay to eat lunch ( I will talk about the food later).
5.) Walk a block back to the school, check some emails with an audience of few curious 6-12 year olds entranced by every tap of the keyboard until they get distracted by something more interesting.
6.) Start my Spanish class with my awesome teacher Maria who is 28 years old, has two kids and one more on the way and threatens violence if I don’t do my homework
7.) Finish my Spanish class four hours later and then either, go for a walk or return to my homestay and eat dinner.
8.) Shower
9.) Study
10.) Attempt to sleep with two TV’s in the house blaring, plus the TV next door (because there are some rather significant cracks in the wall between my room and the house next door) and what I think amounts to about four toddlers/infants shouting or crying in both houses plus the dog next door barking, plus the trucks rolling by that on my first night I mistook for hurricane force winds. No es muy tranquille en mi casa.

This (very exhausting) routine has been punctuated by a trip to the gringo café in town with some people from the school, a giant killer bee flying in the hole in the roof of my bedroom (which turned out in fact to be some harmless kind of massive noisy fly), the purchase of three bottles of water, two soft drinks and one stale chocolate croissant from the local kioskos, The purchase of some sketcy plantain chips from some sketchy men in the public square, the purchase of some chopped up papaya in a bag bought from a street vendor for about 25cents, and most recently a fire about three doors down which drew I think every fire truck in the city, (including one that formerly belonged to the dawson county fire department cerca 1950’s usa) along with every kid in the neigbourhood, plus a fair number of curious adults. Entonces, that is pretty much the story of my life so far.

This evening I went out to see if I could find a nice affordable hostel where I can spend my third week here – because I think I might go crazy in this house for two weeks. The house is like this. An ancient high ceilinged house with incredibly thick exterior walls and incredibly thin interior walls that create a number of bedrooms. The walls of these bedrooms reach only about two thirds of the way up to the ceiling which allows sound to travel through the house with ease.

My room is at the back of the house beside the kitchen, the kitchen is covered but I think at one point it was part of a large uncovered area, probably with a garden and some trees (which many of the homes here have) but the courtyard has since been filled up with extra bedrooms and bathrooms to house this family. The woman of the house is 93 years old and has lived here her whole life – she shuffles around preparing meals for people and babysitting her two great grandsons who also live in the house. So in total there is the granny (Julia) her son (Julio (who is about 5 something) Julio’s wife Chilo which is short for a really long name that I could not wrap my mouth around, their 25 year old son and 30ish daughter and her husband and their two young sons. Oh, and two small birds in a cage.

I requested a private bathroom when I was organizing this home stay and I got one, it is right in the middle of the kitchen, beside the main shower/bathroom of the house. I’m pretty sure I am putting someone out of their room or bathroom and I don’t feel great about that which is another reason I’d like to move out, however, I’m also pretty sure the money I pay helps the family out –not because they are particularly poor – it seems like they are fairly well off compared to many others in this city, but because everyone here just seems to get by with so much less (both space and stuff) in comparison to the developed world.

OK, so last but not least the food. I will start off the food rant with a anecdotal tale of my day today which was spent experiencing various waves of nausea, dizziness, bad headache, and almost vomiting. I’m feeling much better now but I think I have learned a few lessons:

1.) Drink loads and loads and loads of water
2.) Be carefull what food you buy on the street

And most importantly

3.) Don’t eat the coleslaw!

Also the important mantra

My stomach is more important than my manners.