On getting accustomed to things

A lonely mango in the road, and in the fastly moving clouds, a bright smear of yellow light, at its edge an inch of rainbow. A girl--her shorts the brightest red thing in the world right now--crosses the road as though she can't forget a ballet she saw once. Back home, the baby falls asleep, his arm a right angle dangling in the air beyond his mother's lap. The long curtain that hangs in the doorway to the kitchen billows in a sudden breeze, and the Pope prays above it. In the middle of the baseball game, all goes dark, the TV shuts off, we count to five then light a candle. A horse trots down the road in darkness and someone turns on the radio to listen to the score. The light comes back on, little boy cries in the corner.

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I will never forget my grandmother's sad words as my family left her apartment in Medellin for the airport: "A lo bueno uno se acostumbra muy facilmente." One becomes accustomed to good things very easily. It was only our third family trip to Colombia, and it was easy to get used to seeing each other every day.

I've been thinking a lot recently about becoming accustomed to things, particularly in relation to travel. It's funny how after two weeks of eating rice and beans at least once a day, and often twice, I may feel completely accustomed to the habit, and suddenly, in my third week, a pizza craving strikes, and I realize that I was fooling myself all along! I have become accustomed to some things: tucking my mosquito net around the outside edges of my bed every night, and tying it up in a knot again every morning; the sound of at least two different species of frog croaking rhythmically outside the hosue at night; the rumbling vibration I feel in my chest when I'm lying on my bed and a semi passes by the highway just outside; the barking of dogs and the sound of rain on a tin roof; the soft Nicaraguan way of speaking Spanish.

I am not yet accustomed to the mountains--hills, really, but to me that seems too small a word to describe them. I am endlessly fascinated by their interactions with the clouds, the way an entire mountain can get lost in fog, then reappear again after the rain, all its shades of green illuminated in golden sunlight. Yesterday I had the privilege of a three hour hike around a mountain in the community of La Laguna, a small village of about 400 houses. We traipsed through coffee fields, past still ponds and tall palm trees with ripe bananas hanging temptingly close, through thick forest with monkeys and butterflies and toucans, and on open, sunny paths that invited a strong breeze and the gorgeous view of more mountains receding into the horizon. I was led by two young women, members of an almost seven year old group of local youth interested in helping their community through ecotourism. The building of their project has been slow. The process of coming together, organizing and educating themselves, articulating goals and raising money and finding a location and building a cabin (and then bathrooms, and then a kitchen) have taken time. One of the young women yesterday asked if I had been to the nearby community of San Pablo, where another group of young people, friends and allies of theirs, has started a similar ecotourism project. "They're a lot farther along than we are," she said, "because they're mostly men. We're mostly women, so it takes longer to build the cabin and do the work. Also a lot of our members have gotten pregrnant or married, and it's harder to find the time when you have kids." Both of the women I was with yesterday, ages 18 and 23, have a child of their own. Both spoke inspiringly about their dreams and hopes for their project.

At lunchtime, I followed my friend up a steep hill to the very top, to the house of one of the young women, where we sat in the shade and drank freshly squeezed orange juice and ate our rice and beans. There were three houses there at the top, all from the same family and quite near each other, each one small and constructed out of bare planks of wood, with sloping tin roofs. Chickens, skinny dogs and tiny kittens roamed around dirt floors in and out of the houses, and the sound of music and the TV came from two of the houses. Otherwise all was quiet, no sound of cars or other people. Coffee and beans and corn popped up in small patches on the downward slope beneath the houses, and mango trees and hydrangeas as well. From the open mountaintop, I could see more peaks and valleys extending into the distance, green and round and so peaceful. I turned to my friend and made some comment about how absurdly beautiful it was, and how I couldn't imagine being able to live there! She laughed and said "Se acostumbra." You get used to it.

Current plan of action is to continue getting used to things here, letting the culture seep into me slowly. Also letting myself be surprised by things, and keeping my eyes open so that I don't get accustomed to the hard or sad parts of this country. Constant cycle of getting used to things and reminding myself that I am still unused to most things. I'ts been great so far, more updates to come!

Poetry and Revolution before Breakfast

Hello from San Ramon, Nicaragua! Population: 6,000; location: mountains. My home until Aug. 10. I am here only because Haverford's Center for Peace and Global Citizenship thought it worthwile to sponsor my immersive educational experience here in community organizing and social justice work. And in addition because ProNica, a Quaker organization that suports smaller community initiatives throughout Nicaragua, has a solid network of solidarity-based organizations for me to tap into, work with, and learn from. That network exists at least in part because Nicaragua has auch a rich history of communities coming together to organize and act in times of great difficulty, whether in overthrowing Spanish and American control during colonial times, toppling a dynastic authoritarian regime in the 1970s, or surviving the Contra War of the 80s. The history of Nicaragua is one that is heartbreaking and inspiring, and I am lucky to be here.

I've now spent just over one week in Nicaragua. The first five days were full--our CPGC coordinator and the four other interns and I were herded around by ProNica miracles Ramon and Ada, from one meeting to another, learning about feminism in Nicaragua and the planned construction of the Great Interoceanic Canal and the complex political history and the Nica words all the hip kids are saying these days. Always with huge meals of rice and beans and fried bananas and fresh pineapple and roasted chicken and warm tortillas and fresh cheese and more and more...

Now, I'm living with a host family in sleepy San Ramon, and am spending the week figuring out what work I'll be doing, whether it's helping to develop youth-led ecotourism projects in nearby communities, or a working with an Artesania group of women who make jewelry from seeds, or organizing schoolchildren to be "friends and protectors of the environment." For now, a few of my scattered thoughts on being here:

I am gradually becoming aware of those things I take for granted at home, the things I see as given, now that I sense here their absence. Things like a front lawn, glass windows (or indeed, houses that are able to be completely sealed-up and closed-off from the outdoors), paved roads, indoor plumbing, internet access, and more are rare here, if not nonexistent. On the other hand, there are things here which are impossible back home (home being MN or PA): geckos on the walls and ceilings; cows and horses and chickens and pigs in the street and in the green space next to people's houses, even in town; avocadoes for 10 cents each, mangoes for free if you find them on the ground, or are willing to climb a roadside path of rough red earth, skirting the barbed wire fences that are omnipresent here, and toss green mangoes towards the upper branches to shake down ripe ones. There are green mountains rising up like soft teeth around the nestled town. There is the sound of rain on a tin roof and a piglet in the kitchen next to my room, and frogs outside, which you can hear because none of the walls reach the roof, or try to.

The word that keeps coming up in my mental attempts to articulate what I'm seeing, smelling, feeling, thinking, is "impossible." Impossible to describe, impossibly beautiful, impossibly strong, rich, poor, musical, steep, slow, sleepy, green, etc etc etc...

None of my words match the landscape, and perhaps it's just because I'm out of pratice at writing, or because my brain is too busy waking up it's Spanish side, but I cannot satisfactorily describe this place. And any of my attempts to do so inevitably reveal little about Nicaragua itself, and rather more about me and where I come from.

While the other interns and I were having our orientation in Managua, we were staying in ProNica's Casa Cuáquera, their Quaker House where they host guests and hold workshops. There's a nice little library there, and during some downtime I took Edward Abbey´s Desert Solitaire from the shelf and began to read it. The first line: "This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places." So far that's the best way I can think of summing up my experience.

The one other line that stuck out to me from Abbey's book was short and enigmatic, a quick blip of a sentence without much elaboration: "Poetry and revolution before breakfast." Beyond being a nice line, it stuck with me at least partly because Nicaragua has been described to me, and it seems an apt description, as the land of poetry and revolution. (Also breakfast is my favorite meal--a nice avocado and cheese on a fresh corn tortilla with some sweet coffee--nothing better). I haven't yet begun reading Nicaraguan poetry, although Ruben Dario, I am told, is more representative of Nicaragua than even Augusto Cesar Sandino, the great revolutionary himself. Hopefully this summer will bring lots more poetry revolution and breakfast for me and anyone who might be reading! Sorry for the lack of photos and coherent paragraphs, this blog (as all blogs are) is going to be a really weird mix of public and private. Public since I'm advertising it on facebook and giving the link to my parents who may advertise it all over my hometown, and private since I sit here alone in this internet cafe with my notebook, struggling to organize and articulate my inner thoughts. Read on if you want!