Ometepe photos // On Time

Some belated pictures from Ometepe Island!

National flag and Sandinista flags on the ferry

Arrival!

Our tour guide waiting for us with a handmade sign

On a hike around the lagoon

View of the lagoon

Tour guide driving us around the island

Most beautiful beach

Leaving on a ferry

Volcano receding

Aaaaand some thoughts on the different pace of life in rural Latin America:

Thirteen ways of looking at time passing in nicaragua

1. your favorite pineapple
melting into smug fermentation
on a cool table
in a dark kitchen

2. a hot street --
motionless figures standing on doorsteps --
the only street in town

3. three clean twists of
barbed wire
cutting the sky into sections can you see
the different shades of blue

4. mangoes so tiny
their dusky purple bodies
taste like a hard bruise in your mouth

5. sitting with a silent baby
watching the flies
land on the floor's patch of sun
waiting for the water
to be turned on again

6. two women -- their backs towards you --
rhythm out a hot stack of corn tortillas
in the back of the kitchen
while a dog chases a cat and a baby cries

7. watching a large
(but harmless)
ant make a winding way down
the outside of my soft
white mosquito net

8. on hot maroon leather
of a refurbished schoolbus waiting to leave --
the old spanish ballads are playing and
out the window leaves undulate
in the hot breeze
and i sweat
and wave back with a blink

9. the rooster gang starts up its battle cry
4am on the dot every morning
(i check my phone
just to make sure)
the gang of dogs is up next

10. is there meat in this meal
then it's probably lunchtime

11. depending on whether i've met you
or not you may get an
hola
or an adios
as i pass you on the street
sometimes i decide
at the last second
to be generous with my eyes

12. crunching down the mountain
on that gravel path past the cows and
horses
past the gently crying river
take large steps
avoid getting stolen
watch the hilltops ascend

13. bench with yellow paint scraping off
mossy tiled roof and  low flying clouds
red toyotas and arched neck horses
bottlecaps in saturday afternoon dust
and groups of men in saturday afternoon hats

Photos!

A brief interlude of photos while I prepare a lengthy and introspective and probably boring post, ETA sometime next week.

 Matagalpa bus station

Street cobbletsones plucked up by too much rain

 Making earrings

 Children at the artisan shop!

 San Ramón, walk to work

 The office

 My house!

 Best bakery

 Matagalpa cathedral pt 1

 Matagalpa cathedral pt 2

 Walking between El Plomo and San Ramón

Best bakery pt 2

Collections of thoughts

Walking Home from Work, Part I: 

1. There is little in this world so beautiful as a tree ripe with mangoes hanging pink, abundant.
2. On the other hand, there is the beauty of the dog who finally, at my millionth passing of his house, does not bark madly at the end of his chain, but eyes me silently.
3. On the third hand, the hill behind my house.
4. On the fourth hand, there's the obscene non-beauty of the three-story house being built in the midst of a town full of one-story houses populated by plastic chairs, concrete floors, and outdoor latrines.

On things I have acquired/been given:
-nickname: Sarita. will dearly miss it upon return to the states.
-cocoa bean: very odd. filled with seeds that have a sweet gelatinous film around them. seeds themselves are bright purple and taste bitter.
-the ability to roll a bike's detached tire down a dirt road by pushing it with a stick: cool. taught by two eager young boys, Fernando and Jonathan.
-rice and beans, multiple times a day: yummmm
-the ability to say certain phrases with a perfect Nica accent:!!!
-a love for karaoke: working on convincing host brother to sing Bob Marley with me
-a macroeconomics textbook from the 80's: going to try to teach myself some things I should really know by now

On the way back from Matagalpa, 5th largest-city in Nicaragua and a 20min bus ride from San Ramon:

On a full bus, everyone on their way home from the city, right at dusk when the mountains and clouds and setting sun play their game. Idling in the bus station, the smooth music of people everywhere talking comes in through open bus windows. Waiting to move, the dim orange lights turning the warm bus even warmer, momentarily coalescing this mass of strangers into a homey togetherness. The man in front of me plays guitar, the man across the aisle sings, they pass the guitar back and forth and the bus slowly rocks forward on the hexagonal cobbletones. We make our exodus.

Walking from El Plomo to El Plomo Arriba:

5 yr old girl staring at me solemn, big-eyed, a young chicken in a black plastic bag tucked backwards under one arm.

Colors on la Isla de Ometepe:

1. Biking on a bumpy dirt path, three layers of color: black wall (volcanic rocks, stacked) green leaves (plantain fields, fronds waving) white clouds )wreathing the volcano).
2. Pale yellow lemonade, bright yellow straw, magenta tablecloth.
3. A dog hanging around our dinner table (on the street, dirt road) one eye brown, other eye light green.
4. Maroon bus, old man in one of those softly old-fashioned white button down shirts.
5. Lime green lizards fleeing the path as we walk down, sending dead leaves flying as they scamper by.
6. Faded red hammock, light gray hammock-chair, light blue tiles, cement floor.
7. Whitewashed wall, brown pot, pink drops of flower; whole scene bisected by a sky blue staircase.

Waiting for the bus to Matagalpa:

7 yr old boy riding a grey horse (trotting) down the street, feet dangling inches above the stirrups, casual with the reins in one hand resting on the saddle. Passes the Coca-Cola stand, turns head wistfully.

On the way home from Matagalpa, Part II:

I walk down the streets of Nicaragua weeping. Squinting from the sun, I extract a rope of tears. Another step and I weep at the men who stare, whistle, speak, follow. A river of tears for that barefoot city boy and the dog without a paw and the woman hunched on the nighttime sidewalk without a shirt. Three tears each for the bag of onions and the old man pushing the ice cream cart uphill and the women selling fried plantain chips and vinegar in clear plastic bags. During the sweeping hour I weep pools of dusty dears. The windy hour, oceans. I cry at the streets of now and then and red murals and Dios Bendiga Esta Casa and discarded mango peels and Hay Tortillas and that pineapple and those palm trees and the clutches of people that collect in silence and more, and the outlines of hills faint green behind houses layering up up up, and the music and radio baseball games flowing from courtyards, and a river so small and shining at this moment, my tears could swallow it up.

Isla de Ometepe (or, "Almost halfway through the summer")

I've been on many beautiful bike rides, and on much more comfortable bikes than this one, but biking between two volcanoes on the Isla de Ometepe is my current favorite biking memory. This past weekend I was able to make a quick trip to the Island of Ometepe with the other five Haverford interns who are in Nicaragua for the summer. We met up in Managua and had a wonderful time with ProNica superstars Ada and Ramon who helped us reflect on our experiences so far and plan for the upcoming rush of the next 7 weeks. On Friday, we were up and on the road by 5:15, taking a bus to the town of Rivas which lies on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America. An hour-long ferry ride later, and we were on the island that is shaped in a sort of infinity sign around two active volcanoes. To recap: a beautiful tropical island of two volcanoes that looks like it's in the Caribbean, but instead lies in the middle of a freshwater lake in Nicaragua. So before I continue: Thank you, CPGC, thank you parents, thank you Nicaragua, thanks be to all.

Now, the bike ride was only the matter of one afternoon, but it was important. My friends and I biked from our hostel to a beach about 11km away. On the way there, I was in awe. Blue sky, lazy clouds, slow heat. Thick fields of plaintain flanking the road on both sides. Slyly curving road, walking the uphill, whooping down the exhilirating downhill. Then, coming to the top of a new hill, the landscape opens up, you can see the ocean (no, lake--but the waves look so convincingly oceanic) glittering just beyond some slopes and fields.

The beach itself is beautiful, of course. Grey volcanic sand, white tipped waves rushing in, bleached thatched roofs, candy colored bar/cafes peeking out from behind thick gardens. To my left, the water; ahead, the strip of sand; to my right, an isosceles triangle of lime green vegetation narrows to its tip at the horizon, behind it the darker green of the volcano rising up and out past the edge of the beach, misty with distance and fog.

On the way back from the beach it is that glorious hour just before sunset, the other volcano is now on our horizon and it is illuminated from beind by the sun. Beams come at us past its shadowy straight edge and filter through the plaintain fields, slapping down thick cuts of yellow light on our path. That traslucent golden film of dusk is laid over my eyes, everything glows. There is an absurd abundance of flowers red, orange, pink, pourple, all the shades between these--so big and busy I stare like I've never seen a flower before. Red tile roofs, wrinkled tin roofs, satellite dishes and christmas lights, chickens pecking at the roadside, a whole family sitting in the dusty distance between their house and the road, plastic chairs in a circle, speaking and doing nothing and watching the road. Up ahead a group of six men and a truck provide some music: two playing drums, two trombone, one trumpet and one observer to smile at passerby.

Overall the weekend was an amazing trip, and I'm so glad I got to relax with friends for a few days. Now I'm back in San Ramon, and it feels great! I'm in love with my host family, getting to work developing some projects at La Casa del Niño, and getting more familiar with the streets and trees and the correct way to greet people and the many ways of eating plantain. There's so much beauty in everything here, it's hard to soak it all in, but this blog definitely helps me set certain small beauties down in words. Sending everyone love from Nicaragua!