Nicaragua

hadn't had a chance to post anything on my blog about my recent trip to Nicaragua. Mainly because I spent the entire two weeks slaving away in the middle of nowhere in the mountains by the border with Honduras. and I don't mean slaving away with gorgeous tropical forests and stuff around to look at under the blazing sun. I mean slaving away in front of a computer in a damp closet of a tin house under uninterrupted drizzle and gushes of cold wind trying to lift the whole damn roof. oh, and LOTS of coffee. i know, you say, we love coffee, that exciting stuff that is our lifeline early in the morning and sometimes early in the evening too (showing my age, uh...?). but when it's not roasted, it smells rather different. and even when it is roasted, when that all you smell 13 hours a day, i tell you, you start longing for tea...

so here i arrive, having survived the absurd airport of miami after an encounter with this colombian taxi driver who was taking me to the dolphin mall to purchase a memory stick - only interpreter between my mac and pc of the organisation i am working with: "and where (all spanish of course) if i may ask is the shop WITHIN the mall where you are going to buy this thingy" - "hell knows mate!" - "why, you mean you didn't call? MAN THIS IS THE FUCKING U.S. YOU DON'T JUST TURN UP IN ONE OF AMERICA'S LARGEST MALLS WITH A FLIGHT IN 1 HOUR WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE THE FUCKING SHOP IS!!!"

i swear i thought he's kill me. like i offended his mother or something

and when i get to managua, this strange and faceless city, sprawling like a giant oil spill, all glittering signs and modern detached villas, i think "oh fuck".

the following morning i find myself bumping on the front seat of double cabin, as the suburbs give way to a sloaping savannah, then to a flat desert, and as the road starts winding up gentle hills then suddenly climbing up the rising sides of the mountains, i remember what the whole fuss is about. all around are coffee plantations and tropical woods, the screams of birds rising high above us, and as we enter the cloud line, all turns into a drizzling muck, of watery holes and muddy paths, and everything seems covered in this reddish stain, even the highest leaves of the highest trees, and I think again "oh fuck"...

Jinotega is a dump. there's no other way of putting it. only a few houses have proper roofs - one of which is my hotel thank god - most don't even have walls, only wooden boards tied together with some straw. the place is poor in a way i hadn't seen before. i saw the slums of dar es salaam and of santo domingo, but they are different. they are the urban poor, those who float around the riches of the city, and somehow reflect the glitter of the gold that is so close and yet so far... no, this is different. it's egalitarian and all encompassing. everyone seems to share in the misery, it's like nothing else really could exist, the technology and luxuries, why, here we only have this, we don't even know what it looks like, how can we miss it.

well, it's just a silly illusion. the telly is there to remind them - and us - of each other's existence. so i am not at all surprised when at first i am received with a slight detachment, overshadowed by the buyers from the US who are arriving on my same 4 wheel. at least they pay in cash. i bring the potential prospect of a possible grant from an extremely difficult donor. wow. cool man. and who are you again?

so this first night we are all sitting in the main hall, as rain is pouring on our heads, and there are all these women who have come down from the farms of the cooperative, rose-cheeked and excited, and sure enough, there is a stereo in the corner, and what is it playing...? you guess it. merengue and salsa. my dominican nightmare. i feel the blood pumping frenetically as one by one the buyers sitting at my side are picked from women and forced to dance with them. they won't want me... why, i don't bring any money! damn... she's coming straight at me... and that's when i think again oh fuck...



from that moment onwards i love the people, and even more when the following day a large group of japanese buyers arrive and are greeted with the same treatment (only worse) and decorations on the wall comprising large paper fans and centre-fold magazine cut-outs of japanese women in traditional costumes (where the fuck did they find those pictures?!?!). and i love the japanese for speaking better spanish than english and looking at me in complete amazement when i try to explain to them what the european union is...! they are really on a different planet!

the days start rolling away at increasing speed, me arriving at 8 in the office after eating beans and eggs for breakfast and feeling consequentially a little fragile, them slowly learning to work with me, and i don't mean professionally. their personalities begininng to shine through the kind gestures of formalised hospitality, mine slowly breaking free from the reservations of the first few days. they are all young, they love having a laugh, and by the end of the first week there's no reason to be concerned, i am on their side, not some strange tax inspector come to find the faults in the picture. and of all of them, one stands out high above them, despite her barely 5ft 2in height...

Fatima is the director of the cooperative, a short and plump woman of maybe 45, that undescribed age of those who have suffered too much, and her manners become slowly more interested in me as she gets to know me, as i ask and listen, and try too hard to amuse her, something she must not be used to. by the beginning of the second week, the first glimpses at her life start appearing. divorced from an alcoholic husband, two kids who give her headaches, a will of steel and lots of sadness behind those dark eyes. her father, a palestininan emigree' during the 1930s, had married her mother, from a tiny town called La Trinidad, not far from Jinotega in the north of the country. and there he had set up, buying a property in the old part of the town, never to return to that land on the other side of the ocean. she was born there, in this allendesque setting, radical at heart, inquisitive, compassionate.

we talked about the war a lot. and yet very little. there are things which are told through mirrors, and you don't really know how to tell the face from the mask that protects it.

so, 14 days later, i am back on double cabin to managua, sitting by edmundo like the first day, with another little bit of world in my heart, which i might see again, but most probably i won't. and after a day visiting some sites, climbing a spent volcano, looking at vast lakes that resemble the sea, i return to my hotel with the hot breeze of the night, reminding me of the beauty of the tropics, of the warmth of its people, of the harshness of its nature.

but the last memory of nicaragua is the following conversation with an american sitting by my table at breakfast the following morning, just before i head to the airport. i am hungrily devouring jared diamond's guns, germs and steel, which - following a great suggestion by some editor i am sure - has on the cover a gun and some viral cells, when he addresses me as follows:

"The butler did it!"
"Sorry?"
"Are you british?!?"
"No".
"The butler! He DID it!!"
i look at the cover unsure what he's talking about and realise the easy mistake.
"Ah, no! i see! it's not a detective story at all, it's about science, and let me tell you this one of the most amazing books you could read in your lif..."
"yeah, right. see ya"

and he walks off.