I Am, After All

I am the trash drenched in black gutter water being swept onto the street by homemade brooms. I am the bones in the backs of young men hauling baskets of mangoes on top of their heads from the bed of a truck to his neighbor’s stall. I am the branch of a tree cut by a young boy with a machete to be used as wood for fire to feed a family of thirteen plus grandma. I am the patch of tin on the side of a home that wards off some dust and some rain and some sun. I am the crossbar on a rusty bike that holds mom who holds baby while dad pedals and steers. I am the side of a mountain, carved like cake to crush into fine stone to fill holes and pave roads.

The sun has not yet risen and the sky is milky purple. The birds and lizards and dogs and iguanas drown out the morning silence, roosters sing to all who are capable of listening. A cup of milk sits on a table, waiting for someone to drink it, flies perched on the rim ready to dive into the white pool. Men ride bicycles with huge baskets tied behind them, riding long roads from farm to market.  Water is sprinkled onto patches of dirt, no clump is spared a soaking. That same man is sleeping on that same stoop, lacking shoes and anything but sidewalk. As the sun peaks over the lake, over the steeples of Spanish colonial churches and coconut palms, the market begins to buzz, buses begin to honk, drivers calling out their respective destinations like quick-tongued auctioneers, a woman carrying bunches of fish begins to tie them to the rafters in her low hanging vender stall, taxis stop and speed, filling five and six people into back seats. Uniformed children walk in groups, girl’s white knee socks are pulled up high and taught, touching the hem of their dancing navy blue skirts. While some vendors stay stationed on the side of market streets, others roam the city, calling out their signature cry, “frescoooo, frescoooo.” “aToooool, aTooooool” “PAN PAN, PAN PAN”. The woman who sells milk never cries out in advertisement, yet every morning the street senses her presence, and her milk is gone within the hour.

This was the scene as I walked to the bus stop, located on a side street of the market. I boarded the bus and realized it was one of those days: a fish vendor was also aboard. Thankfully my newly congested nose blocked most of the smell. Mosquitos buzzed through the aisles, circling the heads of the sweetest victim, the person who has been in Nicaragua for the shortest time (me).  Having finished his breakfast, one of the bus boys  came aboard to grab his toothbrush carefully positioned in the dash, squirted a line of toothpaste, and brushed with a bottle of water. This is how I knew it was almost time to leave. The bus driver, always a large man, pulled himself aboard and situated himself in the drivers seat. He pulled and tugged at the gear stick, slowly putting the bus into motion, the bus boys hopping on as he pulled out of the station. The forty-five minute ride gave me a chance to go over my lesson plan for the day. Today was Thursday, my longest day teaching four different classes from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. I knew when I woke up, my nose stuffed with I don’t want to know what, that the day was not going to be an easy one. However, today was also the last day of classes before the school’s holy week vacation, a ten day break I have been anticipating since I started.

I began the day with a eighth grade English class (this class I only taught as an assistant, much less stressful). We were learning about occupations, particularly pronunciation. I spent a lot of time clearly pronouncing the words as the students repeated. For my first art class I took the group outside for a change. We ate in the covered area where the students eat lunch, with large tables and natural light. I brought mangoes and oranges that day so the students could practice drawing what they saw instead of what they knew. It was definitely a challenge for them to produce finished drawings, but overall the lesson was successful. In the next class we did the same thing, only this was a younger group with a surplus of sass. They gave me a hard time, touching and moving the fruit, trying to eat the fruit, walking around and talking loudly. You think pimpin’ aint easy? Try teaching. I used my most serious faces and sternest voices, but yelling ungrammatically correct sentences in a foreign language just makes you feel as silly as you sound. In my other classes I had the older kids participate in a newspaper tower exercise. I split them into groups of six and gave them twenty minutes to build the tallest tower. In my first class it was more or less a mess, due to many of my own mistakes. Only one group was successful in getting their tower to stand and I was messy in my explanations and organizations. In my next class I learned to give all directions and assign groups before kids moved at all. This class got three or four out of six to stand on their own, and their techniques were much more creative. When at first you don’t succeed, try try again. After school I waited for the bus with five or six of my other students. They shared their snacks of sweet bread and sickly sweet sodas with me as we talked of our plans for break. My conversations with the kids are getting much easier. I am understanding most questions and answers, and can usually talk around what I want to say. I came home to a room freshly cleaned by my host mom, took a much needed shower, washing off the stress, sweat, and grime of the day.

So begins Semana Santa, my week of rest, sleep, and travel. It is a sticky night, only a slight breeze is coming into the city off the lake, and I’m enjoying a celebratory brownie after my first week as a real live teacher. Nicaragua gave me an idyllic day, and for this day and all others I’ve had during my two months here, I am grateful.

To Feel As I Felt Then

There was a stillness in the city. The pulse of pedestrians’ steps hitting uneven pavement and car brakes pumping at street corners subsided for the time being, and the spaces between buildings, the expanse from one side of the street to another was filled with a tranquil wind, an innocent nakedness enjoyed only by grave-shifters, the madrugardores. It is only in the early hours of the morning, when the mothers, vendors, and tycoons of the city are tucked into their beds, that the city can be enjoyed in this way; blocks are reserved for you and your wanderings, neighborhoods can be conquered without a woken witness. You feel larger than you are, the city is yours, you can do what you will with it, and it smiles as you play. I’ve had this intimate experience twice now, with two extraordinary cities, both cities I’ve come to know in an intimate way, as only a resident can.

I had planned an adventure for the day, a trip up a volcano to a sweet water lake at the end of a dirt road. My eyelids crept open at 6:00, my natural clock now accustomed to rising and falling with the sun. I stepped outside into a breeze, the wind hitting my face in a conversational way, the sun reflected off the tin roofs of Granada, and a perfect composition of clouds scattered across the sky. I walked passed sleepy eyed, slow-motioned old women, sweeping the dust off of dirt roads. The main strip was bare, save beer bottles and plastic bags scattered in the gutters left over from Saturday night merry and mirth. The street was wide and laid with cobblestones overturned or missing in places. I walked down the middle, the rose tint of my sunglasses turning all the facades of houses into enticing reds, faded yellows and oranges, all bouncing off the perfect warm blue of the sky. I felt alone, like I could dance down the street and it would remain my secret memory forever. It was like a dream, where places you’ve only seen filled with people are suddenly empty, and you find yourself cautiously exploring the freedom of being unwatched. The top of the world was under the soles of my shoes, and I turned it by moving forward. It is in moments like these when things become clear, perspective is gained, ideas are formed. I felt fresh, I was standing up tall, and above all I felt in control, a very powerful way to feel, and a feeling I’ve only truly felt once before.

It was the day I turned eighteen. I filled my day with all the respectable shenanigans one might expect, graffiti under the cover of night, champagne bottles popped and drunk without cups, driving through spurting fire-hydrants in a top-down convertible, and most memorable of all, the people surrounding me, the people I know best in the world. The party ended around two in the morning, and I was ready to fall into bed, another day over and gone. Liam Cunningham sat my couch, as he does almost every night after the rest of us have gone to sleep, his head too full of ideas, his body too awake to lay still. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night, and find him up in the midst of deep thought. This is when we have our best conversations. Liam is a unique kind of friend. Though we usually find each other in the same house, we can go days without speaking. I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation over text or phone, we are never updated on the day to day happenings of each other’s lives, and yet he knows me better than almost anyone in the world. On the night of my birthday, after everyone else had fallen against the enemy of heavy eyes and the promise of dreams, Liam gave me a present. Lets go for a walk. I mustered up my remaining energy, drank a tall glass of water, or maybe champagne, and headed out into the warm august air.

We walked though Little Italy, pasted vacant parks and three-flats housing newly moved -in college students, fast asleep. We cut through parking lots, running over painted lines everyone knows the significance of. I haven’t seen a line on the street since I’ve been here. We walked through Greek town, past the corner of Halstead and Jackson, where the gyro meat never stops spinning on that magical carousel dripping lamb fat onto the linoleum floor. We walked onto the Jackson bridge over the expressway, and watched the cars go by. We slipped passed the starry red metal fence and sat on the grass next to speeding semi-trucks and cars driving south to the suburbs for another day of work. We walked farther east, into the west loop, where all green things disappear and the trees above you are replaced with rusty el tracks, holding a beauty all their own, their grittiness and grime. The trains ran all night, and as they screamed above our heads I felt the urge to scream along.  We took Jackson to the Sears tower, and laid in the grass in the park just south. We looked up at the tower, the black beauty that she is, watching us all, her frame so great and resolute. She loves us as much as we love her, I’d say. I don’t remember if we made it to the lake. If we did I have no memory of it. But I can still see the empty streets. What a beautiful place this world would be without cars, those gaudy metal boxes we must have, all of us. We walked home, just the two of us and our city, and we talked of the years to come. Liam spoke of how important it is to feel the absence of whatever it is you love. He told me to go live somewhere else, do something I’ll never get the chance to do again. Be someone you’ve always wanted to be, and be happier because of it.

I take Liam’s advice very seriously, I always have. He is a strange, strange boy, stringy curls of brown hair, light brown eyes, a perfect bump in his nose, and bits of red in his skin. I met him in French class, years ago, before the band, before I knew what an important person he would one day become. He had a horrible French accent, but passed the class with flying colors due to his ability to talk to the teacher in a way that made them seem like old friends out at a bar. He was gangly, dorky, had a strange sense of humor, but something intrigued me about him. I’m slowly putting together the puzzle pieces of his genius. His knowledge is vast and complex, he retains facts and stories of war and their outcomes, kings and their influences, sometimes he quizzes me on how many presidents I can name in order. Once I get into the trivia bar scene, he’ll be my golden ticket. As is true of all brilliant people, he is particular, sometimes obsessive, very in his own head. He will lock himself in a closet for a day with his guitar, without a thought of food or company. He writes the most beautiful words, and understands the language of notes and space, melody and harmony. I can tell he thinks about his dreams a lot, maybe even worries about them. While I can never know the pressure and stress that comes with his passion, I never have a doubt that the world will know him. With some people, you just know. There is no way he can lead an average life, because his ideas are just too big, his mind is just too special.

As I walked through the bare granada streets, I thought of Liam, and the night he gave me, the control he showed me how to gain over my own life and dreams. As I was able to see clearly again the possibility, celebration, and beauty in life, I also felt a touch of sadness for the people I am living without. Wherever we go, there are teachers. People who teach you whats right and wrong, people who teach you of mistakes you never want to make, people who teach you what true happiness looks like. The beauty of a lesson learned is that it follows you forever, as does the teacher you learned it from.

Assuming Adventure in Malacatoya

There was a clang and the long scratch of a sunbathing iguana’s nails pressing into the tin roof above my head.  I woke up as a farmer might wake up to a rooster’s crow, unamused, almost refreshed, lista. My back was sticky and hot, I let my foot dangle off the bed and stretched it to angle the fan on the floor to direct the cool air at my static, sweating body. I wonder about the bats, and if they have made a home in my home, and if that makes us neighbors, roommates, or enemies. As if my cellular realized I was awake, a muffled monotonous ringing sounded from the depths of my bag. Answering a phone call in Spanish first thing in the morning is like walking out of a bar after a long night and taking a math test. Having a conversation with someone right in front of me is hard enough, having to guess who I’m talking to and what they’re talking about with a spotty connection is something else. After a quick and confusing conversation I had agreed to meet one of my students in the park at ten, since agreeing was much less complicated than refusing. I blasted some music, allowing the rhythm and quirk of Rubblebucket to roll me out of bed and into a freezing thirty-second shower. I had no idea what to expect from the visit with my student. She had invited me to her house, which I guess would take a few hours at the most.  I decided as I dressed that as soon as I returned I would crawl right back into bed for a few more hours of shut-eye.

I arrived in the park five minutes early. I posted against a fence surrounding a large yellow catholic cathedral situated on the south end of the park. I found a spot of shade under a large cement cross, and made conversation with a jocote vender on the topic of why I was Latina and didn’t speak Spanish. This conversation occurs multiple times a day. Ten minutes later I spotted my student, Mary Linda, a spunky girl of seventeen who had a poise that was authoritative, though youthful.  She weaved through the market, buying me a refresco and torta as I trotted to keep up with her short quick stride. She hoisted me onto a bus without giving me a chance to utter a question or protest, and before I knew it I was passing the outskirts of Granada in what I assumed to be the first bus ever brought to Nicaragua. As we passed out of the realm of paved roads, leaving behind the city and the chance of a mid-day nap, the bus-riders around me began to settle in, finishing their bags of juice, throwing the limp sticky plastic out the window, and resting their heads against the seat. One had to be prepared for an overload of the senses. The ancient frame of metal clamored and clanged with every rock and lump of earth beneath us, creating a violent rumble like concrete being blended by a powerful machine. The air-conditioning was all natural, the windows pulled down as far as they would go, the dust swept up by the tires wafted into the bus, and you could feel it landing on your sweating shoulders, like snowflakes without the frost. The road we were traveling down was feet away from the lake, shining blue-green waters peaked and dipped, and stretched as far as my eye could reach. Over the screaming of the engine and the crunch of metal grinding metal, I tried to get some information about where it was we were headed. Our destination was Malacatoya, and the return time was overlooked. I asked her when the bus headed back to Granada. Well it’s Sunday, there are no more buses. I asked how much a taxi might cost. There are no taxis in Malacatoya. I realized if I wanted to make it home that night, I would have to hitch a ride. While I was slightly perturbed, I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it.

Forty-five minutes later, after passing lake-side mansions next to recycled-tin shacks, we hopped off the bus at a plain wall with a modest door, and a beer sign hanging in high visibility. I walked into a large open courtyard with a tin roof to create shade. There were three worn pool tables, with men slouching over pool sticks aiming sloppily for stripes or solids, men and women stationed in plastic lawn chairs, their feet crossed at the ankles, fanning themselves with towels and plates, and a small kitchen, a wood fire burning under a large wok-like pan, chicken frying in crackling oil, and large tupperware full of almost warm rice. I grabbed a chair next to my students mother, Mary Elena who acknowledged me briefly before realizing how hard it was to have an interesting conversation with me. She was a large woman, a hard face with worn hands and a frilly apron tied around her waist. She shouted out to customers and directed people in and out of the kitchen without leaving her chair, and I realized she was the ring-leader at this circus. An older woman came into the bar with a soft spoken girl behind her. She pulled a chair into our circle and revealed a bible from her purse. She opened to a prepared page and began reading to us, looking each of us in the eye as she recited the memorized words. Mary Elena nodded her head as she fanned herself, staring off at the bar patrons, busy with conversation and sipping their cervezas. Before long the woman packed up her bible, summoned her quite friend, and moved on the next house. After a hearty meal of rice, chicken, and tomatoes, Mary Linda invited me to go to the beach with her, as if I might have some other preoccupations. I positioned myself on the cross-bar of her bike, and after picking up two more chicas, both were students of mine as well, a small group of us rode two-to-a-bike down the dirt road, stopping only for me to readjust my ass to keep from sliding to a dusty doom. We turned down a small path, passing one house to find another behind it. There were ten or fifteen people scattered around the yard, all eating, cooking, laughing, and eating. We changed clothes in the sparse concrete structure that was the house, and picked jocotes off the ground that fell from the neighbors tree. The small green fruits look like limes, and have an almond sized pit. They taste something like a tart apple, but the good ones are just sweet enough, and eaten with plenty of salt. Anywhere around Nicaragua you will find the gnawed on pits of jocotes littering the ground.

We walked through a watermelon patch to get to the beach. One of the boys held wide two lines of a barbed-wire fence so we could pass through. We left our bags and shoes under a large bush. The water was warm, warmer than any natural water I’ve ever been in. It took meters of walking before we reached water that came up to our chests. My students splashed and squealed. I floated on my back, moving with the waves, looking up at a sky as vast as water that looks like it goes on forever. Mary Linda picked a shell off the ground. She pried it open and picked out the oyster with her fingers, then handed me the rainbow-pearl shell still lined with fleshy tissue. I scraped at it with my nails until it was clean. On the way back to the house we picked a watermelon off the ground. Mary Linda cut it open and handed me a soft pink slice. There were white seeds throughout the flesh. I bit into the melon, juice gushed down my cheeks and chin. It was the sweetest watermelon I’ve ever tasted. One of the boys climbed up a jocote tree and filled his shirt with the small treats. We ate them continuously until there were none left. We rode back, dropping off everyone at their respective houses. One of the student’s mother’s insisted on feeding me again. I had another meal of rice and chicken, this one slightly different from the last. A cantaloupe was cut, and we ate it while sitting in a circle of lawn chairs. I borrowed dry clothes and a whole cantaloupe along with a handful of jocotes were shoved in my bag, a parting gift. Sure enough someone’s uncle was headed to Granada. I insisted on paying for his gas and time, and after a tour of Malacatoya, the river crossing, the church, the school, the basketball court, the fields, we began the journey home.

Riding the same road on a motorcycle was a refreshingly serene experience. I could see everything around me. I could reach out and touch the cows that were crossing the road, I could smell the food cooking in roadside houses, I could make eye contact with the men and woman sitting outside their houses, and the babies standing on their laps. The lake was a mere stones throw away the entire length of the road. I thought of Chicago, and our own Lake Shore Drive. I’ve felt similar sensations of vivaciousness while driving down that road in my home town, next to our own beautiful lake. We passed groups cooking and playing soccer on the beach, crashing and falling into the perfect water. Every few meters a new house was being built, large, two story houses with balconies and two car garages. Around the houses walls were erected, large concrete barriers, protecting vacationing gringos from the beauty of Nicaraguan life. I made it home around five, and couldn’t believe that I had seen so much and still had time to fit more into my day. Sometimes I stop and remember where I am, and I become baffled at the insane situation I’ve assumed. I receive a full day of education everyday, and I get to do it here, in the most beautiful place I’ve ever known. As I washed off the lake, ringing out fresh water from my mangled hair, I spoke Spanish to myself, and thought I sounded pretty good.

Anna’s Got A Brand New Bag

Well i’ve spent a full three weeks here in Nicaragua, and the time is flying. In such a short time my daily routine has changed from white to black, and every day presents new and exciting challenges.  My weeks are long, but fun. I start the day at 5:30, getting ready for the day, having breakfast with Maria Elena, my house mother here, who helps me turn on my Spanish switch with a nice, slow conversation.  Every day she tries to teach me new words and phrases, and showers me with praise when I remember the work for “fork”. Around 6:30 I hear the rumble of an engine outside the house, and grab my bag and hop on the back of Larry’s motorcycle (a friendly man who offered his chauffeuring service to get me to school every morning). I tighten my helmet strap (que sigh of relief from my mother) and begin the thirty-minute long ride to Diriomo, a nearby town where my school is located.  After a quick zigzag through the streets of Granada, passing early-rising merchants setting up their makeshift shops on squatted corners, children in uniform walking or biking to school, and countless stoop dwellers sweeping the morning dust from their stretch of sidewalk, we begin the long stretch on the Carretera.  This road is long, winding, and consists of two paved lanes always busy with speeding motorcycles, auto-taxis, cars, bikes, buses, semi-trucks, horse-drawn carts, and pedestrians.  Navigating this road means constantly passing the slowpokes, honking every time another vehicular transport is in sight to be sure your presence is known. After I got over the thrill of watching a semi-truck flash before my eyes, leaving my mouth agape and a priceless  look on my face I’m sure, I came to appreciate the stunning scenery I had the privilege of witnessing every morning.  The sun would just begin peeking out from behind El Volcan Mumbacho, sending picturesque rays of light to hit the crimped tin roofs and blue and red painted houses.  Horses tied to rocks would watch the passing traffic while swatting the flies from their backs, piles of leaves and garbage burning slowly produced rising streams of smoke, twisting and tuning, mixing with the dust from a passing truck, and the green, the endless green of trees and grass, the smell of tended life mixing with the mornings ration of rice and beans. That thirty minutes, so early in the morning, sets the stage for my day, giving me time to feel wind on my face, see enough beauty to last me years, and reflect and plan on what has passed and what is yet to come.

Eventually we make a 180-degree turn onto a dirt rode, and about 600 meters down is La Escuela Technica Emprendenor. The campus is vast, spaciously fitting three large school houses (one used for offices and a room for teachers), three large cash crops of yuccas and other root vegetables, a growing organic garden, currently growing variations of lettuce rarely grown in Nicaragua, a bed of worms used as fertilizer, a chicken coup, an outdoor kitchen and cafeteria, and a volunteer house that should be finished and furnished at the end of this month.  As I pull up to the school 120 kids in uniform are chatting and sharing snacks before getting into lines separated by grade, classroom, and boys and girls, shortest to tallest.  At this time the day begins with the schools director saying a prayer, and motivating the students in one way or another.  They break off into one of the four classrooms, and wait for their first teacher.  I follow the English teacher, Arlen, to class, and assist her with the days lesson.  Arlen is a Nicaraguan woman who has been studying English for five or six years.  She explained to me that it is very difficult to learn in Nicaragua because there are few native speakers to learn and practice English with.  However at our school the mission is to teach the children English during their five years there, so that the chances of them getting a job once they graduate is three times as likely.  After two weeks of practice, these students can now introduce themselves, describe classroom objects, and describe the appearance of a friend.  While some of these kids would rather face their worst fear than speak out loud in English, I try to comfort them by attempting to speak Spanish, which I still do very poorly, in hopes that they will see I am struggling as much as they are.  I tell the kids that they are my teachers, and they are taking on the task of teaching me words and names of traditional foods between classes. They have come up with some nick names for me, which I assume are harmless, though I couldn’t be sure seeing as I have no idea what they’re saying.  At lunch I mingle with the kids as well as converse (very slowly) with the teachers. It is a strange feeling to never fully understand a statement or question, ever.  I have grown accustomed to hand signals and listening more than speaking, and the frustration of not being able to express myself is slowly beginning to pass, and has turned into a motivational tool.  I always keep a notebook nearby (one of many I received before leaving with the instructions from friends to write as much as possible) and jot down any expressions or words I need to look up, or have someone write down a word I learn so I can study it later. While everyone around me is very helpful and understanding of my language barrier, I will be glad when I can hold a casual conversation without guessing the tense, subject, or verb (sometimes all three).

I finish work at the school around 1, at which time I walk back to the Carretera where I find refuge in the shade of a large tree where I spend 10-30 minutes waiting for the bus.  I have written a detailed description of the bus, since that experience in itself is a blog-worthy post, so I will not fully explain what it means to ride a bus in Nicaragua at this time.  But eventually you hear the yells and screams of “GRANADA GRANADA GRANADA” at which point you flag down the school bus decorated in reds, blues, and greens, and jump on the still moving vehicle as a man pulls you in while collecting your money. The cost of riding a bus from Diriomo to Granada is ten cordobas (less than fifty cents), and comes complete with a boom box sound system and the probability of sitting next to a woman with a basket of food on her head.  The bus pulls into the main market place in Granada, another place you have to see to believe.  As you walk off the bus you are immediately surrounded by people, fruits, clothes, shoes, and phone chargers.  Every inch of either side of the street is occupied by a merchants waving rags over their baskets of goods to keep the flies off.  Here you can get some incredible food for twenty cords or less (if you look Nicaraguan. If you’re a gringo, you pay double at least. I look like a Nicaraguan, so if I say very little I can usually get Nicaraguense prices). My usual snack are platanos fritos ( fried thinly sliced plantains served in a plastic bag with cabbage salad and chile) and a refreshing refresco (fruit juices dished out of large tubs into plastic bags with a straw). I soon learned that everything here can and will be served in a plastic bag.  As I weave through traffic I make my way to the less busy streets still bustling with afternoon activity, all the way to my humble home near the lake.  I trudge up an indoor-outdoor flight of stairs to my room, change my clothes, wash my sweaty face, and dive deep into a book for at least an hour.  After that my days are filled with Spanish classes, occasionally giving friends English classes, writing, exploring Granada, lots of eating, and retrieving balls hit into our yard by a makeshift baseball bat.  While I have had an emotionally trying last week being away from family during the loss of my lovely grandmother, I feel that this experience is worthy of my time and full attention.  However I would give anything for a good ol’ American PB&J. After a long week I have two days to rest before the Poetry Festival of Granada begins of the 17th. So begins a week full of some of the most important Latin American poets reading their work, traditional dancing and music, and beautiful people gathering from all over the world. I’m so excited to post about all the amazing sights I see and words I hear, stay tuned for a very exciting world event.

Know Your Worth

Today marks the first day of my second week here in Nicaragua. I woke up around 6:30, ate some breakfast with Maria Elena, my Nicaraguan mother, and went to school to prepare the classrooms for the kid’s first day on Monday. I cut up paper to decorate posters welcoming the kids into the new year, and conversed with my fellow teachers carefully picking apart sentences, trying to comprehend subject, verb, and noun.  I usually only got one of the three. Around noon the staff called it a day and headed to a stand on the side of the road that sold typical Nicaraguan fruit juice and quesillos. From there I hopped on a bus, literally, the buses rarely come to a complete stop, and experienced my first bus ride into Granda. I got off on a busy market street and amazingly navigated my way home without loosing my bearings.  Today my only costs were lunch and bus fare, which came out to 18 cordobas. That’s approximately 75 American cents. I was trying to wrap my head around this on the way home. I began thinking about worth; the worth of food, the worth of a dollar, the worth of people. What is a person worth? It made me so sad to realize that when asked, most people would answer that question with a monetary value.  In America especially, people with little to no money are conditioned to feel worthless. These past few days I have met people who can’t spare a single cordoba, a fraction of a cent to us, and they radiate love and warmth.  How is it that here in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Nicaragua, I find much more self-worth than in a place like Chicago? I believe one of the main factors is that in a typical American city, advertisements are completely unavoidable.  You see them on benches, newspapers, highways, side streets, schools, and television.  A child cannot walk home from school without unconsciously correlating cool and Nike, food and McDonalds, beautiful and perfection.  This poison has infiltrated every single aspect of our American life, therefore correlating worth and money, a very dangerous correlation indeed. When a person’s worth is found in something as trivial as money, life can loose value very quickly.

I worry for our country. I worry for our values, our idea of success, beauty, happiness. But it is important to remember that Americans do not value money more than all else because they are bad, greedy, materialistic people by nature, they value it above all else because our culture has made it near impossible to distinguish between necessity and excess.  Somewhere in America’s past the great thinkers forget to consider what could happen to a country based on buying and selling. They forgot to say that too much is too much, and something that could’ve been great became an all consuming monster that ate America’s culture in a few big bites.  It is my hope that the monster is finally done digesting, so we can be pooped out and used as compost for our great country’s future fruit.  When this happens, when our culture can become reborn, we can finally give the thinkers, activists, organizers, artists, mathematicians, and scientists their rightful place in American pop culture. We can decide for ourselves who should be important, who should be projected to the whole world, who should be on the cover of magazines.  Not because of a photoshop-able face or the financial support of a morally-bankrupt company.  Once this happens we will have the power to take back the meaning of worth, and keep out the unwanted associations.  People forget the kind of power they have when organized successfully.  As my favorite movie expressed, “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of the people”. Imagine if all the children in Chicago realized their own potential. Just imagine that Chicago.  Start with yourself. Find worth and beauty in all the things you believe in. Take a walk. Pick up the trash on the street. Learn your neighbor’s name, then invite him over for dinner.  Learn a few other neighbor’s names, then have the whole street over for dinner.  Invite everyone to clean out the lot so the children you met can play there. Once relationships are formed you’re no longer flying solo, you have a whole block of people behind you.  Your block with spill over to the next block, then the next block, then you all decide you want something, and you have a hundred signatures.  Ignoring one person is easy.  Ignoring a hundred is harder.  Ignoring a whole neighborhood is near impossible.  All you have to do is knock on a couple of doors.

If I am anything, I am an optimist.  I have complete faith in people,  and not because I am naive or unexposed.  I have seen people spilling over with hate, and I have seen what that can do to public morale.  Hatred is rooted in fear, so I try my best not to be afraid.  It is a wonderfully simple way to begin enjoying life.  I have faith that these people who we are taught to fear will be the people who lead us into triumph and a happier existence.  I can see the yearning for change in people’s eyes.  The only thing left for them to realize is that they are the one’s capable of change.  Now go for a walk, you beautiful, worthy human.

Una Vida Nicaragüense

Day six in Nicaragua, I cant believe it’s been almost a week already.  Amazingly enough I have already begun to notice small changes in myself: my indifference to insects, my willingness to try new foods, and my tolerance for heat, to start.  As a stranger in a foreign land, I have begun to realize that living in Nicaragua will mean disposing of my American standards of living, customs, and expectations, and adapting to a Nicaraguense way of life.  This realization started with a conversation with my boss, Geralyn.  Geralyn is a woman from the States who became heavily involved with the Nicaraguan chapter of an organization called Opportunity International.  Opportunity works in countries around the world to promote sustainable micro-entrepreneur practices with and for the local residents.  In Nicaragua, Opportunity has helped yucca farmers modify their agricultural methods to yield four times the product through simple planting techniques and tricks.  Opportunity networks with local artists, encouraging them to work together to promote each other’s work and business strategies for selling their art.  Opportunity also runs a secondary technical school, teaching required curriculum as well as sustainable trades such as tourism and agriculture.  Tourism is a booming business opportunity in Nicaragua due to its recently acquired status of being one of the safest and most economical travel destinations in Central America.  Walking around Granda, the main city of Nicaragua, you will see almost as many tourists as you do local Nicaraguans.  This opportunity for profit in a struggling country like Nicaragua has caused the residents to shift their business models to cater to tourists rather than force tourists to be absorbed in Nicaraguan culture.  My guess is that most tourists get by during their travels in Granda without saying a full sentence in Spanish.  So, while it is easy for an American like me to make friends and converse with English speaking tourists, it is my goal to become fully absorbed in the authentic Nicaraguan culture and way of life.  And in authentic Nicaragua, I have begun to scratch the surface of an unknown world.  

So, as I was saying, it was a conversation with Geralyn that reminded me that tourist-Nicaraguan culture is far different than authentic-Nicaraguan culture.  I have recently met the director of the secondary technical school that I will be assistant teaching at for the next ten months.  After a lovely meeting, I left feeling excited and motivated to begin work as a teacher.  However, the director felt a bit differently about our meeting.  He called Geralyn in distress, expressing his concern of his new hire, the young girl involved in gangs and drugs (that would be me).  I thought back to our meeting and wondered what on earth would make him assume such a thing.  I thought I was being completely modest and respectful, and hoped he would be as happy as I was with my involvement in his school.  There were a few causes for his discomfort and assumptions.  One – I was wearing a shirt without sleeves (in the 90 degree weather).  Two – I had a piercing in my nose. Three – I had a tattoo visible on my forearm.  In Nicaragua, tattoos and piercings hold a very distinct significance, one that I was definitely unaware of upon my arrival.  Tattoos and piercings have a direct correlation with drugs and gangs, and are completely unacceptable.  Of course, I had no way of knowing this walking around Granada, where every other backpacker was wearing spandex shorts and had a colorful sleeve.  The clash between cultures became clearly visible to me, and I was caught somewhere in the middle.  I am an American, where tattoos and piercings signify freedom of expression and a love of art, where people wear shorts when it is hot outside, and where it is acceptable for women to drink beer out of the bottle.  But, I would be spending the next ten months living and working with families and children to whom those things meant something very different.  I was faced with the question: do I share my own culture with them, or do I conform to their traditions and assumptions of right and wrong? Because I came here to learn, teach, and grow, not to shop, swim, and take pictures, I felt that I had an obligation to comply to the ways of the authentic Nicaraguan, and deter the ways of the outsider tourist.  Although this option is far more challenging, it will allow me to form healthy and trusting relationships with my new neighbors and friends, and that is what’s most important to me on this trip.  

Alas, I have taken out my piercing, covered my tattoo, and spurned all pairs of shorts to make way for my new Nicaraguense lifestyle.  To serve others it is important to act from the inside, to live with the people, to play with their children, to talk to the bus riders, to get to know my neighbors.  Nicaragua is a place of openness; open doors, open houses, open conversations.  It has already proven easy to meet people, each new face comes with a fascinating story and an incredibly kind offer of friendship.  The sense of community is strong, much stronger than any I have felt in the States. During my stay here I am sure I will gain incredible insight to the values and customs of people unconcerned with matters of brand names, formal education, and dominating the world. Instead I will take life a day at a time, using only what is needed, and becoming rich in a sense that Americans haven’t yet come to understand. Nicaragua, I may be in love. 

The Storm Before the Calm

There are few certainties in this life, few things that are simply inevitable.  We may not say for sure that tomorrow will proceed as planned, without any surprising obstacles or surprises.  We should not assume that if we fail to accomplish something today we would have another chance at the same success.  And we should never underestimate the concept of time and permanence.  You will never get the opportunity to relive this second of life.  What a thrilling idea, time. Without fail I can say with certainty that time is continuing to pass, and I can do absolutely nothing to slow it down.

 

I was sitting in the last stage of limbo. I was looking at the milky sunset sky through the floor to ceiling windowpanes in the Houston airport, and I remember wondering if the colors would be different in Nicaragua.  These past few weeks have been a blur of procrastinated packing and identifying which aspects of my past life I will be extending into my ambiguous future.   There is an idea that sometimes crosses my mind, it ever so often tickles the crux of my imagination, and I picture throwing all choices that brought me to this point into a shining silver trash bin, and proceeding empty, fresh, reinvigorated.  So often we fall into ruts of routines that we forget exist.  How easy it is to pull ourselves out.  How hard it is to realize we’re there in the first place.  These ruts are distracting, seemingly harmless, and amazingly comfortable.  Living a life of comfort is an understandable desire, but it can also be a highly restricting parameter.

 

My day of travel did not go as expected, simply because I chose not to assume any emotions that would follow exiting one world and entering another.  Even the segway of two flights, exit-row legroom, and complimentary cheeses could not prepare me for that transition.  On the plane entering Nicaragua I stared out the window at a black velvet expanse.  That’s the thing about night flights, in a new place you have no idea what you’ll wake up to.  This darkness was scattered with multicolored gems of light, strewn about in no apparent grid or linear fashion, a constellation of civilization.  Customs let me through without a second glance at my intended 300-day stay, and I stepped out into the thick, hot Managua air.  A man from Opportunity International, my new familia, picked my dad and I up in a silver truck.  I sat in the back seat as he loaded our luggage, and a young boy tapped on my window, begging for a crumb of my American gold.  We drove through narrow streets enclosed by brightly colored facades; large wooden doors faced with iron gates lent a taste of the wonders I imagined inside.   There were dogs everywhere.  They trotted across black busy streets with their noses to the ground, following the fairytale scent of asphalt food.  It was past ten at night and bikers continued to ride past sauntering pedestrians, as swerving stick shift cars avoided both walkers and cyclists by some miracle of nonchalant steering.  My dad conversed with our driver in Spanish, and I worked my tired mind furiously to piece together the shells of sentences.  We reached Granada, and the streets seemed tired and ominous to me. It all seemed so far away. All the people were surreal. These aren’t the people I know.  I settled into my hotel room with my dad, who was excited and alert as ever.  My mask of bravery had to last a while longer.  He stepped outside, leaving me alone to my terrifying thoughts.  What the hell are you doing here? This is not your home.  Ten months.  Ten months.  I opened my suitcase, a jumbled mess of articles of the life I left behind.  I saw it all there in that suitcase, the life I chose to change, no turning back. I swallowed my tears as I straightened my posture and faced myself in the mirror.  I told myself what everyone had been telling me for weeks.  What an experience you’re going to have.  You are brave.  You are amazing.  This is the best decision you’ve made so far.  Good job, Anna… Good job, Ana.   

 

A few moments ago I felt an internally clear sensation of progress.  It was one of those experiences that gave me reassurance, confidence, and pride.  I stood on the terra cotta tiles of my clean and comfortable hotel bathroom.  It consisted of a sink large enough for a small duck to sit statically, a toilet accompanied by a roll of thin toilet paper, and an exposed sunken shower with one faucet dial.  If I had one guess, it would be that the countries entire hot water supply was not directly connected to the singular dial in room 11 of L’Hotel Pergola in Granada.  Believe it or not, my first shower in Nicaragua is something I’ve been dreading for weeks.  Every time I took a fifteen-minute scalding hot shower in my comfortable American bathroom I would shiver at the thought of a limited to non-existent hot water supply. But alas, no need to fear.  I spent a 90-degree day walking the breathtakingly gorgeous streets of Granada, driving to and from the school gracious enough to employ me, and perusing the interiors of possible housing options for my next month in Granada.  Determined not to wear shorts, the give-away symbol of American tourism, I returned to my hotel room tired, full, and hot.  I disrobed, turned that dial with an assertive 180-degree twist, and placed my body under the barely warm streams of water.  Like most new and frightening experiences, there was an initial shock followed by adaptation, and eventual satisfaction.

 

My first day in Nicaragua is coming to a close, as all days do.  Just as inevitable as this day ending, tomorrow will begin, and eventually ten months will have come and gone.  The fear has left me for now, and I feel an intense calm. The languid pace of Nicaragua fits me like a glove, and I am at peace with my decision to accept any and all challenges that come with displacing myself in a foreign land.  At the end of this Nicaraguan day I am able to feel a warm breeze on my face, look to the stars, and be thankful for the beauty in today.

 

Fear Not of Man

There is an ever-present white noise in America. In all places of the world, really. This white noise is never turned off, so most of us never realize it’s there. This background static buzzes its way into ear lobes and creeps into minds, settling down comfortably in each of our subconscious. This invisible poison is the reason for America’s impossible death rates, crime rates, dropout rates. It is the reason we group ourselves by color and the reason we can’t get a job. It is the reason some of us drop out of high school and others never leave the suburbs. This dooming drone of noise is more commonly known as fear. Americans especially love to spread fear. Fear of change. Fear of revolt. Fear of the unknown. Fear of them. We see this everyday, in every news story, in every TV show, in every stranger’s face, fear is the underlying commonality. This is Chicago, a place where it’s stupid to be unafraid. You must prepare for the worst because the worst happens at least once a day. We begin this preparation at a very young age. Don’t go in this neighborhood, don’t wear this color on this street, don’t talk to people who look like that. These precautions have become common sense, and that’s what’s murdering this city.

I am a nineteen year old American girl born and raised in Chicago. I am an advocate of living without fear. I don’t mean people shouldn’t be afraid of spiders, heights, clowns, etc., because those things are scary, and you should be afraid of them. I’m talking about a different kind of fear. A fear that has been developed over the past 3000 years as an unnatural result of man playing God, and trying to decide for themselves who is worthy of life and who deserves death. I’m talking about a person being afraid of another person. During my short lifetime I’ve walked through the majority of Chicago’s 70-some diverse segregated neighborhoods. I don’t have a driver’s license, so my feet are my main method of transportation. This is a particularly vulnerable way to maneuver the city if you live in constant fear of your fellow-man. Fear isn’t something that remains in your mind. When you become scared the fear is visible from the top of your head to the soles of your feet, noticeably shaking in your boots. When you become scared, you become a target. Of all the walks I’ve taken, no matter the neighborhood, I have never once felt threatened. I’ve never been mugged, taken advantage of, aggressively approached, or even verbally assaulted. This could be because I’m extremely lucky, it could be because I am avoiding the most dangerous neighborhoods, or it could be that anywhere I go I refuse to assume that something terrible is going to happen to me. I don’t carry maze, brass knuckles, or a pocket knife. However I do arm myself with a certain mentality, body language, and openness to speak to people. I truly believe that this is what has kept me safe in this beautiful city.

I can confidently rule out the excuse that I don’t encounter danger because I only roam in “safe” neighborhoods. My parents house, the house I grew up in and left a little more than a year ago, is located on the cusp of Little Village, a predominately Mexican neighborhood with heavy associations of gang violence. I live in a hundred year old brick house on the corner of Millard and 24th, constantly decorated with white drawings of crowns, both right side up and upside down. Many of the shootings reported in Little Village happen a mere two or three blocks away from my family home. The route I take to leave my beloved neighborhood consists of traveling north on Central Park, crossing into North Lawndale, a predominately black neighborhood. North Lawndale is infamous for its fall after riots destroyed the neighborhood as a result of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Since then the neighborhood has been void of successful businesses, home owners, high school graduates, adequate school funding, and safe streets. However it has gained over 100 liquor stores, a few currency exchanges, and lots of drugs. I wont go into the complex causes of this neighborhood’s decline; that’s another story altogether. The point I’m trying to make is that I have been surrounded by the real grit of Chicago’s strife all my life. When I became old enough to take the train by myself, my mother always insisted that I take the bus the four blocks to the train station (two blocks through Little Village, two blocks through North Lawndale). In all the trips I’ve made to and from the train, I have probably taken the bus four or five times. I almost always feel the urge to walk, fascinated by the change in scenery after passing under a freight-train viaduct. On this walk I’ve had small conversations with many people; returning hellos, smiling politely at catcalls, answering the purely curious questions of stoop dwellers. I acknowledge people, and acknowledgement is really the smallest courtesy we can give each other, is it not?

This city is full of crime because people go looking for crime. We pinpoint danger in certain groups of people because we want to perceive them as dangerous. We walk around with our heads down because we expect the worst from our fellow humans. The fear teeming in the world causes us to hate each other, kill each other, disregard each other the basic rights that all life deserves. I think Mos Def says it best – Fear Not of Man.

“Well, from my understanding people get better
when they start to understand that, they are valuable
And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money
or cause somebody think they sexy
but they valuable cause they been created by God
And God, makes you valuable
And whether or not you recognize that value is one thing
You got a lot of societies and governments
tryin to be God, wishin that they were God
They wanna create satellites and cameras everywhere
and make you think they got the all-seein eye
Eh.. I guess The Last Poets wasn’t too far off
when they said that certain people got a God Complex
I believe it’s true
I don’t get phased out by none of that, none of that
helicopters, the TV screens, the newscasters, the..
satellite dishes.. they just, wishin
They can’t really never do that
When they tell me to fear they law
When they tell me to try to
have some fear in my heart behind the things that they do
This is what I think in my mind
And this is what I say to them
And this is what I’m sayin to you”

-Mos Def

Create, Be Created, Create

I have always been one who gets great joy out of making things with my hands. Ever since I can remember I have been a creator of cards, collages, paintings, sculptors, paper, drawings, music, etc. It is a gratifying concept to understand that hands, even hands as small as mine, can create wondrous things. Things of beauty, complexity, emotion, things that make you think about yourself in a way you’ve never tried before. I suppose this habit of making was what led me to believe that I am an artist at my core. It is a scary job, creating. You make something from nothing and brand it with your name, and forever it can only be known as your creation. Once you create something, it has a spirit all its own, that can’t be neglected or forgotten. What may be even scarier for an artist is a sudden lack of creation. For many, creating is an outlet for all the emotions that can’t be described in words, the memories that creep to the front of your thought queue ten, twenty times a day, the only way to describe any type of true love.

I haven’t created in months, almost a year. At least in the artistic sense I have just described. I spent my first year of college at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a place where artists hone the concepts of their creations for months without stopping; no creative hiatus for an art student. During that year I saw everything around me in terms of art. As I would walk home from downtown I would list the qualities of a sidewalk that makes each slab unique. I began carrying a camera on all my walks, and instead of taking mental pictures of the exquisite pedestrians of this city, I took real ones. I learn how to soak in every detail in my line of sight, and enhance the lines that formed a pleasing composition. This is the way I looked at the world for a year, and it was beautiful.

After deciding (very abruptly) that my time at the Art Institute had expired, I began filling my head with questions. The answers to these questions I still dont know, but they all have to do with bettering the lives of people. People became my focus. Wherever I looked I saw the people and their situation. Instead of forming compositions in the skyline I was piecing together the stories that create people’s lives. I spend a lot of time on the train, on the street, walking, interacting and observing people from all parts of the city. I observe the tired look in their eyes, and imagine what time they woke up. I see the worn soles of their shoes, and wonder if they’ve had to run from anything today. I peek into their grocery bags, and guess how long they will be stretching this trip’s load. Trying to answer these questions for myself is near impossible, but I knew that I was beginning to wonder some interesting things. I read a book on the new urban poor, and begin to wonder how many people in this city have spent the day without spending a dollar. I read a book about America’s unfinished struggle for integration, and remember how many kids will grow up only interacting with people that look like they do. I read a book about one of Chicago’s housing projects, and realize that as I sit here writing this post, hundreds are fearing for their lives in their own homes.

Lately I’ve been focused more on what facts and ideas I let into my mind than the analysis and reactions I crank out. As a creator I know that I will return to the production lines, thinking up paintings and photographing strangers. However just as I believe that I have to know how to live without something before I can appreciate it, I believe I have to begin recreating myself before I can continue creating art. Stepping away from what you know allows you to realize just how little you know yourself, and forming the path of your self-exploration will be your most relevant creation of all.

Is it raining in the city, or is the city crying?

Chicago, I hope you get well soon. As it is, you’ve been infected. You’ve been infected with policies that directly create concentrated poverty, drugs, gangs, segregation, and indirectly create fear, hatred, a cease to curiosity. How many children have been taken by Chicago? We are all children to Chicago. We are all children of Chicago. When the report of a killing becomes so commonplace it’s not even reported, it is time to take a step back and restart. As I think about Chicago as I know it, I also think about how Chicago is portrayed. Chicago is a war zone, a blood bath, a training ground to those who hear our music, watch our news, pass through downtown and no where else. It’s a far away problem, an issue that’s only pressing when someone begins to press, and shockingly, it has become entertainment.

When I think about Chicago in that light, I think about Detroit. How many times have you seen a picture of Detroit that looks like this:

Granted, a building like this is a shocking, amazing sight to see. You don’t exactly know why, but it is beautifully intriguing, and hard to look away. This is what some people in Detroit are calling ruin porn. It is a nude, exposed picture of a building striped of all context and historical relevance, and turned into a novel, risky image. When you look at porn, you don’t feel the need to think about the girl you’re ogling in a humane manner, you don’t wonder if she has any brothers or sisters, or what she enjoys doing on a chilly Thursday night. She only exists in that picture, no context or emotional responsibility, all for your viewing pleasure. It’s the same with these pictures of families’ homes, burned down and destroyed, family businesses, looted and vandalized, majestic theaters, neglected and unkept. It is a sad, sad sight to see when fully present. I look at ruin porn the same way I look at Chicago’s expose’s. They are sent out without a story behind them, without the shattered morales of family and friends, without the thought that this person is never coming back. For me, a die-hard Chicagoan who has love for every neighborhood and every soul in this city, it hurts.

Chicago get well soon. I’m trying, i’m trying.