Leaving El Lagartillo

Juan Ramón, Yajaira, Monchito, Liam

Grinding Corn

Gallo Pinto, Platanos Maduros, Tortilla

Maribel and a recalcitrant student

We left El Lagartillo yesterday morning for León. There was a little rain last night which is unusual for this time of year. It was with some sadness that we left and said goodbyes to the friends we made this week. We are now in León, one of the two Spanish colonial cities which is in Nicaragua. I had to think back and ask where did the time go?

Then I had to think a little bit about how we spent our time, and how almost everything we did seemed to take more time than at home. Washing up in the morning was an effort. Taking a shower in an outdoor shower stall meant cleaning out the chicken poo first (they like to sleep in the shower), then filling up the water bucket, then taking a sponge bath.

Making tortillas is quite the technical process. First you have to soak the corn in water with lime (calcium carbonate or ¨cal¨in Spanish) starting the night before. The lime helps to loosen the husk of the corn kernel. Then you have to wash the kernels to remove the husks. Next step is to grind the corn (in this case with a hand powered grinder). To grind corn for 8 tortillas feels like doing about 50 pushups.

While Juan Ramón chopped firewood for the day, Yajaira would start the coffee. She makes excellent coffee, using finely ground Nicaraguan coffee in a Turkish coffee manner of brewing. Of course there is always sweeping, watering the paths to cut down the dust, doing laundry by hand and hanging it in the sun, and other chores.

Class was 4 hours per day. We would usually meet our teachers for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. As a plug for the school, the cost for 1 week of school plus lodging and meals is $160, which is easily worth the cost.

Every afternoon at four, the youth of the town head out to the field to play ball. Beisbol of course. Had you come this week, you would have seen a viejo blanco (old white dude) out playing in the fields with the boys. Nicaraguan boys are invariably excellent at playing baseball which they do from an early age.

For the last few nights, Liam and I would go outside and sit at the bus stop (a covered bench right next to the house) to read, talk about our time, and practice Taekwondo.