Well, it's father's day as I begin this, and I've been thinking about how all minus a few of my seven host families I stayed with during the semester had an absent father. In Quetzaltenango, my host mother was divorced, and the father lived in Guatemala City. At La Escuela de la Montaña, the children's father was in the U.S. (and my host mother's father worked in Xela all week and was only home on Tuesdays). In San Jose las Flores, the father of the oldest kids was killed during the war, although she was remarried with two younger children and we saw the father once or twice while we were there. The husband of Cordelia, my host mother in Nueva Esperanza, died during the war as well. There was a father in El Sitio, who came in after we'd all gone to bed and was gone when I woke up. The father of my Managua family had never been around much, and eventually left for good and married another woman. My host family in our rural Nicaraguan stay was very stable with a wonderful father. Let me elaborate on my experiences with the two host families I had in Nicaragua.
As I said in my previous email, we lived in the CGE house our first and last week in Nica, and if you subtract spring break and our 4-day rural stay, we lived with our host families in Managua for about 4 weeks. The homes were all in the community, or barrio--which is the word for a poor neighborhood--,of Batahola Norte. My family actually lived one block outside of Batahola, in Dinamarka, but all of the families were involved with the Centro Cultural.
Batahola is well known internationally, in certain circles, for two reasons: it was the first housing project taken on by the Sandinista government in 1980, and for its Cultural Center, which was founded in 1983. The cultural center offers classes of all types to the members of the community (music, dance, sewing, cooking, adult education, etc.), contains a library, and is especially famous for its murals, which cover almost every wall surface. The murals depict Nicaraguan history as well as images of the community's struggles. More information is available at www.friendsofbatahola.org , or--in Spanish--at www.ccbnnic.org (this site doesn't seem to be working, but there is a very cool picture of the mural at the front of the church at the top of the home page--do you recognize the four men on the left?).
My little blue house with its living/dining area, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms was on a dirt street. Eight people lived there. With Angelica and I, that made 10, and the two of us stayed in the little tiny room with two twin beds and a foot and a half of walking space between them while everyone else slept in the large bedroom. Our family was made up of Doña Rosa, her four children, and three grandchildren: Marilet, 32, with sons Jeffrey, 7, and Esteven, 18 months; Jessenia, 24, with daughter Miurell, who turned 7 while we were there; Bismarck, 18; and Juan Carlos, 14.
Here's a description of some of the characteristics of living in that house: "a rattley fan, a bed with bar across my chest, a window that opens onto a concrete wall. Corrugated metal roof with wooden 2x2 cross- beams. Aqua walls -- cement, wood, and metal, depending on the side of the room. Curtain door to our bedroom, debris falling on our beds from the roof. Paintings (some by Juan Carlos), and giant posters with photos of fancy U.S. country homes. Rocking chairs with wicker seats and backs. Table with a hole in it where we eat, do art, and study. Ants -- big ones -- in the bathroom. The first week it was cockroaches. Television is on most of the time, especially telenovelas, graphic news, music videos, and Hollywood movies dubbed in Spanish. Music, coming from somewhere down the street. Children yelling, neighbors talking in the street -- or in the house. Esteven, endless source of entertainment!"
Because we were so busy with activities and homework, I didn't get to really experience the culture as much as I'd hoped. But one cultural gem that I did learn about was the "gigantón": We were playing games with the kids in the back yard when we heard drumming, and they all started yelling excitedly and ran off down the street. After a while, we discovered what all the excitement was about. It was a "gigantón," a group of people marching down the street with drums, let by a very tall paper-mache and cloth person and an "enano" or elf, with a huge round head. As they made their way down the road, all the kids from the neighborhood followed, Angelica and I with them, overprotective Americans that we are--we were the oldest people in the crew; everyone else was probably under 13.
One of the bonding experiences we had with the kids was doing art with them and the neighbors. Angelica was an artist, so she brought paper, crayons, and colored pencils. My bonding experience with the women of the house happened when I got sick. "All three of them came into my room to ask me how I felt and if I was sick, and then they proceeded to try to fix me. It was actually really sweet. Doña Rosa admonished me for not telling them the second I got home, because "I could have died quietly on my bed without anyone knowing!" I assured her that it wasn't that bad. But Marilet, who's a nurse, took my temperature, gave me some pills, bought me some crackers, and ordered me to drink a bottle of Pedialyte for rehydration. When I threw up later, Doña Rosa made me a special "tea," which was lime and baking soda- flavored foam. It was one of the strangest concoctions I've ever drunk, but it did the trick, and I felt much better in the morning!"
I was glad to be feeling better because that was the morning we left for our trip to the rural community of Sontule, northeast of Estelí. Sontule is part of the Miraflor Union of Agricultural Cooperatives. Almost all of the men in the community are coffee farmers and grow organic coffee that is sold on the Fair Trade market. Of course, that means that all the best stuff is exported and they only get to drink the second-rate coffee. The farmers in Sontule have been organized into cooperatives since the early 1980s, which made it a target during the contra war, and their coffee storage building was burned out at least 3 times and otherwise attacked during the war. In 1995, the women decided they wanted to start a women's cooperative, which does many things, one of which is an eco-tourism project that involves living with families.
Two other students and I stayed with the family of Vilma Ivania and Guadalupe Castillo. Their house was an 8-minute walk down a two-track road off the main [gravel] road. My impression of their house, surrounded by plants, was "like a little green paradise among the dryness. Some would say, wow, what poor living conditions, but by rural Nicaraguan conditions, it's quite nice! It's pretty big, with tile floor, concrete in the kitchen, a porch and a side patio with hammocks. No running water or electricity, though. We do things like write in journals by candlelight, go to bed at 9pm, and take bucket baths. Their shower is outside, heavy black plastic wrapped around four wooden posts, surrounding a large stone slab to stand on.
Thursday we went with Ivania to the well to fetch water. Lucky for them it's a pretty short walk. On our way back she took us to see their other well, which is used for bath and wash water. Then she showed us around their garden. It consists of coffee plants; mango, banana, lemon, and orange tree; achiote, which makes a red dye; and pataculo, which is a spice. They have lots of varieties of lemons and oranges-- lemons the size of grapefruits, oranges that taste like lemons--we know, we tried one...
The weather there was like being back in Guatemala -- so beautiful and pleasant! It was the only time during our stay in Nicaragua when we needed blankets at night. In fact, we wore pants and long sleeve shirts to bed.
Ivania is an amazing, powerful, strong, articulate, feminist. She and her husband are confident that Daniel Ortega (who was the FSLN president in the 80s) will win the presidential election in November. During the war, she was part of an armed vigilante women's group until they moved to Sontule from Estelí. Her job then became to take care of the kids and the house while Guadalupe was out working and fighting. She told us a story about the first instance that would become a common occurrence during the war: They had been living in Sontule for two days. That day, she was alone in the house, taking care of a lot of children, when all of a sudden she heard bombing and shooting. She took the kids and ran for the mountains. The youngest was her son, Alvaro, who was 4 months old, born by a C-section from which Ivania was not yet completely healed. There were so many kids to keep track of, she accidentally left one of them behind who had been sleeping, whom she had to go back and fetch. The Contras burned the house and everything in and around it. She stayed in the mountains with the children for two whole days with practically no food. And yet she says that she liked the war--because she was never scared by it, and she believed in the principles that it supported and struggled for.
While there, we visited the neighboring community of Cebollal (a 40-minute drive down the gravel road), where they do the quality-testing (called "catación" or coffee-cupping) of the coffee that the farmers grow. We got to watch and participate in a demonstration of the process, which made the coffee fans in our group very happy. We also went on a walk through an orchid reserve and got to climb inside a giant tree that a ficus/phycus plant had killed. The other name for ficus in Spanish is "matapalo," which literally means branch/tree killer. They start in the tops of trees and their roots grow down, twining around the tree and eventually to the ground, essentially strangling and stealing nutrients from the trees. It was pretty amazing.
We ended our stay with the Castillo family just like we began it--with a dance party. They may not have electricity, but they are able to run a television (where they get most of their news from) and a boom box from a battery. The first night, Hannah's birthday was the occasion for the music and dancing. Not too many other people live with Ivania and Guadalupe, but a couple of their children and grandchildren live nearby--so there were probably about 7 adults there and at least 5 kids. It was a splendid weekend--but too short for my taste! I think the stays in the countryside were my favorite part of the program in each country.
