Stephanie's January Letter

Greetings all!

Often I imagine you in your sweaters, enjoying a walk around the Lakes. I was hoping I would escape the most frigid winter of the past century. Will I have a snowball to throw when I visit Minnesota? I now understand why folks who move to places with hot climates say they really miss the seasons. Oh for a wool sweater and a pair of mittens!

One day in November, winter turned to summer in Nicaragua. It has not rained since then and will not until May. Ahhhh! A man that passes from home to home, blowing poison into the homes to kill dengue mosquitos which are abundant during the months of September and October (Winter). It is quite scary to see these guys enter and leave homes, smoke pouring out of the doors and street drains (see picture). Afterward I question which is more dangerous, the mosquito itself or the poison used to kill it.

Amati’s Spanish is improving and I no longer fear that he be the object of study for some Ph.D. student in linguistics. A few days ago he said “Mama, yo quiero dormir.” ("I want to sleep.”) Then, with a befuddled look, “Mom, what did I just say?” Everyone says, “Entiende mucho!” (He understands a lot!), and “Habla bastante!” (He speaks quite a bit!) I am so proud. Hopefully his Grandpa Ruiz will be impressed, as we will be spending some time with him and his Great Aunt Rosa Maria this weekend in a rural town a few hours a way.

La Griteria

On December 7th, the La Griteria takes place, the most festive holiday of the season. Busloads of people from the countryside come into town for this event that celebrates the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Children and adults alike, walk from door to door, saying, “Que causa tanta alegria?” (What causes so much happiness?) Then, the family inside the home yells back, “La Concepción de María!” ("The Conception of Mary!”) The family then gives the visitors a bag of rice and beans, a plastic bowl, candy, toothbrushes, hair adornments, an apple, or even small brooms! Upon exiting everyone yells, “Que viva la Virgen!” (Long live the Virgin!)

León is known for the generosity of those that dwell here, so the poor come on school busses from hours away to join in and collect items too expensive for them to purchase on their one dollar a day salary. Having been sad to miss Halloween, Amati loved this. He twisted the cheer a bit, saying, “Que causa Santa alegria!” (Who causes Saint Happiness?) People smiled lovingly and gave generously. He often got buried in the doorway by 15 people competing for the treats.

At 6pm and midnight the whole town shoots off fireworks. It was awesome and at times scary. One doesn’t want to be on the streets at this time, as it seems there are no laws that are enforced about the use of explosives on this day.

There I stood in my PJs looking up from my kitchen/garden at the brilliant lights and loud, loud explosions. I imagined that this is what it must sound like in a war zone, sounds most folks in León who are my age and older, spent 20 years hearing.

Las Gigantonas

The streets are alive in December and January. For the whole month 50 or more Gigantonas (The Giant Women) walk the streets. For those of you who enjoy the “In the Heart of the Beast” puppets in the May Day Parade, the Gigantonas are similar.

Gigantona is a dark skinned, dark haired, 10-15 foot tall woman with indigenous features, who strolls proudly about the city with her short, dopey male friend with a head the size of a small dishwasher. His name is Pepe Cabezon (Pepe the Big Head).

Following this dancing woman and her little companion are children playing snare drums, or sometimes, plastic milk bottles. For a few cents, families can enjoy a personal show with La Gigantona, watching her flailing arms and her tall, twisting body. At her side Pepe does his own little jig.

Nightly the Gigantona and her entourage come out of the darkness, parading towards my home. Some say that the La Gigantona ritual makes fun of the hundreds of years Indigenous women have had to watch the tall, elegantly dressed Spanish women with their large hats stroll down the streets. It gives the dark, Indigenous woman her chance ... handsome and powerful. What, perhaps, does short, foolish, Pepe the Big Head represent? I have my suspicions.

Hearing the drums each night gives me chills. Their pounding rhythm for hours every night is another example of the sensory experience that is Nicaragua.

PML Work

Since PML coordinators are in the process of choosing two new communities in which to focus our energy and money, my initial hope of building new relationships between León and institutions in Minnesota is premature. As many say, in Nicaragua you can wake up and plan your day, but then the day happens and it turns out nothing like you had planned. So it has been in my work with PML as well. Nevertheless, I am learning and contributing in small ways, though I do believe I get much more than I give at this point.

Project MN León supports a community organization where preschool teachers from rural communities come to León once a month to learn about teaching. I have especially enjoyed attending trainings of preschool teachers and I have visited some schools.

Along with these teachers, I am working on a program to provide traveling learning centers with themes such as transportation, medicine, theatre, home, technology, for 47 schools. So all can benefit, teachers will exchange the traveling centers each month at the training. Amy Carlson-Sather, a dear childhood teacher friend has a 7th grade class in Minnesota collecting items for these learning centers.

Even the best schools here have no books. We will soon begin a traveling library program (550 Books) where the preschools will exchange bags of children’s books in Spanish. Next month I will be teaching the preschool teachers about Gardner’s theory on Multiple Intelligence, Character Education, and other education related themes. If any of you have children’s books in Spanish at home and would like to donate them, we can add them to the traveling libraries. (Contact us via the Contact Us page if you have books to donate.)

I have also created brochures to promote upcoming delegations, and I have worked with leaders of an organization for the handicapped on Christmas parties and toy distribution to kids with handicaps in urban and rural communities.

The most valuable part of my time here has been as a student of Nicaragua. I have spent days on a farm with a man who trains roosters for cock fights. Amati and I attended the promotion of a neighborhood girl, Maylin, to junior high. What follows is a reflection I wrote upon returning from a visit to a hospital in Managua.

Trip to Visit Kits with Cancer

Yesterday something melted within me. I traveled with a group of evangelical Christians (a powerful and growing movement here) to visit kids with cancer. I traveled with markers and paper and a children’s book in Spanish to help us interact more easily with the children; the idea of exuberant prayer intimidates me a bit.

The “highway” to Managua, a sandy, bumpy dirt road for much of the way, caused our white plastic chairs to bend and tip on the open-air truck bed we were riding in. The morning sun burned my already toasted face. Despite this, the hour and a half trip was beautiful with views of Lake Managua and a strip of volcanoes in the near distance.

“Tell me, Amati.” said Fran, a University Professor of English, her hand on Amati’s shoulder. “How many girlfriends do you have?” Amati smiled and laughed, “None!” Then in a more serious tone, she asked, “Do you know where Jesus was born?” “Tell me, Where is God now?” Amati answered, “Well, God is in the wind and the water, in love.” I chuckled. (Proof of liberal theology pushed at home.)

I was wondering when Fran was going to ask me if I have accepted Jesus in my heart. And wondering if it would be disrespectful for me to answer honestly, “Yes, 38 times, I believe.” (My spiritual life went through an evangelical phase in adolescence. Terrified that I would be left behind at rapture, I invited Jesus into my heart each time someone invited me to say that prayer.)

The children who become patients at this hospital travel for up to twelve hours to receive treatment for their cancer. This is the only place in Nicaragua with cancer specialists and a special wing dedicated to pediatric oncology. Some of the rooms are air-conditioned and quite bright, thanks to a Japanese organization. One parent is allowed in at a time. That parent sleeps in a chair or in the single bed with her child, the patient. Any other family who is visiting may sleep on the sidewalk area outside.

Thanks to an Italian organization, godparents from Italy fund the chemotherapy for their “godchild.” Unfortunately, some kids’ treatments are cut short early because the “godparent” failed to provide. Because of the distance and the cost of the trip, most of these children are diagnosed only in the more advanced stages of cancer. At most the treatment only prolongs their lives a short while.

So, with my book in hand, planning to read to the kids, I marched in with six parents, all of whom had lost someone in their family to cancer, and a young pastor from the church. We brought heavy pots of rice, Bimbo brand bread (Nica version of Wonder Bread), and freshly squeezed fruit juice for the kids.

The first room we entered had beds for three young patients. One of these, named Kevin, had turned four the day before. Balloons were taped to the wall and a birthday hat sat on the bed. He slept as the serum dripped into his veins, his hand blue with pin pokes and bruises. His Mom had been sleeping with her head on the bed when we walked in. I read to Kevin when he awoke, bringing a smile to his face.

As the group gathered around Kevin to pray, I went over to Jessica to read about Clifford, El Perro Grande y Rojo. Amati says, “She looked the happiest.” She smiled and proudly showed the colorful pictures she had been drawing. If I understood correctly, Jessica’s body stopped producing blood due to anemia and was sustained by weekly blood transfusions and antibiotics every six hours. Today she looked healthy and happy. Amati blew bubbles with her and she laughed. Amati demonstrated a level of maturity and sensitivity I had not witnessed in him before. I was so proud.

We met a boy from Amati’s Dad’s hometown, El Rosario. The boy was about eight, his head bald and body bloated. The group knew this boy from past visits. He smiled widely and said, “Only two years of treatment to go!” He was touched to see a healthy young boy who knew his community. Here you see a picture of us with this friend.

Later I had learned he had already been in the hospital for two years. “I am a guerilla of God ... I will make it.” he said.

We visited about 50 children, most of them bald and bloated or very thin. One girl, 15 years old, had just had her leg amputated days earlier and was on oxygen. I found myself speechless. After Amati asked his two questions in Spanish, “What is your name? Where are you from?” I struggled to find appropriate questions. “How are you?” brought a flood of tears. “What do you like to do?” seemed inappropriate. “Tell me about your family,” brought more tears because brothers and sisters are not allowed to enter the hospital.

What does one say to children who don’t have even the occasional company of siblings they love and whom they most likely will not see again? A prayer? From that moment on, Amati and I grabbed the hands of our zealous, weeping, praying friends, and entered into their prayers for these children.

That night I prayed again. I asked that if anyone I loved were in the hospital, suffering, that the evangelicals would cry and pray with that person, too. Something hard melted in me that day.

Travel

For a week and a half in December we did some traveling to Costa Rica and the West of Nicaragua. We hiked in the day and night in the Monteverde Cloudforest where we saw sloths, sleeping toucans, poisonous pit viper snakes, and even a praying mantis couple mating. Did you folks know that during the mating process, the female slowly begins to eat her mate? It is amazing to see them able to continue the ritual in spite of his head having been chewed off.

Some say 40% of Costa Rica is Nicaraguan. The nurses in Nicaragua make less than maids do in Costa Rica, so many emigrate illegally. Nicaraguans also emigrate to El Salvador and Guatemala to work illegally as well. With the average person in Nicaragua making a dollar a day, the situation is desperate. The societal impacts of this are profound. Many children grow up without fathers anyway, but with the emigration of the mother to other countries, the kids are often left in the care of ailing grandmothers or extended family.

We spent Christmas on the largest fresh water island in the world, Ometepe. Ometepe is located on Lake Nicaragua, a lake known for the salt water sharks swimming its waters. There we rode horses along a sandy shore with two large volcanoes in view. Later we climbed up the side of one of them to see a ten-story high waterfall.

Our guides, one an ex-contra, the other an ex-Sandinista, each say the people are more peaceful and healthy on Ometepe. The war never reached the islands, nor did the abject poverty, the hurricane, earthquakes or drought. Certainly I felt the unique peace on this island, dancing Salsa on Christmas Eve among the palms.

Friendships

Poor and wealthy alike have loved us and committed themselves to us here. While sick, the wealthier neighbor grandmas competed to see who could be more hospitable, one stopping with fresh squeezed lemonade, the next with rice and chicken.

When Amati felt a bit down another family invited us to their family’s home on the ocean. Their maid adores Amati, so she, too, invited us to her home. The maid, Ilse, works 15 hours a day and makes about a dollar and a half. Meet two of Amati’s best friends, Silvio and Eugenio, in this picture.

Yesterday I was invited to the 60th birthday party of Socorro, my Nicaraguan “Mom,” along with the ladies from her church, whom she calls her “community.” She had prepared Baho, a beef, yucca and plantain stew. After our meal and a very appropriate conversation, two bottles of Flor De Cana suddenly appeared in front of my face. “Stephanie, can you help with the Whiskey and Coke?”

After a glass, nine ladies over the age of 60 and me were dancing, clapping and laughing. I shook my head and said, “Who would ever think I am down here drinking Whiskey and Coke at 2pm on a Monday afternoon with the ladies of the Church?” Amati spent the afternoon with his friend Leonel, who sleeps on a table large enough for only half his growing body.

While walking home from our neighborhood that day, Amati said, “Mom, Leonel put a hose over a tree and we were swinging like we were Tarzan. Leonel, even though he is poor and doesn’t have everything he needs, sure can have fun with pretty much anything.” I closed my eyes, and thought, “Amati is getting the spirit of Nicaragua.”

Amati and I have had our ups and downs with adjustment. All of this has been very rich, but I will not pretend that this abroad experience in a developing country with a nine and 1/2 year old has been pure bliss. With struggle comes the richness of life, and our wisdom. You all have been my angels. Thank you for your support, letters, advice, and curiosity. I love you.

– Love, Stephanie