And I'm Dirty

How is it that the saying goes? “You never appreciate what you have until it’s gone”? Well, thanks to my experience in Peace Corps Nicaragua, I can now say that I fully appreciate the previously taken-for-granted, now sorely-missed, natural resource that is water. Because it hasn’t come to my house for over a month. And I’m dirty.

Back when we were little, we spent a few days on Martha’s Vineyard in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo without water. That seemed fun, like a game of “roughing it.” Perhaps my parents didn’t feel the same way. I do remember driving to a red pump to get water for the house so that we could bathe, clean, and flush the toilet but that seemed like an adventure. Maybe my current situation will seem similarly exciting in ten years when I wax nostalgic about the Peace Corps. But not now.

I’m not the only one in my town with this problem. Actually, everyone has this problem. We are lucky enough to be the recipients of a new water system and soon enough we will all be on the receiving end of potable water that comes 24 hours a day. This is a huge and wonderful change from the water that used to come every other day for about 45 minutes (and you’d better hope you were home when it came to fill up your buckets and barrels) and which, when tested, was shown to contain a decent amount of fecal matter and was, as such, not potable (although people drank it untreated anyway and then complained about getting parasites). So, while I’m excited about the new water system, I’m not excited about the time it is taking to put it in place or about the fact that the old system was completely damaged in the process. And while everyone in Boca de Sabalos is suffering from the water shortage, I seem to be adjusting least well. No one else has a problem bathing and washing their clothes in the river, but I just can’t do it. Especially not after the women who do so come back telling me about leech-like creatures that stick to them and the feminine itch they get after being in the water too long. No thank you.

So, in the meantime, I’m paying someone else to wash my clothes, buying bottled water to drink and cook with, and bathing with rain water. I won’t get into the toilet, but for the first time, I wish I had a latrine. And the funny thing is that whenever anyone complains about the water, someone else always says, “It’s just until June when the system is ready.” Well, on May 9th, that doesn’t seem like much of a consolation to me.

Perhaps I’m adjusting so poorly due to the fact that I am wasteful and don’t use things economically, for which I am often admonished my adopted Nicaraguan family. For example, when it came to the mop head that was left to me by the previous volunteer, which was filthy, sticky, and had tiny lizard eggs in it, I opted to throw it away and buy a new one for $2. This is what anyone would do, right? Wrong. I was being wasteful. Just today I was discussing the problem of deer over-population in northern Virginia with my good Nicaraguan friend. I explained how often deer cause car accidents by jumping out of nowhere into main streets. She asked what happens to the deer carcasses after an accident and I told her I didn’t know, I supposed that the highway authority came and collected them. Once again, I unknowingly demonstrated my and most of northern Virginia’s wastefulness. She told me that if she ever hit a deer with a car, she would pick it up, throw it in the back and bring home a hearty dinner to the fam. What could I say to that? One woman’s road kill is another woman’s feast.

Otherwise, life is back to normal after the departure of my parents. This week in the schools we are talking more about nutrition and singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” The women in the casa materna are learning about the importance of breast feeding, family planning methods, and a little bit about female anatomy. In English class we’re doing gerunds and in the mayor’s office, we are making the final changes to our USAID grant proposal in hopes of receiving the funds at the end of June. My telenovela only keeps getting better and the flowers in my garden are growing. It’s business as usual.

Hrach and Judy Take Sabalos

This past week was spent in the company of my parents and it was great to be with them and see Nicaragua through a whole new lens. On Friday, I traveled down to San Jose to meet them. There was a German tourist staying in my town who was going my way without the handy skill of speaking Spanish, so I became his guide. I didn’t really mind because I prefer traveling with someone else, that way you never lose your place in line when one of you has to use the bathroom. He was a real piece of work. He was 40 years old and had traveled the world on Germany’s dime. He doesn’t work because he has mild epilepsy and so receives subsidies from the German government. Once we crossed the border into Costa Rica, we met up with another tourist, a French man, and instantly my two traveling companions clashed. The German kept making digs about how rich the French dude was, while the French man made frequent comments about how much more fulfilling it is to travel Central America when you speak the language (which the German didn’t). Eventually, I just put on my headphones and tuned them out.

The next day, I met my parents at the airport. There’s nothing I like better than airport greetings. Granted, they were better when you could actually wait for the person at their arrival gate instead of outside behind a glass wall as was the case at the San Jose airport, but it was a wonderful reunion nonetheless when my parents finally walked out. There’s nothing quite as comforting as having mom and dad by your side. We picked up our rental car and headed out on the road towards the Pacific Coast to playa Tamarindo, which the lonely planet guide book recommends in order to “embrace the shameless joys of a booming gringoville,” exactly what I wanted after five months in Nicaragua. It ended up taking about 5 hours to get there and this included the little stop we made when we were pulled over for speeding (98 in a 60 kph zone) and bribed the cop to let us go, which he did. Now, I would imagine that if I were to bribe a cop in the U.S. and my parents were to find out, they would be highly displeased. However, when I did it in Costa Rica in Spanish, and saved us from wasting a vacation day at a court, I was patted on the back and named Miss Intrepid Traveler of the year. A title I think I rightly deserve after oh so bravely asking the cop if “rather than wasting a day at a court, couldn’t we just pay you directly?”

The beach was all I imagined and more. We had a beautiful view of the ocean from our room and I ate caprese salads and drank mojitos to my hearts content. We swam in the pool, in the ocean, and walked along the beach so that Judy could collect every halfway decent seashell she came across. Judy and I also spent an afternoon at the spa and did a little shopping. All in all, we had a wonderful couple of days except for the fact that both Judy and Hrach got terribly burnt and began to peel before we left the hotel. In fact, Hrach’s entire forehead peeled off at point and he had to wear a hat from then on. As we left Tamarindo, we realized the gas tank was on empty and basically drove on vapors with windows down for an hour. To our little white Kia’s credit, it got us through 40 km on dirt roads to the gas station all the while pointing to E on the gas meter. It was quite a relief when we filled up and could turn the AC back on and not entertain private notions of exactly what we would do if we did run out of gas in the middle of nowhere Costa Rica. We made it back to San Jose in one piece due to Hrach’s commendable driving skills as he was able to pass multiple lumbering trucks on a winding, hilly, two lane highway.

The next morning at 5:30 AM we boarded the bus and slept for most of the 5 hour trip up to the border crossing. We got on the boat that took us from Costa Rica to Nicaragua on the Rio Frio and my parents were both more than a little alarmed at the amount of cargo that was piled onto the little boat not to mention the amount of people, including some who just sat on buckets and sacks in the aisles. We saw monkeys and all sorts of birds along the way and my parent’s enthusiasm reminded me of how beautiful the scenery is, even if I do get to see it everyday. We made it to San Carlos in the early afternoon and Judy branded it “the ugliest city she has ever seen” and marveled at all the “collapsing shacks.” Luckily, we got on the last boat to my site thinking it was the second to last because Nicaragua had pushed the clock ahead one hour while we were in Costa Rica, where they don’t change their clocks all year.

Before I continue with the events of the week, I do have to take a moment to expound upon the bane of my existence, that is to say the hour change in Nicaragua. It is completely unnecessary because we live so close to the equator and because no electricity is saved. The only thing that comes of it is a ton of confusion and people going by either the “new hour” or the “old hour.” So, every time there is a class or a meeting or any event that happens at a certain hour, it must be specified whether it will happen at the new or old hour. In a country where everyone shows up half an hour late to everything already, providing an excuse (“oh, I thought the meeting was at 4 o’clock the old hour”) only leads to fiasco. My friend Jim’s host father was so bewildered by the hour change last year that he wore a watch on each wrist, one with the new hour and the other with the old hour. Most of us just subtract or add an hour one way or the other but the two watch system simply worked better for Don Alfredo.

Once in Sabalos, my parents were able to finally see where their hija had been living and working for the last 13 months. We stayed at the hotel in my site and Hrach proclaimed it the most relaxing place in the world due largely to the fact that there is nothing to do there but relax. They saw my house, my health center, and the mayor’s office, met my adopted family and friends, watched me give a charla in the casa materna and in the primary school, and they were given a Nicaraguan folklore dance recital. They were witnesses to the constant small-voiced chorus that follows me wherever I go: “Alexeees, Alexeees,” and were consistently told how young and good-looking they are. All in all, it was a good two days. The only pitfalls occurred when Judy was served a whole fish with the head and scales still attached, when she and I took out a long and difficult to maneuver canoe on the river Sabalos and ended up going in two complete circles in front of the dock to the amusement of several town members, and when Hrach tried to memorize anything in Spanish, especially the sentence “my daughter works for the Peace Corps in Nicaragua.” We went over it about 25 times and I guarantee he still can’t say it correctly! I finally bid them farewell on Saturday morning and luckily it wasn’t too hard because I will be seeing them again in less than a month when I go back to the U.S. for two weeks. But I miss them nonetheless. Thanks again and I love you both!