No

 

“Are you bored?” was the strangest invitation to sunset drinks I had heard, especially by a man who just told me he was married with 3 kids.  But I had just helped him pick up his surfboard from a mutual friend’s house who was out of town, and he claimed he wanted to thank me. Besides, I was bored.  Eliana had been in California for almost 3 weeks, and my closest friends were still out of town for the October rainy season jungle escape.

 I met the business acquaintance of good friends for a drink at the beachfront bed and breakfast where he was vacationing.  I arrived to a vibrantly lit red sunset boasting magnificent beauty over the ocean lined horizon.  I was introduced to each of his friends, all men, as we walked through the open dining space where I was offered Santa Teresa 1796 Rum, which I discovered is quite good in a glass of ice with club soda and lime.

The group had a refreshingly calm demeanor.  Often surfers arrive with enough testosterone and energy to supply a high school football team.  But this group of mixed ages, men from Argentina, New York, California, Venezuela, and Spain was calm and relaxed.  Conversation was easy.  No one hinted at how fantastic they thought they were, or talked about surf.  Instead, while enjoying chips and salsa, we discussed the politics of their respective countries and an unlikely yet still possible Nicaraguan canal and its anticipated effects on local communities, natural habitats, and surf tourism. The upcoming US Presidential election between Clinton and Trump, which was taking place in less than a week, also provided engaging conversation.  I was enjoying the evening.

A perfectly situated teepee-style bonfire stood on the sand less than 30 feet away.  It’s backdrop, a now sherbet orange and fuchsia sky, highlighted the amber sun’s reflection over dark blue crashing waves.  A sun-bleached light brown driftwood log, large enough for 4, was perfectly positioned for sitting and watching the sun set over the ocean lined horizon, so the two of us moved to the beach and continued talking.  Here, the conversation changed.

He bragged about his professional successes and those of his friends I had just met.  Hedge fund owners, multi-billionaires, world famous models, and the likes, all here to gather as professional men, network, and take a break from their business lives.  He talked about looking for a woman to spend his time with for the week.  I realized immediately what he was inferring and I interrupted him to say “That is awful, I would never do that.”

“Does your wife know what you do?” I continued. 

“She doesn’t ask, she’s a typical jealous Latina woman, so I don’t say,” he responded.

“How about don’t give her a reason to be jealous.  She’s home taking care of your kids while you’re out here not respecting her.”

Ignoring my comment, he replied, “I’ve run you through my checklist.  Divorced, your kid is out of town, you’re bored, and not looking for money or a relationship.”  Apparently he thought that meant I wanted to have meaningless sex with a married man for a week.  He could not have been more wrong.

“I would never do that.”

Understanding I wasn’t interested, he then stated that he appreciated he could trust me not to tell our mutual friend about the evening, which I interpreted as a request rather than a statement. 

Thoroughly disgusted, I began thinking about how I could end the evening gracefully, although looking back on it, I should not have cared, I owed him nothing and I just wanted to leave.  I stood up to excuse myself and began walking back towards the dining room through which I needed to pass to pick up my keys and continue to my car.  He got up to follow and offered me another drink.  Of course I refused. 

I wish I had walked straight to my car while he grabbed himself another drink, but instead I sat down on the couch, grabbed my keys and looked at them while I thought about my exit.  Just as I was starting to get up, he sat down to my right, turned to face me, placed his upper body over mine, pushed my back against the couch, and attempted to kiss me while I was trapped underneath.

While pushing him away, I said, “No. No, stop, I don’t want this,” I turned my head to the left to avoid his contact.  He did not back off easily, but he did eventually stop and I promptly stood up to leave.

With my keys in my right hand I started walking quickly to my car.  He offered me a ride home and I refused while picking up my pace.  I wanted to get inside my car and lock the door.  While unlocking my car, he quietly approached me from behind, turned me around, and pushed himself against me with an erection.  With my hands firmly planted on his chest and pushing him away from me, he arched backwards while continuing to push his lower body against me.  I pushed him harder, yelled “NO!” and he backed off.

I drove home a bit too fast, and walked through my front door still pumped with adrenaline.  As I turned on the lights in my house my phone beeped from a text.  He suggested that I get in bed and make myself comfortable so we could Facetime.  I was shocked.  Stunned, really, that after hearing a deliberate and straight forward “no” more than once, he would continue to make unwanted advances.  The next day I received a text inviting me over for sunset drinks.  I told him I was not interested and I blocked him from contacting me.

Over the next few days I told several friends, including our mutual friends, about what happened.  I wanted to hear them be pissed for me, to hear them say what an ass this guy was.  I wanted to feel supported retroactively.  But I was also processing why I was so mad and it helped to hear their reactions and perspectives.  I didn’t like everyone’s response.  Some of the guys thought it wasn’t that big of a deal, some thought I could consider it a compliment.  Most of the women though were disgusted, and my cousin explained that the incident was sexual assault.  That fact had not yet occurred to me.

One friend shared how she had seen this type of scenario played out as a way for the man to make the woman feel wanted as part of the flirting and a build up of tension, and that some women knowingly engage in pulling in and pushing away.  That is when I realized why I was angry.  This man thought, or maybe just hoped, that I might not have actually meant, “no.”

I came to believe that the women and men who say “no” as part of flirting made my “no” sound softer.  People who give in because the the other person wears them down made my “no” sound more like a “not yet.”  Men who keep pressing after they hear “no” and eventually get what they want made my “no” sound like an “almost there”.  “No,” the strongest, and most direct response, was diluted by people I’ve never met, people who should not have had influence over my life in that specific moment.  And this man, acting like a child, was willing to run the long course to see if I would change my mind, or possibly just change my answer, because of it.

Had I changed my words, but not my want, I would have been disgusted with him and disappointed with me.  I wonder, had I changed my words but not my want, would I have conveyed that ignoring my words was a legitimate attack strategy, encouraging him to ignore the words of the next woman?

I realized quickly that for 17 years I had been protected under the blanket of “married.”  I was not accustomed to being seen as single or available.  I did not understand that a man could, or would, see me not as a woman with my own mind, but instead as a body to conquer.

Taking such a strong stand to be respected felt awkward, and while it may seem easy to just say “no,” I questioned myself, “how do I make sure he knows I’m serious?” I felt at the time that the events to (hopefully not) follow depended on how effectively I demonstrated that I really did mean “no.”  But I realize now, that his actions were not in reaction to mine.

It took me longer than I expected to process the violation, express it in writing, and feel confident enough to share it.  Shortly thereafter, the Me Too movement emerged and I didn’t want to appear that I was jumping on a bandwagon, although I would be lying if I said the movement didn’t make me feel stronger and safer by sharing.

I’m not sure what my conclusion is with this story, and not coming up with it has kept me from sharing it for a long time.  I’ve decided to share the experience without a conclusion, and instead just leave you with my retelling of the events, my thoughts and reactions, and my realization that some people refuse to hear “no” even when it is being shouted at their face.

La Segunda Vida

Today, after more than 2 years since my last blog entry, and without a topic in mind, I decided to write.  So like I always do when I’m getting ready to write, I procrastinated.

I created a 17-song playlist with the full intent of listening to it while laying on my back, right arm bent over my eyes, trying to sleep.  I was bored by the 3rd song, so I got up and  opened a bottle of a Chilean merlot a good friend gave me as a thank you gift, and poured myself a glass to enjoy while watching the ocean from my backyard.  When I returned inside, I opened a new document on my computer and saw a clean, white, empty page.  I didn’t like seeing that, so I glanced out the window just as Jerome, my tiny thing of a cat, jumped on my lap and made me look at her as she said, “You’re staying right here.”  I opened Safari, re-read a few of my old blog posts and eventually messaged my cousin in Louisiana via Facebook, but she didn’t answer.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to watch SNL’s comedic version of the 2nd 2016 Presidential Debate.  I sat there, defeated, without a lasting distraction and more importantly, without a topic.

With a second glass of wine to my right and that clean, white empty page I mentioned earlier in front, I looked out the dining room window, watched the energy surging throughout the white-capped royal blue waves, and thought.

I thought about Fred’s and my attempt to have a second child.

I thought about the process of building a new house in Nicaragua, our horses being held for ransom, my failed attempts at learning how to surf, discovering yoga, and our ongoing (and frustrating) clean water project.

I thought about sharing our home schooling experience, but that would just be one long piece of expletives.

I wanted to write about something current, so I contemplated writing about our divorce which will become final any day now.  But that wasn’t the topic I wanted to use to reintroduce myself to writing.

While I could convert any of these memory-worthy stories into words on paper, none of them grabbed me with enough interest to keep me seated for a few hours.

So I thought about why I stopped writing.  I reflected on the theme of my life in its current state, and how a close friend insists I should name my new home La Segunda Vida.  The Second Life.

And I had my topic.

This piece begins in July 2012.  I was almost 10 weeks pregnant with a child I had wanted for roughly 5 years.  Fred decided we would have no more children when Eliana was 2 years old and it took me years to come to peace with that.  Fred was now thinking he wanted another child and he wanted to know if I would consider.  I didn’t know, however, if wanted to open myself back up to the vulnerability wanting a child again if the dream did not become a reality.

There is a lot to this story that I won’t go into here, but the important part to know is that we got pregnant easily.  At 10 weeks I went into a routine doctor’s visit in Managua while Fred was working in the states.  The doctor turned on the ultrasound machine, put clear gel on my belly, pressed the wand to my body, and started looking at the monitor to my left.  He then stopped talking, changed the angle slightly while pressing firmer, and looked intensely at the screen.   “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I asked him.  “Well…yes…”  I looked over and saw that the heart had stopped beating.

Before getting pregnant with Eliana, I miscarried at 7 weeks and I cried.  A lot.  Eleven months later Eliana was born, and I realized that I could not have had both babies, and having Eliana was incredible.  She was unquestionably perfect.  I mean she didn’t look at all like me, and she refused to nurse, but other than that, she was without a doubt the most beautiful being in my world and I loved her instantly with my entire existence.  So while in this moment at the doctor’s office I couldn’t believe it was happening again, and I later cried, I believed that the child for me to love would come, it just wasn’t coming now.

But this story is not about letting go of the dream of a child.

The following week Eliana was in a car accident and she suffered from repeated nightmares in which she watched herself die and rise as a ghost into heaven (see Sorry She’s Late).  She slept next to me in my bed and I didn’t sleep through the night for weeks.  I woke up every couple of hours to make sure she was still breathing.  And kiss her.  And smell her.  And kiss her again.

Four days later she had a growing wound on her chin that I worried would spread to her entire face (see The Maya).  Life was getting stressful.

For the next two years Fred and I attempted to get pregnant but the baby never came.  I experienced again the agony of yearning for a child I could not have.  Our marriage was struggling.  And I felt alone.

I was never hungry and rarely full. I ate when others ate and stopped when they stopped.  I had difficulty falling asleep so I would stay awake until my eyes hurt and my head pounded, until my body collapsed.  In the morning, feeling tired, I wanted the day to end quickly so I could go back to sleep.  My personality was flat, my short term memory was almost nonexistent, and I suddenly needed reading glasses.  I could not multi-task to save my life nor deal with being interrupted or frustrated.  I lost the motivation to exercise.  I felt uninteresting and ugly.  I didn’t want to socialize, and I was most definitely sick and tired of people telling me how much Eliana needed a sibling, or asking me if we had always planned to have only one child.

It wasn’t until October 2014 when I realized I was depressed, and in that moment of clarity I could not get myself help fast enough.  Fred said the marriage was over and I thought, “I’m depressed.”  As soon as our painful conversation ended, I was on the phone seeking help.

In hindsight I can see that I was depressed before 2012.  Before trying to get pregnant a second time, before moving to Nicaragua, before having Eliana.

When we began trying to get pregnant in 2012 though, in conjunction with the other successive events, hormone treatments, and doctors saying month after month that they couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t get pregnant, my depression magnified.  Life finally got too difficult for me to manage and I got pushed to a breaking point.  But instead of breaking, I got help.

My journey out of depression came with medicine, therapy, massage, friends, family, exercise, community service, and both the freedom and opportunity to remember who I am.

Now, before anyone says I could have worked through my depression without medicine, perhaps just by exercising, spending more time in nature, eating healthier, limiting caffeine, not drinking, exposing myself to sunlight, figuring out what was making me depressed, or whatever recently trending article says I should have done, I want to clarify a few things.

I was a competitive cyclist for 6 of these years.  I earned several district titles, one national title, and I competed in the 2004 US Olympic Road Race trials.  I didn’t drink alcohol, I went years without coffee, I was outside, I swam, I hiked, I was fit and healthy, and I later moved to a country in which it is impossible to avoid the sun.

Diet wasn’t my problem.  Lack of exercise, time in nature, and Vitamin D weren’t my problems.  I didn’t drink alcohol or caffein.  Figure out why I was depressed, well, that’s a funny one, because when you’re depressed the unhappiness and aloneness make no sense whatsoever.  And you likely don’t even realize you are depressed.

Up until this point in my life, I functioned so well that no one saw it, not my parents who are familiar with the signs of depression, not colleagues, not friends who had known me for decades, nor my doctors who saw me several times a month.  I didn’t even see it.  A person with depression can be good at making life appear normal, perhaps a bit more difficult than necessary, but normal.  It can be easy to attribute signs of depression to something else.  Something temporary, perhaps a stress that will pass.

I think we, as a society, need to be incredibly careful about what we decide depression looks like and what we proclaim to others will end it.  Unless you have been depressed, you really cannot speak to what it feels like or how easy it should be to take one’s self out of it.  Depression is a private experience, it varies with each person, and leaving it behind requires dedicated work, regardless of the path you take.

I am grateful for friends and family who could see me when I could not see myself, for those who encouraged me to continue my private journey, beautiful souls who stood by me in more profound ways than I ever imagined I would experience.

Some of you know who you are, others may not be so sure.  But if I’ve told you I love you or that I am grateful that you are in my life, then you are definitely one of them.  From the bottom of my heart, with my entire existence, I will say it here publicly to all of you who have helped me make my life beautiful again.

I am full of gratitude that you are part of my life.  And I love you.  Los quiero.

Poverty All Over Again

Hard packed dirt floors, unfiltered well water, homemade outhouse bathrooms, showering clothed in front of family, washing clothes in the river, 15 people in a house, living off of $2/day, no electricity, no running water.

Extreme poverty.  I had seen seen it from afar.  Walking by beggars with signs and collection hats, driving past make-shift homeless camps, I’ve even served the occasional free holiday meals.  I’ve read about it in books and seen it in movies.  But I hadn’t seen daily life in extreme poverty up close.  Not until I moved here.

It took until I got to know people well enough to be invited into their homes to start understanding what it means to be 3rd world Nicaraguan poor.    Still now, with two and a half years of experiences, it’s difficult for me to wrap my brain around what poverty really means because while I can see, feel, and smell it, I don’t eat, breath, and sleep it.

I’m used to the rusting barbed-wire fences distinguishing one property line from the next; dilapidated houses with black tarp coverings nestled against the lush jungle; emaciated horses ripping the last tiny individual blades of sweet grass from the ground as the rainy season leaves them behind; cows and pigs wandering the roads with their necks trapped in triangular stick contraptions so they can’t walk through fences and destroy crops; chicken after chicken trying to cross the road at the most inopportune times; starving dogs searching endlessly for food; pigs comfortably lying in the muddy-puddled dirt roads; young boys steering ox carts loaded down with hay, papaya, wood, or food; enormous bulls nonchalantly moseying down the road, their balls knocking their knees with each step; outdoor dome shaped cracked clay ovens; hitch hiking young children excitedly piling in the back seat of my truck; bright white shirts and dark blue jeans connected to the laundry lines by their buttons; varying lengths of machetes attached to pant loops, bikes, motos, horses, or hands; jam-packed chicken buses with limited pockets of stale air; layers of yellow cut corn dehydrating in the fierce sun; spraying Baygon along the perimeter of the house to limit scorpions and snakes crossing through the cracks of the un-sealed houses; pulling up water from open top wells and pouring it through a sieve to remove debris before drinking it, silver-crowned or missing teeth; and it all feels normal.  This is 3rd world rural daily life.

And then I experience something that surprises me.   Something I haven’t seen before, or something I had previously overlooked.  My brain discombobulates, my ideas scatter everywhere, I can’t reorganize my thinking without my ideas first becoming a gigantic mess.  My thinking feels out of balance.

Days later, with my schema restructured and my awareness expanded, my understanding jumps to a whole new level.  I experience once again, with an ache in my stomach and a breath of utter relief, gratitude of an awesome magnitude.   I am reminded of one undeniable fact:  I am unbelievably fortunate, by no doing of my own, to have been born into a fantastic life full of opportunities and choices.

A Dentist Without Borders clinic is once such experience that got me thinking about poverty all over again, making me aware of yet one more layer of an impoverished life: dirty, brown, pitted, infected, smelly, rotten teeth.

My neighbor, Pili, arranged for a Dentists Without Borders brigade from Madrid, Spain, to provide free dental care for the local residents this past July.  She housed 17 dentists in her two bedroom townhouse and arranged for food, transportation, and financing to support the dentists for the 4 days they were here.

At her suggestion, I arranged a field trip to the dental clinic for the children at Eliana’s public farm school by confirming interest from the teachers and securing friends as drivers.

On Tuesday, the second day of the clinic, I took our maid for a cleaning and check-up.  The line was short and we waited less than 10 minutes before she was called.  With so few patients, the dentists had time to cater to each patient: cleaning, repairing, filling, and/or removing teeth as needed.

While waiting, I asked a volunteer what the dentists required in order to provide care to a group of school children.  I was told to bring written parental permission.  Luckily there was a parent-teacher meeting the following afternoon, so getting the word out would be easy.  I later spoke with the teacher who said she would request parents to send their children to school Thursday morning with signed permission slips.

Thursday morning came quickly and upon arrival at school, I discovered that less than a handful of students had permission notes.  The teacher and I spoke outside, wiping sweat from our brows in the 8 a.m. heat, discussing how to best proceed.  Two kids, overhearing our conversations, quietly slipped inside the classroom and composed two permissions slips for themselves.

I quickly realized that an illiterate parent population would not be able to write their own permission slips.  I felt obtuse for not realizing this in advance, but I had also trusted that the volunteers were familiar with our population and would have known that such a requirement would have been difficult to obtain.   I wondered why the dentists hadn’t suggested going about this in a specific way, such as recommending that I provide a written letter that the parents could simply sign.

The teacher and I began calling the parents of the kids who either wanted to go or claimed that their parents told them to go.  It was a slow process and I envisioned entire families arriving at the clinic as each minute passed by, lengthening our time in line.

After just two phone calls, we decided to drive to the clinic without permission, get in line, and call the parents once we were there.  If parents didn’t want their child to be seen, the child would just spend their morning playing on the most elaborate play structure they’ve ever played on, which would be an experience in and of itself.

We drove the 17 students and 1 teacher split between 3 cars.   The other students who didn’t want to go stayed behind with the two remaining teachers who had hoped to join us.

The clinic was hosted in the weight room gym of the Ford Family Foundation, just 20 minutes from school.  The waiting area consisted clusters of people spread throughout the basket ball court.   The dentists were sitting scattered about as well, sitting on the ground talking in small groups, or leaning against walls.  They had forgotten their keys to the gym and were waiting to be let in.

The clinic opened 45 minutes late.  We pulled folding chairs outside to create a line along the shaded baseline of the basketball court.  To enable the dentists to rotate between the students and adults so no one had to wait too long, we set up a second line of chairs perpendicular to the first, running half the length of the sideline.  The front of each line met at the partially covered 90 degree corner closest to the gym’s main door.

Just as the students sat down, the head dentist approached me and asked if I had a medical history and list of known allergies for each child.  That would be a big, “no.”  And so began our second round of phone calls.  Junior’s battery ran dead and the teacher and I both ran out of our prepaid minutes.  I drove to my mechanic’s house 5 minutes down the road to buy more minutes, returned to the students, and continued with the calls.  All parents gave permission for their children to receive treatment and we recorded the health information for all 17 children.

When the children were called into the gym for their visit, they first sat in a chair next to the door and were handed a plastic bucket with dental instruments.  They held their buckets on their laps as the triage dentist assessed the condition of the children’s teeth.  Students who received a passing grade were congratulated and returned to the basketball court.  With such long lines, there was no time to clean their teeth.  Students who had infected or rotten teeth that needed pulling or cavities were given a small report paper and instructed in which line of chairs to wait inside the clinic.   One section was for fillings, another for cleaning, and the third for pulling.  The children were not told the significance of the line they were in, or what services they would receive, until they were greeted by the treating dentist.  Some children went from one line to the next, to the next.

The students, ranging in age from 6 – 12, were incredibly brave.  Most walked the process solo, but a few faces revealed fright, especially as they watched others receiving treatment, panicking or squirming in their seats.  I checked in with some of them to see how they were doing, sat with those who needed it.   For those who wanted a friend or sibling, I located the requested companions and brought them inside.  The teacher remained in line in her seat.

Of the 18 people we took from Eliana’s school, most had cavities and several had teeth pulled, some more than one.

Most students entered the clinic willingly, however, I did have to bribe one student.  He repeatedly avoided the front door, playing quietly, staying out of the way.  His mom had told me personally that she wanted him to be seen so I was determined to convince him to walk through the doors.  Both his brothers had already passed with flying colors, but he was nervous, backing away from me and shaking his head.   I asked him if his teeth ever hurt him, to which he nodded.  I talked about the importance of his teeth being repaired now instead of allowing more time to pass while the teeth get worse and he has more pain.  He still wasn’t budging.  I promised to bring him homemade ice cream that night and he gave it serious consideration.  Just when I was sure he was going to shake his head to that too, he agreed to be seen.  It turned out he was nervous for good reason.  The little guy proceeded to have a couple of cavities filled and 3 rotten baby teeth pulled.

One of the girls walked out of the gym crying.  She wouldn’t talk.  Eliana sat with her arm around her, rubbing her back, stroking her hair, and protecting her from others who came to to see what was going on.  “She wants to be alone,” Eliana told her schoolmates.  This didn’t come automatically to Eliana.  She at first kept trying to find out what happened. I finally told Eliana that if she could not respect her friend’s privacy, she would have to move 5 seats away and sit by herself.  I then shooed away another girl who kept asking questions.  From there, Eliana took over guarding her friend from inquiries.  Eliana thinks her friend had a few of her front bottom teeth removed, because she saw inside just a little and she saw only the girl’s tongue.  But I can’t verify that.

At 11:15 a.m. more than half of kids had finished their visits and were playing on the play structure, so I called for the driver of the largest vehicle, a Land Cruiser with bench seats which could comfortably transport 12 kids, to pick up the first large group of kids back to school.  I planned to call my friend, Lindsey, to help me drive the rest once all had finished.

The Land Cruiser driver, an employee of a friend, mentioned to me at drop off that he had lost his phone, and to call his boss so he could be notified to pick up the kids.  It turns out he was not so easy to find.  After 20 minutes of trying to reach him, I went to plan B and called Lindsey.  By the time she arrived, just after 12:00 noon, everyone had been seen.  So the two of us debated if we could actually get all 18 people, 20 including ourselves, into both of our cars.

We discovered that, in Nicaragua at least, you can drive 20 people split between two standard-sized SUVs.  We drove home very slowly, stopping several times along the way to drop people off as we passed by their houses.

While driving home I had a small freak-out moment, thinking about the girl who had been crying, wondering exactly what happened and what would her parents would think.  I realized, at that moment, how much trust the parents put into the dentists to send their kids without being present.  I was naively thinking the kids would get their teeth cleaned and cavities filled.  It didn’t cross my mind they could have one tooth pulled, let alone two or three.

I can’t imagine sending Eliana to the dentist with the parents of schoolmates and having her come home with fewer teeth.  But I also can’t imagine her having one rotten tooth, let alone three, nor being so accustomed to teeth in such bad shape that I don’t question the need for a tooth to be pulled.

Could some of the teeth have been repaired and not pulled?  Did we do more harm than good?  Were they all baby teeth that were pulled?  I didn’t know.

The following day Lindsey spread the word throughout the local community that we would drive through the village to pick up anyone who wanted to be taken to be seen on the last day of the clinic.  Her husband and I picked up 2 car loads of adults and drove them to the clinic where we discovered that the dentists had shut down operations 3 hours early.  Our group was denied service.  Five people, who had already been turned away, sat on the chairs outside hoping they would be seen.  We called our friend, Pili, who said, “No, no, no.  Put the dentists on the phone.”

Two minutes later the dentists laid their materials out again, counted how many people were waiting, and issued numbers to each person.  No new patients were to be seen.  We asked for 3 extra numbers knowing Lindsey was on her way with 3 more women.

Interestingly, it was recommended to the mom of the young boy I bribed with ice cream, that a few of her teeth be pulled, and she denied the treatment.  She explained that they can only pull her teeth, they cannot provide replacements, so she preferred to wait until her vacation days to pay to have her teeth pulled and new ones made.  Her vacation has since come and passed, but she did not seek treatment, and so she remains with her rotten teeth which, as I understand, with time, will affect other teeth.

I had the opportunity to talk with the dentists later that night at Pili’s house.  I shared with them how shocking it was for me to see so many teeth pulled, and I asked how they know when it’s best to remove a tooth rather than to repair it, and if they ever pull teeth that could instead be repaired due to lack of resources or time.

I learned that when the clinics have only a few patients, the dentists can do full check-ups which can include cleaning, repairs, and restorations.  But when lines are long, they have to focus on the highest priority needs so they can work efficiently to give all the waiting patients a healthy mouth.  They pull rotting teeth so they do not infect adjacent teeth, even if in a different circumstance the teeth could be saved. They know the patients will not seek out follow-up care and the rotten teeth would then continue to rot and soon affect more teeth.

I left this experience with a whole new understanding of the importance maintaining healthy teeth.  I really had taken it for granted that most people know how to care for (and do care for) their teeth, and that they in turn have relatively healthy white teeth  they get to keep.  It continues to surprise me what I take for granted as what “we” know as basic survival skills, thinking it is what people around the world know.  But what I find equally amazing, is that I am similarly unskilled at basic jungle-life survival, having not had a lifetime of experience learning how to sustain myself living off the land in poverty.  It’s is fascinating to see first hand how personal experiences affect what we take for granted as basic knowledge, and how relative the term “ignorance” can be.

¿Habla Expañol?

On August 2nd, 2011 at 9:23 a.m. when we arrived in Managua, I spoke enough Spanish to be comfortable, but I was nowhere near fluent, nor even slightly conversational.  My four years of French and two years of Spanish gave me a solid understanding of how the romance language works, but with a gap of 15 years since my last foreign language class, my Spanish vocabulary was in abeyance and I was limited to speaking in only the present and future tenses.  I spoke like a three year old, overgeneralizing grammatical rules and using words at incorrect times and in funny ways.  I planned and practiced every sentence in advance.

After three months, I was acutely aware that immersing myself into a Spanish speaking culture was tiring.  The excitement of learning a new language diminished.  I woke up dreading the possibility that I would have to speak Spanish.  I wanted to visit with my neighbor but I didn’t want to think in Spanish for half an hour or longer.  Sometimes my mind was spinning so fast I could only sit down and do nothing.  Just existing was exhausting.  I was grateful to not be working in this country while adjusting, and I longed for an easy conversation with friends back home.

Some of my fatigue was a consequence of being new to the area.  I had no idea how or where to do anything.  I could find the beach because I could hear it and the golf course because we lived on it.  But each time I drove to the closest grocery store an hour away, I could feel Lady Luck steering me there.  If you had asked me for directions, I couldn’t tell you.  There were no street signs to memorize, just landmarks.  I was shocked at how much thought it took to do just about everything.

The local customs confused me.  When I asked a toothless elderly fellow on the side of the road for directions, he stuck his hand out waiting for payment.   But when a young cyclo-taxi graciously led me to the gas station in the pouring rain, he looked at me like I was mad when I tried to tip him.  I discovered it is customary to greet people in passing with “adios” instead of “hola,” and when driving, to acknowledge friends with a quick, “honk, honk.”  I was supposed to negotiate for better prices at the fruit stand, but I didn’t know what a fair price would be, let alone how to barter for one.  I resorted to asking how much individual items cost and once given the grand total, saying, “That’s expensive.”  This frequently resulted in them lowering the price by a dollar or two.  The reply to, “How are you?” often sounded like, “Bien, gracias, adios” (Well, thank you, goodbye).  I knew that didn’t make sense, but it took me awhile to realize they were actually saying “Bien, gracias a dios” (Well, thanks to God).

Most unexpected for me was adjusting my identity as an “American.”  Latin Americans also identify themselves as American.  They are North American, Central American, or South American, and it is perceived as righteous to declare ourselves as the only Americans.  So I became a Gringa from The States instead of an American.  I had wondered before how we Americans got to be “The Americans.”  But the perspective that others also call themselves Americans and that perceiving ourselves as The Americans could be interpreted as exclusionary never occurred to me.  I wondered what else about both my identity and my world perspective would be challenged in this new experience here.

Two and a half years later, when someone asks if I speak Spanish, I hesitate.  Eliana often replies before I can answer by saying, “Yes, she speaks a lot of Spanish,” because she knows I wrangle with the answer every time.  To Eliana, I am fluent, as I have been able to handle every situation that has come our way.  I, however, am more likely to explain that I’m comfortable but not yet fluent.  Truth be told, I still feel like I am somewhere around 3 years old, possibly approaching 4.  The locals tell me I speak Spanish well and they rarely guess I’m from The States, which I take as a compliment to my pronunciation.  As a teacher, however, I have scales of fluency and proficiency against which I’m judging myself.  I don’t know at what point I will finally get to say, “Yes, I speak Spanish,” and believe it.  There is just so much about a language to learn.

I see now why Chinatowns, Little Italys, and the like, pop up around the world.  It’s a lot harder to assimilate into a new culture and learn a new language than one might think. There are many moments of feeling alone, and being surrounded by others who also speak your native tongue is comforting.

I reflect on the hateful comments some US-born native English speakers make about English language learners, and I am thankful that that ignorant type of mentality doesn’t exist here.  I am grateful to be welcomed.  It takes awhile to thoroughly learn a second language and while I communicate pretty well, there are still plenty of situations in which someone could easily tell me to learn Spanish or go home.

I’m reminded of the suspiciously fictitious grocery store story floating around facebook, which goes something like this:

A woman is on her cell phone speaking another language.  After she ends the call, a white man in front her says, “I didn’t want to say anything while you were on the phone, but you are in America now.  You need to speak English.”

The woman, surprised by his comment, replies with, “Excuse me?”

To which the man explains, “if you want to speak Mexican, go back to Mexico.  In America, we speak English.”

To which the woman responds, “Sir, I was speaking Navajo.  If you want to speak English, go back to England.”

Which brings me to a different aspect of living in a different language.  I used to wonder if people speaking a different language in public felt strange about it.  I realize now that English does not sound strange to me, so it does not feel strange to speak it, regardless of the location.  It feels more odd to communicate with my daughter in Spanish.  When we communicate, it is for our private purposes, not for anyone else’s, and so there’s no reason why someone else needs to understand what we are saying, unless of course there are others involved in the conversation.  When Eliana and I speak in Spanish together it feels weird to me, like we’re acting.  But to Eliana it feels normal.

I’m finally getting fed up with not speaking Spanish fluently.  I am tired of thinking my way through advanced grammatical structures. I just want to know it already.  I’ve returned to my attention to Rosetta Stone several times a week and I’m thrilled to flying through the levels and having my pronunciations accepted.  I’m hoping that in less than a year I’ll be able to say, “Yes, I speak Spanish.”

Eliana’s First Report Card

Just when I thought I had adjusted to life in Nicaragua and that nothing here would ever seem interesting to me again, I attended a parent-teacher conference.

Eliana’s teacher informed me at drop off Monday morning that there was a parent meeting at 10:00 a.m.  I thought it just meant Eliana would be dismissed two hours early so I immediately started thinking about how I would adjust my day.  Then she continued, “Can you come?”

I asked at what time the meeting would end and she said around 12:30 p.m. I glanced quickly at Junior who was standing next to the classroom’s open doorway to see if he could watch Eliana past his usual work day of 12:00 noon.  He nodded, so I was free.

All morning I dreaded having to attend the 2.5 hour meeting.  The more I thought about it the more I dreaded it.  Will I understand what they are saying?  Will I care about the information?  Will it apply to me?  How hot will it be in the room?  Will it smell or be stuffy?  Will it be a group meeting or private conferences?

On my way to the meeting I passed Eliana and Junior riding their bikes home.  A friend of Eliana’s was hitching a ride on the back pegs of Junior’s bike, and he wanted to know if it was OK she played with Eliana after school.  Yes, I told him, but not inside the house.  The girls wanted to ride their bikes in the parking lot (which is code for skidding their bikes sideways), and I told her no, not without my supervision, so they decided to play on the golf course instead.  I reminded Eliana that under no circumstance were they to go inside.  Petty theft runs deep in the local culture, so we have to be careful about who we let into our house.  I had never met her new friend and I knew nothing of her family, so I did not know if would be a sneaky snatcher of things and I did not want to take chances.

I arrived at the school at 9:58 a.m. The students had been dismissed and the teachers were inside the preschool classroom talking.  I popped my head inside the open doorway and greeted them in case they were waiting for parents to arrive in order to begin individual conferences.  I waited in the covered hallway outside.  I was the second parent.

The teachers exited the middle classroom together, entered the bright arid sunlight, paused for a final comment which ended their conversation, and turned right toward the upper grade classroom one door down.

“Doña Yennifer, adalente.” Eliana’s teacher motioned for me to follow her inside the classroom.

I entered and look around.  On the wall immediately to the left hung a large, two section whiteboard.  Individual desks with attached chairs were arranged in a semi-circle facing the white board which was blank except for a teacher made poster explaining traffic signals and the responsibility one must take in adhering to them.  A woman was already sitting in the first seat next to the door, so I chose the 3rd seat, figuring the freshest air would be by the door.  The two of us sat there waiting.  And waiting.

I continued to look around the room while parents trickled in.   Across from me, resting atop a rectangular table, was a math display board made of a large flattened cardboard box wrapped in white butcher paper.  It leaned against the pastel green painted brick wall and contained 4 separate pieces of xerrox paper containing hand written math problems with labels explaining the parts of equations.  I wondered what type of math they learned in there.  It appeared rudimentary.  There were several maps of the country, including 4 black and white computer printouts, glued to white chart paper horizontally oriented on the back brick wall.  I wondered how the teacher used them and why there were so many variations of the same map.  There were headers of “our country” and “our history” but not much information below them.  I realized the room had decent air flow.

At 10:20 a.m. the upper grade teacher, an older, robust woman with her hair pulled back tightly in a bun, started lecturing the parents.  She denounced Nicaraguan Standard Time (which I have learned is significantly later then Jewish Standard Time) and belabored the importance of us parents to own the responsibility of being punctual.

She passed around a sign-in sheet which requested us to list both our first and last names, the community in which we live, our phone number, and our cedula (national identification) number.  I debated giving my passport or California Driver’s Licence number, but decided to just leave it blank, as did a few other parents.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted the government to know who I was and where they could find me.

We were instructed to stand and I was immediately uncomfortable.  I worried we would be called on to speak.  The parents stood with blank expressions.   Time moved slowly and I waited anxiously.  A volunteer was requested, no one stepped forward, and the teacher, in annoyance, said that, fine, she would do it.  Everyone dropped their heads and the teacher began to pray.

My friends who know me well are likely appreciating the image of me in this situation.  Had this happened in the states, my blood would have boiled.  For the readers who don’t know me quite so well, I am not against prayer.  I’m perfectly happy to join friends in prayer in a private setting by choice, but I’m strongly against prayer in a public setting, such as a public school activity.  But there I stood, in Nicuaragua, a Catholic country, so I just tried to understand her words.  All I could gather was God, breathing air, thankfulness, in Jesus’s name, Amen.  I wondered if Eliana’s teacher was starting each day with a prayer.  I surmised that if I couldn’t understand it, neither could Eliana, and I concluded it was OK if they weren’t mentioning Jesus’s name.  But I figured that if they were praying, that they were mentioning his name at the end, and the possibility of christian prayer included in her daily studies made me uncomfortable.  I thought it might be best that Eliana not arrive to school on time.

Immediately following the prayer, as if not even a breath was needed, the group began to sing without expression or emotion, a depressing song about the blood of brothers and immortal glory.  I inferred it was their national anthem.  All but two parents had their hands over their hearts and I didn’t know what to do.  Was I supposed to cross my heart for someone else’s anthem?  Visions of the Olympics flashed before me and I decided the answer was no, but I didn’t know if the parents would know that and I didn’t want to appear disrespectful.

The song ended and we sat down.  The teacher started in.

”So I’ll tell you about our problems.  We have many problems in my classroom.”

She listed examples of the ailments troubling her classroom, which included but was not limited to, poor attendance, tardies, swearing, confusing b/d reversals (this is a big problem, she emphasized), parents not meeting their obligations of cleaning the classroom and cooking food, rude students not greeting her in the morning nor saying goodbye when they leave, and all around poor behavior by a handful of students.  She gave examples of specific nameless students, using strained facial expressions and belabored body language to gain our sympathy.  I just found her to be manipulative and likely ineffective at classroom management and teaching all together.  I was not thrilled at the idea of her becoming Eliana’s teacher next year.

The preschool teacher followed suit by sharing that none of the parents of her students were in attendance, but she would apprise us of her challenges anyway.  She expounded on the meaning of the word “preschool” and the importance of their work as it relates to first grade readiness.  She was gravely concerned about the students not completing their classwork and homework.  She proceeded, with sour, puckered lips, to detail the problems of her students.  I was thankful Eliana was too old to attend her class.

She looked at Eliana’s teacher, the primary teacher, to signal to her that it was her turn.

Eliana’s teacher, at 21 years old, was the youngest and most chipper of the teachers.  She shared that she would speak only to the three parents from her class who were in attendance.  She named each child and listed their scores (in percentages) for language, math, PE, cultural arts, and their overall score for the first quarter, which turned out to be an average of all four scores.  She concluded by listing one area in need of improvement.  Eliana needed to work on writing her letters smaller.

I found this format of sharing quarterly information with parents fascinating.  In my 15 years of teaching, I made a conscious effort to not discuss sensitive topics with parents in front of others.  Unless a parent waived confidentiality, we always waited until all children and parents were out of the classroom before conferring.  I could not imagine a parent conference in which all the parents in my classroom (let alone the school) sat in a semi-circle listening to an academic and behavioral description of each child.

Eliana’s report was not glowing.  In fact, it wasn’t even close to good.  At first I wasn’t phased.  And then I tried to figure out what the scores were supposed to tell me and I realized that I couldn’t make sense of them.

I expected Eliana’s cultural arts and language scores to be low.  Her intermediate Spanish skills and minimal knowledge of Nicaraguan history and culture would make it difficult for her to receive a high score.  But at 69%, her Nicaraguan culture grade was her highest grade.

Her PE grade of 62% seemed odd because they don’t have PE and, well, Eliana’s athletic.  I figured the teacher pulled that number out of the air, but decided I would ask Eliana about PE when I got home just to be sure.

And then there was her math grade of 60%.  This was the grade that confused me the most.  I review Eliana’s notebooks daily to see what she is learning so I can follow it up with manipulative-based lessons to reinforce her understanding of concepts when needed.   With the exception of regrouping with addition and counting by 2s to 600 (yes, 600), she’s already known how to do everything they’ve learned in class.  When I saw the regrouping (carrying) in her notebook at the end of first grade, I used her summer break to teach her how to regroup with manipulatives and then with partial sums to make sure she understood the concept before teaching her the algorithm.  I had expected her math score to be high and I couldn’t figure out how she earned a 60%.

I realized that I had been thinking of Eliana as a first grader.  She finished kindergarten last July and started first grade in September.  I had been assessing her progress in relation to the California state standards for this time of year, and that mattered more to me than anything her teacher could tell me.  It occurred to me, though, that Eliana’s not actually a first grader.  When Eliana started her new Nicaraguan school in September, the school year was almost over, and she became a second grader in February when the new school year began.

Even with this in mind, I still didn’t think her scores were accurate.  I’ve seen the work that comes home and I was almost certain I knew what they were learning in school.  Maybe I wasn’t seeing everything.  I just needed to figure out if these numbers were pulled out of a hat or if there was a concern to which I was somehow oblivious.

At 10:38 a.m. I counted 16 people.  Just over half the parents had come.  The teachers passed out report cards but I did not receive one and I wondered why.

The upper grade teacher returned and shared behavior challenges of 3 kids, naming them specifically now that their parents had arrived.   While slapping the back of one hand against the palm of the other, she reported that she would like to hit these kids.  But she can’t, so the parents should really consider getting their kids in line.  The parents, in front of their peers, argued with the teachers and defended their kids.

By 11:00 a.m. there were 20 parents.

At 11:30 a.m. I thought we were being dismissed, but no one stood up to leave.  So I caught eyes with Eliana’s teacher and mouthed, “Puedo salir?”  She nodded and I organized my things.  I was one of the first parents to leave.

The next afternoon at pick up Eliana’s teacher handed me a report card for Eliana Von Whatay, and explained each section to me.  Amazingly, the report card was more of a report on my participation (or lack there of) than it was a report of Eliana’s academic progress.  I had no idea I was supposed to clean the classroom and help with the planting of trees.  But now I know.  And I’ll be sure to turn in Eliana’s immunization sheet before the next marking period.

Eliana received one grade on her report card with a notation that art and cultural education needed improvement (that’s funny, cultural education was her highest score).  None of the individual subject scores were recorded.

I asked her teacher what Eliana needed to work on in math and she responded that Eliana’s  doing very well in math.  To which I replied, “But she has a 60%.”   She explained that Eliana needs to accurately write her numbers up to 1,000 and that her attendance affects her grades.  If she would come to school more often, she would earn higher scores.  I decided to ask her about her language score of 62% and she clarified that Eliana needs to write her letters smaller.  Immense value is placed on neat, small handwriting, and Eliana’s handwriting isn’t yet small enough.  Again, her language score would be higher if she attended each day.

So if I have this straight, her language score came down to handwriting and her math score came down to writing numbers to 1,000.

I realized at that moment that I actually cared what the teacher thought of Eliana’s progress.  All along I thought I hadn’t.  I saw the school as providing the social, cultural, and Spanish immersion component of Eliana’s education that I cannot provide on my own.  I never cared what the teacher thought of Eliana’s academic progress, because I saw myself as her “real” teacher.  That is, until she handed me a report card.  All of a sudden I cared.  But an email from Fred set me straight pretty quickly and I had Eliana’s involvement at the local school back in check.

I still think of Eliana as a first grader.   When forced to think of her as a second grader, and I take into account that her 60% attendance record significantly skews her grades, I realize that she’s actually doing very well in her second grade Spanish-only classroom, even if her grades indicate otherwise.

Upon reflection, I realize now that I went from being a teacher to a parent, from the comfort of the known to the discomfort of the unknown, from an affluent school district to a poverty stricken classroom, from first world to third, from being a native speaker of English to a second language learner of Spanish.  I am firmly on the other side of several continuums right now, trying to figure it all out.  It’s a strange place to be, but I am thoroughly enjoying the opportunity for so much reflection and making adjustments to my perception of what truly is good enough.

To see short videos of Eliana’s speaking Spanish (while playing school with imaginary friends), click on the links below.  They will only be linked to this sight for a short while.

 

Finding a Horse

Eliana did not want to move to Nicaragua.  The only excitement she had about moving here was that she’d get both a dog and a horse.  Both of which she wanted, and neither of which she had.

It took a few stops to farms with puppies playing around outside, but we found a dog relatively easily in the middle of October 2011 at a farm that didn’t have enough money or food to feed him.  For Eliana it was love at first sight, but I was worried because he was so lethargic that he was carried out to us and didn’t move once placed on the ground.  The owners insisted the only reason he wasn’t moving was because he had never seen a white person before and he was scared.  But I was skeptical that that was the real reason (and in shock that he would say that to my face and then laugh).  Tahoe, named in honor of our most frequented skiing/snowboarding destination, has turned out to be the perfect dog for our family.  He loves to play, cuddle, and explore.  He tries to help Eliana out of the ocean when he thinks she might be in trouble (because she’s screaming from having too much fun) and he is so social that he stops at his friends’ houses and barks for them to come out when we take him on unleashed walks and when he goes on outings of his own.

The horse has proven to be a bit more difficult to find.

Nicaraguan horses are smaller than the standard American horses and since they are used by the poor working class, they are shockingly inexpensive to North Americans.  We cannot keep a horse inside the gated community in which we live so we needed to find a place to board a horse before we could buy one.

In November 2011, three months after we moved here, we spoke with our caretaker, Don Chico, about the going prices for horses.  We learned that they sell for c$3,500 – c$4,000.  The exchange rate at the time was 22.5 córdobas to the dollar, which brought the cost in dollars to $156 – $178.  Don Chico also thought we could board a horse on a farm nearby for $10 a month.  “Don,” by the way, is the Spanish title, “Mister”.

Shortly thereafter we found a beautiful 3 year old mare with a rusty-brown colored coat.    The owner lived on a farm just 7 minutes down the road by bike.  The owner used the horse for work but he needed money so he was looking to sell her.  His asking price was $225.  He refused to negotiate, stating that he had others willing to pay more, and that he would not lower the price.  We were doubtful that locals were willing to pay this price, let alone a higher one, but wanted to see the horse nonetheless.

Fred and our new friend, Julie-Ann, an avid horse rider, rode their bikes to the farm to assess Muñeca.  Muñeca was with her filly, and therefore a little feisty and protective.  Fred and Julie-Ann were able to see that Muñeca was a well cared for and healthy horse, but they were unable to decipher if she would be a calm enough horse for Eliana.  I went back a few days later to see the horse away from her filly so I could take her on a short ride and judge her natural temperament.  She was muy mansa, as they say.  She responded to commands and was gentle, tame, and trusting, letting me touch her both behind her legs and under her belly without flinching.

We hadn’t yet located a boarding place so we did not have anywhere to keep Muñeca if we bought her.  Additionally, the family was asking too much for the horse and they didn’t really want to sell her, they just needed money.  So we offered to lease the horse for $20 a month plus pay any vet bills, medicine, and food that may be needed in exchange for riding the horse 3 – 5 hours a week.  They could keep the horse and use her for work, and over the course of the year we would paid more than the asking price and they would still have the horse.  The owner countered with $50 a month, which was a ridiculous counter, so we moved on.  I heard they sold the horse a few months ago (roughly a year after our negotiations) for around $150.

In December 2011, Eliana’s private school changed their Friday afternoon activity from swim team to horseback riding when the swim coach and his family moved back to the states.  We discovered that Eliana could ride an extra time during the week if we tipped the ranchers so we used their horses and put our horse hunt on hold.  But in May 2012, when we decided we would not continue with the school for the 2012-2013 school year, finding a horse became a priority again.

I asked our maid, Jacinta, if she knew of someone who could take Eliana horseback riding for $5/hour, which at 5 times the local hourly rate, was an appealing offer.  It turned out that her brother, Gilberto, had one horse and their father had three, and her brother was interested in the work.

Just by chance, I met Gilberto one Sunday afternoon at Jacinta’s house while Eliana and Jacinta’s granddaughter, Diana, were playing in the river behind their house.  It’s a common practice to get drunk on Sundays here, and when I met him that Sunday afternoon around 2:00, he was drunk.  I not only had a difficult time understanding him, I was uncomfortable with him taking Eliana riding.  I didn’t know if his inebriated state was due to the Sunday custom, or if he drank too much on a regular basis.  Jacinta assured me it was just because it was Sunday, but it still took me awhile to set something up.

Eliana’s birthday crept up at the end of July and we needed an activity for her party.  I arranged with Gilberto for him to bring 3 horses to the party.  This way I could see how he interacted with the kids and the horses.  He was great with both.  We paid him $20, which is roughly 3 days worth of pay, and I decided I would call him again.

Over the next 3 months Eliana rode horses with Gilberto many times.  Sometimes we would go a few weeks without riding and other times Eliana would ride once or twice a week.  Then in November Gilberto informed us that if he continues to come with 2 horses (one for him and one for Eliana) we needed to pay an extra $5 because his dad wanted money for the use of his horse.  Riding then became $10/hour and we realized we needed to get back into the business of finding a horse of our own.  It wasn’t that $10 was so much.  It was that if we were going to spend the extra money we may as well do this as we intended.  Eliana loves to saddle the horses, clean them after riding, brush them, talk with them, and just take care of them in general.  The price increase was just a nudge to get us back on track.

In January of 2013 it felt like we were never going to find a horse, until I realized that we weren’t actually looking.  I informed Gilberto that we were looking and to please let me know if he hears of horses for sale.  I also asked him if we could board a horse at his farm.  In exchange he could use the horse for free to take clients riding.  I also started asking friends if they knew of horses for sale and eventually one friend located a horse for us.  It was a mare owned by the brother of one of her employees.  They were asking c$4000, which, with the current córdoba to dollar exchange rate of 24:1, equaled $167.  The price was on the higher end but inside the expected ballpark.  Eliana liked the unnamed horse immediately and after I checked her out from head to toe, Eliana jumped on to ride her.  Sporting her new short haircut and feeling excited about the possibility of having her own horse, Eliana was feeling extra sassy.  I took pictures of the horse to send to Fred who was working in the states.  She had rope wounds and many ticks, especially in her ears, which I knew we could repair, but her gait was a little funky.  Upon returning home I asked both Don Chico and Gilberto to go with us to see what they thought.

On our drive to see the horse, Don Chico and Gilberto pointed out horses and how much they should sell for and it became clear to me that the horse we were looking at should sell for less than the asking price. As we drove up to the house, Don Chico saw the horse and told me a proper price would be c$3,000 ($125), and as we drove through the houses’s gate, he looked at me and said under his breath, “These people are family.  I’ll stay in the car.”  He was in an awkward position, having arrived with the intention of helping me get a fair price and then discovering that the sellers were family.  I asked him to please come with me.  I wanted his opinion and he didn’t need to say anything in front of them.  Neither Gilberto nor Don Chico were overly impressed with the horse, but they did say it was both a good and a healthy horse.  Remembering that Don Chico said c$3,000 was a more accurate price, and knowing that the seller would never agree to sell the horse to a gringa for a local price, I offered c$3,200, to which she replied it would be too hard to do.  She was selling the horse for her brother who lives far into the mountains without cell reception.  She had only been authorized to sell the horse for c$4000 and there was no way she could call him to negotiate.  I offered c$3,500, but she still did not blink.  Gilberto suggested we offer $3,800 ($158) and if the brother doesn’t want to take it to not call us, and if he does, to give us a call.

The next day I found out that the owner would sell the horse for c$3,800.  I shared this information with Don Chico and asked if he would buy the horse if he were me.  He replied without hesitation, “No.  For us, it’s too expensive.  The horse should sell for c$3000 – c$3,200.  If she won’t sell it to you for c$3,500, you should not buy it.”  I took him with me for his opinion and I wanted to respect his experience, but I was torn.  The price difference of $23 wasn’t a lot to me, and I didn’t know when we’d locate another horse.  But I didn’t like that I was being over charged almost 20%, and I felt that I needed to convey to Don Chico that I respected his opinion.  “Be patient,” he said. “There are many horses out there, we can find you a good one for a better price.”

That evening Don Chico located two male horses for us to see the following morning.  He told me that if we don’t like them, he personally has a tame young filly, about 1.5 years old, on his farm that he would sell to us for c$2,000 ($83).  But he wanted us to see these other horses first because they are older and ready to be ridden.

We left the house at 7:00 am the next morning and drove 15 minutes to the farm where we found Tahoe.  Across the street were 3 horses.  The female horse was too young and not yet tame, and not for sale anyway.  The other two horses were both male.  One a stallion, the other a gelding.  While looking at the stallion, the larger and more beautiful one, the woman walked by and said, “He still has his huevos,” which confused me.  I didn’t pick up on the slang, and took her words literally.  I couldn’t figure out how a male horse could have eggs, and it didn’t occur to me that the slang we use in English would be the same in Spanish, so I looked underneath to see his anatomy, and sure enough he was male.  Don Chico saw my confusion and explained, “He has his testicles.”  I felt silly for misunderstanding.  A horse with huevos would not work because Gilberto’s horse is a stallion as well, and the two would fight for dominance.  We moved on to the next horse, also male but gelded, and Eliana decided at that moment that she wanted a mare so it could have babies.  Out of curiosity though, I asked how much they wanted, and he replied, c$4,500 ($187).  Don Chico and I were puzzled.  He, too, was asking $23 too much.  And then it hit me that my white skin wasn’t going to get a normal price.

Back at our house an hour later my mechanic came to pick up my car to change the oil, air filter, and repair a bumper that was coming loose.  I told him about the first horse and asked him to please drive by slowly to check it out on his way to his house.  When he brought my car back that afternoon he said it’s a good horse and wanted to know how much they were asking.  When I told him $3,800, he said, “That’s carísimo.  That horse should sell for c$3,200.  Be patient and look around.”

The following Monday I needed to drive to Managua to see the dentist, take Tahoe to the vet, and meet my cousin, Liz, who arrived from California.  On our way home we stopped at Don Chico’s farm roughly 45 minutes from our house to see his young filly.

She was shy, but she didn’t try to get away or kick, and she let us pet her and talk with her.  She was dark brown with a black mane and tail, a full white stripe on her face, socks on her front feet, stockings on the back.  She looked like she had the right personality for us and that she would make a super great horse for Eliana.  The only issue was that she is still too young to ride.  She’s is only 1.5 years which means if we want to do this correctly, we will have to wait at least 6 months before Eliana can ride her.  But Eliana didn’t care.  She wanted her.

Once back at home, we offered to pay Don Chico $100 for the horse, instead of the $83 he asked, if they could keep working with the horse over the next month while we were in the states and then walk the horse to us from his farm.  He at first said it would only take a few dollars for the horse to be delivered, but when I told him we’d like to pay him more, he smiled and graciously accepted.

We just returned from the states two days ago.  We haven’t yet arranged for the horse to be delivered to Gilberto’s farm, just minutes from our house.  But we did get much of the needed gear while visiting home, including a halter, lead rope, and saddle bag, (all Chaunkah gifts from Eliana’s Aunt Mimi), cowboy boots for Fred and myself which we weather proofed while on our trip to Tahoe (Eliana already had hers), and a bridal.  Now we just need to find a saddle and a brush.

Embracing Good Enough

It’s been quite an adventure learning to sit back and let learning take place in a more casual fashion.  It turns out that by letting go of the idea of perfection, and instead embracing good enough, we’ve ended up in the most ideal of schooling situations.

Before moving here I contemplated which of the two closest schools Eliana would attend: the poor, local public school just down the road, or the small private school taught in English.  Eliana would become fluent in Spanish quicker at the public school and fully immersing her in the culture excited me.  I genuinely wanted things to be low key, low expense, and local, but I worried that all Eliana would learn in the very humble and poor school was Spanish.   We believed the small private school, comprised of 6 children spanning grades K-6, and located in the expat community 25 minutes away, offered a better academic opportunity.  Fred gave me full decision making powers on this topic (bless his heart, but this time I actually wanted his input), and I vacillated between the two schools for quite some time.   In the end we went with the private school because it just felt more familiar, and with everyone speaking English, we thought we’d all make friends quicker.

Our arrival in Nicaragua coincided with the school’s month long summer camp in August followed by two months of rainy season break.  It worked out perfectly.  The timing enabled Eliana to familiarize herself with the school and its students before spending all her brain power learning a new language and exploring our unfamiliar surroundings during the school’s break.

When school started in November just days after the presidential re-election of Daniel Ortega, I wasn’t yet interested in what Eliana was learning in school.  Just living here still provided daily learning experiences and academics were not yet on my mind.  But I was watching the routines to figure out what type of academic year it would be and assessing how much teaching I would want to do at home as the year progressed.

I could see early on that the school wasn’t going to provide the type of education I had in mind.   The teacher didn’t quite know how to teach to the needs of the now 7 kids spanning six grade levels and the materials were sparse at best.

We had to back up and reevaluate our idea of education.  We knew that our time here was valuable in and of itself.  So after a bit of tweaking, we devised a reverse education type plan, in which I kept Eliana home one day a week for home schooling and sent her to school the remaining days to develop her social network and provide cultural and physical enrichment.  We also studied together for an hour or so every Sunday.

While the tuition was reasonable, we doubled the amount spent on tuition in gas and car repairs each month (the unyielding bumpy dirt roads wreak havoc on even the toughest of cars).  Eliana enjoyed the school and was able to further her love for horses and make some friends. Unfortunately, however, the friendships didn’t spill over into our private life so we found ourselves at home with no playmates.  And I was spending upwards of 1.5 hours a day driving.

For 15 years I taught elementary grades in an affluent, high achieving school district.  Thirteen of those years were in first grade alone.  I knew that I could provide a higher quality education than any of the surrounding schools, but Fred and I kept coming back to our desire for Eliana to have friends, to not live here in isolation, and to know how to learn and work with her peers.

We stepped back and compared our life experiences here with our anticipated adventure, and we realized that we weren’t quite on our imagined path.  We had hoped we would all be more connected to the local culture and that Eliana would be speaking more Spanish.  The teacher in me could not completely let go of the content I knew Eliana should be learning, yet we both believed that there was much to be gained by connecting with the local culture in the public school.

So this year we decided to “enroll” Eliana in the very poor, humble, local school just down the road from our house.  She will attend school for three days a week and formally home school for only two hours each day on the remaining two days.  We’ll spend the rest of the time exploring interests and being together as a family.

Ya’ll may be thinking I’m crazy.  So I’ll explain a little more…

Eliana did not like studying the extra day a week with me last year, even though it only lasted 1.5 hours.  She was unconcerned with how much she had or had not learned during the previous week, she only knew that she had already endured 5 days of school and she wanted two days off.  Because I want to make sure I adequately support both her academic development and personal interests, I want two days with her a week.

The focus of Eliana’s learning this year, however, will be to learn about a third-world culture nestled against the edge of the rain forest so in depth that it could only be learned by first hand experience.  Our goals are that she will experience learning in a poverty stricken school,  learn the customs and celebrations of a people different from her, experience immersion and become fluent in a second language, experience how if feels to be both different and the same, learn how to live off of the land and be one with her surroundings, and create friendships that will hopefully help form her global perspective and keep her both humble and grateful.

The local school is attended by poor Nicaraguan children, most of whom come from  families that live below the poverty line of $2/per person per day, while a few children who come from smaller families with two working parents live off of $3-4/person.  Most do not have electricity or running water, but if they do, they only have it in one or two rooms.  Laundry and bathing often takes place in the nearby river or by using buckets of well water.  Bathrooms are outhouses.  Most floors are simply tightly packed, firm dirt while a few have bare concrete in select rooms.  Travel is done by bike, foot, horse, ox cart, thumb, bus, and occasionally by moto.

Most parents have an education not exceeding 3rd grade, at which point they stopped school and started working, or they continued through 6th grade but did not have enough money to travel to town to the nearest high school.  Some can read and spell, a few fluently, while many create their own phonetic spellings (which in Spanish isn’t as noticeable as it is in English).  Many of the parents are employed in the community in which we live.

The local children have limited interactions with white children and in most cases the parents’ interactions with Gringos is restricted to cleaning, guarding, gardening, or fixing the houses in which the Americans live or rent.  To the best of my knowledge, there are no “equal” relationships between the local Nicaraguans and the whites, Gringos, North Americans, Europeans (whatever you want to call us) who live here, although a few relationships come very, very close.

So on Friday morning, September 7th, when Eliana and I walked onto the school grounds for the first time to inform the teacher that Eliana would be attending her class the following Monday, the teacher stopped talking, the children froze with their eyes wide open, and the world almost stopped rotating.  We may as well have had 3 heads each.  Eliana is the first white child to attend the school.  And she’s fair skinned, blue eyed, and blond.  She couldn’t stick out more if she tried.

Leaving the school Eliana started to have a melt down, suddenly whining about something I can’t remember.  I started to tell her to “redo that,” (fix her intonation and say it again) but I realized her heightened sensitivity had nothing to do with the words coming out of her mouth and had everything to do with where we were.  So I turned to her, took her hands, knelt down to look her in the eyes, and instead said, “This is hard, isn’t it,” to which she responded without hesitation, “Yes, I don’t want to go to this school.”

Over the weekend Eliana expressed an interest in dyeing her hair black.

The following Monday morning at 7:00 a.m., Eliana arrived at her new school.   While holding hands, we walked up the dirt path through the white fence to greet Junior, the boy we have employed to attend school with her to make sure she is safe.  Junior greeted us with his best, “Good morning,” and then explained that no one had yet arrived.

Public schools officially begin class at 7:00 a.m., however they are notorious for having loose schedules.  Arriving late, dismissing early, and canceling class for unknown reasons.  It’s been known to drive a punctual Gringo mad.  The school, having begun in February, was clearly in full swing of their late starting program.

The teacher arrived at 7:15 on an oxen cart loaded with other school kids.  The passengers jumped off the back of the cart.  Some students stayed on the yard and played while others ran inside the classroom to eat at their desks.  A few students transported their brightly colored juice (or sugar water) in plastic baggies tightly twisted to prevent leaks and drank from them by sucking through a small hole in a bottom corner.   Eliana found a small wooden chair with desk attached in the front row and asked me to sit next to her until class started.

We noticed some of the students pulling out notebooks so we asked the teacher if Eliana needed a notebook.  Rather than give me a simple answer I could understand, such as, “Sí,” or “No,” she explained the answer in two sentences that I didn’t understand.  We decided to play it safe and returned to the car to grab a notebook.  Eliana, keen to her uncomfortable feelings, grabbed her favorite stuffed dog, Sally.  Smart move on her part, I should have thought of that.

We waited and waited.  Forty-five minutes later, at 8:00, still only half the children had arrived and the teacher informed me that with so few kids, she would dismiss the students at 10:00 today.

Fred picked Eliana up from school and when she got home she was eager to tell me about her day.   I was nearby in a meeting and Eliana hopped on her bike to spy on me to see if I could talk.  Her timing was impeccable and she filled me in on the wonders of her day.  She was smiling from ear to ear and her eyes exploded with expression.  She was full of excitement as she detailed for me her day in this new world.

The room was hot and she kept swatting bugs away from her eyes.  She sat still in her desk for most of the day and she didn’t understand everything the teacher said, so she copied the other students.  If they said something, she said the same thing.  She transcribed a lot of writing from the white board and practiced reading in Spanish.  There was no recess today because they got out early, but she saw chickens on the yard and she hoped she’d get to play with them another day.

As excited as she was, her first week was also an exhausting and stressful experience.  Overwhelmed by continual Spanish, only having one friend, and sitting in a stuffy room with gnats hovering in front of her eyes, she managed to talk Junior into bringing her home 2 hours early on her second day.  But she remained in school all day on Wednesday her third and final school day of the week.

Overcoming her fear and attending her new school has brought us immeasurable joy.  There have been many times in her seven years that I have been proud of her, but this time takes the cake.  Living here has afforded all of us numerous opportunities to grow and become more resilient, and and I am beyond thrilled at how strong Eliana is to not just embark on this new adventure, but to own it.

The Maya

Entering the house through our sliding glass doors, calling my name, and using her finger to draw my attention to her chin, Eliana declared, “ I have a boo boo.”  This rough and tumble kid of mine rarely comes in just to report a scrape, so I was curious to see what this was really about.

Eliana is an amazingly observant child.  She has noticed every important change in all of her pets before I ever did, and it occurred to me that perhaps she was confused, rather than hurt, by presence of this very small wound tucked underneath her chin.

Eliana didn’t know where it came from and I couldn’t tell what might what caused it.  It was pink and circular with a diameter about the same size as a pencil’s eraser.  There were no scratch marks, signs of physical impact, bruising, or scabbing.  It looked fresh, similar to a tiny rug burn, maybe a blister.  It was raw in the middle, mildly red around the edges, and it was confusing to both of us that she didn’t remember anything happening that could have caused it.

We washed her chin and put some antibiotic ointment over it.  I kissed her forehead and she went on her merry way, running back outside to play.

By the next morning the area looked like it might have been a little larger and by evening it was obvious that it was growing.  It still did not hurt her and instead of a typical dark scab, I could see what looked like a lightly colored patch of skin surrounded by previously healthy skin turning red.  That evening, after Eliana went to bed, I called Fred, who was back in the states working.  He didn’t know what it could be and told me to use a pen to circle its current size and call him with an update the next day.

By Sunday morning when Eliana woke up there was no need to circle the area.  Something strange was going on and I wasn’t going to wait and see much longer.  The spot, measuring 1.5 cm in diameter, consisted of lightly tinted skin resembling a transparent scab, through which I could see the wound underneath.  I got smart and took pictures to send to Fred via email.

That afternoon, while worrying that this wound could spread over the rest of her face, I remembered an article I read in June while researching possible causes to Eliana’s squirted burn.  A Nicaraguan woman had contracted a flesh eating bacteria that had taken over her hand.  She had waited too long to seek treatment and it was believed her hand would need to be amputated.  Ugh, get me to the doctor yesterday!

I suddenly wished I could drive in warp speed to the nearest privately funded clinic, just 15 minutes from here, and a hop, skip, and a jump past the entrance to Eliana’s school.  I had seen enough to know this wound wasn’t going to go away on its own and my mind was getting carried away.  I needed to squash the “what ifs” and get answers.  We entered the lobby and waited less than 10 minutes to be seen.

We knocked on the doctor’s door.  “Adelante,” (come forward).

We entered the doctor’s office and sat down side by side in two chairs facing the doctor, who sat at his desk facing us as we entered.  He did not rise to greet me nor offer to shake my hand.  I started speaking in Spanish, then stopped and asked him if he spoke English.  “No,” he replied.  “It’s better that you learn to speak Spanish.   Learning English is difficult and I don’t have much time to practice.”

I described the symptoms while he motioned for Eliana to walk around to his side of the desk so he could inspect her chin.  He knew exactly what it was…the aftermath of what I like to call, “the pissing beetle”.  The doctor, however, just called it the maya.  “¿Lo conoce?”

“Yes, I know what it is,” I answered, as a slight panic entered my stomach.  I read about this little bugger when researching possible causes for Eliana’s squirted burn.  Remember the flesh eating “bacteria” consuming that woman’s hand?  That, my friends, was the work of the maya.  It’s precisely what I feared had happened, and I forced myself to pay acute attention to the doctor’s delivery and his overall vibe.  I noticed that the doctor didn’t seem alarmed, and I remembered to breathe…and breathe some more.

The maya is a beetle that secretes a caustic liquid.  The locals, and the doctor, say it urinates.  They could be right, I don’t know, it’s really difficult to research the characteristics of a beetle when no one can tell you its name in English.   The “urine” eats away at the skin, and the wound grows larger and larger, spreading over vast areas if left untreated.   It took a lot of researching, and while I did not find a definitive answer, I do believe that in English we call these bugs blister beetles.  If so, then the “urine” is secreted by the males to give to the females during mating, which is then used to cover and protect the eggs.  There are 300 species in the U.S. alone, and thousands world-wide (Spanish Fly sound familiar?), so which type we have down here, I don’t know.  The doctor was grateful I brought her in right away, explaining that these infections are difficult to treat once they get large.  I’m quite certain I was feeling infinitely more grateful than he was.

Eliana was prescribed a triple purpose cream which contained an antibiotic, antifungal, and a steroid.  The doctor rubbed in a thin layer on the wound while he instructed me to clean away all of the yellow (newly formed & infected) skin and apply the cream twice a day.  The visit and medicine together cost me roughly $13.

Let’s just say that wound care is not for the faint of heart.  Eliana instinctively knew how to respond to the pain by initiating lamaze breathing tactics as I soaked, scrubbed, and pulled away the skin.  She cried and requested breaks when she need to regain her strength.  Cleaning the skin away on its own was difficult for her in and of itself, but in the aftermath of her car crash, which had happened just 4 short days prior, she was really at the end of her trauma rope.

We got the wound cleaned and I sent pictures to Fred.  He ran by the diagnosis with docs at work who believed that the wound, once healed, would leave no scar.  We applied a thick layer of the medicine three times a day (you know, to be safe) and not only did the wound stop growing immediately, it stopped trying to heal itself with infected skin and just gradually started looking healthier and healthier.

You can still see where the wound was.  The scar continues to fade and she doesn’t talk about it or worry about it.  As for me, well…I’m holding on to the rest of that cream.  I may just stock up on it and spread it all over her as a lotion for preventative measures.  Just kidding…I think.

Sorry She’s Late

Eliana was a seatbelt kid since before she could talk.  Once, when she was little and not yet talking, I started backing out of our garage and she repeated over and over, “uh oh, uh oh, uh oh” until I stopped backing out and realized that she wasn’t buckled in.  When she was older and Fred started to pull out a parking lot when she didn’t yet have her seatbelt on, she yelled, “Wait!  I’m not ready!”

That all changed when we moved down here – because no one – and I do mean – no one – wears seatbelts on these back country roads, except for us (OK, and maybe 5 other people).

Eliana’s fallen victim of wanting to be like the rest of her friends.  Don’t we parents just looooove peer pressure?  She’s only 7 and I already hate it.  When she gets into someone else’s car and they aren’t wearing seat belts, neither does she.  We’ve told her she needs to, but once they drive away, what she does it out of our hands.  It’s only now I realize what I should have been doing all along to ensure her safety.  I should have told the driver that she needs to wear her seat belt (even if no one else is) and not let her drive with others if she didn’t comply.  I should have realized that sometimes it’s good to be too American (to be interpreted by others as being overly protective).

On a gloomy July afternoon with storm clouds looming in the distance, the importance of seat belts came crashing down on me in such a weight I struggled to make sense of it all.  It became one of those days you think won’t happen, but then it does.  Luckily for us, everyone was OK and I heard the news at the same time I saw Eliana.

A man I had never seen before opened an unfamiliar SUV door and calmly said over the roaring diesel’s motor, “Sorry she’s late, they were in a car accident.”  (I’m sorry, what?!)  At that moment, Eliana flung the white car’s rear passenger door open.  I couldn’t yet see her, as the car was facing me and she was still behind the door stepping out of the car.  She moved away from the car, looked at me across the distance, yelled, “Mom!” and started to cry as she ran towards me with her arm wide open.  She couldn’t reach me fast enough, she looked like she could collapse as I slowly descended the front steps, confused, unsure if what I was seeing was real.

She was in a crash and she was OK?  Was she really OK?  She looked OK running towards me, jumping into my arms, squeezing her legs around my waist and her arms around my shoulders as she buried her face into my neck.  She regained her composure and I held her tight, kissing her cheek, and telling her it was OK, she could cry…and she did.  I kept waiting for the reality of a huge injury to set in, but it never did.  Everyone really was OK.

The car lost control, hit a tree, and flipped on its side in a ditch.  Only one window remained connected, the rest were gone.  It was hard to get my brain to stop thinking “what if”.   A lot of things could have happened.  I was angry at myself for several days that I hadn’t done a better job of teaching her the importance of protecting herself.  I know that her life is going to happen and that as she gets older, much of it will be outside of my control.  I’m not looking to protect her from what is out of my reach or hers, but I do expect to teach her how to be prepared, play it smart, and protect herself.

I don’t want her life’s road to be one straight, smooth, uneventful road in which she experiences only peace and quiet.  I want her to celebrate the highs and know how to deal with the lows.  I want her to differentiate the amazing from the normal while appreciating both.   And perhaps most importantly, I want her to safely experience the scary, the unexpected, and the mistakes, and learn from them…like wear your &@#$#@!% seat belt even if your friends aren’t and I’m not there to make you.

The accident awakened everyone’s eyes and kids and parents (at least the American ones) are buckling up again.  I’m very sorry that it happened, that everyone involved experienced it.  I also know that huge scares like this are a waste of an experience if we don’t learn from them and move forward stronger and smarter.

It’s been almost 2 months and we’ve not once had to remind Eliana to wear her seatbelt.  She’s not yet driven in anyone else’s car, but I feel completely confident that when she does, she won’t care in the slightest if she’s the only person wearing a seatbelt.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that when she’s older and spending more time with her friends and less time with me, that she will always – and I do mean always – wear her seatbelt.

A Squirted Burn

I’ve thought about writing about a normal day.  A not so exciting, nothing unusual kind of day to depict for you what daily life is like for us, because what I’ve been posting has been on the more interesting side, and not necessarily our day to day experiences.  But something strange has happened each time I’ve though about writing such an entry.

The first time I thought about writing about an ordinary day I didn’t write down what we did, but it quite possibly could have consisted of a 20 minute car ride to and from Eliana’s school, a sweaty walk along the hot, sun drenched dirt road to the beach, walking on the damp beach sand watching the blue waves turn brown as they crashed at the shore and the sand lifted and churned inside them, observing sand crabs skitter across the shore as Tahoe tried to play with them and the hermit crabs freeze in response to ground vibrations, and inadvertently scaring away a flock of vultures devouring a small school of dead feeder fish left behind in a lava rock crevice by the changing of the tide.  I most assuredly checked email, Facebook, on-line news sources, and might have weeded out pictures in iphoto or downloaded new family videos.  It likely included boogie boarding, surfing, time in the pool with friends, and a gorgeous sunset.  Somewhere in there we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner, showered, read, and hit the hay.  It was a fairly normal day.

But then we were woken up at 2:30 in the morning from a loud popping noise under our bed.  It started near Fred, so he got up and tried to find what was making the noise, but the the noise stopped and there was nothing to see.  So he got back in bed, and then it popped again.  Again he looked, and nothing.  A few minutes later the sound ran under our bed traveling across the room and we thought it was a small animal, which was a bit unnerving.  Now that the noise was on my side of the room I turned on my nightstand light and got out of bed to look.   I still couldn’t find anything, but upon getting back into bed I could feel that the floor was raised. The tiles created a small mountain range spanning from one wall all the way under our bed to the sliding glass window on the other side.   The following two weeks involved moving everything out of our room, closet, and bathroom, upstairs hallway, and the guest bathroom and bedroom so all the loose tiles could be lifted and glued back down.  That was fun.  And was there ever a lot of dust.

On a Sunday morning, just as this was finishing up, we headed on a road trip to get acquainted with the northern part of the country, specifically Chinandega, and the surf breaks along the nearby beaches.  We drove 5 hours north towards the border of Honduras and passed gorgeous lush landscapes sprinkled with volcanoes.  The hotel was full so we reserved the entire dorm room at Hotel Chincletas (Flip Flop Hotel) which was a hostel style room with 2 bunk beds, 2 single beds, daily maid service, and two outside shared bathrooms.  Eliana’s favorite part of the room, which she spied within 20 seconds of entering the dorm, was a 3×3 array of individually locking wooden cubicles.  Our key unlocked box number one, which was on the top left and required Eliana to stand on an unstable plastic chair to open, so she wasted no time returning to the restaurant to ask for key number 7, 8, or 9.  They only had a key for box 6, located middle right, which would have to do.  Eliana put her items in 3 separate cubbies (she used box 9 and left it unlocked) and devised plan on how to hide the keys so no one could access her possessions.  Key 6 was locked inside box 1 and key 1 was hidden under a mattress we were not using.  Keep in mind we had the room to ourselves.

We took a family walk along the beach watching The Boom, as the heavy wave is called, perfectly barrel with each wave.  It was a little small and no one was out, but it was still pretty.  According to the surf report, a new swell was coming in the next morning and the surfing would be excellent.  Fred and I walked by foot, Eliana rode by horse, to the north end of the beach, which ended abruptly with a volcanic rock barrier which flowed into the ocean creating a 10 foot cliff above the waves.  The horse was stubborn and wouldn’t run, and unless led by a leash, often refused to even walk.  Eliana was frustrated and ended her riding time early, but before returning the horse offered rides to the three girls who live at the hotel.

This brings us to the second time I thought about writing about a normal day and then discovered later that it was to be eventful.

At dinner on Monday, our second day near Chinendega, Fred noticed Eliana had a reddish-purple rash on her arm.  It didn’t hurt her, it wasn’t sensitive, and she had no idea what it was from.  It looked like a burn was squirted onto the underside of her forearm.  Not much changed over the next two days, which was reassuring in that it wasn’t getting worse, but I wasn’t thrilled that it wasn’t going away.  It seemed to be drying out.  It was still flat, but it felt like there could be some substance underneath it.  Fred wondered if it was from a beetle that is known to burn people with its urine.

On Wednesday we left the hotel and headed to our friends at the Gran Pacifica.  I was just starting to get nervous that we hadn’t figured out what the mark was from.  I couldn’t sleep that night so I got up and researched every poisonous animal in Nicarauga I could find, and nothing fit the description of Eliana’s burn.  Even so, my concern did heighten after reading about the pissing beetle, which, after peeing on you can also bite your lip and inject poison that will enlarge the lining of your heart in 5-30 years.  The fact that it is primarily found in densely populated poor communities made me realize we are likely to not cross paths with this culprit, but I did ponder the possibility about a stray getting to the oceanside.  I had to remind myself several times that we have dangerous animals in the states too and in my almost 40 years, I’ve managed to avoid all of them.

My poisonous animals list was exhausted and I sat staring at my computer at 3:00am.  There had to be something she came into contact with…what were our surroundings?  And then it hit me.  A poisonous plant.  I researched poisonous plants of Nicaragua and within 15 minutes I was reassured and and back in bed falling asleep.

Right in front of the door to our room was a cashew fruit with the seed (what we call the nut) attached.  Eliana LOVES cashews so I pointed it out to her saying maybe we could open it later.  Later, when we were bored, we went back to the cashew.  The fruit was old, wet, and squishy and she didn’t really want to open it, but she did take the hard nut section and bang it on the patio concrete step.  “Oooh, it’s wet” she said, and she threw it into the bushes.

It turns out that raw cashews are poisonous.  The “raw” cashews people buy aren’t actually raw, they are steamed.  And after you look at the picture of Eliana’s arm, you can see why.

The cashew tree is an evergreen that grows to be 30-35 feet tall.  Its trunk is short and it branches spread out wide with thick leathery leaves.  The overall shape of the tree reminds me of a wide squashed oak tree.  The fruit has two parts, the cashew apple and the cashew seed.

The upper part that connects to the stem is the cashew apple.  It looks like a cross between an apple and a bell pepper, and has a thick red skin that perishes easily making it unsuitable for export.  This is why the cashew fruit is only found in the tropical regions in which it grows.   Originally the tree was harvested only for its fruit and the seed was thrown away.  The fruit can be eaten as is or it can be used to make a juice.  It contains tannins and is said to be sweet and peppery by some and disgusting by others.  I’ve not yet tasted it.

The seed grows outside of the fruit and is encased in a hard shell and surrounded by a very toxic skin-irritating liquid.  It hangs below the bottom of the fruit.   The cashew seed is what we refer to as the cashew.  According to my research, the bark and leaves can also cause painful skin alterations, which according to friends I’ve talked with, means a poison ivy type rash, but it is the nutshell that has the poison in high concentrations.  Within one day of contact with the liquid, it can cause painful skin irritations that resemble second degree burns.  It can also blind you if squirted into the eyes.  The poison is of the same irritant found in poison ivy, so imagine not just brushing against the plant, but having the irritant squirted on to you.  It is also found in the skin of papayas and at the stems of mangoes.

It was a day after playing with the cashew that we noticed the rash.  But strangely it didn’t bother her.  It wasn’t until 4 days later that it started getting sensitive to touch and another 2 days past that when the dried burn came off and the irritant came out and she had intense itching.  The rash looked exactly like a poison ivy rash and she applied cortisone several times a day.

This was a good lesson for all of us.  We can’t assume something is safe just because we know what it is.  We’re surrounded by new plants, animals, and foods, and unless we know what we see is safe from experience, we shouldn’t touch it unless a local has told us it’s OK.  This turned out to not be a big deal.  It’s since been two weeks and Eliana’s arm now just has a faint white scars where the original purple burn was, which I believe will slowly fade away.

So now we just wonder…with a large cashew tree on the premises of the hotel and raw cashews on the ground, why wasn’t there a sign saying they are poisonous?