My favorite memory was probably when I went with Dona Adilia to visit her family’s farm. She lives in the community of Buena Vista, which is alongside a small highway. It is more like a small town instead of a rural community. All of the people’s lands where they graze their cattle or where they plant their crops are in other neighboring communities, so the men and women have to walk from their homes each morning to their property. Dona Adilia’s son lives on the family property. She began to tell me about their land and I commented that I would like to see it as a way to get to know more about her life. So she said we could go. We left the house and began the 20-30 minute walk through a forest, up and down hills, and over rivers to the community of San Jorge. There we passed by the mayor’s house, stopped to admire the incredibly large tree in his yard, and then finished the last portion of the walk to her farm.
We first went to the house on the property where we stopped and sat with her daughter-in-law. They exchanged news about events that had happened in Buena Vista in the last two days, which included a funeral of a man, a baseball game, and a family feud that almost turned violent. Her daugher-in-law, Salvadora, then got up and brought us boiled corn. Dona Adilia and I ate the corn while she showed me the portion of the garden closest to the house. In this garden various fruits such as bananas, mangos, calala, and other fruits grow that we do not have in the States. Then we walked back up to the house to get a bag and a pale before leaving with her granddaughter to go and collect nancites. Nancites are a small yellow fruit about the size of a grape that have a seed inside. They fall off of the tree and then you can easily pick them up off of the ground. We collected these for a while and then the granddaughter and I went in search of guayava (another small green fruit that we do not have in the states). We went to the guayava tree and began to look for the ones that we more ripe. I began to climb the tree and she asked me in a disbelieving tone of voice – you can climb a tree. Of course, I responded, and continued to climb. We gathered the ones we could reach and then went back to help Dona Adilia carry the nancites back to the house.
We filled a straw bag with mangos and yucca, a plastic bag with the nancites, and then a bean sack about a third of the way full with trigo (a grain they give to the chickens and dogs). We thanked the family for our time there and Dona Adilia laughingly talked about how I would be coming back because I kept saying how much I liked my time there and how beautiful the farm was. We then each began to carry a different bag. Dona Adilia put the straw bag of yuccas and mangos on her head and I put the bean sack of trigo on mine and carried the sack of nancites in my hand. We walked out to the main road this time because of all of the goods we were carrying. Our hope was to find a taxi. But there was no taxi and the bus passed us going in the other direction. It would not return for about thirty minutes. So we decided to begin walking. We walked, talked, and laughed as we exchanged the bags of nancites from one person to another so as to share the load. Finally when we were about at her house a taxi appeared. So we flagged it down and then got in where we road the rest of the way to the house.
Random happenings in the rural communities
1) So I learned that Nicaragua has scorpions. Some of them are the size of my thumbnail and some of them are the size of my hand. They are not that posoinous unless you are allergic to them, but their sting hurts quite a bit. In one of the rural communities I had just come back from using the latrine prior to going to bed. I sat on the small wall that runs around the house to keep the chickens and pigs out where I took off my boots. I then swung my legs over the wall to the other side to put on my flip-flops. I did not use my flashlight to look to see where my flip-flops where. As my feet came down on the back of my flip-flops I turned on my flashlight and saw that my left foot was centimeters from a large scorpion. He did not sting me, thankfully. But I did receive quite a scare.
2) At the recommendation of my director, Reyna, I bought a pair of rubber boots that come up to my knees for my time in the rural communities. I did not think they would really be necessary, but since she said it would be a good idea I decided to follow her advice. It turned out they were incredibly necessary during my first two weeks in the rural communities. During these two weeks it rained almost non-stop and everything in the rural communities turned into mud. There was mud everywhere that in places came to my mid shin. Also the rivers that we easily crossed weeks before now where anywhere between midthigh and waist deep. The people apparently thought I was rather a funny sight – a gringa tromping around in the mud and rain in their rubber boots. I would enter a house and they would say – Oh you have our boots and begin to chuckle to themselves.
3) I received my first marriage proposal from a drunk 65 year old man during the middle of an all night funeral vigil. A little weird, I know.
4) I have now tried armodillo and it is rather tasty. It is a delicacy and the families in the rural communities only eat it a handful of times during the year. In one of the homes where I stayed, the husband and his brother found and killed one the day before I arrived so his wife cooked it for our lunch. We ate the leftovers for dinner. It is kind of like chicken. I don’t mean that jokingly. It has a similar texture, but is more flavorful.
5) One morning I woke up about 5:30. It is hard to sleep much past then. The families wake up between 5 and 5:30 and once one of them wakes up the house immediately fills with noise either of wood being chopped for the morning fire, of the sound of the corn grinder as the women grind the corn kernels to make the morning tortillas, or of the chickens clucking as the wander in and out of the house. I woke up and lay on a bed that is what they call a scissor bed. This bed has two pieces of wood that form x’s on each end and across the wood frame hangs the same material they use for their large bean and rice sacks. I lay there trying to decide if I wanted to get up yet or not. About this time two of the kids, Samuel and Joel, walked into the room and laid down on their mom’s bed. They laid there for a while looking at me and then began to ask me questions about my house, the type of food I eat, the type of animals I have, if it rains, if I have brothers, and many other questions that fill the minds of curious 7 year-old boys. We laid there talking for a while until we heard the sound of plates being filled with food – gallo pinto and tortillas.
6) When it is going to rain at night ants begin to appear from who knows where. They form lines on the floor and wall and continue to crawl around until the rains come. It is slightly disgusting because they are rather large ants – about the same size as carpenter ants that we have in the states.
7) I walked to a house in the rural community of Buena Vista with my two guides – Antony a 13 year old boy and his 10 year old sister named Cindy. We walked along a small dirt path, down a steep hill, across a small river, and then crossed through a fence. The path continued to lead up a hill to the house of the lady I needed to interview. But we decided to take a small detour to go take a bath as they called it. This meant that we went over to the river where we waded in about knee deep and then ended up splashing one another and swimming around for a while. It was a lot of fun.
