The Holiday Spirit: sugared squash, sparklers, and away on a flaming manger

“Here in Nicaragua, the month of December belongs to the Virgin Mary,” to borrow the phrase of a friend and fellow volunteer. Riiteños celebrate Christmas with fervor. With the bean harvest having just ended, people have the leisure time—and in some cases, the disposable income—to get wrapped up in the holidays.

Squash abounds this time of year, and the traditional way to prepare it, in the spirit of the holiday, is doused in brown sugar and cooked for hours over the fire. It’s cooked so long and with so much sugar, that the squash almost becomes candied. The first piece of the day is delicious. In an average December day, however, I must politely decline the next six servings of “ayote en miel” (squash in honey) that I am offered. (Sometimes they also prepare sweet potato this way.) Today in Managua, the nation's capital, I saw a large colorful banner for a Christmas Foods Festival occurring this Saturday the 22nd, complete with a contest for Nicaragua's largest ayote—to be sliced and cooked in miel. (New York State Fair's largest this-or-that produce item contest came to mind. Which farmer harvested the most giant watermelon this year? And what is the prize, anyway? It would be interesting to know what the prize will be to the grower of Nicaragua's largest squash.) 

December 7^th or 8th marks the first Purisima—a gathering at someone’s home to which all community members are invited. The gathering is Nicaraguan's way of honoring the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and an expression of their popular Catholicism, of which prayers and celebrations held in homes, rather than the church, are a central feature. They continue throughout the month of December. My family traditionally hosts the community's first and most important purisima, which I just experienced for the second and final time. 

Preparations begin weeks in advance, and intensify two days prior. Of primary importance is the altar: a statue of the Virgin Mary is at center, and flowers, ferns, and other religious items and imagery adorn in every direction. Blinking christmas lights are strewn around a small, artificial pine tree, and on the altar itself: Behold, television stand transformed. 

Women and even the men bustle around the oven and kitchen—baking, cooking and candying squash, and crafting homemade candies. The assorted candies are colorful, fun, and quite good when fresh. The buttery texture of cajetas, made of milk and sugar, are balanced by sand-papery gofios made of corn meal and brown sugar, and the airy crunch of huevos chimbos—a brown sugar candy bathed in pastel-colored meringue. Grated papaya, chunks of coconut, toasted sesame, and peanuts are other star ingredients of these Christmas candies. 

The morning of, the family sits around the kitchen and porch, stuffing 200 bags full of the goods they've baked, cooked, and purchased. The youngest child is sent to run around to the community's roughly 80 households, to announce and invite people to the afternoon's event.

Around 5 p.m., people arrive and find a seat in front of the altar. Chatter subsides at the hosts initiate the prayer, La Novena. A few booklets circulate, but most people know the whole thing by heart. I, unaware of the words and largely uninterested in praying myself, observe the faces and listen to the sounds. Communal prayer is a neat thing to hear, and as a non-church goer, I rarely hear it. The spoken prayer is followed by a cheerful set of songs. From here, the prayer evolves into a beautiful flurry of movement, light, sound, and laughter. As the songs begin, the hosts pass out sparklers to the first row of guests, light them, and then the lighting of the sparklers dominoes across the crowd. The sun having set, the crowd of lit sparklers is a captivating sight and sound, the dull buzzing of the burning as some continue to sing, while others laugh and just observe. 

Prayers having been offered to the Virgin Mary, gift offerings to community members follow. While hosts make gift offerings to neighbors, participants repeat the classic refrain of the purisima: “Quien causa tanta alegria?” (Who causes so much happiness?) The Virgin Mary! Guests receive the gift bags, full of the homemade and other candies, cookies, and a piece of sugared squash; as well as an orange; a banana; a piece of sugar cane; and a traditional corn-based drink sosolca. Plastics containers are also gifted, many of which are decorated with the above refrain, and with images of the Virgin Mary.
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Christmas Eve is the biggest party of the year. Families gather to cook, eat, drink, and pray. It's the only celebration I've yet observed in which it is socially acceptable for women to drink; this facet of social ease and gender equality makes it my favorite holiday. A few houses set up nativity scenes, and as midnight approaches, community members head to the nativity scenes to symbolically witness the birth of Christ. The baby Jesus lays in the manger, covered with banana leaves, paper, or a blanket. Midnight strikes and then...the covering is removed! Fireworks explode! Jesus is born! 

Last year, the firework was shot too closely to the manger, and the baby Jesus caught on fire. People found themselves screaming “fuego!” (fire!), "agua!" (water!), and swatting at the manger, before they could even exclaim praise to the newly born baby Jesus. People here love Jesus, but are also light hearted and have a sense of humor. We are still laughing about the flaming manger, one year later. 

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As intensely Catholic as Riiteños are, I manage to get through the holiday season without much fuss over my lack of religion. Usually I can satisfy someone's troubled curiosity by explaining that I was baptized Catholic (which is true). I sometimes cringe at the oversimplification over a matter I consider deeply important, as entwined as it is with worldview. But I have found that this route is simply easier, and keeps things lighter.        

Purisimas will dot the coming weeks. People continue to bustle, preparing foods and simple gifts, in a true spirit of generosity, giving, and sharing. Whether in the kitchen, by the oven, or at a purisima, I feel the spirit of the holiday in this sort of raw way that always seems to get lost in the mad rush of consumption that cripples Christmas in the United States. For this distance from materialism, I am grateful. So, the simplicity of this life has a dual character. And when I'm in my best mind, I focus on the liberating, rather than the constraining, aspects of this simplicity—to enjoy and embrace it while I can.

Painting the rains

We’re three months, or about half way through, the rainy season. The week that the rains began will remain a vivid memory when I look back on the years I spent in Nicaragua. People were hailed to their porches by the first downpour—eyes wide and faces full of relief, as the rains had come weeks late. Hills reclaimed their lush green, cows fattened as they happily ate green pasture after months of surviving on dried pasture and concentrate, and a palpable optimism developed among the people, hopeful for an abundant harvest.

Here in northern Nicaragua there is none of the subtlety that marks the passing of the seasons in my native upstate New York; the change is stark and rapid: seemingly overnight, the landscape transformed from desiccation to moisture, from brown to green. A greener landscape arrived concurrently with a lighter, more cheerful environment: farmers relieved and able to plant, people's moods lifted.

People here draw a predictive connection between the weather at the start of the New Year, and the weather for that coming summer. (Here in the tropics, summer refers to the rainy season, theoretically May–October, but the rains have started late for the last several years.) Elders and agriculturalists say that the first six days of January ‘paint’ (pintar) the weather trends for the six months of summer. That is to say, if it rains or even sprinkles on New Year's Day, then the summer month of May will see heavy rainfall. Come rainy season, people hold the pintas in mind, and if they hold true, it is said that it was a year of 'buenas pintas,' or good paints. 

These traditional, locally embedded knowledges, while they might not hold up against our scientific, Western rationality, must possess a certain truth: they are claims made by elders who have lived and farmed the same lands their entire lives—eighty years in the case of my host grandfather, Eduvijes. They have learned through generational passing of knowledge, and from years of steady observation; they know the land as they know the sky, daily identifying if and when it will rain and from which direction. From this vantage point, it makes sense that farmers here would be able to predict the weather with some accuracy. (The notion of weather predictions provoked me to review the history and content of the North American Farmers' Almanac.)[1]

The use of the verb paint to predict the rains strikes me as beautiful and fitting, as it reflects the recognition and artful articulation of nature’s creativity (ability to paint!). But, of course, there’s nothing romantic about it: what is at stake every year is that food availability depends on the rains. Having been here over one year now, in this place where people rely directly on the land, I more intimately understand the cycle of the rise and fall of food availability according to season.                                                                          

I recently listened to an interview with Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue that I found uplifting and particularly relevant to my present circumstance. He spoke of how landscapes offer time, describing rural, undeveloped landscapes as “places where there is still time.” Time to do things; time to observe and know one's natural environment; time for other people. 

I am grateful to be living in such a landscape. ¨Hay más tiempo que vida,¨or, ¨There is more time than life,¨they tell me, which is, of course, antithetical to the notion of time held by the average North American. While I often tire of the slow pace and lack of stimulation, still I think to myself: Why would we want to live in a world other than one in which there is time? 

[1] Traditional/local/indigenous knowledge is a favorite topic of anthropologists. The literature is vast, but see Nazarea 2006 for a neat example. Nazarea describes the “sensory embodiment of local knowledge” and the rich meaning and value of these knowledges.

References

Nazarea, Virginia D. 2006. "Local Knowledge and Memory in Biodiversity Conservation." Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 35: 317-335.

Tippett, Krista. January 2012. "The Inner Landscape of Beauty: Interview with John O'Donohue." http://www.onbeing.org/program/inner-landscape-beauty/transcript/1125

British colonialism, coconuts and pangas on the Mosquito Coast

The six-hour bus ride east from Managua that marks the start of the journey to Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast is the sole land travel and most mundane segment of the trip. You disembark at the transportation hub of Rama—remarkable only for its street food. From there, the waterborne adventure begins: you hop on a panga—a little wooden boat, typically handcrafted—towards Bluefields, the capital of the RAAS (Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur, or Autonomous Region of the Southern Atlantic).

The panga travels down Rio Escondido, or Hidden River—an appropriate name, as the river winds through remote wilderness. There are no communities visible along the riverfront, only the occasional wooden hut on stilts, lazy hammock dwellers just barely visible, rocking. A woman sitting next to me, a native of Bluefields, explained that these homesteads belong to large farms that send produce—primarily coconuts—to Bluefields. When you’re not trapped under a black plastic tarp, protected from the pouring, jungle rain—the views are green, dense and magnificent. 

Arriving in Bluefields feels like arriving in a foreign land. The Atlantic Coast’s history is one of geographical and political isolation, and the result is a culture, people and economy that is entirely distinct from the Pacific and northern regions of Nicaragua. Colonized by the British rather than the Spanish, black Creole is the dominant language and many of today’s inhabitants are of African heritage, because the British brought black slaves from Jamaica as indentured servants to work in the mines and ports. 

Bluefields is a small but bustling city with beautiful views of the ocean, traditional fishing and the sea economy, but it is seedy, especially at night, due primarily to its location on the Colombian/Andean-U.S. drug trafficking route. That unemployed youth in a city like Bluefields have the easy option of becoming involved in the drug trade is one of the tragedies that gets lost in the media, as the drug war wages on.

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The Atlantic Coast constitutes more than half of Nicaragua’s territory, but is home to less than 8% of its population. In other words, it is an immense territory, sparsely populated, and has rustic infrastructure where it exists at all. It is home to the country’s richest linguistic and cultural diversity; six ethnic groups live there: the Rama, Sumu, Miskitu, Creole, Garifuna and Spanish/Mestizo. Rich in natural and mineral resources, the region has a long and continuous history of foreign exploitation of resources, and is considered one of the most isolated and poverty-stricken parts of Central America; it is also one of the most beautiful.

British buccaneers first arrived in the 1560’s, and began trading firearms, metal tools, and rum in exchange for lumber, turtles, fish, and labor. The region, which came to be known as the Mosquito Kingdom together with what is today the Honduran Atlantic Coast, remained a British protectorate until 1860, when Britain signed the Treaty of Managua. The treaty granted the region its partial independence: it became a reserve with powers of local self-government, but legally under Nicaraguan sovereignty. Foreign dominance persisted, however. British colonialism was replaced by U.S. economic control: by 1890, roughly 90% of the region's commerce was controlled by U.S. firms (Shapiro 1987: 67-68). Resource extraction, especially of timber and gold, was a defining feature of the economy and cause of socioeconomic inequality and stratification here throughout the 20th century. 

In the early 1980s, many coastal peoples took up arms against the Sandinistas and joined the Contras, due to their own history of conflict with the central state. The civil war made the region a contested war zone, and further complicate its political relationship to the national government. (For a good review, see Kinzer 2007.) In 1987, the Nicaraguan state passed an Autonomy Law, recognizing the coast as a multiethnic nation and guaranteeing religious, cultural and linguistic rights, as well as an economic rights framework in which costal peoples would have control over their natural resources and lands. The law is not enforced and seems to have been more a rhetorical, political tool for the Sandinista administration in the aftermath of a bloody war in which coastal peoples were taken advantage of and some forcibly relocated (again see Kinzer). Coastal peoples continue to fight for political autonomy.

Despite this heavy history, as a visitor, you would never guess that these people—with their absolute warmth, generosity and relaxedness—have endured such an exploitative history or that they are facing such tremendous political obstacles in their search for sovereignty. The environment there is one of absolute relaxation. I return to our trip:

Another panga ride away from Bluefields is the cove of Pearl Lagoon; we reached in late afternoon. “To reach” in Creole is to arrive at one’s destination, and is employed amply. We headed to a restaurant on the water, where we drank coconut water with rum and observed fishermen out at sea. Reggae music plays somewhere in the background almost without stop, and when it stops, the reggae music is replaced not by silence, but rather by decades-old U.S. country music. As to this genre's arrival or appeal I have not a clue, but on it plays.

Coconuts and breadfruit abound. Coconuts are primarily for local consumption; the fruit and milk constitute a staple of the diet. People press their own coconut oil, which is their main baking and cooking oil. We met a geography professor from the U.S. studying the history of the breadfruit. He informed us that the breadfruit is native to Polynesia, and was brought to Nicaragua from Tahiti by the British in the late 18^th century.

I walked out to the dock to sit in humble awe of salt water’s simultaneous stillness and power—the hallmark of the sea’s majesty. Two fishermen approached and graciously agreed to my request to go for a ride. While this was a welcome opportunity to speak with locals, understanding the local Creole dialect was more difficult than I had anticipated. Skeptics: bow down to these people and their awesome boats; Creole is truly its own language. I am no linguist, but the Creole language allows people to express profound ideas in simple terms, there is a certain charm and a definite beauty in their expression of ideas.1 

Never have I felt such intense, facile temptation to romanticize a place or way of life. Although as my friends who are volunteers there can likely attest, all it would take to dissolve this romanticism is an extended stay and a project goal. From a traveler's vantage point, however, Pearl Lagoon is peaceful, exudes calm and is magical in a time warp kind of way.

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1 Linguistics of the region has been the focus of much academic attention. (See Shapiro 1987 and Freeland 2003 for examples.)

References

Freeland, Jane. 2003. “Intercultural-Bilingual Education for an Interethnic-Plurilingual Society? The Case of Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast.” Comparative Education 39 (2) (27): Indigenous Education: New Possibilities, Ongoing Constraints: 239-260.

Kinzer, Stephen. 2007. (1991). Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. 

Shapiro, Michael. 1987. “Bilingual-Bicultural Education in Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast Region.” Latin American Perspectives 14(1) On the Revolutionary Transformation of Nicaragua: 67-86.

For photographs from our trip, click this link to my album.

For a wonderful set of photographs, see this New York Times slideshow.

Traversing Nicaragua: from the Gold Rush to the Nicaragua Canal, from Californios to the Chinese

Among the first North Americans to set foot on Nicaraguan soil were those restless young souls hoping to strike gold out west. The California Gold Rush of 1848-49 created a need for East-West routes, at a time when the continental U.S. was wilderness—largely unknown territory without sound infrastructure—and prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869; U.S. entrepreneurs thus turned to Central America. Nicaragua and Panama became the fastest and most secure routes between the Eastern and Western U.S. coasts. As the gold rush—both the transit it provoked and the wealth it created—became an important facet of the U.S. economy and motivation for territorial expansion, these transit routes became essential to the U.S.; it is estimated that they secured the largest U.S. foreign investments prior to the Civil War of 1861-65 (Gobat 2005: 23).

Beginning in San Juan del Norte on the Atlantic Coast, the 375-mile journey across Nicaragua followed the San Juan River to Lake Nicaragua, through the famed colonial city of Granada, and then onward via land until reaching the terminus at the Pacific port of El Realejo. The trip took roughly 20 days, until Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company opened an improved (shorter and smoother) route half as long in 1851, which allowed aspiring gold diggers to cross the isthmus in just two days, making total travel time between New York and San Francisco 22 days. Until its closure in 1856 due to warfare, the route was heavily traveled: nearly 2,000 travelers—or Californios as Nicaraguans called the transient North Americans—per month passed through, which was a lot considering that the population of Nicaragua at the time was only 250,000.

Perhaps the most famous traverser of Nicaragua was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. In December 1866, Twain was en route from San Francisco to New York City, where he would set sail for Europe and the Middle East, a trip that inspired his first best seller, The Innocents Abroad (1869). He documented this journey, including his passage through Nicaragua, in a series of letters to a San Francisco newspaper, Alta California, that were posthumously published in 1940 as “Travels with Mr. Brown.” (See this article in the NYTimes.)

Around the same time that Vanderbilt was facilitating the transit of men across the country of Nicaragua, the U.S. was contemplating the construction of an interoceanic canal along roughly the same route—not a novel idea, but rather one traceable back to the time of the Spanish conquest, upon the realization that there was no natural passageway through the isthmus. Explorers struggled to surrender to the fact that nature had not placed a strait:

From the year (1513) when Balboa first looked upon the wide sweep of the Pacific, a century was occupied in fruitless efforts of gallant and capable men to discover that strait which nature should have placed there—but did not…It ought to be true, they said. The seas are so close together for a thousand miles. Commerce between "Cadiz and Cathay " so greatly needs it. It must be so (Taylor 1886: 98-9; emphasis my own).

But, Taylor continues, “The world moving, like all large bodies, slowly toward conviction, did become at last convinced that nature had not pierced the barrier for our use and comfort, and this conviction once forced upon it, plans for an artificial channel began…” (100).

The proposal for a Nicaraguan Canal dates back earlier than the notion of building one in Panama, and even after Panama was under consideration, Nicaragua was for many decades the preferred site. Nicaraguan nationalists, politicians, and citizens promoted the prospect of a transoceanic canal as a project that would single-handedly modernize and stabilize the country’s future. While citizens discussed the canal in town hall meetings, there were public celebrations of canal resolutions, treaties, and visiting survey expeditions. A newspaper called “Canal de Nicaragua” emerged, whose sole purpose was to promote the canal project. Even Nicaragua’s exhibitions at World Fairs, most notably the famous Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, projected a “canal-centered image of a cosmopolitan nation” (Gobat 46). The U.S.-chartered Maritime Canal Company began construction in 1889, but when the U.S. financial crisis of 1893 dealt a blow to preexisting economic difficulty, the company went bankrupt and halted construction.

In 1902, the U.S. Congress voted to build the canal through Panama. Explanations as to why vary, but the aggressive Panama Lobby was a major influence; one day prior to the vote, proponents of the Panama Canal distributed a recently issued postage stamp from Nicaragua showing an eruption of Momotombo, one of the country’s many volcanoes, thereby highlighting seismic instability and the likelihood of natural disaster. Panama, which has no volcanoes and is not as subject to earthquakes, was redeemed as the topographically and geologically safe option. Additionally, new scientific research emerged that countered longstanding assumptions that Nicaragua was the technologically superior route (Gobat 68).

Elite Nicaraguans—their dream of a singular path to cosmopolitanism and modernization shattered—were particularly devastated by the U.S.’s decision to build the canal in Panama. Nevertheless, in 1904, the commencement of construction of the 51-mile (82-kilometer) Panama Canal put the notion of a Nicaraguan canal to rest for the next century. The deal was sealed with the inauguration of the Panama Canal in 1914. [1]

In recent years, serious proposals for a canal in Nicaragua have resurfaced. President Daniel Ortega is particularly enthusiastic about the idea, and Congress recently approved his proposal for a new $30 billion canal (a value about four times more than Nicaragua’s GDP) linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans [2]. Under the recently approved proposal, the project would be carried out by a joint venture in which the government would own 51 percent of shares and tenders would be issued for the remainder.

Despite the Ortega administration's claims, including its provocative statement that the Nicaraguan canal would be "larger and deeper" than Panama’s, the prospect is not being taken seriously enough to generate much attention from neighboring countries, or the media. Representatives from the Costa Rican government, who have described the project as “Pharonic,” are, however, concerned that the proposed canal plan involves a piece of land that is on disputed territory. In 2012, Nicaragua began dredging the San Juan, and Costa Rica accused them of invading a small Costa Rican island on the river. Costa Rica’s foreign ministry has stated that Nicaragua is free to develop infrastructure projects on its own territory, but must adhere to relevant border treaties. Ortega maintains that the land belongs to Nicaragua, and therefore has the right to build in the waterway. The territorial dispute is currently being reviewed at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

With global trade increasingly shifting towards the Asia-Pacific region, China and other Asian countries are keen to build a second interoceanic path, but if and when this will materialize remains unclear, if not unlikely. The Nicaraguan Canal is, of course, being promoted (once again) as the key to economic transformation of the country, and has many supporters, including older people I’ve talked to who have grown up with talk of a canal but never a concrete proposal. Here in the countryside, while I’ve found certain enthusiasts for the idea that their beloved Ortega will make the old dream of a canal a reality, most people agree that such a project will never transpire. Gold diggers and capitalists for now must stick to the Panama Canal.

References:

Gobat, Michael. 2005. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule. Durham: Duke University Press.

Taylor, H.C. 1886. “The Nicaragua Canal.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 18: 95-126.

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[1] Panama boasts the only existing man-made passage between the oceans; the Panama Canal handles 5% of world trade annually, and is currently undergoing a $5.25 billion expansion project, set to finish in 2014. The United States handed over control of the canal to Panama in 1999, and since then the canal has generated a total of $6.6 billion for Panama.

[2] $30 billion is the estimated cost of actual construction. The feasibility studies alone are expected to cost $350 million. 

Note:

There is also discussion of the Chinese building an alternative to the Panama Canal in the form of a“dry canal,” or railroad, through Colombia. Colombia is the world’s fifth biggest producer of coal, which is in high demand in China. Colombia’s Caribbean coast contains easily-worked surface mines to high-quality coal, and a Chinese-sponsored canal connecting the coasts would serve foremost as a coal delivery line, from Colombian mines in the Atlantic, to Pacific ports headed for China. 

Semana Santa, time's cycle

Holy week began one week ago today, on Palm Sunday, and here in El Riito, holy week is movement.

And it's a vacation. Funny to observe vacation in a place that is so laid back to begin with. Beyond the usual movement of men walking to and from the fields, women and children—including elders who otherwise seldom are seen outside their homes—walk to mass, a prayer, a procession, the river to swim, or a holiday visit during which guests drink coffee and eat bread, cookies, or a corn-based, baked something, and hosts draw upon their bucket reserves of baked goods. There is no class, so students run amok, and no work in the urban sense of the word, but to most Riiteños the latter is irrelevant, as men work in agriculture, which observes neither state nor religious holidays save Christmas, and women work in the home, which cycles day by day—no break. Nevertheless, the general atmosphere is one of rest and play.

March and April are the driest, hottest, most unbearable months of sun, heat and sweat, and so for Nicaraguans with money, the beach is the destination. For campesinos, however, Semana Santa retains a more religious tone and centers on prayers, procession, and mass, as well as baking, relaxing, and trying to keep cool by other means, creating shallow pools in the cow dung-filled stream, for example. A haze has stretched across the sky in recent weeks, which I attributed to the heat, until I was informed that this is due to farmer's burning their fields in preparations for May's planting.

I returned to site, per Peace Corps vernacular, or home, as I should call it, last Sunday after a week and a half away. Every time I leave I am more in love with the landscapes and people of Nicaragua—it really is a beautiful country, although at first impression not overwhelmingly so. That is to say, its beauty did not strike me in the same way as that of other places, such as Bolivia or Argentina. The process of Nicaragua growing on me echoes my relationship to my hometown of Rochester, New York; it took a near entire childhood of living in its suburbs, and then four plus years of living in and exploring its urban center for me to fall in love with it. Places to go, sites to see, and people worth meeting do not jump out at you in Rochester nor, I think, in Nicaragua, but with enough time and meandering, you find richness.

Upon my return last Sunday morning, my abeulos (host grandparents) had left for mass in town, so I was alone to absorb being back. I made coffee, and while in the kitchen noticed the chocoyo (A bright green little bird, now an endangered species, in part because it is a Nicaraguan custom to keep one caged, wing clipped, as a pet. Typically they are kept in kitchens. They do not speak like parrots, but a word here and there, and are certainly very vocal, always chirping their high-pitched chirp.) had flown and fallen to the floor. In my eight months here, the only interaction between this bird and me has been me giving him food and him biting me, or me yelling at him to be quiet when he is chirping unbearably loud. That morning, however, with him in a state of distress, below and away from his cage and water, and me the only one home to help him, we had a more friendly encounter: I knelt down, offered my finger; he stepped on, did not bite me, and I lifted him back to safety.

Poco a poco, Nicaragua grows on me. And, I sense, in a similar fashion—as the anecdote of the chocoyo suggests—poco a poco, its people, animals, and landscapes warm up to visitors, too.

With Holy Week at its terminus, tomorrow we return to the normal rhythm of everyday life. Semana Santa is, in fact, one of the few times of the year that time here is described and experienced as an arrow with a beginning and end, rather than as a cycle. Let us cycle on.

Note:
Though discussions on the topic abound, I cannot contemplate time's arrow and time's cycle without acknowledging Elias Mandala's brilliant teaching and citing:

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1987. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discvoery of Geological Time. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Esteli’s Mercado Verde: zanahorias in all their gorgeous, orange glory, a taste of home

Carrots have always struck me as the ideal reference point for how fresh a set of produce is. And, within Nicaraguan borders, the carrots at Esteli’s Mercado Verde are unsurpassed in their orange brilliance. (Note on geography: Esteli refers to a northern department, as well as that department's capital city.) Every Friday morning around 5 a.m., vendors gather and set up on the north side of the city's central plaza to begin the Green Market. It is a good old-fashioned farmer’s market: producers sell directly to consumers—no middleman—and hence, there is a relationship, conversation, and social warmth. Perhaps most importantly, the produce is better, fresher; the colors are brighter and more brilliant—carrots case in point.

Green leaves, bundles of fresh herbs, red tomatoes and scaly onions fill the vibrantly colored crates on the pavement, which sit amid sacks upon sacks of red beans and earthy tubers. Bags of hibiscus flowers are available, as is the finished product—a bottle of jamaica wine. Heads of lettuce, crowns of broccoli, bunches of spinach and dozens of huevos del amor grace one table; while on another sit buckets of wrapped banana leafs encompassing the whitest cuajada (a type of Nicaraguan cheese, some liken it to feta), blocks of smoked cheese, and coolers of fresh cream. 

In addition to seasonally available produce and freshly made cow dairy products, there is ground coffee; honey; artisanal crafts; guirilas and tamales of maiz verde (fresh corn); two goat cheese vendors (One sells chocolate goat cheese—don’t knock it ‘til you try it, although it tastes more like frosting than cheese.); El Salvadorean pupusas; homemade chili sauces, jams, and fruit wines, among other treasures.

From the comedor across the street, with which the vendors apparently have a deal struck, a man with a microphone kindly yells the specials of the day, the rhythm of his voice similar to that of a bus worker—spontaneously and seemingly without effort, creating a countless number of jingles. There’s a buzzing crowd, only the occasional foreigner, and while pedestrians relaxingly stroll, passengers of passing cars make drive-by purchases, hastily.

The vendors

The market began in 2000 with just nine producers, and has since grown to a total of 48 producers. Originally organized by RENICC, or Red Nicaragüense de Comercio Comunitario (Nicaraguan Network of Community Commerce), an umbrella organization that works to support small and medium-scale agricultural producers and artisans, Esteli’s market now functions independently. In 2009, Esteli’s market being firmly established, RENICC moved on to form Green Markets in other towns and cities, and the vendors formed Cooperativa de Mercado Campesino (COOMERCAMP).

Vendors represent both independent producers as well as women’s and community cooperatives. Many of the farmers with whom I spoke are also developing agri-tourism projects. One vendor, for example, represents members of the community La Garnacha, located in Esteli’s Natural Reserve Tisey-Estanzuela, who belong to cooperative ASOPAN (Asociación Programa Agrícola San Nicolas). At their market stand, they sell goat and cow cheese, coffee, honey, wheat bread, jewelry made from pine and earth ceramics, and some of the best produce at the market. At their farms—in addition to hiking trails, scenic views of the western, coastal landscapes, and a calm place to stay and explore—the cooperative offers workshops on vermiculture, organic vegetable gardening, and coffee and swiss cheese production.

While we as North Americans perhaps bring to the table our recent, fanatically sculpted, overly broad connotation of the word “green,” green in the context of the Green Market does not imply, as I initially supposed it did, that all—or even most—of the produce is organic; some of it is. One of the only exclusively organic producers is Finca Organica El Carizo[1], which has sold here since 2003. Worker Renaldo—arguably the market’s oracle and certainly its most eloquent spokesperson—spoke of the friendships the producers have made through the social experience of the market, the significance of the opportunity to speak directly with consumers, and the role that conscious consumerism plays in alternative food systems. Emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between human and environmental health, he expressed concern about the lack of enforcement of pesticide regulation in Nicaragua, and highlighted this as a key reason to grow and buy organic. Michael Pollan—who has famously said that farmer’s markets in the U.S. are our country’s liveliest new public square[2]—I think, would have loved Renadlo’s commentary. Here, thousands of miles south of Berkeley, is a farmer saying that the farmer’s market serves as more than just a marketplace; it plays an important social function.

Current president and one of the market’s original founders, Daysis, who spends the rest of the week on nearby medicinal plant nursery, made a compelling connection between the direct interactions that such a market requires and the process by which campesinos, rural women in particular, build confidence and overcome their timidness. Shopping at the farmer’s market could therefore be an act not just of relationship building, but of confidence building.

There is room for improvement. Brewed coffee, for example, is hard to come by; when available, it’s dulsudo: half sugar, half coffee. Some live music would up the energy. There is very limited seating; simply adding some plastic chairs—not a problem anywhere else in the country—would create a more inviting and relaxed atmosphere. Samples, especially of mysterious products such as Las Dioas hibiscus wine[3], would add fun and aid sales. 

A global food movement

At stake in Esteli’s farmer’s market and related efforts are momentous questions regarding the future of small-scale agriculture in a country like Nicaragua. To contextualize the current economic opportunities (or lack thereof) for small-scale farmers historically, let us take note that land distribution in this country has been shaped by a series of agro-export booms driven primarily by a landholding elite on the one hand, and authoritative government manipulations—whether in the form of forced expropriation or failed aims at collectivization, on the other. While many Latin American countries continue to cultivate models of development based on free-market policies broadly and agro-exports more specifically (for those without oil, at least), small-scale producers across Latin America are engaged in efforts to relocalize food systems both in order to build local economies and gain political autonomy.

Having left the States amid a flourishing food movement and having been sad to leave behind an array of delightful local farmers markets that truly function as community spaces, animating Michael Pollan’s idea of such markets as our contemporary public square, going to the Mercado Verde is a welcome reminder of home, and also of the broader issues that motivate me to work in food security and small-scale agriculture. Put differently, small farmer’s markets popping up in Nicaragua contextualize not only our local food movement in the U.S. but also—for agriculture volunteers—our current work, reminding us that we sing in chorus with communities, both farmers and urbanites, all across the world as part of a global movement for reclaiming healthy, participative food systems.

I’ve made the Green Market a (bi-)weekly ritual. Just as the practice of buying at the market complements my work here as a volunteer, the friendly and relaxed ambiance of the market complements life in the campo, character wise. At its best, the Nicaraguan campo is a timeless place of awesome generosity, in which people understand the beauty of life through a simplicity and in a way that is lost on many, if not most, Americans. Esteli’s Green Market seems to me a natural extension of the sort of intimacy and cooperation that are the hallmarks of life and relationships in rural Nicaragua. Let us, as visitors, support this effort. And enjoy the most tender, delicious, sweet carrots in all of Nicaragua.

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[1] Finca Organica El Carizo. Independent producer, also located in La Garnacha, Reserva Natural El Tisey. Welcomes visitors, $15/night (including 3 meals), less if you work on the farm. willivasq@yahoo.com

[2] Though not the only source of this statement: “The farmers’ market has become the country’s liveliest new public square, an outlet for our communitarian impulses and a means of escaping, or at least complicating, the narrow role that capitalism usually assigns to us as “consumers.” At the farmers’ market, we are consumers, yes, but at the same time also citizens, neighbors, parents and cooks. In voting with our food dollars, we enlarge our sense of our “interests” from the usual concern with a good value to, well, a concern with values” As quoted in this recent NY Times Magazine article.

[3] La Dios is the brand of products made by Cope Luz (Cooperativa de Mujeres Rurales).[3]

A version of this essay appeared in Peace Corps Nicaragua volunteer publication Va Pues.

The strongest, most artful hands: paying attention to detail rather than boundaries

Under the handcrafted wooden table in the kitchen, a mama hen sits on her nest. She moves only about once every three days, to eat and drink, then promptly returns to warm and protect her eggs. Periodically accommodating them, she uses her head and beak to shift them squarely beneath her, making sure to evenly distribute the warmth. She sits quietly—almost silently—which is pleasantly unusual for a patio bird.

My daily life here has become ingrained; I’ve grown less observant as I’ve become more comfortable. As is the case no matter where you are or what you are doing in life, you can easily become wrapped into, and somehow lost in the daily routine—slowly or suddenly losing perspective on all that is good, beautiful and to be grateful for.

Perspective regained, I am newly aware of what a neat opportunity it is to live among these people (and animals); in the coming year, I resolve, among other things, to remain a keen observer. Here I attempt to take a step back and describe some of the finer, forgotten details of everyday life here in El Riito.

By 5 a.m. women are in motion. Their steps on the rock and dirt road can be heard heading to the molino (mill).  The old molino grinds in the distance. As women return to their homes, daylight has graced us; awake and out of my room, I see them pass with plastic buckets of ground corn upon their heads. We greet one another. I begin to walk down the road, and what sounds like a drumbeat emerges from each home I pass—women’s hands hitting and shaping pieces of corn dough against the wooden table. Every woman has a particular rhythm, and her style strikes me as instinctual: daughter does not palmear (palm) like mother. The sound of the drum-like beat precedes the grainy smell of fresh tortillas. (In the afternoon, the smell of toasting or roasting coffee beans fills the air.) Men by this hour are marching off to the fields to work—machetes in hand, plastic fumigation tanks strapped to their backs.

Women artfully use their hands from dawn to dusk. Tortillas crafted, their hands move on, busily and nimbly skimming the milk and handling the rennet to form the cheese; de-graining frijoles or selecting coffee beans; cooking on an open flame, their skin immune to minor burns; or washing dishes and clothes. As they cook, my eyes are drawn not to their hands but, hypnotically, to the flame. The smoke creates a beautiful visual effect when caught by sunlight.

When they remove the burning pot from the flames with their bare hands, my attention returns. It’s incredible to watch: hands so productive and callused, yet so remarkably graceful. A feature of every home, the lavadero (stone washing board where all dishes and clothes are cleaned), seems the appropriate symbol of Nicaraguan women’s dexterity.

Herds of cows and the occasional oxen cart carrying firewood constitute the bulk of the traffic passing through. Neighbors pass, too. It’s an event when a truck or taxi drives by, and when it does, people hear it coming and stare at it from entry to exit, heads swiveling. The traffic of the homestead is busier than that of the road: dogs roam, as chickens, ducks, roosters, and children waddle across the porch and yard as if lost.

The slow pace of life and lack of attention to time, date, and material objects; strange beliefs accompanying somewhat pagan executions of Catholic prayer; the awesome generosity; the simplicity—to me these embody the hallmarks of life here, and all are challenging to fully appreciate. More broadly, I find it impossible to imagine these people’s lives as their lives, and instead can only understand this life as a chapter in my own.

For amas de casa (housewives), the kitchen is their temple. Women of the older generation sit in their temples, spend the day there, watching the world pass by (when they are not busy cooking, sweeping, or otherwise handling their household). Just as some women rarely leave their kitchens, most people rarely leave the limits of this very small community. And I sometimes wonder if these limits are confines? The campo is the freest place you can be: physical and spatial freedom abound, but social and geographical mobility are not easily accessible, and in some cases not desired. I then question the morality of a world in which what to me are confines, to many of El Riito’s inhabitants are simply the extraordinarily narrow parameters of their everyday lives.

Away from the lights of any major city, the night sky here is crystal clear; stars overwhelm the black, and the moon somehow seems bigger. I often find myself wishing I had a telescope. I sometimes talk to my abuelo about the sky, the stars, outer space, men on the moon—mostly joint speculation amid a shared sense of wonder, as I am no astronomer. At these moments I am inspired by the perhaps dangerous, romantic idea that the worldly parameters only divide us if I allow them to.

Does dwelling on divisions separate us further? Does not paying attention to boundaries help us transcend them? We must confront the socioeconomic and historical structures that divide us, and respecting cultural differences is vital. But to the extent that relating to local people is my goal, ignoring boundaries seems a suitable strategy, at least to experiment with.

Letting go of the preoccupation with Riiteños’ limited map, at least momentarily, allows me to observe and appreciate a wealth of small details that animate and enrich everyday life here, which brings me to where I began: the mama hen, sitting in the open-air, campo kitchen, quietly and humbly protecting her eggs.