Buen viaje!

And so it goes.

The day was a very relaxed sort of day with the niños, probably because all the tension of trying so hard disappeared in light of the status of a Last Day. The other teachers were very kind and friendly and great, asking me when I'd return, if I would. Between them and Nicole, the kids knew that tomorrow I am leaving. They gave me generous hugs and "bye bye"s and "te quiero mucho" and I blinked back this feeling of a family, of being accepted and loved and belonging somewhere I never would have imagined belonging.

There was no kindergarten class in the afternoon today, so my last day was cut unexpectedly short. Nicole looked at me and said "that's it". That is it. Four weeks of sitting and playing and writing and speaking slowly, four weeks of "como se dice en ingles" and "otra vez" and "tu puedes". Four weeks and then this last moment, saying keep in touch, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

I did not cry when I hugged Nicole goodbye but if you were to stop me and talk to me on that way back home, I'd have ducked my head with my sunglasses shading my watering can eyes and not been able to respond for all the tightness in my throat. All the thoughts, all the feelings, everything was so very there in my heart and in my eyes.

Still it does not feel like an end. I will likely not believe this experience is over until I am walking into the Toronto summer sunset tomorrow evening. An even then.

I am going to keep this last post short because I know I have more words to say but right here, right now my goodbyes are close hugs and then walking away. Moving on, I suppose, but also just moving forward. We will be parting with Becky and Alan tomorrow at the airport as they head to the Corn Islands for the beginning of their three-week bonus travel, before Alicia and I check into our respective flights and gates and planes and home, in a very distant, very near future. I'm not sure how that airport goodbye will go, as we will be waking up in about 4 hours to start that journey, and I know I will be seeing them sometime.

And them my niños have already been hugged, hair ruffled and hand clasped goodbye.

So all that is left is to look out that plane window and wish well to the people and places that have altered the course of my life.

Te quiero y te echaré de menos mucho, Nicaragua!

No sé cuando yo voy a regresar, o si yo podré, pero la vida es la vida, y yo solo vivo una vez. No tengo bastante palabras para este experiencia. Entonces, gracias gracias gracias!

Mucho gusto!

stay golden,
stay awesome,
stay aware of wonder.

-k

All the thanks

Today my favourite grade twos wrote me love letters. I don't get to teach them tomorrow because they aren't in the rotation. Sometimes you just don't know how to say thank you enough to those precious precious kids.

Ustedes quiero, mis niños!

Uno beso, mi corazón

Our Saturday dawned cloudy and down-pouring for a while as we went for breakfast, bidding us bite our lips and hurriedly rethink plans for the day. This was a case wherein patience was rewarded and spontaneity applauded, thanks to Alan making full use of svuv. Solamente vives una vez. We headed out by noon, taking cover from an unbelievable explosion from the skies in a cafe; once the onslaught leveled down, we caught a cab down to the marina to reassess where we'd go next.

And don't you know, this marina was spectacular, with our volcano looking moody and ringed by clouds, the sky grey and heavy with questionable intentions. I skipped around, breathing deep the air and trying not to clap with joy at just how beautiful it is. Think Everglades and mangrove trees meets the most picturesque small island huts and life. We found another family--Linda and Mike and almost-seven year old Adele and little Zachary--to split a boat tour, and then off we went.

The just-over two hour trip had me lose all my dignity lumber-hauling-beached-whaling it back onto the boat after swimming in the warm, once-bull-shark-infested lake water, imagine what it would be like to go crazy on one of the tiny isletas, wonder what the convocation of almost goose like duck birds were up to, admire the lives of the rich who own their islands and the poor who survive on theirs and generally just run my fingers through the water and watch it stream by, small ripples and the sound of a humming motor, little laughter, the only signs of our presence.

And of course the rain cleared up for us, even though the day had seemed so hopeless. We headed back to our house, damp and happy and having well spent our time, our last weekend on a quiet adventure together. The night inched into darkness, and of course that smattering of stars that makes every night magical rose from our balcony. After a short nap, waiting for the night to get live, we headed out to Encuentros bar-club-pool-cinema, ready to seize the night and enjoy what we could of our open bar.

Let us just leave it as an incredible night. The music was very 'meh', but at one point it stopped mattering, because you just danced and danced and danced. And of course with a pool, there was required of me some swimming. So near the end of our night, approaching two in the morning, I kicked off my shoes and jumped in. The water swirled around me, the music a faint baseline through the chlorine, suspended and flashing and holding me there. Jump out, wipe my eyes, continue the dancing. A game of MarcoPolo or two later, the rest of the bar hadn't yet joined us, so we said screw it and just kept on playing, some strange kind of semi-grown-up-not-really pool party. The night breeze settled in, so amid the occasional whistle, we got out and took a little time to victory dance in the middle of the slowly emptying dance floor, squeezing out our clothes and just moving. Moving and dancing and holding wet hair off of a wet neck and looking up to see the stars and remembering how this is not everyone's life, not anyone else's but your own and this is pretty damn cool for that very reason, to be dripping in a Nicaraguan bar, turning around with stars in your eyes and the feeling that this doesn't always happen but when it does it is because of risks, because of taking them, because of this, because somehow, sometimes things are just as they should be.

Sunday was perhaps not the best of feeling kind of day, but we stayed quiet and local and in for the most part, looking up at blue blue skies and shingled roofs and watching birds pass by and tree leaves trembling and refusing to indulge in much reflection of all the Sundays passed and the Sundays to come. Because they won't all be here, feeling like this after a night like that.

And so it goes.

Yesterday started the end of my volunteering, ushered in by some of the kids asking me where the other American volunteers were, having to tell them they are gone. And aren't we all like that, here for so little, experiencing so much but never quite doing enough. Nicole told me she was going to miss me, and I think for all of our slightly stiff conversations between her hesitation of the English language and my willingness to make it better, tripping over myself to do so, even with all of the moments where I've observed, the moments of correction and encouragement, all of it has had some kind of affect. And my god, there it is. An affect of some kind, be it lasting or irresolute, a bonfire or a matchstick, there it is.

I haven't been thinking in lasts yet. The walk to work is still the walk to work, biting back retorts to the passing gringa comments, dodging motor bikes and horse poop and low hanging branches. And the kids are still my kids, although being on the other side of Tuesday has me blinking rapidly against the bat sounds and creature chorus of the night.

Today had me laughing from the start, the kids being hilarious and untamed in their energy, although I am beginning to appreciate the massive amounts of patience that so become teachers of younger kids. Gracias a ustedes! And then another moment walking home that didn't have me heart broken until just now while we enjoyed some live music of Spanish voices, maracas and guitar. One of the first graders who has taken a liking to me called my name, ¡Profe! Profe! as everyone left in the afternoon, so I turned around, already incredibly attuned to that call, that plea-question-beg for attention of Teacher! Teacher! I picked her up and swung her around and then continued on my way, she balancing on my hip, trying on my sunglasses. Asked her where she lives and she pointed to a bend in the street, onto a road that quickly got rural. As I'm dipping down to put her down, she goes in for a tighter hug and then plants a kiss on my cheek.

Oh, my heart. Not only is it just the sweetest gesture, but it gets me how trusting it is coming from a little kid (and how suave and gentlemanly it is from a late night pool party introduction). Or maybe trusting isn't the right word but I don't know how to describe it. Like innocence and love and joy and gratitude all in one. So it just hit me how beautiful such a moment is, this child whose language I do not speak, whose family I do not know, whose future is not for me to be in, but this child who recognizes me, believes me worthy of affection. Maybe it's just that all gringos who stay longer than a day are worthy of being cheek-kissed. Or maybe it's just me trying to find meaning.

But it is as it is, as it should be.

I am tired now, my luggage bags finally pulled out from underneath my bed. Everything in me feels a little bit shaky, uncertain of how to deal with this next part, this inevitability, these last two days with these kids. There is only so much now to be lived in without overstepping and losing sight of any reflexivity. So here is to final moments and reflection and the way live music makes everything better.

dftba.
-k

Context

I have five nights left in Nicaragua.

Last week I visited the new volunteers' two week project painting and upgrading a kindergarten classroom. It was a quiet morning because the kids were out of school, only breezes through shady trees and the ever present chatter of the birds. It was soothing, meditative work with the paintbrushes rolling over the walls, giving a facelift, some brighter colours, maybe some hope. Who knows. At one point there must have been a church gathering or something in the distance because a chorus of singing voices reached us on that hot nicaraguan morning air, humming and buzzing of life and worship. Could not distinguish the words and probably wouldn't understand it even if I could, but it was so pleasant. Reminded me of how our voices sound at camp when we are all singing in the mess hall and if you are outside, not directly involved the voices just fill the summer space and it is nice. Just nice, pleasant as dappled shadows, as little kids waving, as not understanding but enjoying anyways.

When I returned to Carita Feliz after that, it was this explosion of life and energy and sound. How the kids occupy the space they do, filling it so completely with their voices and bodies and lives, however temporary we might all be. And if you ever wonder why people do this, fixing schools and painting walls and maybe spending the rest of their lives down here because oh, that's where their heart has found itself, if you ever wonder why, you just need to walk into a school or orphanage or community centre when the kids are running, laughing, screaming to each other. And maybe it is for the kids but just close your eyes and feel how we all take up a little bit of space on this earth, how our dreams and hopes and fears and stories follow us wherever it is that we go, how we all have a family somewhere, how we all need our hearts to beat and our lungs to breathe and how when we all sing, it is unity and pleasantness and life.

Walking home from Carita that day, there was this carnival parade exploding down the streets with colour and kids and candy and music. I didn't mean to have it affect me, but like most things in life you never know what will move you and then this did. I was walking back from saying goodbye to the American volunteers whose last day it was and in front of me was Calle la Calzada underneath bubbling thunderstorm clouds, the bright yellow church in the distance, trees and horse carriages waiting for me to pass by. Behind me the carnival parade passed, blasting music, scaring the birds from the rosters of the burned church that's seen more fires and history of Granada than most ancestors. And "we found love in a hopeless place" just suddenly dawned on me. Because I did find love here, in these kids and these volunteers, whether or not this is an entirely hopeless place, and so I swallowed the tears for that moment because it felt more precious than anything else, necessary to just feel it and see it and witness this.

I spent my friday night looking at the stars and stars and stars and constellations I don't know how to name and sitting and chatting with these people I didn't know but now I love and somewhere between our comfortable night in and falling asleep that night I became okay with the idea of coming home. Not leaving, just coming home. Because now what happens is the really important stuff. You've been with me as I've discovered how incredible it is to be travelling like this, to volunteer like this, how much I believe I am capable of now doing for my future. And I've stumbled into several realizations that have given me insight on what I'd like to do with my life, and where it all starts to matter is when I return home. Where do I go after this experience, what will I do with all I've learned and felt and taught and lived when I get back to Canada? And this is how I'm okay with the idea of next week, of two months from now, because I get to start putting everything I've discovered I want into play, get the wheels turning, get focused, get real. I'm excited for how I will make this all work out for me. Nervous, too, because I have no idea how my dreams and realizations will fit into a North American context, but there it is.

I will leave you here for the evening and write more on our last hooray of a weekend for another day.

Here is to what remains, and what is to come.

dftba
-k

Las estrellas

And I title this post as such because there is a smattering of stars across the bottom of our night horizon this evening and they are all a-twinkle as they do and today with the second graders (who are quickly becoming my favourite class) I taught them how to draw the stick figure star I learned when I was barely older than them. Also because the stars are there even when they aren't, even after time and space have extinguished the source but not the after-echo. Or something.

Because today is the ten day mark, the last double digit day I will be spending in this country with these people. (bonus points if you can count how many times I've exclaimed over "this country" and "these people" and the niños.) And I wasn't planning on feeling really weird about it but when you only have ten days left in a country that has been home for give or take the last seven weeks, such a number is knee-knocking. Gah! Sorry. I don't mean to seem obsessed with numbers, with the time that is almost missing, almost here, almost gone. On with it!

Yesterday my now-facebook friend Nicole (the English teacher) was sick so I had to teach the lessons solo yo! Well, I actually didn't have to do anything because if you don't put anything in to Carita Feliz you won't get anything out of it and I could have walked away and wouldn't have been judged except in my own eyes for being a coward and failure and hypocrite about this life, so I screwed my courage to the sticking post and swallowed the slight awkwardness of not quite knowing enough Spanish and just jumped in. Which was incredible, if the biggest challenge yet. Mostly because I didn't know the schedule for which class was when (rotates each day so I couldn't quite nail it last week) so I ended up erring greatly (aka the first class I jumped into didn't actually have english that day.......*squinching awkward eyes*) but my goodness. I've probably mentioned how much I love watching the other teachers in action (how I would not mind marrying one or two of them because they just have this sense of humor and a humble kind of grace.....gosh this just got a bit weird if this gets around) and how "good people" they seem to be but man were they ever so helpful and forgiving and kind to me as I stumbled between classes and tried to get the kids to listen. They called from teacher to teacher to figure out who was next and yelled no escuchan! when no one was escuchan-ing and smiled and asked my name and I'm not sure why I was so struck by this friendliness because if I've learned anything it is that nicaraguans are SO friendly but I think it is because I assumed they used up all of their patience with the kids. But friendly people are friendly to the bone. And so they were.

I mostly just taught the English alphabet and the days of the week because those are basic and quite essential and I just want them all to learn, to repeat and practice and learn and practice and learn and repeat and keep trying. I wrote the Spanish-phonetic English alphabet enough to have it memorized, and repeated the days of the week enough to feel how weird sounds actually are. And the kids were following in the footsteps of the teachers with how forgiving they were to me. They coped a-okay with my not so smooth spanish and understood me and corrected me kindly when I made mistakes, either giving me a false sense of confidence about how my malo español can get me by or just showing me how people don't care about the minor things. I just wish I could be more obviously an example of why you need to practice actually speaking a language to get better, need to open your mouth and just try and make the mistakes that will make you better. Because that was what I was doing but it is so difficult to translate that sentiment, even though kids are much better at trying, shy but eager versus mumbling embarrassed teenagers (unless they know English is a game changer in this country).

And now I'm here writing about it and thinking of those moments bent over a notebook with a student and leading them through conversations and pronouncing each letter and it makes me want to have those joyous happy tears slide down my face because there is so much success in those sentences, in the smiles, in the greatness that comes from the smallest of practice. This feeling is one that would plant me in a country, in one school with one class forever to follow them through progress and triumph and trials and see them go somewhere. This is the feeling that tells me I can do this. Having a day where it was just me in charge of the classes and seeing them all write down my words in their notebooks, pencils clutched tightly, fingers focused on each letter, having that day was all the realizing encouragement I ever needed, and a slightly disquieting show of just how influential a teacher can be. It is no longer something I doubt but something I know. Yo puedo.

And then today with the second graders I love I just had the most hilarious time. Sitting and tickling and laughing and joking with those humble and rambunctious boys, they were kid-fresh and full of giggles. Literally we were just giggling, me able to understand the jokes and being able to make them laugh back and giggling through the "no puedo"s of drawing the rooms of a house or whatever it was. Again I am bereft of words to describe it, glad as all stars that I have it as one of those priceless memories I'm going to fall back on whenever I lose all hope in humanity. Somewhere there are eight year olds giggling about churros and doing devil ears on turned heads, somewhere there will be eight year olds who can just exist. They will not smell of glue, they will not have bright red, veiny eyes, they will not move pseudo desperately through late night streets asking regalome, give me it, gift it to me, they will not be putting palm frond flowers behind tourist ears and feigning hunger as an excuse to wish for an American life, a westernized escape, French fries, an ice cream. I need to believe that somewhere the eight year old boys are loved and happy and laughing, quick to smile, never to judge.

The stars are out in full force now with the last of the sunset gone. There are bats squeaking around the corners, frogs in a distant chorus ushering in the quiet volcano night. I want to hold the world where it is as we all tuck into bed, doorsteps, each other.

Let's just breathe.

dftba
-k

There it is

It is the nurses' last night in Nicaragua with us tonight.
They head out tomorrow early in the morning so we are aiming to have an adventurous night because we can, because we need to, because there are only so many nights left to us here. Which is what I've been thinking about, a lot, in the time we've got.

The two new volunteers who are here for two weeks arrived yesterday during the day, and I'm sitting here feeling like if their two weeks go as fast as the nurses did, I will be in our van driving up to camp in absolutely no time. I do not know how to feel about this, especially when I had such an amazing week with all the kids at Carita Feliz. I almost can't even handle how amazing this week was; from learning the Spanish equivalent of who stole the cookie from the cookie jar to teaching the tourism class about clothing items to actually getting through to the kindergartens to tickle fights with the second graders. True as anything I absolutely love these kids, just as carefree and kidsy as can be, making do with so little and still being so dedicated and immersed into that which it is that they do. I really doubt I will walk away from that place in 12 days dry-eyed.

The thing is I just don't know where they will go, where our paths will lead in the future. Like I'm going to walk out of their lives and get on a plane and return to North America and I will to a degree never know what will happen to all those young and smiling faces. Who will survive this tough world, who will fall to glue-sniffing and addiction, who will go places and do amazing things and who will be underutilized and never live up to their potential. Even though I want them all to, just grow up and do well and go far and speak English and be kind and stay spontaneous and beautiful, this is not right now the country with the infrastructure to support all the brilliant little lives growing up here. I'm not actually sure if there is any country in the world fully geared to the success and well being of their children, but there it is.

So here it is.

I have less than two weeks left to my name in Nicaragua now and I don't know how to feel about it because this country has taken me over and the kids have enchanted me and if you gave me the choice I would be a happy pony just to stay and teach at Carita Feliz as much as is absolutely possible because I love it. I just love it.

Here it is and here is to last weeks and seventh weekends and late nights and pouring rain and lightning storms that just make everything soaked and perfect. Here is to making the most of your time here, finding lovely in the time that's left.

dftba
-k

Tu puedes

I figured out today that 100% of the time you can do it. The only variable is whether you need someone telling you that you can or someone showing you that you can.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked a niño to read me something, to tell me the words in English and I've been met with a bashful little "no puedo", I can't. And then when the whole class does a call response, what do you know the kids are experts in colours and body parts and shapes. It is a matter of leading them into the fire, a small prompt here and encouragement there and honestly they do so well like this. Even Nicole gets embarrassed sometimes with her English but I'm just here reveling in how much they can do, especially in a country that doesn't have mandatory English classes in public schools. I just want to encourage them all the time to keep speaking, keep practicing, they are doing so well.

Tu puedes is the extent of the encouragement I can give, and now I think it might be all anyone needs to hear. You can. You literally can, whatever it may be. You can do it. You can travel to a foreign country and you can discover every corner of wonder in the world. You can leave familiarity behind and start new and different. You can dance more and be more and smile more than you think. You can. You just can and nothing should get in between that subject and that verb.

Tu puedes.

I believe in you. I believe in the kids who get by and thrive with hole-y pants and cut arms and ducking heads and slippery shoes. I believe in the teachers that spend their days repeating over and again the lessons they've been teaching and their sense of humor and their ability to fold the kids right into their sides as if to say it is okay. Maybe the rest of the world is being washed away by the rain and the greed but here you are as safe as leaky roofs and brown bananas can make you. I believe in the whiteboards and running feet and echoing laughter that has devoured my days these last weeks and the volcanic horizons and ocean sunsets and lightning storms before that, and all the adventures out there to find now that I've been here.

Tu puedes.

dftba
-k

Go Thompson go!

I woke up this morning on four hours of sleep after a somewhat sketchy meal of carpaccio, or essentially raw fish, which I nonetheless digested and therefore am now officially indicted into the Nicaraguan Eating Society wherein I can safely eat just about anything here in this creaky, body-conforming bed in our beautiful bare bones hostel room to the sound of birds but not nearly the volume of our Granadan aviary friends. The sun was blowing the surrounding jungle into a beautiful day sort of breeze and it was time to get started.

Our goal for today was surfing and holy *expletive!* did we ever accomplish that with a bonus point for saving an endangered species while at it.

So we piled into our transportation to take us to playa hermosa, the other survivor beach in Nicaragua. (remember the magical horse ride from our last San Juan visit? That was survivor beach number one and this one was number two, though I have no idea what seasons they are. Semi-famous sites visited? DOUBLE CHECK.) It was this crazy bumpy ride off of the road that will eventually be paved to Costa Rica if the Nicaragua government ever gets on top of things. We splashed through puddles and trudged up crazy hills in the little jeep, crammed and jumbled and chalking it up to a pretty fantastic time. I was appropriately positioned to watch the road pass us by and every time we dipped through the jungle to a mercifully not-flooding riverbed there were these swarms of yellow butterflies, and the way the morning light hit them made it look like we were traveling through another pacific-coast enchanted forest. Which is to say I am in love with this place and all those little things and peach perfect sunsets and friendly hostel porch-sharing neighbors.

There is an aura on Pacific coasts of places that enchants me. Here it is the way the jungle cliffs meet the rolling surf waves on wide shorelines with far off foreign horizons. I easily could just watch the water roll in all day, crashing against the live-creature sand, hermit crabs and sand dollars and starfish. The sound of the sea is ancient, a worthy place for all the romance, the poetry, the exploration in its endless depths that holds so much more than our small selves can grasp.

We spent some time cooing over the two day old baby sea turtles they are keeping there before our surf lesson. These Nicaraguan men knew their stuff...and were quite easy on the eyes. We got our boards, the 8 nurses, Alicia and I because Becky and Alan surfed last time and are all about catching as much gnar as possible, and then walk-ran in excitement to the ocean. Strapped on our leashes, one last adjustment to our rash guards and then off we went, colliding with the foamy, salty water.

I will be honest here and tell you I wasn't good. I maybe had one or two good stands and a handful of shore-reaching waves balancing on my knees, but the rest of our three or so hours we were in the water I mainly crashed around, falling off with my usual lack of balance and tumbling through the water. But for all my falls, literally what only mattered were the moments. You know, the moments when you'd catch the wave at exactly its right height and soar in top of the world, feeling like you were born here, like this is what life is about, harmonizing with a terrifying force and maybe completing that small desire in very soul to be so perfectly in sync with the natural world, man made board and body notwithstanding. For me it all lasted about a second, maybe two, but it was enough to realize why surfers do what they do, why so many people search out these waves and coasts and rolls and waters because there really is something inexplicable about it. And I know this is the first time I've ever surfed so maybe it sounds like I'm exaggerating or being a bit overly sentimental but all I will say is that you need to try it. And if you hit it right for those moments, you will get why people live for this, why shark bites and bruised bones and salt water eyes and blisters and sunburns don't matter at the end of a wicked surf day.

Eventually we stopped for lunch, everyone's faces flushed and eyes shining from this discovery. Afterwards, Alan, Mario (one of the Basecamp staff members who accompanied the nurses on this trip), Jessica+Michelle (two of the super awesome nurse gang) and I went for a stroll up the beach. I climbed around in my sandy flip flops on the sediment rocks by the edge of the beach, scaring sideways crabs into crevices from millions of years of tectonic motion. Little fish darted in and out from small tide pools speckled with floating white flowers. Directly above us was this giant hanging cliff with tree roots and cacti clinging to its side. I wish I could have captured what the world looked like from where I stood, the rocks beneath my feet and the cacti above my head with the big big waves and ocean spray and cloudy-growing skies and distant shorelines of far off lands. I could lose myself there, fall deep into the reaches of a sea-sounding thought, just watching and listening and feeling and wondering about all the places there are and all the beings there are.

We took another hour with the higher tide waves, rougher and larger than the morning. If I had a week of dedicated surfing practice, I imagine I'd be able to at least catch a few good waves. This is an addictive sport. But then it was time to head in because the Nica men had their giant blue baskets filled with probably a hundred baby sea turtles, ready and clamorous and excited to get to the ocean. The line of gringo tourists and families following the blue baskets was in itself a sight to behold. We each chose our own little guy to cheer on. A friendly German lady asked if I'd name him and I said yes! Thompson! Don't ask why or how but that was the name of this preciously small creature I cheered on, following him to the edge of the incoming tide and then clapping as he swam his little body into the great blue sea. Nor can I accurately capture how it felt to see these small breathing trying babies to follow the route of so many ancestors before them, the most timeless of rituals, into the sea. We are always only the audience members to these tiny miracles of nature.

So my breath has been accurately stolen by all of this. What am adventure for a weekend all in one day, what a discovery, what a witnessing of life and history and the world. In our 12-person back of the truck ride return to town, we waved at everyone we passed an laughed when they smiled because especially the kids didn't hesitate to acknowledge these crazy gringos. Because we do not hesitate to acknowledge the human in all of us, the being and hearts and tears of all of us.

dftba
-k

San Juan take two!

Okay so it was just a fantastic day today, especially because a little perseverance goes a long way in finding a really great and really cheap place to stay.

Here is our sunset and here is our room. All I need for a great weekend. My goodness!

We will be hitting the waves for some surfing tomorrow and sunshine and everything because we quite enjoy this little town.

So good, breathe sea salt air again and fill my lung with the west coast.

Estoy feliz.

I had in mind something about a kid today who was carving his pencil lead with the razor blade of a sharpener, but today is not that kind of day.

Today is a scratchy sweat from a day well spent kind of day. It is a hug your mama Nica because it is her last day of work and have no words when she cries because she is so wonderful kind of day. It is a teach the third graders how to play candy land and be absolutely swamped by excited hands and yelling voices calling yo yo yo and half understanding how to explain the rules kind of day. It is a sing old McDonald had a farm to primary kids and remember surprisingly well the words to baa baa black sheep kind of day. It is a growing headache and constant smile sort of day, a dance to the music and eat the bagged mangos kind of day, a marvel at the small hands and noses and bright eyes golf the start of life kind of day.

It is a good kind of day. A kind of day that convinces me how much I love this life. A day that makes me bite my tongue when I realize that tomorrow is Friday, our sixth weekend here. Our sixth weekend here...sixth. Weekend. Here.

Oh, goodness.

dftba
-k

The first drawing

Today was my first real day of work, as yesterday Carita Feliz was having a proper party, bouncy castle and all that I could not quite do anything for or against so I left partway through the morning. Enough time there to have a precious little girl come up to me and exclaim "¡Que bonita!" over my volunteer card picture, which up and melted my heart quite instantly.

I returned this morning with hopes of a more productive day, even though my game plan started out as just watching Nicole, the 14 year old English teacher, do her thing, see what level the niños are at. I battled this self-conscious feelings of awkwardness as I followed her from class to class--okay, that's a slight exaggeration, using the word "class". The interior of Carita Feliz is essentially one giant room with myriad picnic tables set up. Each group of students has their area of the room, a teacher and whiteboard accompanying them in their chatty energy. So essentially what happens is that we go from table to table, whiteboard to whiteboard, scrawling lists of vocab words and conversations to be translated into Spanish. Handfuls of curious niños glanced over at me, this sweating gringo watching the lessons silently, not saying anything about the wrestling boys or the gossiping, hair-braiding little girls.

I couldn't help but notice the little things. How different all their faces are, how some of the boys are wearing red sox/American sports team hats, from a country they've never been to, much less a culture they've experienced (all though they have definitely dreamed). There was a boy who had a tip of a thumb attached to his hand by a skinny strip of flesh and he smiled with these wide wide eyes. There were these little friendships and tiny romances and all the small hands and smiles. I tried not to be too creepy staring at the students who ducked their heads in concentration to focus on the board, the lesson, the foreign words and Spanish pronunciation. I wanted to freeze those faces, those moments, those looks and say here! Keep it! Hold on to who you are right the very now! Don't lose that innocence and struggle! Don't forget how to be spontaneous and studious and precious! Don't trade your little kid smiles for jerky teenage smirks. Stay golden, stay crayon-scented and chatty.

They won't, of course, but I hope it anyways for their little hearts and their little spirits in this rough and gritty, wonderful wonderful country.

I returned for lunch at our house in all my midday sweat. Even on a cooler morning, that building just accumulates heat, which intensifies in my body because I'm just a gringo, just a Canadian kid trying to live life in a tropical climate. Returned at one and resumed my silent position but not for long. Around two, a group of Americans came around with the principal, evidently on some kind of volunteer thing. Here I am siting there silently while these two American guys squat down by the kids and start chatting. It's loud enough that I can't hear but it certainly looks like they are speaking fluently, which renews all my self-doubt and makes me feel like an awful volunteer for not instantly diving in. We move on to the next class where I am involuntarily commanded "ayúdame!" by this sassy seven year old, and then the ice is entirely broken, and I limp along in my small Spanish to try and do what I can, explaining what the word hungry, happy, angry is in Spanish without saying the actual Spanish equivalent.

We move along to the next class; by this point I have pieced together that one of the volunteers' names is Andre. It is through the precociousness of the kids in this second-last class of the day that I learn the other guy is James, and that neither of them can speak more Spanish than me (less, actually) but they are trying. So I try right back and make fast friends with a gaggle of girls, one of whom doesn't blink at my lack of Spanish comprehension and chats away while the others play with my hands, write me barely legible Spanish sentences so that I can only say buen trabajo and smile really big. One girl gives me the drawing at the end of this post, my first gifted drawing that has me absolutely enchanted. It is something special; I'm sure I will devise a whole bunch of meanings for its pencil pictures at some point. As we are leaving, I am bombarded with hugs from these precious kids who literally just met me but ¡No importa! It doesn't matter, we are friends now. So I make sure to tell them Hasta mañana in hopes that they will remember me for tomorrow.

It is as we are walking from the main building to the kindergarten building that I make official acquaintance with James and Andrew, the latter of whom is from Lexington, Kentucky. They are here for another three weeks, so I will have some English speaking compadres in my afternoons. At this point I am feeling way less defensive about being the only volunteer, especially since they are so excellent with kids and willing to help out. The rest of their group is in the kinder building, three girls and one other guy. After listening to the little ones yell MOTHER! FATHER! SISTER! BROTHER! for thirty minutes, I get the chance to talk to Andrew and James and the other guy. Learn that they are doing a program through the university of Miami (and Ohio? maybe?) wherein they are learning spanish in the morning and volunteering in schools in the afternoons. I hope to get all their names tomorrow and maybe invite them out to our weekly trivia night. They are very friendly and were very kind in meeting me. So that is literally amazing.

And that is the story of my first day of work. I'm thinking that for the rest of this week I will probably just do what I did in the afternoon and hangout and chat with the niños, helping them where I can. And then either next week or the week after I might try offering a lesson or two up for the older classes--and definitely going to teach "head and shoulders, knees and toes" to the knee-high kindergarteners. We shall see, but for now I am such a happy camper with where I am, all the eat and noise and screaming and running notwithstanding.

Hasta pronto.

dftba
-k

Solamente vives una vez

This is the Spanish "Yolo", to be referenced as svuv in future posts and therefore to be understood as you only live once, often preceding or following an event of risk taking and life shaking, also recognized as living in the moment.

Today, that consisted of swimming into the middle of Laguna de Apoyo, a volcanic crater lake, and then rising in the back of a sixteen year old's truck to the Panamerican highway, through rain and clouds and jungle monkey calls and the eventual emergence of a golden sunset, and then walking and dancing alongside this highway with the fresh breeze and open road, and then cramming backwards onto a mini bus, knee to knee with a granny lady before arriving back in our rain soaked, beautiful city.

This is life as it should be lived, grabbing what transportation comes by and watching the sunsets emerge from a thunderstorm sky.

Coyotepe

Funny how one day changes a lot of things.

Last night we welcomed 8 other volunteers to our Basecamp for their sojourn here. They are nursing students from New Brunswick and will be here for two weeks. Our room is considerably more packed, as in every bunk has been taken, and one has been doubled on. These nurses certainly got crafty with putting up their mosquito nets, so good for them. They will be working in Granada with Pilar the Spanish doctor midwife doing rounds and checkups and things, a pretty good placement considering they don't speak any Spanish.

Which makes me all grateful for the four weeks we had in class with Jessica, because I feel as if I will at least be able to hold down a conversation on Monday when I start at Carita Feliz. Which is another thing--having all these nurses here has taken my mind off the first day jitters of starting at Carita Feliz. There are just so many of them in our one bathroom and they occupy the space not occupied before and they are new so I don't have time to be quiet and pensive and gather fear about my placement. And that's all I will say on that until I have more concrete details and feelings and experiences at Carita.

(I feel the need to share that I am writing this in a hammock with a loud cricket and noventa cinco pointa cinco Spanish love music station playing, a strange context to say the least.)

So this weekend we are staying in Granada to catch up on the Granada things we haven't yet done. Had an all you can eat breakfast at the chocolate museum in town. Delicious and partially Nicaraguan. We will return in an evening to make our own chocolate bars, that's for sure. Purchased some love poems and the third Harry Potter in SPANISH, so I know what will be occupying me for the next four weeks, as a read that would take me half a dedicated day in English will easily take me two or more weeks. Needless to say, I absolutely cannot wait.

And then Becky, Alicia and I went for an afternoon excursion to Coyotepe. It is an old fortress prison since forever, but held prisoners as late as 1975 in the revolution. We bussed to Masaya from here, one of those chicken bus affairs with painted exterior and three people to a 1.5 person seat. Funny to think how deplorable those conditions would seem back home on public transit. Now whenever the 99-b line in Vancouver seems crowded, I will be smiling away and slightly nostalgic for there are no chickens in my face, smelly old men missing teeth on my lap or seven children with one overwhelmed mother. So there's that gratitude. Or perspective. Whichever it is.

The bus essentially deposited us right in the heart of the market. And oh my god. When people say that Masaya market is where it is at, that was the absolute truth. Entirely overwhelming but massively intriguing, just about every handicraft there is to be offered is there on display, pretty much being made right in front of you. Shoes, bracelets, clacking wooden toys, piñatas- all of it somehow fitting onto the shop stalls, each for each, so many colours and textures that the light filters in softly, strangely through drapes of hammocks, over the brown working fingers of shoe makers and toy sellers. We are definitely going back to bargain and buy, but it was an experience and a half to just walk slack-jawed through that place.

Our taxi driver practiced his English for the short drive to the base of Coyotepe, offering to take us to the top but we of course wanted none of it, being at one with volcanic-mountainous inclines at this point. Which is to say we just wanted to climb the hill that would take us to the imposing fort.

The heat was present but just holding out hands as we walked up the scratched road. Paused for some pictures on a lookout rock, already in awe of the views of this country. There is no better way to feel how small we are than to view it from such a vantage point, gazing out over the roads and cars and houses and buildings in which we live out our lives, maybe never seeing the bigger picture, maybe never knowing the shadows of the clouds on the lake, draping the volcanoes, the way the trees move, how quiet it gets with lizard rustle and bird flock in the greenery.

And then we rounded a bend and right there was one of the lookout towers, all like hey how's it going Nica, I'm just going to hang out here on this hill and hold your history. We walked in through the gates, looking on the white cement guard walls and the mouths of the lower prison, buried underground for maximum human cruelty. We tagged along the end of some kind of high school/college history group, complete with the chaperoning teachers adding graphic detail to the accented English explanation from the tour guide. "imagine being in here for months on end, surrounded in the darkness by yourself" ... "imagine hearing the screams of the prisoners chained to the torture wall"... "imagine thinking it was you next". And as strange as it seemed to hear these things come from the voice of some American history teacher (assumed), it was moving. Beneath the sleeping bats and dripping walls, some still streaked with the remnants of feces being poured down, beneath the opening from which hung countless prisoners who'd met their fate at the end of a rope on top of a hill, swinging and creaking like the eerie prisons doors...and still this was mid afternoon, faint daylight finding its way in patches and flickers to the graffitied cement walls, carved with "te quiero morir" and how only Christ is the saviour.... It was not hard to feel the darkness of the place, to know that it existed in history.

I don't know the particulars of the revolution and I don't know whether the prisoners were the "bad guys", whether any of it was worthy of such a black and white concept. The empty cells could only tell so much-in the quiet of this sunny day, it took a thought or two to imagine the horrors of the prison. The daily war of fear and despair, the taunting, the not knowing.

We are such a strange creature, human beings. We are capable of the greatest good and the worst of ungoods, creating art and misery and science and mystery as easily as we breathe. Always we believe our suffering to be the worst, that no one has suffered what we have while all the stories of human history are carved on prison walls and hearts and minds, tree bark tales and fireside fairy tales, ghost stories with a spine shiver of truth in all of them. We are not a solitary being; everything we do exists in relation to the rest of the world, and this is the world we don't always remember to look at. To open your eyes for a moment and imagine what it was like here for more than just your present experience. Who has breathed this air, walked these steps, closed their eyes against blinding sun and shuddered at bat swoops and ripped in the uneven ground of our lives. Who has been before us and who will be after. What are we making and breaking and shaking from ourselves, how very much and how very little we mean, standing in torture chambers and beneath the guillotines of human error.

It was a good exploration and a good kick to the heart in ethics and history. It began to feel wrong to smile in pictures being taken, but then we cannot be mourning every life lost for every moment of our lives. At some point we are still living while other existences have been gone forever, and at some point we need to reconcile this living guilt with a breathing history and move in some direction that is not destruction.

So be it. And so it is that we grabbed the life in us and ran across the Panamerican highway for a moment and crammed back on to a Granada bus and pressed against all these other live people going somewhere.

Here's to going places and recognizing how human we are and how many have existed. To prisons and panoramas and people.

dftba.
-k