So What’s Nicaragua Like?
The pictures the team and I took don’t really convey what Nicaragua is like. I fell in love with the country while I was there and I keep thinking of ways I can get back. The country has seen two civil wars, earthquakes, and a hurricane that filled up the crater of a volcano, caused it to burst, and sent a raging flood upon the people below. During the 80s, the US maintained a trade embargo against Nicaragua. Signs of these hardships still remain. Unemployment is at 11% while 36% of the population are underemployed. Most people live on $2 a day or less. Despite these troubles, I got a real sense that things are improving.
Managua
When we flew into Nicaragua, we landed at the Managua International Airport. Surprisingly, this was a very modern airport. The terminals are brand new and the customs agents had Dell computers. I could have been in Florida for all I knew. The only sign of the past was a series of machine gun nests surrounding the runway.
We got into Managua at night and took the main East-West highway to Leon. In Managua, many of the homes were crumbling and there was plenty of urban decay. All of the taxi cabs had neon mist nozzle lights, neon license plate holders, and neon underbody lights. Most had a banner painted on the windshield, stating messages like “Regalo de Dios” and some had decals even on the windshield directly in front of the passenger seat. Obviously, Nicaragua doesn’t have any sort of DOT similar to the US.
When we returned to Managua the night before our flight back to the US, we stayed at the Best Western right next to the airport. This hotel was like stepping into a resort in Florida. I would liken it to the Green Zone in Iraq - very nice and cozy, but nothing like what lies outside.
Leon
The city of Leon (pronounced, “Lay-own”) is a college town. It was the home of the liberal side of both civil wars and was even bombed by Nicaragua’s dictator, Samoza. There are murals, monuments and statues in the city center depicting Sandinista (socialist) victory and a plethora of book stores. FSLN (Sandinista) campaign ads were painted on walls and telephone poles.
The city also seems to have recovered well compared to what we saw of Managua. While a few houses were in ruins, the majority were in OK shape. Urban development in Leon seemed to be directly opposite of what we see of cities in the US. The buildings in central Leon were in great condition, while the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city consisted of shacks built from scraps of plastic, wood, and corrugated tin. Most people on the outskirts burned their trash on the curb or dumped their garbage off of cliffs and into streams. The city had a definite “smokey” smell due to the trash burning, open fire cooking, and harvesting of the surrounding sugar cane fields.
We shopped at a supermarket called “Unity” that looked exactly like any supermarket you would find in the US. I bought some (extremely delicious) coffee (under the brand name, Cafe del Casa), some red pepper salsa, mango and guava jelly, and a bottle of Rojita. Rojita is a red pop that tastes similar to Inca Cola (a sort of bubble gum flavor) only with a cherry twist. The soft drinks there taste better, as they’re made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. After looking at the cashier’s name badge, we saw that the badge was distributed by Wal Mart. This was a Wal Mart store!
The city stayed pretty quiet during most of the day. As Dave and I sat on the porch of our hostel in the morning, we watched merchants walk by our house pushing their carts full of hot dogs, “juice bags” (baggies filled with fruit juice, wrapped around a straw), and other wares. In the evening, everyone was out and about. Everyone’s door is kept open and many people sit on their stoops. Churches, pulperias (small convenience stores), restaurants, and Internet cafes are filled with people. Eric would take us, two at a time, to the R y J en Connexion Internet cafe to post to the blog. For $3.50 one night, we used two computers for an hour and made 3 long distance calls over their VoIP phones. That’s cheap! It really demonstrates the power of VoIP. For a call on a cell phone to the US, Cingular charges $2.50 per minute. The cafe was filled mostly with teenagers playing video games and posting to bulletin boards. Of course, a scan around the room revealed a guy surfing for porn. Some things are cross-cultural 
One night, our house was visited by a group of kids. Two of them had snare drums and one had a bass drum. One kid was dressed in a paper mache costume representing a tall, beautiful, but stupid Spanish woman and another was dressed as short, ugly, but smart Nicaraguan man. The Spanish girl would dance to the drums and the Nicaraguan man would tell jokes about the Spanish. Several groups around the city go door to door performing their skits for money and the best group is voted for by the community.
The Campo
We spent most of our time in the countryside outside of Leon in the village of Abangasca Norte. The trip to the village took us through the dilapidated outskirts of the city, over a stream of unhealthy, green water, past a cemetery, and through the cane fields. The cane fields are the primary source of employment for the campesinos (peasants) and the fields are owned by the wealthiest family in Nicaragua. I would usually ride in the back of a pickup as we bounced over the rough, dusty dirt road between the fields. In the distance we could see the volcanoes towering over the countryside.
The village of Abangasca Norte was very spread out. As a driller, I spent all of my time at the village church, in front of which the well was to be located. Right next to the church was the pastor’s house - a shack consisting of four wooden posts, walls made from a large sheet of plastic (not too much thicker than a yard trash bag), and a roof made from corrugated tin. The pastor’s family all crammed into a house no bigger than an American master bathroom. They had a single bed frame with a wicker net acting as a mattress. Surrounding the church were a couple more houses, but the house directly next door was temporarily deserted. Across the street lived the Pastor’s brother in law and the village’s hand-dug well. Each property was surrounded by barbed wire fences and animals (chickens, turkeys, pigs, mange dogs) were allowed to roam freely. We had to climb through the barbed wire fences to get to the surrounding properties and to get to the latrine. The latrine was a raised platform with a seat and it was covered by a very short hut.
During some of our breaks we played kickball and baseball with the kids in a nearby field. For baseball, they used a rock wrapped in cloths for a ball and log for a bat. However, most of the kids had gloves. Surprisingly, Nicaragua is home to a few AA teams and some MLB players play in the area on the off season. When we played kickball, we used piles of leaves for bases and we set up only two bases. It was a fast-paced game!
The food they prepared for us was great. Since large trucks bearing sugar cane would frequently pass by, the kids would pick up any spilled cane, grab a machete, and hack us off a piece. Sucking on a piece of cane was a wonderful treat but it left an unpleasant clump of fibers in my mouth. A couple of boys gave me some small, green mangoes. The custom was to dip these sour mangoes in salt. The pastor’s wife, Rosa, prepared for us a dish of sliced green mango covered in a spicy red pepper sauce. It was a flavor explosion! On our final day at the village, the pastor’s family prepared for us a dinner of tortillas and chicken soup. The tortillas were large, thick, and had a full corn flavor. The soup had yucca, squash, plantains, and some kind of stringy, pink, potato-like vegetable, and a whole drumstick. It was extremely tasty.
Beyond
The day we completed the well, we all went to Poneloya Beach on the Pacific Ocean, straight west of Leon. It was here we spotted our first gringos. The beach is popular with backpackers. Some of the homes are completely run down and sit right next to very well kept hotels. The sand had a dark hue due to the volcanic ash and volcanic rock jutted out into the water.
The day before we left, we visited the Masaya volcano and the market in the village of Masaya. The volcano was a great experience. We parked our bus on an overlook right at the edge of the active part of the volcano. All we could see was smoke. Right next to the active volcano was a higher crater. We hiked up to the lip of the crater and walked along the lip. It was a bit scary because it was so windy. If I would have fallen to the left, I would be stuck in a crater. If I had fallen to the right, I would have been safer, but it was still a long fall.
From the volcano we went to have lunch at Pollo Narcy’s. It was a bit surreal to be in an “upscale” chain restaurant co-branded with Papa John’s. We shared 3 chickens. The servings were pretty small (we got 5 tortilla chips and 15 french fries), but it was pretty good pollo. The market in Masaya had some interesting trinkets, but it seemed odd to me that 90% of the shops carried the exact same items. Is there some kind of Nicaraguan trinket factory somewhere? Or were these actually hand-made items? I did get a $5 leather wallet and a clay plate. We also indulged on a couple of Eskimo ice cream bars for 6 cordobas (33 cents) apiece.
Overall, my trip to Nicaragua rates as one of the top experiences of my life. It felt great to work hard and help people, as opposed to sitting at a computer writing software. It was exhilarating to explore a new place and see the lives of people you don’t see on the Travel Channel. I keep thinking of ways I can go back. Too bad the Living Water trips for 2007 are all booked! I could easily see myself doing something like this on a regular basis. Heck, I’d even do it full time!
). Not only will this trip potentially change lives down south, it’s really been a transforming event for those of us going. One of the transformational aspects of the trip is that we have to rely on others to fund the trip. That means asking our friends, family and coworkers for money. Let me tell you, it’s a very humbling thing to do, especially in a society where we are all “self-made” people. It’s also a bit unnerving to send these support letters out to people who may not even agree with what you believe. But, hopefully through the experience of giving or even knowing about the trip, those who are turned off by God can at least maybe see a glimpse of what he’s all about.
