Since I was about 13 or 14, I have been taken with Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, dreaming often of visiting, and perhaps making a difference in that world, so different from ours in the US.  And it has been my privilege to visit twice - once as a college student with Habitat for Humanity, and again as a musical missionary.  Frankly, the first visit was my favorite - it changed the way I understood survival and  poverty and joy.  It tainted, in a good way, my ability to be a good missionary in the sense of what we were supposed to be doing.  Nicaragua changed my life.

So when Grif82600 began posting about his trip to Nicaragua, it brought back a flood of memories:

It was late December 1990 when 14 college students and 2 professors set out from Indiana in two vans to work with Habitat for Humanity as a January Term class.  One of the vans was diesel, which we were delivering to a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) providing educational services for women in Managua.  However, the end destination was Pearl Lagoon on the Caribbean Sea, accessible only by a 6 hour trip over roads which regularly switched hands between the Sandinistas and the Contras followed by a 3 hour cruise on a riverboat.  The community had been devastated by a hurricane years earlier, and Habitat was slowly helping the inhabitants to rebuild.

Sometime I hope to write about everything I remember about the trip.  I hope to write about the night before we crossed the border from Honduras, and the long talk with our hosts in Tegucigalpa, professors who had kept a low enough profile to survive the worst of the "disappearances" of most of their colleagues; apparently, as part of the deal to base the Contras in Honduras, our lovely government provided a great deal of money, armament, and training to the Honduran government, who created a secret police to get rid of dissidents. 

The evidence, for us, was the day we were driving around, looking for an optical shop to repair LuAnn's glasses, and pulled up quickly to the curb when we finally spotted one.  The sidewalk was crowded with folks waiting at a nearby bus stop when we saw the optical shop; it was completely empty by the time we opened the van doors.  Why?  Two american-made vehicles, one with tinted windows, and both with CB antennae.  It took us a minute, but when our bunch of hippy-looking college students tumbled out of the doors, the relief on the sidewalk was palpable as the Tegucigalpans re-emerged.

The evidence was when we tried to cross from Nicaragua back into Honduras carrying books our professor had bought for his thesis.  The Honduran border guards, upon seeing the books, confiscated them, then proceeded to practically disassemble the van - door panels, spare tire, all the bags, turned inside out.  We got through the checkpoint with a large bribe - $100 or so? - but no books:  communist literature was not allowed in Honduras.

Someday, I hope to write about the Pearl Lagoon we encountered.  About the bumpy 6 hour road trip to cover 90 miles of terrain, where the rule for the drivers was to fly through any checkpoint which featured pistol-bearers only; halt for automatic weapons.  We were told to leave a little cash in obvious hiding places, keep a little in our pockets, and secret most of it in various locations among our belongings (tampons became one of our favorite devices).  But then were also the little boys, 4 or 5 of them between the ages of 6 and 9, who blocked the road with a rope to prevent us from crossing their "pot hole repairs" - shoveling dirt into (or out of) a deep washout of the dirt roadbed.  When we had paid them for their services, they lowered the rope and waved us through.

I want to write about the grass streets where livestock roamed, and making cinder blocks on the river bank, and laying the cinder blocks for foundations, and electricity for only about 3 hours a day, and purifying rainwater with bleach or iodine to drink with the koolaid we constantly mixed in our canteens.  And watching from the balcony of the home where we stayed, as children sang a song about an epic battle while acting it out with sticks as swords and rags as capes. 

Someday I will write about hiking about two miles outside of town to visit a local Sandinista, and trying to play with a 5-year-old whose hair was faded to dirty blond/white, and whose belly was distended like you see on TV, with flies buzzing around his head and eyes; according to our Habitat contact, the boy was malnourished, and likely to die of dysentery.

And I want to write about the epic party the residents of Pearl Lagoon threw for us, the night before we departed.  A cauldron of coconut milk and fish chowder cooked under a tent, and a table full of bottles of Honduran rum and cokes, and dancing and singing and more dancing.  I can't stand coconut milk, and fish makes my stomach do flips, but I ate because the hands that prepared it would only be honored by the consumption and praise of the dish.  It was the least I could do, and the rum was a much easier sell.

Someday, I will write about all of this because we wept when we left, knowing that our week or so in Pearl Lagoon did so very little, and because it took 2 months before I felt even a little comfortable in a normal American grocery store.  I will write about this, I swear.

Or perhaps, someday, I will return to Nicaragua, if only to come back with more stories, because people need to know.

Links to Grif's Posts:

Life in Nicaragua: 2nd Poorest Country in Western Hemisphere 

Insurance? Need clean water and food! Nicaragua visit pics

Nica Trip Pics:American Aggression, Poverty, Hope, and Survival

NICARAGUA, NICARAGUITA

Ay, Nicaragua, Nicaraguita
la flor mas linda de mi querer
abonada con la bendita
Nicaraguita, sangre de Diriangen*.

Ay, Nicaragua, sos mas dulcita
que la mielita de Tamagas
Pero ahora que ya sos libre,
Nicaraguita, yo te quiero mucho mas
pero ahora que yas sos libre,
Nicaraguita, yo te quiero mucho mas.

Translation:
Oh, Nicaragua, precious Nicaragua
The fairest flower of my affection
Fertilized by the sacred blood,
Nicaraguita, of Diriangen.

Oh, Nicaragua, you are more sweet
Than the honey of Tamagas
But now that you are free,
Nicaragua, I love you so much more.

Words and Music by Carlos Mejia Godoy
(c) 1984 by Carlos Mejia Godoy

*As a cacique, or ruler, of the native Chorotega group, Diriangén opposed Spanish conqueror Gil González Dávila from 1523 to 1529 and is a symbol of Nicaraguan indigenous resistance.

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