An Experiment with Immersion

As my mind overflows with thoughts in both Spanish and English, with translations and conjugations, with rice and with beans, I find it hard to concentrate on just one concept, to pinpoint one main thing that I’ve learned over the past week. But I think that’s the point of immersion… I dove into a culture where the water, like that of a bucket bath, was both freezing and refreshing. I explored the sandy bottom, its problems, it quirks, and its beauty, and kicked my way to the top where a few deep gasps for air, allowed me to exit the cold water with a better notion of this place, this environment, and these people. But the unpleasant yet necessary side affect of immersion in a developing country is that once you reach the surface again, your perceptions of the developed world are murkier than ever.

Nicaragua is a curious case, and it seems on a whole to be relatively under appreciated. Its slutty tico neighbors (Costa Rica) are in the process of selling their bodies to foreign investors, exchanging untouched beaches for US dollars, and allowing tourists to overrun culture with surfboards and “eco-lodges”. But Nicaragua remains relatively untouched. They have the capacity to reap benefits from tourism but seem to still be regaining their balance from a bloody ten year revolution which crippled their way of life and was followed by natural disasters which left cities in ruin and pueblos underwater. Maybe it is the resilience of the people here that strikes me so. But after two weeks, I still find it difficult to pinpoint, what exactly about this place moves me so and makes me sure that I want to return.

Perhaps it is this host-family of mine. They are a curious mix of characters, but all in all a true representation of the people of Nicaragua: warm, blunt, hilarious and incredibly strong. The majority of the family wakes at 4 am to take a microbus to Zona Finca, the sweat shop to the north. The others arise equally early to sell fruit in the next town. They come home after 13 hour days exhausted to the bone but still so eager to talk to Aeriel and I, to learn more about the states, and to help us with our Spanish homework.

Do they know they’re tired? Claro que si.

Do they know they’re poor? Pienso que no.

They know that they don’t have as much as people in the states, but they also never complain. They have everything they need and they work in sweatshops because their options are so limited. They work to send their kids to school and hope that their children will have more opportunities.

Will their educated children have more opportunities? ----

I sit across from my host Aunt at dinner and she describes her work… sitting in Zona Finca in an assembly line system where her role is to sew the seams into tank tops to export to the states. She points to my shirt and pulls at the seam…

“Yo hago camisetas como eso”..( I make shirts like this).

This is not the only moment I grow immediately embarrassed of where I come from. It will happen almost every day with almost every conversation I have here in San Juan. Their intent is not to make me feel this way…but how can it be avoided? My host grandmother never learned to read because things like education were put on hold during the Nicarguan revolution. I come from the country who’s president fully funded the Contra army, the country who gave millions of dollars to a group of rebel soldiers who would then brutally massacre, slaughter and rape Nicaragua’s most innocent civilians. The more I learn, the more I am utterly disgusted.

The next morning, my conversation teacher Elisa, who has over the week shared her life with me taking me to her daughter’s graduation and welcoming me into her home on various occasions, asks me, “Hay epidimicas in Los Estados por chemicas?” (Are there epidemics in the states caused by chemicals?)

As I take more than 5 seconds to respond, searching for an answer that is both accurate and translatable, she pulls out a book that she found while studying. It is the Dole catastrophe of the early 90’s where a pesticide called Nemagon, was implemented without proper testing on the Banana farms of central Nicaragua. The results are horrifying and still being felt by thousands of Nicaraguans as the pesticides not only resulted in horrendous genital cancers and skin abrasions for the workers but quickly seeped into the next generation as the children of the workers were born with birth defects that prevented normal bone growth.

Today, Dole, the world’s largest fruit and vegetable producer is currently valued at $6.9 billion and has not yet fully compensated Nicaragua for this atrocity.

Aeriel and I talk at length about this issue since we both struggle with it. We know it’s wrong, we know we’re lucky and we’re not the ones who determined where we’d be born or what opportunities would be laid at our feet, but I can’t shake it. I’m ashamed of where I come from and all that I have.

There is no solution or end to this latest thought, like Nicaragua it’s a hard thing to pinpoint. I have no doubt that it is not the last time in my travels that I will feel this way, but am confident that the best thing to do is continue learning by immersion and attempting to appreciate the intricacies of each new culture. Traveling is more than beaches and language, it’s necessary to drown in a culture and its problems every so often to gain perspective.

Onto Honduras…here’s to diving in and kicking my way to the surface. 

A Word on Choosing a Travel Companion

Many people have questioned how Aeriel and I came to embark on this trip together. Truth be told, it started with just two words. On June 20^th, I received an email from Aer titled “Life Changes”, followed by a few lines about her need to get out of the country. I responded simply with “We’re worldly and educated, how hard can it be?” From there we dreamed up a plan, tied in some United Nations goodies, and booked one way flights to Panama.

All this is to say that while Aer and I were friends in college we hadn’t seen each other in well over a year and dwelled on opposite ends of the country. We have never lived together, never spent more than a track weekend together, and really had no idea how we’d fare under constant 24 hour togetherness which is a feat even for people who have known each other their whole lives.

One month later, I am happy to report that I don’t think a more perfect travel pair has ever been spontaneously created, and if you can answer yes to the following questions, you too may also know someone fit to live out of a backpack with you for the next seven or so months.

1.) When you spike a fever that lasts for days will your Travel Companion (TC) take the following actions?

a.       Wash your horribly dirty laundry

b.      Make sure that you have Gatorade and water at all times

c.       Shove granola bars under your pillow at least once a day

d.      Cook you chicken noodle soup when you’re too weak to make it to the grocery store

e.      Bring your journal to your hammock so that you can write without having to move

      2.)  When your hair gets too grimy to call hair much less touch, will your TC braid it to make you feel pretty again?

      3.) Will your TC share the last piece of stale bread and 50 cent imitation Oreo cookies with you?

      4.)  Will your TC tell you that your first attempt at fried plantains taste like perfection even though they taste like moldy feet?

      5.)  Does your TC enjoy eating entire jars of peanut butter during 16 hour bus rides?

      6.) Will your TC take on an entirely new name and identity when living with an indigenous tribe, in addition to living without electricity and running water?

      7.) When situations get tricky, does your TC insist on making decisions over mass quantities of alcohol?

      8.) When you just need a taste of home after a LONG ass bus ride, will your TC ravage overpriced cookie dough with you?

      9.) And on that note, will your TC also be ok with living off bread, cheese, and mustard for 5 consecutive days?

      10.) Finally… is your hair blonde? If so, it is vital that your TC be fair as well, because your moments of stupidity will always be paralleled and marked with fits of laughter that get you through even the most ridiculous of situations. 

Travel in Central America: Begins with a bus and ends with a quad.

When traveling in Central America, one should always be prepared to embrace the culture of slow, because this is a place where you will ride a chicken bus (known as a chiva) with one arm holding on for dear life and the other holding someone’s crying child (literally). It is a place where bus drivers pull over to chat with friends, a place where taxi drivers chug beer while driving you back to your hostel, and a place where a six hour journey across la frontera easily becomes a two-day trek from coast to coast…to coast.  

No doubt, the US news is not covering the state of affairs here in Costa Rica, but in short, hurricane Thomas has wreaked havoc on the Central region of this country as mudslides hurled their way down to the Pan-American Highway last week. This road is the vein of Central America as it runs straight from Panama to Guatemala. When the rains came, they left 27 dead and thousands without homes or potable water. Disaster to say the least, and it is a minute detail that all travel into and out of the country from the West Coast was been halted indefinitely.

 (The bridge to Costa Rica)

The only other way to get into Costa Rica unfortunately is through the port city of Limon, on the Caribbean coast, which happens to be the cocaine capital of Central America. Hence, Aeriel and I quickly put our long eyelashes to work and assembled a team of male travelers who had done the border crossing before and could lead us safely into the country. Inadvertently we also picked up an Aussie couple along the way who both happened to by doctors, so the situation went from dangerous and unsettling to completely fine.

48 hours, 4 taxies, 3 busses, 1 ferry, and one dirt road SUV ride later, Aeriel and I are in paradise on the Nicoya peninsula of Costa Rica.  The country has certainly changed in the five years since I was here last; Century 21 has invaded with real estate signs selling off the last of the untouched land for foreign summer homes and prices have risen drastically for basically everything. However, the lure of Pura Vida, the concept that once enchanted me so much, I chose to write it permanently on my hip, is still here.  

Mal Pais, a small surf town on the Nicoya Peninsula, is no exception. We arrived by chance only after hitchhiking afore mentioned SUV ride through the back roads of Western Costa Rica straight to our very first beach side sunset (in the three weeks we’ve been here, we’ve yet to see a sunset due to daily monsoons).

It’s been just over a day and already we’ve settled into the town’s local tico community. The surf culture, aka: slow talking, fast drinking, anything goes kind of life style is certainly a drastic change from what we’ve experienced thus far in our travels, but the sunlight and free spirit are refreshing. Nothing is planned and each event flows freely into the next.

For instance:

I learned how to ride a motorcycle from hostel owner Ryanà Ryan introduces us to local surfer AdrianàAdrian takes us for 7 mile beach run and free surf lessons where we meet his brother Almon àAlmon takes me mountain quadding where we meet his friend Adià Adi owns a local bar and offers me a summer job. à I now have a summer job in paradise. Fabulous.

(Spontaneous drinking games in Mal Paise, 25 travelers, 8 countries, 1 table)

Be it bus, quad, train or chiva, transport in Central America is an adventure each time your foot leaves the ground, and each ride brings with it a new character. Who cares if it takes you 48 hours to complete a six hour journey. Down here, it seems the destination is ALWAYS worth the wait. 

Panama: Saved by the Ngöbe

Itineraries are funny things. Going into this trip, I knew the second leg, the South American leg, would be wildly impromptu, but the Central American leg was planned to the day. Now, three weeks later, our “itinerary” has received multiple facelifts, and we find ourselves salivating at the uncertainty of each tomorrow.

This willingness to ride the wave of serendipity brought us to my dear friend Klaus. A boy whom I had traveled with five years ago while doing volunteer work in Costa Rica, now an incredibly impressive man serving two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the poorest region in Panama, La Camarka.

We met him in Panama City and partied like Peace Corps rockstars with he and 6 other volunteers, before embarking on the 7 hour journey to his village, Aguacatal, in the incredibly removed mountains of Central Panama. 5 hours of bus,  1 hour of Chiva (sketch South American truck), and 1 hour of muddy muddy hiking with 50 pounds of gear later, we sat in Abuelo’s hut receiving our first sips of Ngöbe coffee. (Klaus has given us warning of sorts, that went a little something like this, “Now girls, it’s really rude not to accept the coffee so you have to drink it, but you should know they dilute it after it boils so there’s a high chance you’ll get giardia or amoeba’s from it”…the first of many nonchalant warnings from our host).  Of course we drink each cup in its entirety, because we wouldn’t want to displease the Ngöbe, but with each sip I think of my brother who suffered nearly 2 weeks attached to an IV with giardia in Lebanon.

Stomach parasites seem a small price to pay to get to know this incredibly unique culture. They live without running water, electricity, or proper sanitation systems. They travel barefoot through mountain mud, and literally work the land until they die. But they’re culture is warm, their smiles massive, and they welcome us without question, giving us names (Jechi and Bechi) so that we can be proper Ngöbe’s for our week’s stay.

The week is filled with the rice harvest, (an incredibly tranquil process: seriously, I never contemplated where rice came from and the process of taking it from mountain side to eating it from a wooden bowl in a candlelit hut is actually mesmerizing), clearing fields with machetes (that’s right I ROCKED a machete), and attending the independence Day festivities filled with moonshine and inebriation.

I think now I can leave Panama feeling slightly better about its overall character. Even Klaus, who has lived here 2 years said, “Panamanians are a people content with mediocrity” and I have to agree. Nothing about the country or its people moved me terribly until I met the Ngöbe’s. They were genuine and intriguing, and as I head for the boarder of Costa Rica tomorrow, they have left me feeling satisfied with my three weeks in Panama. It is a country that thrives off revenue from the canal, a country whose capital is generic and dull, and a country whose character lies undiscovered, tucked deeply in its central mountains.