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by Michael E. Campana
(being a semifictional account of my sabbatical adventures, designed to amuse
and inform, and to be taken with a kilo of salt)
9 February 2003
from Granada, Nicaragua
I apologize to those of you who got hooked on these missives, then had to wait for more than the two months to get another one. Some suggested that while in the USA I should have written something completely fictitious, but that is not what I am about. Besides, New Mexico has very little fodder for such literary inventions. So for those of you who must live vicariously through my ramblings.....here goes.
Those of you who are bilingual will have to forgive my Spanish, as I cannot get all the accents down on this computer without spending hours fiddling with the keyboard, and I am now paying for computer usage. Besides, the formatting will also be lost when I paste all this into an email. But that will fit with my style, as you won't know which word I'm using. Lo siento mucho....
The great news is that I am at an Internet cafe in Granada that features broadband cable. The bad news is that it's Comcast cable. All in all, I will have good Internet for about another week. After that I am not sure where I will be.
Right before I left I received my quarterly alumni newsletter from Chaminade High School on Long Island, NY, school of such famous grads as actor Brian Dennehy, Bill 'No Spin' O'Reilly, Glenn Hughes (the original biker guy in The Village People), local Albuquerque newshawk Dick Knipfing, Lou Gerstner (former IBM CEO), semifamous pianist Edvard Lieber (whom we knew as 'Eddie', then 'Edward', then finally 'Edvard'), ad nauseam (and I still remember my Latin). By the way, O'Reilly and Hughes were in the class behind me (1967), and no, they were not pals. So why do I mention this, and why should you care? Well, this issue had a big spread on one of our most famous grads, former NY Republican senator Al 'Mr. Clean' D'Amato, Class of 1955, now a member of the CHS Hall of Fame. I cannot mention all his exploits and triumphs here (you can go to the US Attorney's office yourself), but suffice it to say that Senator Al has 'done good'. One of his most famous accomplishments occurred unbeknownst to him right after he graduated. At that time, the NY State Board of Regents decided to implement a mandatory ethics curriculum for all male high school students whose last name terminated in a vowel.
If you are like me (obsessive/compulsive, control freak) then you have no doubt been wondering what American Airlines did with all the seats they removed to get "more room in coach". Well, they sold them to Continental Airlines. I took a cramped, cattle car flight to Managua from Houston on 1 February. I was seated in the row separating the Missouri Baptist Volunteers (yellow shirts) from the Kindness in Action folks (green shirts). The MBVs were quite nice, and were going down to build some houses in the barrios of Managua. The KiAs obviously felt that their slogan did not extend to their fellow passengers. As soon as we took off the KiA in front of me slammed her seatback into my knees, then seemed annoyed when I kindly requested using my best ex~New Yorker politesse to back off. The KiAs finally chilled out but I never learned what they were doing in Nicaragua. Suffice it so say there are a lot of aid groups and NGOs here, as there is much to do.
I arrived in Managua late on 1 February. I was no longer in Vienna. Probably not a decent Sachertorte anywhere. It was too late to go to Granada to meet the family the language school had assigned me to. So I stayed in one of the school's 'recommended' hotels, the !Ay! !Caramba! (could I fabricate that name?). The hotel featured daily and overnight rates, and two different rates for single rooms. I inquired as to the reason for the difference in the rates, and learned that the cheaper rooms had larger spiders (actually an advantage because they eat more mosquitoes). There is a saying (one of many) in Nicaragua..."The larger the spider, the more mosquitoes it desires to eat, if in fact it wishes to eat mosquitoes instead of human flesh, which it prefers." Actually, I could use one now as a cohort of ants seems to be materializing from this keyboard.
Nicaragua has come a long way since it was the model for Don Henley's song "All She Wants To Do Is Dance" ('Molotov cocktail's the local drink, mix 'em up right in the kitchen sink'). Consider that Daniel Ortega, the former Sandinista president, is now the millionaire owner of a chain of stores (Augusto Sandino is probably spinning in his grave). Bimbo Bread trucks are ubiquitous. I will never forget my first encounter with these trucks while driving through Mexico to Belize in 1995. I thought they were the advance team for Bill Clinton's impending visit to Mexico. Seriously, what little of Nicaragua I have seen is quite beautiful and the people, especially the rural folks, are enjoyable.
I have already had my first foray into local water problems. I visited a local community (700 people) on the slopes of Volcan Mombacho. The dry season is in full swing now, and it is dry (the rains will begin around May or so). The locals (read 'women and children') have to walk up to 3 kilometers for water. There is a well 200 meters deep drilled into the volcanic rock but it goes dry during this time of year. I promised them I would try to contact some people who could help them. I might try some local US government agencies, maybe USAID, or some NGOs.
Granada, where I am attending one of the branches of the Nicaragua Spanish School for two weeks, is a colonial city of about 120,000 just about 30 kilometers from Managua, on the shores of Lake Nicaragua (aka Lago Cocibolca), a freshwater lake just a bit smaller than Puerto Rico. The lake is famous for being the only one with freshwater sharks. These creatures actually migrate between the lake and the Caribbean via the Rio San Juan. Unfortunately, this remarkable beast is probably extinct, as none has been seen for 10 years. They were slaughtered by the thousands 30 or 40 years ago, to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup. A smaller lake, Lake Managua (aka Lago Xolotlan) is 'dead', as it has been polluted by the human and industrial wastes from Managua for hundreds of years. However, the Japanese, who have a big presence here, are building a treatment plant for the city and want to clean up the lake. The US presence is also felt here. The other day I was almost run over by a US government SUV, no doubt trying to make it to the only golf course in town.
My family is upper middle class. Father Rodolfo is a social sciences professor at one of the local universities and (I think) a former Sandinista party official. Mother Rosario is a former schoolteacher who now wholesales pharmaceuticals. One of their four children still lives with them, as does Gabriel, their 6 year old grandson. Gabriel and I talk a lot. When I first arrived on Sunday Gabriel had on a Philadelphia Flyers (a hockey team for all you illiterati) jersey. I made my first mistake, that of trying to explain in Spanish what the word 'Philadelphia' means. I think what I said was that it means brothers who make love to each other, or some such....Wish I had pictures of the looks on their faces.
Speaking of hockey, one of the students is a big fellow from Edmonton named Neal. He has suffered through endless jokes about how to say 'Eh', 'Take off', 'hoser', etc., in Spanish. He also endured the ignominy of knowing that down here, he is a gringo. His partner is Carolyn, a medical social worker from Sacramento. Both are 'my age' (i.e., old). We were in a place last night called "The Bearded Monkey", which, if I were writing this in 1970, I would call 'funky'. We were with our fellow students, young folks from The Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Neal and Carolyn were about the only ones older than half my age. TBM was a bar, restaurant, Internet cafe, hostel, book exchange, home away from home, etc. The management of TBM was fussy about which books you could exchange. No Scott Turow, John Gresham, or Robert Ludlum, for example. The going rate was one Graham Greene for 10 of the above. I hid my copies of 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' and 'Love Story'. Most folks there were backpackers, and I suspect most were Euros, as they were smoking up a storm. Anyway, Neal related a story of how the other night he had been slipped a note by a young (hey, that's under 50) Nica that said 'Yo quiero estar contigo' ('I want to be with you'). He produced it, and I was quick to point out that the Nica had used the form of the verb 'to be' (estar) that indicated something temporary, instead of permanence (ser). Neal was impressed with my analyses, and said he wished he had paid more attention to this in class, as he had misinterpreted the note as a marriage proposal and had told the woman to 'Take off'. On second thought, he mentioned that perhaps he had said 'Take it off'. She left in a huff. There is another saying in Nicaragua..."If a young woman writes you a note in Spanish, you would be wise to perhaps pay attention to which verb tense she uses, in case she wants something permanent, or perhaps it could be temporary, but it all depends upon the tense that she would use in the note."
I think it is time to close up for now. The Kindness in Action folks have just arrived and they do not look happy. And I need to study my Spanish.
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