4/20/86, Sunday

4/20/86, Sunday

Today is church day. We didn't actually attend any services but we did look at the buildings. Leon was colonized by Spaniards and there are lots of lovely old colonial buildings but the churches are the most ornate and beautiful. People flock to services on Sunday while outside, street vendors set up tables with colorful drapes, selling fruits, snacks and toys. We ate street food: repochetas, a sort of Nicaraguan quesadilla served with cabbage and cream. It's my new favorite dish, I ate until my stomach hurt.

Sandino rests a boot on Uncle Sam

We skipped dinner and went straight to Estudio 19, the local disco. It was hot and crowded and I wasn't really in a dancing mood. As I was standing there watching Audrey talk to an attractive middle aged man, I heard a voice next to me. “Can I buy you a drink?"  I turned around and a young man wearing glasses smiled at me.

"I already have a drink,” I smiled at him weakly.

"But it's almost gone," he returned my smile.

A single fist against Yanqui aggression

Roberto is a medical intern, studying to become a doctor. He plans to move to the U.S., so he’s been studying English and asked me if I would practice speaking English with him. His hair was neatly combed and he wore dark glasses that made him look bookish. I felt safe in his company, so I let him buy me another Cuba Libre and we chatted so he could practice his English. It was a stiff conversation because he had to think and construct sentences in his head before speaking and then he had to decipher every word I said before responding.  After the second drink, we started speaking Spanish which was much more comfortable for both of us. 

Roberto offered to give me a driving tour of Leon at night and I decided to take him up on it. I let Audrey know I would return shortly, but the city was pretty dark so it was an even shorter drive than I had anticipated. We drove back and parked in front of the club. "Thank you,” I said. “You're the only person I've met in Nicaragua who owns a car. It was very nice of you to show me around."

"Do you own a car?" he asked.

"Yes.”

"It's not so uncommon there, right?"

He wasn't expecting an answer, he was making a point. I wasn't sure if I was detecting irony or bitterness in his words.

"I'm more like you than you think,” he continued. “We used to have cars, land and a nice house. We lost everything to the revolution."

Our eyes met. Now I knew it was bitterness.

"I bet this is a story you and your internationalist friends don't hear very often."

"You're right. Me and my internationalist friends are shown all the FSLN's successful projects. You don't like the Sandinistas very much, do you?"

He searched my face.

"I'm not accusing, I’m just asking."

"Somoza was corrupt, there's no doubt about it. Many people were happy to see him overthrown, but not everyone who fought against him is a communist. Now that the land and the factories belong to the people, the country is poorer than ever. The peasants can’t produce like the old farm and factories could, so our rich lands are not profitable. Some peasants can't even fix a tractor if it breaks down, they don't have the money to buy the parts because they're still just working to stay alive. The factories that are still in business have very limited options to sell because of the embargo against the Sandinistas.”

He looked at me, waiting for a comment but I didn't have one. I knew that what he was saying was true. I thought of the sewing machines at the Salvadoran cooperative sitting idle because no one understood how to read the English language repair manuals. I had tried to help but my language skills did not include any knowledge of specific machine parts so my translations proved futile. Craft items for the store were being sewn by hand instead of machine.

"My brothers and sisters were all educated in the United States and I have family in Houston. My father was planning to send me to college there but our plans were changed for us since we made enemies with your government. Now I'm stuck here in Leon, but someday I hope to move there." 

"This country needs doctors, too.”

The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them. I knew it wasn't what he wanted to hear. 

"I will never get ahead here."

He touched my arm, which I took as a signal that I had to get out of there.

"Let's go back in,” I suggested. Once inside the noisy club, I felt like we were running out of things to say and I didn't want to go any further with him. He was trying to touch my arms and shoulders while giving me long, meaningful glances. I looked for an escape.

I smiled at a pretty looking boy who had a poofy bunch of curls falling over one eye. I think I used to have that haircut! He must have had ESP because he came over and introduced himself to me and Roberto, then he proceeded to talk only to me. Flavio was a war vet at 21, but he did not look like a soldier, I couldn't imagine it. About two minutes into our conversation, Flavio turned to me and asked if Madonna was pretty, which I found terribly funny for some reason. We both laughed, leaving Roberto perplexed. I continued talking to both guys.

About a half hour later, Flavio's friends showed up: a fair skinned guy named Rafa and a boyish looking young girl wearing black trousers, a white shirt and suspenders. She looked adorable. Flavio introduced her as Riquie (Enriqueta). The four of us hit it off. I think Robert felt a little excluded because he eventually excused himself and walked away. The four of us hit the dance floor together and it was obvious, if only to the four of us, that Rafael was really dancing with Flavio and I with Riquie. I found Audrey and her friend on the dance floor and we all danced until they closed the place!

4/4/86, Friday

4/4/86, Friday 

I’ve been hanging out with Audrey a lot. She’s one of the students at Escuela NICA. I like that she seems happy and eager to fill a room with her raspy laugh. We’re going through a similar journey, both of us are amazed at how far we’ve come since we first got here. She also saved me from myself. One of the women at the school started to give me a derisive smirk when she saw me applying colored lip balm but before I had a chance to snap at her, Audrey came over and asked to borrow it. Carrie, the smirk-giver quipped, “You two always have to look good, don’t you?” 

Audrey with other Escuela Nica students

Audrey laughed at her good-naturedly and I responded “we don’t have to, we just can’t help it.” Audrey is cute, she has short, auburn hair and a thin frame and neither of us wears much more than tinted lip balm and mosquito repellent. Carrie doesn’t wear make- up or deodorant and she brags about it as though it somehow strengthens her political views. She’s not always annoying but she sometimes acts like a know-it-all. She goes around correcting people’s Spanish pronunciation but she’s not even a teacher, she’s just another student. She doesn’t ever correct my Spanish, she’d better not even try. 

Audrey and I have learned to deal with the bugs, lizards, and rats. We’ve learned to eat food we’d never even heard of before. We’ve compromised our own standards of sanitation. We’ve learned to sleep through the clucking of the hens, the crowing of the roosters, and the pigeons walking and cooing on the tins roofs overhead. 

This morning, I saw a woman walking a cute little black pig on a leash. Its legs were moving really fast and the woman was having a hard time keeping up. Before I could take out my camera, the woman and the pig were halfway down the street. Chickens and pigs are everywhere, they walk along the road with everyone else. I have noticed that there are no homeless people or beggars to be seen. I don’t know if they exist, everyone seems to have some kind of job.

Kelly Thompson, 2015

I brought some cheap, lightweight tennis shoes that I wear at work, thinking they would be perfect for walking, but they are no match for the sett paved streets of Esteli. I think I packed inadequately. Contact lenses, make up and sweaters are out of the question, I wish I had a good pair of walking shoes and toilet paper instead. This afternoon the water was cut off unexpectedly. I was really thirsty and decided to go to the market to buy some soda, maybe even rescue the family from another meal of beans and rice, which incidentally, we have eaten everyday since I got here. 

When I got to the store, I noticed that many of the shelves were empty. There were some bottles of hot sauce, dry beans, dry rice, a small selection of ugly looking vegetables, a few household items and very little else. Everything was inexpensive. I asked the woman behind the counter about the scarce selection. She informed me that when something is in stock, it is cheap enough that anyone can buy it and so it sells out quickly. 

“The US has declared an embargo against us, but they will not break us. We’ll eat beans forever if we have to.” There was disapproval in the woman’s voice. “You are a guest in this country. You do not buy the groceries.” It suddenly struck me that what I was doing was rude. Who did I think I was, coming to their country, thinking I could buy better food because I had more money? I felt stupid and decided against the groceries, then asked her for some toilet paper instead. 

“Papel hygienico?” 

She looked amused. “No hay. Go back to your family and live like a Nicaraguan.”

4/3/86, Thursday

Adrianna

This morning Adrianna, the youngest of my little Nicaraguan sisters, took me on a trek to a school across town to distribute some of the supplies I collected in the U.S. The school is called Jose Benito Escobar, after a guerrilla combatant who was killed by Somoza’s Guardia here in Esteli. Adrianna told me that Comandante Escobar used to live in the house where our family lives now. We delivered our supplies to some very happy teachers who promised to put them to good use. The school was not yet open, so we didn’t hang out for long. We also knew that we had a long walk back and the sun was already beating down on us. On the way back we stopped for some gaseosas (as carbonated drinks are called here), it was a nice treat for Adrianna. I’m amazed that someone so young knows her way around town. I must learn from her. She never complained about the heat or the fact that our sweaty skin was the perfect surface for the dust to adhere.

When we got home, I made the mistake of postponing my shower in hopes that the water would warm up by early afternoon but it was unexpectedly turned off. Now that the water’s off, I guess I’ll have to stay dusty until tomorrow. There is water rationing here, just like in Managua but I haven’t figured out the dates and my family says it’s not uncommon for it to be turned off without warning.

Paca, looking confident and beautiful 

Later this morning I folded some clothes with my teenage sister Paca while she did the ironing. It was our first time alone together and felt like a perfect opportunity to chat. I noticed that she had some torn magazine pages taped on the wall. Among them was a photo of a woman wearing a gray head scarf and a plain gray work smock; next to it was a page from a fashion magazine featuring a woman with a huge mane of curly blonde hair. The two photos seemed incongruous next to each other, so I asked her about them. She started telling me about her trip to Cuba. She said she was rethinking how she defined beauty and explained that at one point, her wall had been covered with images from magazines of women whose lifestyles had nothing to do with hers, like the one of the woman with blonde hair. They were images from the same magazines I had grown up with, which featured predominately Caucasian women in expensive clothes.

Paca carefully ironed the cuffs on Lissette’s Bermuda shorts, made sure the fold on both legs was even, and continued with her story. “I like their straight hair, but mine has very tight curls.” She twisted a curl between her fingers. “And their skin looks so smooth.”

“They never have mosquito bites!” I added, scratching one of mine.

“Their skin is milky white, like they’ve never gone out in the sun.”

“Maybe they haven’t. It takes a lot of work to look like that.”

“My mom says they alter the photographs to make them look perfect.” 

“They do,” I reassured her. Then Paca dropped a bomb.

“But why is THAT considered perfect?” She pointed at the big-haired blonde. I had never considered that question. I knew the standards were impossible but I never wondered who set them or why certain features were considered beautiful. I was momentarily sent back to my childhood, remembering adults in East L.A. cooing over a child with guerito features. Kids could be ugly as sin but if they had light skin, eyes or hair they would receive heaps of praise. I had never understood it.

Paca finished with Lissette’s shorts, moved on to Francie’s uniform pants and meticulously creased them. Taking the tip of the iron, she gently tapped each pleat with it, pressing love into her family’s clothing, enacting the type of beauty she knows she possesses, the type that is now on her wall - the beauty that comes from a sense of purpose. “When I went to Cuba, I saw women who looked more like me. They were beautiful. They were average working women, not models,” Paca said. “It was my mom’s idea to put up the picture of the factory worker. Now, when I see images like this one,” she gestured to the ultra-thin, airbrushed model, “I realize I can never look like them and I’m starting to understand that that’s okay.”

Seeds for Germination 

Beauty in fashion magazines does not reflect or validate the average working woman, especially if the woman is not Caucasian. Learning to accept an appearance that is seldom validated takes ongoing conscious effort. The pressure intensifies as we get older when not only your ethnicity or body type can be portrayed as unattractive but when the natural process of aging is depicted as something ugly that needs to be avoided or corrected. 

When it comes to the household, Paca is second in command. She organizes the kids to help with the chores when Francie is at work. The whole family pitches in, since Francie is the sole breadwinner and it takes teamwork to keep things running smoothly. Paca cooks most of the meals when Francie is away. Yesterday, she cooked a very strange dinner for us, a big bowl of mashed tubers that looked like purpley-gray mashed potatoes. I’m not sure what it was called. We all ate it even though it was rather bland.

Lissette helps with the laundry

Noticing that I hadn’t eaten much, Lissette took the opportunity to introduce me to posicle. We walked a few blocks to an ordinary looking house with no signage. Lissette knocked and after a few minutes an older woman cracked the door open and peeked at us. “Hay posicle?” Lissette inquired. 

The old woman smiled and opened the door all the way to reveal a waist high freezer. "Si hay,” she replied in a friendly manner. I still wasn’t sure what we were getting. Posicle sounded a lot like Popsicle and the freezer seemed to confirm my suspicions but I was willing to be surprised. I gave Lissette the money and let her order for us. She handed the money to the woman who gave her two plastic sandwich bags with something reddish purple frozen inside. We thanked the woman and said goodbye.

Lissette handed me the posicle. I stared at it. “I’ll show you how to eat it,” she said. She grabbed a corner of the Baggie, squeezed and twisted it to create a sort of handle, then she bit of the opposite corner of the plastic bag and spit it out onto the street. I followed her example. “Now you just suck it out through that corner.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Frozen grape punch,” she said immediately, putting the corner of the bag in her mouth.

“You said it was hard to describe,” I teased.

“Well...I thought I should show you how to eat it,” she smiled. Later that evening, she showed me how to eat banana sorbets.

It’s not always easy finding stuff to snack on, which is trying for someone like me who’s used to grazing all day. It seems like one of the most popular Nicaraguan sayings is no hay (there isn’t any). You walk up to a cafe and they’ll have a chalkboard out front with that day’s offerings, except that as the day progresses, you tend to find no hay handwritten next to many items. Often, they don’t even bother with the no hay. You sit down, thinking you’ll order something that caught your eye and you’re stuck with Gallo Pinto... again! The one thing there is plenty of is sugar. Nicaraguans eat more sugar than even a sweet freak like me can handle. It typically comes in the form of frescos, which are usually just a combination of fruit, sugar and water. My favorite fresco is avena, which is a finely ground oatmeal that is soaked in sugar water and cinnamon, it’s sooooo good!

I wonder if consuming all that fresco makes one’s blood sweeter. Well, at least I know the mosquitos are eating well! If it wasn’t for the mosquito net, I’d have been eaten alive. Just now, as I’ve started to complain about the mosquitos, I spied a visitor in my room. I don’t want to be a baby about this but there’s a big lizard crawling on the wall and I’m scared. I’m going to try to ignore it, maybe it’ll leave soon...hmm, it’s not leaving. I guess I’m going to go read in the other room for a little while. I’ve been lent lots of books and I haven’t had time to read them.