January 2002

ihana.com - big trip - diary - nicaragua - january 2002

 

Fanny (left) and Nelly (right) with baby and other relatives

Oyster fishermen

Monday 28 - Wednesday 30 January

We drove to Esteli on mainly smooth new tarmac with sections of the old badly potholed road still being replaced. In town we ate a sizeable meal of chicken and rice in a comedor for $2 each, then got some cordobas in the local bank before heading south into the mountains along a terribly stoney track. It was dark by the time we found a camp site on the side of a mountain, but sleep was hard to come by due to the howling gale making the tent flap loudly and the landy rock on its springs all night.

Skirting Leon, the next stop was to be Potosi, a tiny village in the far north west corner of Nicaragua to climb Volcano Cosiguina which had one of the largest eruptions in history, blowing off the top 2000m of the cone in 1835. Finding a place beside the beach to park the landy, we were soon accompanied by the usual curious children and followed shortly afterwards by some of the local dorises. This was the first time that we'd talked to village girls as they normally keep a safe distance away and only the men have the confidance to come to talk to us. Nelly is 18 and was breast feeding her second baby, the product of a recent liason with a since departed local guy. Her first baby being 3 years old and resulting from her now defunct marriage at the old age of 15. Fanny, her sister of 13, seemed to think she was at an acceptable age for bearing children too but hadn't found the right guy yet. Their 17 year old cousin was 7 months pregnant, the result of a 2 month marriage to an El Salvadorean chap who got cold feet and took the boat back home, half an hour across the water. They were all cheerful and the children were all well loved despite their meagre means and bad luck with useless guys.

String bed and hammock

Nelly and her home

Inside

They thought we were a bit odd for sleeping on the landy and insisted that we spend the night in their shack where there were a couple of spare 'beds'. The beds were made of string criss crossing a wooden frame and were comfortable enough. Nellys 16 year old brother slept in a hammock and she slept with her youngest offspring. We didn't get much sleep for the second night running as they had the radio blaring latin love songs until 11pm when the radio station shut down and then 10 minutes of static until T woke up the soundly sleeping brother and made him turn it off. Ts bedtime troubles continued as the mice which lived in the roof decided to shit on his head. After a few wet ones had found their target he managed to find a safe corner of the stringy bed and get a few hours of sleep before being awoken before dawn by the cockerel strutting around the room. Fortunately, the hens hadn't managed to lay their eggs in the bed that night.

The others were already up. Nelly was preparing tortillas and, like everybody else (including us), wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The staple diet is tortillas and beans supplemented with black or green iguanas, shellfish and sea birds if they find them. A truck drove past selling fruit and veg. We asked them if they were going to buy any but they had no money so we gave the pregnant doris 20 cordobas (about $1.50) and she bought a huge carrier bag of oranges, dozens of tomatoes and a pineapple. Nellys cousin is an oyster fisherman who doesn't like the taste of oysters. He told us that he sells the saucer sized specimens for 30 cordobas per dozen and they are then sold abroad, probably in posh restaurants for substantially more.

Grinding corn for tortillas

Shellfish

Iguana meat and her eggs

The kids go to a nearby school which is housed in a newish looking building. Two hundred kids are taught by just 4 teachers until the age of 12. After this age the education is no longer free and many parents can't afford to send their kids to school, leaving the boys to find some way of earning some money and the girls to their fast approaching womanhood. Nelly was helping a boy write his letters so we asked her to write her name in pencil on the side of the landy. She had two goes at it: 'NictEB' and 'NCtiBF'. She had no idea how to write the name of her youngest son, Johnathan.

Drinking water was from well on the other side of the dusty road and beside that, a concrete sink and wash board for clothes and a kind of shower cubicle. They had no electricity and no kind of sewage system, cooking is done on a wood fire. Nellys brother had a battery powered torch and there was a diesel burning candle thing in a beer bottle which gave off a smokey light and kept the insects away.

The public well beside...

...the shower cubicle and washboard

Babies everywhere

Before heading up the nearby volcano we bade our farewells, and gave them an old T shirt from Las Vegas and some plastic zip-lock bags which they were well pleased with.

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