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Campo

August 21, 2006 ( life )

Let me break into this sum-up of my campo trip by saying that Jamaican transit, for all its foibles, may in fact be better than the cross-country chicken-buses of Nicaragua. Also, for all the bad press this old form of development project gets, hey, someone build some paved roads down here, OK? Aside from the Panamerican highway and parts of Managua, it's all Somozo-bricked roads [1] at best, dirt in general. That being said, fun bus travel games to play include "Which Box Has the Chickens?" and "How Many People Can Really Fit?"

Our first stop was...well, actually at the Managua northbound bus station. We missed the last bus to Esteli, so instead spent the night at a ... well, crappy hotel. Such is life. We got up at the ass-crack of dawn and caught an early bus on to Esteli, where the museum we were trying to go to (of martyrs of the war, put together by their mothers) was closed. We ate breakfast in town and then an early light lunch at La Casita, which is an awesome organic garden place run by a former development worker who's now "living by example." It's a very tranquilo place, with double-ventilated composting pit latrines (that's in there for the water san volunteer(s) reading this).

So early afternoon, we caught a PACKED bus up to San Juan de Limay - it turns out it was the last bus of the day, and students from the region take it home after their saturday classes. I stood for most of the way up to Limay, in an old schoolbus packed 3 adults to a seat on both sides and two thick down the center aisle.

San Juan de Limay

In San Juan de Limay, a town that Chanita assured me is a metropolis, the primary mode of intra-city transit is by foot, with horses being a close second. It's a super tranquilo town, with a few tiny general stores, a bar/restaurant, and a hospedaje(guest house)/bar/restaurant - Mi Rancho - where we stayed. and, uh, that's it. no cybercafes, no nothin' else.

The owner of Mi Rancho was leaving early the next morning (it turns out, to go to Managua as a candidate for his area on the PLC / conservative party), so we had to get out of the hospedaje at an ass-early hour. So we dropped our packs off at the house of this cute abuelita we'd talked to the day before (who it turns out was our host's aunt -- small towns for ya). We were strolling around town, waiting for the (other) restaurant to open, and were invited to walk with Marta, who was going out to her parcel of land to check on the wells and for her children to swim/bathe in the river. We ended up spending most of the morning walking around with her, learning how her family made mud bricks to sell in town (manually), her husband is working in Barquismetro, Venezuela, and we got to see their garden where they grow most of the food they eat. We got back into town, had breakfast (and coffee finally!) and went to visit one of the EeA artisans, Ramon, who is a stonecarver. He works mostly in marmolina, but is moving to marmol (I think that's soapstone, and marble, respectively - I need to figure this out tho). He showed me how he carves the stone, and gifted me a new carving at the end of our visit. It's amazing to see how much he has been able to accomplish thanks to being able to sell his sculptures at a fair price. He's rebuilt his home (with brick instead of unfinished wooden planks), to begin with.

We then walked down to another nearby community, Rio Abajo, where there is a cooperative of potters who use local clay and seed dyes to color their pots. They have one spinning wheel (manual/kick wheel) and turn out some amazing pieces.

Somoto

That afternoon we took a bus back through to Esteli, then out to Somoto, a town further up in the mountains, and the capital of the poorest state in Nica (Nica is the 2nd poorest country in the Western hemisphere, behind Haiti). It's an... odd place. It reminded me of Merida slightly (tho much much smaller). There's a humongous presence of aid/development workers in the town, so the town has adapted to cater to their tastes. There are cyber cafes and fancy restaurants (and pizza even!) With any luck, they will be able to broaden their focus and become their own tourist destination (they're close to the Honduran border, and on the panam highway), so as to not become a ghosttown if the dev community moves on.

We hiked up to another artisan's house, Christian, who at somewhere around 19 is his family's prime breadwinner through his painting. He has never finished school not even taken an art class, but is an obviously skilled painter. Another example of the impressive power of sustained, well-developed fair trade / economic justice work - not only is he able to support his family, his sick brother, but he also rebuilt his house with stone bricks (and bought himself a bike). Just as a tip of the hat to the hardcoreness of his entire family, his father is a carpenter, and I saw him sketching out marks on a piece of wood to cut. His straightedge? The disassembled barrel of a rifle. Probably, his own rifle from the 80s. Swords to plowshares.

There's probably a whole lot more that I'm leaving out. I'll try to add some detailed mini-stories as they come back to me, and photos will be appearing on flickr soon.

[1] The Somozo family ran Nica as a dictatorship for over 40 years, and repaved most of the paved roads with bricks manufactured in their family's factories.

Posted by griffjon at August 21, 2006 09:47 PM

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Posted by: LadyJBird at August 22, 2006 11:15 AM

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