I know that you have all missed my calming presence, but unfortunately my ability to share stories is directly related to the town´s ability to have an Internet connection- something that was lacking (along with power and water) for the entire district yesterday. No matter, though, as the lights are back on (as of yesterday afternoon), the water is spotty (but back in my house!), and the Internet is connected again... what more could one want?
I had a pretty exciting weekend because I got to visit a farm that belongs to my professor and her husband. The first thing that I noticed rather quickly is that my definition of a farm (basically a flat field with animals and/or crops) is way off. The farms in this region are mostly on hills and are for the most part a mixture of crops including coffee, corn, beans, bananas, fruit trees, etc. produced for both personal consumption and market/export. The farm is near a town called El Cua, about 160 kilometers away from Estelí and, with a few stops at family members´houses, we arrived at 3:00 on Saturday, having left at 9:30. You are welcome to do the math but our average speed was probably close to 30 km/h. The roads were potholed and bumpy but no one got sick- hooray! Stories from the road are plentiful so I will share just a few. I am very, very excited to report that we had several hop-ons (or the appropriate Arrested Development stair-car term that escapes me...) in the back of our pick-up truck. In some parts the road was so bumpy that we invited the hop-ons into the truck itself lest they go flying from the back- something that I cannot believe did not happen! Although our hop-ons communicated quite well by slamming the roof or whistling when they reached their destination, I did hear a delightful story about a hop-on who didn´t make enough noise and ended up twenty minutes from his destination!
Also, because roads aren´t just for cars, we almost killed several species, including dogs, chickens, and pigs. No species came closer to death, however, than a human. I wish I was exaggerating (sp?)(my English spelling has been affected by the wonderfully phonetic Spanish language, my apologies). Back to the story. We were cruising down a gravel road with the usual traffic of animals, walkers, and cyclists surrounding us when, despite our informative "hello we are behind you" honk, a child on a bike cut in front of us coming within inches of death. Never before have I ever seen such a close call. Amidst the shock and heart attacks, our young travel companion (my professor´s 10 year old) calmly pointed out to his father that it wouldn´t have been his fault had he struck and killed the child, a statement that seemed oddly out of place. My lawyer friends are welcome to comment on whose fault that would have been.
Car horns here play a strange role in rules of the road. I have thus far identified seven distinct messages conveyed by honking (similar to Ghana, I should note):
-¨Hello my friend, you have your back to me and may not be able to hear me even though my radio is set about 300 decibels louder than necessary and my car backfires every three seconds"
-"Good day sir, I thank you for your informative honk and acknowledge that I have heard you and have somehow deciphered your meaning"
-"You are walking on the wrong side of the road you stupid white boy."
-"Despite the speed at which I am coming towards you, you may cross the road."
-"I am coming at you very quickly and you should not cross the road."
-"I think I recognize you. You know my brother´s friend´s mother-in-law."
-"Would you care to enter my taxi?" ... not to be confused with... "Would you care to see that my taxi is full?"
This final option can also be used for buses and trucks.
Where was I? Back to the farm. So we arrived at 3:00 and realized at that point that the four wheel drive on our truck did not work and we could not get up the driveway. This conclusion was reached after no less than two dozen attempts to get up, including several where all five passengers (myself, my professor´s son, two of his cousins, and my professor´s husband´s stepfather) were in the back of the truck, trying to weigh down the back wheels. Two particularly frightening attempts had the stepfather standing on the back bumper, attempting to weigh down the back as the truck fishtailed and raced up the driveway. How that man did not fly off of the truck is beyond my comprehension. Every conceivable law of physics was violated. After deciding to leave the truck on the hilly, two meters up the 100 meter driveway, we headed to the farm. The farm is a beautiful, lush, green paradise with coffee, bananas, fruit trees, corn, chickens, sugar cane, and probably more. The two Spanish-speaking cousins that came with us were more than happy to share the Spanish names of all of the fruits, vegetables, trees, and animals we passed. It was all delightfully educational. One particularly neat thing on the trip was the ability to see almost the entire coffee process from start to finish. I won´t share the details (which I found to be quite interesting) but will say the following:
-Enjoy your coffee because the process is painstaking and intensely manual.
-Enjoy your coffee because they drink the crappy stuff (what doesn´t make the cut) on farms here so that you may do just that.
-Coffee pulp smells repulsive. Do not think of that smell when you drink your coffee.
-I may have touched a bean in your coffee. I apologize.
The chronology of these stories confuses me. I forget where I was and what I was going to share. Let me just stop, then, and end by saying that the trip to the farm was tremendous. I got to see a wild, lush, mountainous landscape unlike that in Estelí, I got to see the coffee process, I got to visit several small towns and cities in this part of Nicaragua, and I finally took some pictures! I ate deliciously, as I have been doing, and had several wonderful experiences. I may or may not have communicated those above. I am too lazy to scroll up and check.
On the Spanish-speaking front, things are progressing. I was a quasi-translator today. I may or may not have done a good job. Judgment day for that will be tomorrow and will be whether the natural medicine product given to my new Icelandic classmate cured her GI issues. If she is not in class tomorrow I fear that my translation work is sub-par.
¡Hasta luego!
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