Message 8 from Nicaragua

Hey all, it’s time for a new blog. Way too much has happened to write about everything, but there are some highlights for sure.

First of all, I want to let you know that I just returned from a fabulous trip to San Diego and San Francisco. Weather was perfect, meals stupendous and all activities thoughtfully planned by friends and daughters were wonderful! I was a little apprehensive about this first trip back home since I moved to Nicaragua. Would I long to return to my old environment, where there is no language barrier, everything works as expected, and my friends and family make me feel so comfortable, or would I choose to continue in my new home, a still unfamiliar place with challenges that wouldn’t even occur to us in the USA? Well, an interesting thing happened. Two days after I arrived in San Diego, my friends Marc and Lynne threw a party for me, asking who I wanted to invite. So generous of them! The party was a hit, with Lynne whipping up a fabulous meal as usual, wine flowing, surrounded by friends and daughter Shanna, what more could you ask (well, if daughter Talia had been there as well….). Everyone was eager to ask me questions about Nicaragua. Is it as dangerous as they say, tell us about it, what experiences have you had. Well, I was honest. The place is not for everyone. Probably way less than everyone. Probably very few people who have made the US their home their whole lives would enjoy it. Why? Well, I spent most of dinner talking about the things that have happened to me along the way. Not the beautiful sunny skies; the 14 sparkling virgin beaches; the fascinating tourists I’ve met from all over the world; the fabulous coffee, beer and rum; the perfect sailing trips; the daily fresh catch that I have for dinner almost every night. No, I talked about my life there. What happens to me on a daily basis. Unfortunately, one couple, who had never met me before, misinterpreted my stories into thinking I was complaining about Nicaragua. The couple commented to my friends that if I hate it so much there, why do I live there? Au contraire! I LOVE it here. Each day is interesting. But it would be boring to tell everyone that it is sunny, beautiful and the food is great. What my real friends want to know is how is it living there? What do you do every day? What hardships do you have? How does it compare to living in the United States? Dr. Jeffrey Kottler writes in his book, Travel that Can Change Your Life, “People often return from these experiences (i.e., travel, or living in a foreign place) profoundly changed. Yet when you ask them what happened, they babble on about these horrifying things that they did and disgusting things they ate. They talk about the pain they suffered. The show you scars and blisters. They tell you stories of avalanches, sleepless nights (tarantulas and scorpions in the bedroom?) and using snow for toilet paper. And through it all, they are smiling like angels. What the hell happened to them, you ask. The answer is that they were shaken to their very core. They accomplished things they didn’t know they could do. They raised their tolerance for pain and discomfort. They developed intense, mutually supportive relationships in a brief period of time. They drew on inner resources that had long been dormant.” In other words, they want to tell you the REAL things that happened to them. The challenges are what make the trip/living experience so wonderful. The person changes, becomes a sort of independent warrior, the world becomes different, life is not the same. Why hide the difficult experiences when talking to your friends? Those are the things making your life abroad unique. Anyway, this is an aside because I’ve been thinking a lot about the comment made at the dinner party. Just because things sound hard does not mean they are bad. Now I’ll go on to explain more “challenges” and experiences.

There is never a dull moment in Nicaragua. Not one. The unpredictability (to me) is one of the finest factors of living here. Nothing goes as you expect. It feels like you are living in Alice’s Wonderland with the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat and nasty Queen all at the same time. Or for those of you who can’t relate to that, maybe it’s like being in a Woody Allen movie and you are the Woody Allen character. There certainly are enough characters and enough situations to fill a thousand books. This story really reflects WHY I moved to Nicaragua:

This day started out like any other. A beautiful sunny Wednesday morning, waves falling just right, a light breeze keeping the heat at bay. This is where we live, one of the most beautiful and engaging spots on earth. Many of us come here and never leave. San Juan del Sur speaks to us. They say that when you move to a foreign country you will have a defining experience. An experience that is so intense, so filled with emotion, so filled with all that is good or bad, that this experience is the point at which you decide you want to stay in your new place forever or just leave. Well this day was mine and by that evening I had learned something so fundamental and eye opening that the memory of this day will be imprinted forever.

You need some background information. I bought my big lug of a car out of necessity, not my desire to have a car. I can’t get to town from my house in the rainy season without it, nor can I get a taxi after 8 pm in the dry season. I named the car Bruiser and everyone in town knows it. It clinks, razzes, burps and generally sounds like a mobile hardware store in a blender. The CD player doesn’t work, the 4-wheel drive is unavailable at the moment, the radiator overheats in about 15 minutes and the alarm goes off indiscriminately. Many of you yell at me about my car. But that’s my car and I kind of love the big brute.

Another important factor to the story: The day before this fateful day I was at the CasaBlanca ATM machine and during a moment of indecision on my part, the machine in its infinite wisdom decided I had abandoned my card and rather than giving it to another person, who might cause me all sorts of grief, sucked my card back in to the bowels of the metal box. I was without cash!

About 8:45 am on this particular morning, I was driving down the middle of the la ruta Chocolata, the dirt road that leads from my house to town. Suddenly Bruiser took a nose dive…the entire front of the car was on the ground! I got out, the left wheel had fallen off (we’re not talking about a flat tire here), something underneath had snapped; things looked very seriously broken to me. I was alone on the road with my laptop in my car. Not the best of situations, given the recent robberies along this very road.

I wasn’t too worried though, because it wasn’t long before the cars started piling up on both sides. Help was on its way! Yes, the car had fallen down right in the middle of the road and no one could get by. Much to my dismay, rather than getting out of their cars to help, the expats started honking. Some were yelling at me to get the “F-ing” car out of the road! As if I could. As if I did this on purpose to ruin their day. As if I wanted this to happen to me! One kind American, (this is sarcastic in case you don’t get my humor) in a hurry to get himself and his girlfriend down the road as fast as possible, skirted the traffic line and almost ran over my foot on his ATV Quad!

OK, I understood. Traffic could not get by me either way. People were angry! People were yelling! Did any of my compatriots get out of their fancy Hiluxes and Turbos to ask if I needed help? If I needed a ride to town? If I wanted to cry on their shoulder? Not one got out at this point! I certainly would have gotten out to help. Especially for a woman alone.

A lone Nicaraguan man came down the road to see what was wrong. When he saw my predicament, he went back to the truck he was riding in and got his Nica coworkers (they were being taken to their construction job). Twelve Nicaraguan men surrounded my car, lifted it up, broken parts and all, and moved it to one side of the road so that traffic could pass. Ah ha! Now there was a path. Traffic could get by. I was elated because I figured now someone would stop to help me. Surely someone actually driving by would at least give me some advice or tell me who to call. The cars started driving by me, one after another, in a hurry to do nothing. You can’t even be in a hurry here. There is no hurry. There is no time. Sometimes there are no days because we forget which one it is. However, there they went, about 15 cars in front and back of me. Even one of my neighbors drove by and said, “Wow you really have a F-in problem” and sped to town. I was left once again, standing by myself. I know this story is hard to believe, but believe me, it’s true!!!

About 15 minutes later, an American man DID stop. I’m sorry I don’t remember his name; I think it was George. He was in a hurry, but told me he would call his mechanic and hopefully someone would go to Rivas to get a tow truck. He couldn’t promise that his plan would work, so he advised me to think of another one. I did. I called Augustin, an auto mechanic in SJDS. He agreed to come and help. At this point Brigitte also drove by, headed toward the north beaches and asked if I needed anything. I had not met Brigitte before. I told her thank you, but now a mechanic was on his way. She said if I needed anything, to call her. Augustin does not own a car, yet he was at my side in a taxi about 10 minutes later. He took a look at the car and shook his head. Not a great place for the car to be with this problem. It needed to be fixed before dark.

We went back to town to call a car parts store in Managua so that they would drive the parts to Rivas and we could pick them up there in the afternoon. In the meantime, the police arrived (we weren’t there) and asked around to see whose car it was and of course, everyone was eager to let them know that it was mine. The car had to be moved immediately or I would be fined. My mechanic came up with a plan. He told me to get a taxi driver to take us back to the car. We would get the broken ball joints, go back to SJDS and have them soldered together, drive back to the car and put the soldered ball joints on and drive it (VERY slowly, since the ball joints wouldn’t be able to rotate) back to his house where we would leave it until we got the parts. I called Melvin, my Nicaraguan friend and taxi driver, someone I can always count on. Melvin showed up immediately. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. This was taking quite a bit of time.

In a nutshell, this is the rest of the story: Augustin and Melvin stuck by my side for about 12 hours that day. We rescued the car off the Chocolata Road, parked it at Augustin’s, then drove to Rivas. We went to the parts store where Augustin convinced the manager that even though I had to use a credit card (remember I had no cash……and couldn’t get any) he should give me his 15% mechanic discount because I was having a very bad day. The store did that. We waited there until the parts arrived from Managua. We drove back to SJDS. By this time it was about 6:00 p.m. Augustin told us to give him a couple of hours and he would fix the car! I had told Augustin and Melvin that I had no cash. Both said “no problem, Bonnie.” Melvin even offered to loan me money if I needed it! I declined. I took Melvin out to dinner at Jocelyn’s. Augustin called about two and a half hours later and said the car was ready. I couldn’t pay that day, and it would be several days before I fixed my ATM card dilemma and could actually give him and Melvin the money I owed them. I couldn’t even begin to profess my thanks to Augustin, Melvin, the 12 Nicaraguans and the Auto Parts store manager for helping me so much. None of these people spoke English. From car parts to situational jokes to heart-felt feelings and explanations about my predicament, I increased my Spanish vocabulary tenfold that day.

When I got home that night, I sat on my patio, enjoyed the sound of the wind through the trees, gazed up at the gazillions of stars, and felt sheer joy as I realized I had chosen the most wonderful place to live, among the nicest of people. Expats who live here, who choose to learn Spanish and immerse themselves in this rich culture are constantly rewarded by magnificent acts of kindness on the part of the Nicaraguans. Those who choose to insulate themselves “against the grain,” to maintain the lifestyle they are accustomed to in their own countries, I’m afraid they will never experience the wonders of Nicaragua and its people and I think it is sad for them. But life is all about choices. My defining experience was the day Bruiser fell apart on an isolated road. My choice at that point was to leave or stay. The truths are that the crazy inconveniences and frustrations will continue to happen, the people that I thought would help me may not, but the local people I came here to live with will always be my good friends; they have come to accept me as one of their own. Oh yes, and by the way, I’ve decided to stay.