Pon Pon

An excerpt from Duncan’s The Brothers K- a diologue between Everett and his pet goat, Chekhov:

“There’s something missing,” he told Chekhov, handing him the last brown bag. “But there’s always something missing.  Having things missing, even indispensable things, is a fact of life, don’t you think? And life goes on anyhow. Except for the missing parts.  Which were indispensable, so of course it goes on all out of whack. But that, hell and damn, is why we prefer things like cooking and eating brown paper bags to philosophizing. Don’t you think?”

Pon pon, as in, finished.  It’s what some people say here when anything finishes- from food, to juice… well, mostly food I suppose.  Just like that, my time here is finished.  Pon pon.

These past couple of weeks have been rather to very significant to me both in my time here and in my life.  Lots of good porch-sitting, a little traveling, more bread-making, and a lot of insight.  The latter may be due to the fact that I’ve also been re-reading The Brothers K for the third or fourth time, and each time I do so, I can’t help but get wrapped up in metaphors, hidden meanings, and the occasional onomatopoeia… well maybe not so much that. 

For just under a week I traveled a bit around Leon with a couple of people I met in Lagartillo.  They were from California and were studying there for about a month and happened to live at Erminia’s home, which is where I spent about half of my time.  So we did the hostel thing and the city traveling and the beach stuff.  Don’t get me wrong, it was great to get out and see more of Nicaragua, but it was a bit weird to be traveling.  I say this because you can travel and still be in your comfort zone- use Spanish when you need to, meet other English-speakers at the hostel, go see the sights, then onto the next city where there’ll be another international hostel waiting.  I met a lot of travelers that week who had been in Nicaragua or Central America longer than I have and knew hardly any Spanish.  Not to say that’s wrong either- it was just a bit unsettling I suppose.

With hindsight being 20-20 and all, I am so thankful that I’ve been in Lagartillo this entire time.  Although I’d say my Spanish isn’t fantastic, I fell in love with the community and felt at home there.  I also felt that I truly lived and experienced Nicaraguan culture, and that there wasn’t much need to travel.  In fact, every time I’d end up in a hostel I felt like it was a break from the culture.  Now I can’t even imagine what Nicaragua would look like to those who travel it by means of hostel.  It isn’t my space to critique that way of traveling, and that isn’t my intention.  I will just leave it at this: thank God for little connections between people, because that’s what got me to Lagartillo.  I met Pam, my pastor, once, two years before I contacted her through e-mail and she offered me a job in Ashland.  About six months later, I met Lucy, who is a member of that church, who introduced me to Balta, who was living in Ashland at the time, who then invited me to live with her in her community.  I thrive off of connections like this.  Now I am just waiting for someone else to walk into my life and point me in another direction. J

Well… I believe it’s safe to say I also experienced both sides of the decibel scale living in Lagartillo.  I am starting to become a master of porch-sitting, which has been harder than I thought it’d be.  Usually I get antsy after about twenty-eight minutes, ready to do something, or at least run around in circles.  But last week, I learned what it really means to porch-sit.  It should be considered a form of meditation or worship, really.  I suppose it depends on perspective (but then again, everything depends on perspective).  You just… sit.  Enjoy.  No words are needed.  Maybe coffee and a rosquilla.  I will never forget porch-sitting with Erminia, because usually we were both working.  Porch-sitting for us meant that we had finished our job, and could just enjoy the fresh air and those absolutely wonderfully-crafted plastic lawn chairs.

On the other side of the volume scale…. I can say with plenty of confidence that Nicaraguans make baseball into a way better sport than Americans.  On my last day in Lagartillo I attended a local baseball game in Achuapa with Balta and others.  Now, I didn’t take any pictures because it was just that intense- no time to look down in my bag let alone use a camera.  The bleachers/stadium (really just an enclosed half circle of bleachers behind home plate) was packed and everyone had some kind of noise-maker, whether that be a whistle or their mouths.  And the only “fence” keeping the foul balls out of harms way had gaping holes scattered about.  In fact, with just the right precision and odds, a foul ball could’ve made a b-line right for my face.  Guaranteed.  Not to worry, I’m only coming home with a little coffee, not a broken nose as well.

I can also guarantee that this was the loudest experience of my life.  I never thought baseball could be so thrilling, and I found myself cheering just as loud as the next person.  A couple Nicaraguan touches that cannot go unmentioned: no overpriced beer (if anything, I’d say the equivalent of 92 cents is quite the deal), great music, mismatched jerseys, and a finale that no one will forget.  It was ‘the bottom of the ninth,’ as they say, and the red team (as I called them, because I never came to know their actual names) was just about to win.  They got their second out, but an older, rather drunk gentleman a few feet away mistook the second out for the third- he was ready to party, thinking the game was over.  So, he proceeded to shake up a beer bottle and PSSHHAAAAPHEEWWWW, sprayed it all over the place.  Everyone was completely thrown off and pissed, “No hombre, what are you thinking?” As the game continued and as I had failed to wipe the cheap beer off of my only clean pair of pants (sorry, mom and dad, if I came home smelling like beer!), the third out was accomplished and had taken enough time for that gentlemen to buy two more beers… to spray over the crowd yet again.  You’ve got to love the crowds here.

And now, a quick vocab lesson on short, often used phrases:

Va pues (pronounced “ba pue”): The literal meaning is lost, but it’s another way of saying goodbye- sort of like, “go well!”

Dale pues (pronounced “dah le pue”): Well ok.  That’s what it means.  People use it to change subjects, to say goodbye, or to confirm anything.

No hombre or Si hombre (pronounced “nombre” or “siombre”): These are pretty obvious. No, or yes.  The former is used when you clearly disagree.

Vo (pronounced either “bo” or “yo” or “vo”): This one took me a while. It means “you” whenever you’re talking directly to someone.  It sounds a lot like “yo” which means “I”, which was confusing for me. I’ve got this one down now.

It was after Los Rusticos Nortes were done playing and the goodbye party had trailed off but before I walked the moonlit trail back to the round house when I realized how incredibly important this adventure has been for me.  I was in the kitchen one last time with Erminia, just standing and listening to the fire in the oven die down.  After she had already given me bags of cookies, pinol and toasted coffee to take home, she gave me another bag with an assortment of rosquillas.  The thing was, she hadn’t made a batch in a week.  I asked her when she made them.  “Last night, after you left.  I wanted you to take some for your trip.  That way you’ll have something to eat on your plane.”  Seemingly a simple gesture, but something that meant a lot to me.  I’ll tell you why.  To make rosquilla, you have to grind the corn, then mix it with cuajada (cheese) and milk, and then grind it again.  She used the last cuajada the entire family had to make the rosquillas- I know this because that same day there was no cuajada and she wouldn’t say why (and you don’t want to see a campesino with no cuajada to go with tortilla).  I was really touched that she went out of her way for such a little gesture.  But it signifies a lot about her character and compassion.  All of those hours I spent in the kitchen with her… all of the stories, the hauling firewood, the grinding corn, the rising bread… I will never forget. 

All of this to say that the feeling I had the other night about realizing how much I’d miss Lagartillo is the same feeling I’ve had about every few months.  And it’s because I have been moving and have had to say goodbye over and over in the past year and a half.  I go, I build community, I leave, I miss that community.  Repeat.  Like a kid in a revolving door I keep pushing no matter how dizzy or sick I could get.  Of the many things I’ve learned here, one is that I think I’ve taken one too many spins in that revolving door.  The moving and spinning has lost its’ allure, and I am ready to experience a community at it’s fullest.  This means staying put for longer than a few months.  I am still uncertain on the details of that “staying put”; I’ll let you know when I get there.  But I am confident in what I want and what I hope for.

Stories continue to spill out of me and there is so much more that I could have said.  I hope to keep writing and to keep telling, for Flannery O’Connor has said, “I write to discover what I know.”  For now, I’ll let pictures to the talking, secure in the fact that I will miss Nicaragua, and hope to go back someday.  But, as Everett has said (see quote above), we’re always missing something.

Erminia on our hike up the cerro

Balta and I on the cerro

kids running with sparklers down the street!

all the kiddos at my goodbye party

Reynaldo, Balta, Jose Angel, and myself at graduation