Wednesday January 24, 2007

Photos: I'm not sure what the man was selling, but he sure carried a large sword (left); basket-carrying on a road near La Concha; and a isolated mountain farming hut (bottom).

It’s a shame I’m leaving just as I’m feeling acclimated enough to gain tremendously more from my time here. I’m more confident, informed and willing to explore the city, people and country on a more intimate level. The wide-eyed me from the first night’s entry is very distant and my outright fear of cabbies has shifted to a healthy caution. I’ve viewed closely what those of privilege traditionally hold at a distance, occasionally read about in papers or throw a check at by way of their favorite televangelist charity. I’ve shied from the tourist route and blossoming American hotspots like Granada and San Juan del Sur, preferring a more natural immersion, inside looking out. I entered public health research for this opportunity, and I feel fortunate to have experienced this trip so early in my career. It has whetted my appetite for more, in the sea of suffering a search for relief and human truth.

I spent my final day hurriedly cramming my brain with remaining science information and images of Managua. I collected the necessary CDC paperwork to jump through the ever overreaching security hurdles with my human plasma samples, arranged my 5am ride, and enjoyed a final traditional Nicaraguan lunch with my professor and the lab. In the afternoon my house mother and her son joined me for a trip to Mercado Roberto Huemblas for my singular shopping opportunity. Upon first approach, the famous market’s facade appears like any bland American mini-mall, but entry reveals vast organized chaos, stretching indefinitely under a dim warehouse roof with narrow aisles and thousands of chirping vendors and shoppers bartering money for shoes, pottery, vegetables and t-shirts. Traditional capitalism, centuries out of place. Before dinner, I kicked the soccer ball in the street with the boys. Passing neighbors dodged our errant passes; we dodged passing cars.

Perhaps I love Nicaragua because it is a land of contrasts. Christ and cockfights, shantytowns and pristine beaches. It is beautiful and ugly, elegant and vulgar, sacred and profane. Perhaps I love Nicaragua because it was here where I first felt Western guilt and saw how the majority lives, unnoticed but resented, insulated by an extreme self-centeredness and entitlement of those in the land of the free, home of the brave.