Monkeys and Masaya

Monday May 11, 2009

A monkey’s adorableness is universally unquestioned – hemorrhagic viruses aside – but a chirping, playful, miniature monkey crawling all over your head and eating mango slices, well that’s just too much for anyone to handle. La Hotel Mariposa (www.mariposaspanishschool.com) the oasis jungle eco-hotel/Spanish school/animal sanctuary that I visit every Nica trip (and have written about here before), rescued four white-faced monkeys from the illicit animal trade and made them a home in their menagerie. I spent a (healthy) portion of my weekend basking in their awesomeness. An example: the tiniest of the four monkeys has escaped from the enclosure and uses his freedom to taunt the dogs, chase the chickens, and play through the fence with the remaining enclosed monkeys. He is free, but has no interest in leaving the vicinity and testing his soft, domestic ass in the wild mountain jungle, but he also refuses to return to the enclosure. Is there a “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” analogy in there?


Mariposa is in La Concha, the sort of town where kids play baseball on Sunday on narrow streets between pastel houses, and if the residents feel like it, they’ll gather up the fallen wild mangoes and avocados and cart them off to market. Yesterday morning, I rode a horse through La Concha, past the outskirts where the homes can only loosely be called homes, and higher, running the horse through volcanic soil, above the green vegetation line to drier, isolated elevation and an incredible view of fuming Volcán Masaya. Puffing Masaya is ominously beautiful, definitely active, and perilously close to La Concha. My young guides live in the town and care for the horses. Dangerous, no, I ask. Sure, they say, and shrug.

It’s interesting that this worry is trumped by swine flu. A few days ago a man died from swine flu in Costa Rica, triggering a major front-page headline on Nicaragua’s largest daily newspaper, La Prensa. Most Nicaraguans I have talked to about my trip ask probing, serious questions about the looming scourge. Is there a treatment? How can I prevent it? When is it coming to Nicaragua? There is real awareness and a fear that there’s more they haven’t been told. The government has urged only the most gravely ill to seek medical attention, partly to diminish panic, but also to fight the overreaction to the common sniffle. Clinicians here note how mild health disturbances induce swift and immediate actions, over-running clinics with minor problems, while others with more debilitating, long-term, serious conditions avoid treatment entirely. It’s over-valuing the acute, but accepting the chronic. Fight the daily ailment, real or otherwise, but trudge stoically onward with the lot you’ve been given, be it malformation, cancer, or volcano birthplace.