El Empalme de San Francisco
Currently I am sitting at an intersection of two highways, awaiting the bus that is going to take me home to El Roblar and the monthly meeting of the women’s cooperative, El Privilegio (The Privilege). From a small cantina behind me, the Richard Marx song “Right Here Waiting for You” is blasting, reminding me of my mom and of being eight years old, at a time when this was the only song that I knew by heart. Oddly enough, on the buses and in stores here I feel surrounded by eighties ballads I have not heard en años. Like a time warp every time I go anywhere.
I’m feeling anxious as I sit here about not being able to do more than just sit and wait for the bus. I mustn’t forget to always always bring a book with me in the future.
There is a bull grazing across the bumpy dirt highway, a man pedaling by on a bicycle driven ice cream cart, and dark rain clouds moving across a sky that five minutes ago appeared to be endless blue. Hard to know if it is going to pour or simply look menacing for the rest of the afternoon.
It is strange to be in a country where the highways are so full of potholes that car axels break, where the police nonchalantly carry AK-47’s because that is what is left as arms from a war that finished two decades ago, where thousands of children don’t go to school because their families can’t afford to buy them shoes or notebooks, and where hitching a ride in the open back of a pick-up is so normal that one never passes empty. Strange to see that en el campo, the largest most luxurious houses are 40 by 20 feet, with dirt floors and brick walls, and house 16 people or more! Strange to live in mountains that in the last thirty years have been home to guerilla warriors on both sides of a political struggle about how best to meet the needs of los nicaraguenses, the people of Nicaragua. Strange that even despite the raging and vibrant political culture, the government does not come out to the campo to build roads to make it possible for the base of the country’s economy, agriculture, to make it to the market.
In the midst of this I am trying to understand how it is that largely uneducated campesinos are organizing in order to better their lives. It is because they have seen that the government won’t build roads in their communities or help to develop potable water sources? Or because, although there is a high school in the next community, there is no bus to make it possible for their children to attend it? Is it simply a knowledge that together they will be more able to help each other? I don’t know…
Every day I see and experience things sad and wonderful, obvious and confusing. I know it is impossible to synthesize a place like this, to understand. It is impossible to do more than gather the stories of a few, learn the histories, and try to see them as they play out in the present. I need to remember at this point to lighten up, and to just absorb the experience, and to know that I am not going to understand any more than a little more than I do now.
I’m feeling anxious as I sit here about not being able to do more than just sit and wait for the bus. I mustn’t forget to always always bring a book with me in the future.
There is a bull grazing across the bumpy dirt highway, a man pedaling by on a bicycle driven ice cream cart, and dark rain clouds moving across a sky that five minutes ago appeared to be endless blue. Hard to know if it is going to pour or simply look menacing for the rest of the afternoon.
It is strange to be in a country where the highways are so full of potholes that car axels break, where the police nonchalantly carry AK-47’s because that is what is left as arms from a war that finished two decades ago, where thousands of children don’t go to school because their families can’t afford to buy them shoes or notebooks, and where hitching a ride in the open back of a pick-up is so normal that one never passes empty. Strange to see that en el campo, the largest most luxurious houses are 40 by 20 feet, with dirt floors and brick walls, and house 16 people or more! Strange to live in mountains that in the last thirty years have been home to guerilla warriors on both sides of a political struggle about how best to meet the needs of los nicaraguenses, the people of Nicaragua. Strange that even despite the raging and vibrant political culture, the government does not come out to the campo to build roads to make it possible for the base of the country’s economy, agriculture, to make it to the market.
In the midst of this I am trying to understand how it is that largely uneducated campesinos are organizing in order to better their lives. It is because they have seen that the government won’t build roads in their communities or help to develop potable water sources? Or because, although there is a high school in the next community, there is no bus to make it possible for their children to attend it? Is it simply a knowledge that together they will be more able to help each other? I don’t know…
Every day I see and experience things sad and wonderful, obvious and confusing. I know it is impossible to synthesize a place like this, to understand. It is impossible to do more than gather the stories of a few, learn the histories, and try to see them as they play out in the present. I need to remember at this point to lighten up, and to just absorb the experience, and to know that I am not going to understand any more than a little more than I do now.
posted by Hilary King at
11:20 AM
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