Travels with Libby: Nicaragua

Balgue, Nicaragua

We´re on an island now of two volcanos, one filled with fresh water, the other of lave. The island is on the Lake of Nicaragua, fresh water, it´s name: Ometepe. It´s gorgeous here. We´re staying in a small brick room for $1.25 a night. Outside the door sleep 2 big pigs. Everyone in Ometepe has pigs. The brick bunkhouse is on the property of a woman who has been living here for 50 some years, Inez.

She is a mother of 12 and on this same property in ¨La Casa Grande¨sleep three of her own children and their families. Inez runs a little store out of the front of her house and takes care of 2 of her granddaughters whose mother lives in Costa Rica. The 3 of them sleep in a tiny little nook of the store behind a shower curtain.

There are scorpians here. You must kill them if you find one. They carry their baby´s eggs on their backs. I found one on the wall of our room.

Inez lets us use her kitchen everyone. We cook and give her a plate, she cooks and serves us a plate. We help her make ¨pasteles¨ to sell in the store. They´re filled with meat and others with pineapple. It took us practically all day to make over 100 and she only sold them for about 5 cents. The other day was the Day of Independence for Central America and we made enchiladas to sell at the parade. Rubén and I helped her sell them at the pueblo's festival.

The pueblo gets fresh water from the Laguna in the volcano, so there is no shortage of good water. Inez´s kitchen has a clay pit that she fills with water from the hose. The sink is a huge slab of rock with old water canals running outside to the hens. The stove is a fire pit with coals of firewood waiting to spark up to cook. Inez complains of pain deep in her chest that lingers from years of cooking with wood and the smoke. She lights the fire with pieces of plastic and kerosene and the kitchen fills with smoke.

She has 3 dogs, Tigre, Preciousa and Bobby, who wait and beg for food all day and guard the house at night. They eat everything from chicken bones to the most dangerously sharp bones of fish. ¨These are not Pedigree dogs,¨ Inez says, ¨They eat what there is.¨ I want to adopt Tigre. He follows me everywhere.

Grandchildern, children and their husbands and girlfriends and families come in and out of the houses all day. The property runs all the way back to the lake and is filled with banana trees, chickens and pigs. The showers and toilet pits are all outside. The floors are all cleanly swept and pounded dirt. Washing clothes takes all day. Horses and mules loaded down with platanos and fire wood pass in the evening with their tired owners. Music can be heard everywhere, at all times of the day. The pueblo goes to sleep early and wakes with the sun.

There is sense of humbleness here that makes me think of the material aspects of life I am so comfortable with. Inez and her family are not rich. But they have land and family and they all work very hard and take advantage of what they can. And they laugh so much and sit and gossip and talk with their grandmother or grandmother and their Aunts and Uncles and cousins.

It´s beautiful here.

Cristal. The great granddaughter of Inez.

Inez, sleeping outside the store after a long day.

Little Killian. Her mother lives in Costa Rica. Inez takes care of her and her older sister. She wanted me to stay for Christmas and cried when we left.