Halfway Home

First time getting groceries in Managua felt like a labour of Heracles. Exposed skin immediately reddened from the sun. Darting across the carretera, or highway, invoked high-stakes Frogger. Answering the clerk’s basic questions, do you want a bag with that, was beyond my Spanish. The heat had a way of getting in your head, making things fuzzy. I’d walk into La Colonia and hit the air conditioning; that would spark the sweating. Those nearest would flinch, leaping back. Returning to the hotel, I’d pull out the items from my backpack where Kate and I would ooh and aah over how exotic everything seemed.

I was fine walking by myself, but when Kate was with me my pulse quickened, vision narrowed, blood flowed to muscles. Her perceived wealth and, more, her beauty, made her a target. I felt responsible to protect her. Even the repulsive muah muah muah catcall, or piropos, was more than she should have to deal with. When we traveled anywhere I was on edge, stressed, hyper-vigilant, fists balled. Now imagine this bundle of nerves and testosterone in a Nicaraguan bus station, surrounded by people, all speaking Spanish, one aggressively pulling the bag from Kate’s hands to carry it for her, another clutching her by the shoulder to offer his cab services, four more making a wall to beg for cordobas. Mammal brain, you’re on the bench. Lizard brain, suit up.

In time, everything turns mundane, have you noticed? Groceries have reverted back to the menial chore they always were, my skin has darkened to the point where I don’t immediately burn, at least on my face, neck and arms. Human Frogger, like the early video game itself, has a brief shelf life and low replay value. My Spanish is still bumble-footed, but I can navigate through transactional exchanges without making a fool of myself.  I’ve finally adjusted to the heat to the point where, in the evenings when the fan is blowing, I’ve actually felt cold; it was probably 28 degrees. And Kate and I have experimented with many and mastered some of the strange foods and flora.

But the biggest relief is not to have that fear breathing down my neck. Of course there is still danger – only a fool says otherwise – but we have learned methods of mitigation. Just last weekend Kate and I met friends at a bar on the boardwalk. Pausing in the revelry, we linked arms for a stroll along the water. We were almost past four men sitting on the bench that rims the lake when one of them smacked his lips at her muah muah muah. Not so romantic. Apparently, when I am outnumbered by men four to one I am no shield for Kate to avoid the harassment of cowards. But instead of impotently raging and burning the douchebags in effigy, Kate and I started volunteering with an organization that combats street harassment through self-defence classes, graffiti, and Smartphone apps that flag dangerous areas of the city for women. In other words, using my outrage to make positive change, as opposed to just driving me crazy.

Though you might think I’m crazy; I lift waterjugs. They function like weights but the way the water splashes around makes them seem heavier; a particular challenge for the “stabilizers”, a term I’ve borrowed from fit people. I have a collection of one-gallon jugs for concentration exercises and one five-gallon, splashy bastard, I’ve named John Awkward. Six days a week I hang out with John, though, being awkward, he doesn’t say much. After a protein shake and a shower I sit down to my computer and write. Every day there are words, now: a children’s story, novel, poetry and short stories. I’ve submitted stories and poems to (ambitiously prestigious) magazines and journals. I scan for contests and places to submit my writing and how to get an agent and which MFA program should I attend and what should I be reading, anyway?

Writing, John Awkward, tutoring English, learning Spanish: these are the four pillars around which my life is structured. But four pillars are not much protection from the elements, not much of a home. Kate is my home, ladylove, companion, and ladybug. Kate of the piercing mind and gentle word. Kate of the burning ambition, devourer of pancakes. In the ocean I have seen her transform into a mermaid, in the forest, dryad. In the islets of Granada I spotted a perfectly white stork, long-legged, wings outstretched and preening. When I looked again it was her.

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Monkeyshines

It’s dusk, the waves splash on outcrops of volcanic rock, and Kate is buried up to her neck in the beach. She started by laying on the sand and I excavated underneath her until she fell, piecemeal, into an ever-widening hole. But for her left leg, which was scraped on the rocks, she has become one with the sand. Black sand. Volcano dust.

I’ve heaped the sand on her good and proper. There’s a pretty thick layer on the chest, to the point where any more would restrict her breathing. But the mound shifts. Her exposed face reveals strain. The sand mountain shows fault lines. A hand emerges, followed by a slender forearm. The sand beast writhes in her confines, straining. With a terrific push and a zombie moan Kate sloughs off the sand.

We wash off in the Pacific – the furthest west we’ve been since we came to Nicaragua. A Coca Cola Lite washes the taste of brine from our mouths. We’re a crowd today so when we leave the beach I huddle in the bed of the truck, snuggling the cooler. Night has fallen and all I can see are stars and headlights, careening bats, elderly women selling corn paste in banana husks, midnight bicyclists dressed in suicidal black.

We’re staying with friends and seeing Nicaraguan hospitality first hand. Based on breakfast the next morning, this means feeding us ‘til our sides split open. Gallo pinto, tostones, slices of salty cheese, eggs scrambled with sausage, and coffee. After the meal I notice the possessed doll, scrawled on by generations of young girls in demonic script. Its soulless eyes flicker with the madness of the void. Notice how, in the picture below, I nimbly disarm the creature.

After breakfast we set out for Granada and haggle a wizened old man into taking us for a boat tour of the Granada island chains on the cheap. Life jackets not required, he tells me, the lake is tranquil. The shore is lined with fishing shacks and vines dangle from the trees. I scan the water for alligators, but don’t find any. At the top of a colonial-era fort I work the skeletal jaws of a freshwater shark.

Onwards to monkey island, but the monkeys are coy and won’t take the pretzels I offer. They leap from branch to branch taunting us with their bare asses. But our man the captain’s business is monkey business; he swings the boat around for a second pass. I climb onto the bow, sacrificial pretzels held aloft for a monkey on a low-lying branch. She hops on board. Sniffs my pretzels but throws the bag on the ground, then pats my shoulder. Strong and gentle. Our guide mentions her name is Lucy – the matriarch of monkey island – well advanced in another pregnancy. She climbs the rails of the vessel, tail clinging to the bars more surely than an arm. Kate flees to the other side of the boat when she gets close, but Lucy takes a liking to me and perches on my back as we float towards her branches. She braces to leap and I hold up the scorned pretzel bag – she snags it mid-air without looking back.

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Traveller

Because we had arrived early to catch a bus, Kate and I could sit together, and even place our luggage in a spot where we could watch it without craning our necks. The goal was León, a town known as the brainstem of academia and art in Nicaragua. Buses run on a two-man system in Managua. The first member of the team is, of course, the driver. Selection for these positions begins early, as primary school teachers identify which of their charges possess the requisite hand-eye coordination. From this pool are chosen the most aggressive and/or suicidal boys, who are raised in private driver camps where they receive testosterone-boosting injections and are subjected to endless indoctrination by watching movies like “Speed” and “The Fast and the Furious” on a loop. Training (and competition) intensifies during the teenage years, and the boys are pitted against each other in a series of downtown Managua drag races, police chasing after them futilely. A dangerous place for pedestrians, some of more bloodthirsty students scratch the number of people they’ve run down on their hoods in Roman numerals.  

Or, at least, this is what I imagine as our driver plunges his bus into oncoming traffic, swerving between cars, honking every time he has to slow down even one kilometre. He drives with inspiration, a running-back dodging linebacker after linebacker. At one point a rusted-through car breaks down on the street ahead of us, and scarcely has the car’s engine started its death rattle than our maniac of adrenaline lays on the horn. 10 seconds. The slightly-balding man in the unfortunate car is scrambling to start it but the engine is coughing feebly. 30 seconds. The horn is unflagging; the man is fumbling for his keys, sweating. 60 seconds. Kate and I glance at each other, slightly in shock, as the drone continues. 90 seconds. Now the man is checking his engine, face under the hood. Other helpful drivers have joined the cacophony. 120 seconds. The man is back behind the wheel and all the drivers on the street encourage him by joining in the chorus. Some newcomers, incapable of competing with the imposing duration of our bus’s trumpeting, instead play staccato. Most find a balance. 150 seconds. The balding man, looking rumpled and flustered, coaxes a wheeze from the engine, which grows to a hacking cough – he’s done it; the car has started; the symphony stops playing.

While impressive in both skills and belligerence, our driver is too focussed, too extreme to truly interact with the public. Sure he slows the bus down to pick up passengers, though this easing off the accelerator seems grudging, reluctant. That’s where the other member of the team comes in. The ayudante, or helper, is the face, brains, and wallet of the operation. The ayudantes are selected for being able to project their voices – somehow they must be heard over hucksters hawking shawls, the squawking of chickens, and the occasional backfire of the bus’s engine. Ours screams “Leon Leon Leon” so fast the words start to blur together, as he hangs out the side of the bus holding on with one hand “Leonleonleonlonlonlon” every time we pass a group of pedestrians, bus stops being mere suggestions. Of dexterity, the ayudante, is king – nimbly leaping from the still-moving bus, ordering lunch for the ayudante/driver team, paying for it, then jumping back onto the bus without it ever stopping. Of grace, our man the ayudante is crown prince, helping ladies with trays of pupusas onto the bus, lending his arm to the elderly, even assisting young mothers find a seat by holding their babies. Of finances, our friend is knave; he tries to charge Kate and I double – a tax on foreigners – but we have become canny to this custom.

The bus stops. It’s unsettling, at first, when your guts have acclimated to constant motion. There is a shuffling sound, like something being dragged. Someone is coming on the bus, a man, I think. But a stooped man, dragging his leg. A hunchback labours to the top of the stairs; one of his arms is thick, with veins showing, the other is small, too short, ending in a knuckle. He lifts his head to the people on the bus, staring down an army. His eyes are wide-seated, and wet; his jaw is loose, favouring one side. With his strong arm he takes hold a strap dangling from the ceiling. He speaks in a torrent, weaving his way through the bus, bending over so people can put cordobas in his breast pocket.

My friends, I see and feel your eyes on my disfigurements. But what you can’t see is that I have nothing. No family. I am loved by no one. I am admired by no one. You will bear witness to my story. As a child my father was ashamed of me and put cigarettes out on my arms. I went to school for a few years and the children beat me and called me demon. I ran away from my village and came to Managua, where no one would hire me. I became a beggar who wrestled his dinner from dogs and mice. At night I wake myself up with a horrible cough, but have no money for the doctor. No woman has ever touched me or looked at me with desire. The only warmth or comfort I have felt came from a bottle. You will tell me that God loves me. Each day I pray to him this life will be over soon.

He reaches the end of the bus, and his story. We had stuffed his pocket with bills; we could not meet his gaze.

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Sloppy Kisses

The first time I heard the moist smack, the kind you might make to demonstrate your enjoyment of a juicy steak, I was walking to work.  It came from an older, weathered man riding a horse and buggy, who smiled toothlessly at me in between pursing his lips to make the “muah-muah-muah” noise.  I walked faster. 

The “sloppy kiss” is one of many such piropos, or cat calls, that women in Nicaragua endure daily as a matter of course.  The practice is so engrained in the culture that it’s not uncommon for young boys to cat call adult women.  My friend had this happen to her, and recalls the six-year-old boy’s mother giggling, almost to say “my boy is becoming a man!”.  By the time boys are in their teens, they’re firing out piropos by reflex.  Once while walking to the grocery store with two female colleagues, an entire construction team put down their shovels to whistle at us from half a kilometre away.  I guess they were just close enough to be sure we were women.

Personally, this attention puts me on edge; it makes me feel less safe walking the street. Maybe these guys think their judgment about our bodies will be seen as a compliment, but I’d prefer they kept it to themselves.  To my mind, this behaviour reinforces the culture of devaluing women that is a major problem here.  In Nicaragua, gender-based violence is tragically common:  almost a third of women report having suffered physical or sexual abuse from their husbands or long-term male partners.  Unfortunately most women do not speak out or report abuse out of shame or because this behaviour is so commonplace that it has become invisible.  One in six Nicaraguan women agreed that wife-beating is justified if the wife is unfaithful.

Gender discrimination plays out in the economic sphere as well.  Women are denied access to property rights, and they have a harder time accessing credit, which limits many from improving their economic lot through entrepreneurship.  In the tiny restaurant beside my office, I see young girls – age 13 or 14 – laughing with each other as they spend the day making seemingly-endless quantities of tortillas.  Girls are less likely than boys to finish school, since parents pull them out early to help with housework or to assist with crops.

These norms, among other things, were on display at the annual El Torovenado last weekend, a zany celebration where people dress up and parade through the streets.  In addition to zombies and goblins, there were men disguised as Nicaraguan women from folklore, wearing stoic expressions and carrying giant baskets of fruit on their heads.  A small boy in a police costume wore a provocative sign around his neck: “corrupt policeman waiting for his bonus.” More troubling social commentary was conveyed by men dressed as pregnant schoolgirls.  Was the idea to mock these girls?  It particularly bothered me because teenage pregnancy is so high in Nicaragua – there are 109 teen pregnancies for every 1,000 births.  And women who give birth before age 15 are three times more likely to report partner violence. I worry that mocking pregnant teens intensifies their shame, making them less likely to speak up about abuse, and legitimizing the abuser’s actions.

As an expat volunteering here for only a few months, how much do I accept this deeply engrained devaluation of women vs. work to change it? Cuso International, the organization I work with, supports local organizations who run programs to empower girls and provide boys with “positive masculinities training.”  As for the piropos, there are different views on how to handle them.  Some say it’s best to ignore them.  I like the approach suggested by my Nica Spanish teacher: look at your cat caller, smile and say “God bless you.”  Since 80% of Nicaraguans are Christian, maybe he’ll be forced to consider that harassing women on the street isn’t very Christ-like.







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