Pummeled by Tiny Fists

I arrive on campus early: a necessity. I’ve done this trip a few times now – the bus stop for intercity travel is here and I’ve had a job interview and when we first encountered the feminist initiative – https://www.facebook.com/ocacnic/?fref=ts – Kate and I met the planners in the shade of a palm tree. The group is a student-run initiative whose organizers, Noelia, Estrella, and Leda, champion the unpopular cause of women’s equality in Managua. Prompted by the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th, the women’s self-defense class is but one of a number of initiatives they’ve masterminded.

There are no maps of this university online, and none posted. A few signposts dot the occasional corner, but the auditoria I need is not listed. I have the name of the auditorium on a piece of paper. My routine is to approach one of the students and say, perdon, senor/senora, donde es la auditoria and then hold up the piece of paper. The first has never heard of it; the second leads me astray as far as the parking lots. The third tells me to go west, pointing north. The fourth literally walks me to the front door of the auditorium and pushes me up the stairs.

Room locked and chained; I’m fifteen minutes early. A student is sitting on the only bench and has her lunch all over it, so I stand on a little breezeway to cool. In another ten minutes a lady arrives with a bag of martial arts pads; I follow her into the impromptu dojo, and help stack fifty or sixty chairs and line them against the walls. The sensei arrives shortly thereafter, and I try to ask him if he’s teaching the lesson Tu es la professor por la lecion por las mujeres? He stares uncomprehending. Yo soy un voluntario. At which point, he calls for the organizer, Leda, who has a handle on English and can facilitate.

Along with the sensei there are three young men dressed in traditional karate garb: the gi. The housecoat-looking thing with the belt that signifies rank. The sensei is a black belt, mid-forties, maybe, and the rest are student-age, two greens and a yellow. Tall, wiry, fast. While the lads practice kicks and banter, the sensei stands imperious with his arms across his chest. We’re well past the start time but this is normal.

Eventually several women arrive, probably early twenties. There are four in total. Looking at the sensei and karate kids, I worry I won’t get a chance to help. But when the girls and ninjas start circling their arms and necks Leda nudges me – go warm up with them. We jog around the room a few times, hopping over small pylons the sensei set up. Then he lines up the training dummies: the two green belts, one yellow belt, and me in my gym clothes. The four girls cycle through, pausing at each of us to punch us twice in our bellies. http://daleclicnica.com/mujeres-aprenden-defenderse/

There is a shyness about doing violence to people which I think most non-psychopaths possess. Lots of people work through the shyness or have the shyness worked through for them. But not these four. They were giggles at the start, unwilling to hurt us. The sensei had to encourage them, muy fuerte! One of the girls looked frail but punched like a brick. And this actually goes on for some time, and I think it’s smart. Get the students used to the idea of actually hitting someone. And at the same time figure out that if you ever need to hurt a man it’s best if you try really hard.

From here, each dummy is paired with a girl. I don’t think my new friend is particularly happy about this as she is petite; I’m about four times her size. The sensei gets one of the green belts to grab his arm, and practices wrenching his hand free. Then the men/women pairs practice the newly-learned move over and over. We follow this pattern for dodging punches, chokes, bear hugs, and disarming an assailant with a gun.

I worry I am discouraging my partner. It is extremely difficult for her to wrench her hand from mine. I am not easy to trip. Pushing is ineffectual. Many many times in that two hour lesson the sensei came by as we were practicing and got me to grab his neck, or squeeze him in a bear hug, or throw a punch at him, so that he could nimbly dodge, twist my hand behind my back, kick the legs out from under me, wrench the gun from my hand. Yes, he is strong, but you can beat him. Make sure to strike fast and don’t let him take a swing at you. After you strike, run. Ojos y genitales. Eyes and genitals.

But she is still discouraged. During the choking drill I place my hands around her neck and her eyes widen. She yells out, in English, “I will die!” and the sensei swaps her with another lady, who elbows me very enthusiastically during the bearhug escapes, and trips me onto my back a few times, laughing at me.

At the end of the lesson the sensei calls us all to the centre of the dojo and speaks. He says these strategies are for desperate situations only, that it is best to avoid confrontation and run. He tells the women the importance of fast strikes, of hitting vulnerable areas, of surprise. He says even a backpack or laptop can be used to deflect a knife. No man is invincible. Ojos y genitales.

After, Leda asks me, did you understand when the sensei thanked you? He said it was important to know that men can be very strong and to know what to do. I said that was why I was there; there are many men who are much stronger than me and some are predators: A horrifying thought.

The next day, at an anti-harassment photography exhibit where Kate and I were volunteering, I showed her my war wounds. A few scrapes on my hands from having the wooden gun torn out of my hand and my fingers bent back. Kate puts a band-aid on my finger and asks me to show her the moves I learned. As the gallery is closing we spar with the photos watching. When we practice the bearhug she squirms a bit to the side and swings her fist down like a club and strikes me square in the beanbag. Coughing, gagging, hunched-over, limping. Cramps running through lower intestine. Trying to walk it off despite the swelling. “You’re a natural, Kate!” I croak. 

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On Fighting

When I came home from Afghanistan, I swore my fighting days were over. But if you flew over Managua in a helicopter two days ago, you might have seen a strange, bearded, white guy on the corner of a busy street in Managua, holding a sign that read, “El acoso callejero no enamora” or “street harassment is not love”. Darting among the cars stopped at the traffic lights, myself and the other volunteers pressed the palms of drivers and pedestrians with anti-harassment flyers.

It was a local initiative – started small at the University of Central America; a grassroots movements among students, intellectuals, artists. Kate discovered the group advertising and roped me in, along with our friends Paul and Jody. The day in question, if you’re still hovering above, is a rally centred around the creation of anti-harassment graffiti by a  spray paint artist; I can tell he’s passionate because not only does he paint murals, his whole body is inked, as if he ran out of canvas.

Fighting is never tidy, at least when it matters. In Afghanistan we couldn’t even say if we won or lost, or if it was worth it. And when Jody arrived at the rally, she noticed the entire complement was Kate, myself, two organizers, the sound guy, and Tattoo. “Hell, it’d be better if they had more locals – fewer white people”. While more locals eventually arrived, of course she was right. There’s a certain colonial presumption built into a bunch of white people going to Nicaragua and then rallying to change the culture, especially after North America’s many interventions in the struggling country.

But if not us, who? Many people immersed in the culture are too terrified to speak out on this issue. Half of the hundreds of people we engaged that day were young women and men who smiled at our signs, gave us the thumbs up, and yelled encouragement. The other half were men who glared stonily at me. One older gent with three boys in the back seat saw my “it’s not a compliment” sign, and let out a long, appreciative whistle. Three men in the cab of a transport truck stopped next to me to yell abuse; I responded by dancing. My how my weapons have changed in five years.

My comrades have changed, too. I can still see Paul – the ultimate sign post – standing in the median with his sign upraised as cars whizzed by. I can see Jody pulling the rolling paintbrush from Tattoo’s hands so she could help whitewash the mural. Paul and Jody are warriors of the word, the former a writer, the latter, journalist; I am proud to know them.

In Canada a “Masculine Feminist” isn’t a title that takes you very far, but in Nicaragua the role is key. I was happy to be a deterrent for any violence that might be leveled against the volunteers. My Spanish is graceful as a mudslide but I can still speak truth to men and be listened to because of how I look. This Thursday I’m volunteering at the women’s self-defence class and might become a training dummy. From all angles I have broken my oath to myself to lead a life of peace, and I’m dancing about it.

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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.







Thank you for supporting my work in Nicaragua with a donation to Cuso International! Here's my fundraising site. 

Impressions on my role in Nicaragua

I am lounging on the hotel terrace in Managua while heat lightning plays on the top of Mount Momotombo, the nearby volcano. It is too early for stars, but not mosquitoes. Palm trees and corrugated metal roofs hide the streets, where wild dogs bicker.

Where would I be without Carefree Kate, the camerawoman? A chew toy for the strays, I think. She speaks for us both, these days, as her Spanish is better. I am her sweaty bodyguard and packmule, tongue-tied. I am reborn a caveman: need coffee; I don’t understand; I would like rice and beans and cheese, please; can you speak slower?

My first Spanish lesson: the teacher’s hair is greying by the second. Consider my clumsy conjugations and sentences punctuated by mysterious lacunae. No holding forth here, no pontificating, Matt the dim-witted tilts his head to the side—helplessly ignorant. I will sit in the corner while the smart kids patter. I will ride the short bus home and lick the window. I am learning how to be a fool.

Fortunately, for now, I am only required to growl. Our friends advise that while I’m walking with her, Kate is less likely to suffer the advances of the piropos, cat-callers and whistlers, gawkers and oglers, lechers and gropers. Today she strolled past three campesinos, who lay down their rakes to stare at her body—her arms were showing. They didn’t respond to her “hola!” or make eye contact. It was as if her greeting was inappropriate, a failure to perform her role of being a passive body: meat.

There is nothing to do in times like these but laugh; for in all the wandering I’ve done laughter is the only thing I’ve learned. It heals wounds, lessens stress, dissolves fear. “Life is just like underwear,” I say to Kate. “You put it on one leg at a time, unless you’re amazing and can jump into your underwear with both feet.” Then, to demonstrate, I hold my boxer-briefs at arm’s length and leap towards them. Mid-air: amazing, I’m going to make it! A millisecond later: I’ve made a terrible mistake. And my feet get caught in the elastic; I collapse onto the floor clutching a sprained finger.

From Kate, giggles—nourishment of clowns.