I´d like to paint a picture of my trip home from work today to show you a bit about Nicaragua.
I left the orphanage with two other women who work there, Silvia and Evalin. Both live in Jinotepe so we travel together every day. We walk down the long path framed with coffee plants to the main road, made of dirt and lined with coconut trees and farm fields, and start the trek home. There is public transportation here but it´s not constant, so we usually walk as far as we can before a bus passes, which is sometimes all the way home. We pass a man perched on his wooden wagon pulled by two huge oxen. The road, though well populated at this time of day, is very quiet except for the whiz of bike wheels and the sound of horses grazing.
Children walk lazily home from school and the day is slowing down for everyone. No one walks at any kind of hurried pace, and for vehicles it´s impossible to go fast. Recent rains have made the road even worse, and maneuvering around trenches, ditches and mudholes is the only way to drive through here. Even walking can be treacherous as it´s easy to slip, trip or fall into a hole.
We pass a few open fields that consistently hold afternoon soccer games, usually dodging balls flying across the road. Passing one spot, Silvia and I laugh about the scene here yesterday when a rooster walked directly in the path of a bicycle and appeared to get crushed by the bike, but when the dust cleared and I dared to look for the dead bird it was strutting away missing only a few feathers.
The poverty is more evident here than in cities, but in a much different way. There is much more hope in rural poverty than in urban poverty, much more of a sense of purpose and having something. The houses in this area between Jinotepe and San Jose are all very small, cinderblock with tin roofs, but most have hammocks outside and you can often hear celebratory music playing from some prized boom box inside. Dust is everywhere, but it still has a remarkably clean feeling. Every single house has at least ten chickens. One of the most dilapidated houses on this route has a pathway leading up to it that is always covered in flower petals.
After walking for about forty-five minutes, a truck belonging to some business passes and we manage to hitch a ride, all three of us squeezing in the cab. The driver skillfully covers the rest of the dirt road and drops us off at the entrance to the Pan-American Highway, as he is turning the opposite way to go to Masatepe. We walk down the side walk, hoping to avoid the second rainstorm of our walk but knowing it is inevitable. Evalin and I turn off to take a new route through town that she is going to show me, passing her house.
As we walk through the outskirts of Jinotepe, it starts to pour again, but a rainbow makes it slightly more appealing. We walk with Evalin´s neighbor and her three kids. One of the boys carries a coke bottle full of milk, the other casually swings a huge machete around, barely missing their little sister who walks between them. I turn on the street that heads to downtown Jinotepe, saying goodbye to Evalin and continuing past more trees, more horses and more cinderblocks before the top of Santiago Church looms ahead and the buildings start to look familiar. I head to the market to catch the last vegetable sellers, as I have only had rice and beans the last two days. There is only one decent avocado left in the market and the seller knows it. The elderly woman tries to get me to pay 30 cordobas for this avocado. We settle on 20, which is 1 dollar, a lot for an avocado. She tries to convince me to pay 15 now and come back and pay the other 5 tomorrow, but we both know she´ll remember me and can easily throw tomatoes at me or something if I don´t pay her. I´m too tired to bargain more and after buying a massive carrot and tomato, hurry out of the market past people covering their vegetables, loading up carts and sweeping up garbage. I walk the last three blocks to my house and arrive at 5:45, barely beating the twilight.
I left the orphanage at 4:00. Welcome to Nicaragua.