Visitors! (Part One)

Yes, real live honest-to-goodness family came to visit!  Bex's folks were due in Merida on May 7th, traveling from Juneau, Alaska… via Seattle… via Houston… via Managua… via Granada… to Ometepe..  Our first visitors, fer cryin' out loud.  We were excited and nervous.  "We've accepted living here and learned to deal with it.  What if they hate it?!"  "Gah, scorpions and huge spiders and weird things!"  "Crap, no water again today!"  Meh, turned out it was all okay in the end.  [Okay, the water was an issue during their visit but we managed just fine.]

After some consideration on where to have them stay, we decided to borrow a bed from Hacienda Merida so the folks could stay at our house, this to maximize visiting time.  Alvaro was very gracious and refused any payment from us for using a queen bed, linens and the requisite fan.  Obtaining the bed required calling Hamilton so he could arrange a truck and any help he may require and notifying the hacienda that someone would be coming to steal one of their beds.  We had some disagreement about when exactly to get the bed.  I wanted to do it over the weekend prior to their arrival, to give us time for a Plan B if something should go wrong.  Silly boy.  Bex! hates making phone calls in Spanish so put it off as long as possible.  That is to say, she never had to make the call because the day we were leaving to meet Anne and Mike in Moyogalpa Hamilton came by so she just talked to him face to face.  He said he'd take care of it.  He did.

[Bex!'s Sidebar:  Now that's not fair.  I made many phone calls.  Most of them to Hamilton's wife to say "Could you please have him climb down from what ever house he is building and come reassure me that there really will be a bed here for my parents to sleep in".]

We had left a note with Nora at the hotel.  It was a list of the items we would need, and told her that a guy named Hamilton would be coming to pick it all up.  As it turns out, she and Hamilton are related.  Learn something new every day.  Having cancelled classes for the day, we caught the chicken bus to Moyogalpa and the timing couldn't have been better.  After a short wait, we saw the ferry they were supposed to be on coming across the lake.  Sure enough, as the ferry got closer we could pick out a pasty** white guy on the upper deck taking pictures and knew the Alaskans had made it to Ometepe.
[**Mike pointed out later that in Alaska the term is not 'pasty' but 'fish belly'.]

Our buddy Miguel was there right on time and we loaded all the luggage into his rig, then walked up the road to The Cornerhouse Cafe, our favorite little place to eat in this island port town.  Mostly because they serve sandwiches made with real bread.  After a tasty lunch and a stop at the Mini-Super for some groceries, we lit out for Merida.  Volcán Concepción was particularly lovely this day, so Mike stopped a couple of times to snap some pics as we made our way around that end of the island.  

Soon enough we were over the isthmus, past Santa Cruz and bumpity-bumping down the crappy road back home.  Miguel was even able to navigate the narrow little path from the road down to our house, which allowed us to unload right onto the porch.  Home sweet home!  Opening up the house, we were happy to see one queen bed and a nice fan, all set up and ready to go.  The bed was made and the towels were folded in a nice little design.  Why I fretted, I do not know.  We walked up to Margarita's for dinner that evening and they met a few of our local friends there.  

While walking back home, passing under one of the many mango trees in town, Mike got hit in the head with a falling mango!  Now, knock on wood, but that has yet to happen to either of us.  We've had many near misses with a variety of fruit (and a dead iguana).  The most dangerous are the falling coconuts.  But we've never been on the receiving end.  Poor Mike is in Merida about 3 hours and gets hit.  Like I said, knock on wood!

Thursday morning, I taught our morning beginners class on the porch and braved the kindergarten class solo so that Bex! could help her folks get settled in and show them around a little.  I did call on Mike, Anne and Bex! to make a cameo in the morning class, so we could practice introductions.  Bex! also introduced the 'rents to Hamilton the Handyman and his daughter, Yosslyn.  Yosslyn does laundry for us and a few other chores  In fact, she was sweet enough to have made sure the house was clean and ready when we had returned the previous day.

We were a little concerned about the heat and how Mike and Anne would hold up, since there was still SNOW on the ground back home when they had departed a few days prior.  I've written about how dry it's been and how little rain we've had.  Both of those held steady during their stay, unfortunately.  I think it rained a little bit a couple of times, with one thunderous downpour (loud because of our corrugated metal roof).  But mostly the dry season was still in full swing.  They got to experience our 'bathe in the lake' routine.  Oh, joy.

Friday morning, the four of us walked down to Hacienda Merida for our first grade class at OBS.  Anne observed while Bex! and I taught.  Mike wandered about taking pictures and capturing audio.  We paid our regular Friday afternoon visit to Maragrita's for our weekly beer purchase, at which time Tia told us she was making nacatamales Saturday!!  Hell yeah!  So we placed our order before leaving, then stopped by Fruitlandia, Doña Clara's produce stand on the way home.  We introduced Mike and Anne to Jehu, Clara's husband and Edar's dad.  (Edar is one of our high school students.)  We confirmed with Jehu that he and his band mates would be coming over Saturday evening for a fiesta!

Because, yeah, we were throwing a 'Welcome to the Island' fiesta in honor of our visitors!  But first, Friday night French class!  Except no one showed up, so after watching a Muzzy cartoon, we talked through the party plans for the next evening.  This basically consisted of making sure we had enough beer, rum and ice along with a few snacks.  

This being Nicaragua, we hadn't really invited people too early in the week, except for the band.  In fact, most of the guests were invited the day before the fiesta, Friday.  It just doesn't do any good to tell people too far in advance, so we quit fighting that a while back!  If you recall from a recent post, Bex! had heard Jehu and Chema jamming one evening, so we hired them to play for the party.  When we stopped into Pescadito's to remind Chema about his gig the next night, Maykel told us his Dad knew about the invitation but didn't believe that we really wanted him to come to our house.  Very humbling to think that this fine man - and our friend - thought we wouldn't want him to come over.  Maykel brought his dad out and we told Chema that, yes, we would be honored to have him play and we were excited to hear their music.  That settled, we were ready to par-tay! 

The nacatamales we had ordered the day before arrived in time for us to enjoy them before guests arrived.  And they were delivered by Dilan, one of our first graders (with a little help from his mom).  Mmmmm… nacatamales.  After dinner, we set chairs out on the porch, got wood stacked in my snazzy fire pit to light up later in the evening, made sure all of our beverage containers were washed and ready for use (all four glasses, all four coffee mugs, and our collection of little tupperware containers), then waited for the party to show up.

The band - Los Tigres de Ometepe - showed up right on time.  Jehu, Chema and their friend Jose - all guitar players - got comfortable and started tuning and warming up.  Mike set up his recording gear while other guests started to arrive.  In fact, the turn out was amazing.  Almost everyone we invited came!  People brought beer, rum, Coke, and wine.  Jen and Jamey brought tostones Jamey had made for the party.  Tostones are platano verde (green plantains) that are sliced into rounds, fried once, smashed down flat and fried again, then these are usually topped with queso blanco, a white salty crumbly cheese popular here.

Los Tigres de Ometepe - Jose (bottom), Jehu and Chema (cowboy hat)

Chema (l) and Jehu playing on our porch for the fiesta; Jose is in the background

The band sounded good from all angles.

The band was thrilled that they were being recorded!  Once we explained what was happening, they stepped it up and got better and stronger throughout the evening.  Los Tigres de Ometepe played for a solid three hours and probably would have kept playing had we not cut them off!  ('We're going to play one more song' immediately changed into two more.  And was three more by the time they actually stopped.)

One cool moment in the evening:  I asked the band if they wanted a beer or some rum - they said no.  They felt they were hired to play and they were obligated to stay sober for the evening.  They were truly professional in their approach to the gig.  It was great. 

Lakeside, fireside

After playing on the porch for a while, we lit the fire and everyone moved out to the yard.  Yet another surreal moment:  the sound of the waves rolling up on the playa, the wood crackling in the fire pit, the beautiful traditional music being played by these artists, surrounded by new friends - and family.  Magical. 

It was a fantastic fiesta and we were able to introduce Mike and Anne to most of our friends in the village.  We also introduced them to the beauty and generosity of the Nica people here.  The party was a big success, in every way.  Hell, just like back home, we even had to make a beer run to restock!  Now, that's a party!

Tired and grinning, still buzzing from the wondrous evening, we cleaned up and went to bed.  We had a big day coming up - a hike down the road to El Guineo to see petroglyphs! 

Monkey Update

If you read the post about our day of monkey drama, you'll recall that we were pretty sure the family of howler monkeys that lives in the trees near our house was reunited, mostly because Cornelius and Zira started making lots of noise right after the locals said they'd let Milo go.  The parents had been quiet up to that point, remember.  We took the grunting and howling as a good sign that they had the baby back with them.

We were also a little concerned whether Mom and Dad would take him back after being handled by us distant relatives - humans.  When I was a kid I was always told not to handle baby birds because the parents wouldn't take it back into the nest.   Not even if a cute tow-headed 8 year old tree climber who found a baby robin on the ground had the best of intentions.

We continued to hear the monkeys but it wasn't until just a few days ago, about a week after the monkeynapping incident, that we finally made visual contact.  So excited!!  We were on the porch, working on lessons and listening to Cornelius carry on, when we saw some Nicas down the lake path looking up in the trees.  Thinking it was possibly another howler incident developing, I decided to let them know we were watching by walking over to see what they were doing.  You know, act like an innocent gringo "Hey, what's y'all looking at?"

Suspicions unwarranted.  It was a family gathering wood and the dad was holding his young son, pointing out Zira and Milo in one tree, and Cornelius in another.  I greeted him with  'buenos dias' and said 'La familia de monos es muy bonita' which was close enough to 'the monkey family is very beautiful'.  Notice I made sure to refer to them as a 'family'.  I saw Cornelius up in a big mango tree on the south end of our 'yard'.  And across the path along the lake in a smaller tree we saw Zira and Milo.  

Of course, Cornelius and I were thinking the same thing:  Zira, get your monkey butt into a bigger, taller tree!  And bring Milo with you!  

I said goodbye to the father and his son, then walked back over to the porch to report to Bex! that I had seen our monkeys all together.  I think my smile gave it away before I actually said a word.  She hurried over to check it out for herself.

So, for now our little monkey family is all together and doing well.  As much as we like having them near our house, we wouldn't mind if they moved up the mountain a little ways!  

At least until Milo is a little bigger and learns more evasive maneuvers!

A Smorgasbord

Time for another smorgasbord post!  This promises to be the 'all-you-can-eat buffet of blog posts, too.

To wit:

A]  R & R
We got our hammocks installed, finally!  It took quite a lot of time and searching to find the hardware we needed.  As I've written before, our porch isn't set up to just tie off hammocks with rope.  We needed eye bolts, nuts and washers, as well as 'S' hooks for hanging them.  We had looked at every ferreteria (hardware store) we had encountered on the island and in Rivas, to no avail.  Finally, we turned this over to Pedro Pablo, our friend/taxi driver on the mainland.  He couldn't find them, either, but he did the next best thing - in fact, a better thing:  he had them made for us.  Beautiful, simple iron work, painted black and perfect for what we needed.

Shortly after returning home with the goods, Hamilton and his son came over and installed the hardware for us.  This required drilling through the concrete/cinderblock walls and posts on the porch.  Needless to say, they did great work and we thoroughly enjoy our hammock time whenever our busy schedule permits.

Hard at work?  Or hardly working?

Psst!  Guys!  Will you tell my wife that if I don't nap in the hammock at least one hour every day it will damage the hammock?

Relaxation Zone #1

Relaxation Zone #2

If the table on the porch is our office, this must be the break-room.

Chillaxin'

B]  Random iguana picture!

One of three that reside in a mango tree right near our porch

Another of the three.  Or the same one.  I can't tell.

C]  A Unique Problem 
(ring ring, ring ring, ring ri..)
"Good afternoon!  Thank you for calling Hewlett Packard customer service.  How may I help you?"
"Hi, I have an issue with one of your printers I'm hoping you can help me with."
"Okay, ma'am.  Can you please provide the model so I can pull up the manual?  Thank you."
"It's the Ink Advantage 2515, combination copier/printer/scanner."
"Ah, one of our most popular models.  What seems to be the problem with the 2515?"
"Well, um, it seems we have ants inside it."
"Excuse me, ma'am, did you say your aunt is using your printer?"
"No, no - we have ants that have gotten into our printer.  We're not sure how but you can see them through the glass under the lid."
"Okay, so your aunt put something in your printer.  Did she put it in through the paper feed or underneath where the printed documents feed out?"
"Uh, no.  Okay, let's back up.  Hmmm…  Ah, I got it.  You know how when you're on a picnic and you have the blanket all spread out and you open the potato salad and the fried chicken and the baked beans…"
"Oh, that sounds lovely, ma'am.  And the sun is shining and there's a nice gentle breeze blowing, right?  That's how a picnic should be."
"Well, er, yeah, okay - sunny, windy…"
"Yes, but not too windy!"
"Okay, not too windy.  So we have that pictured, right?"
"Oh, my!  Yes!  I'll have to plan a picnic with my Harold."
"You do that.  Okay, now, everything is perfect except all of a sudden you notice ants.  Everywhere!  Crawling on your blanket and heading for your food."
"Oh no!  Harold hates ants!"
"Yes, ants - the insects!  Perfect!  See, that is what we have inside our printer!  The bugs - ANTS!"
"Oh!  I see!  I think I can help you."
"Thank goodness!"
"First, let me ask a question to help me find the right solution for you."
"Yes, yes!  Anything."
"Why did you take your printer with you on a picnic?"

Oy.

D]  Random unusual lizard picture!
Came across this guy in the dark.  The headlamp caught something moving in front of us.  He was nice enough to hold still for the photo op.

Central American striped-back gecko, about 6" long

E]  Bounty!
Back home we did a lot of our shopping at farmer's markets.  We learned to enjoy certain foods seasonally, when they were available and learned to cook with very fresh, raw fruits, veggies, and meats.  In fact, Bex! wrote this post about our food experience thus far and how we've realized that when you see something fresh, buy it up because ya don't know when you'll see it again.  While this is still true, we've also noticed that when it's harvest season, there is plenty of everything, it seems!

Plátanos (plantains), mangos, huge aguacate (avocado), sandia (watermelon), piña (pineapple) all in abundance for a few months in March, April, May.  Our fridge was overloaded at times, which is a wonderful feeling.  Ah, food security!  

While we purchase a lot of food from local vendors, we were blessed by the locals many many times with gifts of produce.  There were many nights when we would come back from teaching classes, loaded down with produce gifted to us by our friends.  Several times, one of us would be walking home in the dark and hear 'Profesor!  Profesor!', to find a friend who had been waiting for us to pass through the village (like we do each evening) so they could hand us a bag full of fruits and vegetables.

The people are so kind and gracious.  Speaking of…

F]  Fish on!
One family in particular has been exceptionally gracious to us - the Lorio's.  We teach an evening class at their house three days a week, the session attended by Luis and his daughters as well as all the neighbor kids.  It's a fun crew and the setting couldn't be more spectacular.  Luis and his wife, Rosabella, have given us more produce than we can remember!  One day, we got a special and unique visit at the house.

Luis wears many hats, as do a lot of people here.  He works several jobs, taking it as it comes.  One thing he does, and very well, is fishes.  We see him all the time out in his hand made boat with his boys and/or friends, dropping their nets and hauling them in.  One afternoon, we were sitting on our porch working on lessons and Luis rowed by in his dugout canoe.  He waved and called to us, then started making his way to shore.  So I waded out to meet him.  He opened up a large burlap bag that was full of fish!  He presented me with two large, still alive tilapia he had just caught!  Wow!   

I cleaned them and we had them for dinner that night.  I cooked them Nica style - slit the sides and dusted them with seasoned flour, squeezed naranja agria (sour orange) over them and inserted slices into the cavity, then fried them in a little oil turning them once.  They were flaky and juicy and wonderful!

G]  Random gecko picture!

Bad skin day.  "I like the color but do you maybe have something in a larger size?"

H]  Another food story
The lakeshore in front of our house is lined with huge mango trees.  There are a few other trees, as well.  One in particular caught our attention a) because it's directly in front of our porch between us and the lake, providing nice shade as the sweltering sun goes down directly west of us and b) we noticed it had a small green round fruit on it.  Curious, we asked one of our friends what this fruit was and he told us it was an olive tree!  Who knew!  We tasted some and they were a mix of sweet and grape-like with the kind of bitter that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth.

Some quick research on the innerwebs suggested brining them, so we harvested a bunch of olives, slit them on one side and stuffed them into a jar.  We let them sit in the fridge for a few weeks, taste testing periodically.  Sad to say that the original bitterness never improved, so the experiment was a failure.  The tree is done fruiting for now but if it comes round again, we'll probably try a different approach with a different brine.  We'll keep you posted!

Hand harvesting without a ladder.

They started falling off in good number when they turned black, so we decided black meant ripe.

I]  Random horses at sunset picture!

Yeah, I was playing with Lightroom...

J]  Visitors from Alaska
In the 'it's a small world' category, Bex! received word from her folks back home in Juneau that some family friends of theirs were coming to Nicaragua and would be visiting Ometepe!  And not just the island, but they were actually going to be in our village - Merida!  We walked up the hill to La Omaja and had dinner with Claire and her family.  It was a great evening and fun to listen to Bex! enjoy some conversation with friends from her home town.  Plus they bought us volunteer English teachers dinner, which was very kind of them. 

K]  Clase de francés
Way back in February, we had four awesome volunteers from Switzerland.  Two of them, Chris and Théo, taught a French class for some of the intermediate adult English students while they were here.  I even took the class when time permitted.  After they left, Bex! decided to carry on the torch.  She found a great resource online, planned her lessons and now teaches a class one evening a week at our house.  After an initial interest, attendance as been sparse, so this one is on life support.  We'll see how it goes.  In the meantime, it's fun!

Muzzy!

Wait, that's Spanish.  Uh, French, French.  Hmmm.

L]  Speaking of France
We met an absolutely wonderful couple from the Burgundy region of France, who live in a small town near Dijon.  They were traveling through Nicaragua and stayed several days at Hacienda Merida.  How we met them is a bit of a story.  We were at home and Ericks stopped by.  He's one of our high school students and the son of one of our friends, Nora.  He told us that Nora needed Bex! to come to the hacienda right away to help translate for a French couple that had some sort of emergency.  No problem - we locked up and hustled over there to see how we could help.  And by 'we' I mean Bex!, the French speaker.

When we arrived we were introduced to Dominique and Bernadette.  We instantly liked the couple very much and the feeling seemed mutual.  My official role was to keep the table in beer while the French speakers conversed.  The emergency was this:  Dominique and Bernadette had gone kayaking out to Monkey Island.  The hacienda has kayaks available for guests, so they grabbed one and went out on the lake.  Unfortunately, the kayak they took out was defective and was taking on water, unbeknownst to the paddlers.  They got out a fair ways and the craft floundered, dumping them in the lake.  During this, one of Dominique's crutches sank to the bottom.  Dominique has a health issue which requires him to use crutches to get around.  

This near tragedy was completely avoidable, of course, had there been a program in place to check and maintain the kayaks on a regular basis.  There is none that we're aware of.  This particular kayak was checked out after the accident and found to have a separation along one of the seams.  Be that as it may, the issue now was the missing crutch.  Some of the staff went out and searched for it, diving down and scouring the lakebed.  No luck.  The only possible location a replacement would be found is in Managua.  Rather than screw up the rest of their trip, they hired Kevin, an employee of the hacienda, to travel to Managua to pick up a new crutch. This is where Bex! came in.  She translated from French to Spanish so that Kevin understood exactly what to look for.  And the next day he went and was successful.

We so enjoyed visiting with Bernadette and Dominique that we invited them over the next day for lunch.  We gave them directions and they showed up right on time.  We enjoyed fresh pineapple and iced tea.  Then Bex! made 'gallopinto Americana', her spin on the traditional Nica dish.  Served with huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) we had a leisurely meal and a wonderful visit.

Now, you might be thinking - how did I fit in with this group, our guests speaking only French, along with my wife.  First of all, I'm naturally charming, so get along with people in any language.  Secondly, I can pick up enough words to keep pace of the conversation, asking the wife an occasional question to clarify what was being discussed.  But mostly I cleaned up and did dishes while the three of them visited.  Stick to our strengths, right?

The next evening, we were all invited to Nora's house for dinner.  If you recall, we had dinner at Nora's one time before when her brother was visiting from Italy.  This time we again enjoyed a wonderful Nica dinner and more good conversation, with my amazing wife translating back and forth between Spanish and French.  It was a lot of fun and very gracious of Nora to have us over.  I think she felt bad for what happened to Dominique and Bernadette.

(l-r) Lionel (Nora's father), Bex!, Bernadette, Dominique, Nora, moi

Funny thing is that neither of them had anything bad to say about anything.  To them it was part of their adventure and 'things happen'.  They shrugged it off and enjoyed their entire stay in Merida.  In fact, after leaving Merida they took the overnight ferry to San Carlos and down the Rio San Juan to El Castillo, which is quite an adventure in itself!

We've made a lot of friends down here and now have a standing invitation to visit Bernadette and Dominique at their home in France, which we will likely do at some point in the near-ish future.  It is in Burgundy, after all.

M]  Random giant flower picture!

N]  Jam session
Bex! was walking home one evening after teaching classes at the hotel.  As she walked by 'Fruitlandia', the small produce stand run by Doña Clara and her family, she heard wonderful music being played.  She stopped and looked around, then heard 'Profesora!', so she walked behind the stand and found Jehu and Chema playing mariachi and Nica music.  Jehu is Clara's husband; they are the parents of Edar, one of our high school students.  Chema is Maykel's dad, where we helped butcher the pig.  She stayed to listen to a couple of songs, then came home.  

As it turned out, their impromptu 'audition' would come into play in the near future.  

Oooh, foreshadowing.

O]  Random chicken in the classroom picture!

P]  A magical Friday afternoon
We have so many special moments throughout each and every day, it's hard to remember them all.  One of our young students running up to give hugs, an adult student conversing with us in their newly learned English, the wave from a friend who sees us walking through the village.  All very amazing stuff.  But one Friday was extra special.

It started out with a most excellent first grade class session at Ometepe Bilingual School.  The kids were great - energetic, focused, into what we were doing.  It was a tremendous class!

As is our Friday routine, after class we took the shortcut up to Margarita's for celebratory beers.  We were hanging out enjoying an ice cold Toña when some of our first graders showed up.  It's not unusual, of course, for kids to be here.  It's an open-air bar run out of Tia Margarita's home and many of the children are related to her in some way.  We had fun playing with them, getting a little extra time outside the classroom.

First grader Dayana took this pic with my camera; me & Jasmina

Jasmina, Profesora Rebecca, Dayana and Jesner

One of the funniest moments is shown below.  Jesner sat at the bar and watched cartoons with his teacher!  Haha!  You'd never see this in the states!

Jesner is watching Curious George; Bex! is watching the Flor de Caña

After a short time, Bex! came back to the table and was replaced - by two more first graders!

After a hard day of learning ABC's and playing tag, a kid's just gotta unwind

A peek into the kitchen revealed that Tia Margarita and her staff were making nacatamales!!  They had actually already assembled them and were now tying them off which, coincidentally, we learned how to do just the week before.  So we jumped in to help, and we learned a new tying technique that is easy and more secure than the way we knew.  So, that was good!  Tia and her help were so tickled that we were there, they sat back and let us tie them all up!  Haha!  it was hilarious, really.  They couldn't stop giggling as we successfully knocked out all the tying.

Because we love nacatamales, we asked if we could buy some.  Tia was more than happy to hook us up.  If you remember from a couple of posts back, nacatamales have to cook for ~3 hours or so.  No worries.  She had someone deliver them to our house!  Maybe soon we'll be able to call for a pizza.

Our extra-cool day wasn't over yet, though.  We went home and hit the lake for a swim.  The kids enjoy it when they see us anywhere in the village and today a handful of them were swimming near our house.  As soon as they saw us, they swam right over to join us!  Two of the young girls, Genessy and Gemela (not students but we know them), wanted to learn some English, so we did colors and numbers and basic nouns, all while splashing around in a tropical lake!  A pretty surreal day!

And we had nacatamales delivered to our door and enjoyed them for dinner that very evening.

Yep - magical. 

Q]  Random impromptu English class at a bar picture!

Bex! with a very happy Juriel who learned how to form questions and yes/no answers

R]  More on nacatamales
Another Friday afternoon, more end-of-week brewskis at Margarita's.  This time we overheard Tia asking some guy to make sure he brought the banana leaves the next morning.  Banana leaves mean only one thing:  nacatamale deliciousness.  Hearing this, our ears perked up and we immediately asked Tia if we could again buy some.  Of course, she said yes and again she had them delivered to us.  Now we are on the home delivery system, the Domino's of Merida!  Tia Margarita makes nacatamales almost every weekend.  If we don't happen to stop in for a beer and place our order, she sends someone to the house to find out how many we want!  How cool is that!?

S]  Teaching the beer guys
The Toña truck makes deliveries most every Monday and Friday.  We've run into the crew several times at Margarita's.  We talk beer and think it's pretty cool that we both worked at a brewery in the states.  In getting to know them, they expressed a desire to learn English.  They live in Moyogalpa, where the ferry comes in.  They asked the same question everyone else from there asks us: Can you come to Moyogalpa and teach.  We were surprised to learn that there isn't anyone there teaching English.  It's one of the two 'big' towns on the island and the main port.  Tourism has been on the rise in the last few years, so this opportunity is perfect for someone.  But, as we always have to answer, we're committed to Merida for the year.

We have sat with them and covered some basics, and even given them some worksheets to do as well as lists of vocabulary, words in English with Spanish translations that will hopefully help them out.  When we do run into them, there is almost always some teaching, even if it's just 10 minutes or so.  They have questions and we do our best to help them out.

T]  Random chicken in the yard picture!

Stop waking me up at 4:30 in the morning!!!

*****     *****     *****     *****

I think that's it for now!  Tata!

*****     *****     *****     *****

Oh, wait a sec…

U]  Random 2,000 lb. bull in the path that will probably make us late for class picture!

"You'll get to class when I say you get to class."

Cultural Differences

We teach an early morning class three days a week, right on our front porch.  It's not a huge group but the students are eager and happy that we're willing to get up early to do this.  Hell, we're here to teach and we've shown the community that we'll hold a class if students will commit.  It's a fun group, all women.  We have a good time with this boisterous class!

Our initial survey said no one would come to a morning class...
All respondents were men.  We've learned a good lesson about sampling.

This morning, about halfway through the lesson, one of my students (Mayerly) pointed up over my head and her eyes got big.  Now, if you've read the blog you'll know we've had our share of encounters with creepy crawlie things.  So, yeah - I cringed a little.  Then Krisna said 'Congo!' which means 'mono' which means 'monkey'.  Sure enough, in a small scraggly tree near the porch, up about 15 feet off the ground on a thin wobbly branch, sat Zira and Milo.

We have howler monkeys in the trees around our place.  We hear them regularly and see them pretty often, too.  The three that visit the most often are a family - dad, mom and baby.  In honor of 'Planet of the Apes' (the original, not the crappy remake) we named them Cornelius, Zira and Milo.

Monkeys on the move.  (Not pictured: Cornelius.)

We've seen the family on the ground only twice before.  They usually move around branch to branch, through the huge trees that are all over the village.  There are too many predators on the ground, these being mostly packs of dogs, so the monkeys stay up as much as possible.  

Zira and Milo!  I was not this close!  This is a enlarged zoom of the previous picture.  Look at those adorable monkey faces.

A Cornelius Cameo.  (Again, an enlarged zoom to show his face.)

After class wrapped up and our students went home, we enjoyed our morning beverages on the porch, tea for Bex! and coffee for me.  We watched as Zira and Milo slowly got comfortable enough to come down lower .  The tree they were in is isolated and to get to the big trees nearby would require a dash across open ground to the tree where Cornelius was waiting for them.  It was very stressful for them and amazing for us to watch this family drama unfold.  How Zira and the little one ended up in this tree, we don't know.  She must have gone up in the night, then felt stuck there when the sun came up and humans started holding an English class not twenty feet away.

Come to think of it, maybe THIS is how 'Planet of the Apes' gets started, with monkeys eavesdropping on English classes!!  Holy crap!!  We apologize in advance for the downfall of mankind.  But I digress…

Zira made her way down to the lower branches, keeping a very close eye on us. Cute little Milo climbed down most of the way on his own, then hopped on mom's back.  Zira hit the ground, looked around to make sure it was safe and took off for the nearest tree that allowed her access to her waiting hubby.  Once they were reunited, you could hear them grunting and howling.  It was a wonderful sight, a wonderful sound to witness.

Monkey noises!  Go to the May 16th post and scroll to the bottom for audio of our very own monkeys recorded last month by Mike Sakarias, Bex's dad.

All's well that ends well, right?  Right.  

Not so fast, unfortunately.

Nicaragua has produced some fine baseball players many who have made it to the big leagues in the states.  We joke that the reason they are so good is because of mangos.  Not because of the nutritional attributes of this common fruit, although they are very good for you.  It's the harvest method that we believe makes a great ball player.  The locals throw rocks.  Lots of rocks.  The mango trees here have large trunks with no lower branches, so they are very difficult to climb.  So people huck rocks up into the branches and hope to knock some fruit loose.  Mangos are pretty tough and no worse for wear after hitting the ground, so it's all good.

A couple of hours after class, there was a group of two young men walking down the path along the lake in front of our house, throwing rocks and collecting mangos.  We heard the howlers making noise, which is normal.  They were giving a warning and we watched the mango hunters make their way down the trail.  Bex! went inside to do some work and I was out on the porch.

A little while later, though, I saw the two guys hurrying back toward their family members, who were harvesting coconuts nearby.  The kids were collecting coconuts and the women were splitting them open and scraping the meat out.  This was all maybe 40 meters away, within sight of our porch.

As the guys hustled by our place, I noticed they had something wrapped up in an orange t-shirt.

I had the monocular with me on the porch as I worked on lesson plans.  So I got it out, held it up and focused it.  They had Milo!!

Hence, the title of this blog post.

I told Bex! that they had monkeynapped the baby.  Unsure what to do or how to handle this but damn positive we weren't going to just sit there, we moved our stuff inside, locked up the screen door and walked over to chat with our neighbors.

Bex! speaks good Spanish but doesn't have the vocabulary like 'stressed' and 'kidnapped' and 'how would you like it if someone came and snatched your child away'.  The two guys were kinda laughing at us, like 'it's just a monkey, no big deal'.  One guy was petting it and tried to feed it a mango.  But Milo was scared to death, you could tell.  He was shaking and kept trying to get away and run to a tree, just like Mom and Dad had shown him.  He got loose one time but was just too unsure which way to go and the guy with the t-shirt soon had him covered and captured again.

We kept pleading our - and Milo's - case.  The guys were okay and seemed understanding.  But one of the women started in on us with "In our community, there are a lot of monkeys. We do this all the time.  They are pets.  Why are you so upset?"  She was a little pissy with us, of course.  And maybe she had a right to be.  We're outsiders here.  But we couldn't let them take Milo and break up this little family unit we've come to know and love.

The guys relented, and we walked back toward out house.  They took the path back toward where Cornelius and Zira were earlier and we went through the gate to our place.  Bex! went back inside, visibly upset.  I think she was vacillating between anger and frustration, between tears and getting in a fight!  This is why I love her.

The guys came back a couple of minutes later, called to me and told me it was all good.  They had let Milo go.  I thanked them and walked over to see if I could spot the little family.  Nope.  Of course, I wouldn't have stuck around, either!


A few thoughts from Bex!:

It was a whole mix of emotions this morning and throughout the day - fear, frustration, sadness, anger, adrenaline, uncertainty, worry, doubt, inadequacy, wistful(ness), selfishness.

Fear for this monkey family we feel we've gotten to know; that the toll of today's stress will shake their fragile survival balance.  We've taken to feeling protective of our monkeys (and our iguanas) and even just this morning shooed off a stray dog that was touring the yard as mom and baby were moving down the tree.

Frustration that we couldn't communicate with the locals today and that there is such a gap in our norms for human-wildlife interaction.  

Sadness for our monkey friends who had to go through the experience today, particularly in contrast to the quiet morning scenes of napping, eating, and reuniting that we had just observed.

Anger that someone would do this to these beautiful, peaceful monkeys.  And that someone would ruin my day in this way.   (Even though this is unfounded - in that I did not get the impression these people were trying to hurt the monkeys or upset us.)

Adrenaline because it's not every day you go confront six strangers, a machete, and a baby monkey while you're a gazillion miles from home.

Uncertainty because I don't know if these people are the angry sort, or are just shrugging about the crazy gringos who anthropomorphize monkeys.

Doubt over whether we made a mistake talking to them; over whether it would have been possible to avoid the incident if I'd been more suspicious when they were hooting at the monkeys.  (I was initially somewhat suspicious because I heard a dog barking, too.  But ultimately I reminded myself that we also have fun hooting with howler monkeys sometimes and went about my business.)

Worry about whether we have made enemies or permanently pissed off or alienated some neighbors.

Inadequacy because my mangled explanations of "it's bad for the monkey" are a pretty lousy version of the education that's needed to teach people about how to interact with wildlife without causing harm and about why they should want to do that.  

Wistful for our illusion of a wildlife sanctuary.  We've enjoyed a lot of iguana and monkey action in the yard over the last two weeks.  We've always been a bit aware of how vulnerable these creatures are - chasing off stray dogs, looking around when the monkeys howl to see if anything bad is happening, telling our friends "nos iguanas no son para comer," encouraging the iguana to stop munching grass out there in the open and get back to the tree where it's safe!  But I was also somewhat lulled into a sense of security and wonder with our porch-based daily wildlife sightings.

Selfishness in being bummed that we may never get to see "our" monkeys again - because if this happened to me I'd move on without looking back and would stay the f*&@ away from humans.  We'd like to see Milo's family again to know that they are all okay, but that may never happen.


Back to Dave:

Although we didn't see them reunited, I sincerely think they were.  And here's why:

When the guys were making their way down the path, Cornelius and Zira were making all kinds of noise.  Like I said, this is normal.  Thinking back as I'm writing about the whole episode today, I realize that the monkeys suddenly stopped howling.  Lots of noise; suddenly, no noise.  A minute later, the two guys came cruising by with Milo.  I think the parents were calling out their warning grunts and howls, then got quiet because their baby had just been taken.  

But very shortly after the guys let Milo go, I heard Dad and Mom again, howling and grunting.  So, yeah, together.  I think they got their little one back and were quite happy about it.

We hope we see Cornelius, Zira and Milo again but won't be surprised if we don't.  It was a little weird intervening in something like this.  We know we're just visiting and that this culture is incredibly different than ours.  We hope we did the right thing and that we didn't make any enemies. 

I think we did.  Time will tell.

One Man's Trash … Is Another Man's Treasure?

Mini-post time.  By Bex!  To tide you over while we (David) work (works) on the next big post.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter T.  T is for trash.  Has this question been keeping you up at night: What do Bex! and Dave do with their trash on Ometepe?  Well, tonight you can sleep because the answer is coming up, right after these words from our sponsors.

"Toña - bringing Eastern gear to Nicaragua since 2013"

"When your nacatamale needs pep or your huevos revueltos need zip, turn to…         Lizano Chile"

"Nothing cleans up delicious pork grease like Axion soap"

Thank you sponsors.  We now return to your program already in progress.

We have four waste streams at our casita.

1.  Compostable

If it's organic, we toss it in the compost.  This is all our food scraps - watermelon rinds, mango pits, coconuts with the agua de coco sucked out, tomato stems, orange peels, carrot tops, banana leaves from nacatamales, pineapple rinds, chicken bones, etc.

Our compost pile isn't much to look at.  That's because we also call it our 'jungle animal feeding zone'.  After the dogs, chickens, pigs, iguanas, magpie jays, grackles, vultures, spiders, and ants have a go, there's pretty much nothing left to actually decay.  And if by some chance there is anything remaining, the warm and humid climate makes quick work of breaking it down.

2.  Burnable

If it's paper waste, we burn it.  This is cereal boxes, used printer paper, etc.  This is also all TP.  Yeah, it's gross, but Central American plumbing and water pressure lack the strength and oomph to handle TP.  It goes in a little trash can in the bathroom and is burned regularly.

3. Fit-In-A-Two-Liter-Bottle-Able

If it's not organic and non-burnable, we next check if it's small enough or flexible enough to fit through the mouth of a two-liter bottle - say a coke bottle or a water bottle.  This is all plastic packaging and bags, batteries, dead white board pens, plastic straws, etc.  If it fits, we stuff it into a bottle, packing it in until we just can't fit another shred of plastic in.  

We only fill one of these every 3-4 weeks.

Then we cap off the bottle and bring it to Hacienda Merida.  They use these two-liter bottles in construction of outside tables and chairs and of the school buildings.  This approach captures the waste and keeps it out of the environment, plus reduces the amount of cement needed.  For more on this cool solution to the waste problem, check out these YouTube videos about the Sustainable Table and about the Garbage Palace School.  Or read about constructing the first school building here.

4.  Our Own Personal Landfill

If our trash doesn't fit into categories 1, 2, or 3, we're out of options.  This trash gets placed in our own personal landfill, an area out back where we toss whatever's left over.  This includes glass and plastic bottles (sans lids, since we have a re-use program for those), tetra-pack cartons from orange juice and chocolate milk, empty printer cartridges, beer cans, and other miscellany.

There is no opportunity for recycling in Merida.  However, reuse is actively practiced.  We use old glass jars to keep homemade vinaigrette; we collect clean bottle caps for sorting activities with the kids; we print or write on both sides of our printer paper before burning it; we buy local honey packaged into 12oz soda bottles; we made a hummingbird feeder from an old Coke bottle and an old Axion tub; we use the box our fan came in as a printer stand.

I love these!  They are like Nicaraguan Legos.  If I ever stop playing with them, we'll take them to class.

Here, hummingbird!  Come here, little buddy.

One good thing we experience in Merida is that there isn't as much packaging.  Many items are sold as eaches - e.g. eggs and pencil sharpeners.  And other things can be bought in bulk - rice, sugar, flour, beans, etc.  So, instead of coming in their own wasteful individual packaging, the store buys them in bulk and sells them to us as is, with maybe a plastic bag (which we can easily squish in a 2-liter bottle after we've reused it a couple times).

One bad thing we've experience in Merida is the trash left behind when "well meaning folks" come.  Twice now, we've experienced this phenomenon.  In November 2013, Fuente Pura, the bottled water division of the national beer company, came to Ometepe and did a great recycling event.  Children from Merida and Balgüe came and could exchange 20 recyclables - plastic bottles, glass bottles, or cans - for a pack of school  supplies - notebooks, pencils, sharpener, eraser, colored pencils.  It was a great event, well attended, and hundred of bags of recyclables were taken away by Fuente Pura.  (We wrote about it here.)  However, the school supply packs were put together at Hacienda Merida.  We helped with this assembly line task and noticed after the event that all the packaging was left behind.  All the card board boxes, paperboard boxes, and - worst of all - all the shrink wrap.

In March 2014, a group from South Carolina visited.  They stayed at Hacienda Merida and were doing construction and outreach projects at a school for the deaf on Ometepe and within the communities.  They came and did some great work and brought donations with them.  These donations included things like personal toiletry items, which had been purchased in bulk at Costco or a similar ridiculously too large store.  With these donations also came all the packaging.  Again, great bundles of shrink wrap, blister packs from sports gear given away, plastic - all left behind on the edge of a national park and biosphere reserve.

Both groups came and did something really good on the island.  But, both groups left behind a LOT of trash in this beautiful place.  Maybe next time they can leave the extra packaging at home.  (hint hint)

So, what do YOU do with your trash?  Where does it go?  If you put it out at the curb, what happens next?  While it may seem strange that we just throw our trash in the back yard, it's not so different from what happens back home.  In places I've lived in the U.S., solid waste either goes to a landfill or to an incinerator.  Hmmm, let me think.  That sounds a lot like burning paper in our fire pit and throwing plastic bottles in a pile in the back yard.  Except that instead of each person having their own pile, in the US we make one big pile all together.  And except that instead of being able to see the pile when you walk around the corner of your house, it's out of sight and thus out of mind.  On the other hand, the pile of trash is at least all in one place back home, rather than spread out across multiple yards, down the edges of the streets and paths, etc.

Trash is a problem everywhere in the world, of course.   In a small village on an island in a lake in a country with no infrastructure to deal with garbage, it's a more hands on, deal with it every day, personal thing here.  We do our best here, dealing with it as described in this post.  

Back home, be aware of excess packaging!  Make requests of stores and manufacturers to cut down on packaging, especially petroleum based products.  If you buy something with a ridiculous amount of packaging, unwrap it in the parking lot and leave the trash for the store to deal with.  That sends a message!  As you might have noticed in the burnables picture, we have a lot of the same brands down here - Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, WalMart, etc.  Not to mention the sugar and junk food purveyors like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Frito-Lay & Co.  Getting these multinationals to change their practices makes a difference all over the world!