Waking Up In Nicaragua

Parrots make an excellent alarm clock.

As does loud honking through the streets well before dawn, deliberately prodding locals out of bed and into mini buses and trucks packed with other commuters heading to Managua and towns along the way.

And then there are the toucans, monkeys and dogs, who keep up a racket until the end of breakfast and we students have settled into class. By then, the grounds are buzzing with workers come to build new structures, tend to vegetable gardens, water trees and sweep away the dust.

It was the dry season at La Mariposa, a residential Spanish school in the heart of Nicaragua, considered the poorest of Central American countries apart from Haiti. We students were all grown-ups, or at least appeared to be so, and had traveled thousands of miles to intensively learn the language -- recent college grads to senior citizens, we converged on this developing country from relatively privileged lives in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and Britain. 

And that was just the batch during my two-week stay there this winter.

Learn we certainly did. With one-on-one grammar and conversation classes five mornings a week -- each lasting two hours for a total of four each day -- it was impossible not to chip away at those irregular verbs and quirky idioms and a vocabulary that never had quite enough words resembling English. While I struggled with the past and present tenses, my more advanced schoolmates were tackling the dreaded subjunctive. You could hear their groans from far away.

Speaking of groans, most of us missed about a day of class for what I call Nicarao's Revenge, a side effect of vulnerable internal plumbing. We could rarely pinpoint its origins -- water? food? something we touched? -- so just sipped a "special" herbal tea or popped a Pepto-Bismol and listened to kind admonitions of patience. Once we got over the horror of its symptoms, we could laugh it off and say to its next victim, with a sly wink: "This too shall pass."

Our friendly cooks

As we gradually discovered, there was a lot more than parrots to wake up to in Nicaragua. In addition to Spanish, the Nicaraguans taught us much about life in this up-and-coming world. They are a young, engaged and energetic population eager to overcome a turbulent past and catch up in a fast-moving and competitive global economy. At the same time, they face numerous challenges, including a culture of corruption from both right- and left-wing leaders who have long exploited and exported their natural resources -- timber, coffee, labor, etc. -- for personal gain and left the rest of the population to founder.

Nicaragua's history generally started around 1520 when Gil González Dávila arrived on its shores; the first Spaniard to visit, Dávila and his men packed up as much gold as they could before being attacked by local chieftains on their way out. One of those chiefs was named Nicarao -- some believe he may have inspired Dávila to later name the land Nicaragua. 

Fast forward to 1821 when Nicaragua finally became independent from Spain, a key event that hardly meant the people's troubles were over. An ambitious American named William Walker managed to declare himself President in the mid-1800s -- his diabolical plan was to set up slave states throughout Central America. But his reign soon collapsed and his life ended by firing squad in Honduras. In 1909, thanks to ongoing political disarray that threatened U.S. economic interests in the country, U.S. Marines arrived in Nicaragua to begin 20 years of occupation.

The Great Sandino

Around that time, a left-leaning Nicaraguan General named Augusto Cesar Sandino put together a small band of guerillas and started making life difficult for the conservative government and unwanted Americans soldiers. Later, the notorious Anastasio Somoza Garcia, then head of a National Guard created by the Marines, tricked Sandino into signing a peace agreement and had him assassinated as soon as the ink was dry.

Che Guevara Photos

After decades of cruelty and repression, then-President Somoza -- who is rumored to have dropped his enemies from helicopters into active volcanoes -- was himself gunned down in 1956. Still, the Somoza family would not give up until 1979 when the last one, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was overthrown by the increasingly powerful Sandinistas. Shortly thereafter, Ronald Reagan began his secret and ultimately unsuccessful Contra war against the socialist government. Today, Sandinista Daniel Ortega heads the government but faces opposition in next November's election.

Elizabeth

Despite centuries of foreign interference, Nicaraguans seem to be wasting little time nursing resentment; instead, they're welcoming efforts at sustainable tourism and development like those at La Mariposa. Paulette Goudge, the British woman who built the eco-hotel and school five years ago, is determined to help locals not only make a decent living but find ways to grow and thrive.

Marlon

Our teachers were excellent, having been trained by Paulette and her Nicaraguan manager, Bergman. I'm especially grateful to three of those teachers; Elizabeth, a young married woman with two small children, who is now also studying English in Managua to expand her career options; Marlon, who gave up a computer job in Managua to teach Spanish and, more importantly, start up a soccer league* to help street kids gain self-esteem in his hometown; and Richard, who taught us about internal and regional issues such as rising domestic violence and ongoing border tensions with Costa Rica.

And my fellow students? We shared our stories over breakfast, lunch and dinner (food was healthy and delicious, by the way) and bonded like teenagers at summer camp.

There was Leonie, a Dutch woman who had been traveling through the country with her Canadian husband and 12-year old daughter; Alan and Jan, a wanderlusty retired couple escaping the London winter; Cat and Martin, a musically talented young duo from Melbourne; Benita and Ed, Americans who were also visiting a son living in nearby León; Jasmine, a young American who quit a steady finance job to see the world and chart a new life path; Christa, a retired German woman also seeking refuge from the snow and ice; Per, a Swedish carpenter planning to build a house on land he bought further south in Nicaragua; Jack, an American who came to study the language and catch fish (he also tackled a big spider in my room); Lisa, an American nurse who longs only to settle down in Nicaragua one day; and many, many more.

Alan, Leonie, the Author, Jan

I had never been to Nicaragua and knew no one at the school when I arrived but when I left two weeks later I had about a semester's worth of Spanish in my brain and a whole bunch of intrepid new friends. 

I also plan to take up offers to visit them in their native countries. 

That is, if they ever go home.


*Note: Marlon's soccer league currently has 10 teams with 12 boys each. One team calls itself "The Dirties," because the kids are poor and not always clean. Many have belonged to gangs and, without something better to do, succumb to drugs and petty thievery. That said, Marlon has seen some rise above their circumstances -- thanks in great part to the discipline, cooperation, medals and trophies that come with being on a team. If anyone would like to contribute to Marlon's efforts, please contact Paulette at La Mariposa or let me know and I'll pass on your interest.

For more information on La Mariposa:
  La Mariposa Spanish School and Eco-Hotel