Month: February 2011

  • Leaving Nicaragua

    Leaving Nicaragua

    Suddenly, it’s over. Martina and I climb from the bus, and wave to Spencer, Marlon, and Myra. A quick, light lunch of fruit and orange-carrot juice and walk in the light rain to Martina’s Esteli boarding house. In a sleep-deprived trance I pack my bag,…

  • Riding on Top of the Bus, with Bags of Beans

    Riding on Top of the Bus, with Bags of Beans

    With a generous blast of a horn, the brand-new bus, striped with brown and red paint, trundles down the gravel hill. Martina motions up the back ladder, and we climb up and up. We nestle down amongst massive bags of frijoles and the journey home…

  • Leaving Miraflor

    The morning is a blur of activity. Breakfast and coffee, hurried packing, long hugs goodbye, last trips to the loo. Then waiting. The bus (that makes a twice daily circuit to Esteli and back) is late. And people begin to gather at the stop outside…

  • Parties and Pinatas

    Hard to believe, it’s our last night in Miraflor. A last ice-cold cup-shower, standing naked and shivering in the little cement room looking up at jungle trees and turquoise sky, as the dirt of the day washes from my body. I have never felt more…

  • Clearing Scorpions from Rock-Piles to Build a School

    I sneak off to an empty hammock, and carefully, carefully lower my aching backside into a semi-comfortable position. I hug my laptop to my chest and hope for sleep. Just 15 minute refresher. Anything to lessen the cracked-out, tireder-than-anything, living-by-coffee feel. But it’s not to…

  • A Morning at School

    After a night of tossing and turning, I wake up in the gray-gold light of dawn to a chorus of roosters and people. I am sore beyond belief. Every little muscle screams pain, and now that I’m awake, there’s no more sleep. After breakfast, Martina…

  • Goodnight, Jungle…

    We pile into Myra’s kitchen at dark, with a feels-like-home familiarity. Dinner of frijoles and fish (caught fresh that morning, hung from the rafters to smoke all day over the kitchen fire). We are careful to pick the bones clean, for Marlon’s approval. Lingering extended…

  • The Downside of Horses & Jungle Showers

    The horses, apparently just as eager to return home after a long day, set off racing home. It’s such a mad dash, as the horses know the path home, and egg each other on. It’s borders out-of-control and scary, but thrilling. To understand my horse…

  • Killing a Chicken, for Lunch

    Martina smile is tense. From the side of her mouth, she says, “They just killed this chicken…for our lunch…” As the don and his son motion for us to sit, his wife hurries around the room, the gracious hostess, and waves her hand at the…

  • The Only Woman Coffee Farmer..

    We criss-cross the fields, then follow a footpath that skirts a row of mossy fence posts, strung with rusted barbed wire, and a row of tiny, white and yellow baby socks, freshly washed, and drying, in the wind. Corrugated roof extends over a rough patio.…

  • Picking Coffee Berries

    We walk across stubbled fields, hopping from patch of grass to the next, under cotton puff clouds. Carefully scaling the wobbling barbed wire fence, sharp spur jingling. Past a dirt-covered outhouse to the clump of trees that shade a tiny, two roomed house and kitchen.…

  • School Visits, Notebooks, and a Life’s Work

    We walk back to the horses and gallop, wildly, over another set of green-gold hills to the new school Martina will begin working with. The familiar two small blue and white buildings in a valley surrounded by mountains and a sea of silver, low clouds.…

  • Interview with a Nicaraguan Coffee Farmer

    We stop our horses in front of a narrow path, leading up a steep hill, through stands of banana trees. Horrific high-pitch squeals screech from massive, mud-covered pig, as farmers in dirt-covered shirts and rubber boots, drag it’s front legs, inches at a time, towards…

  • Racing Horses, Like Jane Austin…& a Dream Come True

    Melodic Spanish of friends and family, shuffling back and forth from kitchen and chores, wakes me up. Bright, white sunshine peaks through the cracks in the slabs of wood.  I finger through the filmy, blue, mosquito nets and grip my phone; 5AM. I don’t think…

  • Cell-Phone Reception, Dinner & the Light of a Single Bulb

    I join the girls for a hike, up the side of a mountain, in search of cell phone reception. It’s no small task as we carefully pick our way, in sandals, through loose rock and dried leaves, following a seemingly impassable steep whisper of a…

  • Breaking a Horse

    I squeeze onto the same, small, slightly lop-sided bench with Spencer and Martina. Our backs rest against the slabs of wood that make up the kitchen wall. The warm afternoon heat filters between the inch wide cracks  between boards. The wood stove belches smoke and…

  • Hugs, Kisses, and Arriving at My Nicaraguan Home…

    A steep hill, a turn of a corner, a brilliant mural (that captures the coffee harvest, the jungle, the village life) sparkles from on an otherwise non-descript, one-story building, glistening in a coat of fresh blue and white paint. Children wave shyly. A dog barks.…

  • The Drive to Miraflor

    The three of us cozy up, between bags of groceries and school supplies, strategically arranging layers of dirty cardboard and bags to carve out a place to sit, careful not to touch any exposed parts of the metal bed, which burns like a bed of…

  • A Newfound Gratitude

    We move to a dim warehouse, walking through the maze of machinery that shakes with ear-numbing racket as it sorts through billions of dried coffee beans. Spencer explains how the beans are jostled across the flat metal surface and eventually sort themselves. Like waves in…

  • Fair Trade, Trace-ability & Lasers!

    When I meet up with the group again, they’re standing in one of the massive warehouses. Giant 200+ pound bags bulging with dry coffee (not yet roasted) stacked on pallets.  A series of colorful skyscrapers, white, red, tan and red, we wander the maze-like pathways…

  • The Sound of a Single Coffee Bean

    The afternoon flits by, as we walk slowly through the oven-like intense heat of Nicaragua-heading-into-dry-season. I let the others wander ahead, through fields of drying coffee, and linger behind. Silent workers shuffle on top of the coffee, through the blasts of dry heat, baggy clothes…

  • Green-Gold Beans

    We pull off the two-lane highway, onto cobbled-dirt roads, weaving through simple cement-block houses, until we stop in front of a large gate, brick walls baking in the sunshine. Massive corrugated metal warehouses shimmer and stretch against the immense blue sky. He walks over to…

  • Riding in the Back of a Truck

    We walk slowly to the store, through a maze of narrow alleys and along an old cemetery, filling each step with more stories and details of the lives we’ve lived in the last six months, as men in cowboy hats wait on horses lazily grazing…

  • Bus Ride to Esteli

    One last, hurried dip in the cool lake. Howler monkeys groan, to each other, across the jungle. I put my hands on my ears to try to stop their uncomfortable, grating sound as I hike up the hill to my hostel bed. I throw sun clothes…