NicaDayz - Good communication

Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 09:52:36 -0300
From: jberman@xxx.xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Good communication

I had planned on writing about Costa Rica, about the rainy cloudforests, the surfing (I got up!), the crusty ex-pat scene, but well. . .sometimes it's hard to control these things.

A quick shout-out to the Gianfransesco family in Providence - we'll all miss Louie, but hopefully the legacy will remain in everlasting chili-cheese omelettes, black coffee, and cold Bud on tap for breakfast. And finally I was riding home in the bus today and I was thinking about what a good ride this was. It was good to be going home, back to La Trinidad, I thought, and since yesterday at 6:00 a.m. I've been in a solid bus groove so there was that. It was the final leg home, the most familiar one, and I felt a part of the family bus feeling that prevailed on this mellow Sunday morning ride. The seats were all filled, and a few folks stood casually in the aisles, but no one was packed in. I sat up against the window, and a beautiful eight-year old girl slept against my other shoulder, leaning into me like we were old buddies. Across the aisle, her large mother and three or four siblings sprawled about, and the mother talked easily with a friend in the seat behind her. Many other conversations were happening around the bus, and it felt like a big, windy living room.

I sat and read, devouring four or five pages at a time and then looking up and around and out the window, stretching my neck, and then going in again. Since the ferry yesterday morning in Costa Rica, I had read over 200 pages of Kenneth Lynn's 'Hemingway', and I had about 400 to go. It's a big book and served as a pillow last night while traveling through the sunset from the Tican border to Managua.

It was cool in the bus this morning and the sky was alternately white and gray, with random light sprinklings. When the vendors got on and walked through the seats, you could smell their wares: broiled chicken in brown, grease-stained paper bags, cut up mangoes and nancites (a sweet, orange vomit-smelling fruit) in clear plastic bags, corn masa pancakes called guilira that you bought and ate with salty cuajada cheese, and boiled corn on the cobs, called elotes. Or sometimes the smells came on the breezes from outside the bus: burning brush and rice husks, or fresh rain on hot asphalt.

I was returning to my site from a very far way off. If not in miles, Costa Rica was worlds away from the life I was coming back to. Maybe it was meeting so many other travelers at Playa Tamarindo and Monteverde. Hanging out with Derek and Brian. Spending time with other North Americans who actually were NOT in the Peace Corps! Having to explain what I'm doing here from scratch and seeing people's reactions gave me a refreshing look on it all. It made me think about going home eight months from now and what that might be like. Then I thought about the end being in sight and the talk I had last night with my buddy Seth who finished his service and is on his way out. It was a really great conversation, late-night up in the dark balcony of Santos. I lay awake in bed afterwards ('Good communication is as stimualting as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after,' said Anne Morrow Lindberg) and wrote down some notes so that I'd remember what he said to me. It was a long conversation and we covered a lot of big topics: development, women, opportunity, creativity, Peace Corps, the future. It was all healthily interspersed with light talk about foods we missed the most, movies, movie quotes, and the role of the foreskin in performing dick tricks. Seth is gone now, traveling through Panama and then Cuba before flying home to New Jersey. But last night, he was still in Nicaragua and I was trying to get an idea of what it was going to be like.

"So you just said goodbye to your site?" I asked.
"Yeah, I pulled out yeseterday."
"How was that?"
"It was really tough, Josue. Much more difficult than I thought it'd be."
"What made it so different from other goodbye's?"
"Dude, for the last six months, I've been dreaming," he started, raising his voice a little and revealing how important it was for him to talk about this. "I've been dreaming about my future, about where I'm going to live, the places I'm going to see, the jobs I'm going to have. I can do anything I want now! I can make money, lots of it if I want to. I can do anything and things are going to Change for me and nothing - Nothing is going to change for them!"
"Isn't that pessismistic?"
"I dunno, maybe, but it's probably the truth."
"Is it like you're abandoning them?"
"Yeah, I mean what right do I have to have these opportunities? What did I ever do?" "It's not a question of 'rights'," I said. "It's chance maybe, luck, I dunno."

I trailed off and we were quiet for a moment. Then he started in a calmer voice.
"It really hit me yesterday. I was standing in the living room of my more-or-less adopted Nica family and they were all there - mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, all the kids, the random adults, the babies, the pregnant mothers; the floor was dirt, the kitchen smoke was black and thick against the ceiling and everyone stood there looking at me. I felt like an idiot standing there with my backpack on the ground and I was so psyched to leave and here they all were, staring at me, all those eyes, and it was suddenly so fucking sad and I fucking lost it, man."
"Wow, dude." Silence while we both looked straight ahead and rocked in our chairs.
"I've heard it's even tougher going back to visit your site," I said.
"O yeah?"
"Yeah, well think about it. You go back in ten years and visit that same family and you're in the same room and all those eyes are still looking at you only there's more of them, more babies and more pregnant mothers."
"Yeah."
"And think about how different you'll be in ten years - ten more years of crazy experiences like these - how much that changes you."
"It's fucking intense, man."
"No shit. So what do you think you'll miss the most?"
"It's wierd, cause I've thought about that and my answer is basically the flip side of what we were just talking about - but I'm really going to miss the Simplicity of Life, the day-by-day, relaxed way of living. I mean, if there's no change, no future, no dominating drive to make more and more money and have a better and better career, you're left with some pretty relaxing siestas in the hammock."

"Just like that Mexican fisherman thing in 'Va Pue'."
"What Mexican fisherman thing - I didn't read that."
"It's exactly what we're talking about and it really sums up a lot. I got it e-mailed to me like four different times and put in Va Pue. I think it's called 'Putting Things in Perspective.' Basically, an American businessman dude is at a pier in a small coastal Mexican village when a fisherman pulls up to the dock in his little boat. Inside the small boat are a couple of nice yellowfin tuna. The American compliments the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asks how long it took to catch them. The Mexican dude says, 'Only a little while.' The American asks why not stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican says he doesn't need to, he has enough for today's dinner. So the American asks, 'But what do you do with the rest of your time?' The Mexican's like 'O, I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, Señor.' The American scoffs, 'I'm a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.' The Mexican fisherman asks, 'But, how long will this all take?' The American says, '15-20 years.' 'But what then, Señor?' The American laughs and said, 'That's the best part. When the time is right you announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich; you would make millions.' 'Millions, Señor? Then what?' The American says, 'Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings, sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.'"

At this last part, Seth smiled broadly and said, "That's fucking awesome dude. That's it!"
"Yeah," I said, "Except for all the upland campesinos who can't just go out and catch a nutritious meal everyday."
"And they all have starving kids, starving dogs, starving horses, and you can see the ribs sticking out on all of them. . ."
"It's fucked up," I said, summarizing Nicaragua, summarizing the world. We sat in the darkness of Santos for a while, silent, rocking in the chairs, digesting it all. After a little while we said our goodbyes and went off to our rooms.

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Josue Berman Alcaldia, 4 cuadras al norte La Trinidad, Esteli Nicaragua, Centroamerica tele#: (011) 505-742-2343 POR AVION, DIOS TE AMA!
jberman@xxx.xxx.xx (Joshua Berman)
"There's a very fine line between clever and stupid." -Nigel Tufnel =================================================