Being Reabsorbed Into The Fold and the Importance of Blessed Dinette Sets.

In the states I can drive a car, work a reasonably complicated job, handle a mortgage, do all sorts of things. Here I am stymied by a $12 cell phone. Totally stymied. I got into college with less effort than it’s taking me to figure this out.

The instruction book is entirely in Spanish. Entirely. I try to decode it to no avail. The last chapter in the manual is called ‘juego’. Juego? Isn’t that the word for juice? How is juice involved in this?

Jesus God. I am helpless.

I bag the whole thing and go to Lilly’s toting phone, manual, and box. Help. Please. I fuck around with my blog, read some emails while she fixes the time, figures out what my number is, messes with it. Lilly deserves a combat medal for landlady-ing. She hands it back to me, reads me numbers to put in my address book. Her. Donna. One of the other people living in the house. The peace corps couple that helps at the clinic.

Lilly has a new cat, Esquina, Spanish for corner. I ask her about it. Some kids had it in a plastic bag on the corner outside the café she tells me. Donna chased them down and took it. She was yelling at them ‘Give me that kitten, you little fuckers”. I adore Donna. And they handed it over to her and here it be, lounging on the sofa in the courtyard next to Pacino.

The ex-pat couple that lives around the corner projects movies onto the side of a building every Friday night. They have a little slideshow/documentary about Calle Santa Lucia they always play first. It starts at six but by the time we head over at 5.45 the street is packed. The whole neighborhood - young, old - turns out for this. I sit on the stairs between Lilly and Esperanza, an elderly Nica woman from across the street. Two American women who rent apartments at Santa Lucia Social Club come out, too. Aside from us and the guy who owns the house and does the slideshow, the rest of the crowd is Nica. It’s already a street party - people are visiting back and forth.

The first few strains of classical music play and the slideshow starts. Everyone goes silent and then it becomes audience participation. A picture of the hot dog stand starts everyone cheering. Everyone loves hot dogs. Same for a picture of the tomato vendor. Those are good tomatoes. A picture of a couple kissing slides across the screen and every whistles and hoots, ay-yay-yay, suggestive noises, even the elderly people are laughing.

The Pulperia on the corner gets big cheers, as does a picture of the street sign for Calle Santa Lucia. Another street sign, for a street a few blocks up, gets hisses. Everyone is happy, laughing. A picture of the house of the ex-pat who does this comes up. Everyone whistles and hollers. He raises his hands above his head. The music changes to an upbeat Nica pop song. The teenagers clap with the beat.

A few pics of the bicycle repair shop on the corner are crowd pleasers. A picture of the sign for the funeral home elicits some hissing. Dead people don’t go over too big. There are photos of almost everyone in the neighborhood and whenever someone’s picture comes up everybody ribs them, hoots, whistles, laughs. There has to be fifty people out with more gathering and everyone is laughing, enjoying themselves.

In the states this would require ten different kinds of permits and several noise complaints. Here it’s what happens on Friday nights. The Calle Santa Lucia show followed by a movie projected on the wall. Tonight it’s a James Bond thing but most people drift off after the slideshow.

After the slideshow ends we mill around on the corner for a while, chatting. Lilly introduces me to some of the Nica neighbors. I chat with one of the American women staying at the Social Club. All of a sudden an older woman in a batik dress walks up on the sidewalk. I recognize the voice before I turn around. Kit, my clinic compatriot. I stand up and she hugs me long and hard. We catch up.

We are, she says, going to Corn Islands in June. Has Donna talked to you about that yet? No, I say, I haven’t seen Donna. She came by to see me this morning but I was still asleep. Kit’s in a hurry, she wants to leave for her house at the Laguna before it gets much darker. She’ll tell you, she says cryptically. We’re going.

As she leaves drums start up in the street. A procession turns the corner - a priest, some altar boys, a bunch of people carrying a statue of Jesus holding the cross, a truck with a loudspeaker on it blaring prayers and hymns. It’s followed by a herd of vendors - cotton candy, sweets, cheap toys, ice cream carts. We stand in front of the Social Club and watch. People are hauling tables out of their houses and onto the street. I am Catholic and have no idea what the fuck is happening here. Lent, Lilly explains. Every Friday during Lent churches take turns doing these blessings and processions. They’re blessing the tables.

I grew up steeped in Catholicism and I have no fucking idea about the hows and whys of table blessing. Even still I adore it - it’s pure Catholic theater - gaudy and public and compelling and completely indecipherable.

Between this and the slide show ask me why I love it here. Go ahead.

After the parade moves on I go in, grab my laptop, head out. The plan is stop by Café Chavalos, see Donna, then head to the vegetarian restaurant with wireless access, finish some online stuff, go to the square and buy a card for my brand new $12 movi-star* cell phone. It doesn’t happen.

All the chavalos are gathered outside restaurant, smoking cigarettes, looking tough. As I walk up they start hooting, whistling, mama mama, bee-yoo-tee-ful. When I turn to walk up the stairs they clam up, look embarrassed. They didn’t realize I was coming in. Oopsy.

It’s so good to see Donna. She looks the same - busy and social and in control. I compliment her on a prestigious award she won from the US government for citizen diplomacy. She just laughs.

There’s a new couple there, she’s from Australia, he’s from London. They own a restaurant here. We talk for a long time. She used to be a high powered personal assistant to a billionaire in London. They had a Mercedes SUV, a nice house. They bagged it all to move here and do this. It’s a better life, she says. Some things are just more important, more fulfilling than money.

I understand. I like them enormously and they’re well traveled, ridiculously funny.

We have extra room in our side yard, they tell me. We can set up some runs for street dogs who need some rehab. We talk about an enormous pregnant sarna dog roaming around in Parque Central. I’ll try to get it tomorrow I tell them. I have a slip lead. Donna agrees. Do it, she says. We talk about another dog, a sweet older dog with mange who hangs out on La Calzadera, begging off the restaurants. We should bring that one in, too, if we can. It’s small, cute, personable. It should be in a home.

We have room, the couple tells me. Do it. Good people.

Tomorrow the Sarna Dog rodeo begins.

Donna brings up the Corn Islands. They have a huge dog problem out there- we were contacted by some people. We’re going out in June with a vet team to do a spay/neuter blitz. You’re coming to assist.

I have to leave on the 25th, I tell her. She waves me off. It’ll be before that. It’ll be fine.
The feral cat issue comes up again. We only have one trap, she tells me. We need more.
I have a friend coming on the 20th, I tell her. I’ll see if she can help, maybe wrangle one up. If anyone can get their hands on a cat trap and get it through customs it’s Kristen. Leashes too, she says. We can use some leashes. Soft slip leads, some collar and leash sets.

I keep meaning to leave but the conversation never slows. Everyone else leaves, the restaurant is empty but for the four of us. Glass of glass of wine arrives. The conversation deteriorates to True Stories of Horrific Intestinal Distress, gossip about the ex-pat community. It gets later and later. There will be no cell phone card tonight.

After about four hours I manage to peel myself away, head home. Futilely I try to fire a text off to the states but it won’t go through. I fall asleep to the sounds of horse hooves hitting the pavement outside my window.

A note on the nature of slideshows, table blessing parades, Nicaragua: Nicaragua is not Mexico. In Mexico and a lot of other tourist areas you get manufactured events, fiestas put on to give gringos a display of what street life is like in Central America. What happens on Calle Santa Lucia, in Parque Central, is entirely organic, natural. No tequila company is selling shots at the slideshow. You cannot buy large velvet sombreros. No tour buses follow the Lenten parades. If every ex-pat and tourist was to leave Granada tomorrow, tables would still be blessed, chairs would still be pulled out onto the sidewalks for evening social hour. Not to say there is not tourist crap in Granada - there is plenty of it. But these things I describe are not tourist events. It’s just daily people in their daily lives interfacing with their communities, having fun, taking care of each other.

A little whiny gringa side note in contrast: Another Nicaraguan exercise in futility - cotton balls. I go to four different farmacias, a ton of Pulperias. Not only does no one know what the hell I’m talking about, no one has them. I draw pictures, write the words down. Nothing. I get offered cotton pads, rolls of gauze, q-tips, but no cotton balls. I’d like to say this is a serious clinic issue but in reality I just use them to clean my face. Even still it’s annoying.

A couple of picture notes: the religious pictures are not from Friday night - they’re from the Lenten parade down Calle Santa Lucia today. Different Jesus statue, no table blessing, same idea. The dog is the dog from Calle La Calzadera who is known to everyone as Teddy and who we decided not to bring in as the bar owners feed him and he’s in pretty good shape, sarna aside. There are bigger fish to fry.

* no, it’s not some sort of super glamorous phone. It’s actually a cheap Nokia - that’s just the name of the company.