Simmons GSLIS: Dispatches from the Field

We were told we should save some time on Friday afternoon for an event in the library – some sort of sendoff. We had no idea what to expect, but at 2:00 the three of us showed up and were directed to chairs in the main activity area. The power had been out all day in town, so the library was lit by the bright sun streaming through the windows. All of the tables had been cleared out of the way, and kids were swarming over the place while preparations were made in a back room.

After a bit, one of the librarians came out and handed us each a book from the library’s collection: an illustrated version of Rubén Dario’s A Margarita Debayle.

Dario is widely considered the poet laureate of Nicaragua and a key figure in modern Spanish-language literature. Margarita is a classic tale that is familiar to Nicaraguans throughout the country.

It soon became clear that the librarians and kids were planning an encore presentation of a dramatic rendition of the poem they had prepared for a library event several months back. We settled back, leafing through the books while we waited. Unfortunately, it’s hard to convey the lyricism of the original poem in English – in fact, John Holcombe has written an interesting article on the challenges of translating this poem.

Suddenly, the pageantry began, and the room was filled with children dressed as flowers, princesses, kings, elephants, and even Jesus himself. The costumes were phenomenal – more crafty creations by SJDS librarians Heidy and Ruth.

The poem itself is relatively short – it tells the story of a beautiful princess whose father had all sorts of wonderful things – a palace of diamonds, a herd of elephants, a “kiosk of malachite,” and much more. His daughter sees a star in the sky, and, being naughty, wants to go collect it to make a brooch. She journeys into the sky and takes the star. When her father finds out what she has done, he is angry and orders the star be returned. But Jesus appears and tells her that the stars are roses given to the children as a reminder of his presence.

The kids acted out this tale while we swiveled our heads between the books and their makeshift “stage.” When they finished, we requested an encore, and they repeated the presentation. The flowers then doffed their petals, and we all shared refrescos and sugar wafers, along with some goodbyes. 24 hours later the three of us would be on a plane bound for the U.S.

Somehow, it’s hard to imagine a better wrap-up for our last afternoon in Nicaragua.

One of the few historical images we were able to locate of San Juan del Sur. This was one of two framed images that Jane had in her hotel. Provenance and date are unknown.

History lies buried just beneath the surface in San Juan del Sur. While new houses and condos for wealthy expatriates spring up on its borders, the town itself bears the scars of Nicaragua’s troubled history.

The nearly two decades of fighting – first to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship in the 1970s and then between Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government and the Contra rebels in the 1980s affected lives throughout the country.

We didn’t meet anyone who fought in the 1979 revolution, in which the FSLN — Frente Sandinista de Liberation Nacional — succeeded in the brutal Somoza family dictatorship that had controlled the country for 40 years. (On Victoria’s flight home, she sat next to a Managuan man who told her that all of those people were dead or living in the mountains up North.) By most accounts, the revolution in 1979 brought about numerous reforms in Nicaraguan society, including democratic elections and a national constitution. Other reforms included literacy initiatives, education reform, rights for women, and improved conditions for the poor.

Many argue that in the years following the revolution, the Sandinista government under Daniel Ortega stagnated and lost touch with its initial socialist ideals. One gentleman that we met in San Juan who worked for the library told us that the FSLN doesn’t care at all about the poor now. “Everything they do is bajo de la mesa” (under the table),” he told us. Despite having lost elections in the past, Daniel Ortega is considered a frontrunner in this November’s presidential elections. A cash infusion from the Venezualan government of Hugo Chavez has allowed the Sandinistas to blanket the country with massive billboards promoting Ortega’s candidacy.

We did meet several people who vividly recalled the counterrevolution in the 1980’s, in which the US-backed “Contra” rebels fought to overthrow the Sandinista government.

I talked to Juanita, a petite woman who now performs kitchen and housekeeping chores in Jane’s hotel. Juan, who works the hotel desk at night also joined the conversation. They told of patrolling in the mountains with shovels and pistols during the 1980s to prevent soldiers from Ortega’s Sandinista governement from marching into town and conscripting teenagers to fight in the war. When soldiers were spotted, the town’s boys and young men would be sent into hiding in holes and cellars until the danger of conscription had passed.

Lest you think the Sandinistas were the only ones conscripting youngsters, we also talked to John, a native of Nicaragua’s east coast, who recounted in his lilting Carribean-accented English how he had initially been drafted into the Sandinista army, had deserted, and then had been conscripted by the Contras and forced into basic training. In both cases, he said, it was unclear to him what he was being forced to fight for. He eventually escaped to Costa Rica until the war ended.

Returning from an afternoon out with the bookmobile one day, Alvaro, one of the drivers, explained that the dirt road we were traveling had originally been the railroad route connecting San Juan del Sur with Managua. It lasted until the rails were torn up, perhaps in the 1950s. Eager to feed our interest in local history, he took us to the river and showed us the few pilings that remained of the railroad bridge where it crossed into town, bringing cargo and visitors from Nicaragua’s larger, more prosperous communities. “Where did it go?” we asked. He motioned with his arm and pointed to the sea. “Like what happened in Indonesia?” we asked him. Yes he said, a tidal wave 15 or 20 years ago had washed the bridge away, along with homes near the river.

“Are there any photos?” we wanted to know. With a gleam in his eye, Alvaro veered off the route and pulled up to a small home on a street corner. He yelled inside to one of the residents. “Do you have that old picture of San Juan?” The man nodded yes, but said that his mother was home and was expecting guests. Undaunted, Alvaro zipped down the street to an Internet café (perhaps “Cyber Leo’s”) and told us to go inside. On the wall above the desk, he pointed to a faded photo of San Juan del Sur as it looked in roughly 1990 – a sleepy fishing village with none of the pricey new condos in the hills. Alvaro left us with a promise to locate other old photos of town–maybe one that the barbershop has — and mail us photocopies. I don’t use email, he told us.

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Knowing of our interest in local history, Jane Mirandette mentiond that we should talk to Rudolfo, a local history expert. One day, we ran into him by chance in the library, where he was poring over a book on fish. We introduced ourselves and in short order we had plans to meet in his home the following afternoon.

Rudolfo’s small apartment sits atop a pizza parlor near San Juan del Sur’s beachfront strip. He has been a fisherman and a teacher at a technical school for decades, and many days he can be seen hunched over a book on his open balcony. At night he frequents a pool hall a block away, and can occasionally be found sipping a drink on the patio opposite the Casa Blanca hotel. During the day, he fishes in the surf using the traditional tackle – a cord wrapped around a weathered board with two tiny bits of lead wieghting down the lure.

When we arrived at Rudolfo’s apartment on Tuesday afternoon, he led us up the crooked spiral staircase into his sunny living room. Arrayed in front of him on a piece of corrugated cardboard were items that gave tantalizing hints of San Juan del Sur’s past. There was a large rock filled with marine fossils, primitive tools and weapons made of stone, and heads from pottery figures: a bird, a devil-like creature, and several other pieces. Rudolfo said the ceramic items date back hundreds of years to the time before the Spanish conquest of the region. He believes that the stone tools and fossils are thousands of years old.

More recent – but still ancient history for a town on the move – was a medallion used during Cornelius Vanderbilt’s short-lived coast-to-coast multimodal transit system during the California gold rush in the mid-1800s. He also had photocopies of a tiny engraving of the town as it looked in 1850, and a newspaper article published decades ago in Managua celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first telegraph line between Corinto and San Juan.

Rudolfo found many of the items in the ground near San Juan, others were gifts from academics and archaeologists he has known. “Why do you have them?” we wanted to know. He told us there was no where nearby to house them. With each successive municipal government, everything in the city hall had been gotten rid of. It seemed not to make sense to him to try and put them in anyone else’s hands.

After we picked his brain (and made him repeat things a number of times – talking about pre-Columbian archaeological finds stretched our utilitarian Spanish vocabularies to the limit), Rudolfo turned the tables and asked us for help. He has been teaching himself English, and was interested in checking his pronunciation. He had grouped his lesson book into categories, with indexes written in pen on the cover of a spiral bound notebook. He turned first to animal words, and we went through a book he had with photographs. It is perhaps questionable whether starting out with animals like “Ocelot” is the most effective way to learn English, but if Rudolfo ever ends up visiting an American zoo he’ll be all set.

While we had found tantalizing hints of the city’s hidden past, I still hoped to find something that would tie it all together. The day before we left town, I followed up on a tip I’d gotten from someone about a “House of Culture” located somewhere near the working port. I walked down toward the waterfront and passed the “Palacio de Communicacion,” an elegant blue building constructed in the early 1940s. It now contains a tiny post office and the offices of Enitel, Nicaragua’s national phone network. After walking back and forth, I finally found the “house of culture”, a thatch-roofed building with several businesses inside. I walked in and spoke with two people who worked at a language school being operated out of the building. When I said I was interested in local history, they said they didn’t know much, but if I came back in the afternoon someone might be there who could help.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time and was unable to follow up on this latest lead. But this encounter seems to follow the pattern of so much other local history: it is located in the heads and closets of the townspeople, not in any sort of formal museum or archive. Now that San Juan del Sur is changing so rapidly, it’s worrisome that there appears to be so little documentary evidence of local history. Will the children of today only know the town that is now growing up around them – the one with the massive homes on the hillsides and tourist-oriented businesses near the waterfront? Or will they understand the deeper (and sometimes more troublesome) aspects of their local history?

On our last day in San Juan, we met a Canadian midwife, Cynthia, who had returned to Nicaragua for the third time to document midwifery practices in Nicaragua. She spent hour after hour in her room, transcribing and translating the oral histories that she was slowly gathering on her trips into the countryside. Her work was a bright spot, and points to the need for the myriad groups working in Nicaragua to document the work that they do. With that in mind, our little blog goes out into the world. Look for us on Google…

On Thursday, Victoria and I took a day off and decided to rent bikes and head for a beach about 12 kilometers north of town. We got our bikes from a shop located deep within a courtyard of a house in town. The helpful man with one arm who rented them to us pointed out the way to the beaches using a map painted on the wall of the bike shop. He reminded us to buy some water and fruit. Before leaving, we bought mamonchinos and bananas from the Mercado.

To get out of town, we biked down to the beach, walked our bikes across the Rio San Juan (at this point not even reaching the ocean), and hit the road. I should have suspected that there would be trouble ahead when my bike threw its chain about 10 minutes into the trip, but we pried it loose, put it back on track, and continued on.

As we headed out of town, we noticed the roads getting muddier and muddier – apparently it had rained recently in the campo. The rutted dirt roads — a challenge for bikers in dry weather — become an obstacle course as we dodged rocks, mud puddles and other hazards. Our progress wasn’t helped by the lack of working gears and brakes on our bikes, and we found ourselves walking on the larger hills.

After we’d gone a few miles, the rain started. What began as a slow tropical drizzle soon became a torrential thunderstorm that filled the ditches and raised creeks over portions of the road. During the journey, we were accompanied by school kids and everyday folk traveling on bikes like they probably do everyday. Our “adventure” was their commute.

At one point as we trudged up a dirt road on a steep hill in the Nicaraguan countryside, Victoria observed that the torrent of muddy water rushing toward us looked like chocolate milk. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves belting out “On the big rock candy mountain” into the pouring rain. (Well, ok, I was doing most of the singing – but I’m sure Victoria would have joined in if she had known the words.)

After a few false starts and backtracks we made it to Playa Madera. This wasn’t the beach we originally set out for, but after the amount of time we’d spent in the mud, we weren’t inclined to be picky!

Madera is known locally as a surfer beach. There’s a tiny blue-painted “bed and breakfast,” which consists of a bunch of tiny cubbies and hammocks, a changing area cobbled together out of palm thatch and sheet metal, and massive waves breaking over stunning rock formations. You can “comprar una cerveza” at the bar attached to the surfer shack and then just kick back and watch the waves.

We plopped down on a rock and broke out our slightly drenched but utterly satisfying lunch: peanut butter and raisin sandwiches on white Bimbo (think Wonder Bread), lychees, mushy bananas and strange Nica “churro” snack chips. We then stashed our things behind a piece of driftwood and hopped in the ocean for a swim.

The ocean at Madera is far different from the sheltered playa in town. Here the waves roll in with great force, and strong currents toss you around. People come here to feel the power of the ocean, not to drift lazily in the surf. We played in the water for a bit (despite the continuing rain) and then saddled up for the return trip.

As we rode back toward town, we rapidly became coated with thick Nicaraguan mud. To our utter amazement, however, just about all of the Nicas we passed going the other way on bicycles were perfectly clean – balancing above the mud in their typically spotless clothes. We have no idea of their secret, but there’s a lesson to be learned there!

When we reached the Rio San Juan, we stopped to take “after” pictures.

Victoria and I are both now staying in homes in town. Our situations vary, but in both cases the inconsistent availability of water has made showering difficult. I ended up splashing water over myself to get the worst of the mud off and then sneaking back into Jane’s hotel for a true shower. Not sure I’ve ever been so grateful for running water!

We capped off our day by watching an overcast sunset while sipping Tonas on a patio near the beach. Overall, an exhausting and exhilarating day.

New Biblioteca Movil Patrons

Originally uploaded by D-.

New patrons of the San Juan del Sur Biblioteca Movil show off their selections on Tuesday, August 22, 2006.

Three little pigs visit the Movil

Originally uploaded by D-.

The three little pigs made a cameo appearance during a visit by the San Juan del Sur Biblioteca Movil to a school in the countryside near Rivas, Nicaragua on Tuesday, August 22, 2006.

New library cards

Originally uploaded by D-.

Students apply for new library cards during the first visit of the San Juan del Sur Biblioteca to a tiny school between San Juan and Rivas, Nicaragua.

Dave’s hand on the Movil

Originally uploaded by D-.

Dave sports a “READ” tatoo from the American Library Association while working on the Biblioteca Movil project in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

The camionetas (pickup trucks) arrived outside the library around 8 AM, and in short order, volunteers and library staff loaded it to the gills with Rubbermaid bins of books and other mobile library necessities.

Once again we were heading out to the campo with the Movil project, bringing books to students at the tiny one- and two-room schoolhouses that dot the Nicaraguan countryside. This time, the three of us we were accompanied by four library staffers and three other volunteers from various walks of life. (Including Mike, the Wentworth professor here documenting the Wentworth bridge project.)

We were headed for two schools buried deep in the countryside, almost all the way to Rivas. The first school — quite literally at the end of the road — was a small building next to a modest country church. It contained two rooms, but had only half of a roof. There was a thatched arbor in front of the building, but it provided scant protection from the stifling humidity.

In addition to the normal complement of books and sports equipment, we brought a few extras along on this trip, including boxes of crayons, a pack of bubble soap that I’d picked up back in Somerville, and temporary tattoos saying “READ” that Denise had gotten from the American Library Association. Once kids had exchanged their books, they were able to play with some of the other goodies. The bubbles were a huge hit (we accidentally left all six containers at the school, so they’re likely still enjoying them), as were the crayons.

While we were there, a woman came walking down the dusty road with a baby and a toddler carrying two books, which she returned to the library.

Soon enough the time came to pack up, and we loaded the cartons back in the truck. Everyone piled in, and we headed for our next destination. Always up for a new adventure, Victoria and I exchanged amused glances in the back seat of the truck as Alvaro suddenly turned off the road and began driving up a narrow creek bed. A moment later he stopped, hopped out, and engaged the four-wheel drive – this was some hardcore offroad driving! Even with the added traction, our truck struggled to make it up the steep incline of the road that suddenly emerged from the creek bed. After a false start and some wheel spinning, we made it up the hill and found ourselves practically in front of another small school – one the Movil had never visited before.

The “Library in a box” protocols used in San Juan del Sur (and now being implemented elsewhere) are exceptionally simple. Potential borrowers first fill out an information card, are given a library card, and then a card is created to record the patron’s borrowing history. We watched this process take place from start to finish at the new school – students who had never before used a library were soon sifting through the cartons of books and checking them out to take home. It was an inspiring experience.

After the books, more games, drawing, and more “READ” tattoos, we reloaded the camioneta, and all of the kids climbed up on top of the boxes of books for a group photo.

Following the trip in the mobile, we took our usual lunch at a local beach – this time Marsella, yet another playa bonita with a thatch-roofed bar (closed when we were there), a boat building operation, and waves crashing over beautiful rock outcroppings. We ate our ham sandwiches, waded in the surf, and eventually headed back to town.

For us, the working on the Movil is a new and inspiring experience. But the real credit goes to the library staff in San Juan del Sur, who keep the operation running week after week. Their dedication to putting books in the hands of children in their own communities is an inspiration.

The title of my one and only blog entry is my meager attempt to convey the essence of this incredible experience in Nicaragua. David and Victoria have done such a great job of keeping you in the loop that there’s not much I would add in the way of specifics; however, I will chime in with some general impressions as we all too quickly approach our departure.

Every day was like a cup runneth over, complete with a “close to the bone” element or two. Revele is the community chorus of roosters that serves as loud alarm clocks every morning (often times much, much earlier than our respective waking-up times)! It certainly felt “close to the bone” to ride in the back of a pick-up truck over bumpy dirt roads to reach one-room schoolhouses in the countryside, as part of the biblioteca movil project. While back in town and working at the library it’s “close to the bone” to look out on the main street through an open door, seeing and hearing the local folk greet the librarians as they walk by the biblioteca, some even stopping to talk and ask questions through the Dutch door that opens onto the main activity room. “Close to the bone” is working in a hot, muggy space with no electricity for hours on end (Jane’s hotel has a generator, but the library does not). “Close to the bone” is translating library policies with the local librarians and witnessing their implementation of some of the policies while you work. “Close to the bone” defines how you feel when a cadre of barefoot children surround you with palm fronds or other items they have made, hoping you’ll be able to give them a few of your cordobas. Close to the bone…the meat is definitely much sweeter.