Happy Birthday to Me

I usually get the royal birthday treatment at home because mine is the first in the "birthday season" as my friends and I refer to the period between Halloween and New Years when almost everyone we know has a birthday. At the very least, there is schnapps for the grown-ups while the 20 or so kids in my neighborhood come by for candy. This year is a little different but still fun. And it isn't over yet.

Started celebrating with a chinese dinner in Managua last night. We were the only ones in the restaurant. The owner was from Hong Kong by way of the Bay Area and he was very attentive, but I can't say it was like Vancouver.

Since today I get to do whatever I want, I went running, bought donuts from the lady walking down Calzada and ate a big Nica breakfast. Then I made Jonathan accompany me to the Masaya Municipal market. I bought another apron, a plastic basket, and lots of flowers. We priced 100 pound bags of rice and beans for our trip up North.

We had Cokes in the Central Park and in a sign that it truly is my day, a lady came by with my favorite honey. She wanted to quit for the day so I bought all four beer bottles she had left for 2 bucks a piece. She wanted me to buy her a soda, too, and this is a sign of how long I have been here, I refused. I wanted to check out the Yucca festival, so Jonathan complied. There was a small festival area set up in Estacion featuring agricultural products, in particular, Yucca. I was surprised to see that it looks like a small shrub with potatoes attached for feet. I was also surprised to see Pithaya wine, so I bought two bottles, one red and one white. Although how you make anything white out of Pithaya is beyond me. I asked the guy selling it, but the music accompaning the small girls dancing on the stage in traditional dress was too loud for me to hear his response.

It began to rain really hard, as if all the rain that had been missing for the winter decided to fall on the Yucca festival in Masaya. I still had one more stop I wanted to make, Marisol Embroidery which was half a block behind the Yucca festival, but we got in the car and made a really big circle just so we wouldn't get wet. They shop had lovely cotton dresses and tops with embroidery and elegant linen suits and dresses. I bought a white gauzy sundress that is way to young for me. Really, I think it is a girl's dress. I saw a few things I liked, but they were too big so I asked if they could make me a smaller dress. I ordered a mint green linen sheath dress with cut out embroidery. The daughter of the owners waited on me, taking all my measurements for the dress. 82 cm seams like so much more than 32 inches. The dress will be ready in a week and cost 25 dollars.

I have been in Nicaragua a long time now, so I will not celebrate what a good deal this is until I actually get my dress. I asked if she had one of the blouses she was wearing in my size. No she said. Well, make me one of those, too I said.

We drove out of Masaya on roads that were muddy rivers, but they only went over the bottom of the car for about a block. My Danish/Chilean neighbors brought me flowers. Laurence and Thelma are coming by with my fruit custard tart later and I have decided to go to Chico Tripa for dinner.

Nice day.

Halloween Party

Friday night was a big Halloween Party at the kids school. Given the recent events directed at the US I was glad to see this guy with a rifle INSIDE the school gates watching the crowd which consisted entirely of small children with their families. OK there were some scary high school kids, too.

I felt even safer because this group of girls was roaming the halls.














I used up a lot of memory taking pictures of maids in uniform holding Halloween bags for their charges.

My kids were dressed up as the Jonas Brothers with their friend Hobbes. Noah played in a high school ensemble - a rousing rendition of Eleanor Rigby.

Interesting Times

Let’s just say things are a little tense here. Since the secret meeting of the Sandinista supreme court justices that overnight changed the constitution to enable Ortega to run again, there have been little protests. Eggs were thrown at one of the magistrates, and in retaliation a non Sandinista civil coordinator was beaten up by thugs reported to have been hired by Daniel. She has been saying that the government is deliberately supporting gangs in the barrios. Students protested against the attempt to take over student standards by the Sandinistas. A television reporter was beaten up at the University Rotunda. Right outside the kids school. While they were there. Thank God it has those 12 foot fences and armed guards.

Today, there was a protest at the US Embassy (we got a little email saying it might not be the best day to show up for a passport renewal). The reason was a condescending speech by the US Ambassador condemning the constitution change. He pointed out how long it takes to change the US constitution and I thought of all those years my mother spent on ERA and her bitter disappointment. Young Sandinista thugs were bussed to the Embassy. It is well fortified. The news video shows masked juveniles gleefully scribbling on signs, drinking beer and firing mortars in the air. There were only about 10 police officers standing by doing nothing.

Here in Granada, we heard cars honking and went to the door expecting to see another high school group driving around advertising a party. But it was the Frente. Packed into pick up trucks and buses. They were probably celebrating something. Sandinista black and white flags. Pink hats (the new softer Sandinista colors). It was all young men. I watched them go by and couldn’t help myself and flipped off the boys in the last truck. A big firecracker was promptly thrown on my neighbors roof.

Silvia and Lucia waited a bit and headed home. Silvia mentioned in passing she would do anything to start a new life somewhere else. They are ready to send the boys in the family to Costa Rica to keep them away from what they see as impending military service if Ortega is re-elected.

We discussed having our chele boys roll up their windows on the way to school in the morning so their little bourguoise faces wouldn’t attract attention in Managua.

I’m sad. I wanted so much for it to be a party of the people. All my years of lefty sympathy for socialist governments. What a joke this one is. A dangerous joke.

Running commentary

I'm trying to step up my miles a bit but it is hard because I have found that I detest the sensation of dripping sweat and being covered in bugs after a run. It is always interesting though. This week I saw a pickup truck full of people (AKA private mass transit) swerve to hit a dog sleeping on the left side of the road. I saw a man wheeling a hand cart down the main street. It was full of little pigs. He called out - Piglets! Piglets! just as if he had fruit or flowers in his cart. I really wanted one, but I held myself back and bought some bananas from the next cart. I ran through a herd of cows down by the lake. There were about 20 of them in varying brown and beige colors, cows and calves slowly moving down the road. A guy on a horse sort of nudged them out of my way. I saw about twenty people drink something out of a plastic bag and throw it in the street.

Is there such a thing as too much chocolate?

I roasted and ground up another two pounds of cacao yesterday. I started to make antioxidant cup cakes to take over to Laurence and Thelma's last night. Unfortunately we didn't have any electricity most of the afternoon, so my oven wouldn't light. I went to plan B and decided to try chocolate mousse. But I don't have any cookbooks; I haven't made mousse since I lived in Berlin, and there was no way to check for recipes online. I had to wing it. Amazing what we do when there is no internet. At one moment, Jules was swimming, Noah was reading a book in the hammock and I was experimenting in the kitchen. The electricity came back on just in time to throw the cupcakes together. Mousse saved for another day.

Decided it be a perfect time to try mole sauce, so today looked up a Oaxacan Colorodita and Moni and I tried to make it. Actually, I translated and told Moni what to do and she did all the work. I was very excited about having tortillas with the chicken mole, but for the first time ever, Natalie didn't come shout at my door at 5 to see if I wanted tortillas. Maybe she or her grandmother are sick. I went to ask the neighbors who were sitting in their rocking chairs on the sidewalk if they had seen her. No, not at all. I asked at the Pulperia and they said, she wasn't here today and we wanted tortillas too. They directed me to a close by pulperia and said if there weren't any tortillas there, they were not to be had this evening. It was closed up.

Jonathan was sure he would have better luck, so he took his bike and went to a different pulperia. They told him where to go into the barrio to find the tortilla lady. He went down a dirt path and asked everyone he met, yes, just down that way they said. Doña Maria's developmentally disabled son was sitting in front of the house and Jonathan asked him about the tortillas. He indicated yes and the mom called from the house - come on in. He found Doña Maria at the back of her house surrounded by a huge pile of firewood. Her gigantic comal was on a wood fire and she was throwing tortillas at an incredible rate. He asked for twenty and she said, just wait a little bit. While he waited for the tortillas, he asked her about her work. She decided to do tortillas twenty years ago so that she would have enough money to take care of her son. Her hands were calloused and she tossed and turned the tortillas directly on the grill. Jonathan came home with piping hot tortillas. They were the best yet.

The mole was amazing. We had the mousse for dessert. Yesterday, Laurence asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday. I said, fruit tart please.

Here comes the rains

The last few days have been cooler and rainy, more like the usual Granada weather for this time of year. Folks have been seen in sweaters. We found a scorpion and two snakes in the house in addition to the usual mice and doves. More ants. I guess everything is being flooded out. Last night was a really hard rain. We walked over to Laurence and Thelma's for dinner and we got soaking wet. Noah was trying to hold an umbrella over the antioxidant cupcakes I was carrying, but he kept catching the water pouring off of the roofs and redirecting it directly onto the cake. The street was a river. When we got home, water was dripping off of beams and down walls - inside a few rooms.

I don't know if it rained up north or if this is the start of enough rain to save the planting. I hope it does more than just cool everything off.

Hungry times

Even though it is north of the Equator, winter is coming to an end in Nicaragua now. This rainy season has been anything but with high temperatures and very little rain because of El Niño. Many people have told me this is the worst it has ever been. The planting has been stalled throughout the country with a prediction of NO harvest in some of the North. Other areas are looking at a harvest of only 10%. There is an official drought, and this combined with the effect of the world economic crisis (ie people already don’t have enough money to feed their families) is predicted to result in lots of hungry people. The government is buying all of the rice and bean harvest, such that it is, directly from the farmer to avoid price speculation in the coming lean months, but they are being criticized for having no plan to make sure that people can eat.

Rosemaria told me she was talking to a friend the other day who had put on a little weight. Her friend was only half joking when she said, I’m getting ready for the winter, girl, you’d better get some meat on those bones while you can. Jonathan was listening to Este Semana this week. They were talking to people in the north. They think they only have enough food for two more months.

So we are trying to figure out how to help. We are thinking of filling the car up with beans and rice and driving up north in the next few months.