Ya lo terminá

My project is done. And I am glad for that. Because I was starting to get really annoyed by things that can’t be helped like my poor Spanish and the fact that the Campesinos speak something other than Spanish anyways (read: the equivalent of Stantonese as compared to the Queen’s English), Carlos and his damned radio on all the time, the fields and mountains of mud, slow moving horses through the mud, never knowing what EXACTly is going on and just having to be patient and hope everything works out, boots that don’t fit, etc. My Spanish is actually better these days. I can have a conversation with cabbies and with Carlos, and I generally understand most things even if it takes them several times of repeating and me searching my brain for what in the hell “vuelta” or “salgo” mean (what tense of what infinitive verb IS that?!). Now that I’m done, I will wait for the plane to leave to Managua on Monday or Tuesday, and spend a week visiting more touristy locations: Granada, Masaya, Ometepe. And then return home to re-appreciate things I forgot were luxuries like q-tips, salads without parasites, yogurt (pasteurized no less!), warm running clean water (each of those four words is a luxury), comfortable beds and quiet nights, washing machines.

Impetigo

There’s a med student named Ben here who did some work with a surgeon in Kenya and also worked here for 8 months on a water quality improvement project and is back to visit and check on the repercussions of his work—he happened to bring his pathology textbook with him and we had some fun looking up what the fuck is going on with my poor legs. Yes, it is impetigo, but it’s the advanced type, marked not just by pimplish things that weep honey colored crusties, but also by big blisters that you can see through to see tiny ropes of pus streaming into the weepage. Gross but totally fascinating. Terribly itchy but very contagious, so I can’t scratch them because getting the bacteria under my fingernails is the fastest way to spread it. The pustules—I think this is really interesting—are caused by a toxin made by the bacteria that separates the desmogoin molecule, which holds the layers of skin together. This is the difference between impetigo and pemphigus folliceaus, which is an autoimmune problem. Neat.
Finally found some antibiotics to treat it here in Managua. About damn time, it's nearly covering my legs, and all the Nicaraguense stare them. Funny, for once to be stared at for a reason other than simply being white. They joke that my legs are like the Sandanista flag: red (impetigo) and black (hairy). Thanks, guys, thanks. One of the pustules, I think, has caused a boil. It's right at the side of my knee and it really hurts. Hope it is relieved SOON!

Jungle Trail Ubiquities

Swallowtail butterflies swarm
Like bats against the daytime sky

Ants crusade, brandishing
Green-leaf dorsal fin blades

Bamboo, like fireworks, vault far from Earth
Then explode in your face to grab clothes and hair

Ass is saved from the saddle
By clenching buttcheeks

Howler monkeys argue yonder,
Always in earshot, never seen

Haunting heart-shaped leaves everywhere leer
Constant ironic reminders of inhospitability here

Yellow clouds of butterflies
Make shit appear gold.

Between Astounding Vistas

I arrive from an astounding vista,
Behind a tall curlyheaded prince
Who carries a gleaming spear.
No, that’s just his radio antenna.

Other things sparkle and gleam here too:
The people’s teeth, with their star or initials-in-gold inlay
And rubber boots, slick with mud.

¡Buena’! we call to the children who stare, silent
From thatched houses that go up in two days.
The pet love-birds answer us though.

We dismount and tie our beasts to a post.
The animal life here is as abundant as the plant life
Of the neighboring jungle, though not as verdant.

Dog skeletons walk around scavenging what they can
And wear scars of scolding scalding oil on their flea-bitten coats
From the woman who guards and never leaves her wood burning adobe stove.

She serves me cuajada, cheese from the cows, and rice with beans
But I sometimes swallow only my appetite as bald
Ugly chickens with occasional sparse feathers “cheep” by my feet.

Slingshots hang, alongside names written in charcoal
On the boards of this minifalda home, to shoot down mangoes.
Curly wire from an old notebook, too, for some future use.

The rain passes, the cows arrive, we tie one still,
I collect some blood, give my tests, mark her
Thank the jefe, bossman, mount again and ride off
Into another astonishing vista.

Mi favorito juego

My favorite game to play here is “How Many Times in One Month Can a Gringa Go Back and Forth Between Hormiguerro and Siuna While Still Getting Data from Outlying Communities”. Each week I have to change a little bit of American money in order to pay our guides ($6/day) and our horses, or bestias ($3 each/day). Somehow during my week-long Doing Nothing In Siuna Week, I never managed to find a place that was either a)open, or b)able to change a $50 bill. And so Monday morning I had to catch the truck out to Hormiguerro without any money to pay my weeks worth of “staff” with plans to return mid week and pay the guides the second half of the week.
Monday we went out to Consuelo, just Carlos and myself (Cristobal went defunct when he learned he wasn’t getting paid since he’s a student. Crappy), with our guide. This, certainly, has been the most intense ride out to any community thus far, which is saying a lot. Not just hillsides of mud, but steep mountains of mud for the horses to slip down. Three rivers to cross that were deep enough that just the very tip of the horses backs were out of the water. My horse, of course, stopped in the middle of one. All the spurring, whip cracking, and prodding, squeezing, yelling wouldn’t make her budge, so I had to jump off into the river, hold my backpack above my head and drag her to the other side with me. After the day of work, we walked from our guide’s house back to a building (couldn’t determine if it was a monastery or an empty health outpost. Could be both, I guess). That’s when the sole of one of my boots (the ones that were sprouting funguses) fell off. And then I got stuck in mud to my thighs. Tee hee! One less thing I have to carry home with me. They’ve served me well; I got them almost ten years ago when I went to Scotland. Always good to give the locals something to laugh at.
As I was walking on horseback between the fincas, looking out over the view, I saw trash in the mud, and cow shit if I looked down, but if I looked up I saw butterflies migrating (there are thousands, it’s really cool), amazing clouds and coconut trees and parrots and rainforest vines. So I decided to look up and imagine everything sparkling and new and pristine, pretend that I was a princess, walking through my kingdom on my fair white steed (fleabitten grey, sunburnt nag). Then I remembered the quote from Monty Python’s In Search of the Holy Grail:

“How’d you know he was King?”
“’e ‘asn’t got shit all over ‘im”

and decided, therefore, since I had shit all over myself, that I couldn’t be Princess afterall.
We stayed in Consuelo at the Monastery/Health post in our hammocks, which was surprisingly nice—No bugs because they (the bugs) don’t know to come there to chow on people since people usually don’t live there. Also, no animals there to attract bugs. The sound of the rushing river nearby was lovely too. This morning, we rode our horses through the rivers, mud (sometimes a half mile at a time) back to Torno, and I continued to Hormiguerro on horseback from whence I walked to Siuna (20 km). Had a drunk man give me a ride on his horse until I realized he wasn’t even GOING to Siuna, he was just giving me a ride to “keep me company”. He started asking me if I was married (I told him yes, and showed him the ring Dad gave me that I wore on purpose in case this exact situation arose), and telling me he loved me and that’s when I slipped off the horse, and profusely insisted that I was strong, didn’t need a ride, asked him to return to his finca, seriously. No, seriously, señor! He eventually left, insisting he was respectful, that he just felt sorry for me and wanted to show me that Nicaraguans take care of foreigners. I assured him I appreciated the gesture and, playing his own game, that I felt sorry for him missing a day of work on his finca. I walked 15 km and then got a lift on the back of a pickup truck for the last five. Changed my dollars for cordobas, and am now resting. (internet is closed, hence this message comes several days/over a week late).