And finally...

Back in Alaska. In fact I’ll probably have seen some of you by the time you read this, but that’s ok. It’s June 25, the sun is shining 20+ hours a day, and it’s not 98 degrees. I’m happy.
The last few weeks in Nicaragua were hectic, mainly due to last minute SPROUT activity. Seven of our eight university students needed their tuitions paid up through August, along with assorted other requests. I’m happy to report that at the ‘end’ of our first year in the non-profit game, we’re in the black and have met the needs of nine post-high school students, and approximately 35 school students. If all goes according to plan, that second number stands to quadruple in the 2010 school year; I’ll keep you posted. We should be getting a new-and-improved website by the end of August, so please take a look. www.sproutnicaragua.org
One morning near the end of our stay, as we sat on our porch sipping our daily smoothies (every morning I’d fling some combination of fresh pineapple, passion fruit, banana, melon, mango, ginger, etc. into our aging blender for what soon became an addiction. Best part: buying all those fruits and more, plus veggies, for around $2-$3. ALL of them.), when a couple of young men showed up in the basketball/soccer court carrying several piñatas. There were three clowns, a Miss Kitty, and what was probably meant to be a Winnie the Pooh, but more resembled the honey pot. The young men, all volunteers for the local FSLN (Sandinista) office, strung the cheerful effigies up to the basketball hoops and a couple nearby trees. The finished effect was a bit gruesome, kind of like that scene at the beginning of Braveheart where the young Wiliam Wallace finds the bodies of his fellow clansmen swaying in the abandoned hut…anyway, it wasn’t long before the square began filling with children. Hundreds of children. I spotted Reyna with her younger daughter, Milagro, and asked what was up. “It’s to celebrate Children’s Day,” she said. “I thought that was last week?”..”It was, but the mayor was busy so they’re celebrating today.” Fair enough. I returned to the porch just as the first echoes of a drum beat floated overhead. “This must be it!” I said to Pat. “What? The Apocalypse?” “No, no, the Buenos Aires Marching Band—this must be what they’ve been practicing for the last couple months. We’ll finally get to see them in action.” See, since around February, Buenos Aires’ residents have been treated to the sounds of drums nearly every afternoon and all day Saturday. We don’t see the perpetrators, however, as they remain sequestered behind the high, broken glass topped walls of the local school. But boy do we hear them. And for the most part, it wasn’t all that promising. But I knew the town was proud to have its own band, the only one in SW Nicaragua, and so I was curious to finally see them strut their stuff.
Eventually the park was packed with hundreds of kids and many parents as well. Most of the kids were preoccupied by trying to cover every square inch of grass in cellophane wrappers from the individual packets of crackers some Einstein had passed out, but a few were clearly planning their piñata assault strategies. And then the drums grew louder, and we all leaned forward to peer down the road where the first flag-bearers had just become visible. Behind them, a bevy of dancing girls, ranging in age from seven to seventeen, and including Edwin & Reyna’s older daughter, Rosita. Behind them, a line of teens with what appeared to be very large cheese graters, from which they extracted a pleasantly rhythmic jangly sound. And at last, the drums. Somewhere around 50 drummers, toting drums of all shapes and sizes, and all, amazingly enough, in near-perfect harmony. They were closely followed by the brass: a few horns, a tuba, and a couple trumpets. All those months and hours of practice paid off; they sounded spectacular. Reyna told me that this was in fact a sort of dress rehearsal, that they’d been invited to perform in Rivas for National Teachers’ Day on June 29th, and then again, as part of a nationwide competition in Managua on Sept. 14, Nicaraguan Independence Day. And with three more months of practice ahead, I think they may just stand a chance.
June was also a month of parties, including one for a friend’s nine year old. When Barefoot Jim asked her what she wanted, she replied, “Mono-polio”. This, it turned out, was not a request for two serious diseases, but the Spanish-language version of Monopoly, apparently all the rage nowadays, and locally available for the bargain price of $6. We also threw a party, a sort of combination birthday (mine)/buen viaje/barbeque over at our friend Carolyn’s place. We’d initially wanted to have pelibuey again, the fleece-less sheep/goat beastie we served last year, but laying our hands on one proved impossible. Pat and Reyna made two or three trips out to the farm that purportedly sells them, but each time were told to come back in a few hours. It seems the flock had gone astray. Patrick started muttering about lost tribes of peliguey roaming the cane fields of Buenos Aires, while Reyna suggested we’d have better luck if we just cruised around until we spotted one and tossed it in the back of the jeep. In the end, we settled on Carolyn’s succulent Beer-Butt Chicken, which I can assure you tastes far better than its ignoble name suggests.
The last few days were spent cleaning and securing the school/apartment for our absence. Edwin welded up sturdy steel gates for the back and connecting doors, and we hauled our bikes and my folding tables over to Carolyn’s for safe keeping. Beyond that, we don’t really have much of value other than the fridge, which aside from being a bit bulky to steal, has a tendency to freeze my veggies even after four visits from the repairman, and would not be that great of a loss. While we’re really not too worried about leaving the place, the reactions of Edwin’s father Reynaldo, and his wife Reyna, to my mentioning that the local police lieutenant, ‘Teniente Jorge’, promised to keep an eye on the place, was not especially reassuring. Both spontaneously burst out laughing—no—guffawing, Reynaldo to the point of tears. Once he regained control, he muttered something about Jorge being unfit to keep an eye on his own ass and left the room shaking his head and sniggering… In the cleaning process, Pat discovered the reason behind the increased field mouse activity we’d noted over the past week: five baby mice nestled in a hand-carved gourd we’d received as a gift the previous year. We were well aware that we had a couple mice; between finding mouse shit everywhere and actually seeing them dash about the place left little doubt. And we had planned to try and humanely trap and relocate them before we left, but now with the wee’uns, we knew we had to act. So Pat gently placed the babes into an empty cardboard container, and we set out a couple strips of “Papel de Gato”,or super-adhesive paper, around the lair. Sure enough, once mama realized her little ones were gone, she bolted, and found herself firmly attached to the goo. Pat managed to extricate her without damage to either of them, put her in the box with the mice-lets, and after dark, carried them a few blocks away to a field and left the open box hidden in some high grass. A couple hours later the papa mouse showed up, frantically looking for his family. We couldn’t catch him, but hopefully he’ll track them to their new digs for a joyful reunion. Of course we never would have had a mouse problem if I’d followed Reyna’s advice. I was over at her place a while back and noticed the stove was facing a different direction. When I asked about it, she said, “Well you have to rotate your stove and fridge every few weeks to confuse the mice. Then they won’t stay in your house.” If only I’d listened…

The blog'll be back in the fall! Have a great summer and thanks for reading.