Nicaragua's First Lesson

Each place in the world, with its unique history, geography, and people, has its own lessons. If you are silent in a place long enough, you can hear the secrets that a culture bestows subtly on those visitors willing to listen. Reflecting on the past two weeks, having spent them with a family on a packed upper lower-class street in downtown Managua, I feel that I have heard Nicaragua's first whispered lecture. Woken every morning either by the proximity of our neighbor's PBC pipe shower or the volume of the avocado and mango hawkers shouting their prices outside our padlocked front gate-door, and frequently falling asleep soaked in my own sweat, as well as that of the children whose nightly street games begged our participation, unable to take my dripping shower with the water cut off, I listened. The life of the average Managuan will teach even the most recalcitrant student that here, the delineation between surroundings and self is not quite so rigid as its American contemporary.

A fly makes his way across the screen of my laptop. A pause to think takes my eyes to his spasmodic jaunt, his movements often too fast for my eye to process. My thoughts formed, I avert my eyes without incident. Two weeks ago I would not have suffered the intrusion, but here his erratic stroll is welcome.