¨¿´Pa dónde vas, vaga?¨
The evening is cool and the streets slick and tranquil. It´s the calm after a storm and I returned to a black, black home. The power was out, so I ran down an eerily calm Carretera Sur in my rain-soaked jeans to here, a crowded cyber café in Monte Tabor. My landlady asked where I was going and she laughed when I told her I need to figure out how to get myself to Liberia, Costa Rica, by tomorrow afternoon.
Details: It´s been a complicated day. The morning intense because I thought my laptop was dead. How do I function without my beloved MacBookPro? It´s seriously my best friend and companion in this country. What happened to its battery? Is this some sort of punishment for using it extensively for things that have little to do with my work here? I moped in bed. Outside the rain pounded down.
For hours I slept, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, ate, slept, read, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, stared at the rain, ate, slept, watched my still-wet clothes clinging to the chairs near the fan not get any drier, unsuccessfully attempted to fix the computer, slept, ate, waited for a bus outside that never passed, shivered in my wet clothes in my lonely cabin, slept. Finally, sometime before noon, the computer decided to come alive again and my connection to the world reopened and:
The rain outside was something important. A tropical storm, or maybe a hurricane, depending on who from government was talking. I was outside now, robbing a wireless signal from my neighbor´s house, learning under his covered porch. The sky was dark and the branches whipped violently and the rain still pounded down. It was frightening, and as I looked at storm-tracker maps on my laptop screen I thought about doing the brave thing that somebody like me should do automatically. And then I thought about putting on dry clothes again and hopping into my sleeping bag with a cuddly book. But a friend set me straight, so I made a few inquiries, then tied up my hair and stepped into the storm.
Again, no buses passed and I got soaked. No taxis. I needed to get into the city to find real people whose houses were undoubtedly flooded, where streets were muddy and impassable. I had wrapped my laptop in two plastic grocery bags and its sleeve and tucked it into my cheap thin messenger bag but I still figured I would kill it this way, in this rain, as angrily I waited for transportation to not pass on Carretera Sur. You have to be kidding me, the transportation strike is over and where are the taxis, the buses? Now, when I actually have something important to do?
So I hitchhiked down, made more inquiries, and eventually found myself in the Hugo Chávez barrio near the airport. It´s poor and houses here are made of discarded things -- squares of metal and plastic and cardboard, pieces of cement, plastic bags. The streets were flooded or muddy and inpassable. People were everywhere, unsurprising since they´re mostly unemployed, but children were everywhere too because school got canceled. Almost immediately I drew attention because I walk like a chela and who did I think I was walking into here carrying a steaming cup of coffee in a paper cup? Did I really do that? Walk in as if this was just some thing I had to cover, please Mr. Taxi Driver, do you mind if we stop into one of the only chain coffee joints in the city so I can buy a wake-me-up?
Um, I guess I did do that. I probably deserved the jeering and taunts my first five minutes in the barrio.
But I learned once from a driver in Matagalpa how to talk to people in a place like this, and so I waltzed into random shacks yelling ¨buenaaaas.¨ And people told me their stories, and one 16-year-old boy guided me for an hour through his neighborhood, considered one of the toughest in the city. Don´t think I don´t realize how lucky that made me, carrying more than $1,500 worth of shiny computer in my deceptively ratty bag.
You know the feeling you get when you are doing a job that you like and you feel confident and happy? I miss that rush. I did my work, my job, and fast, and then I remembered later that I haven´t had a real job in nearly two years. I haven´t done regular reporting in nearly two years. All of the sudden I was afraid that everything I submitted was incomplete and badly organized or worded wrong and not quality. I guess the good thing about having a job and rules and a framework is you get used to expectations and to meeting them. The bad thing about being so loose and free like I have been these past eight months is you forget what those expectations were once and begin to doubt whether you still know how to meet them.
There is good and bad to everything, I suppose.
The storm may be a hurricane by now, I can´t be sure. The internet in this café is terrible and it takes about 5 seconds for every letter I type to appear on the screen. Don´t even ask how long it takes to load a page. But they play tecno remixes of such American classics as Joan Osborne´s ¨What if God was one of us?¨ so it´s not so bad and I won´t complain.
I told Lorena the landlady I was going to Costa Rica because I will go, tomorrow, hopefully on a hurricane-free road to meet two beautiful people I know making their way into Nicaragua specifically to visit me. This is amazing, having friends who like you enough to come visit when you live thousands of miles and several countries away. Since I´ve been down here I´ve gotten to see one two three four five six seven eight and now with Q and C 10 people here on visits. Three more coming next month, one a month after, my bro and his friend perhaps the next month, upcoming visits with other folks in neighboring countries, and it´s not that I like to brag or anything, but ...
my friends are the best.
I´m frequently encouraged to write more personal stuff in here so the above is an attempt to do that. People tell me it´s boring to read about political stuff, please update us on your adventures and love life and that time that kid tried to rob you and we really don´t care about everything else. Well, let me know if this was interesting.
For now, it´s back into the dark, back to my black black cabin and the clothes that isn´t yet dry. And to my bed, where I have little doubt that I´ll be able to sleep for 10 to 12 hours. Be jealous.
Because this is living.