[Vision2020] Letter 7 from Dave Barber

[Louise Barber]

Letter 7 (2/20/07)/p. 1

 

These are scattered notes from this morning.  I´d rather be sending photos,
but I need the right machine and my guide Manuel, who is not here.

 

            This is my favorite sort of morning.  I got up at eight to find
that Mario had left early for a principals´meeting. I folded my clothes that
were washed last night and dried outside overnight, hauled out my little
bedside rug and did my yoga exercises in the living room, turned on the TV
and heard a doctor explaining hyperactivity and attention deficit in
children, had melocoton juice (in the dictionary that´s peach but here it´s
a star-shaped fruit--don´t have one handy to check) in corn flakes for
breakfast, am now sitting here writing, will shortly take a shower and be
off to do friendly battle with my students at 12:30--unless they´ve changed
the schedule on me (they did).

            Often I have wished to be a linguist.  Common sense soon returns
-- but at least, to be one of those people who can be told a word once--and
it´s theirs forever.  For me it takes time and repetition for it to sink in
that a pig here is a chancho and ahora mismo is ahorita.  The subtleties of
common words sail right by me:  suave, bravo.  I am half-deaf to the
differences between ya and todavia, traer and llevar.  There is a whole
vocabulary of food that I´m going to have to write down or lose.  More
broadly, I would like to be Henry James´s ideal writer.  James´s bottomline
advice to young writers was 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is
lost.'  (Those of you who know me well may stop chuckling any time.)
Sometimes observations will hit me over the head because they affect my
behavior:  for example, Nicaraguans do not put their napkins in their laps.


            Well, the act of writing consists in knowing what to leave out,
as Henry Adams used to say, and you´ll never know what I chose to leave out
and what I just didn´t get.  Fitting everything together is another matter.
For example, does it fit right here for me to observe that Ana and Mario's
next door neighbors have a pool table, and though I can´t assess its
quality, the mere sound of balls cracking on balls is enough to take me all
the way back, if I close my eyes (if it weren´t for the heat) to Mingles?

            Lagune de Apoyo is the name of the crater lake I described in
the last letter.  I don´t know why they call it a lagoon.

            An esperanza is walking the ceiling above me.  It is a green
insect about three inches long, with a slender oval body and a long straight
tail, and the two rear legs are themselves 2 inches long.  It is supposed to
bring good luck if it enters your house, which is why its name is “hope,”
but if you grab it to escort outside it leaves a bad smell on your hand,
according to Aura.  I and it leave each other in piece.

            The last two days have been noticeably cooler, crisper, clearer,
and a lovely breeze, occasionally a strong wind.  But the coolest day here
is still hot by 11am and doesn´t begin to ease up until around 4pm.  The sun
rises just after 6am and sets just before 6pm.  Mario says this never
changes much.  The idea that Idaho has little more than 8 hours of sun in
December and almost 16 in June is striking to him.

            Certain trees are beginning to flower now, one in a startling
blue, some in yellow.  Who wants to be a linguist?  it´s botany I need.
Last night Mario planted a cypress, about three feet tall, in their tiny
front yard, and potted two types of what look like ferns, except an Idaho
fern wouldn´t last a week here.  A few days ago I found what looked like a
cotton plant -- and it was.  This one was probably planted by bird
droppings, but cotton used to be planted here and still is in some areas.

            Two Dias del Amor y la Amistad.  When I was visiting the Los
Cedros school last Wednesday, both the primary and the secondary teachers
invited me to their separate Valentine´s Day parties.  As far as I could
tell the students did not have parties, but the teachers did.  At both
parties the feature was an exhange of gifts, each maestro giving to one
other so that everyone got one gift.  The recipients must have been
assigned, but the little speeches that each giver delivered to the recipient
suggested there was a special relationship between the two.  Everyone was
laughing and hugging and having a good time.  At each party lunch was
served:  cabbage-carrot-tomato salad with pieces of yucca and pork.

            The primary teachers had more fun.  They played “pin the cola on
the burro” for a while, then passed around balloons with little pieces of
paper inside.  These papers gave directions, and to get at the directions
you had to put the balloon on a chair at the center of the room and sit down
on it.  One woman in classy chartreuse pants came over and gave me a big
beso on the cheek -- I never knew just exactly what the paper slip told her
to do.  Mine said, BAILE EL PALO DE MAYO.  But I didn´t know this particular
dance, it being from the Atlantic coast.  So a woman stood up with me and we
bumped and grinded for a couple of minutes and got close enough to the real
thing to satisfy everyone.  This was my second Nicaraguan dance.

            On Friday Instituto Gustavo Carrion Zamora, the school in town,
had a special delayed Valentine Day program just for me -- or I was the
excuse to party at the end of the school day.  On the wall behind the
platform were large gold letters saying Bienvenido David Barber.  The
students were packed into the dirt court area, deliriously happy because it
was Friday and they were missing their last class.  The program included
four sets of dancers, three students reading welcomes to me in English, and
two who recited poems from memory with great flair.  Twelve little girls
came up with cards and each gave me a besito.  Getting besitos from little
girls is like playing Bach:  do it long enough and you´ll go straight to
Heaven.

            At the end I had a Santa Claus bag full of gifts:  a clock,
which now ticks away on my bedroom wall, two heavy photo frames, cards,
candy, ornamental trinkets.  Mario and Ana joke about my needing another
suitcase to get home.

            An inch-long black bug is walking across the ceiling.  No little
lizards appear to take him out:  I figure they are spooked by the wind
rattling the ceiling plates.  The white ceiling provides a great backdrop,
Lauren and Chris, for studying insects.  This one has long antennas that
sweep back and forth.  If only I were an entomologist . . .

 

Dave

 


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