Today was one of those days where everything turned into a blur of work work work. In some ways, it felt like we had come full circle, since we spent the morning in the top, airy and light-filled floor of the Palacio Mundial, where we’ll also be having our first national conference this Friday. We went over our various responsibilities and the seeming mountain of work that lay ahead of us in the next few days in preparation for Friday and also our final recommendations to be given to SolCom in summary of our eight weeks here. In reality, after being all prudent and delegating responsibilities, and then diligently hacking away at our seeming mountain of work, we were left with a completely manageable workload to complete by Thursday night. However, I’m not sure how to feel that our eight weeks here are going to be completed within the next few days, when I’ve been here for nearing two months, or how I should feel about my time here ending while simultaneously feeling like it’s just begun, that we’re still new initiates to the cult of MCM, learning bland, vague information in the Palacio Mundial for hours at a time. I feel incredibly comfortable now in Granada, though granted I only know a part of it. Still, it feels strange to be leaving (which I’ve always tried hard not to think about, since I should live in the moment here) and feeling like I’ve just returned.
I’m officially addicted to mangoes now. First papayas, now mangoes. I took a risk and bought a few off the street (they’re dirt cheap, but it’s still more expensive than free), washed them thoroughly in detergent, peeled off the skin and ate them for a snack after lunch and dinner. I also found the mangoes that Julia tucked away in my bag the day I left, which left a twinge of sadness at how quickly I had left them behind despite the fondness with which I remember them. I’m debating on whether I should call Julia and Carlos; will it only prolong the weird in between of nostalgia and the readiness to move on? Given also that Julia and I had to say everything twice to get understanding across, the conversation is bound to be awkward. I have a problem of letting go, and also of making connections really easily. The two in combination means I always have a hard time moving places and saying goodbyes.
While buying my mangoes, I met the strangest man. He looked kind of shapeless and race-less; he was just a person with no identifying markers of ethnicity or culture, so I couldn’t tell what he was saying and in what tongue he was speaking in at first. Apparently he ran a store and hostel in Costa Rica for 18 years but couldn’t give me a straight answer as to what he was doing in Nicaragua. I should have prefaced by saying that he was sitting in a plastic chair on the sidewalk next to the market and by all appearances was helping a street merchant sell fried plaintains and mangoes. “What am I doing here,” he kept asking himself...He was a lost individual indeed, not physically but mentally and emotionally, completely directionless. Weird conversation. At least my mangoes were good.
Speaking about weird people, while walking home last night I found out that the otherwise sedentary homeless woman I pass everyday in the exact same spot no matter the time is actually a raving lunatic. I already thought her strange for remaining in, literally, the exact same spot for the last six weeks, everyday, a every hour. Last night however, she was sitting upright, shrieking like a banshee to some invisible victim who had provoked her ire or had grossly wronged her. Something told me her language wasn’t exactly PG either. The furor with which she spoke was enough to make me cross the road in a mild terror.
We’ve essentially taken over Cafe Euro. I’ve crossed the line of guilted shame and don’t even bother buying an over-priced drink. I’ve even got the audacity to go and buy outside food, like Chocobananos (fulfilling that bucket list!) to the cafe. We simply set up shot, plug our laptops in (outlets are becoming a hot commodity as our laptop batteries slowly die, one by one, in the Nicaraguan heat. That’s another thing - Granada is noticeably hotter than Diriomito, where during some nights I slept with my jacket on I was so cold. Here I can sweat through my shirt within 10 minutes of walking), and type away. To my compañeros, I am incredibly grateful for how well we’ve worked together as a team and the “healthy debate,” as well call it, we have about every topic that comes our way. We’ve produced incredible amounts of work, believe it or not, during these seven weeks.
One of the more excellent things that Timoteo does is notate and compile all of our deliverables and achievements and delivers them to us in condensed form on spreadsheets. While we don’t necessarily remember everything we do, to see it all tangibly accounted for on one sheet of paper does make me feel warm and fuzzy inside because I can sleep well knowing that we have achieved a helluvalot. We’ve visited 12 communities, sold 98 pairs of glasses and 44 stoves (which may not sound like a lot, but really is when you consider how hard it is to even establish oneself in another city). We’ve consulted with nine groups and given them all quality trainings and deliverables that if used right, should have lasting, long term consequences. As Tess, one of our group leaders told us, the fact that we came here a little shaky in our spanish skills and having no developmental or consulting work ever, and then ended up, within six weeks, coming up with a two hour workshop of leadership and business analysis with completely original material, all in relatively fluent Spanish, is beyond their expectations for any SEC group. I’m proud of us.
Tomorrow Cafe Sonrisa is having the esteemed CNN showing up at their doorstep. I’m not sure whether they’re going to be taking a video or writing an article about the cafe, but I will definitely be there to get my fifteen seconds of fame. Plus I love that place and they have the best mango juice I’ve ever tasted. And hammocks to boot. Goodnight! I may go and watch one of the twenty bootleg DVDs I purchased yesterday...
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