September 14, 2009

How to spend a whole week’s salary in about 24 hours (in four easy-to-follow steps):

1. Buy snacks for movie night (60 córdobas)

2. Spend a morning/afternoon buying things in Jinotepe, including handsoap (30 cords), mora berry jam (50 cords), envelopes (25 cords), sending letters to Kim (12 cords), and a delicious and decadent pineapple and mushroom pizza with apple nectar to drink (120 cords).

3. Go to the bar in Santa Teresa that same day, and have drinks with the self-proclaimed BOBs (Bottom Of the Barrel TEFL trainees, in terms of Spanish abilities, who are all fantastic people, lest the label be confused for an insult) (40 cords, plus another 15 cords in transport costs)

4. Go to the internet café in Dolores that night, and talk with parents/significant other for 45 minutes (45 cords).

Add it all up, and that’s 397 of the 400 córdobas that the Peace Corps paid me on Friday. Now, there are about 20.5 cords to the dollar, so 400 cords is a bit less than 20 bucks. Before you balk at how little that is, let me confess that if I hadn’t been splurging left and right on Saturday, that legitimately would have been enough to get me through a week, since that money is given to us on top of what’s given to our families to provide food and shelter for us. If I’d have gone to the good internet café in Jinotepe, that would have bought me 600 minutes on the phone with friends and family in the U.S., for example. Or I could have spent 40 hours on the internet, or taken 40 trips to and from Jinotepe in a taxi, or more than likely some combination of a few of those plus the occasional five cords for eskimo (ice cream).

But, because I spent on big-ticket luxury items like pizza and beer and candy and jam, I now have 14 cords to my name, almost all of it left over from last week’s remittance. This made today somewhat of a painful experience. It started out painful anyways, thanks to my exhausting/humiliating run/walk with Liz to Diriamba and back (about 3 kilometers, there and back). I had to stop halfway through the way back to catch my breath, while Liz still had enough to be talking to me while we were running. Next time, I’m going to try running through the countryside west of Dolores, so as to avoid the smog and brushfire smoke and dung and trash and vehicles and people along the carretera to Diriamba.

Anyways, the upshot of all that is that I woke up with every part of me but my head feeling like it had just been punched, which is generally how my body feels when I wake up after my first run in awhile. Nevertheless, it was Independence Day in Nicaragua, and I was bound and determined to see the big parade in Jinotepe. I went with my 14-year-old host sister María Fernanda, and some of her 14-year-old friends, none of whom were particularly interested in talking to/being seen with me, but all of whom were interested in taking pictures of their friends, and running about the parade route to see them again and again. I took a millionty pictures, which I will upload and post in some format as soon as I can.

We left for Jinotepe at 8:30, and I didn’t leave Jinotepe until about 1:30. So during those five hours, the only thing I could afford to buy to drink was a baggie of red fanta for five cords (this is how most liquid is sold in Nicaragua). I had María take my picture while I was doing my best to suck the liquid out without spilling any on me through a chewed-off corner of the baggie. I’m pretty sure I’ll make it my facebook picture as soon as it’s uploaded. But we spent a lot of the parade moving up and down the route through packed, raucous streets, all in the sun. I was hot, sunburnt, dehydrated, achy, and distant by the end, most of which, I should note, could have been avoided if I hadn’t excercised/neglected to apply sublock/forgotten my water bottle. Still, I had to summon all of my will power not to spend any of my precious remaining local currency on an ice cream bar, which everyone around me seemed to either be selling or consuming.

In the end, I met up with Laura, Liz and Megan, and we walked to Liz’s house, where I gratefully gulped two glasses of water, and I went home and took a cold shower (there’s no other kind in Nicaragua), and felt pretty all right. I’m glad I still have a little money left in case of an emergency, and I’m hoping to be able to change a $20 into 400+ cords tomorrow, since the money-changers should be back to work in Jinotepe with the big celebrations over and done with. I hope they don’t take the luxurious vacation afforded to secondary school students in Nicaragua, who get today and tomorrow off to celebrate Nicaragua’s dual independence days, then get the next two days off to recover from these celebrations, then by and large don’t bother showing up for Friday’s classes, even though they’re technically supposed to go.
I have to confess, that despite (or perhaps partly due to) the ridiculous overspending/subsequent inability to spend, it was a pretty great long weekend.