On friendship

I was reminded this past week of the small pleasures of letting another person into my daily life.

Donna and I traveled the length of the country together last week to her site on the Island of Ometepe after she came up to visit me in Jalapa, becoming the first person to do so since my service began in September.* I was touched that she was willing to make the harrowing twelve-hour round-trip to and from Managua for me, excited at the twin prospects of showing another person around my town and getting to spend time on the Island again, and to be totally honest, vaguely worried that we would run out of conversation after spending a whole week together.

Throughout, we rolled with the punches as only two seasoned veterans of Ecuador study-abroads and Nicaragua PC service could be expected to. To start, Donna came up with the route for our trip after another PC friend bailed on a trip we (but mostly she) had been planning to the rainforest along the Rio San Juan, near the Costa Rican border (now postponed until Christmas break). We dealt with heavy, persistent rains throughout, which flushed my plans of getting to finally swim in Luz de Luna (popular local bar/restaurant/swimming destination)´s pool, climbing Jesus Mountain, or going to the hot springs in El Limón down the drain. We spent hours upon hours being crammed inside or waiting for transport in busses, taxis and boats, always hauling and at one point actually underneath four heavy pieces of luggage. I felt fine throughout, but Donna´s stomach unfortunately did not for the last two days of the vacation we spent in her town, which along with transport issues led to her/us missing out on doing much while we were there.

And yet, it was still a great, at times even wonderful trip. I had the pleasure of imparting some of my culinary wisdom to Donna, teaching her how to make pizza dough and cut vegetables. We then got to enjoy the results, which were the best of any of the Nica pizzas I´d made yet. The search for ingredients became an adventure in and of itself, taking us all over town, as did the search for a bar that was still open at 8 o´clock on a Monday night, which led to us getting soaked on our way to a bar where we only ended up being able to stay at for one drink before they closed and threw us back out into the rain, albeit with a plastic sack of latas de Toña, which we consumed afterwards in our pajamas like college freshmen clandestinely hiding out in a dorm room at my host family´s house while the rain pounded the zinc roof and (we hoped) drowned out the sound of our conversation and laughter from my sleeping host fam´s ears.

Before our time in Jalapa was up, we had not only made pizza, but also veggie burritos complete with hand-rolled flour tortillas, which Donna described eloquently upon tasting by voicing the sounds ¨mmm, mmm-hmmm!¨ We also looked up a recipe for and adventurously decided to try to make peanut butter cookies, which ended up becoming two huge peanut butter cookie-cakes in the oven, but were delicious nonetheless, even without the brown sugar that the recipe called for. We also managed to watch Sister Act, a surprisingly delightful first for me.

After Jalapa, we had some pretty good stops in Managua (to pick up a water filter for Donna, pick out new frames for me, and see Toy Story 3), Masaya (to stay the night with Alex), and Granada (to see PCV Laura´s real parents, who were kind enough to buy us lunch at a posh café) before finishing our journey down to the Island. The last leg of that was on a ferry at sunset. It wasn´t a particularly spectacular sunset, as clouds largely obscured the western sky, but it still felt really cool leaning on the ferry´s rusty railing, watching the mainland recede and the Island´s twin volcanoes get bigger as we floated across the grey water and the world got darker around us.

Donna´s host fam was unbelieveably sweet. Their demeanor was a perfect fit with Donna´s: shy and quiet on the outside, but humble, funny and fun-loving once they opened up. Donna´s host bro was kind enough to drag his own bed into Donna´s room for me to sleep on, despite the fact that it meant he would be sleeping on a cot instead, which he insisted he preferred anyway. Nicaraguans´ sharing of sleeping spaces in the name of making guests comfortable has been a theme of my service so far. When I was in Dolores, my host family of 5 all shared a room for three months while I got one all to myself. On Donna´s visit, my host sister Nere unceremoniously and without complaint moved out of her room to accomodate Donna for the two days and nights she was there. It is a way in which Nicaraguans show their hospitality, and willingness to give away their best to guests that is seldom mimicked in the States.

The night I arrived, Donna´s sickness began, and while she tried valiantly to stick it out the next day and come to the beach with me, her adooooorable little host sister Samantha, and two other volunteers, Jess and Geory, who happened to be on the Island, she ended up having to be rescued from the beach by her host dad and spirited back to her bed. Jess and Geory and I made the best of the rest of the day, taking pictures on the beach and getting pizza in Moyogalpa at a place Donna had told us had the best pizza in Nicaragua. After we demolished an Extra Grande Veggie Pizza together, we had to agree with her. The only thing that would have made it better would have been her company in enjoying it.

The next day Donna recovered somewhat, we bummed around Moyogalpa and her host family´s house, played a lot of Phase 10 and Uno, and then it was time for me to go back. At no point did we run out of things to talk about, as I´d feared; one of us would always break the silence with a question about traveling or a story from a past adventure (unless we were playing Phase 10, at which point we´d both be too concerned with making phase to speak). We laughed a lot, often at our own misfortune (because what else can you do with misfortune?). I realized sometime during the long bus ride back from Managua, after watching La Furia Roja win the World Cup at an Italian restaurant by myself, that I´d almost forgotten what it was like to be in the company of a friend for an extended period of time. I lead a fairly solitary existence in Jalapa. I usually eat alone, and the three groups of people I talk to regularly are the people I work with, my host fam, and local business owners; ¨friends¨ aren´t usually part of the equation.

It was nice to be reminded, if only for a week, what it´s like to spend time with one.


*To give credit where credit is due, Laura did make the trip from Ocotal to visit me for a few hours one day in December with her then-host sister, which was nice. However, Donna, by staying two nights and making the much longer trip, I think deserves the title of my first official visitor.