Adventures in Nicaragua, Peru and the United States: Too Many Goodbyes

After just over a year in San Ramon, Nicaragua it is time to say goodbye to this little town, the friends we made here and our little menagerie. Next stop is a beach in northwestern Nicaragua for a month and then we head to the USA on August 14 for a few weeks. In early September we are moving to Peru for ten months. Everyone in our family has their own perspective on saying goodbye to San Ramon, which we will share with our readers.

Aileen

I can’t believe our family’s year in San Ramon, Nicaragua is already over. Walking around town our last couple days, I realized that there were a lot of friendly faces I would miss. On one hand, I feel like we were just regular customers coming into the hardware store, the tortilleria, or the bakery, but on the other, when we told people we were leaving, they all opened up and gave us big hugs and wished us well. It really made me feel that on some level, we really had been part of the community. Besides the warm people of San Ramon, one thing I will really miss about being in a small town is being able to pay the water bill, check in with the mayor’s office about a certain project, pick up some chicken food, stop in at the Ministry of Education to see if they had the paperwork I had been waiting for, all on a leisurely 10 minute stroll around town.

Work-wise, I feel really good about my year with Seeds of Learning (SOL). I really enjoyed saying goodbye to the community leaders with whom I had worked, because it was a chance for me to let them know how much of an honor it had been for me to work with them; that their tirelessness and commitment in working for the good of their communities had really been an inspiration to me. Also, the staff of Seeds of Learning held a really nice goodbye party for me, the highlight of which was a speech Emma gave in front of everyone, in Spanish, that she had written by herself. The speech was about how she, Hannah and Jeff were proud of me because I had worked so hard so that Nicaraguan children could have nice schools in which to learn. The speech brought tears to my eyes and definitely made up for the flat tires on isolated dirt roads and the late nights in front of the computer doing project accounting. I am happy and proud to have opened up a new SOL office in this part of Matagalpa and know that my replacements (and our new friends) Mina and Chamba will do a great job carrying on the work I started and taking it to a new level.

Emma

It was very hard to say goodbye to all the good friends I made in San Ramon and of course to my pets. Even though it is very nice at the beach in Mechapa and I like it every bit as much as San Ramon, it is still sad to be away from San Ramon because it felt like my home for such a long time.

I had to say goodbye to many people. I was sad that I never got to say goodbye to my guitar teacher Melvin because his Dad was in the hospital and he went to see him on our last day in San Ramon. Melvin is his only son and in Nicaragua the son takes care of the father and the daughter takes care of the mother when they are sick. It was hard to say goodbye to Yuni the teacher at the Centro Cultural which means cultural center. It was super sad saying goodbye to the Frey (her school). On my last day of school I made a speech and gave everyone pencils and Oreo cookies. It was especially hard saying goodbye to my friend Janyn and my teacher Yadira. We had to walk around and say goodbye to people in town like Neyda from the bakery and our neighbors. That made me feel sad but not so sad because I am sure I will see them again but I am not absolutely sure. It also made me excited because it made me feel like I am going to another place to see different people and meet them.

I cannot wait to go to the United States to see all my friends and family and of course super-excited to go to Peru because I love Peru. It is really fun there because we can go on hikes all the time and we can see the people that we stayed with: Dona Teresa, Don Nelson and their granddaughters: Sami, Mafer and Francesca.

Hannah

I was happy to leave San Ramon because we could go to Mechapa beach and I really like it there. The owners of the hotel are Mike and Stacy and they are really nice. I was sad we were leaving San Ramon because I really miss school. I am going to miss all the things in San Ramon like the really nice stores I could go to and my really nice friends. Some of my friends are older than me and some are younger but that is okay because I am still friends with them. I was mad to leave because I had to drive in a boring hot truck with no one to play with because Emma just likes to read. I am really glad I am leaving Nicaragua because I get to go to the United States and have lots of fun there. Then we have to go to Peru. I am worried because someone told me when kids are bad at school in Peru the teachers will pull our hair. The good thing is that I will have lots of fun in Peru because I will go to the park and play with my friends there and we will have a new house and I bet it will be pretty. I will remember some bad things about San Ramon. One thing is that I did not like to use the disgusting bathroom at my school and I pooped in my underpants by accident once. I also remember when a girl threw a pencil and it stuck in my head and I bled on my shirt. I will remember some good things about San Ramon. I liked riding horses in Selva Negra and my daddy and Cuate ran after us. I loved playing at my friend’s house and her name is Montse. I loved buying things with my own allowance money all by myself. Okay, that is it.

Jeff

Leaving San Ramon was a challenge at many levels. Aileen was very busy wrapping up her work so I was responsible for making the move happen. I had to put our house in order, disconnect the Internet, pack our stuff for the beach and pack the rest of our stuff to store in Managua for a month. We also had to get the girls’ school records, visit the dentist and eye doctors, buy plane tickets, sign a lease with our new tenants in San Francisco and take care of other such things.

This probably does not seem like much but remember this is Nicaragua and nothing is ever simple. Power outages, water stoppages, broken down trucks, demonstrations that closed the road to town, incredibly long waits at the dentist office, problems with our Internet connection and constant interruptions made everything take longer than expected. Some of the more ridiculous occurrences included the need to buy a special type of official paper to get the girls’ grades printed on. It was bad enough we even needed this special paper but I had to wait in line at the tax office for over an hour to purchase two sheets. Getting the Internet cancelled was also quite fun. After three trips to the phone company we were finally told that one needs a notarized letter for the final part of the disconnection process; it then took three trips to an attorney’s office and one more trip to the phone company to get our service turned off. I suppose moving was just a concentrated dose of what it’s like to live here and after a year I was able to handle most of it with a shrug and a “ni modo” (what can you do).

The only thing that really put me off was an increase in the daily flow of people coming to our house looking for someone or something. Folks in town generally knew we were leaving and a certain type of person came out of the woodwork asking to have (or buy) anything we were not taking with us. One guy I never met came to the door acting like we were best friends and out of the blue asked if he could have (not buy) our truck when we left. This reminded me of the Austin Lounge Lizard’s song “Can I Have All Your Stuff When You’re Dead.” Some gringos believe this is just how things are in Nicaragua given the poverty. I am not sure I totally agree with that; I just think some people (whether in Nicaragua or Timbuktu) are greedy and rude. The people we really cared about (and who cared about us) never asked for a darn thing. I took great pleasure in giving almost everything in our house to the folks across the street. They are one of the poorest families in San Ramon but never asked us for anything. On the contrary, they once gave us a rooster and sometimes cooked us traditional Nicaraguan food despite the fact that they literally have no pot to piss in. I was really happy we could give them some books, toys, clothes, a bike and other household items to make their lives just a bit easier. In addition to giving them all our stuff we returned their rooster along with our hens and the chicks he helped produce.

It was hard saying goodbye to the chickens but it was horrible having to say goodbye to our dog Cuate who we gave to some friends. He was the first and only dog I had as an adult and since I was home most of the day with him we developed a special bond. I made a little video tribute to Cuate and it breaks my heart every time I watch it. I also made a video of the kids trying to move the chickens to our neighbors house.

Goodbye Cuate

Goodbye Chickens

Of course it was hardest to say goodbye to the people we met in San Ramon, especially the children across the street. When I hugged little Victor just before we left I started to tear up when he asked if I could play with him tomorrow. Actually, most everyone we said goodbye to had similar reactions – a sense of disbelief that we were leaving. Folks from the security guard at school, to the storekeepers, to members of the school community to the friends we made expressed the same confusion and then indignation that we were leaving and not coming back. Without even knowing it our family was embraced by the town and became part of it. I was surprised by folks' reaction; like the song says, I you do not know what you got until it’s gone.

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We will share some deep thoughts on our Nicaragua experience in an upcoming post. In the meantime here are a few more photos that help tell the story of our departure.