Sunday July 17: Día de alegria
Today is the anniversary of the day Somoza left the country: el día de alegria. For us it was a more low-key kind of day overall. My stomach was starting to get better, but James and Jeremy were worse. Around 9, James took Jeremy off to church in town: they were going to try to meet up with Jacob and his mom, but their host family had taken them to a different church, evidently. Zoe read Pride and Prejudice and I took a nap. Then the horses returned from their first trip out, and J and Zoe set off: J on Cappucino, Zoe on Pañuelo. Jeremy and I hung out, swinging in the hammocks, waiting for Jacob, snacking, eating lunch. I chatted a bit with Paulette and Aubrey (“Tell me, you north Americans, why isn’t the US morally obligated to pay its debts, when other countries have to?”), then Jeremy and Guillermina took turns acting out stories (“showing videos” in the classroom). The riders came back totally drenched: evidently the heavens had opened on their ride.
After everyone had eaten, Paulette gave us a tour of the garden. Maybe if I take the same tour again next Sunday, I’ll get some of the plant names clearer in my mind: the tree whose leaves taste like arugula and are loaded with protein, the “oregano” which makes a tummy-soothing tea (guess what I’ve been drinking ever since?). We tasted a berry from a plant Jeremy identified as holly: not a lot of flavor to it. I spit out the large seed, and Paulette said, “That’s my precious coffee, thank you!” She taught us a simple distinction: café arabica is the shade-grown variety and café robusto is the sun-grown version, used mostly for instant coffee. Nescafe is evidently trying to buy up huge tracts of land in Nicaragua in order to clear-cut them and produce robusto café. “If any of you drink instant coffee, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” I feel I should hide the packets of Starbucks instant that Tami left with me. La Mariposa grows its own coffee: arabica, of course. The trouble with arabica is that it has to be picked by hand because the beans/berries ripen at different times, so you have to keep going back to the same coffee tree time after time to take the berries when they’re ripe.
Paulette showed us pictures of the Mariposa grounds from five years ago: only a few trees, mostly bare earth. It’s hard to imagine all this could have grown in just five years. Already some of the trees are crowding or shading out other plants. Paulette also told us stories of animal rescues: there was a picture of Manuel and some other men holding an enormous boa constrictor (released at El Chocoyero). Then she told us about the day Manuel came to her very excited about a different snake he had saved. “Sure enough, there in a large cage is a cascabel—a rattlesnake. ‘Manuel,’ I told him, take that thing away! ‘It’s ok,’ he said, ‘I told everyone: very dangerous.’ ‘You can’t tell the dogs,’ I told him. ‘It only takes one sticking its nose in to see what this is, and we’ve lost a dog.’ So Manuel puts the rattlesnake in a plastic carrier bag, puts the back in a rucksack, and takes it to El Chocoyero on public transport!”
As we went past the monkey and parrot cages, she explained that they had arrived at La Mariposa by way of the police, who had confiscated them from animal traffickers. The parrots are packed wet and very tightly to keep them quiet, so they arrive needing lots of care. They arrived in a group of either 150 or 200 and had to be hand-fed by Paulette and Manuel with a combination of corn and milk and maybe rice. There are only a few remaining: the sickest ones, who took so long to get strong that they also became tame, no longer able to care for themselves in the wild. The monkeys too are those that became too tame to release. Monkeys are caught as babies: hunters get good at judging those that are still young enough to be carried but old enough to survive without their mothers’ milk. When they spot one of the right age, they shoot the mother out from under the baby; the mother falls to the ground; the baby runs down to the mother’s body; and the hunter grabs it. Evidently the traffic in animals follows many of the same routes as illegal drugs, and some of the same people are involved in both.
At about 3:00 p.m., we could hear music pounding up the hill from San Juan; James took Jeremy down in time to see the kids going at two piñatas. Jeremy didn’t want to take a turn himself, but someone brought him two candies from the piñatas. He really is a golden boy here.
I'll post some photos later if I get a chance.
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