Time speeding slowly by...

I was told that I would hit a wall, and I have. I’ve been here long enough that I’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyle, the oddities of daily living. It no longer surprises me to see cows, pigs and horses, wandering in the street, competing for space with cars, trucks and motorcycles, because I see it every day. It is no longer noteworthy for the water at my house to come out of the faucet as mud because it happens quite often. My baseline has changed, and consequently I don’t have much to report to you all. Please accept my apologies and if you’d like me to write about something in particular, let me know and I will gladly oblige to your request.

I was given the latest issue of InStyle magazine and while I admittedly flipped through the pages savoring every detail of each photograph, each ad – the hairstyles, the make-up, the clothes, the background; I was surprised by my reactions to some of the ads. Swimming the English Channel in a Rolex? That’s ri-goddamn-diculous. Bono and his wife in Africa totally decked out in Louis Vuitton? I don’t care if the profits do “benefit Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda,” the frivolous wealth and abject poverty juxtaposed brings the taste of bile to my mouth. All of the anti-aging creams, treatments, serums, drops, the 5 ads for different kinds of mascara that all promise the same results, the endless barrage of perfumes, made me both disgusted by consumerism and at the same time covet whatever over-priced, plastic-packaged, mass-manufactured product they were hawking. I’m at an interesting cross-road in this arena. I was recently asked by a friend back in the US how living in a third-world country has changed my ideas on consumerism. And the truth is, I feel way more pressure in Nicaragua to dress fashionably, to wear make-up and perfume, to paint my nails, to wear high heels, etc. It could be because of the machismo here; the women here are compelled to look beautiful. It could be because it’s a status-symbol. No one knows designer brands in my pueblo, the “luxury” brands are Hollister, Levi’s, Nike, Playboy and Adidas. No one has ever heard of Gucci, Dior, Armani or Dolce & Gabbana. So, Ross, to answer your question, there’s just as much consumerism in Nicaragua as there is in the US. The difference is that it’s scaled back on the amount of dollars spent. Instead of making $2000 dollars a month and splurging on a $500 pair of shoes/handbag/jeans/whatever, here they make $200 dollars a month and splurge on a $50 pair of shoes/handbag/jeans/whatever. The most obvious and common example, that you can find in any town in Nicaragua, is the household with a dirt floor, wooden beds, maybe not even a toilet and yet they have a big screen TV, a DVD player, and Nintendo.

People ask me how long I’ll be in Nicaragua. “27 months,” I tell them. “Wow,” some say, “that’s such a short amount!” And others reply, “That long? You’re crazy!” Personally, I think it’s both. To create a lasting impact on individual lives, on economic growth, on changing, even just a little, belief systems, it’s hardly any time at all. A drop in the bucket, really. But to be away from my friends, my family, the seasons, the music scene, my bicycle, art, food. Well, two years and three months is quite awhile. And so, as I feel time speeding slowly by, and each day here blurring with all of the other days as I spend 27, then 24, then 20 months of eternal spring, I have created some goals that I would like to accomplish in the next 19 months.

• Write daily
• Yoga
• Study Spanish
• Study French
• Plant a garden
• Go running
• Take more photos
• Start a women’s group
• Study for GRE
• Apply for grad school
• Start a youth group
• Art projects

Lots of funny things happen here. Like last week, I was asked to go to the clinic and translate for a team of doctors from the US. “Ok, that’s easy,” I thought, “It’s probably consultations, or vaccinations, or something.” Nope, it was surgery. Open-body, up-to-the-elbow-inside-of-someone, guts-spilling-out-all-over surgery. Perhaps you already know this about me, but I’m a vegetarian. I shudder when I see a hamburger, let alone a 5 pound umbilical hernia. I would have walked out the door after the first incision into the epidermis of the abdominal region, however…, I do have an affinity for dress-up and I got to wear scrubs, a cap, and a mask. Also, I am easily bribed with candy. Not just any candy, imported candy direct from the US of A that wasn’t even melty. So I stayed. At first I set up a stool in the corner of the room facing the wall so I wouldn’t see anything. But I kept looking over my shoulder to see what was going on and to shout translations back and forth. So I moved a bit closer, still averting my eyes. And then the surgeons started pointing things out to me and, as not to be rude, I looked. “Vanessa, as you can see here, we are cutting through the layer of fat.” “Vanessa, take a look at this gallbladder, all we have to do now is disconnect it from the liver.” And after watching the first two surgeries, I felt completely comfortable with the blood-and-guts factor. And so, I spent the next two days in the surgery room watching, learning, listening, videotaping, photographing, translating, and eating candy. And I can say with confidence that I made no mistake in not studying medicine.