December is a BUSY time here haha. I’ve spent the entire month running around and in meetings, as everyone in CANTERA rushes to meet end-of-the-year deadlines. And now, here I am, about to head on the Cap Corps retreat with Marcia and the Managua crew tomorrow, and then when we get back on the 11th, it’s back to work! Quite hectic.
From December 15-17, I was in the yearly CANTERA Spirituality Retreat, along with about 80 other people from various organizations all over Nicaragua, and from other countries, too (including Spain! Shout out to my new Basque friends!). The first day, I thought “this is the dumbest thing ever. All we’re doing is the same repetitive dance moves to slow repetitive music for 15 minutes, and then repeating those 15 minutes twice.” I was expecting a bit more talking and sharing, more about forming “spirituality” (because does anyone REALLY know what that word means?), and I got frustrated to the point of just walking out of a communal dance after the second repetition. However, I talked to Linda (the CANTERA Youth Program Director), and she explained (and the retreat leaders may not have explained this, or maybe I just wasn’t listening closely enough) that this retreat was about communal forms of spirituality (in her [paraphrased] words, “like our indigenous ancestors”), achieved especially through physical interaction. And, as pretentious and new age-y as it sounds (and probably is), after understanding what it was about, it worked for me. I lost myself in the dances we did, in the music, and really felt a sort of unity with the entire group (something that everyone else claimed to feel as well). I felt my “energy” (Jesus Christ, I feel silly typing this), normally kind of spread out throughout my body, “centered” in a way, in a big ball below my heart. And, despite not sleeping more than 5 hours per night during these three days, during and for a while after each dance, I felt, truly, tranquility. I was relaxed and calm, but alert and awake. It was a really new, cool experience, and I really feel like I’m starting to form a stronger connection between my body and my mind, and allow myself to entregar (sorry for non-Spanish speakers, but it’s really the best way I can describe this. It translates pretty much as: give over to) myself into my body and allow it to do what it wants to do. Which is useful (and not, many times haha) when I’m shaking it at a club. But yeah. This was a really cool, eye-opening experieince.
This Christmas was unlike any other I’ve experienced. Mostly because it took place in Nicaragua. On Christmas Eve, Megan, Isa, Ana and I (Margarita was in the United States celebrating with her family) went to our good friend Mache’s house to hang out and bake cookies and all that. It was fun, and I got to eat some baller cookies, courtesy of Megan’s parents or friend (whoever sent her the mix), and Ana’s sugar cookie recipe. Ana and I decided to sleep over, and Mache’s little sister, also called Ana, came down from Somoto (where Mache’s from, way up north) to spend the night, as well. Mache THEN got a call from her cousin (whose name, unfortunately, escapes me), who invited us to hang out with her and her landlord and their house a few minutes’ taxi ride away.
Apparently, in Nicaragua Christmas dinner isn’t eaten until midnight. This was difficult, and we failed miserably; at one point, Mache and her cousin’s friend went to a gas station to pick up some junk food to hold us over. In fact, we didn’t even make it until midnight (mostly because people started getting tired). We drank rum, talked and listened to music, and at around 11:15 we ate a chicken dish that the cousin’s landlord had made, roasted in the oven with a rich stuffing/sauce with olives, carrots, tomatoes, onions, peas, and a few other vegetables. It was damn glorious. Then, at midnight, as we were trying to head back to Mache’s to sleep, the fireworks started. EVERYWHERE. It was the closest thing to a battlefield I’ve ever experienced (except not at all). EVERYWHERE we looked, people were setting them off; cars drove over them, people rode and walked by them because there really just wasn’t a way around it all. It continued until about 4 in the morning. And for the next few days after. UNTIL….
I went to El Salvador on the 27th to visit my good friend Meredith, as she prepared to lead an Oberlin delegation to the little rural community of Santa Marta, up in the northern department of Cabañas.
The red part!
Santa Marta is located just above Victoria, in this photo:
Just about a bumpy half hour bus ride north!
I met her, her friend Chabe, Chabe’s sister Leti, Leti’s husband Silvestre, their daughter Luz (or Lucita), the woman Meredith stayed with for the time I was there, Doña Cipriana (approximate spelling), and a man whose name I forget because I just saw him this one time, at the airport. They drove Meredith and I the five hours from the airport to Santa Marta, and dropped me off at my host family’s house that evening. My host family was made of the father, Ramón; the mother, Márgara; their sons, Giovani (12) and Elceo (approximate spelling, 6); their daughter, Saraí (approximate spelling, 4); and Márgara’s niece, Rosa (19). They were AWESOME! They were very chatty, the kids were really nice and played with and talked to me, Márgara cooked awesome food, and I felt very comfortable and at home. I rewatched Grease (and decided I liked the songs, but still not the message), saw The Little Mermaid, Cinderella 2, and Beauty and the Beast Christmas courtesy of Saraí (who also decided to act out The Little Mermaid for me), and got to know a Mexican comedy show, El Chavo del 8 (The Boy from Apartment 8). Ramón was also an amateur DJ, and loved to blast music and practice mixing and stuff. It was cool.
I really enjoyed my time in Santa Marta; I spent a lot of it just relaxing at my house or at Leti’s with Meredith and Chabe, and it was a nice break from the city and the busy-ness of Managua. Silvestre had three birthday parties, three days in a row, and they were chill, with just food, a few drinks, family and friends. I’m really grateful to Chabe and Leti and their family for letting me celebrate with them, despite the short time we had known each other.
I spent part of New Year’s at Leti’s, taking part in a New Year’s Secret Santa with their family. Chabe was my Secret Santa, and gave me a necklace, El Salvador and F.C. Barcelona bracelets, boxers (she said I looked like I didn’t wear any), and soap (she said I looked like I didn’t use it). FUN TIMES! After that, my host family came by to pick me up to go to Márgara’s other niece’s house for their New Year’s party, but as we were walking away, I realized that I hadn’t said goodbye to Meredith, and told them I would catch up. This was a bad idea. I had no idea who the relative was or where their house was; I just knew that they had a sweet sound system, and so I figured I would “follow the music.” HA. There was also a community-wide dance going on, and by “following the music,” I ended up going down a bunch of dark paths and across a river only to find myself there, and realizing that they weren’t going to be there. So I went back and had to jump my house’s gate in order to get my cell phone so I could get some light, and then proceeded to follow every other path until I got uncomfortable doing so, before I gave up and went back to Leti’s, where people were still hanging out. It was here that the night took a turn for the worse.
Despite the music, the party’s atmosphere was really chill, and no one was really dancing or anything. I was just hanging out, conversing, and the topic came up about drinking before dancing. I mentioned that, in the United States, a lot of people tend to drink before dancing, and Chabe’s baby daddy made a little jibe about gringos (he’s Bolivian and has lived in the United States for the last 20 years) and their “party time,” in English. Not understanding what he meant, I shook it off, but he kept going (in English). He said that I “brought my privilege” down to El Salvador, and I tried to play it off again, saying “just a little bit.” But, he kept going. He started to talk about how “so many gringos just like you pass through here,” and how “he knew what I was doing, and when everyone else found out…” (he didn’t finish), how I always had a “sickness” (Whiteness), and when I tried to play it off again by saying “only half-White” he said, with a straight face, “it doesn’t matter.” He started talking about how it disgusted him to see me in El Salvador, “manipulating the kids,” and then he got up to get another drink, but not before sneering in my ear, “you STINK.” It was honestly, pretty chilling, and a little bit frightening (not the least because the guy is like 6 foot 3 and weighs probably about 180-200 pounds). I then sat down, and a little bit later Chabe asked me why I was so quiet, and I just tried to play it off, saying that I was tired and disappointed that I had been unable to find my host family. After talking to her for a little while, we figured out where they were, and she hooked me up with someone who was going to head that way. I got up to leave, said “¡Feliz año nuevo!” to everyone, and Chabe’s baby daddy called out to me, sarcastically, “Happy New Year!” I answered him back, and he replied “Fuck you!” to which I turned around and walked back. I apologized if I had offended him, and explained that it was “just your face.” I tried to explain to him that I had no other motives other than to get to know the community Meredith has really grown to love (this is her third January there), and to see her for the first time in a long time, but he never let me finish, he just kept going, saying that it doesn’t matter, I’m a White gringo, and that means I’m stained.
I ended up just walking away, and going to Márgara’s niece’s house, but what he said stuck with me, and still has been. Even though he was drunk, he was quite lucid and coherent, and there was such an intense hatred in the way he said what he said and in the look on his face that chilled me. The next day, I spent the entire day at my house, and felt incredibly anxious about leaving, wondering if every Salvadoran that I passed was thinking the same thing. I thought about it a lot, though, and I realized that if nothing else, I have a little bit better of an idea of what a lot of people of color have had to deal with, and how they may have left their houses every day feeling, for decades in the United States. It caused me to think a lot harder and a lot more honestly about the privilege I bring with me, and think a lot more concretely about the ways I want to, if not renounce it, find ways to use it so that other people can take advantage of it. It got me to think a bit more about myself as a mixed race person, and how I blend in (or don’t) in different places and different contexts. And, while the baby daddy didn’t apologize to me (Chabe says that he claims to have his reasons for feeling the way he does), I don’t mind that this happened. And, overall, everything in Santa Marta was wonderful.
So that’s about it for now. It’s a pretty crappy ending (in TWO ways, HA!) but I gotta finish getting ready for the retreat. I hope everyone reading this had a great Christmas and New Year!
Gringo en el trópico 