Day 1 Continued

Right inside the door is space enough to fit two rocking chairs, and a small CRT television is mounted inside a recessed part of the wall.  Behind the rocking chairs is a curtain, which is the entrance to the room that Juan and his family share.  Through another small doorway is the kitchen/dining room.  There is a small propane stove and a table sized appropriately for four.  To the right is the entrance ot our room.  There is a latch on the door for a padlock so we can lock it when we leave.  We put our luggage inside (there is no place to unpack, we will live out of the suitcases) and Douglas warns us to shake out our beds and shoes before using them.  It is the rainy season in Nicaragua, and scorpions (sadly not the 80’s metal band) like to find dark, dry places to hide.  I need no further warning and decide that everything I have is staying packed in the giant vacuum bags that my mom packed my clothes in.  Douglas leaves, and Juan shows us the facilities.  For peeing there is an open drain in the back of the yard/house with a piece of waist high corrugated tin for privacy.  There are also a shower (cold water only) and a fully functional and plumbed toilet, specifically for when you aren’t using the drain.  The interesting thing about the house is that after the front wall/door there is no real rear wall.  When you walk through the house, coming from the front door, the roof ends at the back of the kitchen.  I guess you could call this a courtyard, but since it’s not separated from the roofed area, it’s really just an open part of the house.  In this area there is an enclosure that contains a pit for an open wood fire, and a metal stand on which to place a pot.  Also in the courtyard are two trees, laden with fruit, that I later find out are mango and lemon.

            Juan goes to bed, leaving Jim and I in our room.  It may have been the rapidity in which everything had just ocurred, or maybe we were just a little surprised at the conditions in which we were expected to live, but Jim and I were not very happy.  After killing two rather large cockroaches (about 3-4 inches each) and scouring the room for more (there were none, and no scorpions either), I pulled out my sheet and my mosquito net, and told Jim that everything would look better in the morning.  After a brief shower in “Deepwoods Off” DEET insect repellant, I wrapped myself in the mosquito net and layed down on my bed (a hard wooden platform with an equally hard pad on top).  For then next two hours I lay awake staring at the ceiling, a mix of factors keeping me from sleep.  Something four legged was skittering around on the roof, probably just a cat, but in my current mental state, it might as well have been La Chupacabra!  My mind was racing.  How was I going to survive here?  Can I go home now?  My God, it’s hot as hell!  After a while, I just slapped myself, told my brain to shut up, and fell asleep probably somewhere around 11:00 p.m.

 

I should note that after the trip, we returned and were not nearly as unhappy about our living situation.  Juan’s house is by far completely standard, and a perfectly good place to stay, in fact I’m beginning to feel very comfortable there.  We’ll talk more about that later.