Getting Out of Managua in the Nica Time
Now Both Sham Spouses Are In the Forest
all over Nicaragua

"Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation."
--Elizabeth Drew

Greetings, friends!

Your narrator has been in a slump these past few days/weeks, living in a cocoon of gloom about robberies, being dumped, piling up editors' rejection letters, filling out FAFSA, and an unexpected disatisfaction with my wandering. Combine that with a paranoia about the streets of Managua, low financial resources, the feeling of having left Chiner prematurely, and this home lover has been pleased to have the Quaker House as a home away from home. If I'm going to find myself wallowing in the recesses of my circuitry, I couldn't think of a better place in Managua to do it.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I'm also dealing with a desire I thought I'd never have again--the yearning to be back in Michigan for the spring and summer. But something says it would be wrong to turn around now, except that if I'm not careful, I could get myself into debt. So I'm considering my financial and mental state as I prepare to press southward to Costa Rica and Panama.

One of the volunteers at the Quaker House just got back from a Witness for Peace mission to Venezuela, where revolutionary energy is in full force. She brought back bags of rice from a grocery store where all goods subsidized by the government at half price. Anyone can shop there. All the goods in the store have articles of the Venezuelan constitution written on them. Seeing the Bolivarian Revolution now would be like having seen the Sandanista Revolution in the early '80s. I don't want to miss the opportunity to see something that is born to be crushed by my government.

Quakers and Linders

The stream of volunteers and Nicas who pass through the Quaker House has been nice. There's a large library there. I've gone to see how over 150 families make a living at the city dump collecting trash to recycle, talked with glue sniffing street kids, seen how they live when they're not on the street, and enjoyed a talk at the Ben Linder House (I lived in Ben Linder Coop in Ann Arbor on the left), among other things.

I'm heading to the rural north of Nicaragua near Leon and then Achuapa, where there's a farming cooperative run by the Quaker organization ProNica. I'll be there until the weekend at which time the sham wife and I will reconvene in Managua to figure out what comes next!