There are 18 travelers, each carrying a Rubbermaid tote filled with medicines or medical supplies of some kind. We meet at Standiford field and check in all our baggage, seal each one with a couple of cable ties and head to the gate.
30 minutes before boarding we’re told that they cannot fit all 18 totes on our plane and they will have come on a later flight. After 20 minutes of searching for another route, it is determined that 10 of our totes will go to Baltimore, then on to Houston to meet us there. Since we have a 5 hour layover in Houston, this works great and the totes will be with us when we fly to Managua.
We met up with Becky Briar who was flying in from Colorado Springs and we all flew to Managua and traveled by bus to Leon (about a 1.5 hour drive through city and country).
Although it was dark, you could get a good sense of the country we were traveling. There has been no rain since November 18th, everything is very dry and yet we can smell wood fires everywhere once we leave the city limits. Trash is burned; there are fires for baking brick and cooking fires as well as fires caused by a careless cigarette thrown out a window.
In the distance you can make out the silhouettes of volcanoes, which are scattered across the country. On the way, we pass bikes, motorcycles, cabs, horse carts, people walking and recycled American school buses now used as public transportation.
Still in their bright, familiar yellow, they now have been decorated with names (Desperado, Esmarelda), patron saints, cartoon characters (Wiley Coyote and Roadrunner) or sentiments like “A Dios La Bendiga” (God Bless You) and pictures of Jesus and Mary – always pictures of Jesus and Mary. Sometimes they still have signs on the side “Hampton Township, Cambridge” or Dillinger School District, Texas” as if advertising their proud lineage. You can load on whatever you can carry including animals. Remember how the driver told you to stay away from the emergency exit in back? Forget that – it’s usually not even there!
As we travel, the pace of life around us seems to slow to a steady rhythm, but through the rest of night and on until morning, it never stops. The first thing you learn about this country is that life never stops and it barely slows. In the US, you could drive for many miles or even walk for blocks in your own neighborhood and never see another person. Not here. At least, not in the western and southern most populated parts of the country.
Even though unemployment in Nicaragua is over 22% and you must add to that underemployment (30% +), commerce is vigorous in those cottage industries that mean survival, but are not necessarily reflected in government employment figures; farming, street vendors, black market, making crafts, household employment, taxi drivers, etc.
We arrive at Terry and Arlene Dupont’s home in Leon. A 12 ft. fence surrounds it with barbed wire on top. Makes you wonder why, but every home, place of business, church, etc. has some kind of fence or wall around it – it’s deterrent to petty theft which is, well….petty; but common, unfortunately, in this country that shares the dubious distinction of the poorest in the hemisphere with Haiti.
The house is large with 2 bedrooms full of bunks, 4 bathrooms, a large dining room, and living room. There is a large porch under roof in the front and the back of the house as well as a rooftop porch up a set of spiral stairs. We are welcomed to help ourselves to anything in the house, find our bunks and settle in for the night with a very comfortable 70-degree breeze, which will soon enough vanish with the morning sun.
