Grey Matters Media

When I tell you that the most important thing to understand about Chinandega is that it is hot, you need to really understand the kind of heat I’m talking about. This understanding is vital to your comprehension of the last twelve hours of our lives.

This is not the kind of heat that you casually observe after a few minutes outside - “It’s kind of hot,” you might say to describe the kind of heat that does not settle over Chinandega like a thick wool blanket.

The heat in Chinandega is the kind that hits you in the face like a two-by-four the moment you set foot outside an air-conditioned space (which are few and far between). This is a heat that makes all but the most well-watered plants wither under the unrelenting fury of a sun only twelve degrees from the equator. It means that a breeze, rather than refreshing, is sort of like a fan in an oven - “Oh, the heat is now actively rather than passively assaulting me! How splendid!” It means that after a few hours outside, you can feel a layer (or five) of dust coating the back of your throat and the insides of your lungs. This is not a heat to bask in; it is a heat to roast in.

Now that we’ve hopefully established what exactly I mean when I say that Chinandega is hot, let’s move on to today’s events, and please bear in mind that most of them are permeated by this heat, that this heat is the kind that sinks into your bones and influences your mind in a way that no other weather can (save perhaps the unbelievable cold of a Boston winter).

We woke early and drove to a market near Ana’s house, where buses leave on the hour for cities all over Nicaragua. Many of these buses are refurbished American school buses that have been brightly decorated with hot rod flames, pictures of saints, and of course the names of the cities to which they travel. Our bus could not have been younger than thirty years old, with maroon leather seats that must have been glorious to behold around, say, 1975, but which were now rapidly approaching decrepitude. Hand-painted lettering at the front of the bus requested, in all caps, “Favor No Fumar” (Please No Smoking). An “express” ride - hypothetically, making no stops to pick up or drop off passengers along the highway - from Managua to Chinandega was thirty-five cordobas - about two dollars - each. Once we’d gotten our seats and our bags were stowed, we waited about a half an hour for the bus to fill up. Vendors selling gum, soda, juice, bags of sliced mango, bottled water, and bags filled with rice and meat wandered all around the market, between the buses, transactions occasionally taking place out open windows. Once or twice a vendor got on the bus and walked up and down the aisle.

We pulled out around eight, and the record gets a bit fuzzy here because, lulled into relaxation by the warm-but-not-yet-hot-air, the steady breeze coming in my window, and the gentle grumblings of the bus, I fell asleep for most of the ride. The decrepit leather seats proved more comfortable than two both seats on Delta flights to Nicaragua.

We arrived in Chinandega around ten - “That was so much fun!” Arthur enthused at several points throughout the day - and got a taxi from the market to Betania, the Catholic mission where we spent the day and will be spending the night. grey matters media is producing a pro-bono promotional DVD for Betania (you can find out more about this project on its page), and we spent most of the day shooting material for this project. We filmed at the secondary school on the mission, the vocational schools, the seminary, the Betania church, a health clinic, the school for the blind, and the music conservatory. We ate lunch and dinner in the staff dining room with Padre Marcos and some of the volunteers at the mission, including Paulo, a “loco” (his words, not mine) doctor from Italy, and Juan Martinez, a photographer from New York who’s teaching digital photography to some of the kids at the mission. Conversations flowed in three languages over food too delicious for words.

Tonight we’re staying in an apartment in a building that Betania maintains for its volunteers - ours has two rooms, one with two twin beds and one with two sets of bunk beds, a bathroom, and precious air-conditioning. Tomorrow someone from the mission is going to drive us to various clinics and schools Padre Marcos has set up around Chinandega, as well as to the dump, where we’ll be able to see first-hand the extent of the poverty that plagues many Nicaraguans. We’re catching a late afternoon bus back to Managua and turning in early for an important interview Thursday morning.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.