Preparations, Monuments, an Interview, Two Neighborhoods, and a Suggestion
By Steph
April 22nd, 2006 | Nicaragua |
After a brutally early ride to Boston’s Logan airport; two three-hour flights (Boston to Atlanta, Atlanta to Managua) and a one-hour layover; an hour in the customs and immigration line; and a twenty minute car ride through Managua’s hectic mid-afternoon streets, Arthur, Trevor and I finally arrived at our destination.
We spent the rest of the day recuperating from our travels, and from the insane pace of the last week. Life in Boston has been on permanent fast-forward in the past few days, with everyone becoming increasingly stressed out over final papers, projects, and exams, moving back home for the summer or finding a place to live.
This morning we woke and had a delicious, leisurely breakfast while Ana arranged our first interview. Trevor and Arthur fiddled around some more with the camera, and Arthur and I talked a little bit about the interview itself, planning questions and going over the nuts and bolts of everything. I was a little nervous, but I would have been more nervous had we not been so well prepared.
We still had some extra time before our first interview, so Ana took the three of us up to a hill in the center of Managua where the Samozas had their residence and bunker before the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. The residence and bunker are in fairly well-preserved ruin, and a huge statue of Augusto Sandino has been constructed on the hill. Supposedly you can see it from anywhere in Managua. Walking around the area, looking at relics from the dictatorship - a tank that was a gift to the family from Benito Mussolini, a piece of an equestrian statue of Samoza that stood outside a sports arena - was haunting and moving. So many incredible people sacrificed so much to give Nicaragua the government it has today, and I really felt a - responsibility? debt? I’m not sure either of those words quite captures it - to create something that will do justice to their sacrifices.
And then our first interview, with Presidential candidate Herty Lewites. My nervousness still hadn’t gone away, but I murmured to Arthur, “It’s kind of like standing on the diving board when it’s one-hundred and ten degrees outside. You don’t have a choice. You just hold your breath and jump.” And although I think my backstroke needs a little work, the interview itself went well. Senor Lewites was very open and honest with his answers, and Arthur and Trevor seem really pleased with the footage.
After the interview, Ana drove us to two different neighborhoods in Managua. The first was the Managuan equivalent of Beverly Hills, with unbelievably expensive houses surrounded by high cement walls, security guards, and lots and lots of barbed wire. One thing we all loved, though, was that there are tons of these luscious pink and orange flowers (Ana says they’re called summer flowers) growing like crazy all over the wire. It reminded me of what Ezra Pound wrote about the “perfect symbol” being “the natural object.”
The second neighborhood was the polar opposite of the first. Ana said it had been full of houses which had been destroyed by or abandoned in the earthquake in the 1970s, and people had just sort of taken them over. It was heartbreaking and eye-opening to see people living in such conditions in the capital city; anyone who thinks Washington D.C. has work to do should come to Managua to realize how fortunate they really are. We stopped the car and pulled over next to a playground so Trevor could get some steady extended shots.
On the one hand I just wanted to cry to see children playing with such old, rusty equipment, the once-bright paint almost entirely chipped off, garbage collected and decaying in piles everywhere. On the other hand, watching the kids was strangely uplifting. Two little girls were see-sawing; one got off and the other plonked to the ground and called after her friend before getting up and following her over to the merry-go-round. An older girl pushed a younger boy on the swings. A boy chased a girl around the equipment, yelling. Childhood experiences can transcend boundaries of language, economics, and politics. Maybe political bodies - the United Nations, the American Congress, the European Union - would be more effective if their meetings took place on playgrounds instead of in big meeting rooms, and everybody had to learn to take turns going down the slide.
2 Responses to “Preparations, Monuments, an Interview, Two Neighborhoods, and a Suggestion”
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April 27th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Arthur’s cowboy hat makes him look ready to wrangle some interviews (and hott).
July 10th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
[…] Herty Lewites was our first interview. You can read what I wrote about it the day of here. What I didn’t write then, mostly because I was on a reasonably fast-paced principal photography shoot, but also because I hadn’t quite had time to fully absorb my experience yet, is this: […]