Santa Teresa - Sunday

I’m finishing up my second day in my training site of Santa Teresa.  It’s a small town of about 5,000 people about 40km southwest of Managua and I love it.  The town is awesome and my host family is so amazingly warm and welcoming it kinda almost makes me feel guilty.  My host mom is Thelma, the sweetest and most maternal woman I think I’ve ever met.  She has two sons in their early 30’s, one of whom, Luis, lives in the house with his wife Lizette and their 11 month old daughter Millet.  Thelma also has two daughters, Milagros and Thelma Leonela, 21 and 18, respectively.  It’s a really cool dynamic, because in some ways I feel like a big sister, but in many many more ways I feel as though I’m the tag-along little sister whom they have to explain everything to. 

The house is enormous and pretty with nice tile floors, a killer garden and patio, running water (sometimes), and electricity (sometimes). Holy amenities batman!  My room is about quadruple the size of my one at home, has six beds in it just for me (no joke, six of them), and I share a jack and jill bathroom with Leonela and Milagros.  I swear to god the girls in my house and about half the girls in Santa Teresa dress better than I do.  The standard of living is much lower than that in the states, and there are definitely a lot of families living in undeniable poverty, but the people are rich and generous in spirit.  The best thing about my training site is that I’m in the second lowest language group, not the lowest!!  Where would we all be without the simple victories?

My arrival coincided with the town’s semi-annual commemoration and celebration of their patron saint, you guessed it, Santa Teresa.  Because there’s still a considerable language barrier (nobody in the house speaks more than a few words of English, and my Spanish is downright embarrassing at times), I can’t get a full bio on Santa Teresa, but she was a writer and worked with the poor and seems like a thoroughly cool woman.  The first night Milagros was going to one of the parties that they hold this time of year, and terrified as I was I couldn’t pass up the invitation to join her.  They had a carnival for the little kids and families and a band and dancing for the young people.  And by band I mean a guy singing with a bunch of scantily clad women next to him shaking their asses.  By dancing I mean full on bumping and grinding.  All the while they had a projector playing his music videos, which consisted of him singing, the ladies shaking their asses, and him getting random people around Nicaragua to shake their asses with him.  And here I stand in the middle of it taller than almost everyone else with my blonde hair, blue eyes, chacos, and a polo shirt.  I should have just had gringa tattooed on my forehead.  Just when I thought it was not possible for another human being to look more out of place, in rolls a redheaded white dude in a wheelchair.  I almost fell on the floor laughing.  Nobody else got the joke.   

Thankfully I wasn’t forced to dance on my first night and instead forced conversation on a couple of the town’s youth (whom I’ll be attempting to work with during the three months I’m here), all of whom turned out to be studying industrial engineering.  I swear I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.  Besides providing a much needed opportunity to practice my Spanish, the whole night just made me realize how similar this is to back home.  The places and faces might have changed, but the way people interact with each other is truly universal. 

Sunday was the big fiesta for Santa Teresa.  I started the day out by going to mass with my host mom at the church a stone’s throw away from the house. ( As a little sidebar, this entire experience has felt completely surreal since the initial plane ride to Miami.  I’ve been saying since the beginning that everything is going to hit me all at once and come out in a big crying mess at the most socially inappropriate moment ever.   Gushing tears in the middle of mass.  Check and mate, mission accomplished.  The best part was because my Spanish is so bad I couldn’t really explain to Doña Thelma exactly what was going on, so I’m pretty sure she just thinks I’m either totally weird or really into Jesus. )  All I could figure out in advance about today was that it was going to involve a lot of people riding horses.  Thank god they explained the hand gesture for horse in my pre-training workshops; otherwise I’m pretty sure I would have expected today to bring a bunch of people having sex all over the streets of Santa Teresa.

Once church was over, the rest of the extended came over for lunch and to watch the horses.  And by extended family I mean about nine-hundred relatives.  Once again, there I was standing around awkwardly trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to carry on a conversation with complete strangers.  Unsurprisingly everyone was super nice and friendly and made me feel as at home as humanly possible.  My favorite part of the day was lunch which consisted of the customary rice, beans, chicken, plantains, and… I shit you not, chow mein.  If I knew Chinese Buddha delivered to Nicaragua I would have come here years ago. 

After much anticipation it was finally time for the horses I had heard so much about.  My interpretation of the whole thing, and I’m sure it’s totally skewed, was that every single man woman and child between the ages of 5 and 90 within a 20km radius got dressed up, got drunk, got their horses drunk, danced on the ground and on their horses backs, and had a parade through the streets of Santa Teresa.  And what parade wouldn’t be complete with tons of drunken musicians in the backs of trucks and more women shaking their asses on top of the parade’s one and only float, sponsored by the local beer Toña, all in the glory of Santa Teresa.  That Teresa must have really known how to throw down.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  Tomorrow marks the end of free time and the beginning of six-hour-long language classes.  Not exactly fun, but crucial for my survival in Nica.