Pedro, or Tona from the internet cafe La Chispa, Matagalpa

So I met this super cool dude on one of the first days I was here, mainly cause I needed to use the internet. He speaks really good English so that was also a bonus for me. Also he is very interested in learning about computer programming, so I have been trialling my lessons on programming to him, tweaking them a bit and getting him to help me with complex translations into Spanish. He has been amazing. I can go in there and use the internet for free now (I buy a lot of coffee and cakes) and he even just made me lunch one day. This is what I mean about people from this area they are so nice, very different to down town, which like any city, is more insular and less neighbourly, even if the quality of living is better.

Pedro also has his own small coffee plantation. He just showed me the beans they have just roasted and put into huge 55lb bags. His elderly father was out the back separating the good beans from the old ones. When all the coffee is ready they ship it off to America and sell each bag for about $500. Out of that though they have to pay shipping and all their other costs, although the whole family gets involved in picking the beans so they don't have to pay pickers. I would like to do some picking one day just to have the experience of that, he offered to arrange a trip for me to his farm.

Larry’s dogs, La Chispa

So Basically he has two scrawny little dogs sat out the back. Everytime you come in the house they start barking and try and crawl under the gap in the back door. And when you go to the toilet or shower (also in the yard) they bark at you and go crazy, especially in the middle of the night, waking everyone up! They have never bitten me but I think if you tried to annoy them they might. Anyway they are a massive pain in the arse. I do feel Larry needs to take them for a walk perhaps though. Perhaps this is part of their craziness, they just wanna get out of the bloody back yard! it would send me crazy. I told Larry this! Larry didn’t really say much in reply. I just think he (and a lot of people in Nicaragua) just see dogs as objects, they aren’t part of their family (like we treat them in the west) but are guard dogs, they serve a purpose and are just functional. I remember on Little Corn Island how many dogs, apparently without owners, roamed free. They were aggressive and territorial and fought each other. It wasn’t nice. This is the direct result of owners getting a dog because it starts out as cute puppy, not bothering to control or train it, getting bored and then just letting it run free. It kind of sucks. Also it is really annoying to get woken up in the middle of the night by barking dogs. Also cockerels are f’ing annoying too in the morning, I have had my fare share of them in Central America.

La Chispa, Matagalpa

So I ended up in this unique lovely little town in Nicaragua called Matagalpa. I wanted to immersed in Spanish, in a cheap place to live. My rent is $75 a month! So far I skipped (well other than the corn islands) all the tourist destinations, because I'd rather see something real than just touristy, boy have I seen that!

The streets of la chispa 

The incredibly steep hill going from la chispa to the town centre in matagalpa 

A ranchero band member

Larry's kitchen, he wants to get a cooker. I want to buy him one to say thanks for his generosity, or a bed(as he doesn't have one)

The tiny gym in la chispa, the running machine had no electricity, so you have to push it with your legs!

The roads in La Chispa near the  school

The gym in La Chispa, only 50 cents a day

Larry, a computer teacher from the centre in La Chispa (a poor area in Matagalpa) earns $188 a month. Half of that now goes to his ex wife. I never really understood the term trapped in poverty until now, but I have now. It's like I can get up and go whenever I want. This is just an experience to me, it's not real life. I have the resources to go where I want, but for a huge amount of people they just don't. They can't just leave. Their education is so poor they can't get a good enough job to give them the money to leave. Their whole lives are so bad I can imagine they barely have the mental energy to strive to get themselves out of poverty. They are totally trapped. Larry wants to get out get a job in London. But no way he could ever afford the flight. I was actually just thinking about buying him a flight to London! He offered his house to me for free. It is basically one big room with a tin roof, totally exposed to the outside. At night I saw a huge rat run along the rafters, and god knows what else is crawling around on the roof. We have no sink or cooker, no running fresh water, apart from some taps in the back garden. Generally the water and electric go off every day here for an undefined amount of time, and the water is hardly drinkable. The bathroom is a slab of concrete out the back with a pipe for a shower and a toilet. The shower curtain, so the rest of the world cannot see you, is a worn out rug. You can't flush the toilet. Two scrawny dogs live out the back in the dust and the dirt, who bark at you every time you go out there, especially in the night! He used to live there with his wife and 4 kids...Although I am not up for living here long term (although I do actually like living with Larry) I decided I would stay with him for 3 days, as a room in the centre was not available till the Saturday. It is a real experience living in La Chispa. Although to anyone not from this area or a tourist it seems run down and dangerous on the surface, actually everyone who lives here is really nice. I met so many nice people, everyone is so friendly and welcoming it makes me kind of want to just stay here, even though I am basically living in poverty. You see maybe you don’t need much in life to be happy. Perhaps all the things we have in the west are just luxuries. All you need is people around you. That is why the poorer people are the more generous they are, because all they have is each other so if they are shit to each other then they literally have nothing. Larry is no exception to this rule. He has given me his bed, paid for food, brought me breakfast in the morning, been patient in teaching me Spanish, got my clothes washed, helped me find a house and even paid for my bus fare here one day. Of course I try and give him back as much as I can, but sometimes he just won’t accept money. I decided to thank him for his generosity, despite clearly not having anything himself I will see if I can buy him a nice comfortable bed. He used to live in this tiny house with his wife and family, but since they left he has no bed. I think that is the least I could give him (he also needs a kitchen, but I am not sure I will get that too). 

So this is where I stay, again, for a bit. Didn’t think I would end up as a computer programming teacher in a poor school for young people in Matagalpa in a really poor district, but here I am. It felt right to stay, I felt I had something I could offer so I will try my best, I am pretty sure I will learn a lot of Spanish if I try hard enough. It will be (it already is) an experience I am sure, and this is why I came away to have experiences I can’t have back home. I mean I would never see or have the chance to live in poverty like this in England. Even the poorest of the poor in England have running clean water and a kitchen and enough rooms for everyone. Being really poor totally sucks, maybe just maybe if I can teach these people tech skills I can to east give them a glimmer of hope to get out of poverty.

Computers in matagalpa, this will be my classroom

The streets near party's house in La Chispa

Bluefields (Nicaragua)

Bluefields is the last land stop on the carribean coast of Nicaragua. Is the sort of town people and goods just pass through. There's a lot of poverty and slums and this makes it all the more reason to get out of there, because it can be fairly dangerous at night (as is anywhere in Latin America). I can't imagine what would come over someone to consider moving here, unless it's to study the people who live here or give them aid or as a lot of people do they come in search of a better life because the tourism and trade brings in people and money. However the carribean coast is pretty poor. One town, not so far from here (Puerto Cabezo), gets it's main income from US Aid. There is just a lack of investment from the Nicaraguan government (no roads here, everything arrives by boat), education (poor public schools) and with that goes a despondent people who don't care and don't want to make their lives better and strive for more. Unfortunately this isn't just a problem found on the carribean coast but everywhere in central America. There are some very poor countries here. 

So the one thing you can do in Bluefields, other than walk around is to go to to Bluefields museum. It's basically a history of the Carribean coast here in Nicaragua. The entire museum was empty and I was met by a curator who offered to give me a guided tour, although she said she didn't have very good English, so I thought why not lets give it a shot! Well it started out well as she explained how the Miskito Carribean coast of Nicaragua came about...what happened was the British did a deal with the indigenous Miskito people and said we won't kill you all if you learn English and submiss to us and also let us bring our slaves in from Africa. The Spanish just went into he rest of Nicaragua and were like fuck you lot, killed all and took over and stole all the gold. Now the Spanish didn't like the British being there so eventually they took over and  made everyone try and be like them, which eventually led to a revolution the 80's. Everything else in the museum was a bit vague cause the women showing me around couldn't describe the rest of the museum to me, either she lacked English or knowledge. She was also unable to explain to me why there was an ultra sound machine and a collection of other random objects in the museum, but she said it was there because it was old.

At the end I had to sign the guest book before I left as well. I had to leave a comment about how I felt about the museum too, but I didn't know what to say because the women was standing behind me so she could see what I was going to write, so I just wrote "good" I had a quick flick through the book to see what other people had written too and it was basically really nice stuff like "Excellente", "Bueno", "Very Interesting". Perhaps everyone had lied, because she had also been standing behind them making sure they wrote good things. I 

wanted to write, "It started well but the the curators knowledge dropped off and I had no idea why there was a ultra sound in the museum. It would be unfair to say this museum is basically shit, but I do feel it must try harder."

Getting off the island (little corn)

I just spent 12 hours on a boat which was cramped and full of people. Still it was a free way off the island, mainly cause I didn't pay because the ticket inspector never asked me to pay, which I was glad as they had just left us waiting 3 hours in the hot sun while they offloaded more cargo when they were supposed to leave at 9pm. However we saw Dolphins jumping in the sea following the boat.

So basically it was the most unorganised boat ride ever, we had to wait till about midday till the boat left in the glaring sun, the deck was so hot you couldn’t stand on it. We were meant to leave at 9am, actually we were meant to leave the previous day but that was an entirely different boat that didn’t turn up at all cause they hadn’t left Pueto Cabeza’s.

Then there was the mafia of women sat in the room with beds. God I wish I had taken a picture. They had all marked out the beds they were going to lie in with their suitcases several hours before, they must've arrived at 6am. I removed the suitcase so I could sit on the bed. They weren’t able to climb up onto the top bunk because they were a little too fat, they were big mommas! Anyway i was unable to find a seat anywhere (there were more big mamma’s who had camped out on deck) so the only place we had to sit was on these dirty plastic benches where there was some sort of engine oil or dust from the exhaust of the boat that covered all our clothes and made us filthy. Fortunately I didn’t have to pay for this experience as the guy selling tickets didn’t notice me for some reason and didn’t ask for my ticket!

The best bit about the journey though was the food, the captain cooked a nice meal of chicken for like 2 or 3 dollars, and we had dolphins following the boat leaping out of the water.

Getting off the boat was an experience too. So basically they couldn’t dock next to the port as another boat was kind of blocking the way. So they parked along side that boat, then everyone had to scramble over the gap between the two boats, this is hard when you have a 10kg backpack on, you don’t want to loose your balance and fall in! What made it even more challenging was the 3000 people waiting at the dock trying to get onto the boat, while you were trying to get off. So it was some kind of massive scramble! Imagine if that happened in England, or the civilised world, the entire port would be shut down…it begs the question too about the safety of the boats. I bet a lot of them are hardly marine ready. I mean most of the boats work day in day out, rusted by the sea salty air. The one we were on had a bent safety rail at the back, like someone had sat on it or something, or more likely a huge piece of cargo had fallen from the top deck and smashed it.

But I made it safe and sound to Bluefields town. While I was getting to the end of my boat journey I had these thoughts, because I saw El Bluff port and Bluefields and everything I hadn't seen for 3 months, it brought back memories and it made me think of how I feel like a changed man. I mean I have become a proficient diver. I've found  a reason for my trip and attempted to create a following on the internet that might get some people interested in me. I also maybe dealt with letting go of Amsterdam. I missed it a lot when I was settled on Little corn, probably because other than the diving being settled on little corn wasn't a place I wanted to settle at and I realized I missed being settled in Amsterdam. I wanted to be back there in house I didn't like in the job I didn't want to do. Key to that was Ben, but we will just see where things are when I have done what I need to do and so has he.

I also learnt: 
1) Small islands are expensive because you have to get the food and supplies there. Without the supply ships the islands are screwed, unless you can be self-sufficient.

2)You can’t get to know people unless you stay somewhere for a long time and make an effort to get to know them. When you travel spending a day or two in one place isn’t long enough to really connect with anyone. You have to spend much longer. Like the guys at the dive school, I only got to know them from spending a lot of time around them, having beers, eating dinner with them.

3) Living on Little Corn also made me realise what was important to me, being so remote and far away from things, and that it is important to me to feel settled. I need to be near my good friends and family, I nee to be near my home. I mean yeah giving everything up quitting your job is fine, it seems exciting at the time, but eventually moving around all the time takes its toll on you and you want to find that place to settle to stay else you never really connect with anything. But you can only find that out for yourself. Still I am ok travelling for a while longer...