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."