15 July 2005 19:45
Thus being the Ninth Day of Our Journey:Amongst the Vast Wildes and Savage Lands of NorthEastern Nicaragua.
A Wednesday, the Twenty-Third of March in the year Two Thousand and Five
Waspam. A medium sized river town (for the area), sporting its own docks, hotels, bars, airport, and electricity for twelve to fourteen hours out of twenty-four. in this case, it went of at around three in the morning. now to conserve energy, the room was actually fairly well insulated, complete with newspaper stuffed liberally in the joints around the window panes. This kept things nice and cool when the a/c was running, but in general didn't provide a whole lot of ventilation when it wasn't.
this had a tendency to start cutting into the rest and relaxation part of a "good night's sleep" somewhere around 0500.
"ALLLLLLLLLLL RIGHT!!! That's good enough!" --kyle at the end of a two minute cold shower.
after breakfast at 0730 we wandered back over to the internet cafe to check ticked prices and get some bus line info. Barry tracked us down there and gave us a ride back to the market, where he'd run into his brother just a bit ago.
this probably contains errors, but it's true as near as i can remember: the watson family came to the honduras/nicaraugan east coast (miskito indian land) three generations ago from jamaica. the grandfather was a missionary who came and settled among the various other people groups of the region (whose numbers include a fair minority of carribean blacks, who often speak a little english or a form thereof in addition to moskito or spanish).
One of his sons then, became a traveling minister; based i think, in or near waspam. he would ride the circuit of the local churches that didn't have pastors for most of the year, then would spend two months during the dry season traveling deeeep into the country to perform baptisms, weddings, funerals, and hte like that people would save off on until he could show up.
He was apparently well-loved by his congregations. By his nineties he was living with a daughter in Los Angeles. when he was near his end, they brought him back down to nicaragua, he made a celebrated round of visitations to very warm welcomes, then died peacefully in his sleep sometime very shortly after.
Before that though, he had a number of children (okay, a fair number. eleven comes to mind, but that may be wrong). Three of them were Edgar, Barry, and Oren (sp). Granddad was in Jamaica back in the 90's, driving along hte south coast through the town of Black River when he stopped at the docks to watch a black man repair a boat motor. That man happened to be Edgar, and granddad was impressed to find that he was honduran, not jamaican (yet another brother owned the boat, hence edgar coming up to fix it instead of somebody else...edgar can fix anything that's run at least once in its lifetime). gdd copied his information and filed it away for future reference without too much expectation of ever seeing him again.
come last year, when my cousin dano and gdd were traveling through that area, gdd was able to look him up and talk with him briefly. edgar then gave him contact information for his brother barry, and gdd/dano stayed at his hotel under the care of mrs barry, for barry was in managua at the time. this year we were then able spent two days in kraquira where edgar lives. and this time barry was in town for the duration, so we spent a fair amoutn of time talking with him. also, gdd had found out through edgar that their brother oren is the current head of civil aeronautics in nicaragua (a political position good only as long as the current government stays in power, however he flew in the military back in the day and put in quite a few years at PanAm). gdd was Very interested in meeting him on the off chance that he could do something to aid in opening gorge's ministry into northeastern nicaragua. currently (as is the international standard all through north america at least), aircraft must fly across borders only from international airport to international airport. so while waspam is probably an hour to hour and a half flight from ahuas, gorge would have to fly his 120kt 206 an 1:15 to teguci, then 2-3 hours to managua, then 2+ hours to waspam. it's useless. but if a waiver could be granted for hassle free flights between the two regions, then gorge and jarley would be able to expand their area of ministry another 100 miles into nicaragua.
gdd had informed barry of his desire to meet with oren, so when barry happened to run into him in waspam (oren has a weekend pad about 20 miles SE of waspam, though he lives mostly in managua), he came over to the cafe to take us to meet him. oren invited us to come out to his place that afternoon, which we were later to do. meanwhile barry took us on a tour of waspam and environs. we passed the town generator, where three men were busy filling a large diesel tank from a straight truck...via five gallon buckets. i'd estimate the tank at 5000gallons, and the truck at least 2000. at 4-5 gallons a pop.. that'd take a while!
we went out to see a bridge that was under construction over a tributary to the rio coco, then came back to the outskirts to visit barry's retirement property (he's quite the entrepenuer--owns a hotel and several pieces of land, is putting his daughter through university in managua; this is the guy who arrived in the US in his mid twenties without a penny to his name). i forget what the size of the plot was, maybe an acre? purchased for less than $100 US if i recall correctly... nothing but scrub and pine trees, he was trimming the scrub and grass, had had a well dug, planted dozens of palms and fruit trees, and a fence erected. by the time they get tired of the hotel, the trees around the perimeter should be coming along nicely. back to the hotel by noon.
i could get used to this rich tourist lounging around the hotel thing... cold pepsi in a glass bottle, book in hand, barefeet stretched in the sun on the warm concrete as i test the lawn chair in front of our room...
during the interval we picked some coconuts off the palm by the main patio and partook. after four (we were supposed to leave earlier ha), we headed out for orens, getting the scenic tour from barry. oren then gave us the grand tour of his place, which was basically a large playground with all his toys (well system, generators (three), harvesting equipment, boat, vehicles, you get the drift). after which we returned to the hotel for a very strenuous evening of relaxing.
included email
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(and despite the obvious adam's reference, i hadn't been reading any hitchiker's of late.. don't know what brought it on)
hola from waspam, nicaragua. we´re offically out of honduras, but not officially in nicaragua. theoretically we don´t exist anywhere, but we don´t think we believe them. we´ll get passports stamped in pto cabezas. that´s our next stop, a short 4hr bus ride tomorrow morning. we havn´t figured out how we´re getting to managua yet. the little pieces of green paper that make people nice to us are wandering off at a rapid rate, so we need to track down a little pieces of green paper generator somewhere in cabezas if possible. we might fly from bluefields to managua (a cozy ride), or we might try the 24hr bus trip by land thing (a not so cozy ride). at any event, we need to leave managua monday morning. have a good good friday, don´t let the bed bugs bight, be nice to any cockroaches you meet so that their cousins here will be nice to us, and catch you later (they have some Big cousins here).
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