Marlene

She wasn't allowed to move for a  month due to deep vein thrombosis in her left leg.  Somehow she still looked fabulous, resting on her plush, steely blue couch, wearing a baggy t-shirt and sparkling, dripping earrings that make her smokey blue eyes sapphire.

She taught biology for most of her adult life. Now she's retired, renting out rooms of her two-story burnt orange building to all sorts -- US citizens, Germans, old Italian men, Nicaraguan models, Mormon missionaries and even occasionally a Black man. She is proud of the diversity she's maintained and keeps it a close-knit group, calling all the female renters "hija" and "amor".

Sometimes she'll lend out scissors, pots, or her kitchen and table for a neighborhood dinner.

The conversation will range from her troubles with learning English to her disappointment with the young empleada who cooks and cleans her home, to discussion of religion - a fragile subject that at any moment is likely to shatter into judgements and generalizations. She asks probing questions that are at times only thinly veiled criticisms or complaints.

But she also wakes you up mornings to tell you when the water has come back on after it had been away for days and she's open and kind to any visitors. And perhaps most important and thoughtful of all, she assists tenants in keeping out bugs called Chinches -- a little beetle whose bite, when left untreated, causes an illness that will kill its victim in later years.

She lives alone in her part of the house, not speaking much of husband or children, but gushes about her grandchildren.  The truth is that she has quite a history of love, as will we all. She loved a man and was not allowed to be with him; he was too poor. She married someone else. Had children with him. Life went on, but some mornings when she is looking in the mirror she wonders if she would have looked differently had she married the first man.

When the doctor told her she couldn't walk she took to the television, a situation that at once clearly bores her and lets her blissfully sink into the world of the rapidly changing images on her screen.

She doesn't own very many mugs, for some reason.  Coffee for more than 4 is an amalgamation of
holders - jars, cups, short glasses - anything that will hold the hot liquid that she graciously allows her guests to sweeten to their own liking, a privilege not too common when visiting with someone in their own kitchen.

You wish she really was your mother. Her terms of endearments have a grating effect on your heart after the first month of having them rolled out to you as you walk past her door. I am so far from my own mother, with her own blue eyes and her own earrings and pet names and judgements.

You are thankful for the flowers and long-leafed plants lining the narrow cement walkway that takes you to the rooms further inside. You are thankful for the security offered by this place. The privacy without loneliness. For Marelene's washing machine, her stories of travel, her curiosity. Her immediate and generous giving of love.

Jorge

    He is the most lonely person I know. He tells stories to the air, his features just handsome. A fading scar on the outside of his right eye. Full lips. It's his smile, though, that lets you in and makes you feel important and funny; cared for. He knows about all the living things in his town - people, dogs, rabbits, flora. He dresses well, always looks and smells freshly bathed, hair and shoes shinier and better ordered than a stack of new dishware in a kitchen supply store.

     
    He's been doing some form of labor since before he had hair under his armpits. When he's not sitting at the sewing machine that he supports in its mission of fabrication he sits in class, which sitting at the sewing machine pays for. When he's not in either of those tail-bone bruising states, he wanders in the sugar-cane fields and in the shadows of the regal Guanacaste trees that surround his small and windy town. 

    
     The inside of his left front tooth is chipped. Nothing terribly obvious, just the corner, but when you've listened to him speak for long enough you replace paying attention for 5 second spurts of imagining how it happened. You won't ask him, ever, how it happened because you're embarrassed by the fact that such a question could never naturally follow the story of his father drinking away  the family money, or of Jorge's fainting experience on a hot day while working in the bean fields at the age of 9 with no food or water to fuel the machete swipes. Machetes are hungry and find human hands to attach themselves to in a rather beautiful symbiotic relationship. Machetes do not discriminate based on age.

     In spite of his childhood in which photos show him barefoot out of wretched poverty (instead of youthful freedom) he retains romantic theories and dreams.  He wants to make the most of himself for his country and family. He studies journalism to eventually spread revolutionary ideas of self-education and recreational marijuana, and to pridefully bring knowledge of his country and culture to other nations. And, of course, to travel. His town encircles him like a python, not just because of the size but also the memories that roam the streets with him.

   He's one of those that never stops loving someone once the reaction has settled. Some leave each love behind like candy bar wrappers. But Jorge keeps them alive and sweet in his head. His loves have their own misted glass cases that he keeps dusted and streak-free. He is never single for long because he has perfected a professional and meticulous form of flirting that one cannot help but admire. It is patient and skillfully individualized to each and every female, simultaneously making him vulnerable enough to be almost irresistible. Almost. In his attempts to kiss you, you will be so undecided in whether to turn your head that by the time you do make up your mind, his lips will make it to the corner of your mouth.

     He used to dance and will tell you each time you meet that he used to be thinner; his buttocks firmer, calves more defined. He does move with the grace and ease of practice, always looking over your shoulder as he spins you, or greets you, or tells you of his past. He's looking for danger, you imagine. But he is not so maternal as that. Though some days he picks up his two young nieces from school and the three of them can be seen balancing their way back to the SE part of town on his Rasta-colored bicycle.

     He plays the guitar, which is he is better suited for then singing. He is part of a band and all the members have long hair except him. He had to cut off his dark, straight strands for his job. Something a bit difficult to understand, as the clothes making is the business of his extended family. He spends all day with kin - brother, cousin - there are various places like this in the old town. Houses indiscriminate from other houses until you pass by the open door and are met by the 10 eyes of the young men working the maquinas. Gender roles we know in the US make you think that women would be doing those jobs, but if the options for work are clothes making, 
then that is what the men do while the women care for the children and home.
"Stay-at-home-Dad" is not a fad in Nicaragua. Yet. 

He loves his mother more than anyone, more than himself. She moved to Costa Rica to work and send back money, rarely getting the chance to visit physically.

He used to be Mormon. He may be still but the Church shut down. Though the gates are still opened from time to time to allow the basketball courts to be utilized, mostly for soccer practice.

He wants to build himself a small house so he no longer has to live with his younger brother who resents being a younger brother. 

He says women blossom like flowers within the hour after they rise for the day.

He loves to bathe naked in the first rains of the season, to wash away the predictable summer. 

The Project

  


       This is a series of Character Studies of people that I have met while in Nicaragua. I will make them as honest as I can, but cannot comfortably say that nothing has been changed by time and the fallibility of my memory.  

        So, I will say these are fictitious, based on real people and situations, with real parts of the Nicaraguan culture and geography added in. I have made links to some of these cultural and physical references, and the pictures added in are my own...

I want to give an uncensored depiction of the personalities that I have the opportunity to come across. Everyone deserves to be recognized.