I'm an easy sell for any travel. Always. But I'm especially excited about tomorrow's trip. I'll be heading to Nicaragua with my girlfriend, Aimee, for her long-awaited Peace Corps homecoming.
She volunteered from January 2005 to April 2007 in San Isidro, a small town in the center of the country.
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I'm sure that Aimee's parents will be following along, so now I've got two mothers to worry about upsetting. And my own mom still hasn't recovered from the Fiji stories. But then again, neither has my liver.
I've already had to field a lot of questions around the office. "Didn't you just get back from...where was it, Fuji?" Apparently, two extended trips abroad within three months is not the norm around here. Who knew?
I'm reading a great book on Nicaragua that Aimee recommended to me, called "Blood Brothers". It's written by Stephen Kinzer, who was the NY Times correspondent that first discovered the Contra camps in Honduras.
Some of you may remember the 1980s Nicaraguan Contra scandal, but even if you can't find Nicaragua on a map of Nicaragua, you'll love this book. It's a well written account of the country's fascinating recent history. I can't put it down.
But as good as the book is, I'm still getting most of my travel information first hand. Aimee wrote a travel blog during her time in Nicaragua (there's a reason that we're together), and I've been having a good time going through it. Without question, my favorite quote comes from a posting that she wrote to describe some local hand gestures.
Everyone here gets diarrhea, so when you want to refer to your diarrhea: Make a fist and bend and extend your arm out to the side of your body, starting at chest level and angling slightly downward. Give your arm a few quick jerks back and forth. If you want to say how bad or how long your diarrhea is, do it for awhile.
I'm hoping that this is just spot-on dead pan comedy. Because if she's serious, I'm in for a long three weeks.
By the way, if you'd like to see the rest, it's here
A quick rundown of the current news makes me think that this trip is going to be more about the Contra scandal than it will be about uncontrollable bowel movements (at least I hope so). Nicaragua is under some pretty heavy political stress that has its roots in the era of Carter and Reagan (or from a Nicaraguan perspective, the Somozas and the Sandinistas).
The Somozas were an extremely powerful political family that churned out a series of dictators during the first half of the 20th Century. They were violently overthrown (to say the least) by the Sandinistas, a group of populist fighters with a lot of good intentions, but not much governing experience.
The unfortunate truth about many People's Revolutions is that they often degenerate into the same type of totalitarian regime that they sought to overthrow. [See: China, Zimbabwe] But in their defense, I can't imagine that it's easy to form a truly democratic government when 1) you're extremely (and justifiably) paranoid about the exiled party returning the rebellious favor, and 2) the only example government that you've ever known was run by a tyrannical dictator.
And we thought that electronic voting machines were the biggest threat to democracy.
This pattern seems to be repeating itself with the current Nicaraguan Leadership. The president, Daniel Ortega, was a prominent Sandinista leader that played a huge role in overthrowing the Somozas. However, his current vision of governing may include stacking the deck to make sure that he stays in power. Along the way, Ortega has alienated a lot of former Sandinistas, and now seems to be running a party of one. But it is a powerful party, and one that doesn't appear to to be losing any clout. But then again, neither did the Somozas.
US Air doesn't fly to Nicaragua, so I'll be making a quick stop in Costa Rica. I'll spend a day visiting a Tucson friend who happens to be there for a wedding at the same time. Then I'll hop on a bus, and meet Aimee in Managua, the earthquake-destroyed capital city. Can't wait.
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