Ice Cream in the Nicaraguan Jungle

 

I hate spiders.  Hate them.  With a passion.  Yet, that first morning in Nicaragua, after sleeping only three hours following a delayed flight from the United States, I stepped into the eco-hotel’s bathroom…and a spider was exactly what I saw.  Brown, hairy, and huge, that awful thing could have eaten a small child.  Or at least a small mouse.

 

‘Welcome to Nicaragua,’ I thought, my eyes bleary, my mind weary, as I turned on the shower, careful to give Mr. Arachnid a wide berth.  He disappeared beneath an area rug, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Thank heavens the water was warm.

 

Mindful of Nicaragua’s water shortages, however, I ended my shower only three minutes later–a record, in my mind, given that showers at home routinely last ten minutes or longer.  Anxiously peering out of the shower, I noted that the spider had vanished completely.  Good.  With my confidence bolstered and a wide smile on my face, I left the bathroom and awoke my eight-year-old daughter.  Our two-week sojourn in the Western Hemisphere’s second-poorest nation had begun.

 

While I hadn’t anticipated my early morning meeting with the pico caballo spider (absolutely harmless, I later learned), neither had I expected the delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, eggs, and coffee awaiting my daughter and me in the hotel’s open air dining area.  Or, now that the sun had risen, the stunningly lush jungle greenery surrounding the eco-hotel.  I hadn’t known that Nicaraguans were so warm and friendly, that hearing the rooster crow at 4 a.m. and sleeping beneath mosquito netting would soon feel natural, or that, the following week when a monkey grabbed my daughter’s flowery summer skirt and left a muddy handprint, my initial reaction would be ‘that mark will be a pain to scrub out.’  Given all laundry was washed by hand, my assessment of what constituted “clean” and “dirty” had rapidly changed.

 

Oh, the things I discovered about this beautiful, yet impoverished country–and about myself.

 

Changed, too, were my perceptions of poverty.  In the United States, all but the poorest of the poor have cell phones and flat screen televisions.  No one washes laundry by hand or lives in a home with a dirt floor (if they do, they are the rarest of exceptions).  All children, regardless of socioeconomic status, receive an education.

 

Not so for the children of Nicaragua.

 

I spied two such children just a few days before my daughter and I returned home.  We had been lounging on the hammocks in the eco-hotel, visiting with the other travelers, when we heard the tell-tale sounds of the ice cream man coming down the lane.  My daughter had turned to me, asking, “Mom, may I please have some cordobas for ice cream?”  The ice cream bars were nothing special; at home, we could walk by the same ones at the grocery store without giving them a second glance.  But here, they’d become a treasured treat.

 

I’d nodded, and as we’d happily joined the other travelers outside the protective walls of the eco-hotel to purchase our ice cream, that’s when I saw two boys sitting along the roadside.  With dirt-streaked faces, the younger of the two appeared to be four years old; the older, perhaps twelve or thirteen.  Their clothes were faded and torn–not even fit for a rag bag.  Behind them stood a man, presumably their father.  He may have been my age (31)–or younger.  Beneath the dirt coating his face, it was tough to tell.

 

‘It’s a school day,’ I thought, as my daughter and I joined the ice cream line.  Why weren’t these boys in school?

 

Because, I later learned, they were farm workers.  Field hands.  Their labor was needed to help support their family.  But, for now, they silently watched as foreigners like me shelled out money enough to purchase one, two, three days’ worth of rice on something as frivolous as ice cream.  My fear of Nicaraguan spiders paled in comparison to the worries these boys must daily encounter.

 

Pulling my daughter from the ice cream line, we approached the boys.  I saw a flicker of curiosity in the older boy’s eyes, uncertainty in the younger’s.  I knelt before him, asking in Spanish if he’d like some ice cream.  Shyly, he nodded.  My daughter led him over to the ice cream man, he politely made his selection, and then I posed the same question to his older brother.  He, too, nodded.  Though I saw astonishment light his eyes as he selected his ice cream, as he sampled that first delectable lick, he maintained a composure found in few adults. Both boys politely thanked me.

 

From an outsider’s perspective, it may look as though I saved those boys’ day.  But, to be honest, they saved mine.

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One response to “Ice Cream in the Nicaraguan Jungle

  1. Those monkeys look awesome.
    I visited Nicaragua a few years ago and I saw some wild monkeys which were curious about our gear 🙂
    I hope I can get there soon.

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