From Freedom Road to Calle Libertad

Our early morning rickety charge from Miraflor along a winding dirt road in an old US school bus dropped us back down into Estelli in a bone-shattering, buttock-quivering, knee-crunching 2 hours.

After a quick shower, breakfast and an excellent tour of the cigar factory, we grabbed lunch in the mercado and headed over to Monte Sinai. This is a two-year old housing scheme on a dry, dusty hill overlooking Esteli. Rows of simple, one-room, concrete and tin-roofed buildings line dusty, gravel roads. Not the typical tourist destination but very important to us living in Walkley. The barrio is twinned with Freedom Road in Walkley, part of the larger Sheffield-Esteli town winning scheme. People from both have sent each other letters and held street parties on the same day of the year.

Photos of Monte Sinai and its residents are here on my flickr photostream -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billbevan/sets/72157604098032835/

We visited armed with a copy of a small book of letters from residents of Monte Sinai to Freedom Road which had the names of the letter writers. Within minutes we were talking to one inhabitant and introduced to one of the letter writers who was delightfully amazed to see us and the book! We walked around looking for others on her directions and soon found Heydi and Oscar, two more writers and leading members of the local community. Georgia had a long talk with them, while I took photos of kids playing football and the family goats out on the dirt roads.

The houses were built by a scheme to improve housing. Though simple and stark compared to what we are used to in the UK, they are an improvement on the wood shacks below the hill. They are secure and the walls are not full of gaps. Each has a roofed terrace and a garden. Different people have improved the basic houses over time, some planting colourful gardens, some extending by walling in the terraces. Others have outside living rooms on the terraces. Inside the original buildings there are one or two rooms, either a bedroom/living room and separate kitchen or everything in the single room. Space is cramped and there s no privacy. Still, some people have TVs and DVD players.

Two things strike me the most -

The intention to build on what they have and to improve their homes as and when money becomes available.

How important the street twinning has been to building community identity and pride. The exchanges of letters have meant much as people have had the opportunities to tell people abroad of their lives.

Miraflor

24th - 25th February.


Miraflor

The bus had just 36km to crawl up into the mountains from Esteli. We got to it a little before departure time at 6am, led there by our hostel night guard, to find it already packed but with enough room for us to find two seats together. Two hours later, after slugging it up an unmade dirt road that climbed steeply higher and higher, we reached La Pila, the location of our homestay.

We were welcomed at La Pila with breakfast, the mother of the family spotting us get off the bus and hastily frying us some gallo pinto, eggs and plantains. Though our homestay was booked, there is no way the office in Esteli can contact the homestay family so she keeps an eye on the bus for gringos. La Pila is a group of farmhouses scattered across the hillsides. Families grow beans, maize and coffee, and raise cows and chickens.


Homestay Family

Unknown until we get off the bus, our guide for the day had been on the bus too. Her lack of communication rarely changed throughout the whole tour. She sadly gave a solid impression of boredom and irritation the whole time.


Flying Orchid

The Miraflor area gets its name from a German NGO volunteer who came up with the name as a 'brand' to build a a community tourism project around. He thought there were lots of flowers people would like to come and see - hence Miraflor - view the flower. We did see some flowers but would not say the area could be particularly noted for its flora. Perhaps another time of year. That is except for the Orchid Orphanage, a small area of woodland with orchids rescued from dead trees killed by a hurricane a few years back.





On our way to the Orphanage we passed through woodlands thick with epophytes called Old Man's Beard that hang in thick, grey droves from branches.


Tree Beard

The tour ended with a visit to a beautiful little waterfall which Georgia braved. The water was far too cold for me.


Waterfall


Georgia putting on a brave face

We were soon joined by a group of local chicos from La Pila having a great time.


Chico Splash

After our tour we took ourselves along La Pila's 'high street' a dirt road running along the contour where the traffic comprises the twice-daily bus, a couple of pick-ups and lots of horses. To either side are views up to trees or far across hills goldened with the setting sun, cows in fields, birds singing in trees and chickens or pigs scratching the dirt for dinner. The area is a totality of tranquility and beauty. Along the way we found a long-abandoned Operation Raleigh concrete pre-school.


Seat of Loneliness

Beard 2

Beard 2
Originally uploaded by Bill Bevan

Granada, Nicaragua, 3rd March.

Three days later and the beard is coming along well.

This morning I decided to do something I've never done before - do some hairy sculpting of a beard. Mostly for two reasons:

1. The full beard looks a bit like Bluto's permanent 5 O'clock shadow in Popeye - that is terrible. Not a good look after more than two days having that dark, textured shadow below the chin.

2. Itchiness. In my past experience after a week of growth the nexk and underchin area become unbearably itchy. Even worse in temperatures over 30 o'C.

So, a hairless neck but yet still a beard.

Georgia thought the look of a Baptist, while I tended towards Bee Gees. Neither bodes well for its longevity.

I'm not sure which phase to go to next - the Master/Adam full goatee or the Noel Edmonds tidy-beard. Nor do I know whether I'll be brave enough to blog either result!

Beard 1

Ometepe, Nicaragua, 29th February.

I'm not usually prone to trying to grow a beard. I have tried before with mixed results - bad and awful. However, I am currently bearding the front of my face. This is for three reasons really:

1. A nasty mozzie bite right on my chin needed covering and couldn't be shaved without cutting it.

2. Nobody knows me here, apart from Georgia, that is. So why couldn't I be a beardy? Who would know otherwise.

3. Why not experiment with the hersuit chin?

So I have been bearded for a week.

Here is a photo of me with the full beard, untrimmed, tweaked or shaved. Just growing everywhere.

Revolutionary Esteli

23rd February 2008



A visit to the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs of the Revolution, and a conversation with Nina, a Sandinista veteran combatant.

You cannot take this as just another wayside attraction. The gallery is, of course, one of the main ‘things to do’ for tourists visiting Esteli – a purpose-built gallery with things to look at and read, and a history to peruse. The brightly coloured mural adorning two outside walls greets you with a semi-psychedelic invitation to ‘decode’ the faces and figures superimposed one over the other. This is the bright side of the Gallery. Inside is the story of a 64-year people’s struggle against US Imperialism and Fascist dictatorship starting with General Sandino’s uprising against US Marines stationed in Nicaragua to impose US policy and ending with the fizzling out of Reagan’s narcotic and arms funded 1980s Contra War against the victorious Sandinistas who had won the revolution against the dictators in 1979.



The story is illustrated with photographs of those who died fighting and of bands of Sandinista combatants in training or fighting behind barricades.

Over an hour of silent perusal leaves one affected by the bravery, passion and commitment of those who risked and lost their lives to fight oppression. But this is only a tiny part of the story. The faces, the clothes and the biographies of the deceased, as well as poems by one poet, do leave you amazed at how people could gather the bravery to fight the National Guard in the streets. But…there is so much more to know and understand of personal stories.

In steps Nina, getting water to make lunch for other women veterans of the revolution. Eye contact, a smile and an invitation to talk lead quickly on to the discovery of something of what it was like for an individual to live and fight through the 1970s.


Nina in front of photographs of those who lost their lives fighting for freedom. Her two sons are top left and bottom left.

She was a guerrilla from Esteli who was based in the mountains, leaving her two sons and three daughters to oppose the dictator in the town. Her serious expression, strong posture and large, working hands suggest a woman of substance, who has worked hard in the past. As indeed she has; having risked her life, endured danger and lost people close to her for a strongly held cause. She tells us of the three insurrections in town between 1978 and 1979. Of small groups of combatants, the displays mention on insurrection being led by 24 people, being joined by ordinary people in the town to fight the National Guard. Of how her group came down from the nearby mountains to attack National Guard targets based in town. Of how the women of the town helped the combatants by giving secret signals from their houses to invite the Sandinistas in for food and drink, which gave the guerrillas the strength to fight on and on. She talks with passion, eyes alive with memories and desire to teach gringos about the struggle. Of course she had to take up arms. No one could sit back and watch while people around her starved, could not write for want of education or were ill from lack of health care.

She describes the joy when eventually, in September 1979, the Sandinistas defeated the National Guard in Esteli causing Somoza to flee the country. They had won, one of the handful of true people’s revolutions in the world. She twinkles as she tells us how they fired their rifles in the air in celebration while people of all ages came back out on to the streets banging pots and pans. But all around were the bodies of the dead, who they had to bury somewhere with the danger of sporadic firing from the National Guard piercing the streets. When families could identify bodies they reclaimed them, where they couldn’t they buried the dead together in large graves, often under the floors of houses.

Her regrets are that for 16 years following elections right-wing governments kept power and have impoverished the country further. She claims the country is poorer that it was in the 70s, that there is worse education and less land for people. She feels that the days of the struggle were better than today, perhaps the nostalgia of one who fought with others for a cause and had difficulty knowing what her life was about subsequently, especially so given the right-wing governments that followed the eventual end of Reagan’s Contra War. She hopes that the current Sandinista government of Ortega has long enough in power to begin to right the severe problems.

We leave after taking a photograph of her, which she insists is by the photographs of her two sons killed by the National Guard, and many thank yous and hugs. She is clearly pleased there are foreigners who want to learn about the difficulties and ultimate success of the Sandinista revolution.