The Occasional Pets of Bluefields

Four dogs currently serve as guardians and general mud-footed deviants of the bE house: Cooky, Flipper, Suzie, and the unnamed black one. The computer printers have identical names and are labeled, which is the only reason we have any guesses at the spelling. We expect all of the dogs to be named and properly accounted for once a fourth printer arrives.

Both Flipper and Suzie sleep in blue buckets or on tables just outside the main house. They are energetic protectors of the house (even from people friendly to bE), and for this are fed comparatively well with chicken scraps and rice. No one knows where the black one sleeps. Cooky, already quite old and bearing a striking resemblance to Snoop Dogg (apologies for lack of a picture), was recently hit by a car and removed next door to be cared for. When we see her, all she does is shake and stick her tongue out with her eyes closed. Despite diligent efforts at fence patching, Suzie follows the bE crew down the street to work each morning. Her sense of adventure is greater than her obvious fears of traffic and neighborhood dogs.

Pets aren’t really the same here, despite the fact that everyone seems to have two or more dogs and cats and parrots (and monkeys and songbirds) holding down their porch. Most animals we see outside the bE house are malnourished, flea-bitten, and bruised or beaten or hairless in spots. They are not fawned over, or fed chicken scraps. They are anything but adorable. Population control is dependent upon natural cycles of life and death.

Walking to work on Friday, we passed a truck with its bed full of animal carcasses and a long red puddle trailing down the street. A man in rubber boots stood over them with a hose, pushing liquids and runoff onto the street. We assured each other they were cows.

En La Finca

Our first Sunday in Bluefields began with a taxi ride to where the pavement ends. From there, a dirt road winds up a slight hill, past windblown shacks, a burning cliff of garbage, and partially cleared forests where individuals are staking out claims with makeshift fencing and started foundations. Local government officials, we were told, recently indicated that nothing would be done about squatters in this region, resulting in the recent influx of activity. Beyond this: a state-of-the-art cattle operation (shining, spotless, no cattle), an unattended horse waiting for its owner to return from the bush with armfuls of chopped wood, and, past a dry well, the road to la finca.

La finca simply means “the farm.” There are many farms, but this is the familiar one. The owner’s family has close ties with blueEnergy. Following a quick hike up to a main building (staffed solely by the three children above and below, their parents at market), the eight of us had a leisurely lunch beside the remnants of a dismantled lookout post, before heading down into the jungle, GPS equipment in tow, in search of long-lost fence posts.

Jungle are not conducive to clumsy people. There are streams that can only be crossed through the clever use of tree limbs and by reinventing yourself as a tripod. There are monkeys that express loud, whooping umbrage at your presence. There are bullet ant parades. There are memories of clear-cut national forests. Two machetes upfront.

You're obliged to fall at least once, as a show of good faith.  

When it’s over, when a rusty spoke of metal attached to barbed wire emerges at the bottom of a hill, then fencing and cleared space, it will seem anticlimactic. It will seem, even though a one-hour hike turned into four, premature. Machetes will be slid away too soon. Eventually, dirt paths, a burning cliff with foraging animals, and then pavement resume. The monkey will still be whooping, distantly, but with less feeling.

They Haven't Deported Us Yet

Greetings to family, friends, vaguely ferocious felines, fellow imbibers of craft beverages, and future providers of floor space.  We have safely arrived in Bluefields, Nicaragua and are already making promising strides in providing shelter and nourishment for underprivileged mosquitos.

We are volunteering with the non-profit organization blueEnergy, which installs and supports hybrid renewable energy systems in isolated Nicaraguan communities.  bE has an active base in Bluefields of about eighteen volunteers from the U.S., France, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere, as well as administrative offices in San Francisco and Paris. 

Our central role here - as in, Ken and Ali's central role - is to try to become immersed in one of the communities (Kahkabila) in which bE has recently installed an additional hybrid wind turbine and PV energy system.  Certain things are unknown.  Our extended trip to Kahkabila may or may not occur in late January.  It may or may not last two months.  It may or may not include teaching English classes, working on eco-tourism, or installing a water filtration system.  Like nearly all things in Nicaragua so far, it will be generally indeterminate in time, itinerary, and overall functionality.

More information about blueEnergy can be found here.

This blog is intended to document our travels and travails over the next twelve months.  The sense of time will be distorted.  We will jump and flip.  The focus will tend to be towards the things that strike us as most interesting, in Managua, Bluefields, Kahkabila, Pearl Lagoon, and, following the initial six months spent with blueEnergy, throughout Central and South America (or wherever the current takes us at that time).  Future items of interest could include strategic domino openings, machete maintenance, a handy guide on how not to get your ass kicked and clothes stolen, and a touching feature article regarding a Kahkabilan monkey named Fishy.

We harbor no (or few) illusions regarding the relative intrigue of our own daily lives, and in general things will focus on the food, foliage, creatures, and communities here.  There will be pictures.  There will be merriment.   There will be attempts at attempting these things daily.

In the broader scheme of things, this blog will hopefully serve as a place for family and friends to check up on us in an efficient manner, a place to focus on the various things that bE is doing for the communities here, and a chance for us to experience things more carefully.  

Please feel free to contact us, post comments, make a small donation to blueEnergy, or forward this along to anyone who might enjoy reading about two gringos trying to get by in Central America.