Getting Around and Out of Bluefields

Noted earlier: at least 90% of the vehicles on the roads of Bluefields are taxis and (unlike many U.S. cities) clearly marked. You do not gaze and wonder at taxis here. Driving a taxi in Bluefields does not preclude you from having gigantic speakers mounted in your trunk, tricked-out grills, or comic horns. Driving a taxi in Bluefields, if anything, encourages these things.

The currency unit in Nicaragua is the cordoba, with the exchange rate hovering close to 20 cords per US$1. Before ten o’clock, taxis will take you basically anywhere pavement exists in Bluefields (not as comforting as it sounds) for a fixed price of 10 cords. After 10 PM, the price bumps up to fifteen. This is per person, regardless of your destination, and regardless of how many people you can fit into the front, back, and stereo-filled trunk.

Your time as a clown-car celebrity means nothing here. Ten cords.

More often than not, you’re better off walking. The bE casa seems to be on the outskirts of the central population bubble, but it’s only a fifteen minute walk into the shopping and market areas. Everyone will look at your goofy pale skin, but only because it looks goofy and pale. You’ll see endless little shops where you could purchase veggies, eggs, meats, and sodas. But you won’t, because it’s very hard to see inside and little dark stores selling meat of questionable origins is of some concern (sorry, kids). At night, with the shelves lit, the pulperias of Bluefields appear more inviting.

Other options: bike (both kinds), mud-spattered horse, crowded pickup.

There are roads leading outside the city limits, or appearing to, but there’s nothing nearby. Everywhere one would go is reached either by panga, bigger boat, or plane. We’d planned to spend New Year’s Eve by traveling to the Corn Islands, heading out by boat this morning, but no boats are allowed to dock there this week. The wind’s up. Planes are typically too expensive (~$100 apiece for round-trip, 20-minute flights) for four days.

BUT. We now have other plans, including a Creole cooking class.

Book Review: "Alex Quiere un Dinosaurio"

Certain authors feel a strong urgency to pepper their writing with splashes of foreign languages, to give it that je-ne-sais-quoi feeling of “I’m saying this thing, it’s very clever – oh, but you don’t understand?” Other authors, in the vein of Madison Smartt Bell (whose middle name is “almost smart”), enjoy bouncing their words back and forth between languages like a manic, polyglot pinball machine. These people, at their core, are empty and mean. The writers of “Alex Quiere un Dinosaurio,” a book I found on the bE bookshelf and that contains only Spanish, take this evil one step further.

Let’s assess the basic plot trajectory, starting at the ground floor: Alex wants a dinosaur. The character’s basic needs and vulnerability have been laid out from the beginning: check. His saxophone-playing grandfather – wait for it – gets him a dinosaur. Alex and his grandfather then feed the dinosaur (sorry, “dinosaurio”), amuse him, walk him, take him to school, and have him assault truckers. They run off to pursue a life of violent crime, loose women, and dinosaurio-sized prescription meds.

I flipped ahead a bit. This is the authors’ fault.

The narrative employs a popular technique known as “magical realism,” in which readers are compelled to believe something impossible by authors who woke up that morning wearing their fancy pants. The title mentions dinosaurs, Alex wants a dinosaur and nothing else, and the grandfather wants to get him a dinosaur – either there are dinosaurs when we turn the page, or the story ends. We bend over and take it, narratively speaking. The “Dino-tienda” where they purchase Fred is heavily detailed (the degree to which you describe flying elephants increases their likelihood, a famous fancy-pants owner once said). The other characters believe in and interact with and grow to loathe Alex’s dinosaur, so why shouldn’t you?

Move over, Gabriel García Márquez.


Just when you think it can’t get any worse, just when you think twenty-some pages were too many – but you’re still totally down with dinosaurs existing and all, you’re with him, you’re packing your bags for the Dino-tienda and ready to go – what happens? You turn the last page to see the grandfather give Alex a white bunny. The little prick was asleep.

Influencing an Affluence of Effluence?

Core elements of childhood drawings: a bright, smiling, spherical sun aloft in the corner. Softly lapping waves fill the foreground. Basic one-story constructions, featuring jagged lines and mismatched housing elements, suggesting scrap metal and driftwood. Fencing optional. The sky full of kites. Animals and humans together, smiling, standing side-by-side.

There’s a sense of utilitarianism and ease-of-use permeating most aspects of Kahkabila, from housing construction to the casual greeting (“alright”) to work schedules dependent upon currents and wind. There’s something very idyllic about a community that, while tremendously poor, disconnected, and unsuccessfully developed (and conscious of all these things), manages, on the whole, to keep disarmingly high spirits. Close families. Minimal crime.

People own the cows (and chickens, pigs, roosters, monkeys, dogs, cats, goats…), but very few own enough to warrant penning them off. Despite efforts to keep them clean, wells become contaminated due to various forms of runoff, with the effects exacerbated during the dry season. Visitors are obliged to bring their own water filters and chlorine tablets. Water-borne illnesses are a major health concern here, especially with children.

In those drawings, everyone forgets about the poop.

I'm Dreaming of a Wet Christmas

Most of the bE volunteers leave Bluefields over the holiday, either to return home or visit different sections of Latin America. One contingency headed out to do a turbine replacement at a Costa Rican eco-lodge. Others left for Brazil, Panama, the U.S., France. Meanwhile, Ali, Ken, and Luic remained in Bluefields to hold down the fort, bake cookies, and feed the mosquitos.

In order to properly celebrate the holidays in Bluefields, all you need are a couple cans of bright house paint, some twinkle lights, a few over-the-top decorations (easily purchased downtown), and a handful of firecrackers. Apply liberally. Repeat as needed. You will have plenty of time to rest afterwards, during one of the holiday's thirty-seven traditional meals.

Vida Luz, a close friend of bE, invited us to celebrate Christmas Eve with her family, which at least one of us (hint: it wasn't Ali or Luic) was mildly concerned about due to his linguistic-related failings. We were expecting a quiet evening that would later be filled out by a party happening at Hotel Anabas. Following a filling meal of roasted meats and salads and beer at the home of Vida Luz’s sister, Argentina, we headed into town to their mom’s house to meet and visit with twenty additional family members.

Their second-story home overlooks a busy street in downtown Bluefields, with a spacious patio, fresh paint, and a light-up Santa that Luic helped fix (another bE success story). At eleven, Secret Santa activities began and, for some kind reason, we received gifts. At midnight we headed down to the street to set off fireworks that lit up both the sky and the feet of anyone who wasn't paying attention (never, ever turn your back during those first few minutes of Christmas). Fireworks were followed by another meal.

At no point during the evening did Ken accidentally ask to borrow a pig.

Christmas itself was mellower, waking up late and listening to Christmas music online (Luic hinted that the only French Christmas music occurs in churches). After a traditional Nica lunch of noodles and vegetables, we attempted festive-ness with tortilla Española, honey-glazed carrots, salad, and rum punch ( ½ a pineapple, ¼ a watermelon, two oranges, and rum). Pineapple-upside-down cake and chocolate chip cookies for desert, joined by one of the bE house guards (Victor). While our families up north were looking out onto a thick covering of snow, here it was 80+ degrees and pouring rain. In the waning hours of our very traditional holiday, Luic worked on a final report for bE while Ali and Ken watched Kill Bill Volume 2.

A belated and confused Feliz Navidad from Nica!

December Update, or Give the Gift of blueEnergy!

The latest turbine installation in Kahkabila marked blueEnergy’s first remote health clinic energy system, providing electricity for a vaccine storage fridge, an asthma-treating respiratory device, and evening lighting for the resident physician. Members of the bE team also held a week-long training and maintenance seminar for the local energy commission, along with installing electrical wiring to power the community’s only primary school. 

In Bluefields, bE recently completed a solar panel system installation at the Bluefields campus of the National Technical Institute (IPCC-INATEC), our partnering technical school that bE is helping to reinvent as a regional center for renewable energy and community development.

Most volunteer programs don’t pay their volunteers anything. In addition to not getting paid, volunteers with bE also contribute monthly payments to offset their living expenses. We also sleep in hammocks, we share bathrooms with gigantic face-gnawing spiders (ok, so maybe not face-gnawing, but we’re not about to find out), and generally encourage low overhead expenses through mild amounts of suffering. Donations are tax-deductible and heavily leveraged with our corporate sponsors.

A little goes a long way down here (average incomes for technical positions in Bluefields are about US$100 per month), and the Nicaraguan postal system has a spotless record of losing every single incoming package. So, instead of trying to bubblewrap that fruitcake or fresh bottle of IPA, please consider making a donation to blueEnergy. Even $25 or $50 can be immensely helpful in moving bE forward with upcoming water filtration projects and community outreach activities.  It takes about two minutes.

There’s a link on the left side to bE's FirstGiving account, or click here.

Good Night, and Good Luck Sleeping

Constantly: Taxis and their attendant cacophony at all hours: notifying and insistent honks, tires on pitted concrete, wooden speakers in trunks, 50 Cent and Feliz Navidad. Birds that sound (follow us on this one) like Goofy when he’s skiing and falls of a cliff. Birds that sound like birds. Barking, baying, and rooster choruses that make earplugs purely ornamental. Backfiring motorcycles. Water overflowing somewhere onto something, always. Horses and horse-sized pigs being ushered down the street.

Often: High-pitched gecko chirps. Dog fights. The shrimp guy.

This morning: Firecrackers at 5:30, crackling at half-minute intervals, for fifteen minutes. Then nothing for two minutes. Then a parade.

The Amenities of Casa bE

The bE house is located near the southwest edge of paved Bluefields and across the street from Dr. Bacon, who also happens to be the mayor of Bluefields. But it doesn’t look like we live across the street from a mayor, and someone might be pulling our leg about this.

The main bE house has administrative offices, a kitchen staffed every day but Sunday, a concrete patio with an all-purpose ping pong table, and six simple bedrooms. There are currently eighteen bE volunteers, and three protocol houses down the street provide additional sleeping quarters. Most actual work occurs further down the street at the local technical school, INATEC, which has developed a curriculum and technical workforce around the development and manufacturing of the bE systems. From a bar called La Loma, one can see three bE turbines turning high above the campus.


Things tend to be slightly more organized and pleasant here than one might expect. The other volunteers tend to be around our age and generally cooler than us, so it’s a good time. The local staff takes care of lunch during the week, provides laundry and cleaning services, and orders all the food for the house. Water runs through a well and rain catch and do-it-yourself plumbing (there are ceramic water filters and chlorine drops). The laundry and showering schedule, like pretty much everything else along the Nicaraguan coast, is heavily dependent upon the weather.

If the coconut bread in the container is out, check the freezer. Don’t expect any warm showers (you probably won’t want one). Pick an empty mattress, string up your mosquito net, and make yourself at home.