Hurricane Felix

Just in case anyone out there is wondering, we are all fine.
Hurricane Felix struck the Northern part of Nicaragua at 5:30 yesterday morning, just North of Puerto Cabezas, then moved South, and as a consequence spent the entire day in Nicaraguan territory, before disintegrating itself and moving on to Honduras as a tropical storm.
The Northern RAAN region is struck pretty hard; the media reports indicate some 40.000 homeless and 38 dead. The RAAN region has been declared desasterzone and several villages have been flattened by the category 5 hurricane. Everybody is now anxious to see what the following days will bring in terms of rain. The current prognosis is some 300 mm of rain in Northern Nicaragua, and quite some more in Honduras and Guatemala.
Here in Managua we have felt very little. It started raining yesterday afternoon, and continued throughout the night with rain, thunder and lightning. It was not the usual kind of storm, the rain was soft, not violent, and the thunder was more prolonged, each blast seemed to come from afar and last longer than normally. Quite extraordinary, never experienced something quite like it.
As always, solidarity surprises in times of crisis, even in poor Nicaragua. Maybe because people are so very well aware that tomorrow they themselves could be in need of help because of an earthquake, volcano or another hurricane, recollections of food, water and money has already started. At schools and workplaces, people are busy organizing recollections for our “brethren in Puerto Cabezas”.
Let’s see how much is gathered. I will hand in my part, but I am pretty sure that it will mostly depend upon the Nicaraguans themselves, because international media is not likely to lend a helping hand. Who cares, anyway? It is just Nicaragua…
More on Felix (in Danish) on the MS website.

Posted by Christian Korsgaard

A girl was killed

I have just carried out my most difficult interview ever. I don’t quite know how I will ever be able to write the article I am supposed to – and then at the same time I can’t avoid writing at least something down right away.
I am in Guatemala. A beautiful country with a violent history – and a violent present. Twice a day, a woman is murdered somewhere in the country, and the murderers are seldom brought to justice. Today I was granted an interview with a remarkable woman, whom I for safety reasons will name Clara. She once had a daughter, whom I will call Sarah.
One Thursday, when Sarah was 19 years old, she came back from the supermarket, smiling. She had just received her paycheck, done some shopping and had met a friend of a friend, who had asked her to join him down the street, because he “had a surprise for her”. As a good, Guatemalan daughter, Sarah asked Clara for permission to see the boy, and Clara first frowned at the request. It wasn’t safe, she considered, but when a neighbour passed by to see some clothes that Clara had fixed, Sarah once more requested permission to go – and Clara said yes. That was, as Clara herself explained through tears today, the very last time they saw her.
When Sarah didn’t come back, several search teams were sent out, but in vain. The police didn’t want to issue a search warning until 24 hours had passed, which meant sometime after office hours on Friday. As a consequence, the warning wouldn’t be issued until Monday.
On Sunday, a bloody, female corpse was found some five kilometers from Clara’s home. The victim had been violated, beaten to death, had one breast cut off, and a broken arm. The face had been cut beyond recognition by a knife.
It wasn’t until Monday that Clara and her husband by accident heard about the corpse. Just in time, as the mutilated body would have been buried under the name of XX the following day; unknown victim. The only way Sarah’s father was able to identify his daughter, was because her heels were fissured in a particular way, after years of walking barefooted in the poor house at home.
For three years nothing happened. The devastated parents were left alone with the grief, the neighbours’ gossip and the fear that more was to come. A couple of times a suspect was taken into custody, but then set free. As the parents insisted on continuing the fight for justice, friends and neighbours retracted from the humble home, fearing that the murderers’ families might try to harm them as well. The couple was left alone, and the two faithful churchgoers even felt the rejection from follow worshippers and retracted further into isolation.
It wasn’t until Clara was contacted by a local women’s group that things changed. After a thousand days of suffering, she finally entered therapy and received the legal assistance she needed. She felt stronger, a new trial was set, in which a young man was charged with murder, rape and robbery. After six months of trial, he was found guilty of murder and condemned to 35 years of imprisonment.
The verdict has helped a bit. Some justice has been done – not enough, but some. Life has to go on, and even if the wounds cannot be healed, the verdict at least makes it easier to live with the pain left behind by the murder, the dysfunctional and corrupt legal system, and the gossip and talk of the neighbours.
Things will never be the same for Clara and her husband, and they are well aware that the verdict may some day lead to more violence from the convicted’s friends and family. But as Clara said during today’s group therapy: “This might cost me my life some day. But then at least I will die with my head held high, because I have created justice.”

Posted by Christian Korsgaard

The end of the world

I’ve been at the end of the world. Eights hours drive from Managua on bumpy roads, followed by three hours by boat down the San Juan River will take you to the edge of the Natural Reserve Indio Maíz. No light, no internet, no cars, no tv. Wonderful, natural – and isolated.
Suppose it has to be that way, the end of the world just wouldn’t be the same if you could just get there in half an hour. Sort of goes with the term ‘end of the world’, so some hardship is okay. But does it really have to be as complicated as it is? Do I practically have to rip the car apart in order to get there and spend two entire days on the road? No, not really, but fate has played the cards in such a way that I had no option. Let me explain.
To get to the San Juan River, you either have to fly (I’m too stingy…), take the Granada-San Carlos ferry (13 hours…), or drive. The problem with the ferry is that it stops everywhere and that you have to spend the entire trip on hard wooden seats. Not very tempting…
Now, there used to be another ferry I am told. Long time ago, a couple of worn-out, Russian hydrofoils used to make the trip in three hours, and people in the area around the river still remember how tourism boomed, how prosperity blossomed, and how hope rose. But happiness only lasted a year. The Russian sailors were not paid, went back home and apparently left the hydrofoils in the hands of incompetent, local mechanics. Soon after, the hydrofoils disappeared, as did hope, prosperity and progress. Back to square one.
My plead for better transportation options to River San Juan isn’t really selfish. The one time a year I might go there, I will survive the roads – or take the plane. But I can’t help thinking what better transportation would mean for the people living in the area. And I can’t help wondering why things sometimes have to be so complicated. The Nicaragua Lake is there, big and spacious, and with ample space for a couple of fast ferries or hydrofoils, that would bring products from the San Juan River closer to the world. Obviously, tourists would also have better access to the area, thus bringing money and investments to the area. Why can’t some prosperous businessman see the possibility?
Faster transportation would most probably mean the end of the end of the world. But I wonder of all the poor people along the river wouldn’t be better off?

Posted by Christian Korsgaard

The Black Mountain

I’ve been on quite a lot of volcanoes. No big deal, in Central America they stretch from Guatemala through El Salvador, continues through Nicaragua and straight on to Costa Rica. There are so many, I don’t even know how many, but there are a lot. I haven’t been on all of them, obviously, but I’ve walked up more than I like to think of, and have driven past so many perfect cones that I stopped noticing them. They are just there. It’s just a volcano… and so what!?
Well that changed today. I am on my own these days, Kattia and the children are in Costa Rica on vacations, and I felt like driving out into the wilderness with our dog Anton, and see something new. And I most certainly did. After three hours drive, quite a few stops to ask for directions – followed by a couple of detours because some of the directions were wrong – I arrived at the foot of Cerro Negro, Nicaragua’s youngest volcano, with the latest eruption in 1992.
And now I see why it is called Cerro Negro – Black Mountain. The entire volcano is covered with a deep layer of volcanic sand and tiny stones, making it look somewhat like a beach, only without water. The atmosphere is astonishing. A blazing sun above, steaming heat below, and flickering air making the horizon blurry. Not a sound, no life at all, everything is just black, dead and quiet. No birds, no plants, no wondering dogs, no cows, no nothing. Just a stupid Dane climbing up the volcano and his whining dog complaining with each step he has to make on the burning, sharp stones. For the same reason, this time I only made it halfway to the top, missing the last steep part and the view from the summit at some 1.000 metres above sea level.
Maybe next time I will get to the summit. Because I will most certainly return. Cerro Negro is a fairly unknown jewel on the long list it things that are worthwhile visiting in Nicaragua. Far off the beaten track, yes, but who cares, the isolation is part of the show, it just wouldn’t be the same with a bar blasting out local salsa at the foot of the mountain – though selling drinks at a place like Cerro Negro might turn out to be a profitable business. But I prefer the quietness, the sense of natural greatness and my own humbleness – and then take the drink somewhere else. Certain things are best kept apart.

Posted by Christian Korsgaard

Time machine

Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega seems set on accomplishing what scientists for centuries have failed to manage. Apparently he wants to invent the time machine – and he seems pretty keen on the project.
As most will recall, Ortega used to be president in Nicaragua back in the 1980’s when the civil war ripped the country apart. That was when the ‘imperialists’ in Washington fought against ‘socialists’ in Nicaragua. When the Berlin Wall still made it easy to figure out who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. Since then, things have become less evident, and globalization has reduced borders to lines on a piece of paper.
But no so in the presidential house in Managua. Or should I say, in Daniel Ortega’s house in Managua? Well, doesn’t really matter, because it is all the same. The president now rules from the headquarters of the governing party’s – which by the way is located on the premises of his private mansion. Who mentioned separation of state and party, let alone private property?
Anyway, Ortega seems set on this time machine issue. His language hasn’t changed a bit since the 1980’s, he still wants to fight the ‘imperialists’ in Washington, this time not with the help of the Soviet Union, but with help from his friends in exotic places like Venezuela, Iran, Libya and Cuba. Obviously this has pissed off the entire opposition and most of the population as well. So much for fulfilling his main message from the November 06 elections; peace and reconciliation. Seems he forgot to mention that the reconciliation was with odd buddies from around the world.
The language is thus the same. But what really worries me and a whole lot of other people, is that physically Ortega also seems set on turning back time. A couple of weeks ago he ordered the demolition of the fountain built by the liberal, former president Arnoldo Alemán. The fountain had been built on the Revolutionary Square in the heart of the old part of Managua. Not too pretty though and it was most definitely a bad move to place the fountain on the historic square where the popular revolution in 1979 celebrated the end of the Somoza dictatorship. Every year since then the Sandinistas have celebrated July 19th on the square, but with the construction of the fountain in 1999 that became impossible.
But as somebody said on national tv, you just don’t correct one mistake by making another. Unless you are Ortega it seems, because even though he doesn’t officially have the power to decide what should be on Managua’s squares, he ordered the demolition, answered no questions and sent in the trucks with fresh asphalt to bring back the revolutionary square to its old, parking lot look.
So now the time has been turned back, we are ready to celebrate the upcoming July 19th revolutionary day. I just wonder if we are to start celebrating from scratch again – ie. 1979 – or if the year is in fact 2007?

Published by Christian Korsgaard

Jonrón

Nicaragua is baseball territory. All of it, even the countryside with the dusty roads, horsemen wearing the compulsory baseball caps, wandering dogs and cows – and a few overloaded trucks. Add to that quite a lot of coffee, a few cabbage fields, lots of potatoes – and the local baseball field. That more or less describes the Estelí countryside. And the field was where I ended up with some friends last week, and where I realized why Nicaragua has so much to offer.
I just love the fact that in this country, I can walk onto the local baseball field, sit down on the grass next to the local boys and watch the game. No fuss, no comments, just a few smiles and surprised looks. It is not everyday that a bunch of cheles watch the local match, but what the h… - in Nicaragua everything is possible, even this, people seem to say to themselves. So they leave us alone and answer our strange questions on the game with patience. The field is too short, so they have had to adapt the global baseball rules to local conditions. If the ball hits one side of the roof of the school building, the striker is allowed to run two bases. But if it hits the other side of the roof, it is a homerun. Or jonrón as Nicaraguans call it.
And so it strikes me that this country has so much to offer. Hospitality and friendlyless can open so many doors and maybe allow a major homerun.

Published by Christian Korsgaard

Doña Corina

Last weekend I went to the Northern part of Nicaragua with my family and a couple of friends. Two days out where the only light is brought to you by solar cells on the roof, where water is scarce and where the loo is a brick construction with a hole in the ground and a door that cannot close. But at least you get rid of the bad odours pretty fast.
Tourism is only in its early childhood here. Comfort is not yet a big issue, the beds are hard, the shower non-existent, the menu card has yet to be invented. But who cares when human warmth is so dense that you can practically reach out and touch it? Doña Corina, our host, is a living example of what I am talking about. A loveable, kind person who gladly shares her humble home with a couple of expatriate families, thus making a living for herself and contributing to intercultural understanding. And she is not ashamed of the evident poverty. ‘This is my home; this is what I have to offer. Take it as it is or feel free to leave’, seems to be the general idea here at Posada la Soñada.
Obviously, few turn away from that kind of human honesty. We didn’t either.

Published by Christian Korsgaard

Human kindness as an asset

Whenever the United Nations Development Programme publishes it human development index, Nicaragua inevitably ends up as number hundred-and-something. No matter the personal efforts and sacrifices of the individual Nicaraguan, the policies carried out by inept politicians, combined with an unjust, international trade system, confines this small, Central American country to third-class human development. People are poor, uneducated, lack health, housing, access to clean water, and spend far too many resources on military, corruption and old debt. But at least they are fairly happy. Welcome to Paradise, but please take care – the snake is still around.
But Nicaraguans are a fascinating species. In spite of the hardships, war, corrupt politicians (sorry I keep bringing it up, but they are indeed plentiful…) and an eventual hurricane or an earthquake, they still manage to put up a happy face, treat you nicely and make you feel at home. If the human development index included the aspect of human kindness as an asset, Nicaragua would most definitely be placed somewhat higher on the list.

Published by Christian Korsgaard

Wet, wet, wet

Nicaragua is most certainly the place where the word ‘extremes’ was invented. Either it is so dry that your feet hurt when you walk on the dry grass in our garden – or it is so wet that the same lawn could be used for mud wrestling. As always in this country, it is either-or: Drought or inundation.
And so it started two nights ago. The winter. After six months of drought, the sky suddenly looked different. On the way back from office, a colleague even told me: “It looks like it is going to rain soon.” I couldn’t tell the difference, but took her word for it and started looking for flashlights, batteries, candles and matches when I got home. Rather safe than sorry.
Turned out to be a good idea. The thunder and lightning was far away in the beginning, but soon moved closer. As we were eating outside on the terrace, we had the entire show right before our eyes. Lightning was immediately followed by thunder – and before the sound had died away, a new lightning had occurred. Lightning followed lightning, and was then followed by more lightning. The street was lit up as during day, while rain poured down in cascades. We were beyond cats and dogs – rain in Nicaragua is more like elephants and giraffes.
The lights went off a couple of times, but always came back. Once again, thanks to our neighbour Hospital Metropolitano, which I believe is the reason why we have so few power cuts. Everybody else I’ve heard of lost electricity during the couple of hours that the thunderstorm lasted – and quite a few didn’t get it back until the following morning.
And then it all stopped. Our garden suddenly had a built-in pool, and all the dirt, leaves and the bit of trash that somebody had left on the street was gone. Managua looks so clean when the rain has passed, like if some giant hand has washed the entire city. That is… unless you live in one of the barrios downtown or some other place where all the water (and the trash) eventually ends up.
That is also the part of town where rain and winter isn’t just funny and fascinating, but also mortal. Because the winter did claim the first victim, a 12 year old girl who slipped in the rain, grabbed onto a wire hanging next to her, which unfortunately turned out to be a fallen, electrical cable, fainted and was carried away by the rain that had turned the street into a river. That is the part of the winter that hurts and why you actually have to take care and prepare your kids for whatever situation in this country.

Published by Christian Korsgaard

To have or to have not

A couple of nights ago, I took my dear wife to a concert with Guatemala singer and songwriter Ricardo Arjona in the national baseball stadium of Managua. An excellent concert that left me full of admiration of the magic Arjona performs with words. Only few manage to combine social indignation, voice, music and humble performance as he does. I recommend his newest cd – Adentro – and in case you speak Spanish, please pay special attention to the song Mojado, the Spanish word for the illegal immigrants crossing the border into the Promised Land up North, into the USA.
Maybe because the message from Arjona was so pro-poor and in favour of the underdogs, I was quite surprised by the clear-cut social division at the concert. Nicaragua is made up of those who have, and those who have not. Mostly, the two groups manage to stay apart, only sharing occasional and accidental encounters. The unofficial, but still rather evident borders and limits are drawn all over society, invisible to the outsider, but evident and acceptable to the insider. Here I can go, there I cannot.
But occasionally, the two groups happen to meet. The Arjona concert was such an occasion and once more Nicaragua proved to be the place where the unexpected takes place each and every day.
In any normal concert I would expect the happy mob, the crowd, the fans, the enthusiastic and fanatic to stand next to the stage, waving hands, throwing kisses and screaming.
Not so in Nicaragua. When you have paid 50 dollars to share white plastic chairs with the rest of those who have, then you expect to be separated from those who have not. So we got numbered seats right in front of the stage, far away from the ‘ordinary’ people who were confined behind two rows of metal fence, some 50 meters from the stage.
The result was a physical distance between the artist and the mob that in my understanding is a fundamental part of a live concert. It created an awkward situation because the rest of those who have, clearly expected me to remain seated in my white plastic chair - while Arjona and the music obviously expected me to get up and yell, clap and sing along.
But I am well-behaved and thus kept my butt in the chair, frustrated. When you are among those who have, do as they do. The few people, who tried to stand up, were quickly brought back to social reality by a girl next to us: “Sit down; you are not among those who pay to stand!”
Fortunately, even a couple of hundred ugly plastic chairs cannot stand the pressure of humans wanting to mingle, dance and be part of the show. So eventually – but only when the last song came up – it was okay for all of us to get up and get carried away. Which we did, thus erasing the social border a little bit.
Which basically once more proves that music is a powerful tool to bring people together.

Published by Christian Korsgaard