We've made it safely back to the US! The day before we were to fly out of Managua, I ran into some visa problems at the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Jay was gracious enough to accompany me across the Costa Rica border to a Nicaraguan embassy to get another visa. Thankfully everything worked out!
I've been back to the US for a few days, but I still think of Nicaragua constantly, especially Sahsa. It's hard for me to summarize, so I wrote one more poem.
The memories of Sahsa are like the smell of earth after the rain.
I miss nature's alarm clocks: cows, dogs, crickets,
the drumbeats of thunderstorm on zinc roof.
The boy with swollen belly haunts me, he cries
fitfully, too hungry to wail.
His mother smells vaguely of urine, she talks
with one hand hiding her missing front teeth.
Stale pastries under the neon supermarket lights stare
with raisin eyes as dark as the pupils of begging children.
The flush of chlorinated toilet water gargle
'agua, agua', where is the clean drinking water for them?
From the plane, the cities of light glisten
with every passing of clouds, mimicking
the starry sky above lightless villages.
The beauty of RAAN is like the black buffaloes,
hardly blinking an eye at the truck full of gringos.
The spirit of Nicaragua is in the bachata,
blasting from crowded, yellow school buses.
*RAAN = Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte (Northern Atlantic Autonomous Region, the region that encompasses Sahsa)
