I could be getting pretty depressed ....here in hot, sweaty, dogs barking all the time, over loud music, dusty streets Malpaisillo away from totally everyone I love, or even like !!!, but....I´m not, because...and this is the beauty of doing something like this....little things keep happening that remind me of why I am here and what this Christmas thing is really all about.
I came here to this Cyber to blog today because I had some really nice ¨bus¨experiences that I wanted to share but when I got here, I had this amazing email from a professor in the Social Work department at the University of Nebraska. Can you believe it !!! Well, I have blogged about the deaf kids I discovered here who needed some services and a few of the things I had done to get things moving. One of the women I had talked to here is an English language professor at the University of Nicaragua - Leon ( this is the state supported university and if kids pass an entrance exam, they can attend free, even get medical and law degrees for free) and she happens to have a deaf brother. She had made some contacts and so she forwarded some info about me to her contact in NE and so the prof. in NE and I now are in contact. They are trying to start a major in Special Ed. at the University of Nicaragua ( UNAN) and they are wondering what I might be interested in helping with. Gadzooks...what a small world. It sure would be fun being part of getting something started down here.....
More later on that, but now to my bus experience.
I was on the last bus out of Leon the other day, so it was dark outside. The bus was filled with the usual folks and trappings but now they had Christmas gifts with them too that they were wrestling around this already crowded bus. But, and this is the AMAZING part, no one was grumpy, no one was complaining, no one was acting put out or stressed or anything...just sqeezing one way or the other to let someone else squeeze by. The girl in the seat next to me was having the best time sniffing some skin creams her friend apparently had bought in Leon as Christmas gifts and they were having this huge animated conversation about the smells.
Just as I thought we were full, a smallish woman got on with a dishpan balanced on her head. She was short, so she was able to just lean over and slide the dishpan off of her head onto the luggage rack that is up there on buses, over the seats. So, she stood in the aisle and her dishpan was safely on the rack. Several other people got on so the dishpan got displaced and slid back towards the back of the bus while the woman was still near the front. We finally got full and left the parada. ( bus station) Several people got on, some got off, bags were loaded and unloaded, etc. We unloaded a family, husband and wife and a couple very young kids and several large bags with gifts, pulled away leaving them beside the road ( where buses travel in excess of 60 MPH I am sure), in total darkness ( street lights are few and far between) with smiles on all faces.
Finally, it apparently was time for this smallish woman to get off and somehow, thru some unspoken ( at least to me) series of signals or whatever, her dishpan was identified by folks at the back of the bus, ( they use our hand me down yellow school buses and this was a full sized one...big) ( I saw one the other day that had ¨Cherry Creek School District on it) it was conveyed/ passed / slid from the back to the front to where she was still standing in the aisle and was artfully slid off of the rack to her awaiting head and off she went into the night....intact, dishpan and all.
I hope I have said this in a way that conveys how beautiful the whole thing was.
I don´t know if I have told you this, but 70% of the population is under 30. Very young people here, lots of reasons I guess but its interesting to watch the dynamics of them all.
I´ll quit for now....Happy holidays....enjoy whatever and whomever you have.
I miss you guys....
Pat
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