Tuesday, February 7, 2006

We ran into Nixon again today. He was in the park with his shine box and a young lustrador friend. He greeted us enthusiastically and chilled with us for a while. He did not ask for anything and told us it was a pretty good day, since he’d already made 10 cordobas shining shoes.

His friend poured some black polish from his full plastic soda bottle into Nixon’s nearly empty one. Both of them had shoe polish all over their hands and running down their arms. I was glad to see he has a friend after the way those other kids treated him yesterday.

Eventually Nixon got out a blue rubber ball and played with the other boy. They threw and kicked the ball back and forth across the street and nearly everyone who walked by got in on it a bit, taking a throw or kick as the ball came near them.

After a while we were ready to continue our walk around town and we said we might see Nixon later if he was around. He asked us what time we’d be back and we guessed 6 p.m. I worried that he would take it as an appointment.

It was a hot day and we had to walk in the sun because “that’s where the photos live.” I so wish photos lived in the shade. A lot of the locals carried umbrellas against the glare. The town’s main roads are paved, but when we went a few blocks out, the roads turned to dusty dirt. We passed dozens of flocks of schoolchildren in white shirts and blue pants or skirts with white knee socks.

Later on we had dinner at the Chinese place again because the food was so good. Chinese food may be available everywhere, but it’s not always so great. And by a fluke, we discovered the place had access to someone’s wireless Internet account. We had such a lot of work to do, things to post, e-mails to take care of that we stayed at the restaurant til 9:00.

Afterwards we did a circuit of the park looking for Nixon, but we didn’t see him. The Maruchan stall was shut down for the evening. I felt pretty bad, thinking of him showing up at six, hoping for dinner, or even just a chat with his new foreign grownup friends. I imagined him waiting and looking for us and then beginning to lose hope as time passed and I felt so completely awful inside.

When we got back to our hotel at 9:30, we found it dark and locked up. Their sign says they close at 10:00, so we were pretty irritated that we couldn’t get in. They’re not very friendly at this place. But when we knocked, the old man came to a side door fairly quickly to let us in. He was dressed in some kind of old-timey underwear, but I didn’t get much of a look at it because I didn’t want to be caught staring at his underwear.

We’re leaving Esteli tomorrow, the beginning of what seems like it will be a pretty arduous trip clear across the country to the Corn Islands – Esteli to Managua, Managua to Rama, boat from Rama to Bluefields, then another boat out to the islands. But we’ll try to find Nixon tomorrow morning before we leave. We want to give him a little money and just… say goodbye, I guess. He’s a nice kid.

 

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Nixon.

One of Esteli's firetrucks.

A mural in Esteli.

Michael loves to photograph bikes. Esteli, Nicaragua.

Townspeople.

The dirt road part of town.