Thursday, February 9, 2006

Last night was a bit tough. Michael wanted to use the air conditioning, so I put on my long underwear, socks and my Capilene expedition weight fleece and went to sleep. Then he got cold, so before he went to bed he turned off both the air conditioner and the fan and went to sleep in boxers. I woke up bathed in sweat and we had a little fight. Just a little sample of an "on the road" fight. After that, I sulked by eating my leftover dinner and watching 50 First Dates on TV. What a weird movie. I don’t buy it at all.

In the morning, we had to have a Discussion, so we left the room later than we had planned. We had breakfast at the restaurant where we had dinner last night, which was called "Plucky Friend." Plucky Friend did not actually serve breakfasty type foods, but that was fine with me because I'm happy to eat chicken wings, rice, fries, and salad for breakfast.

We had trouble finding the spot to catch busses to Rama and had to stop into the tourist information office. They were not happy that we interrupted their game of Space Invaders, but they grudgingly pointed us in the right direction.

The bus stop is in the market area, which was more bustling than we'd been ready for. A madhouse of yelling and selling. We tried to find an out-of-the-way spot to wait and had a flock of teenage schoolkids pointing and giggling at us. I was in no mood. Finally we got our bus. It was around noon.

There was a long pause on the road to Rama while the driver got out and had lunch at a roadside comedor, and we arrived in Rama in the early evening. Rama is a muddy little town, and not entirely pleasant. We did not explore it much, but it seemed on first view like the town had grown up around the road, long and narrow.

We did not expect to find any pangas leaving for Bluefields at that late hour, but we checked anyway. It was confirmed that all pangas were gone for the day, but there seemed to be the option of a cargo boat, which would take all night. We voted against it and checked into a hotel right next to the dock.

The hotel was as bare-boards basic as the hotel in Bethel. The toilets, downstairs, required buckets of water poured into them from the nearby plastic barrels, but it had a charm that Bethel sorely lacked, and a bed big enough for two.

There was an American staying there, Thomas. He's a missionary and lay medicine person. He takes sorely-needed medicines and health information out to the villages and then shows a movie about Jesus. He's adopted three Nicaraguan girls, who are all grown now, and is just doing what he can with whatever he has and whatever he can get.

He was a good guy. He took us to dinner at a little place that we wouldn't even have realized was a restaurant if he hadn't been with us. "It's a five-star restaurant," he said. "You look out -there- and you see five stars." It was good food. He treated us and said it was a blessing.

During dinner and afterwards, back at the hotel, he told us all about the Nicaragua he sees going out into the villages. "Basically," he said, "If you get sick, you die." There's no medicine other than what someone like him might bring in, and any treatment is miles away, so a sick person would need to be transported by boat and bus for hours before reaching a doctor.

He talked about politics too, only he called the Sandanistas "watermelons" because it sounds a bit like "sandia" which is watermelon in Spanish. He didn't want anyone to overhear us discussing the sensitive subject and coming to any conclusions about us and what side we might be on, or even just feeling talked about.

Later, he helped us buy our panga tickets for the next morning. "I had you buy them from this company because their pangas are covered. If it starts raining, you don't want to be messing with pulling a sheet of plastic over your head. They might be a bit more, but they're worth it." Thomas being clearly frugal with his choices of food and lodging, we believed him.

The boat is to leave at "light," but we ought to be there at 5:00 a.m. So Rama does not seem to be worth staying in and exploring, but we had a nice time meeting Thomas. Some people are really amazing in the way they see a problem or a lacking and do what they can to help.

The only bummer to the evening was that upon returning to our room to sleep we found that the rat we'd seen climbing the stairs earlier had gotten into our room, climbed into the middle of our bed and torn open the plastic bag holding some cookies we'd bought earlier. Michael was devastated. The rat had barely taken a nibble, but we elected to get rid of the whole bag.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 161.25

 

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Missionary Thomas.

Sunset over the river, Rama.