A Trip to Los Limones, Cusmapa

The sun sets on Los Limones.

It’s been a few weeks since we last posted on the blog, and for that we apologize. We’ve been doing a lot, although very little has been work. We had a week of vacation with Jess’s college friends Becca and Richard, and then Holy Week, Nicaragua’s biggest holiday season. We also went to a fantastic brunch at Nicaragua’s nicest hotel to celebrate 1 year in Somoto. All of those things were fantastic and deserve separate blog posts, so expect a flurry of posts over the next weeks, starting with the Matagalpa post from this weekend, and now this one. We also owe Mrs. Lyttle’s class a blogpost with answers to their interview questions, as well as answers to their questions for us. Right now, however, I’d like to tell you about my visit to a fellow volunteer’s site.

Here's Ian just making sure that everything is in order with his horse.Ian came in with Jess and I and was actually in the same training town as Jess. He’s from Chattanooga, Tennessee, but travelled all over the world with his parents, who are teachers at international schools. Ian was placed at a community called San Jose de Cusmapa, which is a mountain community of about 3,500 people. It is located in the department of Madriz about 25 miles south west of Somoto. Ian has to take a bus from Somoto to get to his site, so we see him more than most volunteers. The bus ride takes about 3 and a half hours (to go the 25 miles) and climbs up some of the steepest slopes you can imagine. Plus, the busses normally are waaaaay over capacity (when I went to see Ian there were at least 50 people in the school bus, and another 25 on top) so they really do crawl up the mountains. In fact, it rarely stops for passengers. Instead, people have to run alongside the bus and jump on board, so that the bus won’t lose it’s momentum. So, let’s just summarize by saying that getting to Cusmapa is an adventure.

Ian works the same way I do, visiting rural communities to give talks on various health themes. He had a visit planned for a community called Los Limones and I decided to join him to see how his Peace Corps experience differs from mine.

Here´s Ian giving a charla in Los Limones
Los Limones is one of those communities that we, as Americans, can only really imagine in our mind’s eye. It is a 6 and a half hour horseback ride from Cusmapa and sits at the top of the world. There are around 200 people living there, and from everyone’s porch you can see the Pacific Ocean, Honduras, and half way to Managua. There is no electricity, no running water, no latrines and no roads accessible by vehicle. The villagers are virtually self-sufficient, growing all their own corn, beans, and some of the best fruit you can imagine.

This local dog guards the fruit trees. In this picture there are avocados, oranges, mamones, and mangos. When the lights are on (meaning the sun) it’s a paradise. When the sun goes down it becomes a misty mountain top, where you’d expect to see ghosts and fairy-tale mountain dwellers strolling down through the orchards. True to its image, Los Limones is actually home to some real life Nicaraguan legends.

This community was a strong-hold of Contra fighters during the 1980’s. Most of the village men currently over 40 spent that decade running through the mountains, causing havoc in the Sandinista army. They received their training and weapons from Honduras and the US and would skip back and forth across the border much like the Al-Queda fighters we now hear about in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Contras were always outnumbered, poorly organized, and didn’t have a chance of actually defeating the Sandinista army, which could put 250,000 soldiers in the field if needed. Hanging out with these guys in Los Limones, it became clear to me how dangerous a few mountain men with guns can be. A few of these pictures were taken just outside of the community at a scenic overlook. Ian and I had to jog just to keep up with these guys as they weaved in and out of the brush always “knowing” the way, despite my skepticism. They just went striding along, only wearing flimsy plastic shower sandals on their feet but never getting caught in the bushes and thorns that kept slowing Ian and I down.

Ian and the Locals.Nicaraguans are also some of the most hospitable people you can meet. Even though Los Limones is extremely poor, the doors of every home were wide open for us. We were offered several local dishes, lots of fresh fruit and a special Semana Santa traditional dish, Fish Soup. By the time we got to the house with the soup, the sun was long gone from the sky. We couldn’t see what we were eating, so we relied on this picture to avoid the fish bones and other unpleasantries that ended up in the soup. Let’s just say it was a good experience that I won’t be experiencing again.Cooking is, of course, a big piece of Nicaraguan life. The picture below is of one of the matriarchs of Los Limones. She is 78 years old and spends every morning grinding corn for tortillas. She starts by running dried corn kernels through a hand grinder. Next, the ground corn flour is put on a curved rock and further mashed by a stone that looks like a rolling pin. It’s very physical work, and very tiring, but she still does it for 4 or 5 hours a day. They were really good tortillas, too!
The next morning we made our way back to Cusmapa, taking a little extra time to take in the scenery. When we finally made it back (about 4:00pm) we said goodbye to our trusty steeds and headed back to Ian’s house. There we enjoyed an ice-cold Coca-Cola in a glass bottle and celebrated our return to civilization…relatively speaking.

This is my trusty steed: a mule...a very lazy mule.

Cowboys gotta have fun!