Finding a happy heart When traveling to a country such as Nicaragua, you can spend weeks preparing, but you will find it makes little difference. As ready as you feel you are, you’re not. On our bus ride from the airport in Managua to our home-stays in Granada, we saw a plethora of things. There were mansions hidden behind towering walls. There were people sleeping on the sidewalks. There were billboards with attractive females. There were young women selling their bodies. There were the most incredible flowering trees. There
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Matias, our professors, had emphasized that immersion is critical to understanding a culture. Being dropped off at a home where no one speaks English, in a foreign country, in the middle of the night is a good way to become fully immersed. The last stop of the night was to a teal home with a large boulder in front. A stout, elderly woman stood at the door. This was my home-stay. I stepped off the air-conditioned bus and into this humble house. The journey had begun. At five a.m. the music started. This low “dum duh dum dum, bum bada bum bum” reverberated throughout the house. Shortly after, the roosters on the patio began to caw. Then cannons were intermingled in this cacophony. This was the heartbeat of Granada. All these noises were the sound of life. My first experience of this actual life in Nicaragua was with my host mother, Juanita. Juanita was a beautiful woman. I do not mean this in the superficial sense. Her heart was kind. Her soul was compassionate. She walked with a cane and only came up to my shoulder, but let me tell you, she was not someone you would want to cross. She was a pro-
We had the most memorable lunchtime chit-chat of my life. Yet neither of us could speak the other’s language.” was trash in every crevice. There was all this devastation merged within this beautiful country, and Matias, one of our group leaders, just kept saying “My heart is happy.” I was not sure what he meant. It is a simple enough statement, but hard to decipher. Our bus arrived in Granada around midnight. The city blocks were lined with boldly painted colonial homes, chipped and faded from the passing of time. Even in the dark of the night, the houses were luminous. One-by-one we students were dropped off with our home-stay families. Ben and
ABOVE: Sociology students of Dr. Ben Waddell (center front) joined a group of students from University of New Mexico, led by economist Matias Fontenla, for a twoweek journey studying efforts to provide more sustainable access to health care, education, and income in Nicaragua. The author, Maddie Mansheim, is fourth from left in yellow. RIGHT: One of many church processions through the streets of Granada.
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aStater summer 2013