I was awake at 4:30 this morning, my mind a-whirl with the happenings of the last two weeks and all that I want to say. Actually, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for days now. At first I thought it was all the strange, lumpy beds, but the not falling back asleep part, the racing-mind part, has me thinking it’s just an overload of bottled up thoughts. For a dedicated (read, obsessive) blogger, this is to be expected.

Quite frankly, I don’t even know where to start. I took 807 pictures and that was with me holding back because I had one memory card and no computer to put the photos on. The entire time I had a nervous bubble in my tummy; I was certain my camera would get stolen and all record of our once-in-a-lifetime trip would disappear forever. But nothing got stolen (whew) and now I have to figure out how to process and present.

Part of me wants to just lay it out there, every single exhaustive detail, day by day by day. But another part of me wants to dress the events up a bit, put them in tidy compartments with sharp one-liners. But, as you know, I’ve never been very good at one-liners. I’m more of a paragraph, essay, oh-heck-let-me-write-you-a-book sort of girl.

Hm, I still don’t know what direction I want to take this.

While I ponder, here’s some rosquilla.

 These are the classic Nicaraguan cookie.
The cookie dough is made out of the same dough that tortillas are made from, but enhanced with eggs and cheese and such. Rock-hard and crunchy, they taste a little sourly cheesy, a little sweet, and quite corny. They come in different shapes, but my favorites are the ones with a puddle of melted raw cane sugar in the middle.

I bought three (four? five?) bags of these cookies. I have two left and am officially hoarding them now.

Hm, still undecided…

Really, what I want to do is jump straight to the end of the trip and tell you about the very best part, but that feels like cheating. I guess I should just lay it out like it was eh? Photos and book-style explanations and all. (I’ll do my best to summarize the tedious parts.)

Let’s begin, shall we?

Day One (July 9)
We ride the Monja Blanca to Guatemala City.

At the halfway stopping point, we buy liquados and get mobbed by a group of high school girls. They touch my older daughter’s hair and admire my younger son’s eyes. My older son has already disappeared back onto the bus (was this intentional? he says no, but I wonder…), and they, upon finding out that we’re living in Cobán, joke giddily that they now have a boyfriend living in Cobán. Their loud, gregariousness is in direct contrast to the K’ekchi’ reserve we are accustomed to. We feel culture shocked.

Once in the city, we unload our bags at Semilla/CASAS and then set out to ride the city buses for the first time. These buses are dangerous. On a routine basis, drivers get shot, people robbed, etc. Plus, we don’t know where we’re going and there is standing room only. My younger kids are entranced by the bars attached to the top of the ceiling so that passengers can hold on to something—the children jump, grab hold, dangle wildly, and then get mad when we order them down.  Other than our monkey offspring, the ride is uneventful.

I stop by a salon and get my hair cut by a scissors magician. Basically, he waves a scissors around my head and the hair falls away. I float home, a new woman.

Back at the “hotel,” we pop microwave popcorn and all pile onto the beds and chit-chat about birth, Fetal Alcohol syndrome, placentas, cutting the cord, etc. You know, just Stuff.

Day Two (and Three and Four)
With the rest of our team members, we drive the MCC van to San Salvador where we pick up another team member, eat a late lunch, and get overcharged (they brought us food we didn’t order, charged us for it, and then played dumb when we tried to explain that we didn’t realize the extra food was extra—we thought it came with the order and so we naively ate it, stupid us).

A couple more hours in the van and we’re at the beach.

We’re greeted with stifling hot weather, crashing waves, deliciously chilly rooms, hoards of vicious mosquitoes, and coffee and cookies. My younger son jumps into the pool and stays there for the next two days.

Really, the pool is awesome. It has different levels and rocky outcroppings and is perfectly suited for leisurely adult conversations, rollicking games of Keep Away, and newbie swimmers and lap swimmers alike.

The beach is lovely, too. But the waves are fierce and no one goes out too far for fear of dying.

We eat incredible meals three times each day, plus morning and afternoon snacks. My favorite: the breakfast cheese platter and the soft, white rolls.

We play volleyball. The kids watch TV. We wash our laundry and lay it in the grass to dry. We have meetings and late night gab sessions. There is an ice cream cake.

One team member gets violently ill and has to be taken to the hospital. It turns out to be some weird bacteria and she needs three infusions of rehydration liquid due to severe dehydration (her toes, fingers, and tongue curled up so she couldn’t talk or walk, yikes). The group that takes her to the hospital arrives back at the hotel at 1 am, and we leave an hour later to catch the bus to Nicaragua.

Day Five
We’re up at 2 am and in San Salvador for the 5 am bus to Managua.

The trip takes forever, thanks to three border crossings (which are more like six since we have to stop on either side of each border).

Thankfully, there are movies and none are inappropriate.

We eat when we find food.

We arrive in Managua late, about 17 hours after leaving our hotel that morning.

Another MCC van picks us up and takes us to the retreat center.

Upon arriving, I lug my giant sleeping slug of a baby boy out of the van and sink wearily onto the retreat center’s front steps. A man, who I later learn is the rep (along with his wife) for the MCC Nicaraguan team, approaches me and says, “I have children. You have children. Right now you need two things: food and beds. We will get both as fast as possible.”

Only the sloth on my lap prevents me from leaping up and throwing my arms around his neck.

To be continued…

Back when I wrote about struggling to belong, Reader Kathy left a comment with a bunch of practical suggestions, one of which was to ask someone “how do you make…” and then hopefully score an invitation to someone’s home for a cooking lesson.

I assumed that I’d end up cooking with people in their homes because that’s what I did in Nicaragua. But that’s not what happened here. We don’t live in a community, and our co-workers go home at the end of the day—their homes aren’t close by or easily accessible. Cooking with them in their kitchens just wasn’t happening.

So, with Kathy’s encouragement, I got pushy. I made mention, to the staff room in general, that I’d love to learn how to cook Guatemalan food, and immediately Amada suggested that I come to her house to cook with her grandmother. “Really?” I said, and then real fast, before she changed her mind, “Okay, I’d love to!” We swapped numbers, agreed to get together over the break, and then nothing happened. I wasn’t really surprised. Following through with plans isn’t exactly the first order of business in Latin America.

But Amada hadn’t forgotten, and she brought the topic up again after our break. Come over on Saturday, she said.

So Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a torrential downpour, I packed up a large square of chocolate peanut butter cake as a gift, and the girls and I headed to Carcha.

Amada met us at the bus stop and we followed after her like a gaggle of ducks as she ran some errands and then took us to an orchid exposition (and paid our entrance fee). Then we wove our way out of the market and up and down some side streets and finally, up a steep, chunky gravel road (more of a path, really), to a long, skinny, patched-together house at the top of the hill.

Once inside, we sat down to a feast of Chinese fried rice with chicken and tortillas and big mugs of coffee. The girls ate ravenously, as though they hadn’t just eaten lunch two hours before.

I met Amada’s younger sister who never stops laughing. The mother filled me in on Amada’s dating life, much to Amada’s embarrassment. The Grandmother told me about her work with the Catholic church and her experiences cooking for a smorgasbord of priests. She also regaled me with entertaining tales about the fathers of her children: three children and three fathers. Other women, drinking, and knives were involved.

And then we got down to the cooking project: rellenitos, a sweet
snack of mashed up plantains filled with sweet refried beans, fried in
oil, and then topped with sugar.

They were fabulous. I ate two.

While we visited and worked, the son and father wondered through the kitchen, cousins came to visit, the mother bathed, the daughter dressed my daughter up in K’ekchi’ clothing, someone went out and bought soda and then fed it to my daughters. The mother decided to go visit an ailing uncle and before leaving she bent down before her mother and asked for a blessing. A couple kids/cousins accompanied her so she wouldn’t have to be sad by herself.

My girls had a grand old time. This was their first time really being in a home, and they were fascinated by the ancient rabbit living by the pila, the friendly dog, they dish-washing system, the TV, the guests, how the grandmother got the refried beans out of the can (by cutting off the lid and then poking a hole in the other end and blowing into it until the beans slipped out just like a tube of wiggling cranberry sauce). My younger daughter took it upon herself to waltz back and forth between kitchen and living room, serving snacks and drinks and then washing the dishes. This tickled the women to no end.

The grandmother was in the middle of starting the second cooking project—banana empanadas—when my husband called wondering where I was. It was after six and the buses would soon stop running. So they packed food into containers for us, hugged us tight, and off we went.

When I got home, I was glowing from grease and happiness. We’ve made  plans (loose, because there is no other way) for the next lesson: tamales. I can’t wait.

Rellenitos

It seems counterintuitive to sweeten something that’s flavored with onions and garlic, but it works. The grandmother used canned refried beans that already contained savory seasonings, but you can also use homemade refried beans. The key is to cook the refried beans until they are thick like cookie dough.

The finished rellenitos are caramelized and chewy on the outside and creamy sweet on the inside. Leftovers can be reheated in a microwave or eaten cold, though they are best fresh. Oh, and they also recommend serving them with a dollop of sour cream on top.

For more instructions and clearer pictures, visit this blog. 

12 -16 smallish plantains
2-3 cups of refried beans
cinnamon
sugar
a small onion
oil

Scrub the unpeeled plantains with soap and water. Put them in a soup pot, cover them with water, smack a lid on top, and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook at a gentle boil for about 15 minutes, or until the skins split.

Remove the plantains from the water, peel, and mash the fruit with a potato masher. (If desired, chill the cooking water and serve it as a drink.) Add sugar—anywhere from 1/4 to ½ cup, depending on taste—and about a 1/4 to a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon. Set aside.

Pour a couple tablespoons of oil into a skillet and add a couple thick slices of onion. Simmer on low heat until the onion is tender—about 10 minutes. Remove the onion with a slotted spoon and discard. Add the refried beans and heat through. Add sugar to taste—maybe 1/3 cup. Some people add a Hershey’s chocolate bar at this point. Cook the beans until there is no sign of runniness.

Pour a half-inch of oil into a large cooking pot with high sides and set over medium high heat.

To form the rellenitos, scoop up a ball of mashed plantain and, using one hand, fashion it into a nest in the palm of the other hand. Place a smaller scoop of refried beans in the center of the nest and pinch the sides shut to seal. Smooth the rellenito into an oval and set on a plate. If the dough gets too sticky, simply wet your hands with water.

Once you have four or five rellenitos waiting, place them in the oil and fry, turning every few minutes so that they get nice and golden brown on all sides. Remove the rellenitos and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with white sugar and serve warm.

Everyone gets showers and hair washes. We set up the computer in front of the sofa and plug in the speakers. We make two huge bowls of popcorn and cut up apples. While the popcorn pops, the kids blast Spanish hit music and have a dance party.

 

 

 

Sometimes I even join in and bust some moves.

Everyone is always very impressed.

The end.