May 2, 2013, Nica Post #3, Am I There Yet?

At about 10:45 on the morning of May 2, an American Airlines plane raced down the tarmac at Miami International Airport, became airborne, and made a bee-line for Managua.  Not having gotten sufficient sleep the night before, I spent most of the approximately 3 hour flight in a nether land between sleep and wakefulness.

The plane landed, everyone disembarked, I breezed through immigration and customs (paying my $10.00 airport tax in the process), stepped out of the air conditioning and into the hot, sultry, urban madness of Managua, Nicaragua.  Though this was my first time in Nicaragua, it wasn't my first time in Latin America, and in seconds I had stepped onto memory lane.  The heat and humidity -- not to mention the general ambience -- took me back to places like Santa Cruz, Bolivia; La Ceiba and San Pedro Sula, Honduras; and Trinidad, Cuba.  The taxi drivers hustled like carnival barkers. Then there were the 'hanger outers,' guys who try to 'help' you with your luggage or provide some other unrequested and at that moment unwanted service.  It is worth remembering that they do this out of economic desperation.  Compassion is called for, but so too is caution.

After wandering around awhile but getting nowhere, I began asking about the location of La Costena airlines, Nicaragua's puddle-jumper.  That was a mistake. I should have done what men have usually done since the dawn of history in similar situations, kept wandering around until random chance put me where I needed to be. In no time several 'hanger outers' were descending on me wanting to lead me there and provide assistance with my luggage.  That's just the way it is, or can easily turn, in most developing countries.

Having missed my 6:15 a.m. flight to Corn Island for reasons over which I had no control -- I was exactly where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there and the only times I wasn't was when Delta screwed up -- one would think I would have suffered no penalty for taking the afternoon flight to that island.  But one would be wrong. I got hit with an additional $40 charge, nothing that would break the bank, but irritating.

Though the offices of La Costena airlines are only a short walk from the desks of Big Dogs -- Big Birds? -- like Delta, American, and TACA, symbolically it was like traveling from the First World to the Third World.  La Costena's offices were gritty, unkept.  The floors looked like they hadn't been vacuumed in a long while. A good dusting would have been, well, a really really good idea. But that for me is part of the arresting, disconcerting charm of the developing world.  Its chaotic, seat-of-the-pants, hold-on-to-your-wallet (literally, and more on that later) shtick scrabbles my cognitive checkerboard in ways that, in the end, benefit me psychologically at multiple levels.  A major factor that keeps drawing me back to Latin America, in spite of its many problems, is that I just really like Latin Americans.

Similar situation with the propeller-drive plane.  While it looked all right from the outside -- I didn't see dangling engine parts or worn tires -- the interior was gritty, and most windows had, deep scratches, and does anyone know where's the vacuum cleaner? The almost-full plane carried a large number of foreigners, many of them English speakers, though there was at least one German speaking couple aboard.

I sat just a few feet from one of the propellers, and as the plane taxied down the runway I watched, mesmerized like a mildly autistic child, as the propeller went from being plainly visible to clearly invisible. I felt a wish to reach out to find out if the propeller was still there. (Good thing there was a window between us, haha.)  In minutes, I was eye-to-eye with beautiful, billowing  clouds, and a blue sky farther up.  In awhile we descended towards Bluefields, on the Caribbean coast, where some would disembark and a smaller number of others would board. As we descend, I see smoky fires here and there across the landscape.  Slash-and-burn agriculture? I didn't know, and still don't.

It is about this time that I began to notice that I was enjoying very much keeping a diary, one from which the material for this blog would be drawn. I recall mentally kicking myself for not taking up blogging sooner -- all those countries, so many stories.

There is something almost meditative, Zen-like, about writing as you travel.  I soon realized that the reason I could do this -- write as I travel -- was because I was traveling alone. Without a companion, my companion became my diary, and there was something about the experience -- this intimacy between me and blank pages in a strange land -- that was comforting and exhilarating.  I could choose between writing in my diary or reading my VIVE book about Nicaragua or my biography about Augusto Sandino. Writing usually won.

I used my diary to do a mental exercise.  For a while I jotted down each and every thought that crossed my mind.  The human mind is rather like a wild horse, galloping this direction and that in fits of consciousness.  Here are a few of the things that I thought about:  Once again, I had an internal conversation driven by my fear that I would end up like my mom: demented in a nursing home barely knowing who I am. Both she and her brother ended up in that awful place before their final exit. I reassured myself that, unlike my mother, I was doing everything possible to avert such an outcome. My attention to nutrition and exercise was way better than hers, my left brain told my right brain. However imperfectly, I remain engaged with life, unlike mom, whose open-wound cynicism following her divorce became a tool of self-destruction as she withdrew from the world.

Cynicism is genuinely ugly past a point. There are worse things than death.  These are two things mom taught me.

And then, like before, the $64 question came up: When and if the time came, would I be willing -- and just as important, able -- to commit suicide?  Of course, the Catch-22 of dementia and Alzheimer's is that by the time suicide becomes a truly viable option, your mind has truly turned to mush.  Interesting: suicide as a "solution" to chronic unhappiness, and suicide as a practical matter.

My other internal conversation will sound ridiculous, and probably is.  For a long time I have considered the United State's unique brand of provincialism to be a serious problem. While this is especially true relative to our knowledge of and perspectives about the other 195 countries in the world, there is a general polarization between American who embrace complex thinking, or even basic thoughtfulness, and those that don't. This statement is an over-simplification of a complex socio-historical phenomenon. Books like Anti-Intellecualism in American Life and, more recently, The Age of American Unreason explore the complexities of this schism.

Last year, I took a group of Southeast students to the Idea Festival, a 3-day celebration of creative rationality held each year in Louisville.  Getting it organized before the conference was a lot of work, and the sense of responsibility that came with sheperding youngins' during the conference was quite taxing.  But the reward was, in the end, worth it personally. For a few students it seemed to be a game changer, with potential to positively alter their life course.

I would love to take a group of Southeast students to a developing country.  For a variety of reasons, that will never happen, and probably shouldn't.  Yet from time-to-time I find myself pondering this impossible possibility.

There were other internal conversations that I jotted down. Most of them were too ephemeral, or too goofy, to mention. Others were too personal.

As we descended towards the Big Corn Island airport, the haze began to clear and I began to discern details in the water.  I quickly realized that I was looking down at a beautiful coral reef, and realized I would soon be scuba diving in a place like that.  This made me feel happy.