A Night in Diriomito

Gloria and Arlen, who couldn't understand why I was so shocked by the size of their avocado.

Downtown Diriomito

We spent last night with Lucrecia, at her home in Diriomito. We found her through her daughters, Arlen and Gloria, who work with Carrie as Spanish teachers in Granada. Lucrecia offered to put us up for the night, and arranged for a driver to take us on a tour the next day in his moto-taxi (a made-in-India motorized pedicab). The family, as Carrie had promised, were really lovely: articulate (Gloria and Arlen are both university educated), friendly, gracious, and generous with what little they had.

Lucrecia's house

Lucrecia

Near Lucrecia's house in Diriomito, along the Laguna Apoyo crater

Lucrecia's water tank (left) and bathroom (right)

I was fairly well prepared for Lucrecia's house - Carrie had warned me that it was modest, and had an outhouse but no toilet - but the sheer extent of the poverty here seems to have snuck up on me. Everyone here is poor. Everyone. The few really nice places you catch glimpses of through the gates in Granada's streets, the homes of the well-to-do, remind me more than anything of simple middle class homes in Germany. The only true wealth I have seen is in the Isletas - the private islands held by the top few families in the country - and in the hotels designed for (and used exclusively by) foreigners.

Lucrecia's family has plumbing to their kitchen tap, but the water only runs one day in ten - if they're lucky. Until recently, they had no water at all, and in the summer they would sometimes have to bathe in the Laguna. (The Laguna, while visible across the street, is a 2km walk - and is also technically an ecological reserve.) So the family saved up for the construction materials (which are very expensive here), and finally built a water tank that catches water from the roof. They use this water to bathe and wash with - but as they have no purification system, they still drink bottled water. They are very proud of their catchment system; with all the rain we've had, it is currently full, and it was obvious that they felt really lucky to have plenty of water.

Behind Lucrecia's is an outhouse (of the smelly, cement-seat-on-the-ground variety). The shower is a tin shanty in the backyard, but somehow they manage to emerge from it looking clean and lovely. (I decided not to try it out.) Elliot and I slept in a surprisingly comfortable bed under two mosquito nets in her guest bedroom. (Lucrecia's net had holes in it, along with what looked disturbingly like mouse droppings.) There are no ceilings in her house - just the bare roof above.

Ironically, while I have always been a renter and have little hope of ever owning land, Lucrecia owns her property, which includes three houses for her extended family. Her father bought it 45 years ago for about $350. About five years ago the road through Diriomito got paved - and now Lucrecia's homestead is worth about $70,000.

The family turned out to be evangelical Christians - which suddenly brought back memories of my trip to Guatemala, where my first host family was evangelical. They are very serious about their religion, and don't dance or drink or "commit adultery," which did make it a wee bit hard to connect with Lucrecia's family on certain subjects. (Lucrecia's oldest daughter, for example, works for a US based religious NGO in Managua, that sends her all over the country doing "sex education" - which means  teaching youth the importance of abstaining until marriage. Think Nancy Reagan, Nicaragua style.)