An Unwelcome Experience

It's over eleven years since I first packed a rucksack and headed off into the unknown (Delhi, back in 1999) to see the world and satisfy my thirst for knowledge, adventure and experience(s). Since then I've spent nearly as much time on the road as at home and seen things I never dreamt I'd see. Now, for many reasons, I feel as if my years on the road might be coming to something of an end, or at the least, a big change. I'm getting older, I'm about to spend a fortune on reeducating myself, and quite honestly there aren't many places I haven't been to (although a Central Asia/India trip would still be tempting!). But above all, I've just found myself growing tired of the whole bus/hotel/transient friendship thing. The old adrenaline rush of arriving in a strange town in an unfamiliar country is more often than not replaced by a sense of foreboding about the inevitable hassles from touts and taxi drivers. And I've had enough dinners on my own and early nights in shitty hotel rooms to last me a lifetime.

But I will always need a bit of adventure in my life, so I chose to combine adventure with work experience and come to Nicaragua for half a year. And it's also the reason why I hope to make energy in the Developing World one of the areas I study in depth when I head to Stanford in September. And also the reason why I needed to make one small trip to the Pacific side of Nicaragua and Costa Rica before heading home to the UK in two weeks.

After a couple of days' diving in Costa Rica, where I saw manta rays and bull sharks, and a few great days on the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, the above thoughts were weighing heavily on my mind and I decided to head back to Bluefields a couple of days earlier than I'd planned. So on Thursday I headed to the town of Granada for the night, from where I would move on to Managua the following day and start the overnight trip back to Bluefields. I was travelling with a guy called Spencer who I'd met on Ometepe. While we went for lunch, Spencer asked me if I'd ever had anything stolen in all my years of traveling. I stopped to think. "Some sunglasses once, took them right off my face". Spencer remarked that if I'd had to stop and think, that must be a good sign. After lunch, Spencer headed off to buy a bus ticket and I decided to follow Avenida La Calzada from the centre down to the shores of Lake Nicaragua for a look-see.

At its top end, Avenida La Calzada is a tree-lined pedestrianised avenue full of bars and outdoor cafes. Heading down away from the centre towards the lake though, it gradually gets more and more deserted until down by the lake front there are very few people. There is a crumbling old pier jutting out into the lake and a concrete promenade that heads off along the lake in front of a narrow park. I stopped at the beginning of the promenade and gazed out at the lake and the hills on the far side and pondered why the Spanish city planners back in the 16th century had chosen to site the city so far away from the lake shore rather than make it the focus of the city*

Anyway, after contemplating that and other important questions of life for a few minutes, a car pulled up on the street and a family of Nicaraguans got out: father, mother, late teenage daughter and a son who was clearly severely mentally handicapped. They came across the plaza towards me and spent a minute or two gazing at the lake, then I watched as the father (who seemed quite old to have children still in their teens) took some photos of his family on the daughter's mobile phone. As I watched, it struck me how hard life must be for this family, who although apparently much wealthier than the average Nicaraguan family judging by the car and nice mobile phone, had to cope with their son's disability in a country really not equipped to deal with such problems. What a random stroke of good luck I had to be born not only strong and healthy, but in the country I was! How unfair that some people should have all the cards stacked against them! I offered to take a picture of the whole family together, which they were grateful for, then they headed back to their car.

No sooner had they got in the car and driven away, than a young man, mid-twenties probably and dressed all in beige, walked up alongside me and said hello. "Here we go again," I instinctively thought, "what's he after?" "Buenos dias", he said. I mumbled an answer and did my best to seem uninterested, hoping he would just move on. "Are you a tourist?" he continued. "How long you been in Nicaragua?" He was talking in a mixture of Spanish and English which seemed to telepathically anticipate the gaps in my Spanish. I decided it was simpler to just tell him I was a tourist and had been in the country for a week, rather than go into details of my job in Bluefields. I was hoping he'd get bored and move on. I turned away from him and gazed out over the lake again. "Lots of rubbish in the lake", he observed. "All comes in from the islands". At this point I started to feel ashamed that I automatically treat every Nicaraguan with such suspicion. Maybe he was just curious to speak to one of these foreigners who have invaded his town, his home? Wouldn't I be curious too if a Nicaraguan turned up in my town? So I answered that yes, it was a shame. He turned towards the lake too. Then he asked me for the time. I looked at my watch and answered that it was 4pm. He nodded then started to leave. As he passed in front of me he suddenly stopped and the next thing I knew he'd drawn a pistol and, holding it sideways like you see those bad-asses in the movies do, it was pointed at my stomach. "Give me your money and your camera" he said. I'm not entirely sure what thoughts raced through my head. There wasn't much time to think of anything. However I believe it was a mixture of: "see, never trust anybody", "wtf am I doing down in this deserted area on my own anyway?" and "shit I have my camera, my iPod touch, my wallet and my money belt with $300 in it on me. How much am I going to lose?" I reached into my pocket and pulled out the first thing that came to hand. It happened to be my camera, with all my diving shots of manta rays and bull sharks, all my sunsets from Ometepe, all the pictures of the people I'd met on my week's holiday. As I handed it over with these thoughts in my head, I couldn't help but blurt out, "dame la tarjeta" - "give me the (memory) card". He just replied, "fuck you!". I asked again, in English this time. Same reply, as he tucked the pistol back into his belt and ran away and out across the street right in front of a passing car.

There was nothing for it but to head back towards the centre and hope nobody else moved in on me as I went. As I left the lake front, maybe 150m from where the incident had happened, I passed an elderly man who had been there the whole time and must have seen what happened. I looked at him and he looked back at me with something in his eyes that said, "I'm sorry, but that's what happens here".

I guess if the world was fairer and things were divided equally among all men, there would be no pressure for people to resort to this kind of action in order to make a few dollars to survive. It's ironic, or perhaps providential, that this should happen to me for the first time just as I'm having thoughts about my attitude to the travelling that has dominated my life for the last eleven years.

That trip through Asia is still real tempting though... :-)

-Phil

*The answer actually probably has much to do with the English pirates who used to sail up the Rio San Juan and attack the city!