Little San Nicolas

We're told that there is a neighborhood in Miami where you can buy Nicaraguan enchiladas, speak campo Spanish, and live side by side with Rayos and Ruizes and Orozcos; here, they call that neighborhood “Little San Nicolas.”

For the approximately 1,000 people who live in San Nicolas, there are an additional 170 or so San Nicolaseños who live in the US. If you ask pretty much any person you meet in San Nicolas, they will tell you that they have at least one family member living in the US. The majority of these people live together in that neighborhood of Miami, but there are also San Nicolaseños scattered around New York City and Southern California. Most of these immigrants don't have their papers – long-term legal status in the US is almost impossible to achieve for most Nicaraguans – but some San Nicolaseños are able to obtain a visa to visit the US temporarily.

I've heard a lot about Latin American immigration issues in the context of immigrants who are already in the US, but until coming to Nicaragua I had hardly even thought about immigration from the perspective of the people who remain here. These are the families who watch as their sons and daughters risk their lives to travel hundreds of miles, to a place where they might never see them again. These are the mothers who receive money wired from their children in the US so that they can afford an elaborate quinceañera for their youngest daughter. These are the young people who apply for visas to the US to visit the older siblings who they haven't seen in years – and these are the young people whose applications are rejected over and over again.

Here in San Nicolas, when you get word that your son or daughter has defeated the harsh desert trek to arrive “mojado” (wet, or illegally) safely in the USA, you throw a party. All of that person's friends and family come together to celebrate their arrival in their new home and the fact that they didn't die getting there. Sometimes, churches hold multiple-day vigils, praying that the immigrant will adjust easily and quickly to their new life.

One of our students, Alba, has two older brothers who made the grueling trek to the United States and now both live in New York. Alba says she never wants to move to the US because of what happened to her second brother. Her first brother, she says, paid the $7,000 fee to the coyotes who transport immigrants across the US border and made it to New York fine. But her second brother somehow got separated from the rest of the group of immigrants and was stranded in the Texan desert alone. He walked and walked, rationing off his only bottle of water, and was eventually picked up by the police. After sending for money from his older brother and paying the $1,500 bail (this part I don't really understand), he was released and had to pay an additional $1,500 to the coyotes to get all the way to New York.

Like many split families here, Alba talks on the phone to her brothers occasionally. One of our primary school students, Alison, doesn't even know her mom because she has lived in the US as long as Alison can remember. There is no way her mom could come back for a quick visit, of course, without having to make that dangerous, expensive illegal journey back to the US all over again. Alba says she would love to visit her brothers, just to be able to see them again, but it's a long, expensive process to apply legally for a visa to visit the US, and more often than not applicants are rejected.

Our neighbor across the street, Edith, is one of the few people we know who has been able to legally enter the US with a temporary visa. Her family is relatively well off and she is studying medicine at a high-profile school in Managua. Because she is on a good career track and has a lot going for her here in Nicaragua, US immigration deemed her unlikely to try and stay in the US, so she was able to visit for a few months. But it is only people like Edith who have a bit of money and a more promising future who are given this chance.

Here in San Nicolas, it's usually easy to tell who has family members in the US. Grandiose houses have begun popping up all over town in recent years, built with funds from San Nicolaseños working in the states. A few months ago, Davie confiscated an iPhone at school from a student whose mom had sent it to him from the US. (He gave it back after the kid's grandma came stomping down to the school later that day). In April our student Etni's parents threw her an extravagant quinceañera for her 15^th birthday with funds from her older siblings who live in the US.

I'm not sure what effect this has on socioeconomic dynamics here in San Nicolas, but I know how I would feel if my mom didn't send me American dollars on a monthly basis and my best friend's mom did. But then again, I also would have a mom in my life.

I have also wondered, if I grew up in San Nicolas, would I be the kind of person who goes to the US to make more money and have an adventure? I think I might be. But what effect does this have on this tiny, agriculture-based town in the mountains of Nicaragua, for all of its boldest, most entrepreneurial citizens to vacate it? And what happens to those who are left behind?

Those are the questions still rolling around in my head. Like so many San Nicolaseños, I would love to see that magical land of “Little San Nicolas” someday – a pocket of Nicaraguan campo tucked away in the urban sprawl of Miami. But unlike so many San Nicolaseños, for me achieving this dream would only cost me a plane ticket to Miami, not a dangerous desert trek, and definitely not my life.

Future Gazillionaire

There are so many good characters in San Nicolas, they could populate a Dickens novel. In light of this, we thought we would give you a taste of a few of our favorite San Nicolaseños. This week we profile 12-year-old Samari, one of our first friends in town.

We first met Samari because her younger sister Tamara, who is five, would always shout, “Adios!” to us from the front stoop of their house as we climbed the hill to school. One day, just a few weeks after we got here, we invited Tamara and a few other little kids in the community over to watch a movie. We dragged our mattress out into the courtyard, set up the movie Wall-E, and brought out popcorn and brownies.

At first all of the kids, including Tamara and her sister Samari (who had come with her), were shy about eating our snacks. They sat stiffly on the mattress, looking obediently at the movie but not watching it, darting fervent glances at the bowl of popcorn and not saying a word when we urged them to eat. Then the boldest among them reached out a timid hand and grabbed a brownie. After that, everyone began to eat brownies, and within minutes, the whole plate was gone.

When the sugar kicked in, there was no going back. The movie was discarded and the mattress became a trampoline. Making sound in front of the gringos was no longer taboo. It was when the mattress turned into a dance platform, though, that we first noticed Samari. She had been relatively quiet up until that point, but when she whipped out those hips, she didn't have to talk. Even with her abnormally huge feet anchoring her twig of a body to the dance mattress, that girl had moves.

After that day, Samari became one of our most devoted friends. She started coming over to our house to cook with us, always bringing her little sister Tamara along with her. She joined both our primary and secondary-school English classes, since she is in seventh grade this year. And recently she also joined our book club.

Although Samari is technically in high school, she still looks like a little kid. She always shows up to English class, her huge flip-flops flapping, with her English notebook peeking out of the elastic of her sweat pants. She wears her hair in a ponytail and saves lollypops for later by sticking them in her ponytail. Our favorite Samari t-shirt is an old Junior Achievement shirt that says, “Future Gazillionaire.”

Besides dancing, Samari also loves learning English. She has a funny way of pronouncing words in English, adding a “k” sound to the end of most words and pausing heavily in between words so “How are you?” comes out sounding like, “Howk ark youk?”. She is one of our most enthusiastic students, though, and learning English has given her a “thing” to be proud of. She says that when she grows up, she wants to be an English translator.

Last week when Samari came over for English class, she asked me in English, like she always does, “Howk ark youk?” When I told her I was fine and returned the question, she paused and said in Spanish, “How can I tell you? I am so happy. My mom is going to buy me a bike!” She went on to tell me the whole long-winded story about how this good fortune had come upon her, about how if the bike was smaller she would share it with her younger sister and if it was bigger she would share it with her older sister. She went on and on about that bike, visibly brimming with happiness.

In our book club meetings, it usually seems like Samari doesn't really understand much of what she's read. She is only at a seventh grade reading level, after all, and has never read another book in her life. Once when I asked what their favorite part of The Hunger Games was, Samari flipped randomly to a page and began reading, “'When I was 11, I used to have nightmares about the coal mines.' That's my favorite part,” she said.

But this week she lingered after our book club meeting for a cup of cold water, and when I asked her how the reading was going, she told me that her mom had been reading to her. “My mom sits in a chair,” she explained, “and Tamara and I sit on the floor and my mom reads to us. Tamara always interrupts my mom to ask what different words mean, but I understand it.”

In a culture dominated by TV, where almost no one ever reads anything except maybe the Bible, this kind of family reading is rare. Once again, Samari had warmed my heart.

Recipe: Cheese Soup / Buñuelos

Our friendships with so many San Nicolaseños are based heavily on cooking expeditions. Cooking Nicaraguan food together is such a tangible way for our Nicaraguan friends to teach us about their culture, just as cooking American food is a way for us to share our culture. And partaking of those foods, letting them nourish our bodies, and saying "Que rico!" when we've done so - this is a way of physically accepting and valuing each other's traditions.

We undertook one such cooking adventure recently with our friend Rosalind and her mom. Rosalind is a toothpick-legged fifth-grade girl who bops around town in froofy dresses, saying sassy things. Davie had asked her to teach him how to make these woven rubber band bracelets (which are all the rage among elementary school kids right now), so we stopped at a little shop to pick up a bag of rubber bands before heading to her house.

Although Rosalind's family is fairly well off (her dad is the vice mayor of San Nicolas), they still make most of their meals in traditional Nicaraguan fashion over the wood stove out behind their house. When we got there, Rosalind's mom already had a fire going and was dropping the little cheese dumplings for sopa de cuajada into a pan of sizzling oil.

Sopa de cuajada (or cheese soup), Rosalind's mom told us, is a meal that people make for special occasions or when they have a lot of cheese on hand. Cuajada is a white, crumbly farm cheese that lots of people make in their homes with fresh milk from their cows. It's actually quite simple to make; apparently you just combine rennet, milk, and salt and after a few hours of kneading the mixture and squeezing out the whey, you're left with a delicious, cow-tasting cheese.

Anyhow, we skipped that part and went straight to making the soup. First we shaped and fried the delicious little cheese and corn dumplings, and then we threw a bunch of vegetables into the soup pot to boil. While it was simmering, Rosalind and Davie made rubber band bracelets and Rosalind's mom braided my hair.

We ended up having too many dumplings for the soup, so Rosalind's mom quickly adapted them into a sweet, donut-like dessert called buñuelos. Buñuelos, a popular Nicaraguan street food, are apparently just deep-fried corn and cheese balls drizzled with a sweet syrup. When they were done, we hauled everything up to their family dining room and partook in the feast together. "Que rico!" we said.

Sopa de Cuajada / Cheese Soup

For the dumplings:
1 lb. of maseca, or corn flour
1 lb. of cuajada, or white farm cheese
salt to taste

Mix these ingredients together and shape them into little balls, 1 or 2 inches in diameter. Carefully drop them into a pan of hot oil and deep fry them for a few minutes, until brown.

For the soup:
2 potatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1/4 cup of mint leaves
1 liter of water

Boil vegetables and water until the potatoes are soft. Then add:

3 cups of milk
1 teaspoon of achiote (a red spice that I don't think there is an English word for)
2 chicken bouillon cubes

Mix together until bouillon cubes dissolve. Throw in the dumplings right before serving. If you have leftover dumplings, you can easily make . . .

Buñuelos / Donuts

Heat up a chunk of dulce (or you can use 2 cups of brown sugar) with a tablespoon or two of water, until it becomes liquid. Pour this hot syrup over the corn and cheese dumplings and let them soak in it until you're ready to eat them.