Goodbye, San Nicolas!

It didn't hit us that we were really actually leaving San Nicolas until two days before we left, when our good friend Maria came over to say goodbye. She had crocheted me a little bag and made the long trek from her community, Potrerillos, just to see us one last time. During the time we spent together that afternoon, a sudden, unexpected panic came over me. Of course we would visit Maria and all of our friends here again, but, I realized, we will probably never live in San Nicolas again. It will never be the same.

Before that, people had been telling us for weeks, “Don't go! Why do you have to go?” Even people we didn't really know very well said that, so we assumed it was just the thing to say. Responding to them, we always felt a little guilty, because when it came right down to it, we didn't really have to leave. In all honesty, we felt ready to leave – to be back in the US, closer to our families and in a more comfortable, familiar culture.

But once we realized for real what leaving San Nicolas actually meant, we were struck with a serious case of the lasts. Here are just a few things we grew nostalgic about in the subsequent days:

The mini- library at the school is finished!

- The last time we washed our clothes by hand

- The last time we walked to La Garnacha to wash carrots

- The last time we walked up the hill to the school

- The last time we sang Catholic Johnny Cash hymns at mass

- The last time we murmured along to the Nicaraguan national anthem at school

- The last time we used our latrine at night

- The last time we saw the amazing view of San Nicolas, Volcan Momotombo, and Lake Managua from the top of the hill that descends to San Nicolas

- And of course, the last time that we would see each of our Nicaraguan friends

Bombarded by all of these lasts, it suddenly became clear to us that the two years we've spent in San Nicolas, Nicaragua have changed us. Nicaragua has taught us so much. One very tangible thing that Nicaragua gave me was the ability to speak Spanish. It feels great to leave Nicaragua with such a useful skill that I will have for the rest of my life. Now that I speak Spanish, I also feel very committed to finding a Latin American community in the US where I can keep speaking Spanish and stay connected to the Latino cultures that I've come to love.

A second thing that Nicaragua has shown us is that we don't really need all of the things that we think we need. We lived for two years without indoor plumbing, without a washing machine, without unlimited internet access, among other people who have always lived without these things, and ultimately, we didn't really miss this stuff all that much. Since we didn't have a gourmet bakery down the street, we learned to make our own sourdough bread. Since we didn't have a grocery store in town, we made a lot more food from scratch. We admired the self-sufficiency of our friends and neighbors, who have never learned to count on the luxuries we take for granted, and when we tried living like them, we realized it was actually pretty easy.

The final thing Nicaragua taught us is to pace our lives differently. There is a pattern of life here in Nicaragua that inevitably prioritizes people and relationships above time and work. Here, friends are always more important than to-do lists. We've often been annoyed by the seeming inefficiency of Nicaraguan life, but the benefits of this flexibility and people-oriented culture always outweigh the annoyances.

A perfect example of this happened on our very last afternoon in San Nicolas. Our bus was going to leave at 4 p.m., so for our last hour in town, we sat out in front of our house on plastic chairs, watching people go by. Gradually, people walking by began to join us, stopping in to talk for a few minutes, and then poaching up on our front stoop. It was a work day and most of them probably had work to do, but they thought nothing of skipping work to hang out with us during our last hour in San Nicolas. We didn't even talk that much; once it started to rain, we couldn't hear each other over the sound of the rain pounding on the tin roof anyway. They just sat there with us silently, simply giving us their presence. Then our bus honked its horn and we put on our backpacks to leave, and with a slight tremor, we hugged them. And when we boarded the bus, they stood there watching, holding us with their eyes, giving us the warm gift of community as we rolled out of San Nicolas for the last time.

P.S. This might be our last blog post for a while. If you want to continue following life in San Nicolas, you can read about the next volunteers, Alli and Kyle's experience on their blog: http://allikylenica.blogspot.com/