Flipper is up one point, then gets a foul. Super Ghetto takes the lead. Super Ghetto then gets a foul, but Flipper misses both freethrow shots. It’s an exciting game. Super Ghetto players have snazzy new black jerseys, names featured prominently on the back (I root for #12, Tajado). Their Nike sneakers pace the floor well. They’ve got groove. It’s all very super ghetto.

Late the next night I’m out at a bar to sample the nightlife, though I’m already very tired from a long day of shooting. I notice the entire basketball team is there, judged by their communal height alone (the few in this world whom are taller than me do not escape my notice). I can’t help but also notice that their super ghettoness is expressed in a very American way – many have baggy pants, designer hats, big diamond earrings, marijuana leaf blingorama chains resting heavy on their chests.

American pop “culture” can seem to reach deeply into the world’s veins at times. I have a distinct memory when I was in Vietnam of eating a farewell dinner from my host family; we’re all sitting cross-legged on the floor, small bowls in hand with chopsticks in the other. Bugs are buzzing around the only lightbulb. At the end of the dinner, they turn on their small TV and flip through the channels until they get MTV. Beyoncé, in all her bootylicious glory, seductively dances on all fours; I have an acute taste of absurdity when all I can hear outside are crickets throbbing in chaotic unison, rural farmland stretching for miles in sweet silence. America’s image abroad, in fact, is undeniably contradictory. A superpower whose every move is watched because of its ability to affect every inch of the planet, it is in turns both loved and loathed.

In any case, Puerto Cabezas isn’t so isolated as where I was in Vietnam, and definitely has its own culture, distinct from the world, from America, and even from the rest of Nicaragua. It’s close to the Honduran border, and still harbors much of its native population of Miskito Indians that were here before the Spaniards came. These days, they speak Miskito first, Spanish second, and English third though it wasn’t always that way. Often, our interviews with the locals here could have been, or were held, in Miskito. The language is rhythmic, necessarily foreign to my Indo-European ears. Most of the locals here talk about the Pacific coast with some amount of disdain, as the “Pacific” is synonymous with wealth, and at times, government oppression. The Atlantic/Caribbean coast in contrast has its own authentic Miskito-Creole groove that has been etched by a history very different from the Spaniard-west. For example, the musical choices blared loudly from car, rooftop, or bar, range from Reggaeton, Bachata, to Soca, Dancehall, and Reggae.

Something nags me though – height. Everyone, I notice, is taller here in Nicaragua. I stand still on a busy street testing my hypothesis, and on average people aren’t reaching my chest, but my nose. I don’t get nearly as many comments for being “so tall” and I don’t feel like a towering monster when walking around in crowded areas like the market. As it is purely anecdotal evidence, I put it aside.

I walk into the local cornerstore to buy a fresco de pithaya, or dragonfruit juice to go.
My to-go pithaya juice arrives in a small plastic bag artfully tied to a straw. To-go takes on a new definition as my plastic-bag-fuchsia-colored juice leaks through my hands onto my shirt. In any case, it’s a slow day and the girl who served me is sitting outside reading a thick book. After getting over the shock of seeing her read a book – any book – I then think to ask what she’s reading. I’m fully expecting a dime store (peso store?) romance novel but instead she tells me, “Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen.”

“En serio?” Seriously? I ask.

I haven’t even read that book.

“So what do you think of Jane Austen?” I then ask.

“Oh, she writes great romance novels” she says.

Right. And why are you working in this joint serving 40-cent juices to the odd customer if you can read and enjoy Jane Austen, I want to ask?

Okay, I decide, my anecdotal evidence is in need of some fact checking – why are these people taller, why do they read literature, and yet still live in such poor conditions?

A massive history lesson ensues, rudely uncovering my ignorance of a country I would have long been interested in coming to visit had I ever caught a whiff of its recent past: Nicaragua had a revolution in 1979. A year later, after the infamous longtime CIA-sponsored Somoza dictatorship was successfully torn down by the Sandanista Front, one of the most remarkable improvements in literacy occurred in recent times. Within five months they reduced the overall illiteracy rate from 50% to 13%. As a result, in September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua with an award for their successful literacy campaign.

My small observations begin to fit into place. Better redistribution of wealth has lead to increased nutrition, better access to medical care, as well as better vaccination techniques and disease control. A very simple trend occurs: people, across social classes, begin to grow taller. It’s a documented fact that a redistribution of income leads to increased height among a population. 20 years later, the effects are palpable. I mean, at least I see the men eye to eye here.

Abrazos
-Isabelle

He’s is 54 years old, but passes for 30. Lean, fit, muscular, a body sculpted from a lifetime of physical work, his gaze was commanding as it was sultry, his face smooth and young. His wife and him were easygoing, a marriage of 30+ years, and for a moment I was nostalgic for their ideal relationship. Then I found out he had multiple girlfriends in town.

His son, Milton, is a buzo – a diver. A lobster diver, to be more specific. His job description includes going out to sea for some 10-14 days, diving around 20 times a day to catch spiny lobsters one at a time, with a small hook fused at the end of a metal rod. They get paid per pound of lobster caught. The price per pound of lobster 5 years ago was around 16 US dollars/pound, making it the most lucrative job in town for the average laborer (who earned $4.50/lb). Today, because of the global recession, the price has dropped to $8.50/lb, and the buzos are earning only $1.90/lb.

These buzos, besides radically overfishing the caribbean spiny lobster, are also risking their lives on multiple counts. The most grave condition is called the Bends, which results when you dive too often and you rise too quickly – nitrogen bubbles form in your blood and essentially renders you paralyzed from one minute to the next,
“I got back into the boat and sat down… and then I knew it had happened. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore” says Oscar, one of the many paralyzed buzos in town.

Oscar sits on the floor of his house on stilts. Before the interview begins he reaches for an empty plastic bottle and puts it underneath his blanket. I hear a strange gurgling sound in my earphones, and I realize he’s peeing into the bottle, which I could hear particularly loudly because he’d already been mic’d with the lavalier. Plaintive, he says simply that he has received no aid from basically anywhere – not the boat owner he was working for, nor the state, nor any other association. I watch carefully one of the other boys in the room, Fernando, who is training to become a buzo himself, and how he reacts to Oscar’s story.

“It’s the ultimate machismo.” Brad, colleague of mine here, explains to me, “They go out to sea for weeks. Their wives and girlfriends come to see them off at the dock before each trip. They might never come back. They might die.” But still they go out and dive, with the possibility of coming back, some would argue, worse than dead: paralyzed. Brad sent me an email about 2 months ago, asking me if I might be available the month of August to help shoot a documentary he was making on lobster divers, and the lobster diving industry in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.

I flew down mid-August to help production for two weeks on the documentary called Mi Aldea, Mi Langosta (My Village, My Lobster), and that’s how I found myself learning about buzos, langostas, Puerto Cabezas, and the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979.

Abrazos
Isabelle