Fiestas Patrias

So this past week marked the Nicaragua’s Independence Day…both of them, respectively on September 14^th and 15^th. There are two reasons to celebrate independence here. Here’s a fun fact for you: an American by the name of William Walker, initially at the request of the Liberal Nicaraguans, came to Central America in the 1850’s  with a gang of mercenaries (or filibusters as they were known at the time), and forced his way into power. For three years, I believe 1853 – 1856, Walker was in control of Nicaragua and was making moves to conquer the rest of Central America, all in the name of the United States, of course. But on September 14^th, a coalition of Central American forces held strong, and finally repulsed him from the country, hence the reason for the first Independence Day. Day 2, 15^th of September, marks the anniversary of when, once again as a whole, a coalition of Central American forces expelled the Spaniards, the original imperialists in the area from their native lands 190 years ago. Another kind of fun fact is that Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica originally were one unified republic, but due to tribal and local differences, that disbanded after 20 years or so. BUT, take all this information with a grain of salt. I had to ask a lot of locals about the reason for the independence, and this information is the most generally agreed upon. For being so patriotic and enthusiastic about the holidays, it seems that the general public is pretty misinformed about it. Once person told me the 15^th marked the day that Nicaragua expelled the English from the country.

For me, Independence Day in the states means long afternoon/evening barbeques with friends and family, red-white-and-blue, and fireworks at night. Oh and how can I forget, plenty of delicious American beer. Here things are a bit different, where the majority of the festivities take place in the morning both days, before the sun gets to high in the sky, and therefore hot. Each colegio (high school) in the municipality has a band and a dancing group that march through the calle principal of Villa El Carmen, to the football field. At the football field, each school has the opportunity to perform their acto, a 20 minute long performance by the band, with the dance group of course dancing along to the beat. For high school students, the acto’s were surprisingly complex and incredibly fun to watch. Each school invests a lot of time, and fair amount of money into their performance (often at the expense of my class time to my chagrin), and they start preparing for it often a month of two in advance.  It’s an unofficial competition, and each school wants to be the best. I was lucky enough to be an “esteemed guest” which meant I was in the company of all the VIP’s of La Villa, and had a front row seat to each performance. Yup, just another one of the perks of the job. The whole thing reminded me of that cheesy Nick Cannon movie, Drumline, but much cooler since it was live…and in Nicaragua. I kind of wish I was in the band, banging on a drum with the kids. Maybe next year. So hear are plenty of pictures of the event, to see just how big the whole thing was, since each school brought between 40 to over 100 kids to participate. How you choreograph something like that, with that many kids, is beyond me. Enjoy the photos.

This kid on the rigtht is the Nica version of my meatheaded buddy Graham back in the states

 

Oh, one last little bit of Nica daily life. I’ve had this mystery stain and seeds appearing on one particularly spot of my floor the past couple mornings and I couldn’t figure out where on earth it could come from. So I finally asked my host mom, and she non chalantly told me it was just the murcielagos. For those of you remember, murcielago means bat. So At some point in the night, I have bats flying into my room to enjoy their midnight fruit snacks. With scorpions, spiders, and plenty of other bugs always crawling around, bats are just one more thing to add to the list. Am I right? Am I wrong?