Went to Sleep in Ghana and Woke up in Nicaragua

I literally feel as if I went to sleep in my mosquito-net-tent outside of our hostel room in Accra behind barbed, metal fencing on our enclosed back porch and woke up at The Hotel Oasis in Nicaragua, with the ´tipico´ breakfast of gallo pinto (eggs, beans, rice, salsa and tortillas) awaiting me.

I don´t think my mind has caught up to my physical body. What I mean is, part of me is still in Africa, the 6 day Chicago stay feels like it didn´t even happen, and I am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I am beginning a new adventure all over again in Central America. Maybe a week from now I will think I´m in Chicago and then after another week I´ll realize I´m in Nicaragua.

I tried to address my adjustment from Ghana to America as best I could: by being drunk. After a day of crying with my best Ghanaian pals having to say goodbye over watching our traditional Ghanaian dance recital together and watching Jake perform a song on his guitar about our experiences over the past few months....we decided it´d be best to spend the last of our Ghana Cedi on Star beers one last time at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.

When my bag was declared lost in Washington DC and I was told to leave it and run to catch my connecting flight that was about to leave, I stumbled upon the plane with my broken flip flops and red, ochre colored dust coating my skin and clothes (thanks for the parting gift, Ghana), and must have looked like a haggard, crazed version of Harry Potter (I was wearing my glasses, too). I was greeted in the last row by a man who took one look at me and asked if I was OK and told him about my night flight from Accra and how my bag was lost and how I hate America, yada-yada; and he told me he was coming back from overseas, too. From Afghanistan.

I immediately appologized for saying that I hate America and he laughed it off. I talked with this 30-something year-old guy for a while about Afghanistan and the military and he said he was sent home for 2 weeks because his mother had died. We decided we could both use a drink; so at 8 in the morning on my flight back to Chicago, I shared a bloody mary with a soldier who had himself a rum and coke.

The few days home I spent in some alternate reality of culture shock. I didn´t realize how many of my friends would be home, and we decided to go to the local bar the night I came back from Africa; which ended up not being the best idea. Overwhelmed by all of the flatscreen TVs and seemingly hundreds of menu options, I ended up having to step outside- just in time to hear a man on his cell phone talking about a $500,000 deal of sorts that got me muttering (loudly) about this guy being a 'Bill Gates Asshole' is I think what I´d ended up saying, before my friends decided it´d be best to take me home.

My doctor´s appointment with Infectious Disease shortly followed, as in the next day, and I was poked and prodded with blood tests and given direction that I needed to produce 3 stool samples over the next 3 days. Welcome home.

Turns out I had a misdiagnosis of typhoid in Ghana (surprise) and I actually had Dengue Fever. I think after all of these misdiagnoses, I was diagnosed with every possible ailment that exists in Ghana and I was lucky that the cipro antibiotic I was given for the typhoid knocked out whatever was in me, so although it´s good to know what I had, the truth is it doesn´t really matter as I was treated and recovered.

So with my life moving at the speed of sound with unpacking, repacking, and re-supplying, I was not really caught up on my Nicaragua research until the plane rides from Chicago to Miami and then Miami to Nicaragua. I paroused the guidebook I´d picked up, and could not beleive all of the incredible things that were awaiting: zip lining and canopy tours, hiking volcanoes, sand surfing, turtle watching, bird watching, the chance of seeing ocelots (featured in a Phish song), kayaking, swimming, incredible food, and a kajillion things inbetween. I´d been to Costa Rica when I was a sophomore in high school, but really did not know what to expect Nicaragua to be like.

Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America, and one of the less visited, although ecotourism has become increasingly popular hear and Nicaragua is being marketed as the place for outdoor/nature enthusiasts to visit.

With Ghana fresh in my mind, Nicaragua looks like Europe to me. In Granada, old, American school buses painted funky colors run up and down paved roads, people smile at you and the harrassment to buy something is minimal, and the streets are covered in colonial-styled and brightly colored buildings that hold so much character and history; I sort of just stood staring with my head tilted back and my jaw open trying to take them all in.

Chris, the man behind Project Bonafide, arranged for a driver, Walter to pick us up from the Managua airport, as we landed at night and it is unsafe to be in Managua at night- so we were instructed to go straight to Granada and get the hell outta Managua as quickly as possible. Maddy and I were instucted to wait for our missing link, Amber, who will be working with us on the farm in Omatepe for three months as well.
Amber is 25 and from Iowa. She decided after working with Seed Savers, she was going to disregard her 3 years of studying Art Therapy and start from scratch with a Horticulture major from Iowa State. Amber lived in Uganda for a summer introducing African bee horticulture practices into a community and worked on building projects and taught girls how to hand-sew sanitary napkins using pieces of flannel and the lining from diapers. We´ve already passed lots of time discussing our time in Africa and it´s been refreshing to know that someone else knows what it´s like to live there, and how addressing one problem seems like just the tip of an iceberg, revealing about 25 others.

I was amazed at how quickly my limited high school Spanish came back to me and have found that I am perfectly capable of getting by with my Spanish here and am excited to talk with Katie and Jairo in Spanish if I´m able to visit them in Colombia! Maddy and Amber both only know French, so they were pleasantly surprised that I have been able to get by translating and re-laying messages in Spanish for us.

Our hostel is called the Hotel Oasis and there are free computers with internet, a pool, hammocks and hanging chairs to read in, free tea, coffee and sweet bread, a TV and a community kitchen. It feels like a five star resort to me and I still cannot believe how nice of an accomadation this hostel really is. We have met so many interesting people staying at this hostel, already. We cooked dinner with a woman from Switzerland tonight (I made my version of ´thai´ peanut butter and soy sauce noodles with stir fried vegetables I learned hiking in the Rockies), and one of the couples we played banana-grams with is from New Orleans, but sold their house and all of their assets on a whim to try and make it in Nicaragua, a ballsy but all-the-same inspiring move.

We have been at this hostel for 2 days, since Wednesday night, and we are leaving tomorrow to take the ferry from San Jose to Omatepe, where we will be settled for the next three months organic farming and working on whatever other projects come up while we are there. It´s been nice and necessary for us to have some down time to get adjusted to life in Nicaragua a little more before we jump into our summer farm work. We are only required to farm from 7 AM to 12 PM Monday through Friday, so we are excited to have free weekends that we will be devoting to volcano touring, hiking, kayaking, and all of the adventuring we can muster.

Today we went on a shuttle bus that took us along with about 15 other people staying at Hotel Oasis to their sister hostel where we spent the day soaking up sun on a lake surrounded by lush, green, mountains. We got to kayak, read, and lay out on a floating dock for the entirety of the day. Maddy got too much sun and has a remarkably hellish sunburn covering the entirety of her backside, but other than that- today was a relaxing success, and I can say that my first impressions of Nicaragua are that it is truly paradise. After feeling so on edge for most of my time in Ghana, I forgot what it feels like to be comfortable in another country, and Nicaragua seems like the perfect transitional place for now and I feel much more calm and at ease here than I did in Chicago for those few days.