11 Degrees Above the Equator

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I am sitting in an internet café in Masatepe, Nicaragua, a small city about three quarters of an hour southeast of Managua. An anemic fluorescent light washes over half the room; the other half is bathed in the sunlight that spills through the open doorway. My companions in the café are mostly young men with dark eyes, black hair, and sparse beard stubble. Interspersed like blooming flowers are several young women, dressed in pink, yellow, blue. The manager is seated behind a battered wooden desk talking with a friend as an oscillating fan sweeps the room with a halting breeze, giving their voices a low intermittent quality.

Beyond the open doorway I hear the dry unsettled rustle of banana palms, the chatter of passersby, the pop of cyclotaxi tires moving over cobbled stones. A stray dog thin as a snake slides by the door, its ribs sharp, its eyes dull.

An instant message pops onto the screen, a friend from back home. “What’s it like?” she asks, and, “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I reply. But while the journey to Nicaragua from the U.S. was completed in a day, our group may as well be on the other side of the universe.

Many homes here are one-room concrete blocks with dirt floors. Chickens scratch in the yards, and the smell of wood smoke permeates the air from before sunrise till after dark. Electricity and water shut off without warning or explanation, and jobs are scarce. In the few days we have been in this part of the city a man from down the street has been killed in a traffic accident, a young mother died in childbirth, and a worker suffered a fatal fall from a ladder.