A bag full of mens' gifts in a country full of women.

This weekend I experienced my first real trip to the Nicaraguan countryside. Although my heart has been content during my travels and in the Nicaraguan towns, this weekend confirmed what I have always known deep down: My soul lives in 'el campo'.

Yesterday was  Mothers' Day here in NIC and the holiday is wildly important to the Nicaraguan people (as it should be). In every household, this is a full day-long event full of festivities, quality time passed with the women you love and paying respects to the ones that have passed. I have learned to appreciate and embrace  most rituals and daily activities here in my new country but the love and attention given to every Mom on this day has been my favorite cultural aspect of life in Nicaragua so far.

We left my house at around 5am yesterday to visit family in Leon, about three hours from Diriamba. The drive was beautiful, mile after mile of emerald green farmland and forest scattered with houses and corner stores. We pulled in to the city of Leon and my dad, Romiro, gave me the grand tour. We stopped first at one of the larger mercados in the city to buy flowers for his deceased mother. After buying three boquets, we headed over to the main Cathedral in downtown.

The cathedral is huge; It fills up an entire city block. My host family are Catholic, as is most of the country, so they were able to explain every piece of artwork and fill me in on the importance of every architectural feature. Inside the cathedral were the remains of the famous Nicaraguan poet, Ruben Dario. His body is protected by a large, marble Lion.  We walked outside and bought a shaved ice from one of the vendors in the park. My dad and i snacked on ours while we walked around Leon, admiring the memorials and murals of past revolutions and the people that lived and died for Nicaragua.

We loaded back into the truck with my mom and sisters and began our journey into the campo. On the way, we stopped as another house for a post-Baptism lunch for a nephew/cousin. I had the chance to meet and speak with twenty or so family members, all curious about the gringo that came to lunch with the Granera family. The one that i spent the most time with though, was my dad's 89 year old father. We sat and ate for over two hours while we talked, he sat with his legs crossed into his chair, blue shirt unbuttoned and his well-weathered face protected by the brim of a big, black cowboy hat. We talked about life in rural NIC, traditional foods of our home countries and life before and after the revolution. Oh, and we had a nice, long talk about venemous snakes too. A little bit of everything.

After lunch. we continued into the countryside, about another 20 km. We stopped at a small Catholic church where my dad and oldest sister were both born and raised. We walked down to a small, brighly colored cemetary where we sat to pay our respects to my host grandmother. We tied our flowers to her headstone. The ranchhouse wasnt oo much further. Protected by fields of bright green Yucca and sugarcane, cattle, horses, wild dogs and more chickens than I cared to count, this open-air, wood-beamed house was my heaven. Very modest and perfect in every way.  I met more family and walked to the edge of the property to look out into the expanses of rolling green. The only sounds came from insects, hungry birds and an approaching storm, pushing black clouds from inland. In this moment, I was home.

At sunset, I walked with a small army of women, sisters and little girls, through the fields to a small shop to buy treats. The darkness and heat lightening chased us home and with the acception of a few major tragedies (spilled chips and candies) we made it home safely. By 8pm, the sun had been gone for almost two hours and replaced with lightning bugs. The sky opened up to one of the most intense and consistant lightening storms I've ever seen. I watched the storm that night from my hammock strung in the center of the open living area, surrounded by around twenty other bodies. The barking dogs, roosters (which I've grown to passionately hate), cows and crying babies kept me from too much sleep. But I rested.

I rolled out of bed around 430 and by five, the sun was up. A cousin asked me if I could ride a horse and he seemed genuinely happy when i responded "Yes, sir." We saddles up two horses, opened a few gates and chutes and drove a head of about thirty cattle through the countryside, up to another pasture to graze for the day. The ride was gorgeous, every shade of green imaginable. Vibrant birds sat in every tree and five volcanos filled the horizon. My companion was very interested in wooing the local girls in English so i gave him a handful of pickup lines and we laughed together while I explained to him in Spanish what they meant. The rain opened back up on our ride home.

After lunch, a group of us drove to Cerro Negro, one of the more famous volcanoes in the area. We hiked to the top. The black volcanic soil made it a hot one but we made it without any problem. We looked down from the top and collectively decided that it would take too long to hike the trails back down. Running down the sheer face was a much better option. I felt like I was back home playing with my brother and friends, running full speed down the volcano. We jumped and fell at full speed. We laughed at eachother and yelled all the way down. Tumbling down that hill, we werent different people from unknown cultures and places. There was no language barrier. We were just kids having fun.

We headed home exhausted and got home around 7, ate dinner and gave my mom her gifts. I got her a set of six lotions and made her a card. I spent a day last week panicked because I couldnt find her a proper gift. All I knew was: She likes smelly things and enjoys little decorations for the house. An appropriate gift was near impossible to find in Dririamba. I was lucky enough to stumble into and unmarked perfume shop in town. I brought an entire bag of gifts from home but had failed to notice until i got here that they were ALL gifts for men.

So, I'm ending my day the happiest Ive been in a month. Laying in bed tired and sunburnt, relieved that I finally found a gift for my wonderful mom and wondering how I came with a bag full of mens' gifts to a country run by women.