More about directions

Sometimes when there’s a major geographical landmark next to a city or town, people there use that landmark as a guiding point. For example, Lake Nicaragua borders my town to the east, so when giving directions here, instead of saying 2 blocks east, people will often say 2 blocks towards the lake. Also, people will sometimes use up and down to indicate east and west, respectively. So when giving directions in Managua, where Lake Managua borders the city to the north, south is never replaced, but north may become towards the lake, east may become down, and west may become up. Thus 2 blocks west, 3 blocks north, and 1 block east may be said as 2 blocks down, 3 blocks towards the lake, and 1 block up.

Describing People

Last spring, when I weighed over 200 pounds, if someone asked you to describe me, what would you have said? Maybe you would have said that I was tall, that I had long black hair and/or that I had hazel eyes. As far as my weight, you might have said that I was “a little big”, or that I was “a little on the heavy side”, but there’s almost certainly one word you would never would have used: fat. In the States, fat it a word people just don’t use to describe someone else, instead we have to beat around the bush and be very indirect when talking about someone’s weight, probably because calling someone fat is seen as being derogatory (although people seem to have no problem with calling someone skinny or too skinny). We do this because we don’t want to offend someone, which is understandable, but honestly a little ridiculous.

In Nicaragua this is not the case. At all. Here, calling someone gordo is not seen as derogatory or offensive, it’s just a descriptive term that’s used to describe someone, just like alto or bajo (by the way, gordo means fat, alto means tall, and bajo means short). This was very weird to me at first, like when someone asked if my host mom in my training town was gorda, but I’ve slowly been getting used to it. There are virtually no descriptive terms here that are faux pas. Asian-American volunteers (from what I’ve been told), regardless of their ethnic background, are often called el chino or la china, not in a derogatory way, simply as a way of describing their appearance. Black American volunteers (again, from what I’ve been told) are often called el negro or la negra, again, not in a derogatory way, just as a legitimate way of describing what they look like. People here usually call me chele (which means light-skinned person) if they don’t know me, or profe if they do know me at least vaguely.

Seasons

It’s winter right now. No, I don’t mean in the southern hemisphere, I mean in Nicaragua. The definitions of seasons are very different here. In the US, summer is when the sun rises more directly overhead and it gets really warm, and winter is when the sun doesn’t rise as high in the sky and it doesn’t get as warm. But in Nicaragua the sun rises very high in the sky year-round, so it’s always approximately equally warm, regardless of the current month. Winter is defined by the rainy reason, and summer is defined by the dry season. Also, there’s no fall or spring. There are transitional periods between summer and winter, but I have yet to hear anyone say the Spanish words for fall or spring.

Directions

You have to give someone directions to get to your house. What do you do? In today’s age of smartphones and GPSs, you’d probably just give them your state name, city/town name, street name, and house number, right? It just makes logical sense to us to have a specific address that refers to a single location.

In Nicaragua, the system is very different. In Nicaragua you give your address relative to a famous location in your town. My address in my training town was how many blocks and in what direction I lived from the factory. My current address is the location of my house relative to the church in the middle of town. And no, I’m not joking. Most of the streets here don’t even have any names. Seriously, open up Google Maps and zoom in to a town in Nicaragua and you’ll probably see that almost none of the streets there have any names. To give someone directions to my house, I tell them which side of the church I live on, the color of my house, and the name of my host mom. If they can’t find the church, they would just ask someone where it is, and if they can’t find my house, they would give someone the name of my host mom and ask where she lives (or just ask where the gringo lives).

Of course people sometimes do this in the US, but here, in most places, there is no other option. There also isn’t a set point in each town from which all directions start; in my training town, my neighbor’s address was directions from the local municipal government building. Sometimes, when there are two famous businesses in a town, they will both give their addresses relative to each other.

I know that this system may seem inefficient to Americans, but here’s the thing: it works. Seriously, it totally works. People here just know where things are, they are more than happy to help you find them, and (here’s a major divergence from Americans) they never hesitate to ask for directions. Americans seem to have some sort of pride in the belief that they can find where they’re going without asking for directions, but Nicaraguans definitely do not. The Nicaraguan system may seem inefficient to Americans, but I would bet that the American system would seem unnecessary to most Nicaraguans.

Table Manners

Consider this scenario: You decide to make eggs for breakfast. What do you do? You would probably lightly grease the pan with oil to make cleanup easier, cook the eggs in whatever fashion you prefer, and then eat them with just a fork. Not if you’re Nicaraguan. If you’re Nicaraguan, you would probably pour so much oil into the pan that you practically deep fry the eggs, then you would drown them in salt, and eat them with a spoon.

Here’s another scenario: You sit down for a lunch consisting of beans, rice, cheese, tortillas, and some veggies. How do you eat it? Maybe you use a fork or a spoon to make a burrito, then eat it with your hands. Maybe you mix everything together (minus the tortilla) and eat it with a fork. Not if you’re Nicaraguan. If you’re Nicaraguan, you may very well tear the tortilla up into strips, and use them to pick up your food to eat it (seriously, I have yet to see anyone else here make a burrito).

One more scenario: You sit down for a dinner consisting of mostly steak. How do you eat it? You would probably cut it up into manageable pieces with a fork and a sharp steak knife, then eat those pieces with the fork, right? Not if you’re Nicaraguan. If you’re Nicaraguan, you would probably just pick up the steak with your hands and rip off pieces with your teeth.

The above statements are based on my own experiences here, eating with
three Nicaraguan families. Also there was some obvious exaggeration.

I’m not trying to imply that all Nicaraguans cook and eat the same way; that would be as ridiculous as saying that there’s no variety in the ways that Americans eat. I’m also not trying to imply that Nicaraguans are backwards people who need to learn how to eat properly. My point is that the idea that there is a proper way to eat, that there’s some way that you’re supposed to act at the table, is complete bullshit. Proper table manners don’t really exist, they’re just a social construct most likely designed by people who want to make themselves feel superior to others. The difference between “food” and “finger food” is basically nonexistent here (pretty much just soup). That doesn’t mean that people always eat with their hands, just that they can if they want to.

The definition of “politeness” varies hugely between cultures. In this sense, table manners are a lot like language, in that nothing is ever truly “right”. There is no right way to talk, there are only various culturally accepted ways to talk; there is also no right way to eat, there are only various culturally accepted ways to eat. If you’re telling someone how they should eat in a certain social situation, remember that you’re not giving them a set of objective facts, you are giving them your opinion. And if somebody is being a stickler for “proper manners”, just quote The Dude: “Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”