Haciendo lo correcto: The Heartwarming Story of How I Got My Computer Back

Hacer lo correcto- to do the right thing

I should start this post off by saying that this is very much a classic "Emily story", in that involves me losing things (a common occurrence until recently), extreme feats of physical clumsiness, people being really nice despite my general haplessness, and absurd bus rides.

As previously mentioned, my computer got stolen off a bus about a month ago without my noticing as I traveled to notoriously touristy San Juan del Sur with a gringo pack of other TEFL volunteers. I logically assumed that this meant I would never see it again.

However, on Tuesday, I got a bunch of calls from a strange number during class. When I received yet another during my break, I decided to pick it up, assuming this person had the wrong number. The caller introduced himself. "Hi, you don't know me, but I'm an evangelical preacher in Rivas and I have something of yours." I thought for a second. Id card? Credit cards? Cell phone? I had all those. Then it hit me. "OMG, DO YOU HAVE MY COMPUTER???" I shrieked, although not without a tinge of suspicion. When he said yes, I almost started dancing around the school courtyard. "Look", he said "I'd like to explain the circumstances of how I got it, I'm an honest person..." I told him we could talk after class when it wasn't so unbearably loud, since band practice was getting underway.
A few phone calls later, the story, particularly of how he had gotten my phone number, became clearer. Apparently, his wife had bought the computer and realized it was stolen when they found all my files on it. Lazy thieves didn't bother to erase anything. THANK GOD!!! Luckily, a Spanish version of my CV happened to be on the computer, and so they found my contact information and decided to do the right thing and contact me.

I was still sort of suspicious this was some sort of hoax/elaborate thieves' plot, but I liked the vibe I got from the guy, so I figured I would head to his tiny town, called Belen, during the weekend, to try and get it back. As luck would have it, another Peace Corps volunteer from my training group lives there, so I figured she could back me up if things went south.
The only minor difficulty was that Belen is literally on the opposite side of the country from me, around the lake (although arguably, most of Nicaragua is on the other side of the country from Rio San Juan), and that I wanted to teach my Saturday classes in "El Never", which end until 10:30 am.

Operation Retrieve Computer got a slow start, because it started raining right as I was leaving school. Not only did I not have an umbrella, but I was wearing sandals, and they are doing a sidewalk construction project which has completely wrecked the road. My sandals broke when they got stuck in the mud, I got completely dirty and wet, and as a result of the walk to the highway taking nearly 20 minutes (instead of 5), missed a bus going north. There are precious few buses in Rio San Juan, so this was quite unfortunate.

To make a long story short, I eventually I got to Managua, but not until 5 pm. I could have made it to Rivas (the nearest city to Belen) that night, but I don't know it very well, and I didn't want to try and find a hostel at night in an unknown city. So I decided to head to the colonial city of Granada, which I know much better, and has loads of cheap backpacker housing.

Should have gone to Rivas. Granada turned out to not be the best decision, because it was in the throes of a giant street carnival to celebrate Mary's assumption, which a) disoriented me and b) ensured that there were throngs of people, particularly drunk men, everywhere, although it was still early, so there were families about. I was panicked about getting robbed. I had one of those "O shit, I'm a woman aren't I" moments when I got surrounded by a crowd of men. It was only for a few seconds and none of them did anything to me, but I was petrified that I was going to get robbed or who knows what, particularly because it would have been ironic to get robbed while on my way to getting unrobbed. Luckily, I got away quickly, walking near some families. I stopped at the first hostel I found, which turned out to be great and cheap, and I got to laugh at the "professional poker player" who had gotten robbed by a taxi driver when he paid $240 for a taxi ride because he wasn't paying attention to the exchange rate. This  made me feel better about my lack of knowledge of the calendar of Nicaraguan festivals. I'm not THAT green. Always know your exchange rates when traveling.

The next morning, I headed for Rivas, but got delayed by an hour because there were no buses leaving every 15 minutes like the hostel owner had described. Instead of being there at 8, I didn't get there til 9:30. Belen was adorable, with a cute little church and park. More importantly, the people who bought my computer were adorable and sweet. I got an even better vibe from them in person. They handed it over right away and encouraged me to look it over. They apologized for looking at my files. They said they realized that something was probably wrong when it was sold to them without a charger, but they rationalized it . But especially once they realized that I wasn't just here paseando, they wanted to make things right. "How can we preach about these things if we don't do them ourselves?" commented the preacher. Before I left, they said a prayer to bless my journey. I got goosebumps from the whole thing. It's just so rare that people do the right thing, at least in my experience.

After re-reading one of my favorite Paul Farmer books, "Pathologies of Power," I had been inclined to give the couple the full amount they had paid for the computer, in what is probably best described as a massive outpouring of white guilt, my own desire to "hacer lo correcto." Basically, I started over-analyzing the reasons Nicaraguans would be poor and need to buy a used computer.  As fate would have it, I didn't actually have that much money in my account at the time, so I couldn't give them the full amount. This was probably just as well. On the off chance they were involved in stealing it (which after meeting them seems extremely unlikely), I didn't want to reward them. And I didn't want to condone buying stolen goods, regardless of the structural injustices that might lead to that. And last, the amount they had paid for it was nearly twice what I had originally paid for it, which seemed a little bit ridiculous to pay to regain property that was technically mine.

However, down the line, I'd really like to do something for them. They run a series of comedores infantiles, sort of like a food kitchen for children, and I'd like to help them with some of their Christmas charity, even if it's not a model of development I necessarily agree with. We shall see how, but I'd like to do right by them.

Esoooooooooooooo

This cartoon made me laugh. I wish I had seen it earlier to show to my 11th grade students for our section on ¨Gender and Inequality.¨ Next year, for sure.

Dengue, or something like it

I did not actually have dengue, but I’ve been sick / exhausted for about the last week with something that was probably just a flu sort of thing, but resembled dengue with some of the symptoms. But I am finally on the mend, poco a poco (bit by bit).

What a long, strange month it’s been.  Too little work, too much time to think, but luckily plenty of stimulation to shake up my brain a bit. I’ve been a little vaga, out of the place where I live quite a bit, more for work and Peace Corps sanctioned reasons than not, but I still feel a bit weird about it. Between school vacations, trainings for Peace Corps, teacher trainings, national holiday, class cancelations that have logic in this country, but not in my rational, orderly Anglo-Saxonized imaginings of what a school schedule should be like, and illnesses, I’ve only taught about 5 days of class this month. Not to say that I haven’t been some sort of busy, but I feel like my purpose has been shriveling up, bit by bit. I’m waiting for a lluvia of ideas (brainstorm) that will revive it again. Real storms have settled into a dreary rainy season routine in one of the rainiest Julys on record, which has admittedly put a damper on most everything, from my ability to think clearly, to mood and movement.

The reason I haven’t posted in nearly a month is that my computer was stolen at some point during my travels. The thought of having to parse my thoughts out in long hand and retype them seems to have dried up most of my will to write. Hopefully, I’ll get the energy back for it again soon.

I started this post wanting to recount where I’d been and what I’ve seen, but it doesn’t seem right somehow.  For one there is too much to tell, and secondly, a list of places seems oddly divorced from what the experiences were actually like.

It’s a pity, because I feel like I have a lot to actually reflect on for once, but asi es. No tengo tiempo ni tintas para todos (I don’t have time or ink for everyone.) Not to capture the adventures with my fellow Peace Corps volunteers who’ve become like a family of sorts, or the dedication and wisdom of our counterpart Nicaraguan English teachers. I don’t have the time to tell fully of the colorful figures of travel and daily life, like the fisherman on the beach in Pochomil who tried to sell me crab, or for the guide at the Museum of the Revolution in Leon who talked to me about every aspect of his life for 3 hours, or the neighborhood children and our new reading routine or about the time I got into a public argument with a counterpart about the meanings of catcalling and machismo.

No time to reflect on art and culture, tourism as colonization (albeit a tasty and delightful one), about my growing frustrations with organized religion, about how history is all too easy to erase from a landscape, about resilience, about how patience is harder to cultivate than I thought it would be, about how it is easy it is to understand less about a place the more time you spend there, rather than more.

Maybe someday I’ll get the words out and tell the stories rightly, if I can even rightly lay claim to them as my own.