matagalpa love

Gotta mean something wonderful to walk out of your hotel room and have a 7" moth floundering on the floor and when you scoop it up and take it out to the garden it flutters away. good omen!

i am awaiting my morning coffee delivered in delicate china with warm thick milk and tiny spoons by gracious staff. the service is getting addictive....hotel living when you are about the only guest with views, gardens and moutain aire....too good.
I needed to report on the Granada twins - children of cousins so sadly born blind. i met them on their morning stroll in the plaza with their nurse. one is a prominant psychologist and the other - the nations most famous pianist - performing on internatonal stages....ah nicaragua.

also in granada i neeed to report on the night of screaming from 1800 when the indigeneous people in agony and frustration over the spanish assault and brutality gathered in front of the church and collectively screamed.....need to research this..what a way for the powerless to be HEARD. also the indigeneous quit reproducing to be sure that their babies were not victims and the population dropped to 10 or less percent of the original sixe through that kind of passive agression...

also needed to report that lovely young women are apparently guests at the finest hotels taking tricks...because in the non economy 70% unemployment - that is the only way to fund their university education.

but on the the immediate story of tçyesterday...i am in the mountains of matagalpa this week -having left granada with Franciaco the director of new projects for that multi national corp....name excpes me at the moment.

Here in matagalpa the air is mountan fresh and the rainforest home to trees 10 feet wide of mahogany, fig etc...

the coffee grown here sparkles in the sunlight under a canopy of bannana ...shade grown coffee still requires the destruction of the rain forest. altho with francisco perhaps my great idea ' to give more ¨certified points¨to growers who protect some percentage of their wilderness and more points in the acreage they protect links up with an adjoinging farmers´protected land....see i can make a national impact...third world is managable..

violance against the rigged election is continuing but not here. mario, genie, francisco and all other friends here chaffe under the sandinista control.-..corrupt, ineffectual and thank god the nic people are so resource full and good to eachother... the biggest victim may be corporations who are blackmailed to even stay in business and profit...well ' that´s another story.

so - the mural is glorious. who would have thought i could do this. i paint from a tall ladder climb down to get a visa perspective on the work and wonder who in the heck painted that ? it is so good and the mountain people come in to watch ' fan me with card board and it is really very satisfyintg.

the mountain people grow beans corn squash cabbage and other lovely veggies and NEVER eat it. they do not know how to use these things. the children have a diet (after nursing one year) of ONLY beans rice and coffee. the reslt is dull minds, listlessness, but the huge eyes and gentle manner is so endearing....brigetthe the director of the clinic is going to start teaching them how to cook and eat the veggies tehy grow...it will be like us learing to eat beetles in aftica....totally culturally foreign

there are also many flower growers in these hills and at the roadside stands,,,,i bought a dozen red roses,. four bundles of exotic and glorius flowers 0 six bunches in all plñuis a huge bundle of sword fern for only five dollars. brigetthe,s car was full of flowers we looked like a car going to a funeral but for our incessent laughter and joy

my spots fro the no see um bugs from granada are all over my torso. the nurses at the clinic where i am painting the mural are caring from me like one of the babies....
´

wine and dreams off my terrace last night with mario and genie and their two kids. the out to dinner at a downtown matagalpa spot = everything looks like it is ready to collapse but we went upstairs on the balcony and had organic beef layed on in slaps on a 5 foot long wood platter organic meat as the cows just eat grass in the hills. the roasted meat surrounded by the sweetest onions and chiles you have ever eated....pico de gallo, salsas, limes, cheese as only nic can make it,. tortilla, ,,minty sauses like pesto texture and i ate enought for six people....traditional nic food....cowboy food...back to genie and marios house for the evening . mario is the old nic family deposed with the first sandinista wave and now back to their coffee operation --esperanza coffee...check it out on the web. cowboys on horseback with their 10 gallon hats all through town on the little cobbled streets.

so off we go now back to the clinic - hoping to nearly finish today.....well maybe on monday....

we need to drive a truck down here for use by the clinic. you or any of your friends want that assignment¨¿´

how i love this place. it is so like africa....but closer. same lovely people. same joy amid poverty...same latitude on the globe.....same love....same music to eniven the soul..

loving every minute here meeting with diplomatic sources tonight on social and environmental issues,.

love you both so much. hope you are happy and i think and talk about you every day

much love