A year after returning home to Montreal, I was developing a craft business, having been inspired by artisans in every country along the way, and was thinking about moving back to Nova Scotia. Some of the momentum generated by the … Continue reading →
It strikes me upon crossing the border from Guatemala into Mexico that the two countries are built on different scales. Mexico is big: the bus is bigger, it goes longer distances, it is designed for bigger people. The landscape is … Continue reading →
I feel a little worried about the cold snap in Guatemala. Twenty-one homeless people have frozen to death in the Guatemala City, and I’m slightly concerned that my blood, thinned by Managua’s heat, may make me another victim. From the … Continue reading →
I’m back on the cattle raising co-op near Nandaime with my brother Mike this time, setting out on horseback to see the herd – wide fields, big sky. Terencio and Andrés, lanky, with their dark, lined faces and floppy-brimmed cloth … Continue reading →
Before I left Nicaragua, I had some dental work done. I guess I picked the right dentist. “Do you know who that was?” he asked, referring to the patient before me. “That’s the wife of Jaime Wheelock,” (one of the … Continue reading →
My brother and I, a friend from Montreal, and other old and new friends spent Christmas 1987 on the beach at San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. The three of us exchanged gifts, each of us thereby receiving a shirt. There … Continue reading →
I took my first steps toward home before Christmas when I went to San José, Costa Rica, to meet my brother, and again when I saw him off three weeks later. The centre of San José looks like an American … Continue reading →
This brings me to another impression: this really is a popular, i.e. “of the people”, armed revolution. A lot of people have government-issue guns and are protecting their land from the Contras. Many more know how to use them. “Power … Continue reading →
Before my trip, a number of people had told me that Nicaraguan soldiers, unlike those elsewhere in Central America who inspired fear in them, made them feel comfortable and protected. Maybe by wanting and expecting them to be that way … Continue reading →
I had heard that the Sandinista Revolution was trying to do something about machismo. President Daniel Ortega is quoted, in an interview in Playboy magazine, as saying that he is aware of machismo in himself and is trying to overcome … Continue reading →
