Nicaragua

Although we were there two weeks ago I would be remiss if I did not mention Nicaragua.
We met the day with sweltering heat and air as humid as a damp blanket. Our taxi to town was a wheeled bench seat harnessed to a bicycle – the cost was $2. The port we went to was extremely poor, the local people had set up a swap meet with one long row – the sun was pouring down and I was drinking lots of water. We stopped at the end of the swap meet row and watched a male and female dancer perform. I heard a … rat a tat tat … - … rat a tat tat … - I turned to see a young brown eyed boy smiling at me. He had an empty milk jug tied around his neck, he was pounding away with drum sticks against the plastic jug– he said something to us in Spanish – next to him was someone in a woman doll costume and the boy wanted $1 for us to take a photo of his creation – it was a doll about 6 feet tall with one of his buddies inside. You could see the fella’s eyes beneath the homemade doll. I thought “here he is in a town that is so poor and he has become an entrepreneur, a mini businessman”, they made this woman doll and were ‘drumming’ up business with it. We were thrilled at his enthusiasm and gladly gave him his fair pay for the photo opportunity.
There were no shops to buy anything from – there was a small market and Dave bought a bottle of kickin hot sauce. We wandered a little down a side street and came upon the ‘vegetarian’ district - all of the open air shops were selling fruits and vegetables – they looked fresh but the knife used to cut the fruit looked unclean and old. One woman had a large bowl with baby parrots sitting on the rim – I asked if I could take a photo – she put the bird on my shoulder and a little girl was next to me for a photo – the bird leapt from me onto the little girls head and we all had a good chuckle – humor is universal. Children asked me to take their photos and were eager to smile for us. Wow – people with so little living so rich – a lesson for us all.