NICARAGUA: THE ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE

Do you ever wonder if you have entered some sort of time warp? A glitch in the fabric of life as you know it and ended up in an alternative universe? I wonder that all the time.
Sure, it doesn’t help that I am in Chinandega, Nicaragua again (either the 3rd, 4th or 6th largest city the country ---apparently the 5th largest CITY option is lost somewhere in the flux capacitor!) where pretty much everything operates at a pre WWII level. I keep expecting John Boy Walton to walk down the sidewalk only his skin would be kinda brown and he wouldn’t be able to afford those cool spectacles. Jim Bob and Mary Ellen would be begging coins and food from people at the petro station instead of going to school. Ma Walton would be washing clothes by pounding them on rocks here. Grandma and Grandpa would most likely be dead. Their house would have cold but not hot running water and the electricity would go out every time it rains…which it does just about every day in September in apocalyptic proportions.
Today, it rained bloody murder which means we ran on generator all day at the hospital, there was water leaking on to a pre-op patient’s head and everyone walked home in complete darkness. The good news is that we got a candlelight dinner of ribs barbequed on a gas grill. And the beans--- as far as I can tell, Patricia the cook has had the same pot of beans on the gas stove at the back on the mission house since she started working here in 1995. I have never seen the level of beans change in this container that could easily contain a small ungulant . Not ever. Bush’s should look into her technique. It’s Biblical in nature.
And speaking of the unexplained, Miriam, an American long term missionary here, gave me a ride to the grocery tonight so I could get some deodorant and people could tolerate being in the same operating room with me in the morning. ON the way back, in the pitch blackness, she starting telling me that there is a mythological creature in Nicaraguan folklore called the chichigulpa, half man and half wolf. I start thinking Twilight Zone. Not the show, the movie. I am thinking Dan Akyroyd, loud radio, country road, absolutely no lights and no one anywhere in sight when the guy driving the car leans over and says, “You wanna see something really scary?” I start to ask myself, “Do you actually know this woman who is giving you a ride? Isn’t she just a little unusual? “ I put my hand on the door handle and consider jumping out and making a run for it. If she asks me if I wanna see something scary, I will make my break. But what if she doesn’t?What if she just BECOMES something totally from the alternative universe? I am now certain I am riding with an alien and I need to call MIB. She smiles. This scares the bejesus out of me. How can anyone in her right mind smile when there is no electricity and you are four blocks from the PanAmerican highway, home of the Frito Bandito and various other sources of potentially life threatening badness? I brace myself and wait for the inevitable…whatever that might be.

“I saw one, “ she says, almost a whisper.
“What? You saw what?”
“A chichigulpa.”
“Where is it?” I glance in the rearview mirror.. Isn’t that where they always appear?
“Not right now," she chides..” I saw a werewolf. Right here on this exact same road about two years ago.”
I sigh relief. This woman seems a little unstable to me anyway. But I also check the bushes along the side of the road. Just in case. No need to jump out of the vehicle. It could be a setup…She could be in cahoots with the chichigulpa.
“Dr. McNutt saw it too. You can ask him.”
I respond brilliantly. “Uh huh.”
I don’t actually know Dr. McNutt, but even if I did, I’ll be damned if I am going to ask a highly respected pediatric orthopedic surgeon from Atlanta if he saw a werewolf about four blocks from the Pan American highway about two years ago while riding in an ambulance with an American woman of questionable mental stability., Trust me on this one--when a woman with whom you are a perfect stranger attempts to discuss intimate details of her menopause and/or menstruation with you within 9 minutes of making your acquaintance, you are living dangerously by accepting a ride with her to the store. Go out in the hurricane force winds and walk to get your antiperspirant. Or just accept your natural god given scent and hope others will too. . It’s infinitely less frightening.


We get back to the house and I realize that this surreal life won’t be changing anytime soon. The generator has been revived now and there are a few lights. I go in the restroom and while there I notice that the bathroom deodorizer scent is literally translated, “Smell like a baby.” Why, I ask myself would anyone who has polluted the toilet air want to make it smell like not only human excrement, but also vomited partially digested milk, desitin ointment and plasticky diapers? Time warp? The only logical explanation is that when someone else in the mission house is standing desperately outside the water closet door as you exit you can say, “I know it smells bad in there, but it wasn’t me. There was a baby in there before me.” And they might actually believe it. Because, after all, you are going potty in an alternative universe.