I'm telling my dad tonight that I’m going to Vietnam in 3 weeks. I’ll try to explain why. I'll tell him that I’m missing Thanksgiving. I’ll miss walking through the woods with mom and Walt. I’ll miss sitting (or sleeping, rather) in the deer stand as dad keeps watch and mom drinks beer. I’ll miss mom’s stewed oysters and Aunt Gina’s sweet potatoes with brown sugar and pecans. I’ll miss the river, the red plaid curtains at the hunting camp, the fireplace and hot chocolate. Last Christmas, Santa brought the family a new boat. I haven't even been on it. Dad would be excited to take me for a spin. When I was 12 he taught me how to drive a boat. Some of our biggest fights during that time were on the water, us being stubborn and silly really. The disputes continue sometimes and though the subjects seem more serious—politics, jobs, religion—they still seem just as silly. How do you make them stop? I never see Walt.
I’ve missed Thanksgiving once before. I’ve never missed Christmas. The holiday has been the same in my family for 20 years, since we moved into our house on Evans Street. We listen to Christmas music, wrap presents, and decorate the tree. Walt and I put on the first ornaments at the same time and we use the same two ornaments every year. The tree is always the same—gaudy with old ornaments falling apart, too much tinsel, and fat, colored lights. Christmas night we have friends over, eat scallop chowder, go to church, and drink. The biggest dilemma is deciding who should drive to Church. No one wants to quit drinking. On Christmas morning Walt and I go down the stairs together. We used to hold hands. Walt insists on not looking at the presents that Santa has laid out on the couch. We must go through our stocking first and look at the crumbs Santa has left by the fireplace. We always have a tangerine in the bottom of our stockings. We never mention that Santa might not be real. Mom fixes a big breakfast and then we pass out presents under the tree. Almost every year it’s just the four of us—a single unit that get less and less time together over the years.
The worst part is if mom thinks I’ll be surprising the family for Christmas. If she thinks that somehow I just wouldn’t be able to miss the holiday with my family and so I’m catching a flight home. I’ve surprised them like this a few times before. She’ll wait and hope and say her prayers. And I wont come home.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I'm a blogger, blogging away
I haven't blogged before. Before, I never blogged. Blog is a great word- better the more times you say it. Blog Blog Blog.
I used to take long trips and clog the inboxes of friends, family, teachers, preachers, professors, friends of friends' families, etc etc. It was too much. Now I'm going to be a blogger and blog blog away.
WHERE? WHEN? WHY??
VIETNAM (to start)
November 12th
to be explained later or never
I bought a one-way. I hear there is a fruit in the south of Vietnam that grows nowhere else in the world. There is much to discover.
I used to take long trips and clog the inboxes of friends, family, teachers, preachers, professors, friends of friends' families, etc etc. It was too much. Now I'm going to be a blogger and blog blog away.
WHERE? WHEN? WHY??
VIETNAM (to start)
November 12th
to be explained later or never
I bought a one-way. I hear there is a fruit in the south of Vietnam that grows nowhere else in the world. There is much to discover.
Nicaragua
May 10, 2007
“Arriba Arriba?” High High? I ask the bus driver and point to the top of the American school bus that’s used in Nicaragua as local transportation. In English it’s called a chicken bus. Most are classic yellow, but customized with images of the white jesucristo bleeding on the cross. This one has green streamers along the sides and a blue Virgin Mary. I am on my way to Limon, Nicaragua, to start a surf camp for Nicaraguan girls. I ride through the mountains on top of the bus and grip rusty racks to keep from being slung off—passing sea-foam colored homes, black iron pots piled on the washing slabs, and bright purple rope oppressed with drying clothes.
I yell with the men, “¡Brama Brama! ¡A la izquierda, a la derecha!” Branch, Branch! Left, Right! And we dodge. When we stop, women with baskets of dulces on their heads and bags of ripe avocados around their wrists, push their way up the aisles looking for a sale. I sit on top because the bus gets crowded and these women have no problem shoving me out of the way. I don’t blame them anyway. So I sit with some men. One holds a pig in a bag. On the back of the bus a calf is tied down. The calf is complacent—staring behind the bus as if to take in the scenery—like me. But the pig squeals inside the bag and the man slaps it to shut it up. Can it breathe? Does it just wish for the view? Women never ride on top.
Within a week the sixteen girl campers come to our house in the morning dressed in skirts and t-shirts. Only one or two wear a bathing suit. Some arrive an hour early because not everyone observes daylight saving time. Time is a silly concept in Limon, Nicaragua, a small town on the Pacific. While Jeff, Sharp, Andy and I fill up water bottles and carry the surfboards outside, several of the girls jump rope. In the hammock two cousins drape themselves over Abby, showing their affection. One of them has a crush on Elvis, the seventeen year-old Nicaraguan surfer with whom we live. Rosa, a spunky twelve year-old, climbs down into the shade of the well, where the air is cool. The others peer in and watch her. They have a lot of respect for Rosa. She has a confidence that draws people to her. Her grandmother’s house serves the best breakfast around and her brothers and cousins make up the local surf gang.
Professional surfers have started traveling to Nicaragua to surf at Popoyo. Because of their influence, there is a growing number of Nicaraguan surfers. But there are virtually no females in the water. In awe of her brothers and cousins, Rosa also wants to learn to surf.
A week before the camp had started, as Rosa and I played with her pet monkey, we talked about the camp. I was skeptical that others would be interested, but she assured me she would convince her girlfriends. The next day, Jeff, Sharp and I were hitching a ride to the store to buy instant coffee and rice, and Rosa yelled for us to wait. She ran from her house with a list of 25 signatures scribbled on a pink piece of notebook paper.
Most Nicaraguan women don’t have the same opportunities that I’ve had. In a country characterized by the machismo culture, male power and dominance, women have often been forced to be subservient to their husbands and fathers. Their sphere of power is restricted to the home and the roles of child-rearing, cooking and cleaning. The idea that women are weaker and need male protection has been ingrained in most western societies and is finally starting to fall apart, but such ideologies have left many women everywhere feeling inadequate and self-conscious.
Surfing has been one of the most important confidence-building tools in my life. Situated in an element out of my control, I have to trust that I can handle whatever the ocean deals me. Waves sometimes slap me in the face and play with my body like a child pulls on the legs of a spider—seeing how far they can stretch before breaking. But sometimes I catch a wave and we flirt all the way to the shore and nothing else in that moment matters. Surfing is a life philosophy, a therapy. Coming from a culture in which self-restraint and control dictate success, surfing provides an opportunity to step outside of that box, where everything is fluid. Inevitably, spending time in the ocean fosters a greater appreciation for the environment and a more personal desire to conserve it.
It’s difficult to say when I began to surf. I think this is because learning to surf is in many ways like learning a musical instrument or a foreign language—it’s a process and it never feels complete. I grew up in Morehead City with a boating and beach family. I would wake up on a summer morning and immediately put on my bathing suit. There was no question that the day would involve spending time in the ocean or the sound behind my house.
With my parents watching from the shore, my brother and I would take our little neon boogie boards out in all types of wave conditions. We preferred big, nasty and impossible, and we loved to get pushed around by the ocean and tossed aggressively into the sand. Eventually, we tried our luck standing. Mostly, the boards would sink, and the wipeouts were always more brutal. Enticed by such a challenge, I asked some family friends to push me into a few waves on their surfboards at Atlantic Beach and Cape Lookout. For Christmas, I received a surfboard. The following summer, the boogie board stayed in the shed.
We play in an estuary on the beach. The water is brown and tadpoles scatter along the edges. I lead the girls in some exercises. A few disobey and run in the water before we finish, but I don’t mind. At first, the girls like Abby and me better than our male counterparts. They tie our hair in braids and climb on our backs under water. Most of the girls don’t swim well. So for the first week of surf camp, we won’t take them into the ocean. Some girls will never learn to surf, but that’s not what matters most. I am excited that Nicaraguans and Americans are playing together peacefully in the estuary. I am pleased that the 16 girls who participate in the camp have an opportunity to do something new together, as women.
We divide the girls into two lines and Abby and I demonstrate a relay race we have designed to help them practice paddling. Sharp yells for us to start and we sprint to our surfboards, carry them to the edge of the estuary, and race them to the other side. The girls cheer for us and Abby and I share a glance, deciding to end the race in a tie. After the girls run through the relay several times, they beg for Jeff and me to compete. The girls call Jeff, Jefe, because its easier to say. Jefe translates to Boss in Spanish. As we race, the girls taunt him, “Jefe no puede, Jefe no puede,” Jefe can’t, Jefe can’t. They grab his shoulders as he paddles to make sure that I will win.
*******
Two summers before, just after my freshman year, I had been co-coordinator and instructor with the Cape Lookout Surfari, a surf camp for high school girls. I worked with Keith Rittmaster, natural science curator with the North Carolina Maritime Museum, to start the overnight camp, based at the North Carolina Maritime Museum’s field station on the Cape Lookout National Seashore.
High school is a crucial time for teenagers who are struggling with their sense of identity, understanding their bodies, and becoming independent from their parents. The Cape Lookout Surfari is an opportunity to learn and improve surfing skills in a comfortable, non-competitive atmosphere. We teach surf etiquette, safety techniques, weather, marine science, and environmental conservation. But camp is more than instruction and activity. Together we are a bunch of girls, running around our island in our bathing suits—surfing, swimming, playing cards and telling stories and waking up early and going to bed late and eating healthy meals and then lots of cookies. We don’t think about the rest of the world for four days and three nights.
The last night of camp, after pouring sea water and sand over the bonfire, and taking one last dip in the shallow lagoon, we pile into the truck bed. A girl whispers, “I wish I were more comfortable with my body.” And she looks down at herself—at her little thighs and sandy feet. Another girl hears and replies, “We all wish we could change things about ourselves, but we can’t…Oh well!” And for an instant the darkness around us is black only because no other color or light or people exist outside of these girls and their lives and mine—life is so interconnected, intertwined; we sing together on the night ride home.
*******
The pit preacher was angry and shouting garbled words at a thin undergraduate standing under the tree. I was a sophomore at UNC, sitting on the steps by the Daily Grind as the grad students bundled up and held office hours and the internationals sipped espresso. I sat with my head in my hands, staring and feeling sad, like I never wanted to move from that one spot, as though I could stay there until the end of forever and just watch the world fall from the top of the skeleton tree and shatter over the preacher’s head.
I left for Nicaragua a few days later after I explained the trip to my mom and then my dad—when he was at our hunting camp with friends, in high spirits and he took it okay. I didn’t leave him much time to change his mind because I left the next morning. My roommate found a note, taped to her computer—I’d be back in a week.
My first trip to Nicaragua, in November 2004, was an escape from structure and schedule, from inland and academia and from normalcy. Feeling stagnant and unmotivated, I went to my professors and told them I needed to get away. I needed to surf and be in the ocean because I hoped it would make me feel like myself again and somehow spark something in me. I talked to John Brodeur, Director of Carolina Leadership Development and the NC Fellows Program and I spoke with Ginger and Ben, friends in the program. They encouraged me to explore and think of ways to use surfing to inspire other people.
During my week in Nicaragua, I decided I would start a surf camp. I had an abstract vision and a lot of questions that could only be answered with experience. I didn’t know where to start the camp; I wasn’t sure how the locals would respond to a blonde American woman, and I spoke no Spanish. I planned to take the following summer to travel down the Central American coast. I told my parents that I was meeting up with some friends from Carolina who were planning to travel south with me. That wasn’t entirely a lie. I knew I would see Jessi and Rachel in Guatemala and maybe they planned to travel south. My plan was to study in a language school in Antigua, Guatemala for a few weeks. Then head south down the coast somehow.
*******
That next summer I was studying in a Spanish school in Antigua Guatemala. After class, I had stayed on the pay phone later than normal, talking to mom and dad and missing home and the live oak trees on Bogue Sound. Mom was worried, so was dad and my brother. The rain stopped while I was on the phone. I folded up my umbrella and walked as fast as I could because it was getting darker. As I neared my house, it was completely dark and no one was in the streets. Approaching fast behind me was a guy with his hood drawn over his head and his hands in his pockets, looking down. He was about to catch up and I thought maybe he’s just in a hurry home to see his newborn baby or catch the evening news.
In the moment before he grabbed me I thought entirely about knives; I imagined a blade with a black, worn handle slicing simply into my side, and I saw blood soaking into my white linen shirt and me squeezing it out, to make it go away and then blood on the pavement, dripping a second before me. And it was thinking about the knife in his hand, that made me swipe him with my purple umbrella. I aimed for his hands and pictured the knife falling into the street with him, but there was no knife, just an inexperienced teenager with cold hands, out for something I can’t understand and I hope he never does it again; I hope he doesn’t get better at it. I hope he doesn’t attack on a sunny day when I don’t carry an umbrella.
There was a bar in Antigua that had a dusty purple glow with creamy walls and tapestries and starlights that hung in the corners and cast star-shapes on our bodies. The bartender was from New York, had been around for a while, he didn’t specify time. Didn’t matter. A tack board was beside the drink specials with a poster of Bush with horns and fliers for apartments to rent and a half-piece of copy paper written on in black:
On our way down south searching for untouched surf spots. Looking for flexible easy-going SURFERS to share the gas to our first destination—EL SALVADOR.
The next night I met the crew: a South African, Italian and English. We decided to leave Guatemala the next week.
Ojala means hopeful in Spanish and this is what we named the 1984 Jeep—we hoped it would make it into El Salvador. It had a rusted interior and peeling paint. The car seats were red and salty from sweat and sea; we did sweat—without air-conditioner; we rolled the windows down and floated between mountains like a plane in a green sky, our contrail—the highway behind; and the sky—jungle hills, green and refreshing.
El Salvador makes me think of neon pink, powerful waves, and palm trees that lined the beaches, nearly perfectly. Black beaches and plastic bags, washed up Band-Aids and bottles. I stayed a few weeks, until the air forced me out—it was heavy air, crowded and dirty. Too small, too dense so that I saw in every situation the really rich and the really poor. I surfed with the rich guys—they had been educated in Florida and California and learned the sport there. They took us to their white stucco beach houses where darker servants cleaned the pool, shimmied up the palm trees to chop down coconuts and crack them open to pour us drinks with rum; and then in the night, we would ride in their air-conditioned white SUV and listen to the music of the Counting Crows as we curved so smoothly around the mountains and so easily past barefoot babes in the streets holding iguanas with their heads chopped off, for sale.
I hitched a ride out with a guy driving from Texas. He had saved up enough cash bartending to take his camper, named Dolphin, through to Panama. He had a thing for dolphins; I never understood. We conversed as we drove out of El Salvador, topical conversation about jobs and weather. After crossing two borders in one day, one into Honduras and one out, where men hissed at me “Hola Mamasita, Aye Americana” and tried to lure Dolphin-lover into a back room, probably only to take his money, we quit talking and just drove.
Northern Nicaragua was empty and tired. It rained and we rolled the windows down anyway because it was so hot that we sweated into the seats, staining the backs. The roads were worn, gone, and Dolphin-lover asked why couldn’t they just get the road fixed and then I read out loud about Hurricane Mitch.
He dropped me off in Rivas, Nicaragua, at the market, by the bus stop, where dozens of chicken buses waited and everyone told me they could take me to my destination. But they didn’t even know where I was going. So I just waited with my book bag and surfboard. I found its usually better to wait and take a few dusty breaths, and then make decisions. A little girl approached and spoke to me slowly and so I followed her. Her name was Amanda, she was 12, and selling beef wrapped in tortilla and then fried. Her hands were greasy but she was smart and made friends easily.
She waited with me until my bus came. After two hours of bouncing down a dirt road with hot bodies and long stares, I got off in Las Salinas, 8 km from the beach. I didn’t want to walk so I paid a shirtless man to drive me. He smelled of rum but he was friendly. We drove past salt fields and white flamingos until we reached Popoyo, where Donald, a friend of a friend had been living for a year.
I rented a room from a family on the beach. Donald had taught their sixteen-year-old son, Elvis, how to surf and I talked to him about starting a surf camp. He liked the idea. It took less than a week to feel a part of their home. The defining instance came when I stepped on a devil’s walking stick and a thorn lodged itself comfortably into my pinky toe. I burned a needle and tried to tend to it myself but I didn’t like stabbing my own flesh. Elvis offered. Instead, I gave his stepmother the needle and she held my sweaty body down and pried the thorn out.
I would wake up early to surf—when the air was almost cool and I would hesitate to cross the river expecting the water to be cold, but it wasn’t. The surf break was a short distance down the beach, a paddle across the river mouth and a walk around a cliff with rocks so perfect in their formation and color—gold and brown and sandy with streaks of red (the streaks were my favorite), but mostly the rocks were beautiful because of their shapes. The smooth shapes made me want to curl up in the contours and return to my congenital state till the sun could join me. I felt the bottom of the ocean with my feet and walked along the angle of ridged rocks, and currents eventually swept me past the breakers. When the sun got so hot that I could feel my skin burning, or when the tide was so low that ugly rocks loomed under me as the waves sucked up, I came in to save my skin and my limbs and to make instant coffee and eggs and beans.
I liked Nicaragua. That was all. It was a feeling—like you get with a lover. Or like when you hear a song you haven’t heard in a while, a song that takes you back to an old state of mind, remembering your old self, your old friend, your old lover. Nicaragua was like that. It was comfortable.
*******
Four months later, over the holidays, I started writing letters and applications, organizing the surf camp and searching for staff. Sharp Kemp wanted to help. He is a student at NC State and a long-time friend from Morehead City who used to fish with my brother and cook for me over a fire on the beach behind my house. In the spring, I ran into Abby Stark in Costa Rica. I recognized her because I’d seen her at a Bob Marley tribute concert at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. She also wanted to teach at the surf camp. Andy Wolfe, a friend from Morehead City who goes to Columbia and speaks perfect Spanish, offered two weeks of his time to start the camp. In February, Jeff Carver called me from Florida, where he’s in school at Jacksonville University and he wanted to help with the camp and fundraising. Jeff’s parents and my parents were friends in college. We hadn’t seen each other since my uncle’s wedding in 1994—before surfing and other countries really existed to us. We worked together over the phone and wrote letters to friends and family, requesting donations. Without the support of this staff and private donors the project would have been impossible.
Atlantic Beach Surf Shop and Marsh’s Surf Shop in Atlantic Beach and Action Surf Shop in Morehead City donated t-shirts, stickers, hats, and rash guards. Florida surfboard shaper, Clay Bennett, gave us an incredible deal on eight of the surfboards that we used for teaching. The other surfboards were donated by Sharp and Jeff.
Despite many restless nights, my parents provided unconditional moral support. They encouraged me to pursue my goals and helped in every way that they could. The trust that they had in my life decisions and the way that they shaped me, had an important impact on the Nicaragua project.
Ultimately the support of the Fellows Program went far beyond financial aid. Being a part of the NC Fellows community has been my most meaningful experience at UNC. It has taught me much about leadership, but it has also taught me a lot about myself. During my time at Carolina, John Brodeur, the director of the program, was a mentor and a constant source of guidance and encouragement. The diversity within our class taught me both to appreciate my personal history and my home while considering new perspectives and ideas. By inspiring me and challenging me to explore the way that I think and the reasons that other people think differently, I grew into my own person. This perspective on life, fostered by the Fellows program, was the driving force behind the surf camp in Nicaragua.
*******
In the afternoons, after camp has finished and the girls have run home to complete their chores, the other instructors and I read in the hammocks until the hottest part of the day is done. Then we surf past the setting sun, until it’s so dark that we can hardly see the waves coming in lines from a horizon we can no longer distinguish. After dinner we drink Tona and Flor de Cana, first trying to salsa and sing in Spanish—understanding the dance and language only through the dewey effervescence of ice and lime.
During the night the heat settles in bed with me. The rain pelts the tin roof and sounds like an old Sandinista that I saw on my first day in Managua. He held a tin jar with a few coins and he shook it and mumbled, “For the love and charity of Jesus your savior, help me.” Coins, tin, sadness—that’s how the rain sounds. When the power goes out, the fan stops and the heat creeps out from under the sheets and the bed and from under my backpack, in the dusty corner. I think I could suffocate so I go outside to the well where the frogs groan, out-screaming the rain.
In the morning I wake up to piglets sucking milk from their mothers. They fight with each other, trying to get milk. Sometimes they wander in the front door and we give them crumbs off the table. Our old neighbor is the color of cracked clay. His Brahman cattle weed our yard and I think they are beautiful until they start to eat the purple azaleas and red hibiscuses that go so nicely with our yellow cinder-block home.
The camp lasts 5 weeks and after the last session, the 16 girls who consistently participate receive boards and goody bags and a fine fish dinner, prepared by Sharp. On one side of the sky, a storm moves in with sudden flashes of lightening. Streaks of red and pink collide with the storm and the battle is underlined by gray clouds the shape of mountains.
Nicaragua is quiet and sometimes I forget people exist. A group of dogs fight on the beach. They are so thin and I can see every rib in their sides. We have gone to the beach with some of the girls to watch the sunset and play a game of tag. I lunge for a shirtless boy in blue shorts and wrap my arms around his waist, tickling his sides and spinning him across the setting sun. Our shadows dance in the pale sands and stretch into the sea. Blackness eats each star’s reflection one by one and we run into the surf. Our bodies glow. We follow the fireflies back home.
*******
I graduate this year and people are always asking me what’s next, what will I do with the rest of my life? Postcards and images of people and places flash in my mind, but no single portrait streams together in a way that I can articulate into a life plan. At some point, I’ll return to Limon and surf with my girls and run another camp somewhere—maybe at the secret spot in the north. I want to go back to Leon, Nicaragua, my favorite city and stay a while; I want to buy a VW van with Sharp and paint it bright yellow and drive up the left coast of South America. When Fidel dies, I’d like to be in Cuba. I want to work on an organic farm, and on a vineyard, bartend to get by, or become a scuba instructor. It’s important for me to understand Latin American politics and the role the US has played. I want to hangout with Peace Corps volunteers on the beaches of El Salvador again.
I will work with kids and with women and contribute something to be determined while there. I will learn and read classics and paint and write. Then I will come back to America in 2008 and work on a Presidential campaign, maybe go to graduate school and if it feels right, I could become a professor…of sociology, or history? In American studies? Sexuality studies? Women’s studies? I might live all over the country for a while or work for a non-profit organization in the Triangle. I’ll be here and there for at least some part of my life. When people ask me what I want to do after college, I just say I want to do a lot of things.
“Arriba Arriba?” High High? I ask the bus driver and point to the top of the American school bus that’s used in Nicaragua as local transportation. In English it’s called a chicken bus. Most are classic yellow, but customized with images of the white jesucristo bleeding on the cross. This one has green streamers along the sides and a blue Virgin Mary. I am on my way to Limon, Nicaragua, to start a surf camp for Nicaraguan girls. I ride through the mountains on top of the bus and grip rusty racks to keep from being slung off—passing sea-foam colored homes, black iron pots piled on the washing slabs, and bright purple rope oppressed with drying clothes.
I yell with the men, “¡Brama Brama! ¡A la izquierda, a la derecha!” Branch, Branch! Left, Right! And we dodge. When we stop, women with baskets of dulces on their heads and bags of ripe avocados around their wrists, push their way up the aisles looking for a sale. I sit on top because the bus gets crowded and these women have no problem shoving me out of the way. I don’t blame them anyway. So I sit with some men. One holds a pig in a bag. On the back of the bus a calf is tied down. The calf is complacent—staring behind the bus as if to take in the scenery—like me. But the pig squeals inside the bag and the man slaps it to shut it up. Can it breathe? Does it just wish for the view? Women never ride on top.
Within a week the sixteen girl campers come to our house in the morning dressed in skirts and t-shirts. Only one or two wear a bathing suit. Some arrive an hour early because not everyone observes daylight saving time. Time is a silly concept in Limon, Nicaragua, a small town on the Pacific. While Jeff, Sharp, Andy and I fill up water bottles and carry the surfboards outside, several of the girls jump rope. In the hammock two cousins drape themselves over Abby, showing their affection. One of them has a crush on Elvis, the seventeen year-old Nicaraguan surfer with whom we live. Rosa, a spunky twelve year-old, climbs down into the shade of the well, where the air is cool. The others peer in and watch her. They have a lot of respect for Rosa. She has a confidence that draws people to her. Her grandmother’s house serves the best breakfast around and her brothers and cousins make up the local surf gang.
Professional surfers have started traveling to Nicaragua to surf at Popoyo. Because of their influence, there is a growing number of Nicaraguan surfers. But there are virtually no females in the water. In awe of her brothers and cousins, Rosa also wants to learn to surf.
A week before the camp had started, as Rosa and I played with her pet monkey, we talked about the camp. I was skeptical that others would be interested, but she assured me she would convince her girlfriends. The next day, Jeff, Sharp and I were hitching a ride to the store to buy instant coffee and rice, and Rosa yelled for us to wait. She ran from her house with a list of 25 signatures scribbled on a pink piece of notebook paper.
Most Nicaraguan women don’t have the same opportunities that I’ve had. In a country characterized by the machismo culture, male power and dominance, women have often been forced to be subservient to their husbands and fathers. Their sphere of power is restricted to the home and the roles of child-rearing, cooking and cleaning. The idea that women are weaker and need male protection has been ingrained in most western societies and is finally starting to fall apart, but such ideologies have left many women everywhere feeling inadequate and self-conscious.
Surfing has been one of the most important confidence-building tools in my life. Situated in an element out of my control, I have to trust that I can handle whatever the ocean deals me. Waves sometimes slap me in the face and play with my body like a child pulls on the legs of a spider—seeing how far they can stretch before breaking. But sometimes I catch a wave and we flirt all the way to the shore and nothing else in that moment matters. Surfing is a life philosophy, a therapy. Coming from a culture in which self-restraint and control dictate success, surfing provides an opportunity to step outside of that box, where everything is fluid. Inevitably, spending time in the ocean fosters a greater appreciation for the environment and a more personal desire to conserve it.
It’s difficult to say when I began to surf. I think this is because learning to surf is in many ways like learning a musical instrument or a foreign language—it’s a process and it never feels complete. I grew up in Morehead City with a boating and beach family. I would wake up on a summer morning and immediately put on my bathing suit. There was no question that the day would involve spending time in the ocean or the sound behind my house.
With my parents watching from the shore, my brother and I would take our little neon boogie boards out in all types of wave conditions. We preferred big, nasty and impossible, and we loved to get pushed around by the ocean and tossed aggressively into the sand. Eventually, we tried our luck standing. Mostly, the boards would sink, and the wipeouts were always more brutal. Enticed by such a challenge, I asked some family friends to push me into a few waves on their surfboards at Atlantic Beach and Cape Lookout. For Christmas, I received a surfboard. The following summer, the boogie board stayed in the shed.
We play in an estuary on the beach. The water is brown and tadpoles scatter along the edges. I lead the girls in some exercises. A few disobey and run in the water before we finish, but I don’t mind. At first, the girls like Abby and me better than our male counterparts. They tie our hair in braids and climb on our backs under water. Most of the girls don’t swim well. So for the first week of surf camp, we won’t take them into the ocean. Some girls will never learn to surf, but that’s not what matters most. I am excited that Nicaraguans and Americans are playing together peacefully in the estuary. I am pleased that the 16 girls who participate in the camp have an opportunity to do something new together, as women.
We divide the girls into two lines and Abby and I demonstrate a relay race we have designed to help them practice paddling. Sharp yells for us to start and we sprint to our surfboards, carry them to the edge of the estuary, and race them to the other side. The girls cheer for us and Abby and I share a glance, deciding to end the race in a tie. After the girls run through the relay several times, they beg for Jeff and me to compete. The girls call Jeff, Jefe, because its easier to say. Jefe translates to Boss in Spanish. As we race, the girls taunt him, “Jefe no puede, Jefe no puede,” Jefe can’t, Jefe can’t. They grab his shoulders as he paddles to make sure that I will win.
*******
Two summers before, just after my freshman year, I had been co-coordinator and instructor with the Cape Lookout Surfari, a surf camp for high school girls. I worked with Keith Rittmaster, natural science curator with the North Carolina Maritime Museum, to start the overnight camp, based at the North Carolina Maritime Museum’s field station on the Cape Lookout National Seashore.
High school is a crucial time for teenagers who are struggling with their sense of identity, understanding their bodies, and becoming independent from their parents. The Cape Lookout Surfari is an opportunity to learn and improve surfing skills in a comfortable, non-competitive atmosphere. We teach surf etiquette, safety techniques, weather, marine science, and environmental conservation. But camp is more than instruction and activity. Together we are a bunch of girls, running around our island in our bathing suits—surfing, swimming, playing cards and telling stories and waking up early and going to bed late and eating healthy meals and then lots of cookies. We don’t think about the rest of the world for four days and three nights.
The last night of camp, after pouring sea water and sand over the bonfire, and taking one last dip in the shallow lagoon, we pile into the truck bed. A girl whispers, “I wish I were more comfortable with my body.” And she looks down at herself—at her little thighs and sandy feet. Another girl hears and replies, “We all wish we could change things about ourselves, but we can’t…Oh well!” And for an instant the darkness around us is black only because no other color or light or people exist outside of these girls and their lives and mine—life is so interconnected, intertwined; we sing together on the night ride home.
*******
The pit preacher was angry and shouting garbled words at a thin undergraduate standing under the tree. I was a sophomore at UNC, sitting on the steps by the Daily Grind as the grad students bundled up and held office hours and the internationals sipped espresso. I sat with my head in my hands, staring and feeling sad, like I never wanted to move from that one spot, as though I could stay there until the end of forever and just watch the world fall from the top of the skeleton tree and shatter over the preacher’s head.
I left for Nicaragua a few days later after I explained the trip to my mom and then my dad—when he was at our hunting camp with friends, in high spirits and he took it okay. I didn’t leave him much time to change his mind because I left the next morning. My roommate found a note, taped to her computer—I’d be back in a week.
My first trip to Nicaragua, in November 2004, was an escape from structure and schedule, from inland and academia and from normalcy. Feeling stagnant and unmotivated, I went to my professors and told them I needed to get away. I needed to surf and be in the ocean because I hoped it would make me feel like myself again and somehow spark something in me. I talked to John Brodeur, Director of Carolina Leadership Development and the NC Fellows Program and I spoke with Ginger and Ben, friends in the program. They encouraged me to explore and think of ways to use surfing to inspire other people.
During my week in Nicaragua, I decided I would start a surf camp. I had an abstract vision and a lot of questions that could only be answered with experience. I didn’t know where to start the camp; I wasn’t sure how the locals would respond to a blonde American woman, and I spoke no Spanish. I planned to take the following summer to travel down the Central American coast. I told my parents that I was meeting up with some friends from Carolina who were planning to travel south with me. That wasn’t entirely a lie. I knew I would see Jessi and Rachel in Guatemala and maybe they planned to travel south. My plan was to study in a language school in Antigua, Guatemala for a few weeks. Then head south down the coast somehow.
*******
That next summer I was studying in a Spanish school in Antigua Guatemala. After class, I had stayed on the pay phone later than normal, talking to mom and dad and missing home and the live oak trees on Bogue Sound. Mom was worried, so was dad and my brother. The rain stopped while I was on the phone. I folded up my umbrella and walked as fast as I could because it was getting darker. As I neared my house, it was completely dark and no one was in the streets. Approaching fast behind me was a guy with his hood drawn over his head and his hands in his pockets, looking down. He was about to catch up and I thought maybe he’s just in a hurry home to see his newborn baby or catch the evening news.
In the moment before he grabbed me I thought entirely about knives; I imagined a blade with a black, worn handle slicing simply into my side, and I saw blood soaking into my white linen shirt and me squeezing it out, to make it go away and then blood on the pavement, dripping a second before me. And it was thinking about the knife in his hand, that made me swipe him with my purple umbrella. I aimed for his hands and pictured the knife falling into the street with him, but there was no knife, just an inexperienced teenager with cold hands, out for something I can’t understand and I hope he never does it again; I hope he doesn’t get better at it. I hope he doesn’t attack on a sunny day when I don’t carry an umbrella.
There was a bar in Antigua that had a dusty purple glow with creamy walls and tapestries and starlights that hung in the corners and cast star-shapes on our bodies. The bartender was from New York, had been around for a while, he didn’t specify time. Didn’t matter. A tack board was beside the drink specials with a poster of Bush with horns and fliers for apartments to rent and a half-piece of copy paper written on in black:
On our way down south searching for untouched surf spots. Looking for flexible easy-going SURFERS to share the gas to our first destination—EL SALVADOR.
The next night I met the crew: a South African, Italian and English. We decided to leave Guatemala the next week.
Ojala means hopeful in Spanish and this is what we named the 1984 Jeep—we hoped it would make it into El Salvador. It had a rusted interior and peeling paint. The car seats were red and salty from sweat and sea; we did sweat—without air-conditioner; we rolled the windows down and floated between mountains like a plane in a green sky, our contrail—the highway behind; and the sky—jungle hills, green and refreshing.
El Salvador makes me think of neon pink, powerful waves, and palm trees that lined the beaches, nearly perfectly. Black beaches and plastic bags, washed up Band-Aids and bottles. I stayed a few weeks, until the air forced me out—it was heavy air, crowded and dirty. Too small, too dense so that I saw in every situation the really rich and the really poor. I surfed with the rich guys—they had been educated in Florida and California and learned the sport there. They took us to their white stucco beach houses where darker servants cleaned the pool, shimmied up the palm trees to chop down coconuts and crack them open to pour us drinks with rum; and then in the night, we would ride in their air-conditioned white SUV and listen to the music of the Counting Crows as we curved so smoothly around the mountains and so easily past barefoot babes in the streets holding iguanas with their heads chopped off, for sale.
I hitched a ride out with a guy driving from Texas. He had saved up enough cash bartending to take his camper, named Dolphin, through to Panama. He had a thing for dolphins; I never understood. We conversed as we drove out of El Salvador, topical conversation about jobs and weather. After crossing two borders in one day, one into Honduras and one out, where men hissed at me “Hola Mamasita, Aye Americana” and tried to lure Dolphin-lover into a back room, probably only to take his money, we quit talking and just drove.
Northern Nicaragua was empty and tired. It rained and we rolled the windows down anyway because it was so hot that we sweated into the seats, staining the backs. The roads were worn, gone, and Dolphin-lover asked why couldn’t they just get the road fixed and then I read out loud about Hurricane Mitch.
He dropped me off in Rivas, Nicaragua, at the market, by the bus stop, where dozens of chicken buses waited and everyone told me they could take me to my destination. But they didn’t even know where I was going. So I just waited with my book bag and surfboard. I found its usually better to wait and take a few dusty breaths, and then make decisions. A little girl approached and spoke to me slowly and so I followed her. Her name was Amanda, she was 12, and selling beef wrapped in tortilla and then fried. Her hands were greasy but she was smart and made friends easily.
She waited with me until my bus came. After two hours of bouncing down a dirt road with hot bodies and long stares, I got off in Las Salinas, 8 km from the beach. I didn’t want to walk so I paid a shirtless man to drive me. He smelled of rum but he was friendly. We drove past salt fields and white flamingos until we reached Popoyo, where Donald, a friend of a friend had been living for a year.
I rented a room from a family on the beach. Donald had taught their sixteen-year-old son, Elvis, how to surf and I talked to him about starting a surf camp. He liked the idea. It took less than a week to feel a part of their home. The defining instance came when I stepped on a devil’s walking stick and a thorn lodged itself comfortably into my pinky toe. I burned a needle and tried to tend to it myself but I didn’t like stabbing my own flesh. Elvis offered. Instead, I gave his stepmother the needle and she held my sweaty body down and pried the thorn out.
I would wake up early to surf—when the air was almost cool and I would hesitate to cross the river expecting the water to be cold, but it wasn’t. The surf break was a short distance down the beach, a paddle across the river mouth and a walk around a cliff with rocks so perfect in their formation and color—gold and brown and sandy with streaks of red (the streaks were my favorite), but mostly the rocks were beautiful because of their shapes. The smooth shapes made me want to curl up in the contours and return to my congenital state till the sun could join me. I felt the bottom of the ocean with my feet and walked along the angle of ridged rocks, and currents eventually swept me past the breakers. When the sun got so hot that I could feel my skin burning, or when the tide was so low that ugly rocks loomed under me as the waves sucked up, I came in to save my skin and my limbs and to make instant coffee and eggs and beans.
I liked Nicaragua. That was all. It was a feeling—like you get with a lover. Or like when you hear a song you haven’t heard in a while, a song that takes you back to an old state of mind, remembering your old self, your old friend, your old lover. Nicaragua was like that. It was comfortable.
*******
Four months later, over the holidays, I started writing letters and applications, organizing the surf camp and searching for staff. Sharp Kemp wanted to help. He is a student at NC State and a long-time friend from Morehead City who used to fish with my brother and cook for me over a fire on the beach behind my house. In the spring, I ran into Abby Stark in Costa Rica. I recognized her because I’d seen her at a Bob Marley tribute concert at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. She also wanted to teach at the surf camp. Andy Wolfe, a friend from Morehead City who goes to Columbia and speaks perfect Spanish, offered two weeks of his time to start the camp. In February, Jeff Carver called me from Florida, where he’s in school at Jacksonville University and he wanted to help with the camp and fundraising. Jeff’s parents and my parents were friends in college. We hadn’t seen each other since my uncle’s wedding in 1994—before surfing and other countries really existed to us. We worked together over the phone and wrote letters to friends and family, requesting donations. Without the support of this staff and private donors the project would have been impossible.
Atlantic Beach Surf Shop and Marsh’s Surf Shop in Atlantic Beach and Action Surf Shop in Morehead City donated t-shirts, stickers, hats, and rash guards. Florida surfboard shaper, Clay Bennett, gave us an incredible deal on eight of the surfboards that we used for teaching. The other surfboards were donated by Sharp and Jeff.
Despite many restless nights, my parents provided unconditional moral support. They encouraged me to pursue my goals and helped in every way that they could. The trust that they had in my life decisions and the way that they shaped me, had an important impact on the Nicaragua project.
Ultimately the support of the Fellows Program went far beyond financial aid. Being a part of the NC Fellows community has been my most meaningful experience at UNC. It has taught me much about leadership, but it has also taught me a lot about myself. During my time at Carolina, John Brodeur, the director of the program, was a mentor and a constant source of guidance and encouragement. The diversity within our class taught me both to appreciate my personal history and my home while considering new perspectives and ideas. By inspiring me and challenging me to explore the way that I think and the reasons that other people think differently, I grew into my own person. This perspective on life, fostered by the Fellows program, was the driving force behind the surf camp in Nicaragua.
*******
In the afternoons, after camp has finished and the girls have run home to complete their chores, the other instructors and I read in the hammocks until the hottest part of the day is done. Then we surf past the setting sun, until it’s so dark that we can hardly see the waves coming in lines from a horizon we can no longer distinguish. After dinner we drink Tona and Flor de Cana, first trying to salsa and sing in Spanish—understanding the dance and language only through the dewey effervescence of ice and lime.
During the night the heat settles in bed with me. The rain pelts the tin roof and sounds like an old Sandinista that I saw on my first day in Managua. He held a tin jar with a few coins and he shook it and mumbled, “For the love and charity of Jesus your savior, help me.” Coins, tin, sadness—that’s how the rain sounds. When the power goes out, the fan stops and the heat creeps out from under the sheets and the bed and from under my backpack, in the dusty corner. I think I could suffocate so I go outside to the well where the frogs groan, out-screaming the rain.
In the morning I wake up to piglets sucking milk from their mothers. They fight with each other, trying to get milk. Sometimes they wander in the front door and we give them crumbs off the table. Our old neighbor is the color of cracked clay. His Brahman cattle weed our yard and I think they are beautiful until they start to eat the purple azaleas and red hibiscuses that go so nicely with our yellow cinder-block home.
The camp lasts 5 weeks and after the last session, the 16 girls who consistently participate receive boards and goody bags and a fine fish dinner, prepared by Sharp. On one side of the sky, a storm moves in with sudden flashes of lightening. Streaks of red and pink collide with the storm and the battle is underlined by gray clouds the shape of mountains.
Nicaragua is quiet and sometimes I forget people exist. A group of dogs fight on the beach. They are so thin and I can see every rib in their sides. We have gone to the beach with some of the girls to watch the sunset and play a game of tag. I lunge for a shirtless boy in blue shorts and wrap my arms around his waist, tickling his sides and spinning him across the setting sun. Our shadows dance in the pale sands and stretch into the sea. Blackness eats each star’s reflection one by one and we run into the surf. Our bodies glow. We follow the fireflies back home.
*******
I graduate this year and people are always asking me what’s next, what will I do with the rest of my life? Postcards and images of people and places flash in my mind, but no single portrait streams together in a way that I can articulate into a life plan. At some point, I’ll return to Limon and surf with my girls and run another camp somewhere—maybe at the secret spot in the north. I want to go back to Leon, Nicaragua, my favorite city and stay a while; I want to buy a VW van with Sharp and paint it bright yellow and drive up the left coast of South America. When Fidel dies, I’d like to be in Cuba. I want to work on an organic farm, and on a vineyard, bartend to get by, or become a scuba instructor. It’s important for me to understand Latin American politics and the role the US has played. I want to hangout with Peace Corps volunteers on the beaches of El Salvador again.
I will work with kids and with women and contribute something to be determined while there. I will learn and read classics and paint and write. Then I will come back to America in 2008 and work on a Presidential campaign, maybe go to graduate school and if it feels right, I could become a professor…of sociology, or history? In American studies? Sexuality studies? Women’s studies? I might live all over the country for a while or work for a non-profit organization in the Triangle. I’ll be here and there for at least some part of my life. When people ask me what I want to do after college, I just say I want to do a lot of things.
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