This morning when my host sister left to bring her older daughter to school, she told me she was going to borrow my umbrella since it was pouring, and was going to leave the younger girl there in the meantime. I said “no problem,” although I was still in bed. (We talk over the wall all the time, since as I described in an early blog there is absolutely no sound buffer between one room and the other with the walls stopping about 5 feet from the ceiling.) She said to the 5 year old, “Watch TV for a minute while I’m gone.”
No more than 5 seconds later there was a light tapping on my door. “Can I come in?” “Sure.” I said, not budging from underneath the covers. She came in and tucked herself underneath the mosquito net and started her routine of touching everything she sees. She picked up my earplugs, then the lantern, then the fuzzy socks. “What’s this? A glove?” Then it was back to rubbing her hands on the nubby texture of the mosquito net. And then back to the earplugs.
At some point I opened my eyes and said, “Why don’t you lie down or go watch TV?” “Where should I lie down?” she asked. “Right there.” So she laid down and started moving her hands in the air and scrunching her face silently in the way that little kids do when they’re not tired but want to be near their sleepy elders. I closed my eyes.
Shortly though, I found myself watching her through lidded eyes, thinking about the fact that we’ve gotten so close and I will soon be leaving. I wanted to capture these moments without her knowing. I’ve been doing this a lot lately. We’ll be playing or just hanging out and I’ll think “capture this, memory.”
This was the case a few nights ago when the girls were relentlessly bored and asking to borrow my crayons, then to borrow Uno, then “can we listen to music on your phone?” The problem with listening to music on my phone is that they get so distracted by requesting songs before the last one was over or the apparently constant urge to touch the screen to make it light back up that it ends up not being terribly fun for me. I had an idea. I grabbed some construction paper I had laying around and started drawing and cutting out instruments. I made a guitar, a drum and drumsticks, a trumpet, and a little piano. So now we were going to listen to the music and play along! That night I learned two things: 1. these girls have no concept of which instruments make which sounds 2. They are great performers anyway! (I mean, I guess I already knew that, but I hadn’t seen them light up quite this much before.) Once Dayanna noticed what we were up to she was hanging around by the door watching, so I handed her an “instrument.” She pulled up a chair and joined our band. We went on this way; ridiculously play acting, for close to an hour. There were a few times watching how seriously the girls were jamming away on their paper instruments that I really wanted to grab my camera and take a video, but I just knew that would change the dynamic. So once again I begged my brain to capture this moment.
I feel the same way about leaving these girls that I did about leaving my actual nephew before coming to the Peace Corps. I knew I would see him again, but I also knew that I would lose valuable, unrecoverable moments of his youth. It would be different later. With my nephew, I will return to the US and be (hopefully) connected to him naturally forever. I know our relationship will be different, but in some ways it will stay the same. With these girls, I know that I will see them again on visits to Nicaragua, but I’m afraid (and know, really) that we will never be as close as we have come to be now. In a few years, they will remember me, but maybe in a long ago “there was this girl from the US who lived with us for a while” way. I have absolutely loved this time with them and in a completely unexpected way it’s been the best and most important part of my Peace Corps service.
That’s all for now.
Love from Nicaragua,
M x
Mariel's Adventure Blog! 
This post makes me cry, because I know how true it is. I miss the girls now, and only spent a few days with them! We’ll just have to make an effort to keep in touch with the whole family. I want to go back, too! We’ll make a pact to do that!
Love from Mom