| As soon as I settled on renting
the house where I live, Rosita found me and informed me I would
need someone to help keep the house up. After all, gringos leave
their houses empty during the day, unlike Nicaraguans, who usually
have someone in the house at all times and often have school-age
children to assign chores to. So I agreed to hire her for the afternoons,
after she works in Tracey’s house in the morning. Her duties
consist of mopping the floor, making the bed, washing the dishes,
and general straightening. She also hangs my clothes on the line
if I leave them in the washing machine, and she’ll cook rice
and beans if I ask her to.
Tracey and I each pay her $60 a month. On that, she supports
two daughters (one of whom works for CEPAD as a cook in the Nehemiah
office) and five grandchildren under 12.
I find it disconcerting to employ someone. Like most North Americans,
I was brought up to value self-reliance, especially in matters
like keeping my own house tidy. In addition, it goes against my
egalitarian nature to give someone instructions for the day. It
sets up a class relationship between us, and I’m already
sensitive enough to the fact that my finances, which would put
me in the lower strata of the middle class in the States, make
me quite wealthy here.
Paradoxically, that’s why I concluded it was okay to have
an employee. Unemployment is officially 75 percent in Nicaragua,
though that ignores the subsistence-level "informal economy."
With the fabulous wealth I have (by Nicaraguan standards, mind
you), it would unconscionable to not employ someone. Her salary
is a tiny fraction of my salary, but it means a lot to her and
her grandkids. I can’t fix the economy here, but I can keep
one family in rice and beans, and maybe even school clothes. It’s
not charity, either, because she’s very conscientious about
her work.
Technically, Rosita is employed in the informal economy—we
have no contract, just an understanding. She worked for me for
eight months before I found out her last name. In the meantime,
I found out many other things about her and her family, because
I make a point of treating her like a friend, not an employee.
That means not being demanding in my instructions, taking time
out from work to sit and talk with her, and sometimes eating lunch
with her.
In talking with her, I found out that she is a staunch Sandinista,
though she’s sorely disappointed with the recent history
of the party. I’ve also gathered that she didn’t learn
to read until she was in her early 30s, which indicates that she
was probably a beneficiary of the Sandinista literacy campaign
of 1980, in which the literacy rate in Nicaragua went from 50
to 87 percent in a single year. This remains one of the FSLN’s
greatest accomplishments, and explains the loyalty that many people
of Rosita’s age feel for it.
Not long ago, in talking to her, I found out that her brother,
Pedro, was quite sick. Apparently, his kidneys were failing. Rosita
was convinced it was from working in Costa Rica, where he sprayed
insecticide on crops with no protective gear, not even a cloth
over his face. He came back to Managua and went to the hospital,
but it soon became clear that the only things that would do him
any good were far out of the family’s price range. One hospital
in Nicaragua has the capacity to do kidney transplants, but that
would cost U.S.$3,000. It might as well cost a million. So the
doctors sent him home to die.
Rosita invited Tracey and me to meet Pedro in the house where
he was staying. To get there, we walked from maybe eight or ten
blocks from her house. We couldn’t drive—the streets
are too narrow and uneven for any four-wheeled vehicle. As we
walked though the neighborhood, I was reminded of my year in rural
Nueva Guinea. The houses are made of wood, tin, and plastic scrounged
from the streets and dumps and then nailed or tied together. Roofs
are held down with large rocks. Property lines are marked off
with barbed wire and frequently enclose a space no bigger than
my office at work. Yards and floors are the same packed dirt.
Outhouses are too close to the homes. Water and electricity are
hooked up illegally. All cooking is done on firewood, and smoke
flows out of a corner of most houses at any given time, leaving
part of each roof black.
Pedro’s family was fortunate enough to live in a house made
of cement block, which was slightly larger than the others—maybe
the size of a two-car garage in the U.S.—divided into several
rooms by a wooden wall and several sheets strung on plastic string.
I never was sure how many people were staying there when I visited,
but it was somewhere in the range of 10 to 12. Decorations around
the house were much like those in other Nicaraguan homes—a
rug depicting a galloping horse hung on one wall, with a poster
of a sports car and a poster of a pastoral scene in an unidentified
exotic place on another. There were fake flowers with plastic
dewdrops in a small jar. Children’s schoolwork was also displayed
on the walls.
Pedro lay in bed, gaunt and listless, and apparently in constant
pain. His legs were paralyzed. He could barely keep any food down.
We really didn’t know what to say to him, meeting him for
the first time on his deathbed. His children and his brothers
and sisters all stood around, helpless. Through extraordinary
effort, the family scrounged enough money to buy him medicines,
but they were only to stave off the worst symptoms, not to cure
him.
One brother had come from Chinandega (western Nicaragua) to be
with Pedro. This cost him his job. Pedro’s sons came back
from Costa Rica to be with him. This cost them their jobs.
Pedro died the night of August 7th. Rosita did not take next
day off from work. As she said to me, "Hay que cumplir,"
or, "One has to follow through." In reality, I suspect
she was infected by the fear of losing her job, as so many people
around her had. She asked both Tracey and me for $100 to buy a
coffin. We are both very reluctant to lend people here money,
but knowing Rosita and her situation as we did, we both gave it
to her. She insists she will pay it back, but if means less food
on her grandchildren’s plates, I’d just as soon she
didn’t.
Catholic tradition holds that the ninth night after a person
dies, there must be a prayer service, a "novena." Rosita’s
family could not afford a priest, so they couldn’t have a
full Mass, but they hired a man to pray for Pedro’s soul.
Tracey and I, along with many friends and neighbors, were invited
to this prayer service.
We returned to the same room where we had met Pedro, but this
time, everything had been taken out and replaced with rows of
folding chairs facing a large arrangement of plastic plants illuminated
by four bare light bulbs. In the middle was a portrait of Mary,
and from the right angle, you could make out that there were two
pictures of Pedro himself on the floor—one from when he was
healthy and one from when he was sick. The chairs, of which there
were at least as many out in the yard, were quickly filling up.
Tracey and I were encouraged to move up to the third row.
From 6:30 to 7:30, the man hired to pray recited—almost
chanted—the Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, and a series
of other Catholic prayers that I have only passing knowledge of.
The people around us joined in at prescribed times. Afterward,
there was food, because there is always food when Nicaraguans
gather. The prayer service was repeated at 9:00 and again at 11:00,
though Tracey and I left before that.
After that, the family settled into life with one fewer member.
Pedro’s brother returned to Chinandega. His sons were now
orphans, because their mother had left long ago with another man.
They went back to Costa Rica to look for new jobs. There, they
discovered the house they were staying in had been broken into,
and all the possessions they had left there were gone.
This story does not have a happy ending, nor is it by any means
unique in Nicaragua. This is the face of life, work, and death
here, the most important of which is work.
This nation needs your prayers that the people might find gainful
employment, but also that they might rest from their labors, secure
in the knowledge that they were able to provide for their family
that day and would be able to again the next.
You can follow the conditions in Nicaragua, and the work of CEPAD,
at http://www.cepad.info/.
Steve Herrick
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