Staring Contests

I am being watched. Constantly. There are whispers and hushed voices and the never ending feeling of being watched. No, I haven’t finally lost it (though the mosquito population is doing its best to see that I do), I actually am being stared at all the time.

Tortuga is in the jungle, a small village tucked away near the Costa Rican border. With such a small population, everyone knows everyone else, and they definitely don’t see tourists here often.

It’s not something you get used to, as Jenn tells me. After spending nearly twelve months here, off and on, and she says it never stops, even among people who get to know you. She tells me the bus driver, a fellow named Manuel, has fallen for me. It doesn’t end with the Nicaraguan men though, the boys and girls all take time out of their day to sit there and stare at me.

There’s no, “oh, she’s having her supper, let’s not stare at her while she eats.” It’s not looked on as being rude here to stare, so stare they do. “Oh look! She’s washing pottery.”

It’s just another one of those things to get used to as a traveller and to try not to be offended by.

Jenn teaches English classes for some of the kids in the neighborhood and since I got here, I have been asked to come sit outside with them while they learn, just so they can stare at me and continue working on their pronunciation without the distraction of having to crane their heads around as I move from one room to the next.

To quote Jenn’s e-mail digest:

On to news about the dig! Living in Tortuga is pretty interesting. It certainly reinforces the fact that I am a spoiled North American. The bus nearly rolled over driving in on the mud road, to the point where everyone had to get off the bus and make the rest of their way into town thanks to a concerned citizen with room on the back of his pickup. I don’t have photos of this particular event, partly because I didn’t have my camera with me and partly because I was really worried that bus was going to roll completely down the hill.

The room Jenn and I share is a small addition off of a family’s household. We are fortunate to have constant running water, as similar towns don’t have that luxury when the power is out, which it was for the beginning of the week in Tortuga. It had apparently been out for over a week, but when it came back on, Ivaña (one of the girls in the household who wants to learn English at a local university when she’s old enough) was quick to start up the radio and dance to the music. Over a week without music must be really tough on a teenager. I was ecstatic to have a working fan.

The dig itself is pretty small, a fifty minute walk through mud, dirt road, shallow streams, and forest from the house. We finished up work on one part of it, a trench Jenn dug to check the transition of a mound. We are almost finished with the larger unit not far from that one, and should be done on Monday. Then it will be time for cleaning and cataloguing artefacts.

Right now, I’m going to sign off and head back to my cushy room by the sea because there’s an American cocaine addict spouting off about booty calls behind me and I’d like to leave this situation ASAP.