More Notes From Managuacita

Maybe I’m doing this wrong.
Maybe I shouldn’t be posting notes about the slum such as it's officially called La Carpio. Or I shouldn’t be writing that it was initially set up by Nicaraguan squatters and is now ‘home’ to 35,000 people. Or that most live below the poverty line. Or that part of the site borders an active landfill site.
Maybe what I should be doing is uploading pictures of cute slum kids playing in the dirt. Or showing photos of myself smiling in front of picturesque rotting shacks. Or posting adjoining comments like ‘OMG this is the totally putrid stream just outside their house... we avoid it like the plague... LOL ;-)’.
So in the meantime, if you want a picture of what it is like, take a dump in your toilet, imagine you live in it and that you‘ll never get out, and then take a photo of yourself next to it.
Don’t forget to smile.
…
Father Felipe and his wife invited me for lunch.
I had just finished painting a makeshift table for them. We sat in his hovel cum house cum church and we talked and ate. They had disagreed on the colour of the table. Father Felipe said it was fine. His wife wasn’t so sure. I jokingly asked him who was his real boss, God or his wife?
He smiled. Then he said, ‘Before I found God, I used to beat my previous wife.’
I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. What can you say? OK, by the way, these beans are delicious...? We chewed in silence.
I blame a lot of things on religion but it sure worked for him.
…
Don’t worry, cute slum kid photos to come.