Color

One of the first things I noticed about Managua is the abundance of color on every surface. Walking through my neighborhood, every house is almost identical in architecture-one story with a porch that has a large metal gate and bars of the same material. Yet, every house seems to be a different color with all shades of pink, orange and aqua being represented. Even the gates and metal bars come in different colors! The streets are lined with trees (mango trees included). It’s hard to tell whether the trees or streets came first because there is no real order to where the trees are placed and often a concrete barrier has been built around the base of each tree. On our way to the grocery store today, I saw a huge tree, think 3 or 4 stories tall, growing in the middle of the side street as if it had just popped up one day and no one had taken care of it yet.

The buses are similarly colorful. The vast majority of buses are retired American school buses that somehow made their way south. Each one is covered in a collection of signs/graffiti declaring: that god loves you and protects all passengers on that bus, Jesus will save you and various virgins while some even have soccer stars (having ruled out their legitimacy as Catholic virgins, I’m not quite sure whether they fall into the god or Jesus category). During the busy parts of the day, the buses get packed until you don’t think there is room for even a midget but they always manage to get more people onto the bus. If you need personal space, take a cab. Yesterday, my friend Emma & I got on the bus and ended up way on the other side of town and ended up seeing a lot more of Managua.

For the last two weeks, I have been attending an intensive Spanish class at the American University (UAM) which is a small private university near my house. For Nicaragua, it is very drab with its white building and few palm trees. In contrast the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua-Managua (UNAN) where I will be taking 4 semester-long classes is probably one of the most colorful places I’ve ever seen. Most of the walls have murals painted in remembrance of this or that war hero, revolutionaries and Nicaragua poets. All the buildings are low with outdoor passageways that show off the Nicaraguan equivalent of a W&M’s Sundial-tropical plants of all types and sizes crowded together leaving hardly any room for grass.