The Road to Signal

As I look back on about two full weeks in Nicaragua, I've already seen some astonishing things. I understand why some call it "developing" and am beginning to seeing why some just call it "home."

My adventures this week have included a trip back to the school in Chimborazo I mentioned in an earlier post. While there, the need to use the phone arose. This is when I decided I had met the definition of developing country smack in the face. "No reception here. You have to go over there." said Miguel, my interpreter.  I walked about 50 paces and saw that "No Signal" still registered on my borrowed cell phone. "Sigue mis hijos," (follow my sons) directed one of the locals.

That's when it began.

I watched as the young men almost hurdled a barbed-wire fence, knowing that my attempt would be neither graceful nor quick, but took comfort in the fact that I'd had a tetanus shot recently enough to throw caution to the wind and follow. The two teens led me down a muddy pass--through water that had certainly just passed through the urinary tract of the bovines that greeted me as I entered their pasture. As the mystery mud oozed between my toes and over the ankle tops of my socks I tried not to think about its contents. At the bottom of the downside of the trail I realized what had to come next - its slicker, slimier upside. I climbed--grasping branches, thick grass and rocks in hopes that when I inevitably face-planted in the mud that perhaps I'd be spared the nastier of the diseases known to take harbor in cattle bladders.

Finally reaching the peak of the slippery slope, (and incredibly winded as you would expect an overweight, out-of-shape, asthmatic with bad knees to be) I paused expecting vistas of grandeur and cellular bliss.

But I was wrong.

Ahead of me: two acres of potatoes and my teenage guides already half-way across. Wondering what other obstacles lay between me and this mythical land of "Signal"--I wheezed my way across the crops in hopes that the boys would stay far enough in front of me not to see me drop to my knees just prior to certain death, or at least long enough for me to catch my breath. I watched as they continued to walk, and walk. And walk. They got smaller as they crossed a small fence and continued their trek. Finally, they stopped walking.

Half an acre behind them, (beans this time), I realized one of the boys was pointing up into the sky. As I got closer I realized he was holding his phone, searching for "Signal." Arriving in the small clearing where they were standing I began fiddling with the phone in an official-looking manner,(while actually just trying to allow time for my breath to catch up to me), I realized I still had no signal.

Had all of this been for nothing? Oh, spare me the injustice!

"What?" I thought to myself as the older of the two animatedly pointed at a rock, then finally stepped up on it and held his phone as if to say, "Like this you dumb gringo!" Following his example, I hopped up on the rock and held my phone high as if to say, "Signal, don't fail me now."

And it didn't. I was immediately connected with the city-folk in Jinotega and was left marveling at this scrap of a very modern world hidden on a rock, nestled in the high mountains of Nicaragua. I  had survived the road to "Signal."