Rural, idyllic El Bramadero is a far cry from my fast paced city of birth (Wolverhampton), famous for its high octane nightlife and non-stop excitement. El Bramadero is nestled in leafy mountains, surrounded by tiny farms. It looks so peaceful. I never would have thought that I would want or need for a more tranquil place. But sometimes village life can get a bit too hectic. This is almost completely due to how many cockerels there are in the local area. And how early they wake up. And just how loud they are.
So last weekend we decided to Escape It All. Gladys, one of the teachers at the local school, invited us to come and visit her farm. It’s not far away from El Bramadero (she goes every weekend) and it only takes her about 40 minutes to get there. It takes us twice as long because we are completely unable to climb hills, and also because somehow on the one road that leads from the town to the farm, we got lost. I’m not going to lie to you, we lost our enthusiasm on that walk. We felt jaded, pressured, disillusioned. I am ashamed to say, I questioned if I even wanted to go to the farm. And then, when we finally found the right gate, we waddled down through the pine trees to two little wooden huts parked neatly on the hill and I knew I never should have doubted. It was definitely worth the hour walk. In fact, I’d recommend you all take the 15 hour flights from London to Managua and five-hour coach trip to Bramadero and one hour hike just to visit this farm.
Let me paint you a picture with my words. The sky is celestial blue with puffy white clouds skirting across it. Hills and mountains roll away from you, covered in pine trees, mango trees, banana trees (do not worry I will return to banana trees very soon), coffee plants, trees of weird fruits and vegetables that I can’t name in English. There’s no electricity in the hut, but there is a hose pipe that comes straight from a stream. You shower out in the open in the middle of a maize field. In the afternoon you take your hammock, sling it between a couple of pine trees and think happy thoughts. Even the latrine is a delight. It really smells like vegetables (in a bad way), but the curtain doesn’t cover the whole door so when you’re sitting and doing your thing, you can see the glorious view spread ahead of you. I think it’s my favourite ever toilet!
Gladys cooked for us and she cooked for us well. In the night we had a campfire and tried to teach her Go Fish. The next day she took us into her farm to have a look around and pick some bananas. Now, I’ve seen farms in England so I knew what to expect. Big fields, neat ridges of soil with spruce vegetables poking out in precise grids….right!? Wrong! The farm was like a jungle, with banana, coffee and avocado trees all seemingly jumbled together amongst thick overgrowth. Gladys told me she was a bit worried as there was a horse giving birth somewhere on the farm but she didn’t know where it was and she was scared an eagle would eat the baby horse. We trenched through the overgrowth until we reached a green banana tree. If you’ve never seen a banana tree google it now because these trees are seriously mind-blowing. I can’t decide if I love or hate them, because they delight me and weird me out in equal measure. Gladys said we could take some green bananas back with us. I assumed we would pick a few and take them home. But bananas grow in a big cluster right at the top of the tree. Gladys approached the tree wielding her machete.
“Stand over there, John,” she said. “You need to catch the bananas to stop them crushing the coffee tree.” John looked confused and afraid, but Gladys clearly didn’t notice as she then started hacking the tree down. The tree trunk split and down came the bananas, tree and all, straight into the coffee plant. We had to carry the whole cluster all the way home. Green bananas are savoury and our host mum boiled them then fried them. They were really good.
So, in conclusion, we are all planning to return to this heavenly place ASAP. I will leave you with a Life Tip that I have learnt during my stay in El Bramadero. My tip is that I seriously recommend that, at your nearest possible opportunity, you find a way to watch a pig scratching its bum against the post of a veranda. Our fat, pregnant pig (named Bryan) loves to have a good scratch after dinner. She parks her bum on the edge of the veranda and scrapes it around. It is very loud, and the movement really accentuates just how big a full-grown pig’s bum is. IT’S HUGE!
Thank you for letting me write a guest blog on the Progressio website.
Yours sincerely,
Written by ICS volunteer Sarah Collings
