Navigating Nicaragua: A Lesson In Getting Lost

A motorcyclist drives past a mural of revolutionary heroes in Managua, Nicaragua. Most streets in the country don't have names. People give directions by using reference points, mostly Lake Managua, when in the capital. Carrie Kahn/NPR

by CARRIE KAHN

August 16, 2014

One of the most popular songs by the Irish band U2 is about a place where the streets have no names. That place could be Nicaragua, the small Central American nation where I just got back from a reporting trip.

While major boulevards and highways do have names in Nicaragua, and some buildings even have numbers, no one uses them. So if you are trying to get around or find an office building, let's say to interview someone, then you're in trouble.

The way to navigate Nicaragua, I quickly learned, is by reference points. When in the capital, most involve the lago, Lake Managua. Two blocks to the lake, then go three blocks south and one down. Lost? I was, constantly.

But I had help from my Nicaraguan producer, Dorisell Blanco, who thankfully also did all the driving. Her address: Start from the place where all the journalists live, head south to the entrance, go two blocks down, one to the south, two more down and then almost to the corner to the green wall.

That address is what's written on all the bills that come to her house and in the phone book. "God help her the day they paint that wall a different color than green ... everyone is going to get lost," Blanco says.

But people don't seem to get lost, and the mail and pizzas get delivered. The firemen also get to the fires, insists fire chief Francisco Reyes.

"We're all used to it ... so it's hard just for the out-of-towners," Reyes says. Though he admits he has received some odd directions. Once a dispatcher gave him the reference point, and then said from there go three blocks down and three blocks up. He was back where he started.

If that isn't mind-numbing enough, there are two more complicating factors when getting directions: the vara and what I call the donde fue. Vara is an old Spanish measurement that turns out, depending where you are in the world, is about a yard. People will tell you often to go two varas south and then one vara north. It's used interchangeably with a block, but a much shorter distance.

The donde fue direction, now, that's the toughest. That's a reference for something that used to be there. For example, the church that fell in the 1972 earthquake or a supermarket long closed, but everyone used to go to.

But here's the best part of the system: It works. That's because everyone helps out. Once you get close to your reference point, you start asking for directions. Everyone we ever asked was very willing to help. The direction discussion usually turned into a five-minute ordeal, not efficient at all, but always, always, extremely friendly.

Young Vietnamese Americans learning the lessons of Black April

Introduction

What better way to understand the complexities of history than through educational field trips abroad? On our immersive itineraries in Vietnam, we offer free travel for teachers and an unprecedented opportunity to meet local people on all sides of history’s iconic moments. April 30th is the anniversary of the “Fall of Saigon” or “Reunification” of Vietnam, depending on one’s political perspective. The L.A. Times reports a fascinating perspective from the second-generation of  Vietnamese “Boat People” who both love and lament their native country’s political climate.


For many Vietnamese immigrants, the memory of April 30 — the day Saigon fell to the Communist north — has been passed on only through photos, stories or video clips. Or it's been buried under silence.

Former members of the South Vietnamese military march during a ceremony at Westminster's Boat People Monument to mark the April 30, 1975, fall of Saigon to the Communist North Vietnamese. (Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times / April 28, 2013)

 

One girl gasps as the grainy black-and-white footage rolls: Women are screaming, thrusting their babies at soldiers boarding a helicopter.
In the next scene, hundreds of refugees packed in the belly of a rickety boat rock in the ocean, desperately trying to flee their homeland after the fall of Saigon.

Gathered in a Garden Grove office, young adults who grew up in the shadow of war watch the images, only tasting the horrors their parents and relatives endured when South Vietnam fell to Communist forces 38 years ago.

For many in immigrant communities like Orange County's Little Saigon, the memory of April 30 — "Black April" to those who lived through it — has been passed on only through photographs, stories or rough video clips. Or it's been buried under silence.

"I was only 10 months when I arrived in the United States," said Giao Tran, 20, a student at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. "I must figure out what led us here. When I ask my dad about his escape, he says, 'That's in the past. We don't talk about it anymore.'"

Now Tran is part of the new immigrant generation trying to keep the lessons of Black April alive.

This past weekend, as their elders donned military dress, convening at the Vietnam War Memorial and the Vietnamese Boat People Monument in Westminster, the young adults gathered to take history lessons from the Union of Vietnamese Student Assns. of Southern California.

"If you think of a history of another country in the world, probably there's nowhere like where we came from," said Phong Ly, 30, who led the discussion.

Ly, an aide to U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), retraced the unraveling of Vietnam and its people after 1975, hitting on land reform, mass executions, re-education camps, hunger and isolation.

"When I share stories of Black April and what happened after with my younger siblings, they're like, 'Are you kidding me? I don't believe it.' We who grew up here get everything we need," said Dianna Nguyen, 22, who's majoring in Asian American studies at Cal State Fullerton.

"What we also need," she added, "is to have compassion for the suffering we never saw."

For some, the lessons raise basic questions.

"So — who are the people who stayed back?" Tran asked. "How did someone decide if they were on this side, or the other side?

Billy Le and Nina Tran, among the nonprofit's current leaders, stressed to the group how their fellow Vietnamese live in a nation without open access to the Internet, without fundamental human rights.

"Instead of listening to what the Communist government says, you should look at what they do," Le, 26, urged. "We're youths, we live with Facebook — why do they block Facebook?"

"It's a society based on brainwashing," said Nina Tran, 25, a student at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

By comparison, Vietnamese Americans "can dig really deep into what went on — no one can force us to accept face value," Nina Tran said, adding that it's important for them to lobby Congress on International Human Rights Day and to learn about the people, places and issues linked to their ancestral homeland — including actress Jane Fonda, who opposed the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War.

Nina Tran then takes the youths outside, assigning them to "write down what you consider the five most important things in your life."
The choices are youthfully typical. Money. Education. Career. Social mobility. Technology.

"Give up one of these things," Tran instructs them. "Then another. And another."

Finally, each is left holding one strip of paper. Most bear one word: "Family."
"You gotta give that up too," she orders. "Now you know what your parents went through — Black April and beyond. That's what they were left with: nothing."

By Anh Do, Los Angeles Times

 

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ff-saigon-fall-20130430,0,6752466.story