Touring rural northern Nicaragua with some potters

I am back on the lake in the volcanic crater mentioned in a previous post. We are almost finished with an intensive two weeks with a vanful of 10 potters visiting communities, mostly in northern Nicaragua. It has been a great way to practice Spanish, since the group includes a Nicaraguan potter who does not speak English. And there have been a number of memorable days, the highlights of which I will try to capture briefly here to give you a idea of these few weeks.

Last week, my camera in a bag tumbled from a tree where it was resting (safe from wandering pigs, chickens, and tromping human feet), and now my main lens is stuck at 70mm and with manual focus. Having to make do, although disappointing, does fit right in with life in the impoverished communities I have been visiting. Of course, their making do usually has to do with something like re-using plastic, or accepting some breakage during the bus transport in the woven bags full of fragile earthenware pots to sell in the market, or having only rice and beans every meal every day, and not accepting that one´s rather pricey camera no longer can accommodate visions of wide angle compositions. But my position as a tourist is already beyond their experience: the potter who was with us last week, 47 and a grandmother, had not even visited any cities in her home country except Managua. (She was delighted to get a glimpse of Leon and Granada.)

Today, a number of men at the vegetable market asked me to take their portraits: willing subjects are a great boon to a photographer!

We have stayed in homes in two local rural communities. The first was comfortable, although one worries how comfortable it was for the person who was relegated to the hammock in the kitchen. The second was a bit uncomfortable with the two foreign guests in two beds in the sleeping room, and the entire family of four in the third bed in the same room. My colleague, the other foreigner in the other bed, tried to find the latrine in the middle of the night. She went the wrong way, and was herded back to the house by a small but very vociferous dog. These tidy, swept-dirt yards can be quite dangerous if one does not know one´s way!

The focus of this trip is on marketing and purchase of very interesting, creative, folk ceramics. The purchase of these items, especially by people from the Global North who can pay a bit more, is a short term benefit to the potters who are selling them. However, in the medium and long-term, these are just ´stuff´- things people buy because they are creative and fun, but which eventually have the main function of adding to clutter. This is not such a sustainable way to develop better income for the potters. However, most have developed from a beginning in making only functional, useful, items for the kitchen, like comales to cook tortillas over the stove or jugs for water. More creativity is possible in the funny-faced mermaids, pigs for piggy banks, chicken plant pots, and other amusing items. Do we need more decorative stuff in the world? Does it make a difference if it is handmade? What kind of creativity can artists have if we decide to buy fewer decorative items with which to fill our shelves ?