Latin American Lifestyle and Art (LALA): Pottery of the Nahuatl

I'm on my way back to San Juan de Oriente to pick up the ceramics that Juan Carlos has (hopefully) finished up for me. I walk down to the UCA bus station by the mercado central. It's super hot on the little bus which is not yet ready to depart so I stand in the shade of the open-air office/kiosk. The old CRT TV up on a shelf behind the counter is tuned to Animal Planet and Steve Urwin Crocodile Hunter is doing his thing. There are a couple of guys completely captivated by his crocodile-wrestling antics and turn to include me in their conversation. "Loco" one of them says to me making the universal crazy sign by swirling a finger beside his ear. "Muy muy loco". I nod my agreement. Conversation moves on as it does at a bus stop. They want to know where I'm from and are very impressed to learn I am from Australia just like Steve Urwin. The next question was kind of inevitable I guess. Do I know Steve Urwin? "No" I reply. "No le conozco. él está muerto". I could've bitten my own tongue off. The look on their faces. Total devastation. They LOVE Steve Urwin in Central America. Of course they want to know how. "Crocodillo?" they ask. I don't know how to say "Stingray barb through the heart" in Spanish so I do some kind of miming. They discuss this with looks of grave concern on their face and look set to ask me more questions. I figure it's a good time to board the bus right about now. I wonder if I've just started a rumor that Steve Urwin was stabbed by a giant bird.

UCA bus lets me off at the turnoff to Masaya and I walk the 8 or 9 blocks into town from the main road. A brief circuit around the old craft market (as opposed to the "new" municipal markets) to pick up a couple of things I had seen there on Saturday. I take a break at the cafe in the courtyard to have one of the excellent fruit smoothies. The young guy remembers me from Saturday. "Hola Senora. Una liquado sin azúcar?" He finds it amusing that I want my smoothie without sugar - I find I have to request pretty much everything "sin azúcar" or it comes loaded with sugar and super super sweet. Today's smoothie flavour - green coconut, pineapple, orange, banana, mango, ginger. Yummmmmm.

I take a private taxi from Masaya to San Juan as I know I'll be carrying loads of pottery back. No chicken bus today! Go direct to Juan Carlos' house/workshop. It's a single cinder block room with a concrete floor and an open gap in the front wall to enter and exit and allow ventilation. No door. A bed made from bamboo poles is pushed against the back wall draped with a mosquito net. The rest of the room is taken up by plastic chairs and tables on which sits clay, actylic paints and pots in various stages of completion. Juan Carlos is 31 years old and has been working with clay since he was a young boy. But, he tells me, his work wasn't good enough to sell till he was 15 years old. He learned from his father who learned from his father, who learned from his father. They are direct decendents from the Najuatl people and it's possible, even likely, this ancestral chain of knowledge transfer goes back unbroken thousands of years. The original Nahuatl (pronounced nah-wahl) Indian tribes settled in this region of Nicaragua approximately 5,000 years ago. The Nahuatl of San Juan de Oriente have been known for centuries for their beautiful pottery and there is evidence of this ceramic tradition dating back 1,000 years. Juan Carlos learned the traditional Nahuatl designs from his father but has over recent years evolved this into something that is very uniquely his own. I love it. He has indeed three new pices of pottery for me and I am delighted.

I stop off to a few more workshops and load up the taxi. That's a hard days work over and done with. I am heading back to Granada with nothing more on my mind than a swim in the pool of Casa Silas. That and how the hell I'm gonna ship all this stuff back to Roatan. Oh well. Lets deal with that tomorrow. Something will work out - it always does.