Student At Large

Ruined Hospital and Tree

Granada, Nicaragua

The room in the ruined hospital was dark, the only light coming from half collapsed windows high up in the decaying ceiling. A pigeon sits there, looking down at us standing in this dirty place full of abandoned medical records turning slowly into dust. Outside a herd of wind goats run carefully over the remains of a shrine to the Virgin Mary, her figurine long since gone. Standing as it is in the center of this field of rubble it seems to represent the state of many things in this amazing yet sad country. Turning to Arma I tell her, “when god’s gone, you know it’s got bad.”
Granada is to me the very heart of description, a place of innate vividness and color where the perfect photo is constantly riding past in the back of a donkey cart or sitting in the foul smelling market cutting steak for dinner. From the ruined hospital to the town square it’s alive and moving with a strange energy, looking up you can see the almost constant milky-white explosions of firecrackers thrown into the ether. Walking down tarpaulin lanes filled with closed up shops inside the Mercado Central you can buy iguanas and turtles, aviators and Playstation knock-offs. Through the streets there are massive religious parades, children beating drums and hitting those plonckity-plonk xylophone things. I like to stand by the side of the road and watch, looking at the life rolling past me even as the thunder crashes overhead in a flurry of tropical storms.
I showed Arma all this, we walked with camera clicking for hours. As the sun went down we ate pasta and drunk Coca-Colas and Cuba Libres at the open air bar outside the Bearded Monkey. Later a band played and I danced with Gringa gap year students and exchanged travel advice with backpackers heading south. There was a sense of fun in the bars, couples winding themselves around each other in Latin dance as those of us less supple nodded our heads in appreciation. If the night had ended there it would have been better, instead hours later I was dancing in Bar Canoes, a place by the water where the cows walk past and the palm trees sway in the wind.