Category: 03 The Chinandegan magpies

  • They start to kiss you!

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies “Thank you very much, I´m sure I am all that and so much more,” he added with a mischievous smile, “you’ll place them right in your pocket, and you can keep them there too; but, allow me to enlighten you: in this valley of tears, there are no free lunches,…

  • And to die… nobody’s in a hurry

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies “But I don´t remember any aunties with such strange names; did they die already?” “They´re dead all right, you can be sure of that!” he replied with a huge grin. “Look, this happened when I was around seven years old. Miss Clarissa, at the time, was probably close to ninety.…

  • And the cheeks too

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies “Yes and no chile. In my case, and not feeling at all like a hero, I had to pay with a peck on the cheek! And right on top of that silly makeup, they plastered their ugly faces with.” “Wow! That sounds more like a scary tale than a fairy…

  • The quest for candies

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies “This will give you an idea, of what life was like back then, when I was growing up! I would walk from my house to a store, called ‘Hope Store’ (La Esperanza). The owner, doña Lencha sold all the available candies in the world. Well this store was maybe, eighty…

  • The town’s bicycles

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies “My honey chile when I was, more or less, your age, I grew up in Chinandega. You could say, I knew everybody that lived in that flea-smitten town (if not, at least, everybody knew about me!). I knew the newly born babies, whose faces were all wrinkled up, and I…

  • A brand new day

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies  Sometimes Grandfather and I would talk about his childhood in Chinandega. He always remembered those days as happy moments of his life. There, he had studied most of his grammar school. In between the week, besides going to school, those warm and sunny mornings, he’d help out at the farm…

  • The Diaz farms

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies Encounters           Miraflores Reserve, Esteli, Nicaragua      Grandfather´s mother, doña Leonor, was the owner of an established and rather highly regarded restaurant in the nearby port-city of Corinto. She was a happy and carefree soul, maybe leaning a little towards the plump and a bit portly…

  • New horizons

    Chapter 3… The Chinandegan magpies My grandfather’s name was Jairo Alonso Díaz Alvarez García y Hernández, or at least, that is how it was officially registered in his birth certificate. He never introduced himself as such. To those who knew him personally, he was called Jairito or simply Jairo. Grandfather was born in Chinandega City…

  • The Chinandegan Magpies

    Chapter IV   The Chinandegan Magpies “When I was a child, I learned an important lesson, and I believe it’s helpful still. I discovered that we all need our own personal space, to be alone with our thoughts, our feelings, and with ourselves. The bicycle ride, to the port, in the mornings was my personal space.…