When I finally see its feathered brown head I see it is a chicken, wrapped in blue plastic - either a gift or dinner or both for whomever she and her mother have set off to visit. Nicaraguans get such a broad smile on their face when they see the bus finally arrive to pick them up, like fortune has shined upon them. On the bus people talk to each other and the Spanish conversation mixes with the ancient Neil Diamond music blaring from the bus radio to create a bizarre and bumpy blend of cultures. Even if just in the music, somehow the presence of the U.S. seems always to hover over life here. The war is over.
Crime is worse.
There is more affluence. There is more desperate poverty. Twelve years ago the billboards were about getting vaccinated and learning to read and the airport was old and funky. Today the billboards are for cell phones and consumer goods and the airport is new and modern. A dozen years ago, despite the war, Nicaragua felt like a grand, often flawed, often brilliant experiment in how to develop a nation through some method other than the standard U.S. model of - integrate into the world economy first, help the poor second.