Feel No Pain

Written 21-3-08

Yesterday my iPod was stolen.

At first I completely freaked out, not just that someone had stolen it, but also invaded my space in a hostel dorm room. For a traveler, we have an almost non-existent personal space bubble...only our backpacks and our beds for the night, and they are sacred. Not only had my space been raided, but my music. To take someone´s music is to take away their soul. Someone has some serious Karma to work off.

We realized that someone had been through our stuff because Andy´s bag had also been looked through, and immediately started tearing our stuff apart looking for anything else not in its place. My stuff was all on the floor because my backpack is still drying, but that´s a story for later. I have been all over in Europe, Mexico and Central America, and this is the first time I have ever been robbed.

My iPod is missing.
FREAK OUT.
Breathe.
My camera is still here.
I have all my credit cards.
There was no cash for them to take.
My passport is in the safe.
They didn´t touch the rum.

Ok...I think I´ll survive. I thought I´d be a lot more upset, but when you have virtually nothing, then you have nothing to worry about. Now if they had taken my camera or passport, I would have gone on a war path and heads would fly. In retrospect, though, they probably have a nicer camera than mine. No one in their right mind would take much from my backpack, because they would be sorely dissapointed.

Checklist:
6 shirts
3 skirts
1 pair of ridiculously colorful Mayan trousers
1 pair of flip flops (same pair I climbed the volcano with!)
1 pair of $200 professional salsa dancing shoes
1 sleeping bag
1 bubblegum pink hammock
2,000 books
3 journals
1 travel-sized Buddha
1 travel-sized can of mace
3 wraps/sarongs used interchangably as towels, shirts, skirts, head wraps, shawls, picnic blankets, and yoga mats.
1 bottle of shampoo
1 kid size penguin-shaped toothbrush

Only a small percentage of the population would find the contents of my bag appealing...dirty hippie backpackers, or perhaps someone starving to death. We are living in a material world, and I am a non-material girl. I thought for a moment that the had also taken my sunglasses, but who takes a pair of Rey Bens???

Action:
Go downstairs and tell the travelers to lock up their stuff.
Talk to the security guard.
Put my camera in our lockbox.
Rum.

By this point I´m ok...just really pissed off. We were watching a movie downstairs with a couple other people and my purse was laying on my bed. They just nicked the iPod and nothing else. Gracias Dios. The night guard came up, asked a couple of questions. When I had first told him, he got very defensive, as if I was blaming him for this. After asking me a few questions, he casually mentioned that there were "Nicas" in the next room. I assumed he was refering to Nicaraguan people, and gave him a confused look. All he replied with was "They aren´t the same."

This gets me on a new topic: locals vs. travelers.
After talking some more with the backpackers, we realized how much a hostel seperates us. In some places, people from that country aren´t even allowed to stay in them. I have always felt the Traveler Code: travelers don´t steal from other travelers, mostly because we have nothing to steal. Most of the time it´s true. That puts us against the local population, which feels that we are billionaire white people with too much time on our hands and not enough common sense to go back to our own country and live like kings. On the other hand, I´ve made local friends who meet me at a hostel, and ask me why I´m staying in a dump. On hearing it´s only three dollars a night, and that I have a fifteen to twenty dollar-a-day budget, they get a little shocked.

This week is a special week, as you all know. I´m in a beach town in southern Nicaragua called San Juan del Sur. It´s a cozy little town, but apparently the hottest spot for Semana Santa weekend. All the Nicaraguans from Managua and the interior come to the beach towns (if they can afford to) and the general chaos of having thousands of people in a tiny town insues. There are rules we as travelers must set for ourselves. Do not walk alone, especially at night, but in the daylight there is risk as well. Do not go to the bank alone. Leave everything of value locked in a safe or lockbox. Carry only small amounts of money, etc. I knew these precautions before we got here, and yet I still wanted to come.

The last song I listened to was "Unforgettable" by Natalie Cole. At least now someone has some good music to listen to. The last time I lost an iPod in England, I found new music, not replacing the old, but adding to the collection. I´ll probably try to buy another one is San Jose, Costa Rica. A lot of travelers have laptops, so I can get new music from them, expanding my horizons, so to speak.

"One good thing about music is
When it hits you
You feel no pain."
-Bob Marley

How true.

*In case you´re wondering why my backpack was drying, it´s because on the bus from Leon to San Juan, my backpack was stored beneath the bus, which is very common. On getting it out, I realize that it was bleeding. No, I wasn´t bleeding, my backpack was bleeding. I´m guessing someone stored some meat or something down there and it leaked out, but it was gross and i had to scrub it out.

Welcome to my life.
Welcome to Nicaragua.