Today's guest author, Eliot Stein is a senior journalist at the BBC and the author of Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive. The book is a vivid look at 10 people maintaining some of the world's rarest and most astonishing cultural rites against all odds. His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Wired, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
You could win one of three copies of Custodians of Wonder. Simply send an email with CUSTODIANS on the subject line and your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]
Reach out to Eliot at: [email protected] He'd love to hear from you.
Please welcome to the book club Eliot Stein...
“Officially," I told my three-year-old son, Oliver, "Mama Vilma, lives on Avenida Noroeste in Managua."
“So, what are all these letters?" Oliver asked, staring at my painfully small handwriting that was now spilling onto a third row of the envelope. “This says: ‘From The Little Tree, go down two
streets, turn left where the man sells fruit, and it's the yellow house,'" I responded.
Without understanding that “down" means west or knowing that “The Little Tree" grew into a big tree before being chopped down back in 1973, you might not find Mama Vilma--but postal workers do, so long as the letters addressed to her are written correctly.
Navigating any new city can be confusing, but Nicaragua's sprawling capital may be the most inscrutable of them all. While major roads have names and a few buildings have numbers, no one uses them. Instead, Managua's 1.1 million residents have woven together a whimsical map of hundreds of man-made and natural landmarks to make sense of their world.
Want to go south? That's “a la montaña” (toward the mountain). Need to head north? That's “al lago" (toward the lake). Even gravity is turned on its head: “up," in the local parlance, is where the sun rises (east), while “down" is where it sets (west). Therefore, depending on where you are, “up" may actually mean downhill.
Many of these landmarks, like The Little Tree, disappeared decades ago. Near Mama Wilma's house, the pasture where “The Brown Horse" once grazed is now a gas station. The driveway where “The Green Car" was always parked is now empty. And the house where “The Hairy Hands," lived for 50 years is now home to a woman with decidedly less-whiskered fingers.
In an age when GPS and Google have mapped nearly every inch of the planet, I find it rather lovely that Managuans with long memories have clung to their own vision of home. These gorgeous, irrational, gentle customs are what make the world so stunningly diverse and fascinating. They're also a reminder that culture is born slowly through a million tiny, personal moments, and that each of these unique local traditions reflects a sense of who we are and where we came from.
There may come a time when Managua standardizes its street names and addresses, just like everywhere else. But I hope not quite yet.
“What's in the letter," Oliver asked me.
“I'm telling Mama Vilma that we just bought tickets to Managua," I said, “so you can see the yellow house, and meet your great-grandmother for the first time."
-- Eliot Stein
You could win one of three copies of Custodians of Wonder. Send an email with CUSTODIANS on the subject line and your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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