Tag: comfort zone

Should I stay or should I go?

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

Image by tookapic on Pixabay

   My (R)evolution, part 6.

Living the dream ain’t always easy, I tell you. Even in times of peace, there were things in our tropical island life that we’d jokingly complain about. The amount of curious questions we repeatedly have to answer, is one of them. (I dedicated a separate page to these FAQ’s on my website, in case you’re getting curious now too).

One of the questions asked many times is: “Are you here for good?”

“No” has always been my honest and wholehearted answer. “But I have no idea when I will leave.”

Before, when asked what could be a reason for me to leave this little island off the coast of Nicaragua—a country now on the verge of another revolution—I’d would sum up this short list:

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Stock up?

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

Image by bierfritze on Pixabay

  My (R)evolution, part 5.

Since April 19 of this year Nicaragua, the country where I’ve been living for the past 13 years, is in a state of social unrest and political upheaval that it hadn’t seen for several decades.

For a while I was playing ostrich. I didn’t look at the news, even though I knew more or less what was on it. I didn’t talk that much with friends about the situation on the mainland, as if silence could make the problem go away or at least not seem so serious and big. On our little peaceful island, we were hoping for the best, pretending that we could sit this out.

Basically, I was in denial.

Until I heard about the road blocks. Barricades on most highways were seriously blocking all traffic, affecting the transport of all our supplies.

On Monday the news got to our island that next Saturday the freight boat that brings everything we need, from tomatoes to toilet paper, from peppers to propane, would not be coming.

Now that was news I needed to keep up with…

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I Saw it Coming.

Posted on by Leontien Reedijk

My (R)evolution, part 2.

Since April 19 of this year, there is political upheaval going on in Nicaragua,

the country that I have called home since 2005. What’s happening isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t seem that the situation is going to be solved anytime soon: the people of Nicaragua have—quite suddenly—stood up against their president, Daniel Ortega, and his wife, vice-president Rosario Murillo.

I can’t say I have openly announced it, but over the past few years I have regularly wondered when something would finally spark this fiery nation back into their old mode of standing up for their rights. Last century they fought a 28 year civil war to overthrow the dictatorship of the Somoza family. Nicaraguans showed then a drive for freedom and equality to reckon with. Men and women didn’t give up in their fight for democracy, and won.

In 2006 Daniel Ortega was elected president. In 2011 he was re-elected. Then he single-handedly changed the constitution so that he could be re-elected until his death.

I happened to be in the capital, Managua, in the weeks prior to the last elections in 2016. In the city, shared taxis are the most used means of “public” transport. They are a great way to engage in conversations with the local population.

On one taxi-ride I asked the driver when exactly the elections were scheduled. He shrugged his shoulders…,

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