The day started like any other: Carrie and I did chores around the house before heading up to San Gregorio for a community bank meeting. After walking up there and finding that the meeting was cancelled, we chatted with Doña Candida for a while before getting a ride back to Murra with the ambulance.

Doña Candida at a bank meeting

Upon returning, we gathered up a bunch of neighborhood kids and went to the field by the school to play soccer.

We kicked the ball around for a while until one of the Murra police officers started walking up to where we were. “Uh oh,” I started thinking. “Are we not supposed to be playing here? Did something happen? Why is this guy coming up here to talk to us?” Well, Carrie starts talking to the officer while I continue playing with the kids until she calls me over. It turned out that the organization Carrie works for had been trying to get in touch with Carrie all day to tell her that she had to go to Managua immediately.

As there is no phone in Murra, the message came through the CB radio at the Centro de Salud (health center). Carrie and I found it very irritating that the people in the ambulance did not mention anything, but messages often take days to get to their destinations in Murra. Well, we headed back into the main part of town to see if anyone knew anything else and found that all of a sudden, everyone in Murra was telling us “Carolina, your organization is looking for you.”

When they send out a message like that, there is usually something serious going on and volunteers are supposed to get on the first bus to Managua. However, as it was well after 5:00 p.m. and the last bus left Murra at 1:30, there was nothing we could really do, so we headed home. Upon arriving we had a note from a volunteer a few towns over stating that there was a Hurricane coming and that was why everyone was being sent to Managua.

When raining, the roads in Nueva Segovia become giant mud pits

At this point, we have no idea how serious the hurricane is and if we are ever going to make it back to Murra. When Hurricane Mitch hit Nicaragua in 1998, all volunteers were sent home for their own safety. Making things worse is the fact that I am not with Carrie’s organization and am not supposed to be living with her. So if someone came up to pick her up, odds were that I could not go in the car. Needless to say, that night was very stressful, developing contingency plans and saying goodbye to everyone in Murra just in case we couldn’t return.

The local news kept saying how the hurricane, which we learned was named Beta, was picking up steam and heading right for Nueva Segovia (the area we live in). Carrie and I came up with plans if her organization evacuated her from the country and I had to get home on my own. I was ready to take as much money out of the bank as possible in case I had to bribe any officials to get out. We were envisioning situations where we would be in separate hotels in Managua with no way to communicate and pretty much getting ready for the worst case scenario, as we had no way to know what to expect.

Carrie's friend Harold

At around four in the morning we had a knock on the door. Thinking it was someone picking Carrie up, I mumbled something along the lines of “OK, I’ll meet you in Managua and email you when I get there.” I was fully ready to just hop on the 5:30 a.m. bus and meet her there. However, it was just Harold, Carrie’s 16 year old best friend in Murra, who came by to hang out with her in case he never saw her again. I slept while they chatted and hung out until it was time to get on the bus.

Fast forward to around 8:00 a.m. and Carrie and I are on the bus stopped at snack shop on the road so the driver, cobradors and whoever else wanted to could get a bite. I had just bought four enchiladas from a little girl and was stuffing my face when a tall white guy comes onto the back of the bus asking for a “gringa.” Turns out it was Ben, another volunteer, who was in the official white Land Cruiser that had been sent up to find the people from Nueva Segovia who had not made it to Managua the day before.

Fortunately, Ben had no problem with me hopping in the car as well and we quickly grabbed our bags and got off the bus. Turns out the driver, an employee (not volunteer) had his non-affiliated girlfriend riding shotgun, which is just as against the rules as me being in the car, so he had no problem with my presence.

The next nine hours were spent riding around getting a nice tour of Nueva Segovia while we piled more and more volunteers into the car.

The snack shop we were stopped outside of when Ben found us

By the time we had picked up the last one, we had eight people crammed into the Land Cruiser. All of our bags were tied to the top of the car with a black tarp on top of them in case it rained. As one hour of driving began to blend into the next, a very “road trip-esque” feeling came over all of us in the car. Between the iPod blasting American music and a bunch of gringos piled into a Land Cruiser, it really felt like we were back home.

Still, there was one more issue that had to be sorted out: the fact that everyone in the organization was going to be at the hotel, including the directors, and I was not supposed to be there. So after on-and-off stressing out during the whole drive, we got to the hotel and had no problem sneaking me in. Somehow Carrie even got her own room, so whenever anything official was going on I could just hide out there. I made myself seen on more than a few occasions while the “higher-ups” were not around, but we still kept me on the DL as much as possible.

In the end we stayed at the hotel for four days waiting out a storm that never really hit Managua or Nueva Segovia. Beta’s path changed and it did most of its damage to the Atlantic Coast: an area that has no volunteers. During those four days there was a lot of relaxing, time at the pool, getting to know other volunteers and one night of going out for Halloween…but that’s a different story.