Skip to content

Beef, Creamed Chipped: The Military Tries its Hand at Development

It was sustainable development at its worst. I should have seen it coming as soon as I noticed military vehicles parked in front of the San Diego escuela primaria, their olive drab and tan paint jobs doing remarkably little to camouflage them in arid, treeless San Diego. Inside the classroom, a half dozen American and Nicaraguan military personnel were debriefing a roomful of bewildered Nicaraguan eight-year-olds and their instructor.

"And there will be more coming tomorrow," a paunchy Nicaraguan military man was explaining loudly. "Everyone go tell your parents to be there." The kids were wide-eyed. Along one wall I noticed an enormous stack of cardboard boxes and a collapsible plastic table. I asked the guy nearest the door, a sunburned American chele in fatigues, what was going on and if they were the US Army.

"Are you kidding? I'm Air Force, that guy's with the Marines." His arms were flailing wildly as he spoke. "This is a Marines show. The Army show is mostly finished up. This here's some milk for the kids in school, and cookies and stuff. And a table."

I was thinking, "show?"

"Actually, I'm Marines Reserve," the other guy pointed out. No one bothered to ask me who I was, or why at the moment I was sweat-soaked and carrying a machete and a hoe. "We just finished up in Santa Teresa ("Sanna Tareesa") and some other place, and now we're here."

And making friends fast too, I noticed.

But of all the communities in Nicaragua, what had brought such international good will to San Diego, and why now, a full ten months after the hurricane? Why did the equally poor surrounding communities get nothing? Then I noticed Fernando standing over by the boxes, talking to the school teacher. Ah yes, Fernando, a good looking Nicaraguan military guy who'd knocked up a San Diego woman in 1981 and promptly skedaddled, who'd seen his daughter Vannia exactly zero times over the years and provided her the same amount of support. Eleven years later, working with the Americans, Fernando had seen a chance to peddle a little influence and send some of that free stuff towards us in San Diego. Poor little Vannia, who knows me better than her own dad, seemed pretty stunned as she munched a handful of "Coffee cake, Cinnamon Flavored, Shelf Stable‚" and watched her old man.

The next day the trucks returned and three hundred cardboard boxes of military rations were unloaded, to be distributed three boxes each, among the families. And the fun began there. Except for the bottles of Welches grape jelly and Heinz '57' ketchup, most all of the food arrived in olive drab tins and cans. San Diegoans don't buy canned food so they don't have can openers, and so took to bashing the cans open with machetes, which actually worked pretty well. But on top of that, all of the military rations were American food, strange to Nicaraguans, with cooking instructions printed in English. "Pre-heat oven to 350ºF" began the can of "Beef, Creamed Chipped."

"What kind of crazy food is this that you eat in your country?" Daniel asked me, clutching a handful of dehydrated powdered eggs. "This sh*t tastes like dust!"

I spent the better part of the day translating and explaining that, for example, the "Creamer, Non-dairy" is for your coffee, not milk for your baby, that once you open the 18 portion can of "Ham, Sliced," you pretty much have to ensure that it all gets eaten, and that the 100 envelopes of Swiss Miss hot chocolate, though tasty eaten straight-up, are good as a beverage too. Some of the experiments were successes, like the Western Omelet mix that got prepared as egg-soup. But some were failures, like the Western Omelet mix that got prepared as fresco (juice).

The Nicaraguans of San Diego though, bless their hearts, were grateful and extremely appreciative of the donation, and didn't mind the irony that the military had given eggs, pork, and coffee to a region of Nicaragua that produces those very same things. "Bush never sent us anything, and neither did Reagan," said one guy"but Clinton did a really good thing for us. The next time you see him, you tell him thank you."

Thank the president I will, but I also owe a thank you to the people of San Diego, who in their generosity and eagerness to share, put my name on the list of families and made sure that I got three boxes of my own. Perhaps in all these months I've overemphasized the fact that I'm a poor volunteer and don't have much money to throw around. Anyone want to join me for a cup of hot nondairy creamer?




This article first appeared in Va Pué! magazine.

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

The author does not allow comments to this entry