Word: trees
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Depressed people often need someone to hug. On occasion, that someone may just be a tree...
...make that point even clearer, each tree is now topped with an illuminated "30" to mark the 30th anniversary of the victory of The Sandinista National Liberation Front over the repressive U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty. Nicaragua's continual Christmas theme is also appropriate because President Ortega governs Nicaragua a bit like Santa Claus. Not because he is jolly or has a tummy like a bowl full of jelly (Ortega is very serious and has kept in remarkably good shape for a 63-year-old), but because the Sandinista boss uses gifts to keep people in line, and always double checks...
...some, it's a bit too much. Gonzalo Carrion, of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, is a bit of a Grinch when it comes to the Christmas trees. He says the thousands of light bulbs burning brightly each night are an offense to the thousands of impoverished Nicaraguans - Sandinistas included - who can't afford to light their own homes. "There is a lack of ethics in all this," he said. "The Christmas trees don't project the image of a humble party of the poor." The continual Christmas celebration is also symptomatic of a country "full of poets...
...three weeks since I've been here, though, I've started to appreciate a lot of aspects of the Tanzanian diet. Most notably, the fruit. Turns out bananas in America aren't really bananas—they're poor imitations of what real ndizi, picked from the tree and sold in a village marketplace, are like. My homestay baba grows avocadoes and oranges in the backyard, so we have some with almost every meal. Chapati, which is basically a thin, African version of naan, is delicious (at least until you're forced to consume six of them by your overbearing...
...mountainous border with Indonesia. O'Hanlon describes wild dance parties at Dayak longhouses, fueled by gallons of tuak, a potent milky rice wine, and enthuses about jaw-dropping tangles of tropical growth along the Rajang and its watery veins, some walled in by lush, 200-ft.-high (60 m) tree canopies...