where the streets have no name...

I spent a better part of last weekend at my coworker's house as a little getaway. Her family is endearing, the house is beautiful and I'm always grateful for an invitation to enjoy their company. On Saturday, a friend called to see if I'd like to go out for drinks and said they'd swing by to pick me up. I stuck my head into my coworker's room to ask for her address and she chuckled and said "give me the phone, I'll explain how to get here". How silly of me, I forget sometimes that here in Managua an address and the directions of how to get somewhere are the same thing.

You see, here in Managua streets don't have names. Buildings aren't generally numbered either. So how do you find a place without street names? Easy enough for locals, you pick a big landmark and work your way toward your destination from there. For example, to grab a cab to the Theatre Justo Rufino Gray you'd have to tell them: "from the Montoya statue, 3 blocks down, 20 meters toward the lake". It seemed to me, from the beginning like some sort of cruel joke - 'down', 'toward the lake'? But really, it's just a system one must learn. Down means west, because the sun goes down in the west. Logically following that, 'up' means east, where the sun rises. The lake is situated to the north of the city so 'al lago' means north and ...well, south never got a code word I guess, you just say 'al sur/to the south'.

It baffles me that this system works...mostly when I get addresses that start with "donde fue el Hotel..." -- 'where the Hotel...used to be'. What if you don't know where the hotel used to be? Or when they finish with "and 20 'varas' up", what the heck is a 'vara'?! (I just looked it up for this post, it's apparently an ancient Spanish unit of measurement measuring approx .875 meters...that will help me when I can finally remember how many feet are in a meter.)

I guess the system all started after the earthquake in '72. Apart from killing nearly 20,000 people, it also demolished buildings and seriously altered the grid patterned streets of this capital city. People figured it out, they made up a new system...one that works well enough that they apparently still don't feel the need to create a new one, or put up street name signs any time soon. And while I miss street names and house numbers, this is certainly an exercise in my sense of direction.

*photos taken and kindly shared by Jenny Ajl