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Ten years ago, Ramón Potosme decided to leave the hustle and bustle of the newsroom where he worked as a journalist in Managua to cultivate land in a community in the department of Carazo, about an hour from the Nicaraguan capital. “I felt the need to live the question of my lineage and my indigeneity. More important than telling and communicating was living it. I decided to create something that would allow me to live on my land,” he says.
Potosme, of indigenous Mangue or Chorotega descent, was weary of the city. “I survived, I worked there, but I always felt a little uncomfortable … I don’t like this unnecessarily fast pace of life, the noise pollution is terrible, the way interpersonal relationships work, I didn’t feel comfortable. ,” he says. His father had died a few years ago and he felt the need to do something. “He was a healer, working with ancestral medicine, and the support that he was there wasn’t there more,” he says. He had a good job, he says, but his job was personal. “There came a time when I felt like I wasn’t contributing to the country with what I was doing and something wanted to do better and I was focused on the issue of saving the indigenous culture I come from.”
He didn’t make the decision alone, but together with his partner Rotsen López, who is originally from Managua. They chatted and it was clear that they wanted to delve into the culture and indigenous ancestry of Potosme. So they started a company they called Nambume, which means “heart” in Chorotega. It started as a nursery and is now, in addition to a nursery, a space trying to save the Mangue-Chorotega culture through ancestral medicinal plants, the garden system, the ancestral farming system, the milpa and cooking recipes. ancestral.
Accustomed to life in the city, she took three years to settle permanently in the Cañas Blancas region. She continued to work part-time as a journalist in Managua and part-time in kindergarten, only leaving school after her son Mauro turned one year old. “I wanted Mauro to live in a greener area so he could play and run in a big garden,” he says. However, at first there were two things that shocked him: the water supply was severe and the internet connection was very bad. “Now the water comes every other day and since we already have the rhythm it doesn’t affect me that much,” he admits.
Ramón Potosme, Rotsen López and their son Mauro courtesy
“An Act of Resistance”
Not everyone understands that this couple decided to leave the city and their jobs at the time to go to the country and work the land. Her family and friends criticized her. “They told me at home: He had moved to the mountains to live there,” says López. They told her that someone with a postgraduate degree like her would devote herself to selling plants.
“The first were close relatives. How could it be that someone gives up their career, their job… and now they go for a walk in the mountains with a machete.” At that moment, I understood that it was an honor and I felt very good about it,” says Potosme. It happened several times that his colleagues went to fairs where they started selling their plants and looked at them with pity. “There were people who said to us, ‘I’m going to buy to help, like they’re going to give us handouts.’ And that really has to do with the concepts surrounding success, happiness and status, both show exist.
According to the VIII Population Census and IV Housing Census of 2005, there are 46,002 Chorotega in Nicaragua, one of the largest indigenous communities in the country. Of these, just over 34,000 live in rural areas.
Being local, Potosme affirms, is an act of resistance. His whole life is the demonstration. Her long hair, her house made of bamboo, vines and jaragua grass and her relationship to fire, plants and animals. It’s a direct way of saying it exists, that it’s native, that it’s proud of it and doesn’t want to be made invisible.
They live in a house where the traditional Mango design is most visible. In doing so, they want to justify the ancient indigenous architecture as something “powerful, elegant and proud to show off”. Some think they didn’t have the money to build it, and others see the house as a museum. “We didn’t want to recreate this because it’s a heritage showcase or because it’s a conscious tour,” says López. “I’m building this house for myself, not to show off. Because I want to live here and remind the next generation that this way of building exists and that it is the leadership that our grandparents gave us,” affirms Potosme.
Ramón Potosme in Nambume, which means “heart” in Chorotega. decency
Revive the mango culture
In Nambume, the day starts early, at 5:00 am. Sometimes before. He goes to the fields and she starts her day feeding a new project: some chickens, a duck and a pig.
While he works in the field, she takes care of communication and logistics, takes care of social networks, coordinates interviews, receives customers and since she loves to eat and cook, she is always present in the kitchen. Potosme farms half a piece of land that his parents inherited. It contains Guapinol, Tepozán, Ciguapat, Contrahierba, Muicle and all medicinal plants. But also corn, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, cucumbers and others. “Everything that is grown in the Milpa is processed in the kitchen. Only products that are grown by us and our employees are served,” he says.
The couple welcomes people from all over the country and foreigners to learn about their experiences. “Guided tours of the orchard and milpa will be taken, which will include a lecture on medicinal plants, native bees and the ancient system of milpa cultivation. They offer traditional dishes linked to the ancestral gastronomy of the mango,” says Potosme. They don’t intend to become a major tourist attraction, says López, but rather to share their knowledge of mango culture. Those who visit may find tortillas, tamales, porridge, cereal, and scrambled eggs, depending on the season.
“Being both in the same place and with all the passion, desire and dedication is what we are now,” says López. Ten years after this idea, they have turned Nambume into a profitable place, where six workers are already in charge.
They are happy, both insist. López enjoys seeing how the trees sprout their fruit or how the hens lay their eggs, how simply and quietly they live and how his son Mauro runs around in the middle of nature.
Potosme feels leaving the newsroom ten years ago was the best decision ever. “It has helped me connect better with my people and my culture. It has helped me connect to the earth and feel happy in something that is within me that I have not done, which is working in the fields, with herbs, animals, plants, with the farming system, with Microorganisms and that kind of makes sense “I’m in a place where I’m very, very happy.” Together they dream that their work in Nambume will be a major engine in the revival of the Mangue Chorotega culture.
In Nambume, the couple welcomes people from all over the country and foreigners who learn about their experiences. decency