Last night in the third world was spent in a flashy hotel a couple of rooms down from the one and only Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua. At first glance we clapped our hands and jumped for joy as we saw half of Managua’s police force coupled up with the ambulance outside the hotel, singing “we’re safe!” Until we realised it was all due to Daniel a.k.a. dictator crackpot and perhaps linked to the rioting mass on the other side of the fence. Nevertheless, aircondition on max minus and a hot shower later, three months of cold showers was flushed down the toilet with toilet paper (and man did I miss the convenience of latter).

Now, on my way to the Big Apple (via Big Texas) with my Vogue, Twix chocolate and a chatty neighbour with Norwegian ancestors, I’m watching my skin slowly turn from brown to its natural milk-white see-through reflection as I try to sum up my Central American adventure. Thing is, I’m as excited as ever, and in my right element: going from one place to another. In transit. Moving. And when I move, I don’t look back. Three months fade alongside my tan.

There are certain sure signs of due adjustments and things I haven’t quite managed to shake off in the six-something hours midair (twenty something hours to go). Like eating my first meal without looking around if anyone wants the leftovers or if I’m to buy two meals; one for me, and one for the hungry kid with a bottle of glue hidden under his dirty t-shirt. Like a million other things as no other place I’ve seen can compare to the country ridden by earthquakes and surrounded by volcanoes. I’m sure touchdown on Norwegian ground will evoke an avalanche of emotions. For now I’m rolling around in luxury like a pig in mud: fashion and chocolate surrounded by white clouds and gay air hosts with white gloves and flawless makeup. Did I just go to the third world?

Only two weeks left submerged in all things Latin, and the feelings ought to be mixed. Yes, on the one hand there’s the inevitable homesickness mixed with the never-ending food poisoning issue, but on the other hand there’s the feeling of not wanting to go back to the otherness. Because after three months, normality as I knew it is not that normal- or perhaps desired anymore. Nomad of nature, and globetrotter by choice, there’s nevertheless a home and a travel destination. But as time passes, and as the travel destination becomes home, insecurity of the unknown is obscured.

Realising there’s only two more weeks of dancing in pairs (vs dancing solo in an overcrowded nightclub where introducing yourself is seen as odd), I decided to indulge in a culture I fell in love with before I knew it existed. And so the dancing shoes were strapped on for two solid days. The aftermath being, amongst others, blisters and strange looks as my stiff Norwegian being tried to get amongst it. I love the language, the music, the passion and the cheap first class rum (on sale for the same price as a glass of water in a Norwegian nightclub), but even more so I love the feeling of being in love like only a true tourist can be. It’s a feeling lost as soon as you own it. Should I settle here, it’d be, some would argue, like getting married. Now, after turning thirty and all, marriage isn’t al that far fetched anymore, however, I do see the concern of loosing the magic somewhere in the salsa-turn. That’s why we travel. I think (after a few more bottles of rum) that we travel to stay in love. Either with our own country, the new country of choice, our loved ones at home or with fellow travellers who share the same mindset.

There’s something magical about a third world that has rhythm like nowhere else, that has all the confidence it takes to make up for what the Nordic countries lack, and that has the ability to make you reconsider everything you learned about happiness. The favourite radio track right now is the song “yo no se mañana”. Directly translated: I don’t know about tomorrow. Wise that, and true that- but they actually live it here. We know, but they live the fact. Ok, I know we’ve got obvious barriers such as the freaking cold winters that incarcerate the entire North for a good (or rather, very bad) six months a year, but it somewhat fails to make up for the remaining other six months spent cold as ice. In short (a non-existing word in this blog it seems), the troubled tummy and the daily harassments fade in the glory of all this continent has on offer.

I had a feeling I’d get bored of organised ramble day 2, and so we’re skipping the six days in between gratitude and the gratitude of being 30.

Yes, half an hour before I turned 30 I thought I’d seen my last day. When you get sick in a third world country, and you were born and raised in the first world (I guess it’s called the first world? Although I have no idea where the second world is hiding?), it all feels a lot worse than it is. Right, the usual tummy trouble turned into a nasty fainting business (and other scenes out of the Exorcist movie) and subsequently the plea for someone to follow me to the hospital. Half an hour before turning 30, fair dinkum.

Outside the “private clinic” (for European chelas with insurance as myself) a guy much younger than me in an overdue wifebeater asked me “que pasa”. By then I thought my green complexion and wide-open wallet would give away the fact that I needed a bed and some medicines asap. No, he asked again. Lucky I got the Spanish language going on by now. After ten minutes of him writing my details down and me running back and forth to the far too basic toilet in a tiny closet, I was followed to the nurse through the hallways of patience patients with crying babies in their laps. The nurse was sound asleep on a table (meant for examining patients); a problem quickly resolved by the guard who simply kicked her in the leg and pointed at me. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t exactly smile at me, and apparently she wasn’t there to help me either. As she fished out some prehistoric thermometer I managed to visit the closet toilet five more times, faint, and crawl back to the lady who insisted weighing me be the first priority.

As in passing three stages of some fucked up video game, I was finally let through to the doctor. The man with a plan (and a 24-hour shift under his eyes). Placed behind an oversized wooden table most likely found on the street, he asked me to come up with a diagnosis. Now my Spanish is far from fluent, but five minutes later I was on a dirty table, had an intravenous forced into my vein and finally managed to open my eyes only to see bloodstains on the floor, the walls and in the ceiling . Above the doctor behind the desk an old-school watch revealed that I had indeed made it to 30. Five minutes past midnight. I told the doctor in broken Spanish that it was my birthday. He looked at me as if he needed to increase the potency before he quite friendly said “feliz cumpleaños” and sent me home with a goodiebag of drugs a couple of hours later.

Moral? Freaking out about being 30 is shit all compared to freaking out about not turning 30. So, happy birthday to me!

This day, a week before the big day when shit all, yet everything happens, serious and repetitive existential thoughts crawl out from the subconscious where they’ve been hibernating since my quarter-life crisis (that’d be five years ago). Once tucked away by comfort, now shaken (and stirred) by the discomfort of the sudden, yet dragged out notion of no longer presenting myself as a girl in her twenties. And, as the addict of self-imposed pain as I am, I chose to celebrate the transition in an environment where I am nine years older than the average population (yes, the current average age in Nicaragua is 21) and ten years older than just about everyone that I see on a daily basis. The latter impose frequent reminders such as hearing “oh, I miss Pokémon” or “let’s play some old school hip hop” followed by cranking up the stereo with 50 Cent working his way through 50 ways he’d like to make love to a biaitch. Words and actions that make me feel not so old because of their words alone, more so because of my initial thoughts like “oh my God, my little brother played Pokémon, oh my God he’s not really that little anymore is he” and “cool, yeah let’s play some De La Soul, oh fuck no, what’s that shit, and will you please lower the volume”- you get my drift.

Back to the existential issues. I’d like to think that this turning 30 in seven days marathon could be headed by one word for each day: gratitude, love, freedom, friendship, courage, wisdom and truth- in that particular order. Yes, I can see the resemblance of eat, pray, love- and as much as I appreciate the words and the actions related, they’re all up for grabs in a highly unoriginal world.

Ok: Gratitude. Some smart person probably paraphrased another smart person and wrote the following words on a blackboard in a café in Granada, Nicaragua: “Everything is a once in a lifetime experience”. I swallowed the sentence with my espresso coffee (no sugar needed). I like to think I’m grateful, yet whilst in the third world the perspective is skewed no matter how hard I try. I somewhat spend more time thinking about highly mundane matters such as diets, tanning, shopping, getting the dream job (without working too hard to get it) and subsequently get rich sometime soon than thinking of important issues such as what can I do to help the street kids off their heads on glue and the street dogs ravaging through the garbage bins. I’ve indulged in a highly subjective conversation with myself, and established the hypothesis that it’s not so much narcissism- it’s a survival technique. Well, I’ve done the here ‘comes the white man to save your day’ activities such as voluntaire work with poor kids, teaching them English and all, and I always bring take-away to the hungry small hands in the streets, but they are actions a million miles away from producing a good night sleep for me, or a square meal a day for them. The differences are all too obvious to ramble on about; I’m merely rambling on the subject of gratitude.

A footnote is in place here: 70 percent of Latin Americans said they would consider themselves happy when asked in the yearly Latinobarometro.

I’d find it difficult to believe my so-called richest country in the world would even get in the same upper 50 percent. Why? Too much time for self indulgence, too many self-help books reassuring readers they are in fact fucked for thinking like humans do, and impossible sky high ideals perhaps. I don’t know, but it’s tempting to think we just don’t have the right perspective of gratitude, hence happiness. Well, I’ve written myself into a corner on this one, so I’ll try and round it up. I have a million things to be immensely grateful about, but the rickety mind tries to forget. It seams the more needs fulfilled, the wider the gap. Is it a black hole? Is wealth the Bermuda Triangle of happiness?

Now, you can put down your guitar right away, because it’s by no means any of that kind of street life. It took me five days to become utterly confused yet somehow enlightened in the city of León, Nicaragua, a city full of nameless streets and lost heroes. Yellow busses tattooed with catholic sayings like “Jesus is the man” make way for horse and carriages, limp street dogs and old abuelas carrying the daily market bid on their heads.

Scorching hot, the sunlit sidewalks lay empty as the shadow welcomes its villagers, however the shade remains a scarce resource for twelve sunny hours each and every day. By which you’ll sweat on average five litres (not even eyeballs are spared the sweat séances), and drink about three litres of water – leaving you confused, dehydrated and possibly unable to drive. Latter offers no problemas, as the horses usually know their way home.

In the inevitable search for all things authentic, I ducked into a hole-in-the-wall eatery and asked the grandma if she could offer some vegetarian food. Me: soy vegetariana (generally a handy tip when trying to avoid the nastiest sorts of food poisoning). Grandma: ah… Me: tiene algo sin carne? Grandma: sí. She promptly served me a heap of food from the family-run street stall, chucked it in a microwave oven (without turning it on. Electricity too, it seams, is a scarce resource). I worked through it with my fork. Chicken. Pork. Undefined meat. Me: muchos gracias…

Two polite mouthfuls later (and some thousands of possible excuses processed in my fried brain), and seconds after the universal “muchos gracias”, the grandpa of the place shuts all the doors and covers my food with a plastic bag in the most upbeat tempo I’d experienced in the sleepy (and oh so Catholic) city. Just about to freak out, with thoughts of being mugged or worse, the panic settles when a pesticide truck appears with a loud rumble. No one escapes the fumes sprayed directly into all buildings and onto all beings along the street; kittens, stray dogs and the dodgy food stall were all covered in white clouds fume of pesticide (most likely banned some thirty ears ago everywhere outside the third world for reasons I don’t want to think of). The big kafuffle let me escape leftovers on my plate, but of course it was all too late. I bid them all an “adios” and walk home only to stay up all night with a streetwise stomach, praying for a free passage to the toilet.

I always suspected this, but I’m not quite sure who’s in charge of these kinds of decisions. What exactly is it that forced a right turn, which in the aftermath can be viewed as a wrong turn, is indeed a confusion of sorts, though it is unclear who can judge and therefore on what basis. To the left: the gym, surrounded by total, utter darkness and ten Celsius below. To the right: my coffee shop of choice, that serves not only the best coffee in town, but the very finest French pastry and home made brownies that forces a big frown on the hardest of man. I order a double cortado with milk all the way up, and a brownie- the one that creates smiles and melts frozen hearts.

After the first sip of my coffee I feel a relaxed state of mind slowly, but steadily like domino, affecting parts of my body and mind. Pre coffee, there were cold and franticly repeating words like “must diet, must work long hours, must stay warm”, and there, a sip of coffee and a nibble at that brownie later, it was going in the direction of “I really enjoy this, it’s not such a bad winter after all, the music is great, the girl behind the counter is really friendly”, and last but not least, “fuck, I am so happy I’m not sweating my brains out a stupid dungeon of a gym!” Who is it then, making the right or wrong decisions in this case? One could argue it be the fuming person who’s still adjusting to a strict and newfound non-smoking program and who would commit any crime but that of smoking, but it could very well be the frantic person on a diet starting as of today. Or, it could just be the person who believes life is too short to miss out on good coffee surrounded by good music, elevated people, old books and pastries made in heaven.

Inevitably, and unfortunately, the judge swings the hammer, and hands down a sentence, and it is not a gentle one. It comes when the sugar rush and caffeine high wears off, and she sits there waiting with a pointed finger and says, “I told you so”. Now guilt overcomes me, and the sweet taste turns sour, and once again I consider the gym endeavour after all. A perfect waste of the perfect time spent in the coffee shop. “No!” exclaims the last involved person- the soft-hearted and ever forgiving one. “I don’t believe in organised gym. We’re caged animals all day at work, then caged animals at the treadmill”- and yes, I see the resemblance between a drug addicts’ arguments and that of mine, however I still-most of the time- chose coffee over gym, and that I’m afraid, will blow any change of getting fit this winter. Just like that: all bets are off. I give in, I give up, and I am far too addicted, far too cold and far, far too north to make any behavioural corrections that rule out the sheer joy followed by my favourite activities. Just like that, I choose coffee.