
Tornado hits Masaya, damages 18 homes
Tornadoes may not hit Nicaragua with the same ferocity as in Oklahoma, but they can still have a devastating—if usually short-lived—effect.

The Café du Parc
There’s a new café in town. Its name – Café du Parc – is the first remarkable thing, in a place where the number of French speakers can probably be counted easily on one’s fingers (and I, with tattered remnants of schoolboy French, would be one of them). More interestingly, the café has a sort […]

Letter from Cuba
The old car was typical of Cuba. This time it wasn’t a half-century old Chevrolet, but a slightly younger and less glamorous Lada. Broken door handles and window-winders had been replaced by locally-made spares; the road was visible through a hole below the driver’s legs, ventilation came from a desk-top fan clamped to the dashboard. […]
Election Day in Nicaragua
The phone rang. It was our neighbour, Magda: ‘When are you going to vote?’ ‘Now, we’ll pick you up’.