DAYS OF SOLITARY SCULPTOR

Your house does not measure more than six square meters. It is made of a few puny boards and inside it has only one bed that occupies half the space, whose mattress are small pieces of cardboard and some old rags that cover it. There is also a makeshift table: made of old plastic pieces and cardboard: a radio, glasses, and a photograph hanging from a nail about to fall. In the picture he looks young, relatively. He does not remember how many years ago they took it. Of course, always with a cigar in the mouth. Daily walks a kilometer to the sale to buy your pack of cigarettes. That is his only vice.

He was an alcoholic for some years, but he managed to get rid of the vice thanks to his work. There are coffee plants too. In his home he has a mill that he uses to grind the coffee beans he sows.

- What do you live?

-From the help that the tourists that come to visit me leave me. They leave me money, whatever they want and with that I buy the things I need.

-And when nobody comes?

-Well, I have to feed on the earth, on all the fruits that I have planted here in the forest.

Don Alberto does not have difficulties to get up in a single jump to a tree for short sweet oranges, neither to do it in one of mango, avocado or lemons. In all the path that leads to the top of the mountain has all kinds of fruit trees and flowers. This, more than his place of work and the only way he has to make a living, is his home, his sanctuary.

"This is my garden of Eden, my paradise. Sometimes I lie down in these benches to reflect. I have made those holes that collect water for the birds to come and drink. I like to see animals, I talk a lot with them, "he says.

What's that noise?

-They are the bells that are out there. Do not be scared if, they do not do anything to me, they already know me. Here is a cave where coyotes live. Right now I think they are not there, "he says, the moment he bites a freshly cut orange.

"These fruits are tasty because they are pure oxygen. Here the air is crystalline, it has no pollution, "he says. His life is nature, that's why he's 26 years old not to go to the city, to Estelí. "The last time they made me go was because they told me they would recognize my cultural work. They promised me some furniture and that's why I left, but they only gave me a plaque with my name, "he says.

Although three brothers and a sister live a few meters away from him, he almost does not relate to them. Is shy. And although she constantly receives visitors, she still finds it difficult to talk to people. Every time he speaks and walks the path he repeats hundreds of words at full speed, when he ends he says almost automatically: “That’s it, thank you very much then.”

-And the rest of your family?

-I do not know, I never see them. And I’m sure they do not recognize me because I’m already old.

-And his sons?

-I did not get married, nor did I have children. What I am going to leave of memory for the other generations are my sculptures. Those that are already made, and those that I will continue doing. My mom insisted that we look for our girlfriends, but I never had the ability to fall in love … the one who is going to be single, will be no matter what he does, that’s why I decided to be a hermit in the mountains.