Jewelry Foray

It’s Saturday, the day for shop for jewelry at the Masaya Market—jewelry for Friends of Chinandega to sell as part of our fundraising for Nicaraguan projects.

Without our teachers, we have used our beginning Spanish to navigate the bus and taxi rides, convinced that these drivers speak an entirely different language from the clear and careful speech we have been hearing all week.

We have made a few purchases—earrings, necklaces, and bracelets that feature seeds and polished granite from multi-purpose shops. Then we stop at the table of Javier Hernandez. His table has only jewelry which he himself has crafted. We admire its designs with bronze, copper, nickel, silver, and polished stones.

When we ask his prices, we are disappointed—his pieces are too expensive for us to add a retail mark-up. But it takes a lot of time, he says, to make each metal necklace by hand. Each one is unique: there are no duplicates.

We agree, and we explain our purpose and our goals—reselling in the United States as part of our partnership with Chinandega churches. Oh, he says, that’s different. He offers us a substantial discount.

We make our choices. He writes us a description of each piece, and provides his email address if we sell out and need to order. We take his picture.

We say we think he will now be busy making replacement pieces for his table. He smiles and nods.

We hope our customers in Iowa will like his work as well as we—and that we will need to reorder more pieces from this courteous and soft-spoken craftsman.

For me this transaction has one down side.

I like these pieces too much. It will be hard for me to part with them.