Desperately Seeking Cereal: A Travelogue

By Michael Mangold

Alone, broke, and abandoned by family and friends, this true story relates how Michael Mangold MD survived being homeless in Nicaragua by using his wits and at times doing the "unthinkable.” With help from unexpected sources like a Roman Catholic priest in Estelí and Mormon missionaries in León, Desperately Seeking Cereal also describes how those who are entrusted to serve the needy and desperate often do so at a cost. If at all.

Desperately Seeking Cereal: A Travelogue starts where Dr. Mangold’s book My Worst Thanksgiving Ever ends: kicking his landlady out after she robbed the house in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua while he was in the Immigration detention center in Managua. For some unknown reason, an Immigration official told Dr. Mangold that he had three days to leave the country. Intending to help a man from Belize (“Cereal”) instead, the good doctor packed all of his remaining possessions and headed to Managua. When he got there, he discovered that Cereal had been released on a holiday amnesty.

Mangold then switched to Plan B, which was to meet up with Cereal in Matagalpa and then travel to El Salvador to fly home. Unable to find Cereal there or in neighboring Jinotega, Mangold headed to El Salvador alone. But he was mugged one more time in Estelí, robbed of his remaining money. That is where he met Father Rafael who handed him a $50 bill and said “go to León, it is safe there.”

Dr. Mangold took his advice and discovered that the priest was right. For almost a month, Mangold lived the homeless life, begging for food and money, and sleeping most nights outside. Desperate and hungry, he eventually returned to Managua, the last place on earth he ever wanted to be again.

The book is a sequel to My Worst Thanksgiving Ever and the fourth in Dr. Mangold’s “Bridges” series. It is a tale of ugliness and beauty, of evil and good, and how all are to be found in the least expected sources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Mangold
• Release date: Dec 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370115822

Michael Mangold

Winding down my career as an ER physician, I went to Nicaragua in 2013 to teach medical English to the med students in Puerto Cabezas. Our plans changed when the medical director of the school could not obtain funding so I was forced to look for other sources of income in Managua first, then San Juan del Sur, our adopted home. While in SJdS I published three eBooks on Amazon: "How to Think Like a Doctor," "Cómo Pensar Como un Doctor," and "Barefoot Doctors." I wrote all three with the intention of bringing quality medical knowledge and practice to underserved areas of the world. My "mission" was cut short over the Thanksgiving weekend that year when I was mugged five times that Thursday and Friday night. The first two weren't so bad but by the fifth mugging I was left for dead. Why would any sane gringo be out after dark in a large Central American city? I was trying to find my son Ben, who (as I later found out) was being hidden by the American embassy there. Find the full story in my new book, "My Worst Thanksgiving Ever."

Book preview

Chapter 28: Adios Nicaragua

EPILOGUE

Books by Michael Mangold MD

About the Author

DEDICATION

To my lovely daughter Savannah.

Someday you will read this and understand all I had to go through to get back to you. You will hopefully also come to understand that what we all endure is a combination of our past choices and what happens to us by outside forces. Usually those forces are other people who mean us good or harm. I pray that you are protected from the latter.

I pray too, that you will learn to realize when you need to help someone else in trouble. You should be able to recognize when someone needs help fighting a fire, is hungry and needs a plate of food, or even is lonely and needs a big hug and a kind word. I know you can do that: I foresee the woman you will become in the type of girl you are now.

Even though this is a true story of good and bad things that happened to me in a foreign country a few years ago, it is also a story of hope that someday, in some way, futility will not be the final word.

Love, Dad

And a special thanks to my younger sisters Kate and Mary for helping me out financially when I was abandoned in Nicaragua. You both are great and I love you very much.

PREFACE

Desperately Seeking Cereal continues the story of my struggles in Nicaragua following the muggings I received trying to find my son Benjamin one Thanksgiving weekend. I relate those events in My Worst Thanksgiving Ever which ends with me screaming at Dueña Claudia after she ransacked our house while I was detained by Immigration. Her excuse was that she thought I wasn’t coming back. In reality, she is just a thief.

She did make me realize it was time to leave. I went to Nicaragua with the best intentions so that realization was exceedingly difficult. In a short period, I accomplished quite a few good deeds, including introducing the local public health officials to an inexpensive oral rehydration formula during a Dengue Fever epidemic. I also helped the San Juan del Sur Rotary Club obtain wheelchairs for the physically disabled and taught English as a volunteer to local children. But as I keep repeating, no good deed goes unpunished.

Which is also one of the themes of my book Mythomania, the prequel to Worst Thanksgiving. In the former, I try to piece together how sociopolitical factors not only influence but cause personal psychological pathologies. Likewise, I show how our own problems support and enable social abuses. Like abducting a man’s own son in a foreign country and believing it was the right thing to do.

However, Desperately Seeking Cereal is more than just a sequel. It portrays a spiritual journey for me. I learned a lot about people while trying to get back home; a lot about how we can encounter evil from unexpected sources and encounter good from the least expected. Even though this story ends with my departure from Nicaragua, the journey itself continues.

Learn and enjoy!

PROLOGUE

I met a man from Belize in the detention center. His name is Cyril but because of his thick patois I thought he said Cereal. The Nicaraguan guards pronounced it "Cero" which is Spanish for Zero. He hated that nickname because he is not a nobody. Instead, he asked me to call him by his middle name, Albert.

Cyril Albert Barnett claimed he is the nephew of the Prime Minister of Belize, Dean Barrow. He said that his mom is Mr. Barrow’s sister. He spoke pidgin English, French, and Spanish. He helped me a lot during my incarceration. In return, I like to think I saved him from suicide.

Cereal ran a successful business and lived in an estate just north of Matagalpa. He was mugged in Managua one October night and the ladrones stole his wallet and passport. He reported it to the police who arrested him instead because he couldn’t prove that he was in Nicaragua legally. He sneaked his cellphone into the detention center, called his girlfriend, and waited for her to come help him. When she did show up with their infant daughter, Cyril told her where he had hidden $3,000