I’m always impressed by my good friend Alba, who manages to
post thoughtful blogs about interesting Nicaraguan subjects twice a week. I
fear I shall never live up to her standards…
Change was in the air in the month of May. Oops, I just
realized I never wrote anything about the month of April. I don’t think
anything exciting happened in April, so we’ll just skip to May.
The biggest
change for me was that I moved into a new home. Most Peace Corps volunteers
decide to change homes after the first two months of their Peace Corps
experience, but I had decided to stay. Then last month I decided it was time
for a change, something the Peace Corps recommends to achieve better community
integration. I talked to some volunteers who have been around for a while and
changed houses, and they said it was a very difficult decision, but that it
ultimately improved their experience in Nicaragua immensely. Most volunteers
change houses because they want to be more independent; those of you familiar
with my lack of know-how in the kitchen and my love of being in a family
environment can imagine that this was not so in my case. I moved in with the
family of a friend of mine, Julia, who is an English teacher at another high
school. She lives with her husband Julio (fate, right?), her 12-year-old
daughter Cristhell who was a student of mine before I lost my counterpart, and
her 7-year-old son Kenneth Joshua, who is adorable, especially when he smiles
because he is missing his front teeth. They have a cat named Missifu who sleeps
with me at night (the family secretly thinks this is dirty…I don’t care, of
course). They also have a cow who gave birth to a cute baby calf shortly before
I moved in, meaning…fresh milk! I’m dying for a milking lesson, but they tell
me the cow has a bad temperament and won’t let me. But I do enjoy the mug of
warm milk with sugar with my breakfast every morning! My new house is a little
farther from Urbaite than I would like, about 3 kilometers that I travel by
bicycle almost daily. It’s uphill on the way there, downhill on the way back. I
have been making good use of the headlamp my loving parents sent me, since I
need to ride home after my community class that finishes at 8pm Mon-Thurs.
Fortunately I have students who also live out my direction, so I usually have
company (yes, I guide them through the dark like Rudolph). My house doesn’t
have all the luxuries of my other house; for example, running water. Water only
flows through the pipes a couple times a week at night, and we use it to fill
an enormous pila (water receptacle)
from which we retrieve water to use for the next few days. Unfortunately,
sometimes the water doesn’t come as expected, and we are eeking by on very
little today – I hope it comes tonight! However, my new family is absolutely
wonderful – they have welcomed me with open arms and love, and positively dote
on me when it comes to meals. Oh, and did I mention we have a laundry lady who
comes in once a week? Only those who have had to hand-wash their clothes will
truly understand the joy that this brings me. Finally, someone who cares enough
to make sure all the soap is rinsed out…So yes, I’m very happy in my new home,
and still take time to stop by my former home to visit the family, the cousins
who live next door, and the neighbors whom I’ve become quite close to.
Speaking of my former host family, I believe many have
already seen the pictures of the fawn that I posted on facebook. In April, the
does Gaviota who lives at the beach-farm gave birth to a beautiful baby boy,
who as of yet is unnamed. I spent a great deal of time photographing him on his
first day of life. The new news is…that Giselle, the doe that lives at the
family home, also gave birth to a baby girl last week! Her name is Pelusa, and
she is adorable and allows me to touch her gently. I didn’t take nearly as many
photos, because the truth is that all baby deer look very similar, but I
couldn’t resist snapping a few. And mama is as sweet as always and not at all
aggressive or protective. She also doesn’t seem to have the urge to follow her
baby around, constantly licking its butt like Gaviota from the beach does with
her baby. Speaking of deer, there is also some bad news. I have been posting
pictures on facebook of Chamaco, the father of these baby deer. He used to be
very aggressive, but ever since his horns came off in a very bloody and
dramatic fashion several months ago, he has been the very image of docility in
the house. I adored him because he is curious and likes to be involved in
household activities, a trait that often infuriated Georgina, our cook, though
she always smiled when she scolded him. Unfortunately, his horns slowly grew
back, and I enjoyed touching them because they were covered with a soft layer
of fuzz. Then, shortly before I moved out, he began scraping the fuzz off,
again in a dramatic and bloody fashion. Something about this process reminded
him that he was a tough male with two impaling devices on his head, and he
returned to his aggressive ways. He signed his death sentence when he pinned
Moises against a wall, ripping his jeans and injuring his leg so he could
barely walk. Marlene beat him back with a large cooking spoon she grabbed from
the kitchen. And so it was that Chamaco’s life came to an end last week.
Reports say he has not yet been eaten, but is in the freezer. They are
preserving his pelt, I don’t know whether to sell or keep, and they also saved
his antlers. Rest in peace, amigo mio.
Unnamed baby boy
the proud father, RIP
Another big change for me has been something I’ve been
wanting to do since I arrived: I joined a women’s soccer team! The team is
based out of Las Pilas, a small community down a dirt road from Urbaite, just
past the university where I work. It has a beautiful soccer field and a soccer
team of about 22 official members. Several of the players had seen me running
and mentioned me to their coach, and it so happened that one of my students was
on the team and offered to invite me to play. Last Sunday was my first official
game. We lost, I got really tired in spite of only playing half the game, and I
felt like I was running around aimlessly most of the time. I was disappointed
about my conditioning, but it seems the ability to jog half marathons and the
ability to run for 45 minutes are entirely unrelated. With some conditioning
and training, hopefully most of these problems will go away. The team played
fairly well, yet at a level that I can play at, which is good. So wish us luck
this season! There are only four teams in the league, so I’m sure we will all
get to know each other very well. Games are every Sunday at 3:00, which means I
have less incentive to leave for the weekends. Practices are Tues-Fri at 4pm,
though it seems to me like everyone shows up at 5pm and then I have to leave to
teach my community class at 6pm. I’ll do what I can at least!
I suppose I should take a moment to talk about my birthday,
which was on a Monday this year. Well, wait I need to digress a moment. The
weekend before my birthday, I spent in Managua with a group of 10 TEFL
volunteers working on an exciting project. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned,
Nicaraguan students have nothing in the way of textbooks or classroom
materials. A great deal of class time is devoted to copying things off the
board. So, we were all thrilled to hear that the Ministry of Education had
developed English textbooks to be distributed to all high school students in
Nicaragua next year! And would the Peace Corps please proofread the books for
mistakes? Proofreading has always been a hobby of mine (something my dear
sister and I have in common!) so I was looking forward to the task. We worked
tow full days in partners, two volunteers to a textbook for each of the 5 grade
levels. None of us were prepared for the sheer number of errors; we speculate
that a textbook-publishing company whose employees didn’t speak English was
hired to transcribe the textbook, because mistakes were abundant. We spent the
first day simply correcting mistakes, such as grammar, spelling, etc. One
volunteer, Jamey, kept a list of the most entertaining mistakes. One of our
favorites was: “A: What’s your profession? B: I’m a dog, Walter” (instead of
dog walker. Lol.). On the second day, we exchanged textbooks and made notes
about the content; our opinions about the activities and suggestions for
changes and improvements. We also had a ton of these, and I can only hope that
the government listens to us. Our boss, Greg, said he was going to suggest that
we personally be in charge of making the changes on the computer program (I can
hear you snickering, Dad), and I hope they let us do it so we can have free
rein to make improvements. It was also interesting to see how overtly
politicized the textbooks were, biased toward the current ruling party, the
Sandinista Front (commonly referred to as “El Frente”). But we expected nothing
less based on our experiences in-country, so we weren’t overly surprised.
Anyways, back to the birthday. I had nothing planned,
because from what I’ve observed in Nicaragua, only small children and
15-year-olds celebrate their birthdays. When Moises turned 14 in January, all
he received were hugs, and gag gifts of 3 bottles of coke of increasing size
with each meal from me. The one tradition I took part in was with the teachers
at my school in Urbaite. The tradition is, whenever someone has a birthday,
that person brings in a small meal, soda, and sometimes a birthday cake for
each of the 14 teachers and administrators. The other teachers each contribute
a little money, and buy a gift for the birthday girl/boy. I requested jeans,
since my other ones are a little big on me. The result was my first pair of
Nica-style skinny jeans; I bet no one can even tell I’m a gringa when I wear
them! They’re going to take some getting used to, but I feel like I’ve taken an
important step towards cultural integration. Anyways, goodness knows I wasn’t
going to cook, so I asked a lady from town named Maria to prepare the food. She
prepared tortilla with chicken and salad, and a vanilla cake with a layer of
raspberry in the middle and chocolate frosting, which everyone proclaimed
delicious. One down side to celebrating birthdays is that the administrators
invariably extend the snack break from 15 minutes to half an hour, if not 45
minutes, and I get frustrated at the lost class time; oh well. My two 8th-grade
classes surprised me by singing, offering me small gifts, and showering me with
confetti, and even my 9th grade class whom I didn’t teach that day
called me into their classroom to offer me gifts. I felt very touched.
However,
the biggest surprise was yet to come. First of all, I had been very discreet
about my birthday; I think only my counterpart Shirley, Moises, and one other
friend knew about it. But I had been warned about the power of gossip around
here, and word got around. So there was half an hour to go in my advanced
community class that evening, when suddenly I heard a ruckus outside. I froze
and looked at my students questioningly, and they all had huge smiles on their
faces. Almost all of the 30 students from my beginner community class had come
together, including some students who formed a band, complete with turtle-shell
percussion. They burst into the room singing, pressed a bouquet of flowers into
my arm, and proceeded to sing the infamous Nicaraguan birthday song, which was
approximately 20 verses as far as I can tell. Then the band continued playing
while the students milled around, the advanced class jubilant that they
wouldn’t have to present their interviews using the simple past. They brought
tons of soda and a beautiful cake with fluffy pink frosting. Another Nica
birthday tradition is to paint the face of the birthday boy/girl with frosting,
and I consider myself lucky for only getting a little. However, various
students went on the attack, and soon almost everyone sported some pink or
white fluff on their cheek, neck, or forehead. We wrapped everything up around
nine, at which time I headed home to share the rest of the cake with the family
and all the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins that live nearby. I felt
very special and loved on my birthday, and am extremely grateful to my
students. Now I’ll have to see if they can outdo themselves next year…
May was also the month of the university fair that I had
been planning for two months with Kelly, the health volunteer in Altagracia. I
think I’ve outlined the plan in a previous post, but I’ll recap here. We
invited universities from the island, Managua, and Rivas to give presentations
on the careers they offer and opportunities to receive scholarships. Getting responses
was a pain in the boss that involved hours of repeated phone calls on my part,
but in the end we had a group of seven who made the trip. Kelly was in charge
of the health portion, and she gave a presentation about HIV/AIDS and condom
use. I think overall the event went really well, but there were a lot of
unforeseen problems, as expected. First, our invited speakers still hadn’t
shown up by 9:15, the scheduled start time, so we delayed 45 minutes and then
had to improvise by inviting a woman from the community to speak about her
career. The students from 2 of the 10 schools failed to show up, and I still
don’t know what happened. We divided the students into 3 groups; one went with
Kelly, and two went to see the university presentations. We did two rotations,
then broke for lunch. This is when I realized that the lady who prepared lunch
had not brought drinks like I expected. So my counterpart Santiago graciously
offered to go to the local convenience store on his motorcycle and pick up 30
liters of soda, which we served and the students picked up after they were
finished eating. It then proved almost impossible to organize the students into
the groups again for the final rotation, and many students left early. So we
have many things to improve on for when we do this event again next year, but I
think it was a solid effort for our first attempt.
The month of May was not a very busy month in terms of
teaching class. School was cancelled one day for a teachers’ training and two
days for Mothers’ Day celebrations. Unlike in the US, Mother’s Day occurs on a
fixed date in Nicaragua: May 30th. On May 29th, class is
cancelled so the students can present an “acto” in honor of their mothers. I
didn’t attend, but from what I hear these involve dancing, reading poetry, and
raffling a “canasta basica” (basket containing all the essentials one needs to
survive in Nicaragua) to one mother from each class. Then class is cancelled
the following day so the students can spend time with their mothers. So I
suddenly found myself with a 5-day weekend, and thought, how can I take
advantage of this? So I hopped on a bus (more accurately:
bus-ferry-taxi-bus-taxi-bus-taxi) to visit my friend Alba in the northern part
of the country (as I like to call it: In the Land of Coffee and Bricks). After
9 hours of traveling, I found myself surrounded by green mountains and a
relentless drizzle as I arrived at Alba’s home. We didn’t do any touristy
activities; the trip was more about spending time together and me getting the
opportunity to see her life first-hand, after having heard so much about it
from her. She lives in a very nice house on the edge of town with a 30-year-old
woman whose husband works in the US. She almost always has running water, and
recently got wifi in her house. But she has to do her own cooking, which she
enjoys and she showed me one of her rice creations that she dreamed up a few
weeks ago. She took me to her favorite Nica café where we ate fantastic typical
food with another volunteer from the area, Carol, who then took us to visit her
site nearby. We got to see a really cool tradition having to do with the
Catholic celebration of Corpus Christi, in which artists use colored sawdust to
make elaborate carpets on the streets outside of the churches. We visited the
workers in a nearby bakery whom Alba is friends with a chatted with them while
they worked, after which they served us cake and coffee. I know, I’m not
usually a coffee-drinker, but the north is coffee country and I felt obligated.
We stopped by a convenience store whose owner is a friend of Alba’s and
snuggled with her two super-friendly kitties, Muchachito and Osito (Alba knew I
would love this). We took a day trip to the nearby city of Esteli to visit a
farmers market, drink frappes, and eat tasty organic lunches. I bought coffee
and chocolate for my host families and some friends on the island, and also a
new belt and some tea for me! We stopped by a women’s pottery collective on the
way back, but unfortunately the women weren’t working that day, so we poked around
the gift shop and left. We got stuck in a drizzle, and rewarded ourselves with
tea and rosquetas, like homemade
graham cracker cookies from the north, when we got home. Our final highlight
was an early-morning walk down a gorgeous dirt road (that would be perfect for
running) to a scenic river spot that Alba sometimes visits. We were most
excited to see a baby burro on the opposite shore, so cute! Then a 9-hour bus
ride back to my beloved island so I could play in my first soccer game the next
day.
Me with some kitties that belong to one of Alba's friends who owns a small shop.
Beautiful sawdust "carpet" for corpus christi.
Scenic river that we walked to.
Alba and I at said scenic river.
Okay, I think this might be the final piece of interesting
news that I have to report. I believe May 4th was the official
celebration of the Patron Saint or Urbaite. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely
sure who this is, but I’m sure what it means: it means that a bull-riding ring
is set up in the plaza, along with various tents for beer and snacks, and the
“Casa Comunal”, a communal roofed structure adjacent to the plaza, is
transformed into a disco. But is one day of celebration enough? No. One
weekend? No. This celebration continued every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for
the entire month of May. I ventured out twice when some friends of mine from
the community invited me to go. At first I didn’t want to because I was worried
my students would see me and spread ferocious gossip, but I relented and had a
great time. Though yes, the rumors have spread that I was horribly drunk
(totally false), but I suppose that can’t be helped. One of my friends asked me
how parties in Nicaragua compared with parties in the US, and I didn’t know how
to respond, as I really had no basis for comparison. When do we have large
dances where every member of a community attends and everyone knows each other?
Do we even have anything remotely similar?
Okay, thanks for sticking with me dear readers. I’ll
probably check back in sometime in July, please keep in touch!
