Well the new school year is underway! Hardly a day goes by
that I don’t reflect on how much I’ve changed in the past year here. More
confidence in what I do, more understanding of the community, and definitely
more seasoned in all aspects of life here. And grateful that I have another
year here (well, okay, 9 months) to enjoy all that Ometepe, Nicaragua, and the
Peace Corps experience have to offer. So here’s the highlight reel of the past
few months.
I recently changed houses for the second time. For the past
9 months, I had been living with a wonderful family in a house in the small
community of La Sabana, which is unfortunately 4 kilometers outside of my
actual community Urbaite. After countless nights of commuting home in the dark
after my nightly community classes, my bosses in Peace Corps and I decided it
would be best for me to move back to Urbaite. Fortunately for me, there is a
family in Urbaite that has taken me in as one of their own, and they opened
their hearts and their home to me when I asked. My new family consists of two
parents about the age of my own, named Elise and Carlos. Their oldest daughter
Nubia, a good friend of mine, lives in the house with her 2-year-old daughter
Emily. The other two children, Carlos and Jeisel (pronounced Hazel) are
currently in Managua doing a medical practicum and studying at the university,
respectively. Both of them were home for most of the summer vacation here, and
just left today, leaving the house feeling a little more empty and quiet. For
animals, we have a dog named Princesa, a sow that looks like Chacala in pig
form, two black piglets, and numerous chickens and baby chicks. I think I’m
going to be very happy here, I just need to get a few more pieces of furniture
for my room!
My most recent achievement here has been a project unrelated
to English. As Peace Corps volunteers, we are encouraged to search for
community projects outside of English teaching, and I think I wrote before that
I was pursuing a project building ecological ovens to benefit local women who
had completed a dessert-making course and were looking to put their skills to
use to earn income for their families. Well, a few weeks ago my check for the
project came in! I have had unbelievable support from a man named Gerson, the
husband of one of the participating women, who is a welder, builder, and
general jack-of-all-trades who has proved invaluable. He accompanied me to buy
all the necessary supplies and negotiated a favorable price, did all the
welding on the ovens, helped with the delivery of the bricks to all the homes,
and is now being called upon by the women to build the ovens for them. The
project officially kicked off last Friday, when a friend of mine from Peace
Corps who works in the environmental sector, Tim, came to do the oven construction
training. He showed us how to make a
natural cement out of mud, horse poop, and water with dragonfruit branches
soaked overnight to make a sticky substance. Then he showed us how to use it to
construct the actual oven out of bricks and a welded barrel. We have now
completed two out of twelve, but can’t advance any further until the women
fulfill their part of the bargain by first constructing a brick foundation. I’m
so excited about this project! Here are some photos to illustrate the process:
Step 1: Order 3,000 bricks from a local brickmaker. This is what they look like before they are fired.
Step 2: Load bricks onto a truck. Be sure to recruit many strong men to do this, and only help when necessary.
Step 3: Gather sacks of mud to use for the "natural cement". Other necessary ingredients are horse manure (NOT cow), dragonfruit branches, and water. Strong men should also be on hand for this phase.
Step 4: Be serenaded by a nice old man wearing a scary mask and playing a guitar.
Step 5: Assign each oven recipient the task of building the base of the structure.
Step 6: Arrange for an experienced Peace Corps volunteer to come and give a training on how to build the ovens. Thanks, Tim!
Step 7: Construct the oven. Be sure to steal Tim's photos and post them on your blog as your own.
Step 8: Pose for photo. Then repeat x11.
Step 9: Self-explanatory.
I also completed one of the greatest physical challenges of
my life on February 8th, when I participated in the annual Fuego y
Agua ultramarathon event here on Ometepe. Last year, I ran 25 kilometers; this
year, I aimed to finish 50km, or 30 miles! I had been training for months,
doing some short runs during the week and long runs (17-23km) on the weekends
that usually culminated in me eating a hearty breakfast of eggs benedict at my
favorite diner, the Cornerhouse Café, in Moyogalpa. I was familiar with the
route, which climbed the 1394-meter Volcan Maderas, went down a different
trail, and ran around the entire back of the volcano before ending on the
scenic Santo Domingo beach. For the occasion, I invited my intrepid and
adventurous Aunt Donna to take advantage of the opportunity as an excuse to
visit me in Nicaragua; and wouldn’t you know it, she took me up on the offer!
We didn’t actually run together, because Donna was doing the 25-km route, but
we met up at the finish to take muddy pictures. Did I mention the mud? I know
Donna will be regaling us at family gatherings for years to come about the mud,
and she didn’t even reach the worst part! There is a section of the volcano
called the “jungle gym”, which necessitates acrobatic climbing techniques to
navigate the various roots, branches, vines, logs, hills, and mud pits. It was
actually quite an adventure and I enjoyed it, but it was tough - at one point
there was an unavoidable mud puddle almost up to me knees! All part of the
experience. I did pretty well on the volcano, but the run around the back side
of the volcano under the blazing noon sun almost killed me; I’ve never
run/shuffled so slowly in my life! But no, I am not motivated to start training
at midday to better prepare myself for future runs. It was funny to see how I
behaved at the water stops; at the first one, I grabbed food and drink and then
was on my way, maybe 5 minutes max. At the next two, I sat down and made myself
a peanut butter sandwich while I chatted with the workers for a few minutes. By
the final stop, I stayed a full 20 minutes recovering and preparing for the
final stretch, and in that time I didn’t see another runner either ahead of or
behind me. And so it came to pass that, 11 hours and 20 minutes after setting
out in the pre-dawn darkness, I crossed the finish line. A former Peace Corps
volunteer from Ometepe named Zac was coordinating the event, and he encouraged
me for the last bit over the intercom system, then greeted me by putting the
participation medal around my neck. And of course, my trusty companion Jerome
accompanied me all the way, though he warns me now that I should take him on
more training runs before attempting such a feat again in the future. I’m fully
planning on looking into trail running groups when I get settled down in the
US.
Me, Donna, and Jerome at the finish line! Very muddy. I have a picture from the top of the volcano, but it doesn't look like much more than me in a fog bank.
Auntie DonDon stuck around to play with me for another week
after the marathon. The morning after was devoted to bringing kids to
participate in the “fun run” organized in conjunction with the Fuego y Agua
events. 400 children from the island between the ages of 8-16 ran 3.5 kilometers
along Santo Domingo beach and received a t-shirt, a medal, a bag of school
supplies, and a snack. I brought 20 kids, and I think they had a blast! I had
taken my little host brother, Kenneth (age 8) on some 3-km training runs in the
previous weeks, so he was ready and excited! My sitemate Katie, Donna, and I
stood about 1 kilometer out and gave high fives to all the kids that passed,
yelling encouraging words. I may have been a little hoarse at the end, but it
was worth it to see how the kids lit up and started running a little faster
when they saw us.
Kids that participate in the fun run, with shirts, medals, and goodie bags.
I took advantage of Donna’s presence to do some touristy
things I hadn’t done before. We completed the “Ometepe triathlon” one day,
which consisted of: biking to the community of Merida (1 hour), renting kayaks
and touring the Istian River (3 hours), biking to San Ramon (1.5 hours), hiking
to the waterfall (3 hours round trip) then biking home and arriving after dark.
All the biking was on terrible dirt roads. It was an exhausting day, but I
thought it was fun. Aunt Donna? We also toured a coffee farm one day, part of a
cooperative that sells to the nonprofit BOSIA (Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Island
Association), a non-profit based in Washington State that sells the coffee and
invests the profits in community projects on the island, one of the most
important of which is a scholarship program for the most deserving university
hopefuls. For the final leg of our trip, we went to the beautiful and historic
city of Granada to visit its churches, eat its delicious gringo food, and tour
the famous “isletas”, a chain of small islands where Nicaragua’s rich and
famous have lavish summer homes.
Another project that I’m trying to get off the ground in two
communities, Urbaite and Altagracia, is a youth group oriented toward the
development of leadership skills and community service. I participated in a
Youth Leadership Camp, organized by 12 Peace Corps volunteers during the first
week of February, and I had the good fortune to be able to bring 7 students of
mine from Ometepe! The camp was in the northern province of Jinotega at a
retreat center called Vida Joven, and it was COLD. I brought all the warm
clothing I had, but the freezing showers in the morning were brutal and almost
more than I could handle - I performed gymnastic
maneuvers I didn’t know I was capable of in my attempt to only have the
smallest portion of my body under the water at one time. The camp was only 3
nights, and the mornings were devoted to classes presented by each sector of
the Peace Corps – the environmental sector presented on environmental projects
the students could do in their communities, the business sector presented on
how to write a personal budget and public speaking skills, the health sector
presented on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and teenage pregnancy, and we of the
English sector presented on how to organize a community project, using
materials we found online from 4H, I believe. No need to reinvent the wheel, we
figured. The afternoons were devoted to fun activities such as field games,
kickball, kayaking, etc. We also did a scavenger hunt, glow-in-the-dark
Frisbee, a bonfire, and Zumba night. It was a lot of fun, though a little
stressful keeping an eye on the hormone-charged couples that popped up
literally overnight. I had a great time, and am now in the process of
organizing the kids that attended the camp to organize youth groups. It’s
interested to see the two different approaches; in Altagracia, we have a group
of 12 kids, hand-picked by the participants, and they’ve decided to begin by
replicating the classes they received at the camp. In Urbaite, they decided
they wanted anyone who was willing to participate, so we presented the project
in all the classrooms at the high school and have a list of 70 names; we have
yet to organize a first meeting, mainly because the kids who participated in
the camp are swamped preparing for an upcoming science fair. This is a project
I’m really excited about, and I hope it does great things in the community and
empowers the kids to be future leaders of Nicaragua!
Me with my kids at the YLC 2014
While I’m on the subject of camps, I also want to talk about
the camp I worked out the second week of January, just days after returning to
Nicaragua. It was called FACE Camp (Fluency, Accuracy, and Confidence in
English) and the participants were 40 English teachers from all over Nicaragua.
The event was organized by the CCNN (Centro Cultural Nicaraguense
Norteamericano), specifically by an amazing woman named Elizabeth Smith, who
works as the English Language Fellow for the organization. She organized a team
of 4 Peace Corps volunteers and 3 of the best English minds in Nicaragua to
plan the event. Each PCV was paired with a Nicaraguan counterpart to plan a
core class (mine was academic writing, and we chose to focus on memoirs) and an
elective (mine was drama, something neither of us had any experience with).
There were four days of class, with each ending in a culminating project that
the teachers could take home with them in a portfolio. I was excited because my
counterpart Santiago was accepted to participate in the camp, and he really
enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. The camp was intense because of the
classes, and the daily workshops on important topics related to teaching, but
it also had a lot of fun activities like game night, Jeopardy night (organized
by me, thanks to my Jeopardy powerpoint experience that I gained in China!),
samba dancing lessons (led by one of the Nicaraguan counterparts), a bonfire,
and a talent show (we performed the “Cupid Shuffle”, a highly technical and
complicated dance routine). This camp was one of my favorite and most rewarding
activities so far in the Peace Corps, because I could see the impact we were
directly having on Nicaragua, training and empowering the high school English
teachers who will in turn educate the youth of this country. I met a lot of
amazing people and hope to meet up with them again in the future!
Ok, I guess that’s all for now. Hope you enjoyed the update,
please keep in touch! And I’m always open to accepting visitors J
