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Thursday, November 25, 2010

Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving and as always I have much to be thankful for. It seems pedantic to make a list of everything I’m thankful for as I used to have to do in elementary school so I’ll give you my top 3 reasons that I’m thankful, (in no particular order.)
1. My health. I know I’ve written previously about my misadventure in the Health Center and that I’ve had the flu/cold 4 times, but, dude, I live in Central America and I haven’t had parasite issues as of yet. This is a miracle. I don’t harbor false beliefs that I don’t have parasites per se, it’s just that we’ve adjusted to one another so well that I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. I like to think that my stomach is strong from eating so much candy and whatever off of the ground when I was little, not washing my hands as often as I should, not washing my fruit and vegetables all of the time, and basically maintaining a close and working friendship with germs in general. But, I’m probably giving credit where credit is not due (let it be known that I do not condone eating things out of gutters. Anymore.) In any case, I’ve been lucky to have good health for the majority of my life, and especially in Nicaragua. And for that I’m thankful.
2. Support from my friends and family. You! Yes, you! Unless you’re a super-bored stranger randomly visiting the mostly-boring blogs of unfamiliar-persons, then I know you! And chances are that I probably even like you and think about you often. It’s hard to be a foreigner in a strange land, some days harder than others, and to know that there are people rooting for me to succeed, and eager to hear about my achievements and my failures, is sometimes what gets me through the day. You give me a lot of encouragement and it gives me strength to continue to do my work here. Honestly, I couldn’t do this alone!
3. My Mom! I know, I know, I already mentioned friends and family, but I’m really, really thankful for my mom. So thankful, in fact, that she merits her own number. She dutifully sends a monthly package and regretfully omits my jellybean request. Because she loves me and doesn’t want me to get cavities. I guess I see the logic. More importantly, I receive her advice ranging from how to make chili, to how to deal with willful counterparts, to what to gift a 15 year old girl for her confirmation in the Catholic Church. We talk almost daily via one media or another and even though she’s far, far away, she isn’t really. I have a nica friend who lost his mom when he was twelve years old. One day, I was telling him some sort of funny or silly story about my mom and when I was done he said “Isn’t it the greatest thing in the world to have a mom?” And I replied “Yeah, it is.”

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Time speeding slowly by...





I was told that I would hit a wall, and I have. I’ve been here long enough that I’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyle, the oddities of daily living. It no longer surprises me to see cows, pigs and horses, wandering in the street, competing for space with cars, trucks and motorcycles, because I see it every day. It is no longer noteworthy for the water at my house to come out of the faucet as mud because it happens quite often. My baseline has changed, and consequently I don’t have much to report to you all. Please accept my apologies and if you’d like me to write about something in particular, let me know and I will gladly oblige to your request.

I was given the latest issue of InStyle magazine and while I admittedly flipped through the pages savoring every detail of each photograph, each ad – the hairstyles, the make-up, the clothes, the background; I was surprised by my reactions to some of the ads. Swimming the English Channel in a Rolex? That’s ri-goddamn-diculous. Bono and his wife in Africa totally decked out in Louis Vuitton? I don’t care if the profits do “benefit Conservation Cotton Initiative Uganda,” the frivolous wealth and abject poverty juxtaposed brings the taste of bile to my mouth. All of the anti-aging creams, treatments, serums, drops, the 5 ads for different kinds of mascara that all promise the same results, the endless barrage of perfumes, made me both disgusted by consumerism and at the same time covet whatever over-priced, plastic-packaged, mass-manufactured product they were hawking. I’m at an interesting cross-road in this arena. I was recently asked by a friend back in the US how living in a third-world country has changed my ideas on consumerism. And the truth is, I feel way more pressure in Nicaragua to dress fashionably, to wear make-up and perfume, to paint my nails, to wear high heels, etc. It could be because of the machismo here; the women here are compelled to look beautiful. It could be because it’s a status-symbol. No one knows designer brands in my pueblo, the “luxury” brands are Hollister, Levi’s, Nike, Playboy and Adidas. No one has ever heard of Gucci, Dior, Armani or Dolce & Gabbana. So, Ross, to answer your question, there’s just as much consumerism in Nicaragua as there is in the US. The difference is that it’s scaled back on the amount of dollars spent. Instead of making $2000 dollars a month and splurging on a $500 pair of shoes/handbag/jeans/whatever, here they make $200 dollars a month and splurge on a $50 pair of shoes/handbag/jeans/whatever. The most obvious and common example, that you can find in any town in Nicaragua, is the household with a dirt floor, wooden beds, maybe not even a toilet and yet they have a big screen TV, a DVD player, and Nintendo.

People ask me how long I’ll be in Nicaragua. “27 months,” I tell them. “Wow,” some say, “that’s such a short amount!” And others reply, “That long? You’re crazy!” Personally, I think it’s both. To create a lasting impact on individual lives, on economic growth, on changing, even just a little, belief systems, it’s hardly any time at all. A drop in the bucket, really. But to be away from my friends, my family, the seasons, the music scene, my bicycle, art, food. Well, two years and three months is quite awhile. And so, as I feel time speeding slowly by, and each day here blurring with all of the other days as I spend 27, then 24, then 20 months of eternal spring, I have created some goals that I would like to accomplish in the next 19 months.

• Write daily
• Yoga
• Study Spanish
• Study French
• Plant a garden
• Go running
• Take more photos
• Start a women’s group
• Study for GRE
• Apply for grad school
• Start a youth group
• Art projects

Lots of funny things happen here. Like last week, I was asked to go to the clinic and translate for a team of doctors from the US. “Ok, that’s easy,” I thought, “It’s probably consultations, or vaccinations, or something.” Nope, it was surgery. Open-body, up-to-the-elbow-inside-of-someone, guts-spilling-out-all-over surgery. Perhaps you already know this about me, but I’m a vegetarian. I shudder when I see a hamburger, let alone a 5 pound umbilical hernia. I would have walked out the door after the first incision into the epidermis of the abdominal region, however…, I do have an affinity for dress-up and I got to wear scrubs, a cap, and a mask. Also, I am easily bribed with candy. Not just any candy, imported candy direct from the US of A that wasn’t even melty. So I stayed. At first I set up a stool in the corner of the room facing the wall so I wouldn’t see anything. But I kept looking over my shoulder to see what was going on and to shout translations back and forth. So I moved a bit closer, still averting my eyes. And then the surgeons started pointing things out to me and, as not to be rude, I looked. “Vanessa, as you can see here, we are cutting through the layer of fat.” “Vanessa, take a look at this gallbladder, all we have to do now is disconnect it from the liver.” And after watching the first two surgeries, I felt completely comfortable with the blood-and-guts factor. And so, I spent the next two days in the surgery room watching, learning, listening, videotaping, photographing, translating, and eating candy. And I can say with confidence that I made no mistake in not studying medicine.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010





Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs

The culture of sharing here continues to surprise me. Example: on Sunday I went to watch one of my friends play soccer and I brought him a Gatorade. He had a small sip before he handed the bottle off to one of his teammates, who also took a small sip before handing it to someone else, etc. The bottle never got back to my friend before it was empty. This happens with everything; clothes, food, shoes, etc – you need something that I have? Take it, it’s yours. At first, I got frustrated (and I’ll admit that I still do) because when I gift something to someone, it’s for them and their consumption and enjoyment, not for their friends or their friend’s friends. Sometimes I want to say something, like “Hey, I got that for you!” but that’s the USA talking, and I have to adapt and adjust to the nica culture, which is big on sharing. But the street goes two ways, and as easy as it is to focus on the giving side, I more often find myself on the receiving end. I went with some friends to the park last week and a friend of a friend bought an ice cream cone. It was passed down the row of nicas, with everyone taking a bite or a lick until it got to me. I took a bite, savored the delicious taste of friendship, and passed the ice cream down the line.

One of my best friends, Jonathan Malacarne, wrote a poem during training when we lived in Nandasmo and I just recently found it again. We had had a discussion during Spanish class about living in harmony with nature, versus fighting her and the implications and impacts of city-living and country-living. A day, or a week, or a month later he showed me the poem in his little brown book that he carries with him everywhere in his pocket that is reserved for the finished product: the poems that he has written and rewritten probably hundreds of times in his head and at least a dozen times on paper, and he has deemed worthy of self-publication, to be seen by (almost) no one but him.

Send the hippies to the city
Pave its streets with grass
Set them up in a bee’s nest
Plant the fences
Till the roof
Send the office workers home
Live from dawn till dusk
Stop separating life like garbage
Bottles and cans
Jobs and families
OR
Shine light on shadows of correctness
Proselytize
The glittering book cover
Scrap and claw
Lie and abuse
Light fires to move forward
Bury not treasure but the fallen
Say in the long run
“We’re all dead”
Whatever.
Choose.

A lot of weird things happen here, but one of the notably weirder things happened two weeks ago at one of my schools. I arrived about 30 minutes early and went straight to the teacher’s lounge to hang out until class started. I heard wild giggling punctuated by little squeals of excitement and didn’t think much of it because it was recess and recess can get pretty crazy. None of the other teachers even looked up from what they were doing and continued their conversations. The students squeals grew louder and more intense and I noticed little groups of them running around. I finally asked one of the other teachers what was going on and she replied nonchalantly that a crazy drunk guy was running around on campus chasing kids. Um, WHAT?! So, I went to look outside and sure enough, a boy of about 17 years of age (who had long ago dropped out of school) was drunk and perhaps drugged running around chasing the students, and yelling incomprehensible things. I was also slightly amused and assumed that he must not be a threat or else the teachers would have already taken action to dispel him and lock the gates. But then he started to throw rocks. And his antics grew more violent. And girls started crying because they were scared. All of the teachers but one are women and they locked themselves in the teacher’s lounge, screaming just like the little girls that they locked out. It was every man for himself, the men in this case being children between the ages of 10 and 16. The students continued to run from classroom to classroom, trying to hide from the intruder; it reminded me of the running of the bulls in Spain. The trespasser cut a girl on her face and the situation stopped being funny to me. The school has no telephone, the community has no police, there is no cell phone service and even if there had been no one had minutes on their pay-as-you-go cell phones to make a call. And so, the one male teacher tried to remove the crazy, drunk prowler from the premises by what looked like logical reasoning through dialogue, which proved to be ineffective (duh) and the charade went on for more than an hour. The drunken dude chased students, climbed trees, broke off branches, attacked students with aforementioned branches, threw rocks, yelled obscenities, made rude gestures and never appeared to lose momentum or stamina. Somehow the police in a neighboring town were notified and arrived. Before the police got out of their truck (which they were in no hurry to do) the inebriated young man ran out the open gate of the school and disappeared into surrounding corn fields.

Last week was Nicaraguan Independence Day which meant that Monday there was no class because the students were practicing for the parade, Tuesday and Wednesday there was no class because there were celebrations that consisted of said parades and civic acts, and Thursday and Friday there was no class because they were declared national holidays. Which meant that I spent the week attending various events, swimming in rivers, hiking mountains, drinking mojitos, going to dance parties, and general vagando en la calle.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Ideay

I had a dream last night that that I was back in Glenwood Springs after my two years of Peace Corps service was finished. I didn’t remember anything from my two years of service, as if my memory had been erased. Everything at home seemed strange and foreign. The entire town was under construction – installing strip malls. The unfinished strip malls were shiny, cookie-cutter designed, sterile, and flooded in florescent light from the cloudless sky. The town was full of strangers. I went to my favorite places hoping to find familiar faces and all I saw were strangers. I called my friends, eager to have someone to talk to and relate to, but they didn’t recognize me and had moved on with their lives, getting married and starting families. My cat didn’t even recognize me. I tried driving and found that I didn’t know how to. I rode my bike and crashed into things on the street. I wanted to call my friends in Nicaragua but I couldn’t remember any of them. I was totally lost and alone with no direction. And then I woke up. And what I thought was, “Shit, I’m only going to be here (in Nicaragua) for two short years and I need to make the most of it by taking every opportunity I get.” And also, “I need to have a plan mapped out for when I finish so that I don’t have to go home and face that situation.”

We haven’t had steady electricity for two weeks, maybe because of the rain, but maybe not. The rain has been flooding rivers and washing away houses and bridges. The water that comes out of the tap is mud and it gives me a good excuse to put off showering for another day to wait and see if it will clear up. I got a water filter – a clay pot inside of a bucket – and now I don’t have to use the chlorine but my water tastes like clay, which I can live with, because at least it’s clear.

I had my first terrible class last week. The professor was in a meeting so I taught the class alone, which I’ve done several times and it’s usually not a big deal, in fact I almost prefer it. The grade was 10th, the class size was around 40 students (small by Nicaraguan standards) and the topic for the day was “Leaders with Entrepreneurial Spirit” and “Creativity.” Class started out normally: about 10 minutes late with students walking in and out at their leisure, yelling out the open doors and windows at class mates, passing notes, and texting on cell phones. All of this activity I have to work around every day and with minimal shouting it isn’t usually an issue. But for some reason, on this day, the students were absolutely hellish. They up and left class, they refused to participate, they were screaming. And after multiple attempts at controlling the situation in a measured and civilized manner, I ultimately got frustrating and ended up yelling, curse words and all, in English. Which was actually pretty effective because the room got silent as I paced back and forth in front of the room berating them for their poor behavior and lack of respect. Honestly, I come with a disclaimer that says “I AM NOT A TRAINED TEACHER” and my classroom management skills are mostly made up on the fly. And that’s what you get. This next week, the professor was in the classroom and their behavior wasn’t much different so it was a consolation to me that they weren’t just acting up for me - they’re always a rowdy class, and that made me feel better.

The boyfriend/girlfriend thing here is really weird to me. On the one hand, it’s very formal and conservative. Girls generally aren’t allowed to have a boyfriend until they have graduated from high school, and when a boy wants a girl to be his girlfriend he asks her in person, “Will you be my girlfriend?” kinda like middle school. On the other hand, Jinotega (my district) has the highest rate of unplanned teen pregnancies in the country, and Nicaragua has an infidelity rate of 70% among men (the highest rate in Latin America.) WHICH is one of the reasons that when my site mate, a health volunteer, asked me if I wanted to co-teach a series of 10 classes to 9th and 10th graders on healthy relationships (Noviazgos Saludables) I agreed. I really enjoy the class because it’s information that the students never formally hear (self-esteem, emotions, gender roles, sex, etc) in a format that they never have (participatory!) We get to talk about topics that are slightly taboo, and I feel like I learn just as much from them about Nica culture as they learn from me about destrezas para relacionarse.

I was riding on the bus yesterday (feeling sick again with flu) when a man boarded and sat in the seat behind me. He waited until the bus started moving again before he twisted around in his seat, craning his whole body around the back of my seat and leaned over my shoulder.
“Sarah Johnson” he said. Um, if that’s a statement then I don’t need to reply with anything other than a weak smile, right?
“Sarah Johnson” he said more urgently.
“No” I said, assuming that he was trying to verify whether or not I was she.
“You were here in 1991” he said in Spanish. And if I was confused before I got even more confused because, dude, I was 6 years old in 1991 and either 1) you have no concept of age or the passing of time or 2) you are verifiably crazy. I decided to just ignore him since I wasn’t really feeling up to playing along. He sat back in his seat a few moments and then lurched forward again
“What’s your name?”
“Vanessa” I replied.
“Donalda?” he said.
“No, Vanessa” I replied.
“Oh, Donalda” he said.
“No. Vanessa” I stated firmly, thinking that he must be fucking with me, but know that he wasn’t.
“Nice to meet you, Donalda.” And with that he sat back in his chair, pleased with how the conversation was going.
He leaned forward again “Where do you live?”
“San Rafael” I replied, trying to be a vague as possible as to thwart any attempts at stalking me.
He eyed me suspiciously “Where in San Rafael?”
“Over there.” I pointed in a general direction.
“Who do you live with?” He interrogated.
I sighed. It really is impossible to keep where I live a secret since the town is so small and there are only two white girls living in it. One would have to conduct a random survey of probably 2 people to find out my whereabouts. I told him where I live. “I live with [name omitted to protect the identity of my land lady].” LUCKILY, he was just as confused about that as he was everything else.
“Oh, you live at INTA?” he said, smiling.
“Umm…..Yes” I said, although I have no idea where the INTA office is (Ministry of Agriculture). And with that he left me alone for the remainder of the bus ride.

I have gripe for the third time in as many months. I usually feel fine during the day, light cough, slight fever, congestion, but I’ve been spending my nights awake taking various mixes of drugs trying to control my symptoms so I can rest. I have a friend who is a doctor and he comes over to check on me periodically and adjust the plan of attack according to my latest health developments.

Last weekend was the birthday of a relative of the family that I live with and they threw a party at their finca in the mountains. A friend and I decided to walk to the finca instead of catch a ride because it’s a beautiful, rugged dirt road curving through mountains and we hadn’t seen each other for a while and wanted to catch up. A heavy rain had just passed through the area and the air was fresh and the ground was muddy. We walked and talked and laughed for about half an hour, all the while I was following her lead thinking she knew where she was going, and she (as it turns out) assumed that I knew where I was going. Both of us had been to the finca once before, and it isn’t that hard to get to, IF you know which forks to take. But….we got lost. My friend climbed up an embankment to get a better view and try and figure out where we were and heard the music from the party. Excellent, all we had to do was climb over a barbed wire fence, walk through a field, and presumably we would be there. But, it had just rained, so as we got about half way through the field we found ourselves mucking through a swamp. Which made me glad that I had decided to wear my new rubber boots on their maiden voyage, because I arrived dry and comfortable.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Lately...

I constantly flip flop. “I can do this, I can adapt.” “What am I doing here? I’m not even making a difference.” “This is exactly where I want to be.” “Is this where I want to be?” I have to ride the bus a lot. The people that I talk to on the bus want to know where I come from, why I’m in Nicaragua, what I think of Nicaragua, where I learned Spanish, if I’m married, if I left any boys crying in the US, how old I am and who I voted for. Sometimes I give English lessons on the bus, usually to boys my age who want to learn how to woo a girl in English so that they can “get passports.” When I’m not talking to people, I draft stories in my head that I never write down. I change the plot, the characters, the feeling, depending on how I’m feeling. If I’m having a good day the story might be about triumphantly overcoming adversity and the similarities of all humans that unite us. If I’m having a bad day it might be about soul-crushing loneliness and how each individual was born alone and will die alone.

I got sick last week. I spent the night trembling with cold and a fever of 103 degrees. I went to the health center as soon as it opened and they immediately internalized me in their emergency unit due to low blood pressure, 70/40. They ran a series of tests: urine, blood, feces, and after waiting in a one-room building for 5 hours, with an IV, no air-conditioning and no privacy, they announced out load that I had amoebas in my stomach, a bacterial infection in my lower intestines, a kidney infection, flu, and possibly dengue. The doctor told me I should not drink the water out of the tap. I asked the nurse when I might be able to leave. She ignored me. After a couple of hours they brought me some pills to swallow with a glass of water out of the tap. I informed the nurse that I was told by the doctor not to drink water out of the tap and was there perhaps any purified water? Absolutely not. I spent the day listening to babies crying, to telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) that the nurses and doctors were watching instead of taking care of patients, to nurses yelling at patients and at each other. People came in to visit family members and ended up watching me for an hour or two until they got bored. Strangers came in and touched me and got close to me and wanted to know all of my symptoms. I just lay in bed shivering and ignored everyone. I had to spend the night in the emergency room because my fever would not go down. I called the Peace Corps office the next morning and they told me to come to Managua so that they could monitor me. They ran a series of tests: urine, blood feces. They didn’t find anything. Maybe it was an anomaly? They ran the same tests again. Nothing. All I had was flu, after all.

I drink the rain water that runs off of the roof. I collect it in a plastic bucket and fill up my water bottles and add 4 drops of bleach per liter of water. The water that comes out of the tap is milky at best and brown at worst. The people here drink the water if made into coffee or refresco (juice, water, sugar) otherwise they drink soda. I have a hard time writing because my mood changes so often. I begin to write, inevitably have to put it down, and when I return I cannot tap into the same line of thought. I was walking to class yesterday, on my mom’s birthday, when a man started hissing at me to get my attention at a bar on the outskirts of town. He had his penis out and was shaking it around and yelling at me from across the street. I ignored him and kept walking. I usually don’t look or acknowledge when people hiss at me. It seems uncivilized when they could use language to communicate with me. Every time I walk by the police station the police officers hiss at me. Last week, I got hissed at by some men in a funeral procession. Some neighbor boys were calling me “lesbiana” whenever I left the house and they were in the street playing soccer. I ignored it for a week, hoping they’d get bored, but they didn’t. I went over and told them “Listen, it’s nice that you want to say hi when I leave the house but my name is Vanessa, not lesbiana. Now you can call me that, instead.” They were embarrassed that I had approached them and have now taken to calling me “chelita” (white girl) instead. Ok, we can compromise on that.

Role Play

One of my favorite elements of Peace Corps is that I get to play pretend a lot. A year ago if you had told me that I would be teaching high school I would have laughed at the impossibility of the idea. But here I am, a high school teacher in Nicaragua. I had little to no training in classroom management (and it’s probably obvious to the seasoned professors) but I’m learning new techniques daily and getting better and better at standing in front of 40 fifteen year olds and holding their attention for longer and longer spans of time (sometimes forcibly, sometimes through bribery.) The first week was the hardest. I work in five schools; with both 10th and 11th graders and some schools have two sections. That means that I had to give 13 introductions, and in theory (if my schedule didn’t overlap) teach 13 classes per week. Wowza. I digress. The first week was the hardest because I’m NOT a high school teacher. But, it’s my job, so the only option was for me to get in front of the class and pretend that I have all the training and preparation that I need. And it was probably awkward. BUT, the next time was better. And after 13 introductions, 13 first classes, 13 second classes, I can now say that, yeah, I’m a high school teacher, and when I walk down the street my students say “Adios, Profe.” And it’s kinda awesome, because I get to play a role that I would never have imagined playing, and I’m getting pretty good at it.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

¡San Rafael del Norte!

On Tuesday we got our site assignments and the verdict is….San Rafael del Norte! It is in the district of Jinotega, and my town is the highest elevation town in all of Nicaragua at 1,085 meters. Which means, it’s also the coldest, (mom, send sweaters!) The low temp is around 50 degrees but average is 70s or low 80s. Good news: tons of swimming, there are rivers and waterfalls close by and I’ll be surrounded by “fissured mountain peaks” and cloud forests. Great news: strawberries!!! An agriculture volunteer will be living about 20 minutes away from me on a strawberry farm...Peace Corps either read my blog or my mind! I’m a 4 hour bus ride away from Managua and 33km away (on rutted dirt roads) from both Esteli and Jinotega, which is where I’ll have to go to do my shopping. My town has a population of 5,000 and has tons of history; Sandino’s wife was from SRN and they were married in the cathedral in town. I’ll be leaving for my site visit on Monday for a week where I’ll be staying with my new host family and meeting all of my counterparts. When I get back, it will be a whirlwind two weeks full of deadlines and presentations and then we swear in on July 30th. Whew!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Home

It seems odd that I am in another country. I have to occasionally remind myself of the fact that I am in Nicaragua, far, far from my “home,” in a foreign culture speaking a foreign language. I have gotten used to and internalized (most) of the daily habits, customs, food, noises, and phrases of my family and community. I’m no longer afraid of public transportation, getting sick from eating or drinking strange things, walking alone in my town, running errands alone, taking bucket baths when we have no water, battling 5-inch-long cockroaches and asking strangers for directions (even though Nicaraguans are too proud to admit they don’t know so often lead us astray, but I’ll save that story for another time.) In fact, although I find myself feeling nostalgic for some things in Colorado, it is happening with less and less frequency. My definition of home isn’t changing per se, but perhaps morphing and growing to encompass a greater variety of feelings and smells and places. When I am having a rough day, the thought doesn’t cross my mind to be in Colorado; instead I long for my nica bed, my nica mom and sister, and the kinda weird but delicious maiz-and-soy-protein-ball-soup with vegetables my mom makes, to comfort me. It’s fun to step back and observe myself from a distance and the note the changes taking place. Just as I am getting more comfortable, we get our site assignments in 3 days. In three days we will know where we will be spending the next two years of our lives. It’s a strange concept for me to wrap my head around and I have spent hours and hours thinking about where I’ll be, who I’ll be near, how I’ll react if I get sent somewhere I don’t want to go, etc. The bottom line and the thing that matters most is that: I will be in Nicaragua. Somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter, right? I’ll be here, in this beautiful country, making my home, where ever I end up next.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Lo Nuevo

I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling homesick for the first time since I’ve been in Nicaragua. I had been having a vivid dream about going to a grocery store in Colorado and buying strawberries, and then sitting in my backyard at home and playing with my cat. I woke up from the dream and lay in bed thinking that I won’t be able to eat strawberries for 27 months. When I get back, in all likelihood, Herman (my cat) won’t remember me. I LOVE summer in Colorado and the way the shadows play on the ground when there is a breeze and the cool breeze itself, and the long days. I stayed in bed for a while and analyzed my dream and thought about what I was doing in another country. It was 5am and the roosters were crowing, the first round of people were in the street selling their milk, or bread, or cheese which entails them wandering around yelling their advertisements: “¡el paaaaaan!” or “¡queso, queso, queeeeeeeso!” I heard the birds chirping and the first busses coming by and honking their horns in maddening rhythms at the bus stop directly outside of my bedroom window. I heard wooden carts and wheelbarrows clanking clumsily along on the cobblestone street. I saw the red and then purple and then light blue dawn out my open window, from under my mosquito net. I began to remember where I was and all of the steps I’ve taken to get here and all of the work that I’ve put in, and that my whole life has been a preparation for this moment. I have an opportunity that many people don’t have, and may never get in their lifetimes to make a difference and to learn. I set aside my nostalgia, knowing that it will pass, and enjoyed the dawning morning. I made a cup of mint tea with honey, an ode to my life in Colorado, and began my lesson plans for the classes that I’ll be teaching the rest of the week.

Wednesday afternoon we got the list of possible sites and although I wanted to shut myself in my room and read the folder cover to cover, I had to plan a lesson. I finally got a chance to read the packet on Thursday afternoon and already had an idea in my head of what I wanted. I ultimately want PC to decide where I’m most needed. That being said, I’m leaning towards going north to the mountains. Because, I’m from Colorado, right? Kind of, but also because I want to work with agricultural projects and women’s groups. The site’s that are possible,( because I know you’ll want to know, mom) are San Marcos, Somoto, Corinto, Cinco Pinos, Tonala, Esteli, Granada, San Rafael del Norte, Yali, Leon, El Jicaral, Nagarote, Masaya, La Concepcion, Veracruz, Ocotal, El Jicaro, Bluefields, Pearl Lagoon, San Carlos, San Miguelito, El Almendro, and El Rama. The sizes range from 150,000 people to 2,500 people. Most have electrity most of the time and not all of them have running water. The farthest away is about 9-10 hours of traveling involving both buses and boats. The sites I’m looking at are 4-6 hours away from Managua and between 5,000 and 50,000 people. I’m staying open to possibilities and letting the perfect site find me. We have the site fair on Saturday morning where we will get a chance to meet with volunteers who are in the sites and hear about the projects and living situations of the different areas. We’re all super emocionados!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Volando vengo, volando voy

I have had a pretty great day, a pretty great weekend and a pretty great week. On Sunday I went to Matagalpa, Matagalpa for my volunteer visit. The premise of the volunteer visit is that each aspirante (trainee) goes to a different site to shadow a volunteer in their everyday lives. Matagalpa is a fairly large city with about 90,000 people. It’s a couple hours north of Managua in the mountains (ie coffee and chocolate) and the drive is quite beautiful. I stayed in a hostel (Buena Onda) that an ex-Peace Corps volunteer set up and I had hot water (yeah!) I had originally thought that I wanted to be placed in a small town but after visiting a city I’m having second thoughts. Matagalpa has tons of NGOs which, from what I can tell, is both good and bad. It’s good because, obviously, it’s helping towards the development of the country, but it’s bad because many of the NGOs give out money and then people expect PC to also give out money, which isn’t how PC works. I did get a chance to meet with a really cool NGO called FUMDEC; they work primarily with women on a variety of development projects. The principle is that by educating and training women in different arenas, for example agriculture or health, then the whole family base will be lifted up since the women take care of the household. I would love to work in this area and, based on the needs of the community in which I’m placed, I’d like to set up a similar project.

On Saturday we had a group outing to the Volcan de Masaya (it was a diversity charla, good work PC on picking a rad venue!) The volcano is still active and fuming with sulfur-smelling smoke. Garry, I thought of you, and even remembered aa and pahoihoi (spelling?) I read somewhere that Somoza used to throw people in the volcano (alive) as to dispose of any evidence. Aside from that creepy fact, it was beautiful. Also, PC brought peanut butter for a snack, so that was diacachimba (flippin awesome)! I came home afterwards to take a nap and my host town buddy, Jonathan,’s host mom came and yelled in my window leading me to believe that Jonathan was on his death bed and I was the only person in the world with the ability to save him. So, I went up to his house and he ended up being pretty sick with a high fever. We called the medical office but of course the labs and farmacias were closed so we had to wait until the morning to take any action.

Jonathan was sicker on Sunday morning that he had been the night before so I went on an expedition (with a bag of his poo) to the closest laboratory that would be open on a Sunday. I borrowed a bicycle and rode through rutted, dirt roads to Masatepe, about 20 minutes away, to a sketchy lab run by a maje (dude) out of his house. I waited an hour and a half for the results (which proved he had a bacterial infection) rode over to the farmacia, and then rushed home with his meds, pretty much saving the day. Kinda super-heroine status. At the moment he is still in bed, but I’m pretty sure he’ll live.

In the afternoon on Sunday my family had been planning to go to the Laguna de Apoyo to hang out on the beach for a bit. They warned me that we wouldn’t go if it was raining but when it ended up raining we went anyways. I think they didn’t want to let me down because I was super excited all weekend about swimming. I swam in the rain, alone, but I had a really nice time. It’s my favorite place in Nicaragua, so far.

This coming weekend is the site fair, so we’ll get to see all of the sites that are available to us and a week and a half after that we’ll get our site assignments. There is a ton of excitement surrounding our site assignments and it’s the main topic of conversation among the trainees. We’re half-way done with training and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I’m bracing for INTENSIVE training for the next 6 weeks. ¡Tengo que hablar solamente en español si quiero mejorar!

Monday, June 14, 2010

I know, I know, I’ve been neglecting all of you for the last five weeks. But I’m here now and I have a moment to breathe and to update you on my adventures!

I’ll start at the beginning. I left home five weeks ago today (woah! It seems like only a week!) for Nicaragua to work as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Small Business Development. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be here for 27 months. Unless I decide to stay forever, which I haven’t ruled out. I am in training for three months in Nandasmo, a small town (human population 3,000, stray dog population 300) about 20minutes away from Masaya, and two hours south of Managua.

I am living with a family in Nandasmo which consists of mom and dad, two brothers, a sister-in-law, a three year old niece and a 12 year old nephew. In comparison to the other trainee host families, mine is small. I have electricity and running water about 6 days out of 7 but there was a week of storms where we didn’t have either for a few days so I’ve become adept at bucket-baths. I’ve got it down to a science. Science can be messy, right?

I have two other trainees in my town with me and we have activities from 8am-4pm 6 days a week. We have “language class” in the morning but it usually turns into more of a culture class with some grammar and vocab thrown in for good measure. In the afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have a youth group at the local high school. We are working on an entrepreneurial project in which they are developing a product or service, conducting a market study, writing a business plan, etc and then competing against the other youth groups that the other trainees are working with. Our town won last year and our kids are great and high energy so this is one of my favorite projects. I’m also teaching one day a week and a private, all-girls, catholic school on business basics. Last week we taught them how to conduct a feasibility study for a business. I had initially thought that this would be horrible because when we went to visit the class room to observe the girls, they were completely out of control; passing notes, talking on cell phones, talking to each other, getting up and leaving the class room, etc. HOWEVER, when we taught they were well-behaved, engaged, and they all participated (for the most part). Which lead me to believe that perhaps the teacher who taught the class that we sat in on had created that atmosphere by not laying any ground-rules. On Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays we have technical training which can range from anywhere to cultural adaptation, to the economic history of Nicaragua. It usually sounds painfully boring but the presentations end up being really interesting.

The climate here is quite nice once you get used to it. The first week we were here it was HOT and muggy but I’ve acclimated and when it gets down to 80 degrees at night I usually put on a sweater. I had flu last week and I’m still trying to get rid of it but its getting better. I had a fever, chills, body aches, tingling extremities, cough, congestion, headache, eye pain, nausea, diarrhea, and I was really dizzy. BUT one of the other trainees has already gotten Dengue, so I’m doing pretty well in comparison. Also, I figure that it was a seasonal flu so maybe I won’t get it again this year? I am becoming stronger!

In all, I am having an amazing time. Training is taxing but the Peace Corps folks have it down to a science so I feel like I’m in good and capable hands. I’ll try and update this page more frequently and please let me know if you have any questions! I do have skype and I get to an internet café about once a week. Also, I have a phone now! 505-8438-0635 If anyone had a hankering to send me….oh, I dunno, jelly beans for example….or a letter on Lisa Frank stationary….my address is:

Vanessa Krueger
Apartado Postal #3256
Managua, Nicaragua
América Central

I love you all very much and I can’t wait for you to come and visit me!