A little more info

My daughter asked about my ¨quarters.¨  Here is what I told her....

I have a three burner gas cooktop and a gas tank attached,  a bike ( that needs a lot of tune up work which I´ll get done as soon as I get back, a fan, three tables, a rocker, a plastic chair, a bed frame, a place to hang clothes...and a bunch of pots, pans nad dishes all of which I bought from the previousl vol. for $75.  Doesn´t sound like much, but most new vols. start out with nothing so at least I have a place to cook nad sit.  My bathroom and shower are outside but are in little houses ( its not an outhouse but you have to throw water down it to get it to flush) and the shower is just a pipe that comes out of hte wall...the water is not heated but it comes out of the ground a little warm due, I guess, to all the volcanoes around here and the geothermic heat.

The total square footage is probably about 200 but thats enuf for me.  I had a little trouble sleeping this past week as everyone has chickens and at least one rooster in their yards.  And , of course, the ever present dogs that apparently do not sleep ever !!!!! 

I expect to accumulate more stuff as I need it and am here for a while.  Like, get this, I have wifi access in my hovel.  The folks next door have it so my predecessor shared the expense with them and I said I would do that too.  I don´t have a laptop yet but my daughter and her family plan to come down next April so I have asked her to bring me one.  I am told not to trust the mail delivery system in Nic. ( specifically anything that has to go thru the Leon post office) with anything more than a flat envelope.  I have gotten a couple boxes that came thru the Manaugua correa, but I´m not going to chance it with the Leon folks.

Report on my site

I have just finished a 5 day visit to my site in Malpaisillo.  I head back to my little bario of Jinotepe tomorrow for a couple more weeks of entrenamiento ( training and language classes) then we swear in on Nov. 22 and then I am back here for 2 years on Nov. 23.    This place is quite different from Guisquiliapa, my training town. Its more of an urban setting but there are only two paved streets.  The suelo ( dirt) around here is very black, volcanic soil, I believe.  The folks I will be working with are terriffic.  One of them, Profe Adalayda, the director of the escuela ( school)  que se llama ( called)   18 Junio ( thats the the date the town was liberated by the Sandinistas from the Somozo´s National Guard in 1979)  There is so much political stuff that goes on.   If the Sandinistas should lose the election next year, the name of the school will change back to what is was before the Sandinistas got elected a few years ago.  Funny, actually the school still has the old name painted on some its walls.  I´ll be working in that school with 3 or 4 teachers and in another school, Nuestra madre Fatima, its a catholic school but gets some public funding somehow, with 3  teachers there.  This morning I met the English teacher there and he is all excited.  His English is pretty good but he´s Nica so of course he has an accent.  We are thinking that maybe we can combine my lessons on the environment with his English lessons and get both done together.  The kids all want to learn english far more than they want to learn about the environment so maybe that will be an incentive.  

Last evening, one of the profes from 18 Junio came by on her bike to take me on a little tour of the town.  I bought the bike from the leaving volunteer ( whose little space I am also renting for $50 a month, more about that later) so I hopped on my bike and we took off.  As I said, there are only two paved roads and they are paved only thru the busier part of town, they turn to dirt pretty fast and the dirt is pretty loose in spots - had to do some serious steering to avoid the cow poop, the running waste water and the many people who are out in the streets in the early evening.  We had to take one detour as we saw some muchachas coming our way with a young bull on a mecate ( rope) egging him on to be rowdy.  We found another route.  We went  looking at the few remaining trees from the old growth ( over 100 years old - I think we have found 5 remaining in the town) One is in the middle of the bus terminal which is a wide space surrounded by an authentic market, little stalls selling all sorts of things.  There is a group of women who sell various foods and drinks to the buses as they roll in, always blaring their horns and going way to fast, but so far I have not seen anyone or anything squashed.  There are lots of  ¨tricicles¨ three wheeled carts, powered by a youngish male with a bench in front of him with a little roof.  It is very cute to see them coming at you...today I saw three little kids in their school uniforms sitting in there on their way to preschool.  Very cute.


  So, my assignment is to teach about the environment in the schools, to work with the teachers to help them use more participatory strategies, to start a vegetable in as many schools as I can and to work with other NGOs ( ONGs in Spanish) on secondary projects whenever possible.  I have met some other volunteers from a couple other NGOs with similar goals so I think that will turn out pretty good. One amazing thing I found out is that there is a public access TV station located in a little casita ( thats a nice name for a shack) about a block from me.  Seems like a good place to put PSAs about discharging soapy water into the streets, trash in the streets, etc.

Oh, can´t forget this...   The school, 18 junio, has a special ed. class.  Not sure how many kids are supposed to be in but when I observed last week, there were 5.  Two are deaf, one can hear but not speak ( they are all about 15) one girl who looks about 15 and maybe is down syndrome, and one about 10 whose looks did not reveal anything but the teacher says she can´t learn.  So.....they were all stringing beads and making necklaces when I got there.  There was not a book or paper in sight.  The teacher has no training at all in special ed...she is in the class because she got anxiety attacks with the regular classes....while I was sitting there being chummy with the kids, an old man came to the fence and grunted...the kids all looked out and I learned that he is student in the class....he is 43 !!  He is clearly severely impaired and they say he has no where else to go during the day, his mother died last year, and he does not harm the other kids so they let him come to SCHOOL !!!!!  Can you imagine that !!!   I have my work cut out for me in this regard....those deaf kids don´t have any signing skills, they could not write their names when I asked them all to sign my book, they are not behavior problems and they sure seem to me like they could learn .  I know there are schools for the deaf in Leon but it is a 75 cent bus ride away and apparently the school district does not provide transportation.   Work to do there !!!!    The school summer vacation starts for all the kids at the end of November and they are out until the end of January so I´ll have some time to figure this out.  Apparently there is a woman here in Nicaragua who was a PC vol. for a couple of years but then decided to stay.  She is in her 60s and apparently is a sign language instructor somewhere here.  I need to find her....fast. 

And the other amazing thing is that last Friday, serendipitiously, there was a meeting at the school for the parents of the special ed kids. !!!! I got introduced but I didn´t say anything since I can barely speak to one person at a time, surely not a room full.  But, it was nice to see those parents all together ....like old times !! Apparently, they have an ïnclusion¨law but I don´t know where it is or what it actually says so that will be a project for me too when I get back here at the end of November.  MINED, Minister of Education, is in Managua so I´ll go there.  Apparently, there is a special ed. office.  Hope my Spanish improves fast !!! 

It has improved a lot but I still speak very slowly and often has to rephrase what I want to say so that I can used words and verb tenses that I know. 

One last thing before I go....yesterday afternoon, when I did not have anything to do and was sitting in my place reading ¨The girl with the dragon tatoo ¨( very good by the way)  a cock fight broke out in the yard of the casita across the dirt street from me.  I watched for a while from behind my wooden doors ( I have these two wooden doors that close in the middle behind one of those open iron work security doors). Apparently, cock fighting is against the law, but people train cocks to fight by coming togehter in yards ( across the street from me for example !!) and stirring up fights.  They don´t have those awful blades on the cocks so there is no blood, just a lot of crowing and squawking.  I got outraged for a while but I settled down.  These people are so poor and have so few things to enjoy in their lives, I decided to let them do this in peace....since they´ve been doing it forever anyhow and I am not going to change them.  Hopefully, their children will have more choices and make better choices.......

The birds were georgeous and the owners picked them up and stroked their feathers very lovingly and then shortly after that, placed them on the ground and egged them on to fight.  Go figure !!!çç

One more last thing, I went to Leon on Saturday for the day of looking around.  There is a huge mercado there with all kinds of scary and exciting activities and there is also a central business district that has a very European look in a central american sort of way.  There is a huge cathedral in Leon, takes up an entire city block, has 5 colonades inside, very very lovely in a churchy sort of way.  There is a museum of the revolution and of course many many universities.   Leon is about 1 hour away by bus and that bus ride is an experience in itself.

So, thats all for now.  I am getting closer and closer to actually doing some productive for the kids here.  It is so funny, they gather around me and stare like I am Santa ( or mrs. Santa).   They are beautiful in their little uniforms and georgeous hair and skin.

Thanks for the emails.   Ellen, I loved all that info.  I´ll respond soon.  The cyber is closing now.

Love to all......

Got my site assignment

For the next two years, starting Dec. 1 ( mas o minus) I will be living in Malpaisillo, Leon, Nicaragua.  Well, what can I say.  Its a city of sorts, 8,000 souls at last count but they have not taken a census in many years.  The entire municipal area has 35,000 souls.  It is surrounded by active, smoking volcanos. ( the word malpais means volcanic rock) It used to be the most fertile soil in the country but it is now ......well, not fertile due to overuse of chemical fertilizers to grow cotton during some very ugly years where the land and people were exploited for the benefit of a few ( you all know who they are ). Now former farmers have mysterious diseases, kidney and cancer are very common.  They grow basic grains, at least  and cattle ranching has begun to take a greater role in the economy.  There are some small women´s artisan cooperatives which might prove very interesting.  The dry season is a month longer than the rainy season and people living there now recall when the rainy season was longer than the dry season.  Does not bode well.   I will be working in three schools and at least one of them has two self contained special ed classes so that will be fun to work with those teachers on strategies.  I don´t know what kind of disabilities I´ll be dealing with but hopefully I´ll know something that will be of help.  They have electricity and water most of the time but there is no sewage system in the city so all waste water is either dumped into the street or into the suelo ( soil) on the property.  There are times of the day that don´t smell so good.  There is a public library and there is a vol. there now who is leaving shortly after I arrive so I´ll be able to pick up on some stuff she started.  She also has written out a lot of stuff that she wishes she had done differently so that will help alot.  Also, I´ll probably get to take over her house.  I have to live with a family for the first 6 weeks but after that I am free to live on my own if I want, and I am pretty sure I will want to do that.  I have met her at a training and she seems like a great person and a person in whose footsteps I will want to follow and in whose kitchen I will enjoy cooking !!!!  Malpaisillo is about 45 minutes from Leon which the city I wanted to be near and there are buses leaving every 30 minutes from 5 am to 5 pm so I was real happy to get this assigmnent. 

New paragraph.....for Ramelle.   One last thing on this post.  I just learned from the Senora ( age 70) with whom I am living that  the first Somoza ( during the 40s I believe) freaking SOLD part of Nicaragua to Costa Rica.  It is the part that is known as Guanacaste and has absolutely beautiful islands off the Pacific coast.   I was watching the travel chanel the other night with my host family ( the have cable) and the Muriociegle Islands ( spelling is wrong)  which were part of the sale are rated as one of the best 5 vacation cites in Central America.  This country has sure been screwed six ways from Sunday, if that is a saying !!!!

Love to all   Off to the land of volcanoes and a long dry season for me !!!!  At least there is a lot of work to do there and I won´t get bored !!!!

Now I´m sweating

I have a few minutes before I teach my last class in the escuela in our little town.  The topic is organic/inorganic basura and then we are going to put together an abonerra ( compost pile ) in back of the school where we have made a nice garden that seems to be growing pretty well right now.  We don´t know who will take care of it once we leave and that is a little bit of a downer as the kids are really excited to be growing vegetables.  They get very few, and less fruit, in their homes. 

I want to report one thing before I run out of time. I got my first haircut in Nicaragua last Saturday.  It cost 3 cordobas which is about $1.50 US.  There is clearly something wrong in a world where I paid $90 for a haircut in Cherry Creek and only $1.50 for one here which is every bit as good !!!!

For the future, I will be asking for boxes of school supplies from anyone who wants to send them.  Crayons, colored pencils, decks of cards, frisbies, note pads, so if you find any of these things or other little goodies that elementary children who have almost nothing might like for little prizes,  in second hard or good will type stores, please get and them and hang on to them  for me.  I will eventually have an address in my site and I will find out tomorrow where I am going.

All for now.

update

Well, I am back in the cyber in Jinotepe this fine Sunday morning.  It actually is ¨fresco¨which is what they call weather under 90 degrees.  Actually, I am beginning to adapt to the weather and don´t feel so hot so much of the time.  I learned the other day that body temperatures here are a few points, like 98.8, above what we call normal.  I can believe it. 

I am starting this new paragraph for Ramelle..Apparently, he likes paragraphs !!!

I have experienced a few interesting things in the last couple of days that I wanted to share.  First, we are half way thru training and I am sooo ready to be in a community where I will stay for a while.  I love my training site but it is hard getting comfortable knowing I´ll be leaving in a few weeks.  We had a presentation from current volunteers who are living in sites where there will be a place for a new volunteer and next week we get interviewed/given an opportunity to express our desires.  There is only one site that I don´t want and that is in a gold mining community that PC describes as very poor.  I don´t think I could take any deeper poverty than normal and I have such a hatred of mine owners in general....well...I just don´t think they should send me there.   I think I would like to be near Leon as it is a city described as ¨liberal.¨ Of course that relates back a couple centuries to when Granada was considered the cultural and conservative capital and Leon was considered the ïntellectual and liberal capital.   Leon is more of a tourist town with lots of colonial ( thats another issue) Spanish architecture that has not been damaged by earthquakes, fires or volcanos.  Anyhow, I think I would like to be near Leon but that means going to a place that is hot, hot hot !!!  Good thing I have grown to LOVE cold showers.

New paragraph !!!   So, the interesting things.  First, I was just hanging out in the front part of the house and saw a little horse drawn  cart coming down the road so I watched it approach.  There were two youngish hombres aboard, drinking cerveza out of plastic bags.  They sell things here, all types of things, in small quart sized plastic bags as it is muy carro ( very expensive) to buy a whole bottle of something , so they repackage it, like Coke and milk, into these very thin plastic bags, put on a twist tie, and people buy them, bite off a corner, ingest the contents, and then, unfortunatamente, throw the plastic bag onto the street.  But, anyway, this was the first time I had seen cerveza in a bolsa...but, when you think about it...why not.  I don´t think they have an open container law and if they do, it must not apply to horse drawn carts.   

New paragraph.  Another thing involved the Sandinistas.  We all know about them from the late 70s and early 80s and the contra horribleness.  Well, I have been reading a lot and know a lot more.  First of all, there is still a Sandinista party, in fact , it is the party that is in power now and the Presidente of Nicaragua is Daniel Ortega who was a big player in the ´79 revolution to overthrow the Somozas and then continued to lead the country until the late 80s when he and the Sandinistas agreed to hold an open election and by some stroke of luck.....his party lost and the Liberal party took over.  Anyhow,  that is another thing and the whole Contra funding etc.that went on  for at least a decade is another sad tale from down here.  But, yesterday, I heard this loudspeaker and siren approaching our little town and then saw three vehicles race by with Red flags flying and numerous hombes standing the back of the trucks waving their arms.  Some kids from my family, which is very very Sandinista having had many of their sons and one daughter who is now a lawyer fight with the Sandinistas against the contras in recent history, ran to get and fly our Sandinista flag ( which is black and red) in front of the house for when the Liberals returned.  Very interesting and very passionate.  One of the bloodiest battles of the revolution took place in this town where I am sitting right now and the Senora in my host home recalls the bombers flying very low over her house ( where she was raising 9 children) on their way to this town.  Recent memories for this family.

And lastly, this morning I got a taxi to town ( 5 cordobas which I cannot even calculate but 21 cordobas is a dollar)  so I could get a watch battery and on the road out of town I saw a whole crew of people and of course the ever present horse ( the horses here are actually large ponies - cheaper to feed) and cart working to fill holes in the caraterra ( road.)  I recognized one of the kids from our youth group and asked the taxi driver if it was gente( folks)  from Guisquiliapa....he said yes and we chatted about how they were not waiting for the gobierno ( government ) to fix their road...they just did it themselves. It was a wonderful thing to see.

Thats all for now.  I am NOT sweating at this very moment !!

October 9

Last Wednesday, we were all taken in small groups to visit a current volunteer in his/her site  I went with 4 others to visit in the town of Nagarote, in the department of Leon.  We started out at one of his 4 schools down a dirt road, crossed two large puddles by stepping on the rocks strategically placed by one of the helpful campo fathers.  The school had no electricity because someone stole the cable that ran from the school ( escuela) to the pole, no water because some had stoled the mecate ( rope) that lowered the bucket into to the well and they had replaced it several times, the children used to go to the casa nearby to get water but they found a dead bat in their well so the teachers would not allow the children to do that any more, the preschool classs ( 6 kids) were meeting outside because there was a coral snake in their classroom hiding in the adobe blocks that were stored in there, there were no doors on the letrines ( all outside toilets) so the kids went in pairs and held the doors for each other, there were 4 grades in one classroom ( 3-6), and wasps were swarming around our heads the whole time ( I learned that if you don´t ¨molest¨them, they won´t ¨molest ¨you) , they had workbooks that looked at least 10 years old and do not match the current curriculum the teachers are required to teach, and you know what.......no one was complaining !!!!! It was so wonderful to see how happy the kids were and how well they accepted what they had to work with.  We observed their science class and they all were working.   The PC vol. teaches a natural science class in each school 1 day a week and he has 4 separate lessons to prepare for this one class, and then one for the other 3 schools.  Despite this, he did not have any comlaints.  He is a young fellow, chemistry major, from Miami, Fl.  Hes been here a year and seems very comfortable in his situation.    We spent the day with him, met his counterpart in the school system , a school director, who helped  him get started when he first got there and who continues to help him out with school related needs.   Anyhow, that was a very enlightening experience.  We got a booklet with all the possible sites for our group (  we are called Nica 54) and I have been reading thru that.  There are lots of good places but I think I am going to try to get placed close to Leon so I can take a college class on Saturdays.  I hear there are a lot of colleges/universities in Leon, altho that is one of the hottest parts of Nica.  We´l see.  I don´t really have a choice - I´l get what they give me but I think I would like a small town where I could know a lot of people but still be close to a bigger town where I could continue to learn about Nicaragua´s history, etc. Thats all for now.......more later.  Hot and dry right now, even tho this is supposed to be the wettest month of the year.  Could there be climate change? ......hmmmmm now there´s a thought !!!!

We survived Tormento Matthew

Matthew never became a full fledged hurricane but we sure got a lot of rain for several days.  Parts of Nica were really badly affected but we were not.  Just a lot of ¨lodo¨( mud), damp clothes, lost power etc.  All things we can live with, considering.....  We watched the news when we had power and there were lots of evaucations in Nica, most north and of course along the shorelines.  We are continuing in our training, lots of great Spanish classes...I actually feel like I am a lot better already.  We had some trainings from current volunteers yesterday and this morning and it is great to hear what their lives are like in their sites.  Also, they are lining up Embassy families for us to spend Thanksgiving with.   Usually, the volunteers are sworn in right before Thanksgiving and then there is a country wide conference for all volunteers but it has been cancelled this year.  So right after swearing in we will go to our sites or stay in Managua to spend a day with an Embassy family.   I am opting for the latter.  I have been reading a lot about the history of Nica.   Many interesting parts....I am amazed that they have survived as well as they have.....we Americans have a lot to be ashamed of when it comes to our involvement in their lives...but, somehow, they don´t seem to hate us.  I finally had pinolo, or whatever.  It is not my favorite !!!  My favorite is made with the flower Jemica...it has medicinal value supposedly, is a beautiful color and tastes really good.  They are calling for more storms to move in this weekend but so far....nothing.  We are working in our garden this afternoon, putting up the barrera ( a fence to keep out wind, people and grazing animals.)  It is located within the fenced school yard but people let their chickens peck where ever they want, there are always dogs foraging for anything they can find and yesterday I saw two pigs tied out near our garden.  Why not, lots of good grass there for the taking.  The Catholic church is nearby - an ancient one that has been abandoned, holes in the tin roof, windows out, etc and a new pre fab looking one is located right beside it.   I´ll  take a photo...another contradiction.  Got to learn how to do PICASA.    More later, adios !!!!