Benji has a home

Thank you, all you wonderful people.  I got responses ranging  from "ahhhhhhhh Pat" to "send him tomorrow."  I really got a glimpse of what wonderful people I have the priviledge of knowing...thank you all.   My friend over here, Chelsea,  put him on her facebook page at the same time I  blogged about him and she got a hit.  The ex boyfriend of another volunteer wants Benji.  The volunteer and her Nica boyfriend had a dog who looks very similar to Benji but they have broken up and the volunteer is taking the dog back to the US with her in a couple of months.  So, she told her old boyfriend about Benji and that was that.  He will be living in Riva which is in the south of Nicaragua, near the Costa Rica border.  He will have a good home and will not have to endure a long airplane ride. 

But, thank you all.   Does anyone have any interest in little horses that look more like ponies but work like oxen ??!!  Just kidding, but there are tons of needy animals down here.  You might see another Benji on my blog but I will not toy with your hearts. 

Love to you all,
Pat

Benji needs a home

Ok, its starting.   I need a home for this good guy.  Another volunteer and I will help getting him to his new home.. he .just needs one.  He is very gentle and soft, even with his hard life.  He is also very skinny under that pretty fur.

  He lives in a neighborhood but not any particular house.  When Chelsea, a PC vol who lives in his neighborhood,  leaves in November she does not know where he will be  getting his next meal.  If someone will take him, we will get him his shots, neutered, and provide food for him for the next year and then I'll  bring him to you when I come in Nov. 2012. 

Just another update

Nicole, the volunteer from Switzerland, whose house I am now renting, on a horse out in the country.

This is the house of Javier and Doris in the Valle de las Zapatas.  He seems to be a serious farmer.

I am going to call them Javier and Doris...not sure at this point of their genders but who cares.  They seem happy. I am glad I got two of them.

These kids are experts on innovation...no drum stand, so where's my bike !!!

There is a Nicaraguan word...fachenta.  It means fancy, snobbish.....these girls were fachenta this day.

I took one of my 3rd grade classes on an excursion to the mercado to watch the women there who make those little purses with recycled chip bags.  The kids were enthralled and the women were very generous. 

Three of my lovely girls playing memory with the color words in English...they really got into it and are very competitive..but, good losers.

This building has interested me from early on but I did not know that it had a history. This is an example of why this country has no infrastructure.  This was the train station for our little town, which linked it and a lot of othe little towns to the cities and other small towns along the way.  I can't find a whole lot about it on the web, but apparently it was started in the late 19th century, grew larger and then declined and then President Chamorro, a woman unfortunately, sold the whole damn railroad to another country as recently as 2002 !!!!!! She sold the country's railroad !!!!!  My counterpart here remembers when it was running thru the town....of course, that is only 9 years ago....OMG !!!!

Not a whole lot new in this little burg.   There have been a lot of disruptions to the school schedule lately because of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the town along with the preparation for the Nacional dia de patria which is either the 13th or the 14 th of September.  They get the whole week off from school so I am not sure which is the official day.  There are parades both days so that further confuses me.  But, to be sure, the kids are having a lot of fun preparing with all the drums and marching and the carnival in town, etc.  Its very exciting for them.

I am attaching some photos from my trip yesterday to one of the comarcas ( suburbs) of my town, Valle de las Zapatas.   According to the farmer who we were visiting, there are about 150 houses there, and two schools so it is not really small.  All the families are involved in agriculture or cattle and it was a really delighful place.  I went with Nicole, the volunteer from Switzerland, who brought her bike here from Leon on the bus and then we biked out there together .  It was about 45 minutes each way and was not too bad in the morning while it was still sort of cool but it was a killer at 3:30 when we returned. 

The farmer, Javier, and his wife get up at 3:45 each day to milk 5 cows by hand and then he gets on his bike and bring the milk to his sister's house, across the street from my house, and she sells it.   That might give you an idea of how labor intensive everything is here.  While we were at the house, his herd of dairy cows, there were about 30 total, came trudging home and I discovered he hires a teenager who herds them on a horse, brings them home for water, and then his son, age 9, uses the same horse to take them back to the field until they come back home about 5 for the night. 

While we were there we saw 4 kittens but no mother and learned that the mother had been killed on the street a day earlier.  So, since they can lap up milk on their own, I offered to take two. ( Picture below)   Javier brought them to me this morning in a card board box hung from his handlebars and they are adjusting nicely.  They are curled up in my lap right now and I am really glad I got two as I think one would have been really traumatized to be taken away from all his siblings so early.  Anyhow, I have two and they seem to be happy, so far.

Another interesting sight out there  was a dog dragging his hindquarters around.  Seems he too was hit by a car which apparently broke his spinal column as he has no sensation in his back end.  He does not seem to be in pain, eats , poops, etc so despite him looking very very pitiful, I guess he is better off like this, than dead.  I guess.....

I think I have gotten a little more hard hearted about the hard life animals have down here.  I see so much of it from killing iguanas to beating and starving horses....its horrible..but every once in a while you see animals that have it a lot better and it is so refreshing.  It seems all the Nicas know there is a lot of mistreatment of animals but no one seems to be able to do anything about it.  They have an animal abuse  law that they refer to in stories in the paper but clearly it is not enforced.  I have seen these very small horses, I think they are really ponies, that they use to pull carts all over town, including in the cities of Leon and Managua, right along with the 18 wheelers and the huge buses, with multiple brand marks all over their bodies, clearly someone just kept placing the branding iron in various places all over the poor animals, obviously not caring about the pain involved.  But, if that is clear for me to see, surely the police can see it and could enforce the law by charging that poor horse's owner with something.  Its clear, the authorities here are overwhelmed.....and animals come way down on their list.

Javier's wife, Doris, is the lady who comes to my house once a week to mop the floors and do my wash, all of which is well worth the price.  Anyhow, I have this pile of fallen leaves and kitchen scraps in my backyard ( they call it a patio)   They usually burn everything like that but one of Peace Corps goals is to teach them to USE organic waste, compost it, or at least don' t burn it, at least pile it up somewhere and let it rot naturally !!!!.  Anyhow, when we were out there yesterday at her house, she told me she has started doing that after she saw my little pile in my yard !!!  Yay, a victory. 

Also, one of my students from the catholic school lives out there too so Javier's daughter took me to her house for a little visit ( ratita).  She took us out to show us her patio and all her trees and animals, and she told me that she remembers the video I showed them about the endangered species in Nicaragua.  Another small victory....gotta take the small when ones when I can !!!!

This next week, since the schools are closed, on Monday I am going to Esteli, a town not too far away to have lunch with another volunteer who is leaving Nicaragua in October, a month short of her 27 month committment.  She was teaching English is a very samll town outside of Esteli and had a tough time.  She did not enjoy her assignment very much, but she loved the kids and made lots of friends in her town and in Esteli.  Esteli is not as big as Leon, but its pretty good sized and has a couple nice hotels and restaurants ( with airconditioning)  Seems all the volunteers like getting away about once a month to a place with AC !!!! 

 Tuesday and Wednesday are the parades here in Malpaisillo so I'll have to make an appearance at both of them, and take some video.   I have english classes each afternoon, and some evenings, in my house so I'll probably continue with them if the kids come.  I'll try to work in the gardens some, but it really does not make a whole lot of sense for me to do that without some teachers and or students involved.  After all, its a teaching project !!!  Actually, its a good week to be off so I can get my new little friends acclimated to their new home. 

I have an update on Margarita.  Turns out she is 9 months old according to one of the girls in her family ( although she could be wrong and I plan to see what the vet thinks).  She has a large place on her back without hair and the girl told me that it was all burned off when a neighbor woman poured scalding water on her to get her to stay out of her house.  When I told other people about this, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, yeah, thats what they do around here.  See what I mean !!!!?????   Anyhow, I think her hair is growing back,.  I can now pick her up and touch her all over.  I have cut off a lot of her mats and I think she is still flea free.  She has not come to eat in the last couple of days so I have not seen her.  I actually think she gets enough food at her house, its just not dog healthy food....its their leftover rice and tortillas.  Anyhow, I want to bathe her this week....just petting her turns my hands black..she is so dirty, but very very sweet ( carinosa, they say down here). 

I also have a neighbor's full grown cat who has started coming to eat the dog food that I put out.  She seems to be real hungry so I just let her eat.  It will be interesting to see how these various animals all get along with the two kittens.  I am calling them Doris and Javier....the names of the farmer and his wife who gave them to me.

So now, some photos.

A really short one

Margarite was on my porch tonight eating and drinking, and then she laid down and rested .....and she WASN"T SCRATCHING FLEAS !!!!  I'll bet that is a first for her....it was so wonderful to watch.

I got the first half of that pill into her and will get the other 1/2 in on Sept. 13, then monthly after that.

I tried to get her a pill today to prevent pregnancy, but they don't have a pill, just an injection.  When I said I could not give her that,the vet asked me if I could bring her in and they would do it, so I whispered to him, " She's not my dog....."  He laughed....so, maybe when she gets real relaxed around me, he said I could give her a little sedative, and then give her the shot...so, maybe I can do that in a couple months.

Just an update

I've been back about 2 months and everything is back to normal.  I am having English classes in my house with no more that 3 kids at a time so that is very nice.  I still have my class at the school for the younger kids and that usually turns into a free-for-all, but they seem to like it that way, so I can live with it.  ( for an hour a week)

I was planning to blog last sunday, but just when I got all geared up, the power went out and did not come back on until sometime in the night.  Then, as I was getting into the shower the next morning, with the bathroom light on, I discovered there was no water.  I learned later from another teacher that there would not be water FOR 4 DAYS !!!!! Apparently, they notified all of us good citizens but I did not get the message.  They use these red moto taxi's ( a three wheeled scooter with a cab on it)  with HUGE speakers strapped on the top, to go up and down the streets announcing everything from a water shut off to a death/funeral in the town. They also use the same means to sell green peppers, announce church services, announce baseball scores, etc. so I have pretty much grown to ignore them.  Besides, the guy doing the talking is also the guy driving the moto taxi and it usually sounds like ....  "BLADHALDKFGeotjvnsjfleiwqjdkgfnvbjgtoyJito" or worse, to my ears.

I'm attaching some photos.  One is of the 50th Anniversary celebration of Peace Corps ( 30 years in Nicaragua) that was held in a very nice restaurant in Leon.  I went and took one of the principals ( directora) of one of my schools.  It was nice, very small and simple. I think she enjoyed the information.   I guess in the past they have had a lot more money to spend on celebrations and the like, but they have had their budget cut so they are cutting out the frills, too.

I took a bike ride this morning, my first other than in the streets of Malpaisillo.  It was a little scary as there is virtually no shoulder and the buses and trucks move awfully fast.  But, I made it.  I went out to a little community to give some money to a family to pay the bus fare for the young woman, Jackeling, who I have mentioned before.  She is going into Leon 3 days a week to help out and observe in a deaf school so she hopefully can get hired as a teacher and hold classes here in Malpaisillo for our deaf kids, their families and those from the surrounding comarcas.

 I have learned that the reason there is so much deafness here is because the families have access to antibiotics over the counter and those which end in "micin" have the possible side effect of deafness.  Apparently, when children are born in unclean conditions they often suffer "sepsis" which the family then  treats with this antibiotic which apparently kills the infection but often results in deafness.  The rate here is 5x that of the US.  Actually, I am surprised it is not higher. 

Anyhow, I have gotten involved in attempts to get some deaf education going here.  I am planning to host a week or two "camp" when the kids are off school in January, to teach them some basic signs and finger spelling.  Kids love that stuff and learn much faster than grandmothers...I am sure.  I am hoping to work with the lady who directs the Public Library.  She is currently in Pittsfield, MA on an exchange with their library.  She has never flown before and she is traveling alone.  The folks in MA offered to allow her to bring a traveling companion, but apparently we would not issue the person she chose a VIsa so she is coming alone.  That will be a riot !!  She is very eccentric !!

So, the first picture below is that of a litte........doggie !!! how pitiful is she ??Her name is Margarite and she has a family but its not much of a life.  I have started feeding her and giving her fresh water.  She chows down on both.  I got a pill ( 10 cordobas==about 22 cents) to give her to kill fleas.  Sometimes they bite her so bad, she cries out and then goes after them.  Very sad, and she is filthy.  The little girl who owns her calls her their Pekinese.   If she has Peke in her, its a very small percentage.  Anyhow, I am giving her some food and comfort for a year or so.  I'll try to get a better picture but she is very timid.  I told Helen, her owner, that she is very timid and Helen says thats because we hit her.  Duh !!! There are no pretenses over here...that is for sure.  I have been feeding her for only a few days, but the other night she came and I did not know it , so she barked, to let me know she was available for eating.  I have this flea killer pill to give her so I have to buy a hot dog to stick it in now that she'll let me get close enough to toss bits to her.

Margarite having a little snack and some fresh water on my front porch.  She is very timid but at least she does not run when I open the door.  She waits for something to appear in her bowl. 

This is Helen with her pig.  Her family owns Margarite and they live right behind me on the next calle but we have a very high concrete wall between us.  This is not my street, mine is paved.  This is the street that connects my street with Helen's  and it  is a river after the rains.  The rains come down so hard and fast that the earth cannot absorb them so theres a lot of runoff and the plants dry out the next day. 

 

This is the 50th Anniversay of Peace Corps celebration.

These are some 5th graders with their teacher , Brenda.  They took some gifts and a cake to her house and invited me.  They'll each get a copy of this photo when I remember to t ake my cable to Leon with me. She is a fantastic teacher. 

This is an inside shot of a little place in Leon, La Rosita.  Some gringos own it and they cater to extraneros from everywhere.  Lots of PC vols. meet there for various purposes and TO EAT !!! 

This was taken at the restaurant where the PC held its 50th anniversay.  Just a shot from the second floor down to the entry way.  Its very pretty with lots of beautiful woodwork.

I have internet in my house thru a modem that connects to the phone system.  That has been very nice and lets me keep up with my loved lovely ones in the US.   I have a granddaughter skiing in Chile right now with her ski team and then she has been invited to ski with the US ski team ( not as a member of the team, just as a prospect) this winter in Austria, while the rest of that crew spent several days on Lake Powell.   My son and his wife have been travelling a lot with their music and this past weekend was spent in Santa Fe. Check out Finnders and Youngberg on YouTube.   When he isn't traveling the world to Star Trek conventions, my brother is in upstate NY writing screen plays and fighting the fracking companies that want to get into the shale in his part of the woods. My sister is in Annapolis doing good deeds in a thrift store that supports the elderly in their homes, that is,  when she is not in Florida, running the condo association down there.

So, thats it for me for now

Love,
Pat
PS  Margarite says good bye too !!!!

Variety is the spice of life

Today was one of the most diverse I have had  so I wanted to be sure to log it, for my benefit at least and it might be interesting to some of you.  I went to my public school, 18 de Junio, at 7 am to take some posters I had made that have the English words for most of the colors.  The teachers were thrilled to get them and the kids just LOVE anything related to speaking English.    Then, I lost my patience with a water spigot that has been leaking for at least two days.  It was clear no one was going to address it so I went to a local ferreteria, hardward store ( my counterpart's husband has one on their front porch - photo attached) and bought a "clave" spigot for 72 cords which is about 3.50, took it back to the school and the special ed. teacher fixed it.  My counterpart said that Paticia " esta sufriendo" about all the water that was just spewing out all over the playgroud unless someone tied the turning mechanism down.  Anyway, it just amazes me how so many people down here can just NOT SEE so many things.  I guess you have to get that way to stay sane when so many things are in such disarray.  Its the third one I have replaced....I just can't stand to see water going all over the place when the dogs are walking with their tongues hanging out....

So, I left that school about 8 to keep a prearranged meeting.  I had arranged over the phone in Spanish ( can you believe that ?) with the sister of  the girl who is deaf go to Leon with me to meet some of those folks who work in the deaf community.  The plan was that I would get on the bus in Malpaisillo and she would be standing along the highway and I would be watching for her and the bus would stop for her and we would go the rest of the way to Leon together .  It worked.  She was there and the bus stopped and so forth.

I had arranged ( or so I thought)_ to take her to Leon to meet some folks at a special education school who could get her connected with the right people so that she could hone her sign language skills, get some teaching skills and hopefully come back to Malpaisillo as a paid teacher and teach our many many kids who are deaf and currently have NO services.  Most of those kids just stay home, but some go to school and just watch whats going on and look forward to recess !!!

So she, Jackeling, and I got to Leon, got a taxi to the part of Leon called Sutiavi where the school is located and got to the school only to find that there were no kids there, the main teacher she needed to see was at a training in another town and most of the rest of the teachers were in a training.  She did get to see the three deaf teachers who were there but not at the meeting and they all knew each other from somewhere ( the deaf community here is very close, just as it is in the US) so that part was wonderful. 

One teacher came out from the meeting and basically told us to come back on monday and we could see Martha, the lady we need to see.  So, that means on Monday, after my morning in the school here , I'll get on a sweaty bus, meet Jackeling along the highway, and make another stab at Leon.  If nothing else, I am gaining huge confidence in my Spanish when I have to talk to all the folks on various topicts.

 Even our taxi driver was a treat - I spoke to him in Spanish about where we wanted to go and then, when the other guy got out, the driver started talking to me in English.  He had learned it all in high school here and was now in his last year of college....driving a cab and finishing college.  The odds of him ever finding a job other than driving a cab are very slim...but many of our young people are well educated with nothing to do with their education.  Its sad. 

So, Jackeling went home on the bus and I stayed in Leon to do some errands.  Actually, I bought a dock so I could play my ipod in the house without earphones.  Its wonderful.  I also went to that french bakery, bought a tuna sandwich on a whole wheat baguette ( a big treat) took it to the super market where they have air conditioning and a few tables, bought a paper and sat there and ate my sandwich and read the paper.  Yes, read the paper, I buy one almost every day and can pretty much understand it all.  The politics are really heating up...we actually had a bit of a riot in one of the smaller towns in the northern part of the country.

I got home about 2:30.  The bus ride was not all that bad...not at all crowded and no rain.  Two of the teachers at my other school and I had agreed to be at their school at 3:30 to work in the garden.  We had talked and they let me know, by text message, that this was the best date and time for them and it worked for me.   So, at about  3:20 off I go with a bag of partially composted leaves and kitchen peelings in a sack in my basket behind my seat and a bucket of the same stuff hanging off of my handlebars.  There were a few kids there , but NO teachers.  The garden was clearly dry as a bone, as I knew it would be.  The partially composted leaves were to mulch the plants to try to preserve some moisture.  So, I spread the leaves around a couple of the plants and watered them in and they looked so much more healthy just with the leaves there instead of that dry powdery " soil" lying there.  Notice I put quotation marks around that word...its not really soil...its dust.

By way of background, the Nicas use "basura" to describe anything they are not eating or wearing.  For example, basura is either organic or inorganic but they rarely differentiate and that is something we are trying to teach them.  So, basically basura means trash.  This cute kid was standing there in the garden watching me mulching the plants and he asked, very genuinely and sweetly, " Why are you putting all that trash around those plants ?"  It was so sweet and innocent.  It was a teaching moment so that s what I did,.  There are lots of them and the kids are so great.

So, a couple of the kids and I watered the garden and I took a couple of tomato plants to transplant and gave to Adalayda on the way home.  She is my counterpart and I have mentioned her many times.  She is fantastic.  I am attaching a photo of her husband's ( the baseball player who just got home from living illegally in the US for 5 years working in Biloxi)hardward store on their front porch. 

I am writing this about 8 pm, with my Ipod playing Jimmy Buffet songs on its new dock, I/m connected to the internet after having spent my day as I have described above.   So many contradictions....it constantly amazes me and keeps things interesting.

Well, as luck would have it.  The lights just went out so now I am on battery, have a candle burning next to my computer, no fan, no tunes..   Gotta love it.

Thats it except for a couple photos

Jackeling is the one in jeans, the child is the daughter of the couple on the ends and Adolpho, the other guy is deaf too.  The child is not deaf.

This is called a mini ferreteria

Pat

Bus musings, etc

Wouldn't ya just know it....just when I thought I knew everything  I would ever need to know about riding a bus in Nicaragua...I find out there's more.

The rainy season has started here and we have had some noticeably cooler days so I was glad the season had changed.  And I still am, but I have learned that there are some drawbacks to rain when you are riding a bus.

The Nicas will be sitting in the bus, sweated totally wet but when it starts to rain and a few drops fly in from the window in front of them, up go all the windows and the bus is almost totally without air !!  Its incredible...they will sit there, windows up, sweating their guts out but saved from the rain drops.  My Spanish is waay to low to try to logic it out with them soooo...I have discovered, that if you sit or stand near the front of the bus, should it start to rain and all those windows go clicking up, you can still get air from the door which, if not open all the time, at least opens and closes when someone get on or gets squeezed out. Its actually good that there are still things to learn...it reminds me that just because something looks easy, like riding a bus, it isn't necessarily so !!!

I also discovered a good analogy to describe those long sweaty rides.  I was telling someone how you just sit arm to arm sharing sweat and I likened it to the way weiners, when they are packed tightly together in those plastic packages, sort of take on the shape of the weiner next to them....thats what its like on the bus some days.

I have also been having the pleasure of the company of the folks from Nebraska and have been involved in a few more planning sessions with them and folks from UNAN.    I had a little visit to  the escuela educacion especial ( Special Ed. School) here in Leon this morning and was pleasantly surprised.  They have lots of staff and there were about 15 young people there from University of Barcelona doing some special activities with the kids.  They have their own bus that goes around Leon and picks up the kids - they have all types of disabilities and ages together. deaf, blind, autistic, down syndrome, and other kids with disabilities which are not easily visible and therefore not easily labeled.  I also got to visit a little private school for deaf kids in Leon which is a great opportunity for the kids who can get there.  The problem is, all these services are available to kids in Leon, the rural kids have almost nothing.  So, clearly, more teachers need to be trained and out in the classrooms.

The folks from Nebraska are not Spanish speakers, although Julie can do sign language and communicate with the deaf folks pretty successfully.  Wonder of wonders, I have been serving as their interpreter....can you believe it ?????  I sort of had an out of body experience when  I realized what I was doing....people would look at me to find out what the other person had just said....OMG !!!!!

I've only been back a little over three weeks but I have settled back in and feel part of the community again.  I am doing my exercises religiously and have learned a few adaptations in addition to those the physical therapist gave me.   We have these light trucks that serve as inner city transportation around Leon.  They have benchs down both sides so when they go around a corner, which they do at high speeds, you have to either hold on or get tossed across the aisle onto the unsuspecting folks over there.  Well, I have perfected the skill of squeezing my toes and feet to brace myself into my seat, rather than only using my arms.  It works so well and I think I am getting very shapely feet as a result !!! The same technique works when you are standing on the bigger buses between Leon and Malpaisillo.    I have developed a "wide stance" ala Larry Craig to counter act hard turns and stops rather than hanging onto the overhead rails with all my weight.  This may be boring to you, but to me its rocket science !!

I'll add a couple photos to spice things up.

Love to all,

God bless these guys.  They are  in some sort of race on a highway where they have to dodge trucks and buses of all sorts but also ox carts, free range cattle and horses, pedestrians and......everything imaginable.

 



This little girl, one of my thrid graders showed up in the mercado one morning with a crown and a shirt that reads , :"Let it snow" She'll get a copy of this one for sure.





My new next door neighbors.  They look angelic....not.  In the dish are nancitas which grow on a tree in my backyard and which these boys LOVE .  The boys are  Dariel and Eugenia.



This is a shot of the inside of the cathedral during the mass that morning.  It was packed.

These "puppets" appear at most fiestas.   The music starts and somebody gets underneath the skirt and lifts the puppet up and dances it around, spinning  a lot so the arms,hair and the skirts fly out.  The children just go nuts. This was part of the celebration of the UNESCO naming.  It went on for a week....or more.

The exterior of the Cathedral in Leon.  It was just added to UNESCO's list of  World Heritage Sites.    The people of Nicaragua were very very proud.  Construction of it began in 1747 and took a while.  It is huge...covers an entire city block.