Thinking in terms of Nicaragua

I was watching the Under-20 World Cup with my host brother last night and I noticed that the field was really well-lit, but I couldn't help wondering what they would do if the power went out. Would they have that many generators for the entire field? Would they stop playing? Would all of the players get headlamps? Then I realized that the game was in Canada. The lights don't go out in Canada like they do here :(.

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Anecdotes from this Week

1. Mangoes
Before yesterday, I had never eaten a mango; the closest I had really come was the mango-flavored syrup at Sno Biz each summer. My host brother came home with some fresh mangoes and asked if I wanted to try one. When I said yes, I thought I would get a nice piece of mango to try. Instead, I received a gigantic mango and a couple of napkins. My host brother demonstrated on his mango how to peel the skin off in long strips with my teeth before eating the fruit. I can now say that I like mangoes, but that the act of eating the mango itself was by far my worst experience yet in Nicaragua.

First, I had to bite into the gross skin of the mango and peel it off without getting my nose and chin sticky. Then the wet, sticky mango was so big I could barely hold it in my hand. As I tried to eat it, I got mango juice everywhere (face, arms, shirt, and later I think I later discovered some mango stickiness on my forehead) and I had no idea that mangoes are incredibly stringy: I spent about 20 minutes flossing after I was done because probably 75% of the mango was in between my teeth as opposed to in my tummy. The rest of my family that was sitting with my on the porch thought my messy foray into mango-dom was hilarious and of course my host brother, Walter, ate every last bit of mango without getting a drop anywhere.

I think I’ve decided, however, that if the act of eating a mango remains my worst experience in Nicaragua, I’ll be doing okay.

2. Money in perspective
This morning after I put on a pair of pants, I was digging around in the pockets and pulled out a green bill. Immediately I thought it was a 10 cord bill (each bill here is a different color and 10s are green), but I quickly realized it was actually a $5 bill that I guess I left in there a while ago. Even though a $5 bill is worth a lot more than 10 cords, I was immediately disappointed because, while apparently you can use US money here, I would have been much more excited to have a 10 to use for the bus.

I think I’ve also become a lot more pinché (stingy) with my money here… I often find myself thinking, “What! That bottle of Coke is nine cords? No way!” even though nine cords is about 50 cents. After two years in Nicaragua with my new pinché attitude, I just may have saved up enough to buy a six-pack of Coke when I return to the States.

3. Yet another example of how incredibly nice my host mom is
Our entire training group has a day of charlas and meetings in one of the other training towns just about once a week. We are on our own for lunch on those days, and we usually go to one of a few pizza places that are in town. On a night when there was no electricity and I was trying to make conversation, I told Doña Petrona that I’ve been eating a lot more pizza here than I did in the States, but that I’m getting sort of tired of it and need to find a new place to eat. She was very alarmed by this and told me she would pack me a lunch tomorrow because pizza has too much grease. I tried to tell her that it was okay, that I could find somewhere else to eat, and that I was really just trying to make conversation, but she insisted on packing me lunch and planned out that I was going to get a tortilla española, a grilled cheese, a cookie, and a box of juice. That was fine, and I then jokingly told her that because she’s such a good cook, all the other aspirantes were going to be really jealous of me. Her response to that was that Paul wouldn’t need to be jealous because she was packing him the same lunch as well. I tried to insist that I didn’t want her to have to do the extra work and that it really wasn’t necessary, but I sensed pretty early on that it was a losing battle and I was going to be taking my sacks of lunches the next day whether I wanted to or not. The final surprise was that when the other girl in my Spanish class stopped by in the morning so we could ride the bus together, Doña Petrona also had a sack lunch (juice box and all) ready for her so she wouldn’t have to eat pizza either.

That afternoon, then, we all had our juice boxes and aluminum foil packages while everyone else was eating pizza. The moral of the story is that I should never just “make conversation” or “joke around”; I need to carefully consider all possible logical extensions of what I am going to say before opening my mouth, or I may be stuffing it with a cold grilled cheese later.

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Grupo de Jóvenes

In addition to our language classes and co-teaching, the other major part of Peace Corps training is having a youth group. The first week we had to seek out members of our youth group, and our goal during the eleven weeks of training is to complete some sort of project with the group. I am facilitating the group with the other trainee in my Spanish class and we were really fortunate to have kids in our host families that are of youth group age that we could 1) guilt into being in our youth group and 2) guilt into helping us recruit more jóvenes (youth) to be in the group as well. Some youth groups sort of flop after a few weeks (the Peace Corps tells us often that it is what we learn—not the outcome—that matters with our youth groups), but I’ve been really pleased with the enthusiasm and initiative of our kids.

We have usually around 11 kids in our group ranging from age 13 to 18. We play lots of dinámicas (ice breakers/games) with them and also have to give them charlas (talks) in Spanish about issues like AIDS or how to prepare for a job interview in Nicaragua. The main purpose of the group, however, is our project. The project is supposed to be something the group wants to do (we are just facilitators to help them along)—it can be a project to plant trees in the town, pick up trash, make a book about the town, have a soccer tournament, or whatever. Our group eventually decided to make a new sign to go at the edge of our town welcoming everyone to our pueblo. The one that’s currently there is just a regular looking green highway sign, but it’s really old and rusted-through. After picking the project, we had to figure out how much it was going to cost, how to raise that money, and we had to figure out a timetable to complete all the steps we’d need.

Right now we’re at the stage of raising the money for the rótulo (sign); originally we thought that the whole project would cost about 600 córdobas (about $33), but when we went to the alcaldía (mayor’s office) to get permission for the project, the vice-mayor told us that our idea of painting a piece of pine wood was a bad one because it would weather too quickly, so he offered to give us a piece of metal to use instead. That was really awesome because it takes some of the pressure off of needing to raise a lot of money. All we needed to do, then, was raise the money for the paint and brushes and we did that by having a rifa and a venta de sopa.

For the rifa (raffle), the kids all brought items that their families (especially families that have pulperias) donated to make a canasta básica, or a basket of stuff. The items in our basket include rice, beans, sugar, soap, toilet paper, soup, bread, and a variety of other odds and ends. Each kid then has a paper with 15 numbered lines on it, and for 3 cords a person can pick which number they’d like and write their name on that line to act as their raffle ticket. Once the rifa was over, we eliminated papers and them numbers until we wound up with our winner, who happened to be my host nephew Walter from our youth group (it was fair and square, I promise).

The second fundraiser was a venta de sopa (soup sale) that we did two weekends ago. The kids all pitched in to donate vegetables and ingredients for soup, then that Sunday morning we went to one of their houses to make a huge batch of soup. While the soup was cooking, we broke up into groups and walked door to door telling everyone that we were making soup, that it would be ready at 11:00, and that it cost 15 cords. If a person wanted to buy soup, he or she gave us some sort of bucket, bowl, or thermos and we wrote the family’s name on a piece of tape and stuck it to the bucket. When the soup was ready, we filled up all the buckets, delivered the soup back to each house, and collected the money. We sold all of the soup we made very quickly (I wasn’t sure how many people would want to buy hot vegetable soup on the day that I got a sunburn from walking door to door), but everything worked out. Our only problem was that a lot of people forgot to bring their ingredients, so we had to buy a lot of things; that significantly cut our profit from the venta. However, I think it was still a success.

We purchased our paint and have now painted the primer and the base coat (yellow). Tomorrow we'll paint the letters on the sign, then we just need to add our drawings. I'll be sure to post pictures when it's done!

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Let There be Light

Last Sunday afternoon just a little bit after Paul left to go back to his town, everyone in my family suddenly and spontaneously migrated to the street and called me to follow them. For some unknown reason, two power lines in our street just fell down (one pulled the other down). That same morning a big tree in the same street had just fallen over, so I really thought that there was going to be some catastrophic earthquake right on my block… nine days later, however, I’m still here. What was not here for a long time, however, was the electricity on our block. I’m pretty sure that they called the electricity company on the second or third day, but my host mom told me they said it would be another five days to get new poles from Managua.

The next step, then, was that my host brother called a Nicaraguan news channel to tell them about what happened. Apparently the best way to get someone like an electricity company to do something is to shame them into doing it by embarrassing them on the news. Tuesday someone told me that it was on the news that our block hadn’t had power for several days (obviously I couldn’t watch the news myself) and Wednesday my host mom said she heard that they'd be coming on Thursday. The electricity company did come, and it was a community event. My host mom told me to go down and watch with my host niece and nephew, Claudia and Williamcito, and she told me to bring my camera to take some pictures, so I gladly obliged.

This is the look down the street from my house. You can see the two fallen poles and the small crowd gathering by the repair truck.

Here's another shot of the crowd on one corner sitting to watch the action.

The funny thing is that it’s not really that big of a deal… it wasn’t like in Springfield when the power went out for a week in the winter and we had no heat; here it’s not like there’s air conditioning anywhere anyway. The only real difference is that after it gets dark around 6:00 every night, the evenings are unbelievably boring. I talk a lot with my family, but really a person can really only say “¡Hace calor!” so many times each day. The only real good to come from the situation is that my headlamp is quite the commodity and I have definitely gotten my money’s worth this week alone.
For some reason, instead of coming early in the morning to take advantage of the light, the electric company crew didn't come until about 4:00 in the afternoon, which left them with only about an hour and a half of light. My host mom told me that they were working until 2:00 in the morning trying to get everything put back together. Last weekend I stayed with Paul, and I was sure that everything would be fixed and the light would be back by the time I returned to my pueblo on Sunday; I was so wrong. They had fixed the electricity for everyone else but my family, so we were the only house without power. Doña Petrona decided that enough was enough so she had William (who is an electrician) hook us up to "borrow" electricity directly from the line yesterday afternoon. Finally, the electricity company came back today (Monday-day nine of the electricity crisis at our house) and fixed it once and for all (I hope).

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Pictures from Home

Paul has posted plenty of pictures of where he now calls home, and I figured it's high time I do the same.

First, this is the view of my house from the street. Before this picture was taken, there were flowers covering the whole front of the patio. When I saw them cutting down the flowers, I decided I had better take my picture quickly before they were all gone. Now it's a lot hotter on the patio because there's not as much shade (but it's still the coolest place in the house to be) and it's not as fun because I used to be able to watch people walking down the street through the flowers... I could see them, but they couldn't see me. Now that I write that, it seems sort of creepy, so perhaps it's for the best that the flowers are gone. The picture looks pretty messy because there's all the brush around; usually it's really neat and tidy.

Here's a better picture of the porch where we have Spanish class and where I like to sit to cool off.

Here's a picture looking into my host mom's pulperia. It's just a little room off of the patio, and so whenever someone comes to buy something they just yell ¨¡Buenas!¨ and my host mom comes outside to help them.

Here is my bedroom. It's small and simple, but very nice and cozy. I have my bed with my mosquitero on it, a desk, and a nice dresser with drawers, a mirror, and a place to hang my clothes.

Finally, here's the living room looking from the kitchen in the back of the house toward the porch. My room is on the left side, but you can't see the door in the picture. Bonus in the picture is Guido the cat.

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