Matagalpa

A few weekends ago we went to Matagalpa in the north to visit some friends. The city of Matagalpa is cool—we went to a nice coffee shop and I tasted good coffee for the first time in 6 months and afterward we tracked down the source of the coffee and I bought a huge 500 g bag for 30 córdobas (about $1.50). Afterward we went to a grocery store with peanut butter and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. (Never before in my life have I been so deeply concerned with the offerings of grocery stores, but here it becomes sort of a scavenger hunt and because I’m interested in it, I assume that you must be also. I apologize if that isn’t the case. I’d be pretty bored too if everyone wrote to me to tell me about the new grocery store in the US that has everything you could possibly want to buy. But I digress.) After lunch at a real Italian restaurant we made our way to the outskirts to see a real-life chocolate factory!

This chocolate factory is pretty small and doesn’t have any Willy Wonka-style security precautions. There were some short people running around, but I’m pretty sure that they were just children and not oompa-loompas. We just walked up to the gate and even though the owner insisted that he was gardening and not giving tours, he eventually relented after hearing that we were Peace Corps volunteers. Maybe because he felt that we looked underfed or maybe because he was really nice, he gave us tons of free samples during the tour, sometimes even opening up new candy bars just so we could try a bite of the “old recipe.”

The owner is an extranjero (foreigner) but the chocolate is pretty Nicaraguan. It uses cocao and coffee from all over the country and it’s made by hand in Matagalpa. Here are some pictures from the trip:
This is the cacao before it gets smashed up:
Here they crack the cacao by hand to begin the process of separation:
Here’s Holly and me on top of the castle:We all felt pretty giddy in the presence of so much chocolate:

After we were done and we had bought a 2-month supply of sweet sweet rations, we made our way to Nicole’s very small, very rural site. It was raining, and sometimes there aren’t many buses passing by. This was one of those times, so the bus that we took looked something like this:
Yeah, those are people riding on the roof. When our bus came, that would have been the only option, but the cobrador opened up the back door and yelled, “Make room for the gringos!” Never before had I felt so guilty and privileged, but I wasn’t about to ride on top of a bus on a terrible road for more than an hour to assuage my guilt. Instead, we were lucky enough to be crammed into the bus with no room to move. It was a fun trip and it was nice to see more of Nicaragua, but by the end of the weekend, we were ready to come back to running water, less erratic electricity, and a real toilet. On Sunday when we finally got back to Masaya after riding on bumpy, slow buses for five and a half hours we jumped in our hammocks and both thought to ourselves, “There’s no place like home.”

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Rain Day

At first, I was really disappointed that I was going to be a teacher in a place that doesn’t have snow days, the cold days where you get to stay at home, watching TV, and drinking hot chocolate. Little did I know that Nicaragua has an even better idea: rain days.


I had heard that school is canceled when it’s raining, but we had never actually experienced it until Tuesday afternoon. There have been plenty of days when it’s been raining, of course, but apparently there are a lot of unspoken rules about what does and does not constitute a rain day: first, it needs to be raining about 30 minutes before school starts, which is the time everyone is normally going to school. It’s rained lots of times around 3 or 4 o’clock, but by that time everyone’s already at school, so there’s no point in canceling it since everyone would get wet going home anyway. Second, it has to be raining hard. Little sprinkles or even the threat of really dark clouds isn’t enough to earn students and teachers a day of freedom. It also has to be the type of rain that’s going to last all afternoon, not just a brief shower that’s going to pass. I think there are probably other unspoken rules that we still don’t know, but I guess we have two years to figure it all out.

On Tuesday morning (school was already canceled Monday, remember, to allow a day of recovery from Masaya’s festivities over the weekend and is also canceled this Monday for the same reason) it started raining really hard at about 10:30 with no sign of stopping. I’m not going to lie; Paul and I were a little eager for our first rain day, but when the rain stopped at about 12:00, we both got ready to go to school. I decided to walk to school since the rain had cooled everything off, but of course it started pouring again when I was just far enough that it was pointless to turn back or take a cab. I arrived at school before my 1:00 class, but it became obvious that it was a rain day because there were about half a dozen professors and maybe 20 students there. I think this is sort of a chicken-or-the-egg situation; the teachers say they don’t come when it’s raining because the students don’t, but the students say they don’t come because no teachers do. Either way, they never even rang the bell for classes to begin. Those of us that were silly enough to come to school pretty much waited around until the rain let up to go home, and I also wanted to wait until my two classes would have been over just to make sure that neither of my afternoon counterparts would come and think I was lazy for not going to school (they never came). I made it home around 2:30 during a brief break in the rain and discovered that Paul had had the exact same experience at his school. Even though the idea of a rain day (presumably) is to allow everyone to say dry, there were plenty of neighborhood chavalos who took advantage of the day to go swimming:


And more chavalos that took the opportunity to dispose of some unwanted trash:


Wednesday was more of the same: it started raining a little before noon and really didn’t let up until after 3:00. Paul and I decided that we shouldn’t go to class since we doubted anyone else would be there (chicken or the egg?) and just enjoyed an afternoon at home reading while it rained. I’m not exactly sure if there is rain day etiquette regarding two rain days in a row, but I guess we’ll find out this afternoon when we go to school. That is, of course, unless it starts to rain.

UPDATE: Without a cloud in the sky this afternoon, Paul and I both went to school. Yesterday, Paul's counterpart didn't go to school at all, and mine both went, but there weren't enough students to have class. So it turns out we didn't miss anything and we didn't have to get wet.

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Greased-up tree trunks and firework bulls

Last weekend we went with to la alborada (I don’t know how that translates). It’s a nominally religious festival for San Miguel, and for that reason it was at Iglesia San Miguel in Masaya. We were originally attracted by the prospect of people climbing a greased-up tree to get a prize. When we got there, though, we were pretty surprised to find out that it was also a fireworks show. I feel like we talk a lot about fuegos artificiales, but they're pretty invasive and a pretty consistent theme to life here (for example I heard some go off as I was writing that sentence). Fireworks in Nicaragua are scary because they’re mostly homemade and would most certainly be outlawed in at least 45 states in the US. There are a few types—the one most frequently encountered is one that goes into the air and makes a lot of noise. Then there’s the rare one that goes into the air and makes noise along with some colors and lights. The loudest one is a ground-rumbling firework that can be heard miles away. The final is one that you put into a torro (bull) hat and then use to chase after people:

Since words are inadequate to describe the terror you should feel upon seeing the bull for the first time, here’s a video to help you understand:

After the big fireworks the air is filled with sulfur and smoke, but chavalos still want their picture taken:

Holly and Miriam safely out of danger from the raging fireworks bull:

The whole festival centered around the greasy tree:

The promised pole-climb was a bit underwhelming because not many people were willing to do it. People were pretty smart about it, though. Instead of trying to climb it solo, a group of guys would climb on top of each other (sorry the picture is hard to see).

No one really got close while we were there because the guy on the bottom would always crumble and then all of the guys on the human ladder would slide down the tree. No one had gotten the prize (cash) in a little over two hours, so we decided to leave because it would go on until someone got it. We left to get some nancite helado and Holly spilled it all over herself and the ground but the picture has mysteriously been deleted (hmmm).

It turned out that a few minutes after we left someone got the prize, which of course only intensified the fireworks. Things finally settled down, but there is an exact replica of la alborada this weekend at a different church, but at least we can be prepared for the explosions this time.

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La Hípica

Last weekend was the hípica in Masaya and it’s a pretty big deal. Hípica is a horse parade, and it’s pronounced more like eeeepeeeca. Every city has one eventually, and Masaya’s is usually one of the biggest. There were over 1000 horses here from all over the country (Holly says there were fewer, but no one counted so we'll just go with 1000). These aren’t the ordinary caballos that you see every day hauling carts and coaches around the city. No no no, these are special horses—caballos de raza—whose main function in life, as I understand it, is to go to hípicas and be cool.

We had really good seats for the parade—right next to a booze station where the riders could pull up and grab a can of Toña for the road.

An unintended consequence of our front-row seats, however, was that we almost got trampled a few times by runaway horses. The horses seemed pretty overwhelmed by all of the activity. Either that or they’d gotten a few Toñas along the way also. See if you wouldn’t be just a little freaked out:

Guys in trucks provided some music. Sometimes there were two trucks really close playing competing tunes. This was unfortunate. And loud.

Toña float and the semi-famous Toña girls:

There were plenty of horses and guys on horses drinking beer:

Our friend explained what this is, but we didn't really understand. It's a really tall woman and that's about as far as we got.

Even the chavalos got to ride in the parade:

The most entertaining part of the whole parade was this guy, though. He came up to our tent and was showing off his skills with the spinning top (it's like the Nica yo-yo). He did a few tricks and when he couldn't spin it on his toungue (to the dismay of the guys yelling "en la lengua!") he just decided to dance a little bit:

That's about it for the hípica. We liked it so much that we're going to try and to the one in Jinotepe in a few weeks.

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What Can We Send You?

This week for some reason it has been raining a ton. Yesterday afternoon as I was riding my bike home from school, the roads had nearly all been converted into tiny little rivers, and every bus and taxi that passed put the fear into me that I would end up not only tired and wet, but tired and soaking wet with muddy, gross water.

Luckily I was able to wait out the rain in the Telecentro while Holly was giving her evening English class and we walked home together afterward with just wet feet. We got home and as soon as we walked in the door it started pouring again and didn’t stop until this morning. Our house is really comfortable now—it’s nice to cook on our own and not have to eat gallo pinto 14 times a week. Even last night as the power went out while we were cooking we just got out our headlamps and finished dinner in the dark.

Thanks to everyone who has sent packages—it is always a bright spot in our week to open up the package and go through all the things we didn't know we couldn't live without. Catching up on 3-week-old news or munching on Peanut Butter M&Ms can be surprisingly therapeutic and calming.

We don’t want to seem like we’re begging for people to send us stuff, but a lot of people have been asking what we need or want sent to us, so it’s probably easier to list some things that we can never have too much of:

• Peanut Butter M&Ms
• Sour Patch Kids
  
• Annie’s Mac & Cheese (Bunny Helper)
  
• Jolly Ranchers
  
• Luna/Clif bars
  
• Vegetarian powdered soups
  
• Sunflower seeds
  
• Twizzlers
  
• Whiteboard markers
  
• Magazines (People, The Week, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and anything with lots of pictures that we can also cut out and use in class)
  
• Starburst Jelly Beans
  
• Honey-Roasted Cashews and Peanuts
  
• News-Leader/Post Dispatch (to keep us informed on what’s going on at home)
  
• Folding Orikasu Bowls
  
• Good-smelling candles/incense
  
• Books

Really, any good food that we can make on the stove (we don’t have an oven or microwave) is highly welcomed.

One lesson we learned from Danny’s awesome package was not to send cheese dip… after sitting in quarantine for a week, our Fritos cheese dip was confiscated and “destroyed” (though we suspect some customs agent somewhere is probably enjoying chips and dip as we speak). But don’t let that deter you! :) Every other package we’ve gotten has arrived quickly and completely unharmed.

To pass the rainy days and long weekends, we’ve been reading just about everything we can get our hands on, so you can be sure that you’ll never again find such a desperate and captive audience upon which to thrust your favorite books. Or if you’re not tempted by this opportunity for cheerfully-consumed propaganda, we also have a wish list of things we really want to read.

We also just realized that we’ve been spelling our address wrong all along… it actually is:

Paul/Holly Ragan
Apartado Postal #59
Masaya, Nicaragua
Central America

The advice we've received and learned through trail and error about packages is that padded envelopes are less likely to be opened and searched than boxes. Also, USPS is the best way to send anything; any other way is really expensive and we have to go to Managua and hassle with customs if it's not sent through the regular mail.

Obviously, we also always love receiving e-mails and blog comments to let us know what you’re all up to and how you’re doing at home. Finally, if anyone wants to save money on postage and just hand-deliver a package, we’re more than happy to share our hammocks and care package goodies with you!

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