Adios

****

Ha llegado la hora de despedirme de mi linda Nicaragua. Mis dos años aquí pasaron rapidísimos. Claro que habían días difíciles pero gracias al amor de Dios y la amistad de mis amigos y familia Nicaragüense mi servicio de Cuerpo de Paz vio mil sonrisas y pocos problemas. Nunca voy a poder agradecerles de forma adecuada ni comunicar a otros cuanto he aprendido de Nicaragua. Realmente llegue a amar a este país y especialmente al norte y a mi comunidad en el Jícaro. Aunque me vaya ahorita, siempre voy a llevar conmigo un alma pinolera. A todos, les agradezco su apoyo y su amistad y les deseo suerte y salud hasta que nos volvamos a ver. Que Dios les cuide y les bendiga!

****

Now that the time has come to take my leave of Nicaragua, it is hard to find the right words to convey my feelings. I am, above all else, grateful for the time I have had in Nicaragua and the experiences and relationships that I have enjoyed and been challenged by over the last two years. I have been more than lucky during my time here, I have been truly blessed. Every morning I have prayed for the strength and the patience to deal with whatever challenges the day presented and every night that God would order my steps for the next day. I have never been disappointed.

I am also ready to go home and get started on what's next. It is hard to be too sad about leaving a place when you are excited to go somewhere else. In my last blog post before I left the US for Nicaragua I wrote:

“So now it is time to move on. I'm excited again. I may miss the people I'm taking my leave from, but it is their love and support that has allowed me to come to a place where I can step out to wherever I'm called to go in faith and confidence. Nothing changes between us just because we are not together. Leaving is not complicated. It is quite simple. One day you are in one place, with one group of people. The next day you are somewhere else, with different people. The job is still the same. “

I still believe that to be true.

Entonces, me despido. Nos vemos pronto.

La Lucha Sigue

I love Nicaragua. The last sunrise I see in Nueva Segovia (for now...) is going to be bittersweet. As my service comes to a close though, I find thoughts like “almost done, almost done” running through my head. I'm excited to move back to the States and spend time with my family. There are things that are important to me that just aren't part of my life here. Still, there is a part of that thought— almost done— that I'm not quite happy with.

From very early on in my service, I realized that my life in Nicaragua was not going to be the experience of living in poverty. I have earned too much yesterday (even if I don't use it) and I will earn too much tomorrow (even if I can't use it) to feel truly poor today. Plus, my Peace Corps stipend is designed to be sufficient and is reliably deposited at the end of every month; I have phenomenal health care; and if it comes down to it, I can always quit. No, my experience was never going to be living in poverty. Instead, it was going to be living with people living in poverty. It was not going to be living with uncertainty, but living with people living with uncertainty. And that is exactly what it has been. I have done my best to be of use to my community, but most of the time I am more student than teacher.

I knew something about development before I came to Nicaragua. I could tell you all sorts of stuff about the most cost-effective intervention to avoid pregnancy in teens in Kenya (educating them about the dangers of relationships with older men). I could write ten pages on when subsidizing uptake costs makes sense and when it doesn't. I can still cite you those facts and more. What I can't do is put what I've learned over the last two years in such pithy form. They weren't the kind of lessons that are easy to use to justify policy decisions. They're the kind of lessons that make you love a place and a community and, at the same time, say “I can't wait to go home”. I've learned a lot of them, but even so I know I've only scratched the surface. The surface, however, is deep enough to remember that life in my community is not going to change a bit whenever I take my leave of Jícaro. The issues that are so important to life here, and to so many communities in developing countries around the world, have not improved a whole lot during my two years in Nicaragua. What's more, they exist and are often ignored in the home I'm going back to in a way that is just as pressing as in the home I'm leaving.

Yeah, I'm a bit burnt out. I'm looking forward to sitting around the fire with people I've missed and catching my breath. But “almost done”? No, hombre. No se termina la lucha; la lucha sigue.

Sencillo?

For some time now I've been struggling with the idea behind this blog. At the moment I'm re-reading all my posts over the last two years to see if they at all fulfill the mandate that I set for blog two years ago. The idea was something like this:

Things are not as complicated as we like to make them. We clutter life up on purpose in order to avoid boredom, feel important, and to avoid dealing with certain things in their true form. When you strip away the trappings what lies beneath is more, well, sencillo.

I know I am guilty of hiding behind complexity. If we are ever talking and I try to end an explanation by saying “it's complicated”, please call me out on it. It usually means I'm confused and don't want to admit it. I use similar tactics in my mind and heart to avoid dealing with things that I read or see, especially with regard to poverty. You would think that an odd problem for a self-identifying “development economist” but I think you would be mistaken. It is, in my mind, our Achilles' heal, this desire to explain everything away and reduce things to a series of equations and variables.

I have many friends that work in impoverished areas around the world. Some are academics, some work in Christian missions, some work for organizations with humanitarian missions, some are on short term projects like the Peace Corps, and some have made life-long commitments. In all of these endeavors I have witnessed things that I both admire and question. I envy those who are not afraid to care enough to have their heart broken repeatedly. I admire those who see something that needs done and, quite simply, figure out how to get it done. I am frustrated by good intentions causing more harm than good for lack of cultural understanding or research. I am maddened by inertia, vested interests, and bureaucracy standing in the way of efforts that would achieve positive results. And I am disenchanted with those who (as I sometimes find myself wanting to do) think they can look down from above it all and explain it away.

All of this leads me back to the idea behind the blog. Is it true? Are things simple and we make them complicated? I know I've fought the temptation for the last year to write a series of entries called “Not-so-sencillo” in which I let loose all of the complicated emotions that build up as I walk through life in Nicaragua. Truth is, however, the topics of those entries would have truly been simple. It would have been my responses to them that were complicated.

I think I still believe in Sencillo as an idea, as an ideal, and as the name of my future coffee shop. As a blog, however, I do not. Not my blog, anyway. I will leave it to other, more capable, minds and pens to show us the simple side of life. I hope to keep writing, but it will need to be under a different banner. For most people, however, this blog has not been about the sencillo ideal but about my time in Nicaragua. In that regard I am not quiet finished. I have one month and two posts left. I plan to enjoy the month, I hope you enjoy the posts.

So you want to join the Peace Corps?

For some reason, most of us who write blogs during our Peace Corps service decide at some point to impose our thoughts, opinions, and advise regarding Peace Corps on anyone among our readership that may be considering such an endeavor. It could be because we benefited from similar advice (I can't say I did) or because we have finally figured this whole experience out (um... that'd be an emphatic no...) and want to make it easier on those who follow in our footsteps, but I think we just like to hear ourselves talk. Maybe that's a bit harsh. I think writing about it helps us process our own experience and come to terms with what we have accomplished and/or failed to accomplish during our service. It appears that I am not immune to this little indulgence.

I don't remember the first time I saw this video, but I have constantly come back to it over the last few years when thinking about how to thrive/survive as a Peace Corps volunteer. I highly recommend that anyone considering joining the Peace Corps watch it. I can, without a single reservation, say that if you join the Peace Corps you will have moments when you are both of the video's characters. Hopefully you will spend most of your time somewhere in the middle. Below I've constructed a little analysis of that middle using five of the video's central claims.

Claim #1: In the Peace Corps you will be helping people and giving of yourself which will, in turn, give meaning to your life.

My short answer to this claim would be: yes, yes, and uh oh you're in trouble.

My long answer is a bit, well, longer. Peace Corps is, in fact, a great opportunity to be of assistance to the people in your community. The first part of our mission asserts that we exist to provide technical assistance and training to host country organizations and individuals in response to their requests. It is also a simple statement of fact that as a Peace Corps volunteer you will give of yourself to your community, maybe/often to an extent that exceeds what you planned, wanted, or even thought yourself capable. The extent to which many volunteers come to care about their host countries and host communities is one of the things that truly sets Peace Corps apart. The mental/emotional toll that the same characteristic can take on a volunteer is one of the things that makes Peace Corps truly challenging.

So I've agreed on the first two points. My caution comes on the third. I believe that, regardless of whether you have a positive or negative experience, the Peace Corps will be a meaningful and important period in your life, but I stop well short of claiming it will provide meaning in itself. Your work will teach you things (probably more than you succeed in teaching others) and it may make you happy, but it will also frustrate you to no end and occasionally convince you (wrongly) that everything you're doing is worthless. If that feeling is allowed to translated itself to “my work is worthless therefore I am worthless”, you are indeed in trouble. 

Claim #2: You will learn a new language, children/people will not be able to understand you, and you will be motivated by these challenges (see also: you're a real piece of work).

There is nothing quite like asking a group of kids to repeat a word you didn't hear or understand only to have them start saying it over and over with increasing velocity until it becomes a perverse game with you at its center. That being said, there's also nothing quite like finding that you can function nearly effortlessly in a language that isn't your own.

Language is one of the toughest parts of PC because the most frustrating thing of all is to not be able to communicate— be it frustrations, needs, successes, or feelings. I came to Nicaragua speaking passable Spanish and language was still one of the most challenging parts of my experience. Sure, the challenges can be motivating and they should be, but they are also tough and frustrating. Its ok to acknowledge them as such, in fact it is both healthy and will keep everyone around you from thinking you're a real piece of work.

Claim #3: You will be 1) healthy and active and engaged in your community, or 2) sick all the time, sleep late and read dumb books.

Most people I know in Peace Corps would simply say: yes. In Nicaragua I have been as sick as I've ever been in my life and I've also run a half-marathon. I've eaten wonderfully fresh fruits and vegetables and eaten more instant noodles in a month than I did in my whole college career. I've had months where I woke up at 5:00 am without an alarm and with a spring in my step and months were I drug myself out of bed only to plop back down in my hammock. I have read books I would never have touched back in the States, but I've also learned to play guitar and read a lot of wonderful books that I'd never have had time for if I were living a faced paced life back home. I've worked with over 600 students and helped them with 72 student business projects. I've worked with health volunteers to increase access to sexual health resources and with farmers to market new products and improve business practices. And then there are the things that aren't so easily quantifiable, drawing with kids, talking about culture, teaching people to make popcorn...

I guess the crux of the issue is time. In Peace Corps you will have to deal with a lot of time. Twenty-four months worth of it (in your community). You can put it to all sorts of wonderful uses, both work-related and personal. Hopefully you will feel good about how you use this time. It is important to remember, though, that you will need to dedicate more of that time than you probably think to staying sane. Dumb books have a purpose. Sometime you just need to relax and let your mind have a rest. That's ok. 

Claim #4: You will 1) Never leave your site not wanting to miss out on the “pulse of the community” or 2) Spend your time in the city with your ex-pat friends and hide from your neighbors.

Hopefully you will love your site and love your community. I do. I rarely leave site unless it is for work (partially because I live really far away from... everything). There are, however, plenty of times when I have shut myself in my house and pretended not to be home when a gaggle of children started pounding on my door demanding entrance so they could play with my colored pencils. I'm not proud of it, but I need space.

Getting out of your community can be a good thing. It gives you a chance to see the rest of your host country and to share experiences, frustrations, and successes with your fellow PCVs. The better you know your host country's culture the more able you'll be to find the “pulse” of the community when you're back in site. Also, it can present some pretty cool work opportunities. In the States we take travel for granted. Over the last few years I've had the opportunity to travel with some kids from my community that had never been more than an hour away from home. It's fun to watch them react and interact with other kids from around the country.

Also, like I've said before, sometimes you just need to recharge. You can't give much if you're completely out of gas. Everyone finds their preferred spot to escape. Mine is... well that's a secret.

Claim #5: Peace Corps service will be a time of personal growth and you will love/hate it even though it is the hardest/easiest job you've ever had.

Two years is, at once, a long time and no time at all. I think it is safe to say that Peace Corps will be a time of personal growth, though what form and direction that growth takes is hard to say. Maybe you'll decide to dedicate your life to working in development in a foreign country. Maybe you'll decide you're never leaving the U.S. again. There is really only one way to find out. Yes, some days Peace Corps will be tough and you'll love it. On my best days I'm up before the sun to milk cows, hardly speak English, walk two hours home because a bus broke down, and deal with 50 high-schoolers who may or may have any intention to learn what I'm trying to teach them. I also inevitably say/do something stupid and get laughed at, am mocked for being really white/speaking English, and may not get to take a shower because the water isn't running. Those days I go to bed happy. It is the other days, the days I give one hour of class and spend the rest of the day reading a magazine in my hammock or talking on the phone to another PCV, that I find myself wanting nothing more than to go home.

The Bottom Line (according to me, anyway):

Every Peace Corps country is different and ever Volunteer has a different experience. I'm not sure anything can really predict whether or not you'll have a positive/productive Peace Corps experience except for, well, being in the Peace Corps. Even then there is a huge element of luck involved: right country, right program, right community, right relationships. One thing that is certain is that, as a PCV (you will get used to acronyms... wait, that's not it) you will fulfill three roles in your community. You will be, each in its moment, a learner, a change agent, and a mentor. You can't help but be. Everything around you will be new and different and you will need to understand it if you want to be happy/healthy/productive. You bring with you different life experiences and a new perspective that will help you draw attention to opportunities and generate new ideas in your community (change agent). And finally, everyone will be watching what you do. Little kids, big kids, adults, men, women, everyone. You may never even know who is using your words and your behavior as an example. In all three of these roles, you are on duty 24/7 for 27 months. That's Peace Corps.

So you still want to join the Peace Corps? Go for it then. I'm glad I did.

Progress

When I was in India back in December I was stunned by the shear amount of construction going on. I feel like most of the time I spent in a car was spent weaving our way through construction sites. I would love to have before and after pictures of Chennai twenty years ago, ten years ago, and today. Everyone told me that by the time I go back it will be a completely different place, in terms of physical infrastructure anyway.

While infrastructure investment in Nicaragua can in no way approach the speed or scope of India, its presence and its impact are no less visible. In the last five years, heck, in the last two years, access to the east coast and some of the southern departments have improved exponentially. Here in my community as well, the march of progress continues. More roads are being paved with paving stones. They are building a (rather large) bus station/market. Outside of town a new dump is being prepared. Now especially, everywhere you go you can see people taking advantage of the income provided by the November-January harvests and the adobe/cement drying powers of the dry season sun.

My neighbor is putting in a bathroom. The first step of which involved digging a great big hole. I spent most of the week leaning over the wall and talking to the guys that dug it, watching as they shoveled the dirt, eventually hauling it up with buckets, then hauled it away with an cart and a team of oxen. I've also been watching for over a year now as a decrepit old theater has been renovated into the beautiful structure pictured to the left (and down). Work has progressed piece-meal, when funds and weather allowed it to.

In addition to physical infrastructure, businesses come and go. I wish I knew how many cellphone repair shops, used shoe/clothes shops, and convenience stores have opened and closed since I've been here. We recently got a new laboratory (to do medical tests) and a second internet cafe. We will see if the market is big enough to support them. The laboratory is in a building that has housed at least four different businesses since I first moved to town. That is the way of economic progress though, it stumbles its way forward.

What Nicaragua really needs if it hopes to take advantage of its resources is stability. Fifty years with no major natural or man-made disasters. Time to let the country take advantage of its investment in physical and human capital and to convince the rest of the world that Nicaragua is a stable place to invest. Already you can see individuals and businesses rushing to take advantage of the better connectivity to the east and south. You can also see the population responding to the job opportunities. As I ride the bus I see a lot of young engineers, both men and women, supervising work crews made up of individuals twice their age. Most of my students tell me they want to study engineering of one sort or another because that's where the jobs are.

Is access to this progress uniform and equal across the country or in a single community? Of course not. Not everyone has access to the same technology or the same educational opportunities. Some of my students have internet in their houses and some of them wouldn't have the slightest idea how to turn on a computer. Some of my students will go to college, some of them will dig holes like the one next to my house and haul away the dirt with an oxcart, or maybe a truck. There are plenty of places that aren't getting new roads and whose farmers can't get their milk out to market. While the new roads will make it easier for some farmers, they will put others at a competitive disadvantage. Development as a whole has always made it hard for small farmers. What will the families do that have been small farmers for generations? Families that see farming not so much as a business as a way of life?

I don't know. Some will send their kids to college to be engineers, switch from planting beans to making long term investments in planting coffee and use the higher incomes to hire other people to dig their holes and build their houses. Others will struggle. That's one of the few things I know for sure.

¡Avión! ¡Avión!

A few weeks ago, I went over to one of my counterparts' houses to plan our class. Usually we do a group planning session at my house, but every once in a while something comes up— in my schedule or in one of theirs. I've been working with this counterpart for over a year now, so I've come to know her, her husband (who teaches at another of my schools), and their six-year-old son pretty well. Her son, Nazer, is a smart, confident, little kid who is quite fond of me and loves to tell me what he's doing even if I'm in the middle of planning class with his mom. When I got to the house that day, Nazer was playing with a battery-powered car that moved forward and backward when directed by an attached remote control. He explained how it worked and told me that the batteries were almost dead. We gave it a little nudge in the direction we wanted it to go and managed to get it working. When we started planning our class his mom sent him outside to play so that we could focus on the lesson.

About ten minutes later, I hear Nazer screaming at the top of his lungs: ¡Avión! ¡Avión!. Then, he comes running into the house, still screaming, with one hand above his head pointing to the sky. “¡Avión! ¡Avión! ¡Es un avión!” He ran in a few circles and then headed back out the door. I tried to go back to planning the lesson, but I could still hear him out in the street. Curiosity got the getter of me and I got up and walked outside. Sure enough, there was an airplane, way above the clouds, cruising through the sky. Truth be told, it is the first airplane I have seen in the sky over Jícaro in the twenty months I've lived here.

I became aware of the lack of airplanes in the sky over northern Nicaragua maybe six months ago. I was standing in one of my schools looking out over the hills and was struck by the emptiness of the clear blue sky. Even if I had seen the plane that caught Nazer's attention, I probably wouldn't have noticed the little spec of white moving silently through the sky. I suspect you wouldn't have either. If we had, I know it wouldn't have prompted us to run around the neighborhood shouting at the top of our lungs. I can only wonder how Nazer would react to visiting the airport in Managua or, better yet, standing in the park at the end of the runway of Reagan Natl. Airport in DC and watching the planes drop out of the sky over his head.

What we see, what we notice, and how we react to them are functions of our experiences. I notice things now that would never have caught my eye two years ago. There are also many things that I see every day, things that once caused me to stop and take note, that now slide right past my eyes as if they were so normal that they barely warrant recognition. Not only does this have implications for the way we interact with the place we live from day to day, it has huge work implications for someone like myself who aspires to plan and evaluate development programs and interventions. To have any idea how a project is likely to go, you have to be able to see it the way its participants are going to see it. One of the quotes on my refrigerator, stolen I believe from the 2011 Time 100 profile of Cory Booker, says, “You can best serve what you know.” I firmly believe this to be true and it is one of the lessons I hope I don't forget when I leave Peace Corps.

South Indian Coffee

After 20,000+ miles and almost a month I find myself back in Nicaragua sitting, not surprisingly with a cup of coffee and my journal open in front of me. For the last seven years that has been one of the more constant fixtures in my life, and it is what I invariably turn back to when I need to relax and sort out my thoughts. The month of December and my vacation certainly left me with much to think over. I visited some friends in Virginia for a few glorious days. I spent New Year's Eve on my favorite block of my favorite beach. I was with my parents and my grandparents for Christmas, which I had spent the entire last year looking forward to. And I traveled to India for my older-brother's wedding. I've tried my hardest to sort through my feelings and find a good blog post: about the amazing wedding, about being back with family, or about how, no matter how much I love it, Nicaragua still isn't Virginia. As I've met with little success I'm going to stick to what I know.

I told my brother that I had to give him credit for at least one thing with respect to his wedding: always having a man whose job it was to make coffee. The wedding festivities lasted for a full two days and, despite not having much of a role to play in the ceremonies themselves, I did change outfits about six times, meet a million new people, take a thousand (literally) pictures. I'm not sure how it would have gone without my constant caffeine buzz. That's not true; it would have still been wonderful, but I do prefer coffee to be a part of any social activity.

My South Indian coffee experience started just a few hours after touching down in Chennai. My plane arrived in the middle of the night and I was driven outside the city to the farmhouse where my family was staying until the wedding. After a few hours sleep I was awoken, not unpleasantly, by the man who was in charge of our stay knocking on my parents' door saying, cheerfully but authoritatively, “Morning! Coffee?! Tea?!” It was a scene that would be repeated daily and that would continue when we moved into the city. I don't usually enjoy being woken up, but you can wake me up whenever you want if you do it by offering me good coffee.

South Indian coffee is somewhat akin to a latte or café au lait in that its principally a combination of milk and some form of coffee (it is often called “milk coffee” so I guess that isn't surprising). Rather than espresso or brew coffee however, the coffee element in South Indian coffee is a a cooked-down, syrup-like concoction. A small amount of the coffee syrup is then combined with sugar and hot milk in one half of a metal tumbler set. The mixture is then poured back and forth between the two tumblers, preferably from a bit of a height, to thoroughly combine the elements and also to aerate the mixture. I, of course, had o shoot a video of the process:

The result is quite delicious. By the time the wedding was over the coffee man knew that I preferred mine without sugar, a characteristic that earned me the same weird looks I get here in Nicaragua when I tell people I don't use sugar in my coffee. Even so, the coffee guy gets my wedding MVP nomination.

Cosecha

(Written November 2011)

Green hillsides are tinged with yellow, signaling that it's time to start pulling beans again. Coffee farmers are scrambling to line up workers to start “buscando la rojita”, looking for the little red-haired girl, the bright red coffee cherries that account for such a large part of the country's exports. In my garden, the eggplant bushes (I call them bushes because they are gigantic and because eggplant plants sounds funny) are weighted down with bright purple fruit. And after a year and a half of working with the same kids, I'm preparing five of my 200 students for the national business-plan competition. That's what the coshecha is all about. You work hard all year long; you pray for rain and a little luck; and when the time comes, you get to see the fruits of all your labor. Si Dios quiere.

Finding your cosecha moment can be tough in Peace Corps. The vast majority of projects do not turn out the way we intended or go as smoothly as we would have liked. We work with people. Most of us work with kids. Since we don't have resources, we mostly teach people things. Well, we try to teach people things. You can't make someone learn. If you do succeed, you may never even know. What my kids learn in their entrepreneurship class may help them out down the road, but I probably won't be around to see. I have enjoyed watching my eggplants grow because they provide such a nice foil to that experience. Sure, I can't control the rain or the sun, but I know what is supposed to happen if everything goes right. The seeds germinate. Little seedlings grow to transplant size and move to the garden. They grow bigger, put down roots, and eventually flower. Along the way I help them along the best I can: providing some water when the rain fails, battling caterpillars and grasshoppers, staking the plants so they don't blow over in the wind. If things go well, I am rewarded with bright-purple eggplants.

My students take no such easily identifiable path, nor journey to such a readily defined destination. The grasshoppers and caterpillars that impede their growth are not so easy to see or deal with. We set the end-of-the-year business plan competitions as a goal to work toward, but when the time comes even those can serve as a stumbling block for the teams that don't advance to the next level. Only two of the thirty-five student groups I worked with this year advanced to the regional competition. Only one of those groups (and only one of the more than 150 student groups formed in the department of Nueva Segovia) will have the opportunity to participate in the national competition.

I am not overly concerned with whether or not my kids win the national competition. Sure, it will be nice to watch them stand up on stage and prove that they learned what I was trying to teach them, but if it earns them a prize is of little interest to me. The group I am taking is from a small, rural community. In October, our trip to the regional competition was the first time most of the kids had ever been to Ocotal, which is only two hours away. Now, they are preparing to go to the nation's capital. They will have an opportunity to meet and get to know (and sure, compete with) kids from all over their country. Most of them will never visit the communities (or even the departments) represented at the competition, but now they will have names and faces to put on kids their own age that live there. For me that is more than enough.

(December 2011: The student group Naturalmente Alternativa and their banana flour, which I will personally attest makes great pancakes, did a wonderful job and had a great time at the Feria National de Emprendedurismo. They also took home a prize for Most Creative Product.)

A Tribute: The University of Virginia

During my first week in Virginia I attended a an assembly on the Lawn, the focal point of the University of Virginia, along with all the other first-year students. We were welcomed to the University; we signed the Honor pledge; and on each of our chairs there was a nickle, which, of course, bears the image of our founder: Thomas Jefferson. Every day that I have been in Nicaragua I have carried that nickel in my wallet.

I have an interesting relationship with my university. Talk to almost anyone who went to UVA and they will tell you the same thing. It is a trait that connects us to each other and occasionally earns the ire/scorn (*cough*envy) of those who don't understand it. The University of Virginia is my university in a way that is somewhat akin to the way that my parents are my parents. That is to say, it is somewhat of an error to use the possessive. The only claim I can make on my parents is that I owe them my existence and that it was their care and nurturing that made me into the person I am today. It is a similar (though admittedly much smaller) claim that I make on Mr. Jefferson's University. Without its ideals, without its dedication to excellence, integrity, and service, without the people I met there and the things we learned and did together, I wouldn't be where or who I am today.

One of the biggest challenges of the Peace Corps life is staying motivated. Getting out the door is the first obstacle. I've always had a thing about doors, gates, and the significance of crossing thresholds. My time at UVA definitely accentuated that affinity. The gate leading to each and every garden is unique. If you peer through the keyhole of the Rotunda door you are looking right at the statue of Thomas Jefferson. And above certain doors, and certain gateways, there are inscriptions. Two of these inscriptions are particularly significant to me.

First, a word about motivation. Motivation isn't a trick. It isn't about bargaining with yourself. It's about remembering why you made a decision in the first place and then finding the drive to follow through. Remembering is all about being reminded, having something on your finger, or on your wrist, or in front of your eyes so that you can't forget. In college, most of my classes were in one particular building. That building had a door, an out of the way, side-door on the south-west corner. Above that door was an inscription:

You are here

to enrich the world

and you impoverish yourself

if you forget the errand.

I now have the same words written on the door to my refrigerator, right in front of my eyes as I sit in my hammock (which I do a lot). It is a warning against pride and vanity and it is a reminder that the harder I work and the more I put myself out there, the more I get back in return. (There are five other inscriptions on my refrigerator, but that's for another day.)

The second inscription that was particularly meaningful to me at UVA was found above an archway marking an entrance to central Grounds. Exactly where I don't think I'll say, but it now hangs above my front door so that I have to walk under it every time I leave the house.

Enter

By this Gateway

And Seek

The Way of Honor

The Light of Truth

And the Will to work for Men

I used to go out of my way to walk through that archway. Sure, it is just a collection of brick and mortar with some words over it. Choosing to walk through it, however, was my way of accepting its charge. Now it is just a piece of paper duct-taped to the wall, but I hope I would take it down before I would idly walk under it.

There are many other things I could have talked about in my tribute to UVA and its contribution to my Peace Corps service. I could have mentioned the Virginia flag proudly hung on my bedroom wall or the fact that when I'm really down in the dumps I put on my UVA shorts and my C-Ville 10-miler t-shirt. I could have talked about how I felt when my green Virginia baseball cap abandoned me to continue its adventures alone or my offering to buy a security guard friend a new hat when he showed up to work wearing one that was a frightful combination of maroon and orange. But those are just funny stories. My real tribute to the University of Virginia isn't wearing the right colors, but rather having the right motivation when I walk out the door.

Wahoowa.

A Tribute: Outside Magazine

I have often credited New Belgium Brewery with being the pivotal link in the chain of events that led to me deciding to pursue an extended experience of living and working in the developing world. Toward the end of my third-year and over the summer that followed I was working on applications for a variety of jobs— as a consultant, as a statistician, and as a research assistant— but very few of them were ever turned in. Mostly because I didn't really want them. It got so bad that I felt physically sick when I tried to write a cover letter. Then, one afternoon, I read about New Belgium Brewery: their work philosophy and their incentive scheme to encourage healthy living and environmentally friendly commuting. I liked the idea. Not just a job, but a life. The magazine in which that article appeared was Outside.

Outside has long been a fixture in my family. Good writing. Great gear reviews (I almost always buy my trail-running shoes based on the previous year's Gear Guide best buys... they're cheaper). Content that nails my interests, and, on top of it all, beautiful photography. You can always count on the writers of Outside to provide something to dream about (that heli-ski trip in Alaska or the ridiculously expensive adventure lodge in Chile), something to think about (Urban sprawl, upheaval in the Middle East, the future of green architecture), and something to act on (the best adventure races near you, quick outdoors getaways in your city). Whatever your mood— dream, think, or do— Outside has you covered. 

 

This past spring, my grandma bought me a subscription and every month she and my mom send me the newest issue. When it arrives it usually sits in the post office for a week or two, waiting for someone to pass through Ocotal headed for Jícaro (a two hour trip). Sometimes the magazine takes a detour. One poor issue (September 2011) sat in the post office for a week before being picked up by my friend Paul, who held on to it until one of my bosses came through the following week. My boss got it from Paul and tried to come visit me, only to be turned back by a roadblock protesting one thing or another. The magazine then went to Managua, where it stayed until one of the other Peace Corps staff members visited my friend Lexi, who gave it to me as I hopped on a bus to go to Esteli. Sadly, I left the magazine on the bus when I got off and it continued its journey into the unknown. (Outside, upon hearing the story from my mother, sent me a new copy, which has almost completed its journey to Jícaro.) When an issue finally gets here, I invariably spend the following Saturday in my hammock, leaving only to walk to the corner store and buy coffee. Sunday, I pass it along to my site-mate Natalie. All of us look forward to a new issue making its way to Nueva Segovia.

The reason I so look forward to each issue of Outside is bigger than the magazine itself. One of my major struggles during Peace Corps has been feeling unbalanced, feeling like only some parts of myself and my personality are being expressed. I miss standing on top of mountains in the middle of the night, jumping of cliffs into lakes, the sense of anticipation you get eying up a ski run, running without being chased by dogs or laughed at, and hanging out at the bar after a long week just chatting with my friends. They aren't just activities, they are expressions of self. Every month when I get my new issue of Outside, those parts get a little attention. What I read injects something new and different into my daily life. The fresh look at things helps me me put my current experiences into perspective or makes me challenge something I used to think. Aerial photography of development in the west helps me think about urbanization and infrastructure development (Nicaragua is urbanizing at a rate of 2% per year). A ranking of the 19 best towns to live in (for the outdoors/adventure inclined) lets me ponder how such places and the establishments in them have come to be and why they exist in some places and not others. Then, of course, there is the yearly Best Places to Work issue... we've already seen what that makes me think about.

In Nicaragua I spend a lot of time developing new aspects of myself by playing with little kids and working with small farmers. I also spend time deepening other aspects, patience and flexibility, also my already impressive ability to drink coffee and ponder things. When I leave, they will demand a measure of attention just like the parts of my personality that currently feel out of place. That's the price you pay for stitching together a self from so many different places. Thankfully, there's always something like Outside Magazine waiting to help you make sense of them all.

Next up: Need I really say it? If you're allergic to nostalgia better start running...

A Tribute: Crooked Still

There are many things that I have come to associate with Nicaragua. Rice and beans. A particular shade of green. Sentences that start with “fíjese que” and end with “gracias a Dios.” But twenty years from now, long after I've taken my leave from Jícaro, it will be the fiddle solo from Crooked Still's Undone in Sorrow that instantly sends my heart back to the days of riding old school buses down muddy roads through rolling hills.

I first saw Crooked Still play in Charlottesville, VA in the spring of 2010. I was making a last trip to C-ville to see some friends and ended up tagging along to a show on the downtown mall. Something about that night struck a chord that is still ringing. Maybe it was just the fact they are wonderful musicians. Maybe it was walking out into the cool VA night with my best friends and the words, “I'm young, the world is wide” still ringing in my ears. Or maybe Some Strange Country just sounded like the perfect album title for someone moving to Nicaragua for two years, but whatever it was it was immediate and it would prove to be lasting.

Now, Nicaragua is a beautiful country with a great poetry/folk-music tradition so maybe I would have continued my journey with Crooked Still regardless of where I was assigned after training. Then again, my musical interests had been few and fleeting since I gave up the saxophone freshman year of high school. As fate would have it, Peace Corps sent me to live here, with this man:

a banjo-wielding Agriculture volunteer from Michigan's UP as a site-mate. The first time we talked about music I mentioned Greg Liszt— Crooked Still's banjo player— and Kyle says, “yeah I've met him” and launches into Little Sadie. Music was soon cemented into my service. I started to learn guitar and a bit of banjo. Soon, Natalie (a Health volunteer from Iowa), arrived toting a mandolin and fresh off her own pre-Peace Corps Crooked Still concert. For the next year I wandered through a world of new experiences, full of highs and lows, sometimes feeling right at home and sometimes tremendously far from it, but with Aoife O'Donovan's voice smoothing things out and keeping me connected to that night in Charlottesville, in my other mountains and my other home.

In July I made my first trip home in 15 months. Of my six days in the States I spent two in New York getting my visa for my brother Tim's wedding in December. As it happened, Crooked Still was playing one of those nights at the Rockwood Music Hall, an amazing, tiny little venue in Brooklyn. I sat on the balcony with my brother and a good beer (family and good beer, two of the things I miss most), with a big smile on my face as everything that I'd experienced between my two Crooked Still shows flashed before my eyes. . Corey DiMario's double-bass— the first time I came down the hill into Jícaro— Greg Liszt's banjo— my shoe-shine boys and their friends drawing with my colored pencils in the park— Tristan Clarridge's cello— swinging in my hammock with a cup of coffee watching the rain— Aoife O'Donovan's voice— a class full of 16 year-old's in blue and white uniforms— Brittany Haas' fiddle— sunrise in Nueva Segovia. Sadly, (though deservedly) they are taking a break from performing in 2012 so I won't be able to book-end my Peace Corps service with Crooked Still concerts, but that night in New York everything was perfect.

Thanks guys.

Next up, Outside Magazine

Mid-service writer's block

I've been struggling through my mid-service writer's block for the last month. Writer's block is tough on me as my writing is my preferred way to process what's going on around me. While I was waiting for it to pass, I started to reflect on some of the things that have helped me deal with the past 17 months. There was, of course, my family, who received a brief hat-tip a few posts back, and some other things that I've picked up along the way like my hammock, stack of books, and my guitar. I thought briefly of including my camera (the Canon G11 definitely deserves a hat-tip, it's amazing), but I have a love/hate relationship with pointing it at things. I also thought of all my under-6 friends in Jícaro and sunrises with the cows out in the mountains, but they are part of life here and I was looking for something from the outside, a tribute to people/places/and things that have no idea they've been playing an integral part in my Peace Corps service. What resulted were the three tributes which will appear over the coming weeks. Keep an eye out!

Paz,

JGM

Suggested Reading

For those of you looking for a bit of extra reading, I highly recommend this Wanderphilia entry.  It's a great blog in general.

And since my last post was photoless

Seven

When I first moved to Jícaro I went out to look for some plastic containers. I needed something I could store leftovers in, use to freeze things (well-drained soy meat, for example), or just trust to keep my lunch and my backpack separate. As I wandered from place to place I found myself surprised and dismayed at the price of simple, closeable storage options. Thirty córdobas here, twenty-five there, but by far the most common price I saw on the type of vessel I was seeking? Seventy cords!

The stores that sell plastic goods, pots, pans and other household goods often call themselves “variedades”. You could translate it as “variety stores”, though in my mind I usually think of something more like “everything that would fit in the truck”. Variety just seems too coherent a word to describe a place that will sell you heavy frying pans, cartoon character sippy-cups, mangoes, green coffee, blocks of refined cane sugar, soccer cleats, fabric by the yard, shampoo, plastic garbage cans, leather belts and a microwave. These stores are, however, one of the few places in Jícaro that label merchandise with its price. I was especially appreciative of this fact during my early days in site. For me, knowing what things should cost is a big part of feeling comfortable in a place. Not knowing the bus fare from one place to another, a good price for a pound of onions, or the average price of a cup of coffee or a beer leaves me feeling out of place and at risk of being taken advantage of. That may be because, here, if you don't know what things should cost you end up paying double for them. Anyway, after browsing through Variedades Luz for awhile, I ended up with a set of three plastic containers for which I paid about seventy cords. Not bad, considering that the ones I really wanted appeared to run seventy cords a piece.

The strangely expensive plastic containers continued to bother me. Then, about a month or so later, I started noticing strange math mistakes in all my classes. My students having trouble with math was not overly surprising, but it usually results in them leaving questions blank because they didn't have their calculator, not in making calculation errors. After about a week of seeing the numerical equivalent of “seventy times three equals thirty” and “twenty-seven divided by three equals seven” it finally hit me: they are misreading my sevens as ones. Which, of course, meant that I was misreading their ones as sevens.

 Turns out, the Nicaraguan one looks like this:

                          

     and the seven like this:

Simple little misunderstanding, right? Now I write my examples and homework problems with the Nica seven and am no longer fooled by outrageous plastics' prices (10 cords, not 70). If I have doubts, I know to ask and now that my Spanish and my confidence are much higher that isn't as difficult. But the story isn't over.

Understanding the Nica seven is very cultural adaptation. The cross-bar on the seven isn't natural to me, but I've learned to understand it and I've used it over and over again for the last eleven months. Sometimes I forget, other times I find myself doing it without thinking. But on occasion something more interesting happens; I look at something I've written (a phone number) or I think about something I am writing (a date) and get caught somewhere between the two ways of writing the number seven. Was I talking to a Nicaraguan and using my Nicaraguan numbers when I copied the phone number? I know this form is going to the Peace Corps office, but will they misunderstand me if I don't put the crossbar on the seven? Will I misunderstand myself later? It is a neat little summary of my cultural adaption process. For me, cultural adaptation isn't so much learning to live and function seamlessly in a new and different place as it is navigating smoothly in a world where there are a million little things that are done differently or have a different meaning than what you originally learned.

Many of these little cultural differences are communicative. Even when firmly in the middle of our own culture we often make the mistake of thinking that everyone communicates the same way we do (Hi Mum!). Outside one's own culture, knowing how to give and receive information is even more difficult. “Ud. casi no habla español, ¿verdad?” doesn't mean the same thing as the English phrase, “You don't really speak Spanish, right?” I've learned to accept that and not be offended when someone questions my ability to speak Spanish after we've been talking for half an hour. On the other hand, I still feel like I'm being yelled at if I receive a text message in all capital letters. I know I shouldn't, but I also know that my mom trying to make my plans doesn't mean she thinks I'm incompetent and that is still the most common source of our arguments.

One of my hopes is that Peace Corps service is making me a better, more aware and more intentional communicator.

Free Time

I try to stay busy. During any given week I work with my counterparts, teach computer classes and entrepreneurship, visit the businesses I advise, work on my sexual health study or my basic grain market project, and spend time hanging out in the park with kids in my community. When all my projects are written out on paper, it would seem that I do a pretty good job of staying busy. Maybe, if I lived somewhere else, that would be true. When you take into account, however, that over the last few weeks the closest I've come to having a normal class was running into a bunch of my students sitting on the steps of the gazebo in the park and talking to them about fixed and variable costs for ten minutes, or that it routinely takes a month to get a meeting (read: find the person you are looking for actually occupying their office, even after you've fixed a time to get together) and in that meeting you're as likely to be sent off on a four hour trip to meet with someone else as to have your simple question answered, things look a little different.

Now, free time is both the boon and bane of the Peace Corps existence. It can recharge your week or leave you feeling unproductive, lonely and far from home. By far my favorite place to while away the hours is my hammock. I purchased my hammock from a volunteer who was finishing his Peace Corps service just a few weeks before swore in and moved north. It is made of denim and, while it is occasionally a bit warm, distinguishes itself by its durability, lack of pressure points (or line leaving strings), and ability to keep mosquitoes from biting me from behind. It is also large enough that, when temperatures are a bit cooler or it is raining, I can pull up the sides and wrap myself into a cocoon. My hammock is the linchpin of my free time. When I am traveling or working and become tired or frustrated the thought that crosses my mind is almost always, “I can't wait to be back in my hammock.” In the scene below, everything is organized for easy access from my hammock.

 1) My guitar is the newest member of the free-time team. She was a birthday present to myself and, being from the department of Esteli, I think of her as the norteña girl everyone keeps trying to hook me up with. She is slightly less polished and professional looking than her cousins from Masaya (down south), but that's what I love about her. It should be noted that I'm not much of a guitar player, but that is exactly why Veera (that's her name) is such a great part of the team. Learning the guitar is something I can work on every day and listen to myself improve. Besides the calming quality of music, slow progress does wonders for my emotional state.

2) Six years ago I was sitting at my desk in what we called the fishbowl, 141 Fitzhugh, my first-year college dorm. It was called the fishbowl because its only window opened out to a walkway from which passersby could peer into our room. I assume it was a weekend because everyone was out except for my roommate and I, who were both hard at work. Finally, needing a break, we wandered up to an on-grounds convenience store called Cross-roads where I purchased my first cup of coffee. In the years since, coffee has come to be my favorite time passing aid, facilitating both countless hours of conversation and quiet reflection. Here in Nicaragua it has been no different. If I am puzzling through the details of life here in Jícaro or escaping into the memory of adventures past, there is usually a cup of coffee to the right of my hammock. (Hat-tip to both Chaka Market-Bridge and Rise Up Coffee, check them out!).

3) My free time is usually accompanied by a stack of books. I like to keep my options open. In the year I spent at home prior to coming to Nicaragua, I did a pretty good job of cluttering up my mom's kitchen table with an assortment of journals and reading material. Now my books usually occupy a plastic chair within and easy arm's reach of my favorite spot. The lineup changes from time to time, sometimes including my computer or a new magazine, but the basics are about the same. (Everything pictured here is highly recommended.)

The key to making free time a positive force in my Peace Corps life has been aimless purpose. The idea of killing time has never done me any good. I feel guilty about killing time. I prefer to use my free time for some purpose, however trivial or oft-changing that purpose may be. When I practice guitar I'm learning something. Having a cup of coffee in my hand helps me organize my thoughts into something coherent and my stack of books provides new inputs to be organized. But as I said before, it hinges on the hammock, on having a place where aimless purpose can be relaxing and rejuvenating regardless of what is going on in the wider world.

The Return of Green

 

After months of oppression under thick layers of dust and sun-baked soil, the green world of living things has once again sprung forth in the hills of Nueva Segovia. Dull gray fields, burned in April by the incessant sun (and some misguided/lazy farmers) happily took in the May rains and turned black under ox-drawn plows. Now they are bursting forth in slightly crooked, green rows of beans and corn. The nature is, of course, far ahead of the farmers' fields. The untended hillsides and valleys are already in full “winter” glory. It happened so fast that it was almost impossible to believe that a few weeks before there was nothing— absolutely nothing— green and growing to be found. Startling. Magical, but starling.

I have been doing my best to take advantage of this seasonal glut of growth potential to get my garden going. So far I've had only marginal success. For a long time I was surprised at how few Nicaraguans had home gardens. Given the length of the growing season and the fertile soil, I figured the productive potential would be pretty high. You could also stagger your planting in order to extend the period in which fresh produce was available. Unfortunately the same sun that nourishes most growing things seems to have a vendetta against seedlings; the rain that showers plants with love doesn't know when to stop and drowns the objects of its affection; and as those two forces battle for supremacy they create an ideal environment for molds, fungus and all sorts of leaf eating bugs. Only my cucumbers and my beans, plants that grow fast and are resilient to losing a few of their leaves, survive from my first round of planting (well, and one severely stunted swiss chard plant).

Far from being discouraged, I've sought some Ag volunteer advice and reorganized my efforts. I've planted some more beans and cucumbers, a concession to what grows well. My sitemate and I call beans “Nicaraguan ivy” and I plan to make a tunnel-like trellis for them to climb. For the more difficult items I've moved away from planting directly in my garden. I started my eggplant seeds in Coke bottles, my lettuce in old water bottles, and my kale and swiss chard in tubes made by from rolled up paper. My herbs (oregano, mint, basil, and thyme) are also in bottle planters, though they'll stay there for the duration. The green, leafy vegetables are the most difficult because of how susceptible they are to molds and hungry pests. That could be why they are not available in markets here... and also why I'm so anxious to get my own crop growing. I'm armed with soapy-water, flour, and various other non-chemical weapons for the battle ahead.

Some days I consider just growing interesting-looking weeds. Aside from the leafy greens I'm not overly excited about anything I've planted. I do, however, like playing in the dirt and watching things grow.

Last year at this time I was... in Nicaragua.

For the last year I have been wandering through life in Nicaragua. In a speech I gave at the end of training, I said:

During these twelve weeks we have shared much. We have tried new food. We have learned new words and new skills, both for life and for our work. But not for a single moment did we learn, not for a single moment did we struggle, succeed, fail, or live— alone. There was always support, community, and assistance.

Well those twelve weeks have stretched into a year and I feel it is only right take this time to acknowledge some of that support. My two host families— first in Nandasmo and then in Jicaro— obviously deserve a big thank-you. The same can be said of my PCV friends, from Rio San Juan to Jinotega and from Chinandega out to the RAAS and of all my Nicaraguan friends here in site. My real family back in the states has been wonderful as well. My Dad and brothers came to visit (and Roopa!). My Mom and Grandma fight over sending me things in the mail. And everyone gets together once a week to SKYPE with me. I appreciate it all greatly, just as I appreciate everyone's letters and emails, however trivial the subject matter!

I would also like to call special attention to one companion who has been with me through all my time in Nicaragua: the perro zompopo. Now, zompopops are leaf-cutter ants (See Roopa's post from a few months ago) and perro means dog, but thankfully these guys are not dog-sized leaf-cutter ants... or worse, flying ants... I hate those guys. No, they're geckos (or some other small lizard)!

I remember lying awake one of my first nights in Nicaragua trying to find the source of the strange chirping sound I was hearing. I could also tell a million stories of little lizards jumping off the roof onto my shoulder (or head) just to say hi and make sure I was awake. They're so thoughtful. I love to watch them zip around and chase bugs. For awhile there was a small one living on the water shut-off valve in my yard. I named him Humberto. 

Yesterday this little guy fell into my patio while I was in my hammock and went nuts chasing some little red ants. So thank you perro zompopos for keeping me company and eating things that bite me. You are wonderful listeners, even if you have rather short attention spans. I look forward to another year of friendship and adventure!

And the same to all of you. Thanks for taking this journey with me!

Adobe

 I am constantly amazed at the speed and skill with which adobe houses, quite literally, rise out of the ground. While I have spent the last few months bemoaning the heat and the dust, I have really enjoyed watching the wave of construction that has swept across my little mountain municipality during the months of March and April.

Like most things (if not everything) building with adobe can be well done or poorly done. When it is well done the result is both beautiful and durable. It feels more like the reshaping of a piece of land than anything else. A foundation is dug out and squared off, using mostly digging bars to chop through the sun-baked dirt. That same dirt, or dirt from nearby, is then mixed with water (and sometimes a bit of grass) and pressed into molds to form blocks, which are once more baked by the sun. 

After they are dry, the adobe blocks are laid and cemented together with more mud to become a house, usually by the very people who own the land, made the bricks, and are going to live in the house. Later, the walls will be sealed with a layer of cement or “tierra blanca” (a special kind of dirt), and painted with brilliant colors. Once the process gets going it moves very quickly. A piece of land can be empty one week, the next week all the walls of a house are up, and the following week the house has a roof.