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.

Puro Polvo

 April is the hottest month of the year in Nicaragua. The sun is relentless, rising early and thoroughly baking everything it touches. Some nights my thermometer is still pushing 90 degrees at 1:00 am, and by noon I have to use a potholder to move a frying pan from the drying rack to the stove because the metal is too hot to touch. The rains have long since disappeared and will not come back to bring relief until sometime in May. In the river only a web of little channels still flow and hills that were once luscious and green are now dull and gray. Everyone seems to be resigned to the heat and the lack of water, but the straw that really makes the camel groan and say, “Really? Anything else you'd like to add?” is the dust.

To be fair, the dust that is now the source of everyone's complaints will, in three months, become the mud that is the source of everyone's complaints. Maybe it is just a trouble-maker in general, the younger brother of the dirt that makes crops grow and is molded into adobe bricks and built into houses. Regardless, It is on everyone's nerves. It is in their house. It cover's their clothes as they dry on barbed-wire fences and turns nicely shined shoes fuzzy looking slippers. When they walk along the road it is in their eyes and their mouths. Quite frankly it simply has no respect for personal space and it is EVERYWHERE.

In addition to getting into every chink and every crack of every house, the dust works hard to hold onto its place in the forefront of every mind. Each morning, just before dawn, it lifts in clouds so that as the sun rises it casts an ominous red glow out across the Segovian hills. Similarly, every evening the last rays of light are orange jets diffused across millions of particles hanging in the air, final reminder of what tomorrow will bring. That part is actually kind of cool...

(Postscript: The mountains of Nueva Segovia are a comparatively cool region within Nicaragua. I take this time to express my sympathy and offer my hammock to any poor volunteer who finds his/herself in the blast-furnace that is Managua, Chinandega, or the RAAS. -JGM)

La Casita

March marks the third month since I moved out on my own. Living all alone took a little getting used to, but now my home is really home. I'm always happy to get back at the end of a long day at school. When I'm off traveling, sitting on yet another bus, it is my little casita, with my hammock, my tiny kitchen, and my little sphere of personal space that I can't wait to return to. Some days I may go a little overboard and spend too much time there, but in general it has been a great addition to my life here in Nueva Segovia.

It may not be the most stereotypical Peace Corps house of all time— I have tile floors, electricity, and running water (it is cold, but still, it moves), and a real toilet— but learning to enjoy my house and its lack of adversity has been a big step in my Nicaraguan experience. While suffering and overcoming a new kind of living standard were always a possibility, they were never meant to be the reason for, or the defining characteristic of my Peace Corps experience. I came to live, learn, and work. Now I have a wonderful place to relax and reflect at the end of the day, which is a great advantage in achieving those goals. As Peace Corps volunteers, we love to trade war stories, “We haven't had power for a week and the water started running again yesterday but it is coming out orange.” “They canceled all my classes, then the bus broke down, then I got stung by a scorpion, then I came home to my dinner of rice and beans and the dogs were barking so I couldn't go to sleep.” “There's a tarantula in my shoe, again!” All that stuff happens, and it is a part of our life, but there is a tendency to let it start to define our life, to want to one-up the next volunteer and show that your site (or your country) is the toughest or most extreme. I feel that pressure, too, but at the end of the day I know that I didn't come to Nicaragua to prove myself, I came to learn as much as I could and hopefully help some people out along the way. Now I have a sweet little casita to help me achieve those goals.

There's plenty of extra room, so come visit.

Swing on over to my FLICKR page if you want to see some more pictures.

Guest Posts: Second Edition

This is me.

So what did I liked about Nicaragua? Ok wait, before that, I really like making lists. So here are three lists of three things each about Nicaragua. I know that is not a very big number of things for a list but three is a good number. So is 29. and 11.

 

  Things I like about Nicaragua:

1. There are a lot of volcanoes. A LOT. I really like volcanoes. They are very, very cone shaped. Not all of them, but many of them are very nice cones, like in the movies. I did not know volcanoes were really like that. And they were everywhere and we saw them all the time and that was awesome.

2. I got to CLIMB a volcano. It wasn't an active volcano, but it used to be. That is so cool. It had a little lake in the middle. I swam in the lake. I SWAM IN A VOLCANO. It was very shallow and the bottom was very mucky and maybe a little gross, but I didn't try too hard to find out what the muck was made of so it was still fun. Oh but it was also cold. Usually I don't like being cold, but this was ok because I WAS IN A VOLCANO. I didn't know it at the time, becuase at the time i didn't know this was a word, but it turns out what i was was TOTALLY STOKED about swimming in a lake in the middle of a volcano. Jonathan said he's been swimming in better craters, but i still like this one best because it was my first.

3. Squishy candies on a bus: we were on a bus going to the beach at jiquillio. It was a nice crowded bus and it was really hot and people were selling things. I didn't know what most of them were, but almost everything was for eating. Except one person who i thought was selling mushrooms becuase I heard her say the word "hongos" which is the Spanish word for mushrooms and one of the few words I know in spanish. only Jonathan said she was actually selling something for curing toe fungus so i guess everything they were selling wasn't for eating. Anyway, one lady was selling bags of little brown squishy things wrapped in plastic and i was very curious about what they were. I looked so curious a lady standing near me bought some and gave one to me. I thought that was very nice but i was not sure what to do with the brown thing becuase it was obviously for eating but also a bit strange looking. but i ate it anyway and it was a brown squishy candy and it was AWESOME. I do not know what it is called but if i could have i would have bought lots to bring home with me. Maybe Jonathan can tell you what they're called. Also tell me please.

Ok there were lots of other things i liked in Nicaragua, but I said I would only have three things in my list and that's three. But some other things I liked in Nicaragua were breakfast, walking on the beach, walking up the hill in El Tisey, hammocks, monkeys, and watching Hot Fuzz. In case you haven't seen it, it is a very good movie. There are probably other things I liked but those are the important ones. Also this is not about why I liked Nicaragua but about why i like Jonathan and that is because he gave me "Avatar: the last airbender" on DVD for Christmas in 2009 and it was awesome. If you don't feel like watching Hot Fuzz you should watch Avatar. The Nickelodeon version, not the other one, and not the one with the blue people.

Things I didn't like:

There are not too many of these but I will try to list them anyway:
                                                                                                                                               
1. I bought a little rooster whistle in the market in Granada and i wrapped it in a sock so it wouldn't break but when i brought it home it was broken. But that isn't Nicaragua's fault. It was probably my sock. And it isn't Jonathan's fault because he wasn't even there when I bought it.

2. Lack of coconuts. Nicaragua has the Caribbean sea on one side and the pacific ocean on the other, and we were always really close to the pacific ocean but there were never enough coconuts. I really wanted coconuts and was sad that I did not see them for many many days. I saw many coconut trees but no coconuts for eating. It was sad and strange. Then I made Tim ask someone at a store if they had coconuts and they laughed at him, and i thought that was funny and I was less sad.

3. I actually can't think of a third thing.

Things that surprised me about Nicaragua:

1. I found out that Lago de Nicaragua has sharks in it. I was surprised because I did not know that there were lake sharks. I never saw any sharks in the lake, but i still think they are awesome. I will tell you why. They are bull sharks, or Carcharhinus leucas, which are found all over the world and will often swim from the ocean to fresh water rivers, stay a while, then head back. The lake nicaragua sharks are even cooler than other bull sharks. First scientists thought they were a separate species of shark that was endemic to the lake and had gotten stuck there during the pleistocene. Then they realized they were just bull sharks, and they were kind of bummed that they weren't a brand new species. But THEN they realized that they weren't just stuck in the lake. They tagged a whole bunch of bull sharks that were hanging out near river mouths in the Carribean in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and a few of them showed up in the lake. The Lake Nicaragua sharks were swimming all the way up the Rio San Juan from the Caribbean Sea! Pull up a map and think about that for a second. And they didn't even figure all of this out until the 1970s. That's not even the cool part. THIS is the cool part: "Bull Sharks were jumping the rapids, much like salmon, to enter the lake". [http://www.jstor.org/pss/1442846] Jumping. Like. Salmon. SHARKS. now that is cool. and I didn't get to see that this time but I think Jonathan should go check it out.

2. There are a lot of Peace Corps people in nicaragua. Sometimes I saw the same people multiple times.

3. I saw Jonathan reading Twilight. I was surprised.

Oportunidades (Opportunities)

 This past weekend I had the opportunity to help facilitate Peace Corps Nicaragua's first cross-sectoral youth leadership camp. The event saw nearly a hundred youth from all corners of the country converge on a small retreat center in the mountains of Jinotega and spend three days attending educational sessions, playing sports, and getting to know a new group of friends they may have otherwise never met. Other than a few transportation headaches (though no more than can be expected getting 100 kids from around Nicaragua to and from a camp in the middle of the mountains), things went remarkably smoothly. A wonderful job was done by the camp staff and by the Volunteers who served as counselors and session facilitators (giving sessions on such topics as leadership, non-violent communication, diversity and stereotypes, nutrition, sexual health, self-esteem and positive attitude, behavioral change, creativity, community banking, job preparation, and time/money management). The kids were also wonderful— participative, respectful, friendly and as well behaved as you can expect a group of a hundred teenagers to be. A spontaneous walk-off did erupt between the two boys dorms about an hour after they were supposed to be asleep... but we all know how easily those things pop up.

I really hope the kids absorbed some of the information we threw at them during the retreat. Well, I should rephrase that. It would make me really happy if the kids absorbed some of the information we threw at them during the retreat. Truthfully, however, the sessions themselves were probably not the best opportunity we offered them. Many of the attendees had never been more than a few hours from home. Most of them had never traveled alone or spent the night in their department capital (most of our kids traveled with a local PCV to their department capital the night before the camp so they could arrive on time). Few of them had more than a handful of friends from other departments. Now, here they were, eight hours from home, no parents, surrounded by a group of strangers from places they had probably never heard of, learning to make decisions, learning to make friends, to share, to listen and to think for themselves. That type of experience is much more likely to stick than anything we said or tried to teach, which is good, because it is much more important.

Viajar (to travel)

Traveling in Nicaragua is an interesting experience. Whether your rent a car and risk being stopped by the police, paying a few “taxes” or tickets, and navigating a confusing mess of roads or decide to brave the bus and taxi network, there are sure to be surprises. I recently had my first opportunity to do a bit of non work-related traveling. Over Christmas, my dad, brothers, and my brother's girlfriend came to visit me. Wanting them to have the most authentic experience possible, to see some interesting things but to get a bit of an idea of what my life here looks like, I decided we would travel exclusively via buses and taxis.

All in all, the decision worked out wonderfully. More often than not, our timing was usually good and we avoided waiting around for buses to show up. We only had to stand up for one or two trips. Only one person was pick-pocketed, and he wasn't carrying anything of use in that wallet. Our travels took us down south to climb volcanoes on the island of Ometepe and up north to lounge on nearly deserted beaches in Chinandega. The trip gave me a good opportunity to compare and contrast life in my site with life in some other parts of Nicaragua. Those reflections will probably come out in my posts over the next few months. At the moment, however, I am going to give my visitors a chance to express their thought about Nicaragua in a series of guest posts.

Enjoy the new perspective! Then come visit and contribute your own to the discussion!

Overload

(Mark Malacarne)

I am not entirely sure how I want to describe my trip to Nicaragua. With the stress of finals and being done at Lock Haven, it felt like before I even realized what was happening I was sitting in the airport ready for another adventure.  I hadn't even had to time to put
together expectations for what I was about to experience.  I was thrust into a world with rice and beans, cold showers, loud dogs, louder chickens, bamboo huts, crowded buses, littering, poverty,
undrinkable water, dirt floors, no cell phones (for me anyway), mediocre beer, and a language that, although I studied it for years, couldn't speak and barely understand.  But while these sound intimidating on paper, I wouldn't change one thing about it.  I would struggle to recollect a time that I felt more relaxed, and more
connected to nature.  It's funny what a perfect sunset, the beach and close family can do to your perspective.

There I was. Here I am

(John Malacarne)

The journey, an experience of a lifetime – the chance to be where not many people I know have ever been; the chance to be with my sons for an extended period of time; what more could a fellow ask for?

Well, I got a lot more than I expected. I did go where not many people have ever been. When I arrived in Nicaragua, I couldn’t have been more shocked or unsettled. The first streets I saw were littered with garbage, crowded with people, cabs, and buses. The journey in those crowded buses was, at first, a little unnerving. The places we observed on our travels were wooden, bamboo, block, and plank shacks. Wow, how bad these people had it!

- There I was, Here I am-

It took some time, but things changed - not the conditions or the people – the way I saw them. I began to realize I was looking through very clouded eyes. The people had all they needed; the sea, from which most received their living, beautiful skies, fantastic sunsets, warm water, shelter, and the opportunity to live in nature at almost all times. After I realized that, in many ways, these people whom I felt sorry for were living the dream of many people, I relaxed and shared in the beauty of God’s Kingdom of Nicaragua.

There I was – the Dad taking his boys on an adventure to a foreign land. They would lean on me as they have their mother and I since they were born – me, the hero, the fun one. What was I thinking?!

Here I am – Mark drove me to and from the airport. He was much more confident in finding our way through airports than I ever could be. Jonathan was waiting for us as soon as we disembarked from our plane. Tim had been traveling alone from the US and around Nicaragua. Tim and Jonathan handled all money transactions and travel during our adventure (as well as communications). Jonathan would be stopped on the streets of a village to shake hand and catch up with community members, or to introduce us to people at whom we could just smile and who smiled back at us. Going up in the hills to help a farmer friend of his milk cows and seeing the feelings these people had for him was heart melting. My boys are not little anymore – they are men each on a path to help others. Glory to God. Oh, I did get to see my little boys – they still play on the beach and tease each other as they have always done. One time, as they were walking down the beach side by side, I saw the three little guys who yesterday were walking on a beach in N.J.

Well, maybe it was the sunset reflecting off the water, or salt mist in my eyes, or maybe just maybe it was a film of tears at the pride I felt toward the three.

Did I enjoy the adventure – were there new revelations? Naw