Amazing Sights

I keep getting blown away by things I see.  I wonder how long it takes to be so acculturated that common sights lose their ability to astound.  Until that happens, I’m enjoying the constant surprises.  Here are a few:

Sunday, there was such a clamor on the patio of the house I live in.  The parrot in his cage was squawking wildly and there was other noise I quickly identified as a cock fight, but as it occurs in nature.  We have roosters and hens and chicks roaming around all the time.  Two cocks got into it and someone in the family had to intervene to stop it.  One cock was placed in the shower to segregate him from the other and life returned to peace.  I was reminded not to open the shower door.  This morning I walked around the house to the lavadero, the cement basin in which we wash clothes and dishes.  There stood the señora of the house with a dead rooster in the lavadero.  She was plucking it. I was taken aback first because the señora has a responsible job in the world and I’m always amazed that her status doesn’t insulate her from the hardest household work, including apparently, plucking roosters. Second, I wasn’t aware of this additional use for the lavadero.  A little later I went to take my shower.  The only sign of the deceased rooster was a fair amount of ñaña on the floor of the shower.  Por eso always wear flip flops in the shower.

Speaking of chickens, a week or so ago I was traveling into the country in a cab.  This sounds kind of posh, but it is a common form of transportation in my part of the world where busses pass by infrequently and nearly no one has a car.  When I take a taxi I expect to share it with at a minimum of three and a maximum, in my experience, of six extra people, not including the driver and children who sit on laps.  We all pack in somehow.  On this one trip, however, there were only two of us in the back seat until the cab stopped to pick up a woman who carried a large bag, the kind people buy rice in, plastic but reinforced with cross hatched string or thread. In the bag she cut two holes and out of each stuck the head of a chicken. I did the proverbial double take. On the way home, I caught the bus along with a lady who had two chickens tied together at the feet.  No bag.

One day my packed taxi stopped to pick up another passenger.  There being no room inside the taxi, he climbed into the trunk which was left open to accommodate him as we sped down the road.  I’m used to that one now as it happens fairly often.  I am hoping to find out how much the trunk riders pay.  I bet it’s the same as those of us who ride inside.  Everyone pays for the ride so the cab driver is motivated to shove in as many people as he can.  No one complains.  Everyone is glad to have the ride.

The father in the family where I live was taking down the dry laundry from the line.  As he took each piece he folded it into a neat square and put in on top of his head.  By the end of the line he was balancing a tidy stack. 

 His mom is a charming and unassuming señora, very warm, in her mid to late 70’s I’d guess.  She came to visit and was very interested in me and kind to me.  She asked about my children and I took her to my room where I have pictures of my family and friends.  She was much taken with a snap shot of Alex and Tina on their wedding day.  It’s the only wedding picture I brought with me.   The señora asked for the photo and when I handed it to her she left the room with it clutched tightly to her breast.  I wasn’t sure that I could get it back, but knew it was gone when I saw her a few minutes later.  The wedding picture was tucked inside her bodice, the edge peaking up over the neckline of her dress.  She left with it.  These are the kinds of misunderstandings that are impossible to negotiate with my level of Spanish.  Easier to ask Alex and Tina to send me another snapshot.

In the campo life is even more traditional than it is in my pueblo of 2400 people. I always see ancient ladies walking along the road with heavy loads on their heads.  I see men riding burros bareback.  I see women gathered at the one well in a village early in the morning with their barrels and pails talking as I imagine women have been doing for all time.   In the house where I give lessons, a very old señora naked but wrapped in a towel from the waist down makes her slow way over the packed dirt floor to shower. I love to watch the oxen walk in the road.  They are various and complex shades of cream and taupe.

I am reading a very good set of short stories, Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories by Joan Silber (thank you to whomever recommended this one) and in one story a character thinks back on his years as a tourist when he would look at amazing sights as if his seeing them somehow validated them, as though in a way they weren’t  real until he saw them.  Not sure I explained this right but I think I recognize the idea.  I’m still a tourist here and these sights make me want to turn to a companion to say, “Did you see that!!” as though the sight was placed there to blow me away.  In time the sights, and maybe I, will just be a part of the landscape. Not sure I’m looking forward to that time.  My life now is very vivid.   The visuals are a part of the sensory overload that makes me sleep a solid 9 hours every night.

Amazing Sights

Peace Corps is really good at training.  Part of training for us was preparing for the emotional ups and downs of service.  We were warned that there would be times when we’d question the usefulness of what we were doing or feel overwhelmed by the foreignness of the place.  At such times we were advised to hold off on the blog and turn to the journal.  But a friend emailed an inquiry as to what I’m actually doing now and I was struck by the two ways in which the question, “What am I doing here?” can be understood.

So, apropos of one way of interpreting the question, I’ve been in my permanent site for 3 weeks.  My job is to help Nica English teachers develop better teaching strategies toward the end of more ‘communicative” learning.  I am also charged with helping to develop materials for classroom use in this country where the only existing material is a whiteboard.  Finally, I’m supposed to find ways to teach English to interested people in the community.  I am permitted to develop other projects secondary to my main English-teaching obligations. But there’s a hold on all this work. School is out for the year.  This is summer vacation.  Classes resume in early February.  Peace Corps schedules us into the new site with 2 months during which I am supposed to “integrate” into the community, not actually work. 

Theoretically, some time for getting settled is a good idea, but as you can imagine, this integration part is hard.  For the first time we are on our own, some of us with limited language skills, living with people we don’t know who may or may not be excited to have us here.  I can tell you what I’ve done by way of integration: introduce myself to neighbors, visit and chat at various small businesses in town like corner markets, tortilla and rosquilla sellers, hang out at the park hoping someone is interested enough to stop for a chat (this actually works often), go to church for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, go to the high school graduation, visit the local Department of Education office, meet the police, try to figure out who are local leaders so I can talk with them about community needs, etc.  I have tried, but the truth is there’s still a lot of down time every day.  So I use that to reread training material and, especially, study Spanish maybe 3 hours a day. I have to feed myself so I shop and cook. There’s still time left so I’ve been reading a lot of very good novels and enjoying that. At night I listen to music, write in Spanish in my journal and read one thing or another.  I admit to playing solitaire.   I also have done a little traveling.  I have a PC site mate, Jenny, who has showed me how to get around the closest large town for food, cyber and banking needs.  She also took me to a bigger city, Esteli.  I’ve met some other volunteers from the area.

So, in short, this is a hard time for me with some up sides.  But I recently had a project that really excites me fall into my lap. Another volunteer in the small business sector let me know he’d meet a Nica guy who operates a tour service for the only real tourist attraction in Madriz, the Somoto Canyon. The owner employs 6 guides who need to learn English so they can better do their jobs. I agreed to meet with the owner. Lacking his name or phone number, but with a general idea of where his business was supposed to be in the nearby town, I headed out to find him. When the business wasn’t where I was told it was, I started to ask around in local shops.  In one, a lady didn’t know, but got her employee to put me in a car (yes, I was a little worried) and drive me to the local tourist office.  The folks there listened and knew who the guy was, phoned him and he came to find me at the office and brought me to his place. (This was an amazingly successful negotiation.  It could have as easily ended up that no one knew who I was looking for or that the guy wasn’t around or nobody understood my Spanish, but this is how business is done in Nicaragua—in person, at your house or shop, face to face.)

Long story short, I am thrilled that I am going to try to help these guides so maybe they do a better job with tourists who maybe will tip them more so they can live better in this poor part of the world. I suggested and the operator agreed that I don’t have time to teach them a lot of English, but we can do basics and maybe I can translate the things they say on the tour and help them learn how to say those thing in English. I hope this will be my project in the month and a half before school starts and maybe a little after.  So, that’s what I’m doing.

As to the other meaning of the question, “What am I doing here?” I ponder that sometimes.  I think about my kids and the lovely women in their lives, my friends, my family, my dog, my garden. I think of the odds against making any real difference.  I think of the  difficulty of knowing well another culture, or another person in that culture.  T

What Am I Doing Here?

La Purisima

In the last post I mentioned the Feast of the Immaculate Conception which apparently has two faces.  The religious holiday is December 8, but on December 7, and for a week before in large cities, there is the more pop-religious version of La Purisima.  I have only a single experience with it, and my experience is in a small town, but it was something.  To begin, I gather that La Purisima is something like Halloween.  There are no costumes but people go around to houses for treats.  But not all houses.  The house I live in, however, has a Purisima event every year.  I am not sure how many other houses in the pueblo do this, but I think not many.  I’ve never seen anything like it. 

It started at 4 p.m.  I walked out to the patio of the house which is surrounded by a chain link fence on the other side of which is a dirt road.   I was taken aback to see in the road outside the fence maybe 40 or 50 people.  Many were milling around, pulling down large palm leaves so they could sit in the dirt.  Others, including teens and children were pressed up against the gate in the fence maybe 5 rows deep and I mean really pressed against the fence and each other.  Inside the fence on the patio were a dozen plastic chairs facing a homemade shrine to Mary with lots of lights and glitter and artificial flowers.  I sat in one of the chairs and made small talk with a nine year old sitting next to me. (I am so odd to them.)  After 40 minutes or so an older señora stood and the rest of us followed as she and another woman recited readings and led us in songs.  The songs are traditional (I heard them on the radio for days in advance) and are sung mostly by women in a distinctive tone—hard to describe—a bit nasally, very loud, a combination of song and chant.  In the house the family had accumulated a vast of hand number of handouts, enough to fill two very big cardboard boxes.  The treats consisted of sections of cane, candy and fruit.  Some were packed in large plastic containers; there were smaller containers, plates and finally a huge number of bags, maybe the size of small lunch bags in the states, all with the aforesaid treats. There were also some plastic balls for children.

After the readings and songs, the family passed out the medium containers to the folks on the patio who then left via the gate, but with great difficulty because the people on the road were so packed against the gate it was hard to get through.  We then waited, maybe for a half hour.  Musicians showed up with a crew of singers and, once again, had a horrible time making it through the crowd.  When they got in and settled on the patio,  the Purisima songs started anew,  this time with marimba, and guitars and I think a mandolin.   There was another señora in this group who spoke at length about the Virgin.  When these people, musicians from an outlying campo comunidad, were done—about 7:00—they had to leave by the back entrance, the crowd outside the fence was so deep.  The musicians and singers took with them the largest plastic containers of treats.

The time had apparently come for the people in the streets to get treats, too.  But the family said that they wouldn’t open the gate until there was some order.  The deal is that a few people at a time are let in, maybe 10 or so, and they sing a Purisima song and get a bag of treats.  But the people outside, all pushing and shoving, looked like a mob and the family wasn’t letting anyone in until somehow the people better behaved.  The stalemate commenced and I must say I felt pretty awkward sitting there on the patio with one or two family members, while outsiders, obviously poor and incredibly determined to get their treats, stood, listening to Purisima songs, without moving from the fence  for 3 ½ hours.  It was a standoff and I was struck that no one on the outside took charge, said to others, “OK you guys, these people aren’t opening up until we make a line so, you people at the gate, you can go first but get in line so we can get our treats and go home”.  Rather everyone stood there without moving.  And the family didn’t move either.

I didn’t quite understand what was going on.  At first I wondered why the family wanted to provide this treat for the community when it carried such difficulty and great expense. A few days later, someone explained that the person who holds the Purisima celebration does so because s/he promised the Virgin s/he would do so if the Virgin granted a request.  So it’s an obligation owed to arrange for the songs and prayers and to give gifts to the people.  This helps to explain the attitudes on all sides: the family’s need to give is by way of paying a debt, not necessarily a display of concern for the poor.  And the poor are a part of the dynamic; their role is to accept the benevolence.  This doesn’t explain the jam up at the fence, though. 

By 8 p.m. I was pretty hungry and nothing was happening so I went to the kitchen to make some dinner.  When I looked out about 15 minutes later the gate had been opened and some people were singing their song on the patio.  I assume they got their treats.  It must have taken the family an hour or two to get through all the people who had been waiting.

La Purisima

It Comes with the Territory

I haven’t been in site very long and the real work won’t start until school resumes in early February, but I’m already registering the difficult parts of service.  The prediction is that the first six months of service are really hard. Here are some stressors:

1.     I used to worry about wearing sunglasses.  I’d think that nothing made me more gringa, but the truth is that everything about me screams gringa, from my clothes, to my skin, to the way I walk—silly to worry about sunglasses, as if by avoiding them I could fit in better.  I so stick out.  And that will never change, although people will get used to seeing me in the streets.  People are nice.  They smile and say “adiós” (Nica greeting, pronounced “adio”), but I am the “other” in spades.

2.     I can’t rely on my well-honed ability to size up situations.  I was really good at this in the States.  I prided myself on being able to read people well and to intuit what was going on interpersonally.  Here, in this other culture, I don’t know the rules and so can’t make predictions and judgments. It’s a strange feeling, because Nicaraguans are Western, they watch TV and wear clothes I recognize, so it’s easy to think they think like I do.  Not true.  In many small ways I miscalculate and that undermines confidence. 

3.     Time hangs heavy.  Perhaps this will change when the school year starts or maybe I’ll figure out what to do with the time I now have.  This is a big one—I really do hope that I can learn the “in-the-moment” thing, or, put another way, a way of being content not doing too much that’s “productive”. But aside from taking care of buying daily food to cook, there’s nothing much to do for entertainment, no one to go visit, no casual shopping, although I can get to a bigger town and plan to do that at least once a week if just for the scene change.  I asked for a small town and I got it.  I saw a little boy yesterday in the street kicking an empty plastic bottle around.  Maybe I should give that a try.  Joke.  But this is an opportunity to do things I always said I wanted to do and never had time for, like walk for an hour a day, do yoga daily, get out my calligraphy stuff and read, read, read.

4.     There are many moments about which we were warned, moments when the disconnect between life as we knew it and life as it is here becomes acute.  This morning I had one.  I was drinking coffee on the porch appreciating the view when I looked up the dirt road to see two little kids playing on the side of the road.  One was about 7 and the other about 5.  The seven year old was hacking at a tree with a machete.  No adult in sight.

I can get euphoric about not much.  Today, by asking questions, I found the home of a lady who sells tortillas.  I was invited in while one señora went for the tortillas.  Two other señoras were talking.  I introduced myself, said who I was, what I was doing in their town and shook hands.  I got such a positive response.  The two year part impressed them.  When I get bored I can go sit at the park and hope someone wants to chat.  Today I got two high school girls.  They were giggly, one more bold than the other who tagged along when her more confident friend.   Both sat down to talk.  But that was fun for me and I might have one of the girls as a student when class starts in February.

Wednesday  is the day before the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a big holiday here.  In the big cities it’s celebrated for a week with candy for kids and gatherings at people’s houses, but here it’s a one day holiday.  My family has a gathering at the house.  Should be interesting.  Today the family broke out the Christmas decorations.  (Yes, we are decorated for Christmas and Immaculate Conception).  When I got back to the house the tree was already up.  Now there is more glitter and light around than you can imagine, two crèches with a giant baby Jesus, and you know what, it’s just like home, down to the big cardboard box that holds the decorations wrapped in plastic bags from year to year.  Fireworks are sold in the streets.  It’s going to be a big holiday season.

I think I’m going to be fine here.  I am prepared, though, for 6 hard months.

It Comes with the Territory

New Home

The move from my training town to my new site in the northern mountains of Nicaragua took place on Thanksgiving day.  And it was an ordeal even though the transportation part proceeded without a hitch.  The problem was with the hugely heavy and ungainly suitcase I had to schlep along with an overstuffed back-pack and weighty day pack.  The source of all this weight was not simply my clothes but also the ton of material PC thinks I need.  I agree I need it but moving it all required transfers from taxi to bus to taxi to taxi to bus and finally into my pueblo at the top of a steep hill.  I managed it all with the kindness of strangers, and when I got here my host dad met me on the highway with his “friend” a guy who lifted probably 70 pounds of suitcase on his back and walked it up to the house while my host dad and I hefted the packs.

Thanks giving dinner consisted of a tortilla wrapped around a piece of guajara (type of salty cheese) which I bought and ate on the bus from Managua.  I add this detail not to make anyone feel sorry for me (I don’t feel sorry for myself) but to show that I’ve learned how to manage. I’ve started to get a little organized, to get out and meet a few people at the local pulperias that sell the few things I bought to start cooking for myself.  Today my site mate, a health volunteer, who sadly will only be here for 4 months or so, took me to the nearest large town to hit the bank and to buy some food for the week.  So I am ready to cook for myself—oatmeal, pineapple, a few veggies, some peanut butter and wheat bread, and yoghurt.  In another week, after I get the hang of things, maybe I’ll try a preparing a real meal, but I need to figure out the rhythms of the house first—when the kitchen is used, when I can do my wash without taking up limited line space, in what order it’s best to get a shower in the morning.  I’ve arranged to meet with each of my Nicaraguan counterpart teachers next week,  And next week I’ll get back  to work on my Spanish. For now I’m trying to take it a little easy.

This is a beautiful town.  It’s amazing what mountains do for a place.  The mountains here are more like foothills, really sharply peaked and covered in vegetation.  I’d like to learn the geology. There are lots of nice vistas. The town is muy tranquilo.  In the night and mornings—actuaslly now that I listen all day long--, the roosters set up a competition (or maybe they are just saying hi).  One starts, his neighbor picks up. And the next one and so forth till the first one (under my window) starts again.  It seems that every  house has a big parrot in a cage.  The chickens sometimes roost in trees and are very pretty there. Today while my site mate and I were talking by the side of the road, a small parrot appeared between her legs.  She bent over and he hopped on her finger.  She went to put him up on a tree branch when a woman came running out.  He had apparently escaped from the house but he hopped on the woman’s finger to return home—another Nica moment.

I’m glad for this time to rest up.  Training has been full and when school starts in early February I’ll be very busy again.  These two months are for Spanish and for talking to people the best I can and for figuring out—or starting to—what I can do here to help.  

New Home

Being Official

Yesterday I and my group of 33 trainees sang two national anthems (Nica and US), took two vows (one in Spanish and one in English) shook hands with the U.S. charge d’affairs and signed on as volunteers. (If you want to  see the Nica news report of the ceremony, go to YouTube and enter “ pc on the news”.  It’s a news spot one of us filmed from the TV,  and there’s lots of volunteer party noise in the background.  I am in one brief shot at the end). The ceremony took place in a Holiday Inn in Managua and our host families were invited and feted for their invaluable help. Each volunteer individually presented a printed certificate to host moms and posed for a picture.  It was really nice to see our crew, all cleaned up for the occasion, with their much shorter host moms.  Whatever else happens here, the connection to and among these families is the best diplomacy. I would trust my family to take care of me any time, and to always be glad to have me come back to visit.  It’s an amazing capacity for hospitality and generosity these families show.

 Some in our group felt that even a place as ordinary as a Holiday Inn was too grandiose a setting and could make our host families feel intimidated and poor. Actually the Holiday Inn was humble in comparison to the US embassy which we visited on Thursday after a lot of security to-do.  The Embassy is relatively new and when you’re in it you are in the US.  Everyone speaks English, even the Nica security guards.  There’s a contingent of Marines. There is a store where we volunteers, in a pathetic show of need, stocked up on chocolate, Snickers bars in particular.  Although they brought in pizza for lunch, I managed to buy a real cappuchino at the cafeteria. I was so happy to have that flavor again, especially when combined with a peanut M and M. 

I got side-tracked by food.  I swore I wouldn’t do that.  Volunteers spend a good deal of time talking about food, what they are eating at home, what they miss, how they plan to feed themselves at their sites.  It’s the most popular topic.  Speaking of which, after we swore in, we were invited to the home of the county director for Thanksgiving dinner, a week early. We had massive quantities of bean dip, salsa and guacamole.  We had real delicious turkey and pies with whipped cream.  We had sangria. The director’s house is lovely.  We were outside without mosquitos in her beautiful garden.  A wonderful end to a wonderful day.

We stayed in a pretty nice hotel in Managua for two days, enjoying warm showers and air conditioning for the first time in this country.  We could watch CNN. There was free wifi.  I found all of this a little hard, a hint of culture shock to come.  I didn’t really want to be in this world.  But having said that enjoyed the shower.  This morning everyone departed.  There were a lot of tears as people went off by themselves to their sites.  I admit to having been close to tears a lot over the last 2 days.  I think it was the culmination part, and the going alone part, and the great struggle that was  training was a part of it too.    We trainees were, after all, the only folks from home we knew for 3 months and it was hard saying good bye. 

But there’s adventure ahead. The next post will be from my new site.

My Pueblo, Revisited

Now that I have a less than a week in my pueblo before swearing in and moving north, I’m getting a little nostalgic.  Part of it is the fabulous weather, sunny and warm with constant breezes.  This is winter in Nicaragua and it’s a pleasure to walk around in it.  Last week I was assigned by my language facilitator to interview a resident of the pueblo about how life was 40 years ago in this town.  I visited Dona Petrona, my host mom’s older sister.  Dona Petrona was a safe interviewee, having hosted twenty-some volunteers herself.  She knows how to slow down for us.  The interview consisted of several questions, but after the first few, Dona Petrona wanted to talk about her life with the volunteers and in particular how sad she was when each volunteer left her house.  This is a lady muy carinosa and her heart breaks when she loses a volunteer, so much so that she takes to her bed for a few days until she recovers.  She told me a story about a black volunteer who lived with her and then moved on to her site.  The volunteer called Dona Petrona in tears because her new host mom rejected her because of the color of her skin.  Dona Petrona reminded the volunteer of a song she had sung to her during her training about an angel with black skin who was taken up to heaven.  The volunteer hadn’t understood the song at the time, but when Dpna Petrona sang it for her again over the phone, the volunteered cried and thanked Petrona for reminding her of the song.   I was happily diverted from my interview by these stories and had to return the next day to finish up.

  When I got there Dona Petrona had some fabulous, truly amazing sorbete for me, some fruit flavor and a real treat.  We finished the interview and I was asking her about the various barrios around my pueblo.  I’ve always wondered who lives there.  Petrona offered to show me the next day. I showed up on Wednesday and we started to walk out of town.  The paved roads changed to dirt as we came to the first of two barrios.  In both there was a greater population of the poor than in the pueblo.  We passed many house with dirt floors, outside kitchens with wood fires, children playing outside in the dirt.  But we also passed some neat little family compounds consisting of a house and several reed  or stick out-buildings roofed with thatch.  At one someone called out to Petrona to come in.  We did and a toothless woman named Consuela gave me a big hug as did her husband, a very old and leathery looking man named something Angelo.  It’s normal to hug on first contact in Nicaragua but I still am a bit awkward with this but should’t be at my age.  Three generations live in this compound all cooking and eating together and taking care of each other.  This is what happens in Nicaragua.  Thje family is always there if you get sick or lose your job or   need any kind of help.   I met Consuela’s daughter making tortillas on the outside wood fire stove.

The best thing is to walk with someone like Dona Petrona.  She knows everyone and in between houses she tells me their stories.  We came upon 4 or five children—about 7 years of age—playing in the road. Two little boys were building a kite from sticks and plastic bags.  Petrona stopped to talk to the two little girls.  It seems she heard one of them use a bad word.  In the nicest possible way she told them that such words were not good for them  This was because the words were ugly and the girls were so beautiful.  The girls ducked their heads and giggled, but Petrona kept talking.  They knew she meant it.  She is privileged to correct other people’s children.  He stature, this culture, bestows the privilege.

I saw so much on our hour walk.  I heard PC say we should get people to walk around with us in our site, but didn’t get it until I saw it in action.  I get stuck on my norteamericano values—how would you ever ask someone to walk you around town in the U. S.  But I thinks it’s a kind of honor to be asked, acknowledgement to the person asked that s/he has importance.  And there is nothing like being introduced by an insider.  It’s a win/win.  I’ll do it right away and often in my new site.

Anyway, my days with Dona Petrona made me nostalgic for my pueblo.  How many other great people would I have met had I not been embarrassed of my poor Spanish and studying all the time? My host mom and I are comadres, language notwithstanding.  We will miss each other.  I am easy to be around.  I know how to disappear when needed.  I think I was easy for my family to live with.  I’ll miss my host dad, too with his jokes and willingness to try to explain as simply as possible complicated subjects like the influence of world debt on labor in Nicaragua.  I had a great time here.  And it’s clear I can come back for a visit any time I want.

My Pueblo, Revisited

Objectives and Dogs

I’ve been thinking about this blog and I have a couple of disclaimers I want to make..  There are some constraints on writing that I’m afraid may leave a false impression.  First, although the national election is today and the politics in Nicaragua are intensely interesting, PC has a policy of strict neutrality when it comes to any political expression, which as far as I can see, means no expression at all.  It would be hard to talk about politics without betraying an opinion, so saying nothing is the best course.  Second, I don’t want to write anything that would offend an average honest Nicaraguan.  There are hard things to see in this country and they are especially visible to people who aren’t used to them. I’ll write about one below: dogs. Until I understand something better I hesitate to describe it because I’m afraid my norteamericano response would leave a false impression.  As a result sometimes I worry that what I write will sound like a travel brochure full of quaintness and local color. Enough said on that topic. Reader beware.

We are heading into the last 2 weeks of training.  The final language evaluations are next Friday.  I have made my peace with them.  I know what I know and no more at this time.  PC is sponsoring a workshop for teachers and each training group has to prepare a 1 ½ hour charla, on a subject regarding the teaching of English.  My group is talking about lesson planning, and my part in particular is objective writing.  This doesn’t sound too interesting as a topic, but it is to me. I have become a little passionate about how we teachers use the students’ valuable classroom time.  Especially here, where time is so hard to come by.

For example, I learned yesterday that there are 220 school days in Nicaragua.  Officially.  Compare that to the 180 days usual in the U.S. But those 220 days don’t happen, especially for English class.  To begin, English class meets on average for one 2 hour class and one hour class per week, compared to other subjects that meet daily.  And in fact, English classes last 1 ½ hours and 45 minutes respectively, for a total of 2 ¼ hours per week of English instruction. Secondly, school often doesn’t happen.  For instance, this week there was one day of school.  Why? A holiday ( Day of the Dead), a political meeting for teachers, and two days related to the use of schools as voting places.  This is an unusual time, but school is cancelled for all kinds of reasons. In a lecture yesterday a representative of the department of education said that actually there are 70 class meetings for an English class in the year, about a third of the school days and from what I understand that is optimistic (I’ll bet he doesn’t count the days when school is closed for torrential rain).  As a result, I am on a tear about using that remaining class time as well as possible.  And that means a special obligation to get the purpose of those few classes clear. Hence, my topic: writing objectives.

Nicaragua is beautiful right now.  We are entering “winter”. The days are nicely warm but right now there is less humidity and it actually gets cool at night.  My family thinks it’s cold, but I think it’s fine.

My birthday was last Thursday and I got more celebration than I thought. PC is all over birthdays so I got text congratulations from my jefe and others.  Then my family celebrated by—are you ready for this—having a pizza motorcycled in from the nearest city.  It was served to me with a traditional birthday drink made for me alone, chiche de jenjibre, made of ginger finely ground, rice, canelo (cinnamon) and coco.  It clears the sinuses and was pretty refreshing.  The next day the training group met and my two 22 year old Texan sitemates rose to the occasion by buying a bag of candy for the group and for me 2 packages of microwave popcorn and a marshmallow and chocolate lollipop. They really surprised me with that one.  Everyone sang happy birthday and then I was taken out for beers after class.  An altogether satisfactory birthday.

Dogs.  Whenever you travel abroad you see street dogs.  Same here.  They are pathetic and skinny and not-neutered and really scruffy and dirty.  They are a part of the landscape and after a while you don’t notice them much.  We have three dogs at my house.  All day long they are tied up on short leashes in a place where there is shade and water.  They are fed. At night they are let loose to guard the house.  They bark at whomever comes along, usually only street dogs.  When I got here I was horrified about the dogs, including the dogs at my house which I was not allowed to touch because they did not know me.  Now I am not.  Our dogs have a better deal than street dogs.  They are free to roam around the yard for about 10 hours a day. The family doesn’t play with them, but they get shots and occasionally washed.  It seems a pretty good deal for them, given everything.  And in a place where there really are no extras, the dogs need to earn their keep. 

This blog isn’t nice and thematic. But I’m going to add a couple of pictures.  Just learned how to do it.  2 cute Nica babies:

 Me and volunteer Chris atop Masaya volcano in the rain:

I’ve been thinking about this blog and I have a couple of disclaimers I want to make..  There are some constraints on writing that I’m afraid may leave a false impression.  First, although the national election is today and the politics in Nicaragua are intensely interesting, PC has a policy of strict neutrality when it comes to any political expression, which as far as I can see, means no expression at all.  It would be hard to talk about politics without betraying an opinion, so saying nothing is the best course.  Second, I don’t want to write anything that would offend an average honest Nicaraguan.  There are hard things to see in this country and they are especially visible to people who aren’t used to them. I’ll write about one below: dogs. Until I understand something better I hesitate to describe it because I’m afraid my norteamericano response would leave a false impression.  As a result sometimes I worry that what I write will sound like a travel brochure full of quaintness and local color. Enough said on that topic. Reader beware.

We are heading into the last 2 weeks of training.  The final language evaluations are next Friday.  I have made my peace with them.  I know what I know and no more at this time.  PC is sponsoring a workshop for teachers and each training group has to prepare a 1 ½ hour charla, on a subject regarding the teaching of English.  My group is talking about lesson planning, and my part in particular is objective writing.  This doesn’t sound too interesting as a topic, but it is to me. I have become a little passionate about how we teachers use the students’ valuable classroom time.  Especially here, where time is so hard to come by.

For example, I learned yesterday that there are 220 school days in Nicaragua.  Officially.  Compare that to the 180 days usual in the U.S. But those 220 days don’t happen, especially for English class.  To begin, English class meets on average for one 2 hour class and one hour class per week, compared to other subjects that meet daily.  And in fact, English classes last 1 ½ hours and 45 minutes respectively, for a total of 2 ¼ hours per week of English instruction. Secondly, school often doesn’t happen.  For instance, this week there was one day of school.  Why? A holiday ( Day of the Dead), a political meeting for teachers, and two days related to the use of schools as voting places.  This is an unusual time, but school is cancelled for all kinds of reasons. In a lecture yesterday a representative of the department of education said that actually there are 70 class meetings for an English class in the year, about a third of the school days and from what I understand that is optimistic (I’ll bet he doesn’t count the days when school is closed for torrential rain).  As a result, I am on a tear about using that remaining class time as well as possible.  And that means a special obligation to get the purpose of those few classes clear. Hence, my topic: writing objectives.

Nicaragua is beautiful right now.  We are entering “winter”. The days are nicely warm but right now there is less humidity and it actually gets cool at night.  My family thinks it’s cold, but I think it’s fine.

My birthday was last Thursday and I got more celebration than I thought. PC is all over birthdays so I got text congratulations from my jefe and others.  Then my family celebrated by—are you ready for this—having a pizza motorcycled in from the nearest city.  It was served to me with a traditional birthday drink made for me alone, chiche de jenjibre, made of ginger finely ground, rice, canelo (cinnamon) and coco.  It clears the sinuses and was pretty refreshing.  The next day the training group met and my two 22 year old Texan sitemates rose to the occasion by buying a bag of candy for the group and for me 2 packages of microwave popcorn and a marshmallow and chocolate lollipop. They really surprised me with that one.  Everyone sang happy birthday and then I was taken out for beers after class.  An altogether satisfactory birthday.

Dogs.  Whenever you travel abroad you see street dogs.  Same here.  They are pathetic and skinny and not-neutered and really scruffy and dirty.  They are a part of the landscape and after a while you don’t notice them much.  We have three dogs at my house.  All day long they are tied up on short leashes in a place where there is shade and water.  They are fed. At night they are let loose to guard the house.  They bark at whomever comes along, usually only street dogs.  When I got here I was horrified about the dogs, including the dogs at my house which I was not allowed to touch because they did not know me.  Now I am not.  Our dogs have a better deal than street dogs.  They are free to roam around the yard for about 10 hours a day. The family doesn’t play with them, but they get shots and occasionally washed.  It seems a pretty good deal for them, given everything.  And in a place where there really are no extras, the dogs need to earn their keep. 

This blog isn’t nice and thematic. I was going to add a couple of pictures but my attempt failed.  I'll try to learn how next week.

 Me and volunteer Chris atop Masaya volcano in the rain:

I’ve been thinking about this blog and I have a couple of disclaimers I want to make..  There are some constraints on writing that I’m afraid may leave a false impression.  First, although the national election is today and the politics in Nicaragua are intensely interesting, PC has a policy of strict neutrality when it comes to any political expression, which as far as I can see, means no expression at all.  It would be hard to talk about politics without betraying an opinion, so saying nothing is the best course.  Second, I don’t want to write anything that would offend an average honest Nicaraguan.  There are hard things to see in this country and they are especially visible to people who aren’t used to them. I’ll write about one below: dogs. Until I understand something better I hesitate to describe it because I’m afraid my norteamericano response would leave a false impression.  As a result sometimes I worry that what I write will sound like a travel brochure full of quaintness and local color. Enough said on that topic. Reader beware.

We are heading into the last 2 weeks of training.  The final language evaluations are next Friday.  I have made my peace with them.  I know what I know and no more at this time.  PC is sponsoring a workshop for teachers and each training group has to prepare a 1 ½ hour charla, on a subject regarding the teaching of English.  My group is talking about lesson planning, and my part in particular is objective writing.  This doesn’t sound too interesting as a topic, but it is to me. I have become a little passionate about how we teachers use the students’ valuable classroom time.  Especially here, where time is so hard to come by.

For example, I learned yesterday that there are 220 school days in Nicaragua.  Officially.  Compare that to the 180 days usual in the U.S. But those 220 days don’t happen, especially for English class.  To begin, English class meets on average for one 2 hour class and one hour class per week, compared to other subjects that meet daily.  And in fact, English classes last 1 ½ hours and 45 minutes respectively, for a total of 2 ¼ hours per week of English instruction. Secondly, school often doesn’t happen.  For instance, this week there was one day of school.  Why? A holiday ( Day of the Dead), a political meeting for teachers, and two days related to the use of schools as voting places.  This is an unusual time, but school is cancelled for all kinds of reasons. In a lecture yesterday a representative of the department of education said that actually there are 70 class meetings for an English class in the year, about a third of the school days and from what I understand that is optimistic (I’ll bet he doesn’t count the days when school is closed for torrential rain).  As a result, I am on a tear about using that remaining class time as well as possible.  And that means a special obligation to get the purpose of those few classes clear. Hence, my topic: writing objectives.

Nicaragua is beautiful right now.  We are entering “winter”. The days are nicely warm but right now there is less humidity and it actually gets cool at night.  My family thinks it’s cold, but I think it’s fine.

My birthday was last Thursday and I got more celebration than I thought. PC is all over birthdays so I got text congratulations from my jefe and others.  Then my family celebrated by—are you ready for this—having a pizza motorcycled in from the nearest city.  It was served to me with a traditional birthday drink made for me alone, chiche de jenjibre, made of ginger finely ground, rice, canelo (cinnamon) and coco.  It clears the sinuses and was pretty refreshing.  The next day the training group met and my two 22 year old Texan sitemates rose to the occasion by buying a bag of candy for the group and for me 2 packages of microwave popcorn and a marshmallow and chocolate lollipop. They really surprised me with that one.  Everyone sang happy birthday and then I was taken out for beers after class.  An altogether satisfactory birthday.

Dogs.  Whenever you travel abroad you see street dogs.  Same here.  They are pathetic and skinny and not-neutered and really scruffy and dirty.  They are a part of the landscape and after a while you don’t notice them much.  We have three dogs at my house.  All day long they are tied up on short leashes in a place where there is shade and water.  They are fed. At night they are let loose to guard the house.  They bark at whomever comes along, usually only street dogs.  When I got here I was horrified about the dogs, including the dogs at my house which I was not allowed to touch because they did not know me.  Now I am not.  Our dogs have a better deal than street dogs.  They are free to roam around the yard for about 10 hours a day. The family doesn’t play with them, but they get shots and occasionally washed.  It seems a pretty good deal for them, given everything.  And in a place where there really are no extras, the dogs need to earn their keep. 

This blog isn’t nice and thematic. But I’m going to add a couple of pictures.  Just learned how to do it.  2 cute Nica babies:

 Me and volunteer Chris atop Masaya volcano in the rain:

 

Objectives and Dogs

 

Objectives and Dogs

Objectives and Dogs

Rosquillas

In three weeks I’ll be packing up my unwieldy suitcase, my backpack and daypack and heading north to my new site via a 5 hour ride in three different buses.  I am not looking forward to that journey, but I am very happy with the town, my new Nica family and 4 counterpart teachers, each of them sweet and eager to learn how to better teach English.  They are so glad to have me.  One said she was glad PC didn’t send a man.  The fact that I’m older works for me here.  In Nicaragua, I am la senora.  I have the hope of creating “confianza”.  Confianza is relationship built on trust.

I spent time at the high school observing classes.  In my town there are two “tornos” or sessions.  Students go to school in the morning or afternoon, not a full day.  This is the case all over the country (in some places there is a night session as well) because there aren’t enough schools for all the students in this young population.  But in my town there is a third session on Saturday for the “Sabatinos”.  I hadn’t run into this before. Apparently there are adults and young people who never graduated and want to finish their degrees.  Sometimes they have jobs and can’t get to school.  Other times they live in the country and the bus fare to get to school is too much for them to attend daily.

The town itself is up a steep hill from the highway.  It has a beautiful shady park, two sports arenas, a library, a health center and a “casa de materna” a hostel-like place where pregnant women from the country can come to live for 2 weeks before their due dates.  Apparently serious problems can arise when women go into labor and can’t get to medical facilities.  There are few cars and so women stay at home which is fine until there are complications.  The “casa” gives them a place to stay and a way to the hospital or medical center for a safer delivery.

 The town is full of large outdoor adobe ovens used to bake rosquillas, a pastry made of corn meal and flavored with sugar or cheese and drunk with coffee.  They are  good by themselves.  I finally tracked down some black coffee without sugar (a rarity—everyone uses sugar) and tried them out. Very good combination.  The coffee was the best ever.

PC assigned me to make a map of the town, so one day I went to the park to get a cup of sugared coffee from a little stand there and sat down to start the map.  I was joined on the bench by a young man who asked who I was and what I was doing.  I explained and asked for his help.  Before long there were 4 guys—all in their early thirties—working on my map.  They split into two groups and it became a kind of competition.  I encouraged both teams and I have two good maps, signed by their makers.  It amazes me that it’s so easy to get people to talk to me and now I have 4 acquaintances, one of them with same age and name as my older son. My Nica friend was pleased to find that out.

I was invited to dinner at the home of one of my counterparts along with a PC volunteer who lives in my site,  She works in health.  While dinner was being prepared I was served coffee and rosquillas. A half hour later I ate the best meal I’ve had in Nicaragua.  Marisol is a gifted cook.  She made some wonderfully flavored chicken, rice and veggies.  After dinner she explained her work as a teacher of sewing to women and the possibility of work for women who learn to sew.  Work is the crying need here.

My new family lives on the edge of town on the side of a hill.  The house is built of brick and the rooms have peaked ceilings.  There are adobe tiles for the roof.  The house is designed as a series of rooms open to a walkway with plants and trees on the other side.  There live in these woods roosters, hens and chicks, three dogs and a kitten. There is a latrine a little way off, an area for laundry and an outdoor oven on which some cooking is done although there is also a large eat-in kitchen.  There is also a large living room and beyond that a long patio with a view of the mountains, my favorite place to sit in the morning with sugared coffee to watch the the mists lift off the hills. The best part is the  shower, outdoors of course, but because the water is so cold, the family—mother really—heats water on the outdoor stove to add to the cold water to get warm water for a bucket shower.  The best, although when I return I’ll insist of heating my own water.  Before she leaves for work at seven, my new Nica mama heats the water, scrubs clothes to hang on the line, makes coffee and breakfast, makes lunch for when everyone returns at noon and takes her own shower.  She needs help.

Suffice it to say, I love it there and I think it has the potential to be a very good site from the PC point of view.  There will be a lot of work.  I need to co-teach 16 hours per week and co-plan with the counterparts for those classes which will take a good deal of time.  There’s already some interest in a community English class.  And I want to do some project with women and work, but don’t know what yet.

More later.  Forgive the weird type change.  That happens from time to time and I don’t know how to fix it.