I am living the fullest days I’ve ever had. Nothing in my experience is an intense as all the learning I’m doing about Spanish, culture, teaching English,. I even use a sheet sometimes. After a week with little to no exercise I figured I better get some. So I’m walking in the earliest part of the morning, 6 o’clock, right after I get up. The breezes blow and there’s lots of shade, but when I return I’m sweating seriously. Today I walked for 20 minutes, yesterday 15. I’m aiming for 30, but, who knows, maybe I’ll be managing myself and building relationships. Some of it is the heat. The sun is so intense. In the shade or under the patio roof it’s fine so long as a little breeze blows, but when I have to walk somewhere in the middle of the day, I grab my water bottle and get ready for the onslaught. The nights are fine. I sleep hard and well until cock crow, literallyable to do an hour sometime.
I walk through the pueblo in the morning. It is the smallest Peace Corps training town, set aside for us almost beginners because there are no distractions. The pueblp (there are barrios on the outskirts) consists of about 12 blocks. The heart of the town is a park, concrete, where the kids play soccer, a Catholic church and the health center. The streets of La Paz Cento are paved with tiles. All kinds of animals walk there: dogs, hogs, oxen, horses (these last two attached to 2 wheeled carts), cows on their way to pasture, goats,
My Pueblo, El Instituto y Mas
I am living the fullest days I’ve ever had. Nothing in my experience is an intense as all the learning I’m doing about Spanish, culture, teaching English,. I even use a sheet sometimes. After a week with little to no exercise I figured I better get some. So I’m walking in the earliest part of the morning, 6 o’clock, right after I get up. The breezes blow and there’s lots of shade, but when I return I’m sweating seriously. Today I walked for 20 minutes, yesterday 15. I’m aiming for 30, but, who knows, maybe I’ll be managing myself and building relationships. Some of it is the heat. The sun is so intense. In the shade or under the patio roof it’s fine so long as a little breeze blows, but when I have to walk somewhere in the middle of the day, I grab my water bottle and get ready for the onslaught. The nights are fine. I sleep hard and well until cock crow, literallyable to do an geese, and the ubiquitous roosters, hens and chicks. These deposit nana (pronounced with a sneer) on the streets. There are farms close on the outskirts of town, but right in town people keep animals.
Many of the houses are built of concrete, have patios of broken tile set in cement, and porches protected from the sun. All of these, including my house, are surrounded by walls or fences and gated. Most house dogs which are tied up duing the day and run free at night to act as guard dogs. These houses are not grand but considerably more comfortable than some of their neighbors. I visited one the other day in a family compound. A very old lady lived there, a relative of my Spanish teacher. I went there to meet his wife. When I asked about the abuela, I was invited to meet her, too. She lives in a house with a dirt floor, There is an open kind of wood burning stove (pans on top of fire) and the walls of the house were slats of wood set irregularly at intervals so that the house is open to the outside. I write this to provide perspective. Let me say the family was hugely gracious. I was invited to sit down, to have a drink and to talk (I did my best) and after they offered to help me with Spanish if I returned. (I don’t think there was anything causal going on in that last sentence. The people offered what they had.)
There must be 2 pulperias on every block in town, little shops in the front room of a house, including mine, where people buy their necessaries. The town doesn’t have a market or even a corner store. People shop in Jinotepe, 7 miles away, 15 minutes by taxi or microbus. I investigated the panaderias (bakeries). I heard we have two. The one our family frequents opens for a couple of hours in the afternoon 2 days a week and I’ve yet to see it. The ice cream place turned out to be an itinerant vendor. All of this is fine. To help with community integrating, I’ve decided to buy one small thing a day from each pulparia until I’ve met all the owners. I’ve been to two already. As a volunteer I have very little to spend on this project, but I don’t buy anything else except some cyber café time so I should be able to afford it if I keep the purchases small, maybe 1 or 2 cords each—5-10 cents.
Peace Corps wastes no time. I was at the local high school, el instituto, within days of arrival in the pueblo. The school consists of a central yard surrounded on three sides by single story classrooms. The school is made of cinderblock painted blue below and white above, just like the students uniforms. There are banks of windows on two sides of the classroom. These are open for air. The classes have desks and a whiteboard. That’s it. No books, no duplicating capability. The teachers go from room to room and the students stay put. Because there are so many kids, there are two sessions, morning and afternoon. Some schools have a night session as well to accommodate all the students. For the first 10 minutes of one class I visited, two students (girls) swept and mopped the classroom floor. Class proceeded while they did this. Students were standing outside watching what was going on in the classrooms. There’s a lot of noise that comes through the windows, most notably a marching band consisting mostly of drumers which was practicing for the upcoming holiday. The din was incredible, but accepted by the teacher, I guess, as a part of life.
Nicaragua, or my little corner of it, is noisy. And people learn to work through the noise. I’ve heard that it’s rare for any Nicaraguan to ask another to pipe down. I have seen my own teachers, who hold class in our houses either on the patio or in the main living room, keep on teaching although a teenager was watching TV in the room or children were running through playing or the band (thank God the holiday is over) was practicing in the street right outside the house. If you stop for noise nothing gets done.
The skies are stupendous. I have view of a volcano, Masaya from the streets of town. I was here two weeks before I saw it. Sensory overload. Ans watching out as I walk for the nana.
My Pueblo, El Instituto y Mas
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