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.
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