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.
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