Aug. 30, 2011
I spent practically the whole day today in a FUMDEC (Fundacion Mujer y Desarollo Economica Comunitario which translates to Women’s Foundation for Community Economic Development) meeting where half the participants, all 20 of them, out of 40 total active members, were an hour and a half late showing up. The head manager of the organization that was supposed to be there to present to the group didn’t even show. So the meeting continued on without her, another technician showing up in her place to talk about planting corn. I didn’t eat lunch, seeing as the meeting lasted until 2pm, after which Idalia and I went back into Praderas to buy Esmeralda some sugar, missing the earlier bus. She wanted us to go buy sugar since this certain store where the sugar is cheaper will only sell 5 lbs. maximum to each person, and she wanted around 20. So I went in to the store first, Idalia waiting outside so as not to be affiliated with me, and sneaky as I am, I decided to ask for 6 lbs., thinking they would think I was a naïve foreigner that didn’t know they only sold 5 lbs. max. It worked. They guy looked at his coworker, as if making sure that was okay, and his coworker just nodded his head, as if to say “it’s okay for her, she doesn’t know any better”. Idalia bought her 5 lbs., then we were off, to sit and wait for the 3pm bus that would pass by an hour later. It had begun to rain pretty hard, so we were in no mindset to start walking anywhere (except for one quick errand I had which was to run across the street to buy some more packages of ramen noodles—I swear I’ll never get sick of those—and two more packages of baby wipes to clean my feet at night before going to bed after wearing flip-flops all day).
While sitting under the awning of the store waiting for the bus, I started talking with a lady sitting next to me who kept looking at me and randomly commenting things at me like she knew me. I asked where she lived, and she said Wale, like I should know. I asked where, and she said the plastic house right next to me, like I had forgotten. Turns out she’s my next door neighbor who I’ve never officially introduced myself to. She actually does live in a plastic house, one which I can see from my bedroom window. She reminded me that I had been in the back yard two days ago looking at the birds in the trees. I guess after exiting the latrine the other day while looking up at the pair of orapendulas chit-chatting loudly I hadn’t realized that she had been watching me. I’ve never actually seen her over there in her house, just heard her yelling at the kids who are always running amok in the yard. So basically I felt really stupid for not having visited with the people who live directly next to me. I walk by some houses every day and still don’t know the names of the people I say “adios” to. I should be ashamed.
The other morning I woke up to the unmistakable sounds of two of the younger brothers chasing a frantic chicken around the yard, Esmeralda yelling orders to get it and quickly. Probably for soup for lunch, I thought. They were unsuccessful in their pursuit, for when I came into the kitchen to eat breakfast there was no chicken a-stewin’. I made myself a bowl of instant maple and brown sugar flavored oatmeal, thanks to Jodi, and watched Esmeralda scrub the molindero after her daily tortilla-making session earlier that morning. The boys were still outside no doubt continuing with their morning chores, dictated constantly by their mother, when one of them came to the small kitchen window with a chicken in his hands. He passed it to her through the window and without hesitation she twisted its body round and round, its head firmly in her grasp, and threw it into a vacant pocket under the wood stove to thrash violently while the nerves reacted during the post-death stage. Meanwhile I ate my oatmeal. Typical Nicaraguan breakfast moment, I thought.
I had received a text message that night from Don Diego (originally known as Daryl, the other trainee who was to live in Pantasma with me and Paul, but had to remain in Spanish training for another month before swearing in) that he in fact did not pass his final language interview, and that Peace Corps was sending him home. He’s got to be joking, I thought. There’s no way that after 4 months of intensive training and effort that he would be sent home for a language requirement that he could only really improve on by living in a Nicaraguan community. I texted the two other girls who had remained back with him to make sure, and the response I got was that the two of them passed and would be moving to their sites in two days, and that Daryl didn’t pass, and was going home. I feel so terrible for him. He had said during training that being a PC volunteer was a life-long dream of his, seeing as he was almost 60, and that he was finally at the point in his life where he could apply. Well, he came all the way here to spend 4 months of training with the PC in Nicaragua, only to be sent back. It’s a shame that he even came to his site for the week of the site visit to meet his home stay family and see the community where he would be living for potentially 2 years. It makes me feel all the more lucky to be here with the level of Spanish that I do have, and to have been given the opportunity to work in a community in Nicaragua. I shouldn’t be complaining about anything, I think now, considering there are people who want to be here and can’t for various reasons. It makes me want to work that much harder to be a successful volunteer in my community. I shouldn’t be taking anything for granted.
The other night I witnessed voodoo in action. No, not really, but it was certainly something unusual that I would expect to see from a witchdoctor somewhere deep in the jungle. One of the neighbor boys has an inflamed knee, and the pain had been spreading up his thigh, through his back, all the way up into his forehead. I know pretty much nothing about inflamed knees, but it looked like he had a bug bite or a sharp spine from a plant stuck in his knee due to the small bump that had formed on his kneecap. He said it was neither of those things, that he didn’t know what had happened, just that he suddenly had this painful inflammation. Esmeralda said she knew just what would cure it, and sent one of the boys up the street to acquire from a neighbor some “aceite de culebra”. I had to ask her to repeat herself. Did she actually just say snake oil? She wants to put snake oil on his knee? Sure enough, later that evening she asked me to grab her a chicken out of a tree so she could pluck some feathers to apply the oil. I asked how exactly the oil was extracted from the snake, and she told me that a dead snake is hung from a post, and that the natural oils of the body accumulate in the tail, where it would then be cut and drained from the body into a vial. Really good stuff, she told me. Cures the pain and swelling in inflamed tissues. The next day I asked her how the neighbor was doing, and she said he was better, that the oil worked well and caused the pain to go away and the swelling to reduce a bit, and that she had applied more oil to his knee earlier in the day. Just a few minutes later he showed up to eat some dinner and I asked him myself how he was feeling, and he reiterated what she had said. So who knows? Maybe I shouldn’t be so skeptical about some of the odd medicinal practices here, but I can’t help feeling bad for the snakes.
On some happy news, the house has a new kitten. I sure hope this one survives. Don Pantaleon was gifted a kitten by a neighbor (which makes me wonder why that neighbor won’t give me a kitten seeing as the whole world of Wale knows that I’m crazy about cats!). I came home from a meeting one day and heard the sad cries of what I could tell was a super tiny kitten. I followed the sound and found him tied to a leg of one of the cabinets in the kitchen by a shoelace. Poor thing was screaming for attention, and lucky for him, Sarah was there to give it to him. He’s really little, and really friendly, and it pains me to think that I’m the only person in a house of sometimes 10 people that will give him affection. They’ll toss him some rice or pieces of a tortilla to eat, but that’s about it. I feel like I should probably ignore him like the rest to he doesn’t get into the habit of rubbing against feet pleading for the attention that he won’t get from the Nicaraguans that live here. Animals that get close enough to touch people’s feet get kicked away as if they were infectious. It hurts me to see it. But I just can’t help myself. He can sit in my lap and get petted to high heaven as much as I have time for. I just hope he learns that it’s only okay with me. Really, I hope he survives to adulthood. I won’t name him this time, maybe that will lessen the blow when something bad does happen.
Sept. 1, 2011
This past week I had the opportunity to work with a community group on one of the “tools” I’m supposed to implementing to help me understand the needs and wants of the community better. We worked on a seasonal calendar, which outlines all the activities of the community throughout the year, including when they plant and harvest all their crops, the length of the school year, the seasons (when there’s more rain and when it’s dry), holidays celebrated, and overall family health issues. The goal is to map out potential problems and issues faced by the community throughout the year, and to look for patterns to try and come up with solutions during those difficult times of the year. I ended up using almost 2 hours out of this meeting that they had already planned, which made me feel bad. But there was a lack of communication/understanding when I told the vice president of the group that I wanted to have a meeting with members of the group, but not during one of their monthly meetings so I wouldn’t use up all their time. Turns out the date he gave me to use was the date of their monthly meeting. I’ll have to be explicitly clear next time, because the meeting that day ended up running for 5 hours. Not to mention that they all showed up two hours later than the meeting was planned to start. Typical. Frustrating.
So far many of the needs of the community that have been listed are things that I don’t really think I’m capable of helping with. For example, the two groups that I have worked with so far have put down electricity outages as an issue, which of course it is, but I don’t think I can go to the electric company and petition to allow people to pay per usage per month and not have to pay constantly for their electricity. It’s not like in the States where we pay based on what we use, here they all pay one lump sum for electricity each month, regardless of the constant outages that occur pretty much every single day. That’s a much bigger problem than just Wale is experiencing. Another issue is the water quality. In the winter there’s plenty of water but it’s often dirty due to the rains. In the summer there’s a water shortage, and it’s still dirty. I’m not sure how to help with the potable water issue; I don’t work in the potable water sector. Another issue is better roads that are off the main highway. They’re all dirt and are often hard to travel on during the rainy season, especially during harvesting time when farmers have to transport their goods to the highway to ship it to sell. I was hoping there would be more necessities like income improvement during certain months or improved crop management. I suppose I could find ways to do projects that deal with those issues even though they didn’t explicitly state that. I don’t think I’m getting the full attention and understanding of the participants when doing these activities to get the types of answers I’m looking for. Or maybe I am getting the right answers; I just have to look deeper to realize how I can help.
Sept. 3, 2011
Today was the big desfile, or parade, in Praderas, where all the baseball teams from Pantasma show up in their new uniforms to start the season off. Each team has a Madrina, or a “Godmother”, who represents their team and walks with them in the parade to show their support. Guess who was asked to be Madrina of Wale? That’s right, yours truly! So I got all “dressed up”, as best as I could for an aggie PC volunteer, and put on a dress and heels and makeup (with lipstick!), plus a flower in my hair. I even painted my fingernails and toenails red to go with the dress and the color of the team’s uniforms, white and red. They gave me a white sash to wear that unfortunately said “Walle”. I hate when words are misspelled. You’d think people would know how to spell the names of the communities in their area. I heard it was made by someone who doesn’t live in Wale.
I got up at 5am to prepare for this exciting event. We met in Praderas at 7:30 and waited for the rest of the team to show up. Standing out in front of the same store as me was Lidia, the house mom of Daryl, who wouldn’t be returning to live in Cuatro Esquinas with her and her husband. I had never met her, so was surprised when she approached me to ask when Don Diego would be returning. I realized at that point that they hadn’t been told yet that he wasn’t coming back, so I unfortunately had to break the news to her. She was disappointed, and I felt really bad because she told me she had called PC to ask when he’d be returning and they hadn’t returned her call. How frustrating to wait an extra month and never hear that your volunteer isn’t returning to live with you and work in your community for 2 years. I felt bad. Later that day I ran into her husband who I had met earlier on when we all came to visit during site week. He had heard by then that Daryl wasn’t returning, but could at least joke around with me that that means I have to come work in his community too since they now lost their volunteer. I had to also explain to them that there wasn’t another volunteer to take his place. They seem to think that there’s a line of us waiting to take the place of volunteers who can’t continue (or even start) their service. I had to tell them that maybe next year their community would be chosen by the next group of volunteers that will be coming in. They were bummed to hear that they would have to wait another year to see if they might be considered again.
Back to the parade; it was super muddy in some parts of the streets, and all of us Madrinas were wearing heels, so that was unpleasant. But it was a nice opportunity to be able to represent Wale, especially being a foreigner. They gave me a baseball cap and a glove to wear during the parade, which is customary. We all ended up in the baseball field of Praderas, after slipping and sliding in the mud and trying to avoid twisting my ankle on all the rocks in the road. It would have been pretty terrible to be the foreign Madrina who slipped and fell in the mud in her dress and heels. At one point during the ceremony of greeting and welcoming all the teams, the MC called all the Madrinas to the center of the field, and I got super nervous thinking that we’d all have to say something. I had no idea what to say, only “good luck” or something like that. When we all arrived in the center I asked one of the presenters that I knew if that meant I had to say something, and he said I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. I told him I didn’t really know what to say since I’d never done this before. So it was just kind of left at that, and we all waited in the center while other local officials and important people said their speeches and words of encouragement. While we were waiting I started to prepare a few words in my head to say in case they did end up handing the microphone over to me. At this point I actually felt ready and prepared to say at least a few short words to show my appreciation for being asked to represent Wale. Then it was that guy’s turn to say something, the one I had told I didn’t know what to say. He talked for a really long time, but at the end thanked all the beautiful Madrinas, and said “especially Sarah”, and then told everyone that I was from the States and it was good to have me hear and things like that. I was ready for him to give me the chance to say something, but he ended up saying to everyone that I told him I wasn’t prepared to say anything, that I wasn’t used to these types of things and didn’t feel comfortable speaking. I felt so embarrassed, thinking that everyone then thought I was scared or unprepared (I was unprepared, I guess). I regret not correcting him in that moment and asking for the mic to say at least something short and sweet. I was just so surprised that he told everyone I didn’t want to say anything. I felt bad, like I let the team down by not saying some words of encouragement, or at least a thank you. So far I’ve had a few opportunities to speak Spanish in front of a large group of people since I’ve moved here, and even though the huge gathering of baseball teams and onlookers was the largest group so far, I know I could have easily grabbed that mic and said something without being nervous. Even though I still have a lot of Spanish to learn and I’m the only foreigner here in my community, I don’t really feel as nervous as I would back at home speaking in front of a large group of people. I guess because I’m a volunteer I feel like it’s my duty to present myself well and professionally, and to be open to taking any opportunity possible to present myself, or at least try and make a good impression. So far today was the first time that I failed in doing that, and if I could go back I would have taken that mic and spoken in front of all those people. From here on out I just can’t let it slip by me again.
Sept. 7, 2011
Today I had a meeting with a group of people that live in Wale 1, sector 2. There are three Wales, and each one has various sectors. By the way I found out finally that the total of Wale has about 3,000 people, considering all 3 parts, if you all were interested in population numbers. This meeting today was to do a community map, but focusing on the sector they lived in. It got complicated and I realized how clear I need to be in giving instructions to groups. They didn’t really understand the main goal of the exercise was to help me see the community the way they see it, showing all the resources they use like where they get their water, areas they don’t like to be, areas they like to be, where they visit daily vs. monthly, etc. They got too concerned with trying to make a very precise map with every single house and the measurements between roads and stuff. I got kind of frustrated and had to repeat myself multiple times to make sure they switched gears to get the right type of information on the paper so I could analyze the needs of the community from their perspective. It wasn’t the most productive meeting, and only about 4 people ended up working on the map, but overall it was a learning experience and I got to meet new people. Not to mention that Wale is beautiful, and I got to see another part of it.
The school garden project is going slowly. I’ve been out there 3 different times with the expectation that there will be parents there to help me make the fence out of old sacks, and each time there’s only about 2 adults, sometimes including me, to do the work. So we’ve been slowly but surely hacking away at the weeds trying to prepare the area for planting. I’ve put too much faith in the teachers’ ability to get the word out that I’m going to have a work day in the garden to prepare for planting. They just never seem to remember to spread the word to their students like they say they will, and flat out tell me the next day that they just forgot. So this last time I typed out 40 invitations to give to one of the teachers to hand out during a school parade last Monday, and today, the day to get the work done, only 2 adults showed up, the rest were kids. Don’t get me wrong, the kids can be good help sometimes, if they have worked before, but children swinging machetes is always a scary sight. However it’s a very common thing here in Nicaragua. So I don’t really know what to do regarding getting the fence done. This Saturday will be yet another attempt to gather people to get the work done, wish me luck.
This last week we had no water for 3 days. Well, really they had closed the access at the community well due to the heavy rains since it gets really muddy, so the spigot for the house water was off. The family has 2 large plastic barrels that are full of water in cases like these, since the water being turned off is a common occurrence. So really, there was water, but after day 2 both the barrels were near empty, which meant I didn’t bathe and couldn’t do laundry. It almost got to the point where we needed to go to the river to bathe. I thought that was kinda cool, but the water came back the next day and everything was back to normal. I’m totally spoiled here, is that obvious? There are people in this community who live away off the highway that have no electricity to their house and use the river every single day to bathe and do laundry and dishes. And here I am living in a house on the highway that gets to have an electrical outlet in my room to recharge everything, can heat my bathwater if I want to, and now has a fridge to put my powdered-juice-filled Nalgene on those hot Nicaraguan days. Did I mention that not every PC volunteer has it rough?
Sept. 8, 2011
Today the house received a puppy. I’m super excited to have another adorable animal to coddle, but bummed out that there’s another flea-ridden creature in the house as well. She’s only a month old, and was super dirty this morning, so I gave her a bath with the only shampoo they have in the house, which is an antiseptic shampoo, not meant to kill fleas. So I went into town to buy some flea shampoo and two combs to try and clean up the puppy and the kitten. I haven’t named either one of them in hopes that they will live longer that way.
Alright, well, sorry about the long entry this time. Not having internet makes it difficult to post more often, and I find it much easier to pre-type everything so I don’t have to try and rush through the last months’ worth of information in the internet café. I did buy a modem for my computer, and I do get a slight signal in Wale, but for some reason the modem’s not working and I can’t connect. I went back to the store to get some answers and they basically gave me none. So I’ll keep working on that :)
Spanish lesson for this blog: let me explain the phrases from the last one (since Tina recommends I translate the Jesus phrases for those who need it). Sangre de Cristo or Sangre de Jesus means Blood of Christ or Jesus, usually stated as an exclamation after something serious happens or was just discussed. Si Dios quiere means If God wants, or If God wills, usually stated to refer to someone making a meeting or being somewhere at some point in the future. Basically they have little choice in what they do; God does most of the choosing. Jesus Maria should be an obvious one, but I’ll say it anyways, Jesus Mary. I feel like it’s when we say “Jesus Mary and Joseph!” as an exclamation. And I’m sure there’s plenty more phrases that use Jesus and other religious connotations, but these are what I hear most often.
For those of you who have been mailing me stuff (Tina, Jodi, Liz), THANK YOU!!! I’ve been receiving them and I love everything. Nannette, I haven’t received yours yet but I’m sure it’s on its way. Auntie Kathy, your package that was sent to Managua still hasn’t reached my hands yet. I’m hoping the next time I get a visit by one of the PC staff (which is Oct. 19th) it will delivered. I’m sure it made it just fine, it was just bad timing when I was moving. If anyone wants package ideas, I’ve been drinking a lot various Tang flavored juices since they’re easy to just mix with water, and that’s what they sell here. I miss having juice to drink, and that’s the closest to it, so if you find any powdered juice drink mixes you can sent them my way! They’re a nice break from coffee. The house now has an official refrigerator (I feel so special!). Esmeralda bought a new one since her old one died to hold sodas and frescos to sell in her pulperia (store), so I have a drawer to hold cold stuff. And, as always cards and letters are greatly appreciated.
Okay folks, that’s it for now. Even with all this info I’m totally forgetting to write down so many other interesting things. It’s hard to keep track of all the stuff that happens here.
Until the next chapter. . .
~Sarita~
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