October 13, 2011
Today I woke up at 6 am, thinking I had a meeting with Wale 2 about the Community Bank at 10 am, since that was the time of the last two meetings. But then I actually had the mind to check my planner to see that it was at 2pm. So I took advantage of the extra time in the morning and did some laundry while Esmeralda was still making tortillas. If I know she's busy in the kitchen, then she can't come out to the lavandero and stand there staring at me wordlessly telling me to hurry up and finish so she can do whatever she needs to do. Obviously I've been extra irritated by her lately. So I washed my whole full bag of clothes before eating breakfast. Then I headed back to my room to go through my bank book again to see how I could improve my presentation for the meeting that day. While reading the book I was getting really sleepy, so I decided to take a nap before it got too late to do so since I had the meeting at 2pm (it was only 10 am at that point, the earliest nap I've ever taken). So I set my alarm and laid in bed for a total of about 20 minutes before I got up to hear what all the racket was outside. The marching band from the secondary school in Praderas was slowly heading up the carreterra and past my house. I just then remembered that today was a school parade to celebrate Dia de la Raza (which is actually October 12, but they celebrated today), where the kids dress up in costumes depicting indios, or the native people of Central America, girls dressed as men (like vaqueros), queens, nurses, viejitos, which are little old people, and other random stuff that I didn't make the connection with. I jumped out of bed, threw on a shirt, grabbed my camera and ran out to the front porch to see them march by. All the teachers kept calling my name and telling me to join them, but I didn't feel dressed appropriately since I had my lazy house flip flops on and my hair was all messy from my recent siesta. Plus I realized a little too late that I in my haste to get up see what the noise was all about, I had put my shirt on inside out. But after they passed by I thought, why the hell wouldn't I join in the fun? So I ran back inside to tidy up, fix my shirt, and put on a hat, the most important item since it was super bright and sunny, and I ran up the street to catch up with the procession. I walked all through the parade taking pictures of the kids in their costumes, occasionally busting a move to the band's drum beat, which made the kids laugh and shyly look away. I didn't go all out and really dance like I wanted to, however. I'm still working up my comfort level with this community, and don't want to scare them away with my crazy American dancing style :) They have to warm up to me too.
So the procession walked up the hill a bit and then turned around and headed back to the school, where there was food prepared representing typical cultural dishes. I was invited to sit down in the room with the marching band and baton girls from the secondary school in Praderas. I wondered after a bit where all the primary school kids went to since I knew them better than the kids I was sitting next to. I was served a chicken and rice dish with a cabbage salad and tortillas, of course. No one knew me or wanted to talk me, which is normal with the white girl, but it was even more awkward when the kids on either side of me actually picked up their chairs and moved to another part of the room to be closer to their friends. Great, I thought, way to make me stick out even more. So I finished my food and left the room to find out where all the younger kids went. They were in the other classroom and had already started some performances, which made me mad that I had stayed in the other room for as long as I did. They did some cultural dances and had some short speeches from the reinas (queens) of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. Then there was a costume contest! Yes! I thought, this is more and more like Halloween! Kids dressing up, marching around town, costume contest. It's as close as I'll get I suppose. Then the teachers called me up to be one of the judges, which was fun. I was taking pictures the whole time, of course. We picked 4 girls out of the crowd that had the coolest outfits. Three of them were indios, with leaves and plant skirts, flowers in their hair, corn husk hats and dresses, painted feathers. All kinds of cool stuff. The 4th girl was the youngest and smallest, and was dressed up as a viejita, and was the cutest little old lady I've ever seen. She was decked out with a cute little dress with an apron, white socks and shoes, granny glasses, white in her hair, a cane, and topped it off with a hump on her back. I loved it. And she had a super cute smile on her face the whole time. Since there was only supposed to be 1st through 3rd place, and we had picked 4, they decided to have them dance to see who'd win. They turned on some traditional Nicaraguan music and the girls all moved around a little bit, not really milking their audience like I felt they should have. But, as I've mentioned before, there's a ton of pena here (shame), and public performances rarely crack a smile out of the performers. It just goes against everything I've ever been taught or had the urge to do on stage, so it's hard for me to watch dancers here look like they're hating being on stage. Why are you even there then?!, I always think. Don't perform if you can't look happy doing it! Okay, that was my 2 cents. So the costume contestants were doing their dancing thing, and I couldn't decide who should win since they were all doing the same basic, simple move, with little to no emotion. Except for the little viejita; she had a huge smile on her face and was actually making the effort to do a turn every once in a while. So I made sure to point that out to my fellow judges, and they agreed. So little old lady won first prize in the costume contest! She deserved it, she was so adorable. I loved the other costumes as well, they were earthy and colorful and they just made me happy.
After the contest it was time for them to eat. The dishes prepared included gallo pinto, nacatamales, and some type of soup that I didn't get a good look at since I had already eaten and wasn't served anything. One of the girls came up to me and asked how much a picture was. I asked if she wanted me to take a photo of her, and she said that she wanted to buy prints. So I told her how much it costs to print colored photos in Jinotega, which is only 10 cordobas a page, and I usually put 4 pictures on one page. So she told me she wanted 4 pictures of herself. Okay, cool, I thought, I love taking pictures. So I took her to a scenic spot with pretty green hills in the background and took 4 pictures of her in slightly different poses, showing off her costume. If I haven't already mentioned it, I need to now. Nicaraguans NEVER smile in photos. They could be laughing and smiling and having a great time, but when you pull out a camera for a photo their face goes limp and they stare at the lens like they're bored as all hell. I hate it! Why would you want to look so lame and unhappy in a photo that lasts forever! The worst is all gigantic 8x10 photos in everyone's house of the graduation ceremony of their kids from school. Graduating from school, whether it's from preschool or secondary school, is a huge feat for some people since not all kids can get an education here. I don't understand why the parents and graduees in every picture look like they're tired and have something better to do. Your kid just graduated from high school! Look happy for them like a proud parent should be! So needless to say, all the kids are accustomed to donning that same bored face that their culture has taught them to make for pictures. Every time I take a photo of someone I tell them they need to smile, and sometimes won't take the picture unless they crack a little smile, even if it doesn't have any teeth showing. Just give me something, please. Or I try to make them laugh, then snap the shot. But some of these kids are tough, man. They won't crack a smile for nothing.
After the first little girl asked me to take her picture, others started gathering around and caught on that I was taking photos and going to print them, so I ended up taking pictures for about 4 different groups of people who wanted prints and said they would pay for them. Only one mom paid me up front, the others said they'd pay me when I come back with the prints. Which is fine, as long as I don't get taken advantage of. So this got me thinking, I could probably do some kind of fundraising activity taking family pictures for people. I could charge a little extra for the prints and use the money for some type of project. I'll see how these first few families like the photos I print for them and then go from there.
After the Dia de la Raza activities, I had to hurry back home to bathe and then catch the bus that takes me up the hill to the community of Wale 2. The bus dropped me off right on time, 2pm sharp, at the big cement bus stop that they use as their meeting point. Not a soul was there, except for the workers who have been slowly but steadily cobblestoning the carreterra. Not a surprise, since no one's ever on time to meetings, so I sat down and waited about 15 minutes. The last meeting I had people showed up at a decent time, and I've had good attendance with the last two meeings with Wale 2, so I started to get conderned that this was the failure meeting. Luckily I have the phone number of one of the guys who helped me set up my first meeting with them, so I called him to ask if he knew there was a meeting today and where everyone was. He of course said he didn't know about it, which means all 19 people from the previous meeting failed to pass along the message about the next one. So frustrating. But he ended up coming over and meeting with me. Then a few minutes later the community leader showed up to, who hasn't come to any of the other meetings I've had there, and I've heard he doesn't like coming to meetings anyways. So I just spent about a half hour talking with them about starting a community bank and the steps we would have to take to get there. It was hard talking with them because they hadn't yet seen my presentation explaining what a bank is and how they do work, and they kept comparing it to other cooperative situations where the initial funds for loans are provided by an outside organization. That's not at all what a community bank would do, and I was trying to explain that to them, but they just seemed super pessimistic about it. So I felt extra frustrated that used my time and paid for the bus ride up there and back when no one even showed up, and the ones that did were hard to convince. In the end I asked the one who had helped me set up the first meeting if he could please talk with the community about setting up another meeting to discuss this idea of bank. He said he would and that they will come, but seeing is believing. So even though that meeting felt like a failure, at least I got the community leader to come out and see me and listen for a little bit. So much for the awesome attendance at meetings from Wale 2. They totally got me all excited and led me on with the first two meetings. I don't know what I did wrong for this last one. I mean, they tell me what days and times work for them, so they should be there, right? It's just a never-ending battle.
Then to top off the day, my attempt to make a flavorful dinner for the family since Esmeralda is out of town for two nights failed. I had just bought some produce from the grocery store in Jinotega the day before, including globe grapes, broccoli, apples, and celery, all things I can't get in Praderas. My plan was to use the celery in a soup. It started off bad when I asked for help starting the leña fire. The last time I attempted to start a fire on my own the wood just never ignited, no matter how much paper and cardboard and plastic I threw in there. The youngest brother kept trying to help get it going, using a big piece of thick plastic from an old patio chair to start the fire. They use plastic here to start fires since the melted plastic sticks to the wood and gets it going. But the wood just took forever to ignite. So this time I just asked them to start it for me, I wasn't even going to try. And sure enough, the same thing happened; no matter how much fuel we put in there the wood just wouldn't catch. So it took like an hour just to get the flames going to heat the water in the pot. I made a mock beef stew using beef boulion flavor for the broth and but I had no meat. So it had only potatoes, onions, squash, the celery I bought just for the occation, some pasta to bulk it up, and a ton of other spices I always throw in for flavor. Turns out you really need the beef for a good beef stew flavor. Not like that surprised me, but in the end I realized I must have not put in enough beef flavor for the amount of water, because no matter what other spices I poured in, it just tasted thin and lacked flavor. I toasted some tortillas to go with it, but that just seemed to make it blander. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.
October 14, 2011
Since there was left over soup from the night before, I heated it up for breakfast. It tasted even worse than it did last night! I'm so bummed that I had to dump it out and waste the food. It tasted sour, like maybe the celery sitting out all night in the pot had just enough time and temperature (not having a fridge that's plugged in overnight is really annoying) to turn from bad to worse. At least I think it's the celery. That's what my instinct told me when I first tasted it. So I told Don Pantaleon don't bother trying the soup again, it was worse than it was last night. He asked if I had peeled the celery. What? I thought, no I've never peeled celery before putting it in a soup before. He said he doesn't have much experience with celery, but the few times he's had it it's tasted different when peeled. So I either had bought a bad batch of celery from the store that would have tasted bad anyways, or I just need to peel it next time first. I've never had to do that before and it's tasted just fine, so I'm confused and disappointed that I had to throw out a pot of food. The pig will get a little something new in her meal today.
I forgot to mention that I had my first attempted robbery experience. I was in Jinotega getting on the last bus of the day to take me back to Pantasma. Since it's the last one people always crowd the door as it's pulling in and try to shove their way onto the bus so they can try and get a seat. I was amongst the crowd trying to shove my way on, with my backpack on and two shoulder bags, one full of mail and one full of groceries. I felt an oddly extra amount of pressure on my backpack, like someone was pushing at me harder than usual to get on the bus. I turned to look to make sure it wasn't someone messing with my backpack, but sure enough, it was. This guy had his hands on my bag and was franticly trying to unzip the second pocket, the one that holds my wallet and my camera. I don't remember what I said first, I think it was “Hey!”, and turned around and shoved him away from me and my bag, yelling in Spanish “what are you doing!”. I could see then that he had already opened the first little pocket on the front of the bag and had worked his way up to the second one, but I had luckily turned around in time to stop him before he could reach in a take my wallet that was sitting so nicely right on top. I looked at his hands, which were empty, and angrily asked him what he had that was mine, and he just backed off with his hands in the air telling me he had nothing. When I got on the bus and got my seat I checked everything to make sure he really didn't get anything, and he didn't. Apparently he didn't think my ziplock baggie of med items and toilet paper that's in the front pocket is worth stealing. What pissed me off the most though is that no one said anything while this was happening. The crowd of people getting on the bus with me just watched him do it without any sense of good samaritanism to tell me he was trying to steal my stuff. That's just not the way here. People don't care, or they just look the other way and pretend they don´t see it. I'd like to think that if that happened to me in the States, someone would say something if they saw that happening. Not the case here. Well, I learned my lesson and will be putting my wallet deeper in my bag from now on, and will take my bag off and hold it in front of me in crowded situations. You can never be too cautious sometimes. I was lucky this time, at least.
October 16, 2011
Today's the first day I've spend almost the entire morning in bed. I have a cold that was at it's worst yesterday, I think, but today I woke up extra tired. I slept in til almost 8am, which is super late here, got up to go to the bathroom, then laid back in bed all morning and finished reading my book that I had stayed up late last night reading (The Help, which was sooooo good!). This is the first real sickness I've had here in my site so far. Runny nose, congestion, and a nasty, phlegmy cough. But it already feels like it's on it's way out, so that's a relief. I'm hoping to be nice and healthy for my big meeting on Wednesday. It's the date of the 3 month community meeting where I'm supposed to present the results of the meetings I've had during these first few months getting to know my community and finding out their problems and needs so I can figure out what types of projects we can do here. Felix, the Ag Specialist for Peace Corps, will be coming to listen to my presentation, so that makes me extra nervous. He's a great, super nice guy, but he's kinda like a supervisor so it's always intimidating. Plus, we're required to have the presence of both our community counterpart and our INTA counterpart to help us deliver the info, and I don't know if my INTA counterpart can make it. I won't know until the day of since he has to check his work schedule. I'm so frustrated because I told him probably a month ago about the date of this meeting, and then reminded him a few weeks later, and he acted like he hadn't ever heard about it. Other than missing a few meetings here and there, he's been very willing to work with both me and Paul, the other volunteer in my area, so I can't complain too much about it. We'll just have to wait and see if he shows on Wednesday.
The last English class I taught went well, better this time than the second class. I was teaching about plural nouns and the rules, such as if the word ends in a consonant -y, you change the -y to -i and add -es (baby=babies). We played tic-tac-toe; they split into two teams, and they had to change the word in the square from singular to plural, but if they were wrong the other team could steal and take the square. They loved it. It was fun because they hadn't ever played this game before, so they had to learn the tricks, and they got really competitive and started yelling and screaming if the other team got it wrong so they could steal the square. It was good fun. They ended up getting so good at it that after the 6th round there were all ties. Then after class one of the older students invited me over to eat one of his mom's freshly cooked nacatamales. It was good to get invited into their house since they are the direct neighbors to the little casita I'm looking into, so I'd like to get to know them better and get on their good side. It's the second nacatamal she's given me for free (she sells them at 15 cordobas each, less than $1), so I told her I'd print out some pictures of her kids for her from the Dia de la Raza parade in exchange. I hope she likes them. I hope she likes me.
The presidential election is about 3 weeks away, which means Peace Corps is getting tighter on security. We're prohibited from traveling a week before the election (Nov. 6th) until a month after the election, for our safety in case the country gets crazy when the results are announced. There have been some protests in the nearby town of Praderas the past couple of weeks, where people have been putting up blockades to stop the flow of traffic in or out of the town. So lines of buses, trucks, and motorcycles just have to sit and wait for hours until the protest stops. I had to walk home from Praderas the other day since the buses couldn't pass through, but luckily my house is close so it's not a problem for me. They're protesting not receiving their cedula, which is like a social security number in this country. You can't vote without a cedula, and the government has so conveniently been providing cedulas to only the members of the Sandinista party, preventing non-Sandinistas from receiving theirs. That means they can't vote. Plus, the election age has been dropped to 14 years old, allowing a ton more people to vote this time around, but only if you have a cedula. The fear and anger of election fraud by the current government is a huge one, so we're all anxiously waiting to see what the results of this election will be and whether or not the country will go crazy over it. So needless to say, Peace Corps has been working hard to make sure they have various ways to get a hold of us if they need to and that we know to stay safe and out of trouble. Plus, the rainy weather in Managua has been a huge safety issue. It hasn't rained too hard in my area of Jinotega, but Managua and other areas of the country are being hit hard by the storms, flooding towns, making bridges impassable. We're currently in a “stand-fast” mode, where we're not supposed to move from our current location. So volunteers that were out of their sites for the day have to stay there until the stand-fast is released. I'm fine in Wale, so it's weird thinking that there's others that can't get home since the bridge is flooded, or something like that. Overall I feel super safe, and right now my biggest concern is preparing for the meeting and getting invitations printed and passed out to my community before Wednesday. Wish me luck!
P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures in this blog, I'm using an ordinary internet cafe computer with lousy signal and I don't have the patience to wait for them to load. You can always check out my Shutterfly page for more pics! sarahinnica.shutterfly.com
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