Machetes and Pen Pal Letters

Well it looks like the rains have finally settled down in Pantasma.  Summer feels like it's here.  The days are beautiful and sunny and have been nice and warm during the day, but still cool after the sun goes down.  Living in my house has been super great so far.  All my things were right where I left them when I returned from my irrigation workshop trip in Managua.  I feel very safe here and sleep just fine alone at night.  It actually doesn't feel like I've really left living with a family because the two houses on either side of me make enough noise to force me to get my ass out bed early each morning.  When the neighbors talk it sounds like they're in the next room or right in my backyard, because they practically are.  All that separates us is the metal fence.  It actually can get quite irritating when I can't sleep at 5:30am because someone three houses down is blasting reggaeton music so the whole community can hear.  I'm not exaggerating, it sounds like they're expecting people to come over for a sunrise party or something.  And currently the neigbors on the other side are building a latrine for a new housing project that's coming into Wale, so every morning I can clearly hear the shoveling and sawing as if it was right outside my back door.  Honestly it's not that bad, and it makes me feel assured that people are close by.  Plus, I shouldn't be sleeping in late anymore anyways.  I've got work to do.  For the past week I've been getting up around 6:30 to go over to Don Pantaleon and Esmeralda's to water the tomato and pepper seeds we planted for the irrigation project I'm doing with the youth.  He offered that we use his little greenhouse to start the seeds since the soil was all disinfected and ready for planting.  I agreed to come over every morning and water them myself, partly because it's my project and want to take part in it, and partly to help me get up early and get the day started right. 

So far I have about 7 youth helping me with this project.  And by youth I mean 18 to 24 year olds.  They are all super capable people that have an interest and experience in agriculture, so I'm really looking forward to working with them.  We've already chosen the land we're going to use, which is a family plot owned by my community counterpart Don Pedro, and spent a day this week clearing out all the tall weeds with machetes.  I've finally bought my own machete since I figured I might actually need one for this project.  Before I was borrowing them from whomever I went to work with.  It's a pain in the ass to sharpen it for the first time since it comes pretty much completely dull.  I've been going around asking people if they can help me sharpen it with their specially made machete sharpeners.  It's a metal file that has been worn down on one side to make a sharp edge, basically like a knife, that they use to shave away the machete edge.  So they don't use the face of the file like it's meant to be used because their way of sharping just works so much better.  Unfortunately, that means that the brand new metal file I bought to accompany my machete is useless until I can shave it down to a sharp knife-like edge.  Pretty sure I need a machine to do that.  

Wow do I look fat in this picture.  I swear it's the camera!

 Another project I'm trying to get going again is the school garden.  Today I have a meeting with the teachers to try and start a committee that will help support me in seeing this garden through.  Last time it was basically all me trying to get people to show up for the work days and get the students to go out and tend to the plants.  If it's going to work this time I'll need help from the teachers, the students, and some parents to get the ball rolling and keep it rolling.  Ultimately the goal is to produce fresh vegetables for the school food program to use. The ovens project paperwork is still in the processing stage, so I'm just waiting to hear back from them about when I can receive the money to start buying the rest of the materials.  People in the community have been asking me about it a lot because they're hoping to get ovens before Easter week (called Semana Santa here, Holy Week).  I hope I can make them happy.  I've also been approached about a few other projects from some people I know, one being monetary support for a bridge, and the other being pre-school supplies.  I'd like to help with both, but I don't think that Peace Corps money is something that I can easily access for these two based on specifications for certain types of projects.  The school supplies sounds more like a donation kind of thing, so I'm just throwing it out there that if any of you would like to donate school supplies for the pre-school class, I'd gratefully accept them.  They don't have the funding to buy paper, pencils, art materials, games and puzzles, etc. for the pre-schoolers, so the teacher asked if I could help in some way.  She's got over 20 bright young minds enrolled in her class and is limited on the teaching activities she can do with a lack of supplies.  If you're interested and able to donate something, even the smallest thing, please get in touch with me. 

This coming week I have another In Service Training (IST) event in Esteli.  The agriculture program in Nicaragua is changing a bit for the coming years.  They're now focusing more on water accessibility and sanitation projects, like building pumps for wells.  So I think most of this week's IST will focus around water issues.  Speaking of being in Esteli, I'm also looking forward to seeing if my hand-made leather boots will be ready! 

Since the kids have started their new school year here I've started the pen pal letters again with the new 2^nd grade class that are being exchanged with my aunt's 2^nd grade class in California.  The 3^rd graders who were writing the letters last year want to continue, so I'm going to see if she can set us up with a 3^rd grade class as well.  The activity I did with them this week was drawing pictures of their family to compare the size of Nicaraguan families with American families.  It was a tougher activity for the kids than I thought it would be.  The kids are fresh out of 1^st grade and are at varying writing abilities (not to mention various ages; most are around 7 or 8, but one girl is 11, perhaps because she wasn't able to attend school at an earlier age or because she's been held back).  I showed them an example of how to put the title on the page “Mi Familia Nicaraguense” and then write their name under that.  Then they were to draw each one of the family members they lived with (my example just had simple stick figures) with their names and ages.  It was hard enough for them to just get the title written, and then many of them didn't know how to spell their names, let alone the names of their brothers and sisters.  So for about an hour we slowly worked through the activity the best we could, and I took their papers and will be sending them to California to share with Ms. Kreb's class.  For future letter activities I'll try to keep things really basic that involves little writing (what a shame since they are pen pal letters after all) and try to keep the themes fun.  The 3^rd grade class worked on drawing their favorite foods on a poster that was sent by the California kids.  What I found funny was that many of the Nicaraguan kids started drawing pizza as their favorite food, even though we don't really have pizza accessible to us here in the campo.  I think they just got a kick out of copying the foods the California kids had drawn.

3rd graders drawing their favorite foods on a chart sent from the California students

Well, perhaps I'll have time to post another blog after this week's IST to inform you about the new water technologies we learned.  I hope it's fun!  More later. .  .

~Sarah~

Super Bowl and Drip Irrigation

February 12, 2012

Great news, I've finally moved into my house!!!  The doors and windows are all installed, the plumbing all works (except when the water's off, which is most of the day), and an electrician came over last week to install wiring for just my little back half of the house where I'm living.  I have one light bulb in the main room, one in the bathroom, and one on the back porch, plus one plug for my electronics.  After coming back from a small trip out of town for the Super Bowl, I had my host dad help me move the larger furniture over and I did all the rest, taking about 10 trips to bag up my stuff and walk it over two houses down.  It was raining that morning, but nothing was going to stop me at that point.  Also that same morning the guy who's been doing all the work on the house came over and at my request installed a 2x4 wooden plank behind each of the windows for added security, and also put some cement nails up around the house so I can hang things like pots and pans, mirrors, and the curtain that will serve as my bathroom door.  That's right, absolutely NO sound privacy when it comes to business in the bathroom.  So yeah, any of you that come visit me be prepared to get comfortable hearing bodily functions during your stay.  I have to admit it's awkward when people stay over and hear everything that goes on in there when you're on the toilet, but hey, this is Peace Corps, you gotta get over it at some point. 

The weekend of the Super Bowl was a busy one.  I spent a few nights staying at other volunteer's houses for potlucks and birthday parties, then spent one night in Esteli in a hostel on the way to Ocotal in Nueva Segovia (way up in the north) for this big Super Bowl party where lots of volunteers gathered to hang out and celebrate this big American sports tradition.  I have no interest in football, but there's no way I was going to miss out on the party.  It was fun and good to get out and travel a bit and see some new towns and new people.  In Esteli I went to this boot workshop and ordered some custom made leather boots from a guy who's known for his work.  It's very popular to get handmade leather boots in Esteli; it's part of what the area's known for, so I had to go check it out for myself and ended up putting 50% down on a pair of brown ankle boots with a buckle on the side.  I'm not into cowboy boots, which is the most common item made in these leather shops, so I found a pair in a different style that I liked and will pick them up at the end of this month when they're done.  They cost about $80 US, which is something I'd never pay in the states for a pair of shoes, honestly.  But to have them custom handmade in Nicaragua for that price is a fraction of the cost for the same boots in the States, so I went for it. 

The sample boots that will be made custom for me

 Before heading into Ocotal for the party, we stopped in Somoto, which is a town in the department of Madriz, just south of Nueva Segovia in the Northwestern part of Nicaragua.  There we hiked into Somoto Canyon, which was so beautiful. I wasn't prepared and didn't bring a bathing suit with me, but others did and got to swim in the river upstream quite a ways.  There's a part where the trail actually ends and you have to get in the water and swim the rest of the way into the canyon.  The water looks deep and green and was cold, but refreshing, from what I could tell by just wading in up to my knees.  The whole area is very dry right now at this point in the season (summer has started here), and actually looks very similar to the hilly, scruby chaparral areas of California.  I would love to go back and go for a swim next time.  It was nice being in a warmer area since it's still raining pretty regularly in Jinotega.  My site has been chilly and wet ever since the winter season started last August.  We're already technically in summer, but the rains have continued in my area and have been damaging the current crops, like the beans that were planted in Dec/Jan.  It's been a tough time for the farmers who rely on that harvest for money.  They're all hoping the rains stop soon.

Somoto Canyon

Then this past weekend my Ag group had a drip irrigation workshop where we got to bring two youths from our community with us to Managua to learn.  The idea is that each one of us starts a small 100 meter squared garden using this drip irrigation system with a group of youth from our community so that they can learn the technique and hopefully manage a successful garden and sell the harvest.  We went to an experimental farm in the department of Granada to learn about different types of drip irrigation systems and how to install and manage our own.  It was fun and educational and I'm glad I brought the two youth I did with me.  One was one of my host brothers, and the other was his cousin who lives down the street from me.  They're 19 and 21 years old, and they both have agriculture experience so they seemed the perfect two to take along with me.  They seemed to enjoy it and I'm hoping that when we get back to site that we can motivate some other kids in the community to help with this project to make it successful.  My one big worry is that someone will steal the materials once it's installed and we'll be out of luck.  Peace Corps provided us with chicken wire to enclose the garden, a shovel and pickaxe to maintain the garden, a sprayer and mask for fertilizers/insecticides, and the irrigation system itself, which includes a 200 liter plastic bag to hold the water and all the plastic tubing to water the plants.  That's a lot of stuff that I'm sure many people would love to get their hands on, and since the area of land that we're going to use isn't necessarily close to any of our houses, I'm concerned it will get yanked in the night.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it all works out. 

A chiltoma plant (bell pepper)

Well, today I'm still in Managua, hanging out for the night in a hotel because I need to pick up some meds from the PC office tomorrow since they're closed on weekends.  So I think I'll treat myself to some fast food (perhaps a Subway sandwich this time?) and a movie in an actual theater at the mall before my 5+ hour bus trip back to site tomorrow.  I hope my house is still in one piece and all my stuff's still there!  More updates soon. . .

~Sarah~