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~