Friday, August 1, 2014

My Final Months in Peace Corps Nicaragua!


I recently celebrated my 4th and last birthday in Nicaragua.  I arrived in this country at 27 years old and am now leaving at 31 (which makes it sound like I’ve been here 4 years, but it was only 3 since my b-day falls in the middle of the year).  Three whole years, 39 months total.  Three months of Pre-Service Training in Diriamba, Carazo, where I officially learned Spanish as well as a whole ton of other things, and then 36 full months of pure rural Nicaragua living in Wale, Pantasma, Jinotega.  Although, I did take a little break there after two years and went home to California for a month, then spent two more weeks in Peru, which was amazing!  Nicaragua has been a great experience and it’ll be with me forever, but at this point it’s time for me to start something new and continue on with my career development.  I’m ready to go home.

This is what I’ve been up to the past few months:

In June I stared a walking routing each morning so I could get out more in my community and get some exercise.  After a recent doctor’s visit I realized how much weight I’ve gained (a whopping 20 lbs!) since moving to Nicaragua and decided it was time to try and reverse that.  The diet here, although it’s delicious (or because it’s delicious!), has given me quite the “pansa”, or tummy, and I’m more than ready to get rid of that!  I’ve only lost about 3 lbs so far, but little by little I’ll chip away at it.  I’m hoping my diet will improve once I’m back stateside. 
By birthday pizza with Gloria and Jureymi
July was a very active month.  Not only was it my 31st birthday, but I also attended and helped facilitate a workshop for people living with HIV with some other volunteers from the Health sector.  It was a great experience and I appreciated talking to the Nicaraguans who attended and hearing their stories.  I’ve also made three more improved ovens and 2 more improved stoves.  I think I still have one more stove to make in Wale, then that’ll be it for me! In total throughout my service I’ve made about 36 ovens and about 12 stoves.  Hopefully they continue to help people use less firewood to cook and reduce the unhealthy smoke inhalation of the whole family.

A new side-by-side improved oven and stove for Filomena!

I also spent 3 days in Managua doing my final COS (close of service) med check-up, where they do a physical, send me to the dentist, and do any final follow-ups needed.  That’s when I realized how much my weight has changed from living here (I asked my doctor to check what my weight was when I was applying for PC back in August of 2010, and again when I first arrived in country).  Other than the weight gain and this annoying persistent cough that’s seemed to have been aggravated while living here, I’m A-Okay!  But I’m sure some kind of parasite will follow me home and rear its ugly head at some inconvenient future date.
 
So besides the ovens/stoves building and the HIV+ workshop, the only other work I’ve been doing is the Saturday girls’ club meetings.  I’m trying to do an activity with them every week now, since my time is dwindling down so quickly.  Recent charlas have been dental care and finding role models, and recent fun activities started with a day of “Uno”, and have since continued each week with more “Uno”.  They LOVE this card game!  I’m bummed I didn’t think to play it with them earlier on, ‘cause they went crazy for it!  I taught them what “Skip”, “Reverse”, “Draw Two”, “Draw Four”, and “Wild” meant in Spanish, and they got it memorized within the first game.  Now they’re pros.  I’m definitely going to leave the cards with Nayelis so they’ll remember who taught them that awesome game.


Profe Josefa and students looking at the photos from Lompoc
I also did the very last pen pal activity with the now 5th graders in the primary school.  This time instead of having them write individual letters back to their pen pal buddies in Lompoc, I had them write a phrase on a poster paper, stating something new they’ve learned about the American students in California.  Some of the phrases included, “I learned that their school year begins in August and ends in June”, and “I learned that they have a computer lab and a library”.  I showed them the photo book that my aunt sent with pictures of the students using the computer lab and visiting the library and getting a book read to them by their full-time librarian, and I think the students were surprised that American schools have these things.  Their school here doesn’t even have books they can read, only the textbooks they have to share between 4 or 5 students during class time only.  They can’t take anything home with them because there’s nothing available to take home.  What’s considered a low-resource school in the U.S. is miles ahead of most Nicaraguan schools, if you compare the available resources, length of the class day, the quality of the education, and the expertise and dedication of the teachers. 
Wale students writing to the Fillmore Elementary students in Lompoc

So these last 3 weeks in site I’ll be starting to sell/give away my things and pack for my trip back home to California!  I’m selling most of my furniture to Gloria so that Nayelis can have a desk in her room to work on and a wardrobe to hang her clothes.  I told Gloria I’d give her all my kitchen stuff if they’d cut me a deal on the last month’s rent, and she agreed and told me I didn’t have to pay at all, so that’s good for her and for me.  She gets a kitchen full of gently used dishes and pans and knick-knacks and I save some money.  Most of my clothes, save for a few items, I’m planning on giving away to the teachers during the despedida (going-away party) they’re going to throw for me.  I’ve also been slowly but surely printing out lots of photos of me with all the different families and will be gifting those out to them when I see them for the last time.  I figure they’re the only photos they’ll ever have of my time here, since no one here has their own camera, so why not print out all the good ones and give them out?  I made a 2015 calendar of photos for Gloria that’s on its way in the mail at the moment, and I can’t wait to give that to her.  She’s gonna love it! 


Now all I have left to do in site is one more stove and the remaining few girls’ club activities, plus a few despedidas here and there as they come.  Goodbyes are so uncomfortable, and I’m hoping this one goes by smoothly and without too much awkwardness.  I’ve already had a lot of goodbyes with the previous volunteer group leaving country the last week in July, so my mind’s set on that mode, but it’s not good to be there for too long.  I’m really looking forward to coming home and getting settled back in with my kitties and my friends and family.  The next big step will be finding a job (hopefully in California) and starting a new career!      

See everyone soon!

~Sarita~

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Sea Turtles and Tulululu Festival

Olive Ridley laying her nest
The month of May was a very busy and active one for me.  I took a few vacations out of site to try to take advantage of the fact that even though my service is swiftly coming to a close, I’m still here in Nicaragua and there are so many places and things to see and explore.  One of the activities I had yet to experience was all the sea turtle nesting activity that occurs all along the coastline here.  So I gathered up 3 friends and we all headed south towards the border of Costa Rica and spent 2 nights on a couple of beaches where a group called Paso Pacifico is monitoring the sea turtle nesting and hatching activity there.  They have turtle rangers that spend every night out monitoring the beaches for the arrival of nesting turtles and try to save their eggs from the turtle poachers.  It was the same location I went with my friend Tina back in early April to try and see the turtles, but at that time we went too early in the nesting season and didn’t see any turtles.  So I wanted to go back, and when we went in May we saw some turtles!  The trip down took over 12 hours, and we were really tired and cranky from all the buses, so the first night we arrived to spend the night with the turtle rangers we only stayed out until midnight.  And we saw an Olive Ridley turtle within the first hour we were on the beach!  It was surprising considering all the turtle poachers that were out on this beach.  It was ridiculous!  We literally saw about 8 turtles total that night, but 7 of them were taken by poachers, meaning they grabbed them out of the water, flipped them upside down over their heads, and walked them up the sand to a spot on the beach where the turtle would most likely lay her eggs once she was set down.  Then the poacher just sits and waits until she lays her eggs and collects them right out from underneath her.  They don’t hunt or kill the turtle, the poachers are just there for the eggs, which are a very traditional specialty food item. 
Finally got to see a nesting turtle!

We rescued 102 eggs! They got transported to a safe spot.  
So the turtle we saw was a surprise because we were all just sitting in the sand talking with the turtle ranger when one of us saw her making her way up the beach and called it to attention.  It was crazy that she hadn’t been spotted yet by a poacher!  I think we lucked out because she happened to leave the water and come out right where we were sitting, so the poachers probably kept their distance since they knew we were tagging along with the Paso Pacifico ranger.  So we all jumped up and ran over to her (I remembered from my previous trip that the turtle ranger said that when he spotted a turtle he’d run like mad to get to her first so the poachers wouldn’t claim her for their own).  After a few jumps and squeals of excitement that we got to her first, we watched and waited behind her until she made her way up to a higher part on the beach.  She started to dig in a really rocky spot where she wouldn’t have made a very good hole, so the turtle ranger started digging another hole down lower where the sand was softer, then he grabbed her by her hind flippers and gently dragged her down over the new hole, where she paused for a second, probably getting her bearings since she had been moved, and then continued digging as if nothing had happened.  So we got to see her dig her nest and lay her eggs!  It was really cool. 

Then the turtle ranger told us we wouldn’t be able to rescue the eggs since he technically wasn’t scheduled to work on that particular beach that night and therefore didn’t have the key to the turtle egg nursery where they transfer all the eggs to for safe hatching.  I wasn’t having that one bit!  We did not just travel 12 hours and spend half the night out on this beach to finally see a turtle lay her eggs and then let the poachers just take them from us!  So I made a stink about it and in the end (after trying to call the other turtle rangers and get them to bring the key, with no luck) we did end up digging up and transferring the eggs to the nursery, but he had to “break in” to the nursery to be able to re-bury them.  Hopefully since then they have made the nursery break-in-proof from poachers, considering it wasn’t that hard to do.  I was praying and hoping that none of the poachers nearby saw us and that the nest of eggs we saved hatches successfully.  If we hadn’t been at that beach that night, every single nest would have been poached!  So we were all very pleased to have been able to help out at least one nest out of 8. 


Baby Green sea turtles hatching out of the nest!
Besides seeing a turtle lay her nest and rescue the eggs, our other goal for that trip was to see babies hatching out of the nest and head to the ocean.  So the next night we hiked out to a different beach with 4 other turtle rangers that worked out there with the hopes of seeing a nest hatch.  There were multiple nests already laid there that were due to hatch, so we decided to go there.  The hike was short but kind of hard since it went up over this hill that led to the beach.  On the way up we were all panting and sweating and thinking how shitty we were going to feel hiking out the same way the next morning after having been up all night.  It was a full moon that night so the beach was really clear and beautiful all night long until about 4am, when we watched the moon set over the ocean.  It was so beautiful.  We only saw one turtle that night, but the group of poachers that was there got to her first and we never saw her lay her nest.  BUT, we did get to see one of the nests hatch!  Only about 7 little baby Green sea turtles came out of the nest that night, but it was really cool and really special.  Their little heads just kept poking out of the sand and then they booked it to the water.  Their little flippers are so strong and they fight really hard to get out of the sand and push their way to the ocean.  Needless to say we all got lots of baby turtle photos.  So all in all we got to see everything we came for, but we only saw one nesting mama and one nest hatch.  I was hoping to have seen much more activity, but I’ve still got over 2 months to hopefully make that happen.

Another oven workshop done!
Immediately after the sea turtle trip I traveled back to Jinotega to help give an improved ovens workshop to a group of volunteers and their Nicaraguan counterparts.  We spent a few days teaching about the importance of using less firewood to cook and reducing smoke inhalation, and then we spent a morning constructing an oven so they could learn how to build one.  Then two days later I was back in Managua to give another presentation about the HIVaids Task Force to the newest group of trainees (that has since sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers).  Then I had three days back in site before leaving again for a 2-week vacation! 
Giving an HIV charla to a new group of trainees

De-worming a pig with the vet team during the brigade
It started with 5 days in Jinotega interpreting for Trinity Medical Mission, who is a brigade based out of New Orleans that has been coming to Jinotega for the past 20 years.  They come every year and always go out each day to a different community and provide basic medical care for the communities, including dental work, OB-GYN, pediatrics, wound care, and basic adult and family care.  But this is the only brigade I’ve seen that comes with a veterinarian!  Dr. Troy from Mississippi comes with the brigade every year and offers rabies vaccines for cats and dogs as well as de-wormers, a flea and tick spray, and other vitamins or antibiotics as needed.  I worked with him last year when I first interpreted with this brigade, and I had a good time.  This year I worked with the vet team 4 out of the 5 days they were in country.  I must have been good help because they kept scheduling me with them each day, when normally us Peace Corps volunteers rotate around with various doctors to help interpret Spanish with the patients.  This year the vet team saw a few horses and some cattle in one community in particular, but mostly people bring their dogs and some cats to get their rabies shot.  What’s funniest is that the dogs hate getting sprayed with the flea spray more than getting poked with a needle or de-wormer shoved in their mouths.  They scream and squirm and fight the hardest when the sprayer gets turned on them.  It’s pretty funny.  I helped out more this year than last year in actually administering the rabies shots.  I feel pretty confident giving shots, but the animals here aren’t really pets most of the time and aren’t comfortable with some stranger approaching them, especially when they’re already tense at having a leash strapped to their neck and having been drug away from their home to some tent in the park with 20 other dogs yapping all around them.  So I only gave shots to the animals I felt were the least crazy.  It can get pretty tense and stressful for most of these animals.  Also surprising is seeing some people (mostly kids) walk up with their un-collared cat just hanging onto them for dear life.  Sometimes it’s all too much for these cats and they inevitably scramble away, but sometimes they’re pretty calm and take it all well.  We saw a ton of adorable puppies and kittens too, which of course is a perk.  Until you see how covered they are with fleas and then feel really sorry for them.  Hopefully their owners are actually using the free flea shampoo we were handing out!
De-worming a box of puppies in Jinotega

The "Palo de Mayo" during the Tulululu festival 
Immediately after the brigade I went to Managua to catch a night bus to Bluefields for the weekend.  It’s a 6 hour bus ride from Managua to El Rama, where you wait in line for a few hours and then get on a panga boat and ride the river another 2 hours to the city of Bluefields, which is on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua.   In all it’s about a 12 hour travel day (or night) to get to the coast, unless you fly, which costs way more.  I pretty much went on my own for this trip, but met up with other volunteers that were there celebrating Tulululu as well, which is the last festival in May celebrating Palo de Mayo, or May Pole, which is a HUGE Atlantic coast celebration each year.  It was really rainy and humid the whole time I was there, but the dancing in the streets was really fun and I had some really yummy seafood dishes.  I had planned to visit Pearl Lagoon while there, which is another popular spot along the east coast, but my bank card had expired the day before (they give no warning!) so I couldn’t get any more money out for the other leg of the trip.  So that morning I had to borrow money from another volunteer just to get back to Managua, where I went to the bank the next day and got my card all settled.   That was my 2nd time in Bluefields where I wanted to go visit Pearl Lagoon and didn’t due to some reason or another.  Yet another place I still need to visit in this country!


Immediately after coming back from Bluefields I was in Managua again, this time to give a presentation to the current health volunteers during their In-Serving Training workshop about building improved ovens and stoves.  So I got to spend another night in a nice hotel in a beautiful setting, where there were howler monkeys and lots of pretty birds to look at.  Then it was back to Wale, where I am now, after spending over 2 weeks out of site last month on vacation.  It was fun, but I need to get focused on finishing the activities I’m working on in site, such as my girls’ club and finishing making the stoves.  Not to mention I have a ton of books I still haven’t read and study materials for the GRE I need to crack open at some point.  I’m still planning on applying for grad school next year, and I’m currently in the process of applying for some jobs for when I come home in September.  I have yet to choose my actual fly-home date from Nicaragua, but it’ll be sometime during the last week in August, unless some amazing job happens to pop up in the meantime.  But the way things look now that’s not likely, so I’m expecting to leave late August and start working again in the States in September.  
Me and Jureymi after she performed a folklorico dance in school

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Earthquakes and Semana Santa

Nicaragua’s been quite shaken up this past week.  Thursday, April 10th, was the day of the largest quake I've felt since living here.  It was a 6.2 based near Managua and did a lot of damage to nearby community houses and buildings.  It was around 5:30 pm and I was in site, in my room, making a quesadilla at the stove when I felt it.  About 3 seconds before I felt the tremor, the electricity went out, which I thought somewhat normal considering that happens occasionally here, but then I felt the ground start to sway smoothly back and forth, and thought, uh oh, if I can feel it that strongly way up here in the north, then it must have been a pretty large one down near Managua.  Almost every earthquake in this country is epicentered in or very near to Managua, where most of the fault lines are located (also conveniently located near a string of various volcanoes).  After the tremor the lights came back on and everything was normal again.  There were many smaller aftershocks that day and in to the next, but they were small enough that I didn’t feel them in my site.  We’ve of course been receiving lots of texts from the Safety and Security staff at the PC office, letting us know the details of the quakes and that Managua was on red alert for more quakes during the whole week due to ongoing tremors.  Seismologists came to Managua from various other countries, and have stated that the microseisms are mostly located around the Momotombo and Apoyeque volcanoes that surround Lake Managua, and that small tremors will continue as the tension is being released progressively and not drastically, which potentially reduces the risk of a really big earthquake (hopefully!).  So things have been a little exciting here in that sense, but luckily nothing serious enough to affect service. 

Tamales pisques, the plain kind with no bean filling

Filling and rolling tamales pisques for Semana Santa
This past week the whole country has been in celebration of Semana Santa, or Holy Week, the religious week that proceeds Easter Sunday.  It all starts on Holy Monday, when people start to prepare to make their traditional Holy Week foods.  Holy Wednesday seems to be the big day to make tamales pisques and bake lots of bread.  The tamales pisques are probably my favorite style of tamal here in Nicaragua.  They’re only made during this week of the whole year.  The corn masa is different than the masas of the Nacatamal and the sweet tamales, because they add wood ash to the masa, which gives it a browner, greyer color and different flavor.  They make two types, one that’s just solid masa, which really doesn’t have much flavor and is mostly used as a substitute for the tortillas or the boiled bananas of any meal, and the other (my favorite) that has delicious refried beans rolled into the masa.  Both types are folded into green leaves and boiled in a huge pot over an open flame for 2 hours, then enjoyed with cuajada, the campo cheese I love, or some crema on the side.  The refried bean ones are so good!  It’s all about the flavor of the beans, which usually have garlic, green bell pepper, and chilies.  I don’t care much for the plain ones. 
A cooked and ready-to-eat tamal pisque with refried bean filling. YUM!!!

Me and Nayelis making bread for Semana Santa
The baking of bread is also a huge Semana Santa activity for all the women here.  Luckily for 20 of them in my site, they all have improved ovens to bake with, and I’m sure they all used them this past week to get their bread made.  I baked with Gloria at home one day, and I also went to Filomena’s house to help them roll tamales pisques and to see what kinds of bread she was baking.  Gloria made plain white bread and attempted to make a pineapple cake that was a sugary explosion disaster in the oven.  She was really angry
when it didn’t turn out and was pissed off the rest of the day (losing a cake or bread recipe is a big blow sometimes since the ingredients cost a lot of money, and that cake was meant for her husband Santos belated birthday who’s here for the week on vacation from his job that’s really far away).  So to avoid Gloria’s sour attitude, I went to Filomena’s to watch them make their bread the rest of the afternoon.  There are usually two types of white flour breads they make, one that’s just a plain simple masa, and the other is sweetened with sugar.  They mold them into various shapes, from a simple long log of bread, like the looks of French bread, and then there are circle shapes like donuts and braided bread and solid blobs of bread like scones.  But they mostly all have the same flavor, which when they’re cooled has a really hard, crunchy consistency and is mostly really sweet with all the sugar in the dough, plus the extra coating of sugar they stick to the top before they put it in the oven.  Plus, they love to add pineapple jelly to the middle of a lot of breads, but they always color the pineapple bright pink with this cheap raspberry food coloring, which is weird to me.  Why not leave it yellow if it’s a pineapple flavor?  It’s not my favorite flavor of bread, to be
Pineapple jelly-filled picos, a popular Nica bread item 
honest.  Nicaraguans love really toasted, crunchy breads, and rarely eat anything soft and spongy like we Americans usually like when it comes to our breads.  So when I made a loaf of rosemary Focaccia bread and brought that over to share with them, they didn’t seem to love it like I do.  First of all, they thought the rosemary was ginger, and scrunched their noses at because the strong flavor surprised them.  I explained that it was rosemary (an herb they rarely or never use in cooking, yet are familiar with its name), and that I used olive oil instead of margarine, which also gives the bread a (wonderfully) unique flavor.  They never use olive oil either, since it’s so expensive, plus I just don’t think they really have a taste for it.  Nicas love their margarine and lard when it comes to baking.  So needless to say my focaccia bread took some getting used to.  Filomena had tasted it before in the past, and she said she liked it, but I saw some chunks of it put into the oven with her other breads to get toasted to crunchy state, so even if she says she likes the flavor, I don’t think she likes the softness of it.  That just seems totally crazy to me how they only eat hard, crunchy, dry bread here.  One of my favorite things is a hot loaf of soft steamy bread right out of the oven, and Gloria and the others I’ve baked with always wait to eat it until it’s cooled and crunchy.  I just don’t see how that could be good all the time!  It just shows how much your culture raises you and molds your taste buds and flavor choices. 


This coming week is the AG and Business 59er’s Close of Service (COS) conference, where staff presents information about preparing resumes, interview and job search skills, health insurance options offered while in the States, closing our service here in country, and other topics regarding returning to the States after our service.  It turns out that us 3rd years aren’t permitted to attend, since we technically already received this session last year with our own group.  I’m pretty upset about it considering part of the purpose of attending your COS conference is to prepare yourself for the end of your Peace Corps service in country and the return to the U.S.  Well, the budget won’t allow all of us 3rd years (there’s only 6 of us) to attend the conference this year, even though this is the year we’re actually leaving.  I’ve talked to a few staff members about this and there’s really no way around it, but they are offering to set up another smaller meeting with the 3rd years to go over anything we’d like to discuss before finishing our service in August.  So at least we get some time with the office staff to prepare ourselves for the return to the U.S.  I’m already in the process of looking for job opportunities for when I come home, mostly at this point just trying to figure out which organizations offer the types of jobs I’m interested in.  So far I’ve found interesting positions with the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, and the Student Conservation Association, that all offer part time and full time positions working in wildlife biology and conservation fields.  The problem right now is that all currently offered positions are for the summer season, and I won’t be ready to work until probably September or October.  So the wait is hard for me right now since there’s some pretty cool sounding jobs available right now that I can’t apply for.  Another option that’s been in the back of my head is applying for grad school and getting a Master’s in Wildlife Management and Conservation.  There’s a fellowship program offered for RPVC’s (returned PC volunteers) that offers full tuition coverage for certain schools, which is something I’d definitely consider.  However, that would require taking the GRE, which I wouldn’t look forward to.  But if I get serious enough about getting a higher education in order to gain more experience and education and to obtain a better paying job in the field I’m interested in, then taking the test would have to be another hurdle to deal with.  

Happy Easter everyone!

~Sarita~

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Spider monkeys and Sea turtle egg nurseries

And now to the 2nd half of my Nica trip with Tina. . .

At the spider monkey sanctuary
After spending two nights in my site in Pantasma, we headed to the Paso Pacifico office in Managua to meet with the staff at the office there to plan the volunteering part of our trip.  The staff was very nice and helpful, they picked us up from the bus station and drove us to their office (soooo nice having a chofeur!) and allowed us to stay in an extra bedroom at the office for the night.  The next morning we travelled with them way down south to the community of Cardenas, which is in the very south of Nicaragua about 2 km from the border of Costa Rica.  There we spent time at a spider monkey sanctuary that Paso Pacifico cares for and we worked with the caretaker there to show him some new monkey enrichment ideas.  Tina and I were very pleasantly surprised at how well the place was kept up and how much enrichment he was already giving them.  The caretaker lives there with his wife and son and his sole job is to care for the spider monkeys 24/7, so he has lots of time to make them enrichment and prepare their diets, which is all bought by Paso Pacifico.  These 4 spider monkeys live pretty well, so Tina and I basically just brainstormed some more ideas for him and typed up a list of other types of enrichment he could make for them.  In preparation for this trip I had already collected up a large bag of toilet paper rolls, cereal boxes, plastic bottles, and various other paper goods to bring to make enrichment for the monkeys. 

Me and Tina ready to give their AM diet
The 4 spider monkeys














Since we arrived at the sanctuary in the afternoon, Paso Pacifico put us up in a nearby cabin where the staff usually stays when they’re there, which was this large one-room cabin right on the south end of Lake Nicaragua.  It was so beautiful, we could see the two volcanoes of Ometepe Island from there when it wasn’t overcast, and it was super hot and muggy but that spot was really windy so it felt great.  We bought meals from the owner of the house who lived nearby and enjoyed a nice relaxing evening.  The next morning we returned to the sanctuary and helped the caretaker with the cleaning of the exhibit, refreshing water jugs (they had 3 water jugs in each of the 3 rooms of the exhibit! Talk about covering all bases) and making the AM diets.  It was like being a zookeeper all over again, but just for one morning. 

A Paso Pacifico boat on El Ostional beach
The protected sea turtle egg nursery at El Ostional
After our spider monkey time, Tina and I headed to San Juan del Sur for lunch.  We took an afternoon bus to a community called El Ostional, where Paso Pacifico has a sea turtle egg nursery and conservation project.  We met up with three of the local turtle rangers and spend a few nighttime hours on the beach with them looking for turtles and seeing the egg nursery, which is basically a fenced off area up higher on the beach away from the water where the turtle rangers move the eggs to after the females lay their nests. That way the nest have up to 100% chance hatch rate, and the rangers then help the baby turtles enter the ocean without the fear of predators. The beach (and the country of Nicaragua in general) has a problem with egg poachers, since turtle eggs are eaten by the locals and are worth a lot of money.  So every single night there are egg hunters out patrolling the beach with flashlights searching for turtles basically right next to the turtle conservation workers themselves, and whoever finds a turtle first gets first dibs on her eggs.  The turtle rangers often have funds as an incentive to pay off the poachers for the eggs, and most of the time the poachers take the incentive instead of taking the eggs, and will even help the turtle ranger move the nest to the egg nursery.  It’s totally crazy and backwards and unbelievable that there are no regulations monitoring this turtle egg poaching in this country!  It’s technically illegal to take the eggs since most all sea turtle species are endangered, but there’s just no enforcement of the laws, so the poachers very simply and easily get away with it.  And these poor turtle rangers have to deal with them each and every night, literally running in the dark to get to a turtle first before the poachers spot her on the beach, which is often difficult.  Tina and I were totally flabbergasted at this nightly activity and struggle, and although we were disappointed to not have seen any turtles, it was definitely an eye-opening learning experience.  I’m hoping to go back to that beach in the next few months and spend a couple nights helping out the turtle rangers. 
Me and Tina at the beach in El Ostional

After our night in El Ostional, we decided to head back to San Juan del Sur, a very touristy beach spot, and spend the afternoon and one night there.  We took a dip in the ocean, which was way colder than we thought it would be, and almost immediately Tina got stung by a jellyfish!  It didn’t really attack her, but lightly grazed her hand as we were slowly inching our way in deeper into the unexpectedly cold water.  That was it for her, she got out of the water immediately and left me there worrying that some jellyfish was going to drift by me next.  I got out a few minutes later and we just stood on the beach for a while drying off in the sun since we only brought out our katenges (Tanzanian wrap fabrics) and not any beach towels.  At least we can say we experienced the Central American Pacific Ocean, even if it was only a few moments. 

San Juan del Sur sunset

The next morning we made our way up to Granada and spent the last night there, enjoying a nice Italian meal and buying some last minute souvenirs.  Basically this second half of the trip we spent only one night in each place, so it was a lot of traveling on Nica school buses and having to wait at various bus stations and bus stops for our buses to leave to the next place, and needless to say it got old and annoying.  I was ready to stop travelling so often at that point, but the vacation was still fun and I of course was super happy to see Tina again!  The next time we see each other will be when I’m done with my service and head back to the States in August or September.  Until then I’ll be trying to continue building stoves in my community and working with the youth group.  And I’m also in the process of researching job opportunities with various organizations in the U.S. that work in wildlife conservation to get an idea of what I should start applying for when my service comes closer to an end.  Hopefully I won’t be jobless for too long!

Tina's last day in Nicaragua.  Oh how Peace Corps brings us together!

Check out my shutterfly page to see lots more photos of our trip. . .


~Sarah~

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

First half of Tina's trip to Nicalandia!

My best friend Tina is here in Nicaragua visiting me for 10 days, and we’ve had a good trip so far.  It’s great to have a friend that has lived and understands the Peace Corps experience come visit me because she knows the feelings and frustrations and emotions I’m going through towards the end of my service.  Plus she speaks Spanish so I don’t have to do any translating (not that I really minded when other family and friends came to visit, it’s just easier to have conversations with people when everyone understands each other).  I’ll get to our trip in a minute, first let me fill you all in with the last few weeks in site.

A successfully completed charla!
The girls group teen pregnancy charla that I was having such a hard time coordinating is finally done and over with.  I decided to have the last few meetings before the actual charla at a different house where a majority of the girls lived in, since they’re sisters, and all of them showed up and we actually made progress on getting the activity organized.  The day of the charla at the school they all showed up in their Camp GLOW t-shirts that they received at the camp, and put on a pretty decent charla for the 5th graders.  I had to help them out here and there to keep the flow going and to organize the rambunctious 5th graders, but overall they did a good job and I was glad for it to be over.  After we finished one of the girls told me as we were walking out that she was looking forward to doing another one!  And I’m thinking in my head, yeah, but you barely even showed up for the rehearsals for this first one, and you think I’m gonna help plan another one?!  But hey, if they are truly motivated and show up to practice another charla, then great, I’ll help them out.  But I think I’ve kinda had my fill recently of these girls and their lack of motivation.

My community watching photos of my vacation in Peru
A few weekends ago I finally got my hands on a projector and decided to do a photo slide show presentation of my vacation home for Christmas and also my trip to Peru, so that my host family and other neighbors could see what other countries look like.  I set up some chairs in our living room and bought a 3 liter bottle of soda to serve for everyone who came, and they all laughed and enjoyed the photos of my trip visiting my family and the places Tina and I saw in Peru.  Then the next night (to take advantage of having the projector still) I played some episodes of Planet Earth in Spanish and invited some neighbors to come over and watch with popcorn.  Not many people showed up, but those that did seemed to enjoy the movie.



Atop the cross overlooking Jinotega city
So this last Wednesday Tina flew in to Managua and we headed to Jinotega for the night to stay with my friend Paul and have dinner with all the volunteers that live in the city.  The next morning we hiked up to the cross that overlooks the whole city, and man, my calves are still sore 6 days later!  It’s basically a hike straight up the side of this mountain on cement stairs that the city recently built in the past year for hikers to make it up more safely.  I was huffing and puffing the whole way up.  But the view at the top was nice and we got some cool photos.  Then Tina and I headed to La Bastilla Ecolodge, which is on the way up to my site, and stayed two nights there.  It’s a really beautiful place on the top of this overlook into a reserve and protected area, so there’s tons of tall, fully grown trees and lots of birdlife.  We took a short hike and saw various birds, including a violet sabrewing hummingbird, a golden-olive woodpecker, lots of yellow-backed orioles, and many other things.  We heard a keel-billed toucan and various groups of howler monkeys in the distance but they never got close enough. 
On our hike at La Bastilla



Pretty view of the Datanli reserve at La Bastilla

Enjoying Gloria's chicken soup at my house in Wale
After La Bastilla we headed to my site and Tina got to meet my host family and some other families in my community and finally see where I’ve been living these past 2 ½ years.  We saw lots more birds and took as many photos as possible.  I was hoping she’d get to see the national bird during our trip, the guardabarranco, or turquoise-browed motmot, and we saw 3 in my site!  I also requested that Gloria make us my favorite meal, chicken soup with dumplings, so we had a delicious meal as well.  We only spent two nights in Wale, since there’s always so much more to see when you’re on vacation, so after my site we headed down to Managua to meet up at the office of Paso Pacifico.  They’re an organization that works mostly in the south part of Nicaragua working on animal conservation, reforestation, and environmental education projects.  I contacted the director, who is based in Ventura, and she said we could spend a day doing some enrichment with a small group of spider monkeys they take of at a sanctuary in Sapoa, a town near the border of Costa Rica.  So I’ve been collecting toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes and plastic bottles and various other enrichment items from my house to take with us to make toys for the monkeys.  We’re headed there today, and possibly tomorrow
A turquiose-browed motmot we saw in my site
we’ll be visiting a sea turtle egg nursery that’s run by a local women’s group on one of the beaches down south.  We’re kinda playing it by ear on this second half of the trip, since I didn’t have great communication with the organization ahead of time.  But so far everyone’s been really nice in the office and I’m looking forward to working with and seeing some animals!

Keep posted for the next blog to hear how the remainder of our trip went!

~Sarah~

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Pig feed and Community banks


I’ve successfully made two improved stoves this month!  That’s the same amount of stoves I made in site all of last year.  I’m hoping to make more in my community as word hopefully catches on and more people become interested. 
One of the improved "Inkawasi" stoves I built recently in my community


A neighbor's pigs enjoying their new home-made concentrate mix
The swine project is also slowly making progress.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t have enough time in my 6 months left of service to officially request funding to make pig pens for some families in my site, so I’ve decided instead to work with each interested family individually and make improved husbandry plans with them.  I’ve talked with two families so far and have suggested ways to improve their health care and diet for their pigs.  The other day I made a home-made diet with a woman who agreed to try something new, which is mostly that she weighs out specific amounts of each ingredient to make a more-or-less balanced diet.  It consisted of corn, beans, rice semolina, salt, and crushed egg shells.  They’re ingredients they already use for their pigs, but I’m trying to help them organize a better feeding plan so they can put more weight on their animals faster.  Right now they mostly feed their pigs dried corn kernels and whatever food has accumulated from a slop bucket of kitchen wastes (old tortillas, beans, rice, banana peels, and the bean water that they were boiled in).  We’ve decided to try feeding this new weighed and measured diet to a skinny sow and her 3 pigs, with the idea that we need to put more weight on this skinny nursing mother and hopefully grow the pigs faster than normal.  We’re also planning on weighing the pigs each month to see how much weight they put on over this diet improvement process.  Since I won’t be able to request outside funding for this project, I’m planning on using the funds raised from all the bra sales to help these families either pay for materials to fence in their animals or to buy improved feed ingredients to improve their nutrition.  The fencing materials will last longer though, so I’m leaning more towards that idea, however I need to work with these families first in the initial stages of this swine husbandry improvement project to be sure they’re willing to work with me and make some positive changes for their animals.


The girls from the youth group participated in a 3-day camp where they participated in various life-skills activities as well as fun obstacle course games and ice-breakers.  As part of their participation they’re supposed to organize and participate in an activity back at home using the information they learned from the camp.  So it’s up to me to help them put this activity together.  They decided they want to give a charla on early pregnancy to the 5th grade class at the local elementary school.  All sounds great so far, right?  Not so.  Trying to get these 6 girls organized and working together productively has been one of the most trying activities for me during my service.  It’s obvious that these girls are reluctant to have to do anything after having participated in this fun sleep-away camp with all their friends.  I’m pretty sure they were surprised to find out they actually had to do some homework afterwards, and are now procrastinating and taking it out on me for trying to get them organized and working.  We set a date to work on the activity and maybe 2 of them show up, or when they do all show up they all want to leave early before we’ve finished what we have to do, or they goof off and talk over me or ignore me when I ask them productive questions to get them moving.  The other day I almost started crying out of frustration after a meeting with them, since we got very little done in the 2 hours that they actually stayed to work.  Towards the end of the session I had to leave the room to get something, and when I came back half of them had slipped out of the house and already started heading home.  I had to call them back so we could review what’s left to be done and to agree on the next meeting time.  It’s driving me crazy how irresponsible and lazy some of them are!  I don’t know how to handle these kinds of things very well, especially since it’s not my charla, it’s theirs.  They’re the ones who will be presenting this information to a classroom full of kids, not me, so if they don’t show up and practice what they’re going to present, then they’ll feel pretty stupid once they realize how dumb and unprepared they’ll look in front of an audience.  I’m trying to help them get organized and practice what they’re going to say, but no one wants to participate.  I’m the one trying to prevent a car crash here, ‘cause I don’t think they realize how difficult it can be giving a public talk, and I’m worried that they’ll fail because I didn’t prepare them enough.  I just don’t know how to wrangle all of them together and keep them focused to get the damn work done.  We had one more meeting a few days ago, this time with a new strategy of having the meeting at one of the houses where most of the girls in the group live, and luckily everyone showed up this time and did a great job getting the work done.  We're scheduled to do the charla tomorrow (March 12th) in the afternoon for the 5th grade class, and I'm praying the all show up and do the work they've agreed to do.  


On a positive note, the community bank that I started all on my own a year ago has finally closed their first yearly cycle, and in the last meeting they received back all their savings and the interest they've earned over the loans from the past year.  They finally got to collect all their money for their year’s hard work in saving it, and then we opened the next year’s bank cycle that same meeting, with 3 new members joining.  It was a big success and I’m really hoping they use the money they’ve saved for something good, like improving their house or investing it into some other type of income generating activity.  That’s part of my job, to show them how they can use the money they’ve saved to make even more, like a baking sales project.  Most of the women in this bank have participated in my baking classes so I’m planning on discussing that idea with them.  I have high hopes for this little bank, and will work closely with them until the very end of my service, helping them in any way I can.  
Me with the old and new members of the 2nd cycle of Banco Unido after a successful first meeting!


Thanks for reading and enjoy more photos at sarahinnica.shutterfly.com!

~Sarita~






Saturday, February 8, 2014

Returning back to site: bras and chia

Now that we’re all back up to date with my month home leave in December and my Peru trip with Tina, I can finally start blogging about my time in Nicaragua again.  It’s already February, I’ve got 7 months to go before I officially COS my Peace Corps service.  And there’s still so much more to do! 

The last two weeks of January I mostly spent settling back into site, like cleaning my dusty, moldy room that had been closed up for 6 weeks (I told Gloria to please open my window while I was gone and turn the fan on to get some air circulation in there, but it wasn’t enough cause the room still stunk when I got back).  I had a lot of groceries to buy since I had eaten most of my food and thawed out my fridge before I left.  A week after being back in site I had to go back to Managua for an ECPA Task Force meeting.  ECPA (Energy and Climate Partnership for the Americas) is where we volunteers get our funding for the improved oven and stove projects, and I’m one of the volunteers on the committee.  Our meeting was mostly to catch us all up on plans for the coming year, since it’s our last year receiving funds for these projects.  The committee also organizes and teaches ovens and stoves workshops for other volunteers so they can learn the technologies.  I’ve helped with two workshops in the past and will help with at least one more this year. 

Chia plants
This last week I accompanied my former host dad, Don Pantaleon, to his chia plot, where he’s been growing the plants for the first time.  Chia has become a very popular crop in recent years in Nicaragua, with a big US market that is buying it up.  I had told Don Pantaleon late last year that I was interested in going out to see his plants so I could learn more about it and maybe help him find some contacts in the States to sell it to.  I had never seen chia plants before, and having only ever really heard of it before as the famous “chia pet”, I thought it looked like long green grass, or like wheatgrass, for all I knew.  The plants are very different, it turns out.  They’re really pretty, with soft green leaves and long stems, and the day I followed him out to see them they were starting to flower.  The plants form long pod-like stems with little delicate purple flowers on them, and once all of the pods mature, they cut the plant at the base, stack them all together to dry, and then shake the dried plants to remove the tiny grey seeds.   Apparently, I found out, it’s the seeds they sell, not the plant.  I didn’t know that chia seeds are such a hot commodity right now in the States, but he tells me that there’s a big market for them amongst the organic health food scene and for medicinal purposes.  Have any of you back home seen or heard of chia being the new thing?  I saw some bags for sale at Ross when I was home for Christmas, but that’s the only time I’ve seen it there.  If you guys know of a reliable buyer in the States who’s looking to buy organic chia direct from Nicaragua, let me know!  I know a guy who grows it J
Don Pantaleon showing me where they cut the plant to harvest it
Chia flowers blooming

Bras for sale!
Gloria, Nayelis and some neighbors showing off their new buys
Before I had come home for Christmas my mom had collected various “gently used” bras that her family, friends, and co-workers had donated to send with me.  I brought back 76 bras to my site and put them up for sale for all the ladies to come by and try on.  American bras (whether-or-not they’re actually made in the USA) are a hot commodity in Nicaragua because they’re well-made and last much longer than the typical cheap-o bra sold here.  So I sold them cheap at 20 cordobas each (less than $1) and made $60 in total selling them all.  I sold 71 bras in the first morning alone!  The ladies came running from everywhere once they got my text that the bras had arrived and were ready to go, and man, they sold like wildfire!  I was lacking heavily in A and B cup sizes, since most of the bras my mom had collected were C cups and above (the biggest one was a 38 G!  And I sold it, but it wasn’t easy).  Most women in my site are petite and smaller-chested.  So if any of you have smaller bras you’d be willing to donate and mail me, respond to this posting and I’ll e-mail you my mailing address.  The money goes to a good cause, I assure you.  I’ve been saving all the bra sales money plus the money from all my clothes and shoes I sold last November.  In total I’ve raised 2,700 cordobas ($108) towards a future community project.  It may go towards a Club Las Estrellas activity, or the swine husbandry project, or a community health fair that I’m also trying to organize. 
Women buying donated bras
Gloria's brother helping me make cement planchas for their improved stove
I’m in the process of getting my previous projects and activities back up and running.  The community bank that I left to close their yearly cycle in December didn’t end very well apparently, ‘cause one of the members didn’t pay back her loan and now owes everyone money.  So I had to go visit her personally and see where she was with that, then planned a group meeting to try to figure out how mediate this issue.  She has two weeks to pay her loan back, so we’ll see how that goes next weekend.  I’m also meeting with two families about building their improved stoves.  This is a frustrating project that I tried to get going last year, but so far no one has wanted to build one yet.  I think they’re dragging their feet on buying their own materials (although they require way less materials than the ovens do) and they’re afraid the stoves don’t work, so I’m in the process of trying to convince people to give it a try.  That’s hard to do when they’ve been cooking a certain way their whole lives.  But as of this week I’ve got two biters, so hopefully by the end of this month they’ll have a new stove in their houses. 

Neighbors helping me make the chimney for a stove
I’m also working on getting the girls’ youth group, Club Las Estrellas, formed again.  This week I sent 6 of the girls to a 3-day camp that Peace Corps volunteers and a Nicaraguan NGO put on every year called Camp G.L.O.W. (girls leading our world), that focuses on teen health and self-esteem issues.  Last year I sent 4, so in total there are 10 girls from Wale who have participated in this camp.  My hope is that once they return next week that we can discuss some of the issues they learned during the camp and make a project out of it, like teaching other girls in the community some of the same topics.  Other activities I’d like to continue with the club include more baking classes, animal biodiversity charlas, and maybe a youth community bank, so they can start learning the important habit of saving and spending their money wisely. 

My girls starting their weekend at Camp G.L.O.W.


As for the swine husbandry project, that may be slow to start.  The MAGFOR animal health inspector that helped me a lot last year has been moved to another department and replaced with a new guy, who I have yet to meet.  Hopefully he’ll be as helpful as the first guy!  I’m trying not to get too over my head with new projects that require funding, seeing as I only have 7 months left.  It’s hard to get a project organized enough in the first place to even start asking for funding for it, so I may have my work cut out for me.  

Keep tuned in for more soon. . .

~Sarah~