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~

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