Malanga, school garden, and new furniture!

Sept. 15, 2011

Today I spent the morning aimlessly following Don Pantaleon around his malanga plantation (I guess you could call it a plantation).  Malanga is a root vegetable grown here in Nicaragua that is one of the bastamientos food options.  Bastamientos are the things always served with a meal to ensure you’re full when you’re done, and they include things like tortillas, cooked plantains, yuca (another root vegetable), cooked bananas, potatoes, and of course malanga.  Here at my house there’s no shortage of tortillas, and I’m always expected to have one with a meal whether or not there’s huge amounts of potatoes and rice put into my chicken soup.  I think Esmeralda’s getting used to my different eating habits because she doesn’t hand me a tortilla every single time anymore, but still tells me I should have one.  

Let me give you an idea of what I did yesterday: it was the second time I’ve gone out to do some actual agricultural work here in Wale.  I woke up early at 5:30am and followed Don Pantaleon out to his malanga field to help him “clean” the malanga.  That’s how it’s translated to English.  I was told we were going to be “limpiando malanga”, which literally means “cleaning malanga”, so I thought we’d be pulling the roots out of the ground and washing them or something.  But I know at this point just not to expect anything and go with the flow, because many things can’t be taken literally here, especially when my Spanish is still in the works.  So I’m handed a freshly sharpened machete and off we go.  It was about a ½ hour walk down into another part of Wale I hadn’t been to, so that was good.  We crossed the river a few times (which is more the size of a stream right now since it’s hasn’t been raining too much lately) and ended up in this valley surrounded by dried corn.  The land he uses to grow malanga is leased, so there are all kinds of other parcels surrounding it who are leased by others and mostly used to grow corn.  Right now the corn is on its way out, so the stalks are all dried up and yellow and bent in half to ensure the corn stays dry from the rain.  I love it because it reminds me of the Fall season back home right around Halloween time. There’s no autumn season here, but it is September, so the brown dried corn stalks help to set the scene a little bit.  

He gives me a little demonstration on how the malanga is “cleaned”, by trimming off the outer browning stalks of the plant at the base and chopping away at the weeds.  Oh, I get it; it’s like pruning and weeding then. “Cleaning” makes sense now.  So each one of us takes a row side by side and works our way down the whole line, turning at the end and coming back the other way down another row.  The plants look like some type of water lily (and they actually grow best right next to water, like the stream), and right now his plants are about 5-6 feet tall.  The stalks come straight up out of the ground and kind of fan out as new ones pop out of the center, looking similar to makeup of a banana tree stalk.  They’re super wet plants, meaning the leaves are like big cups facing upwards towards the sky which catch rainwater easily as well as the centers of all the stalks, so when sliced into with a machete they gush out the stream of water that’s collected there.  It had poured rain for the first time in over a week the night before, so needless to say we were soaking wet just after the first row.  Since the huge leaves are right at face level you have to bend at the waist to cut around the base of each plant, and to just see where you’re going.  So that was the position I took for about 2 hours, bent over with machete in hand, neck crooked to the side to see the plant in front of me, getting doused with water each time my back hit a water-filled leaf.  Some of it went right down the back of my pants.  There was no point in wearing a hat since we were under the shade of the giant leaves, plus I wouldn’t have seen where I was going with a brim on, so I donned my bandana to keep my wet bangs out of my face.  After 6 long rows working in that position my body was pretty sore, and knew it would feel even worse the next day (which it does!), and I had managed to get a blister to start forming on my pinky finger (?), so I was glad that at 10am he said we were done for now and headed back home.  I was sopping wet, not from sweating though, which felt weird, so bathing before lunch felt really good, mostly because I couldn’t wait to get the slimy dead leaves off me, plus all the other random watery bugs that managed to get into my clothes after having bit me first.  Plus, I must say that I’ve finally gotten used to bathing in cold water every day.  It actually feels very refreshing after a hot sweaty day, even if I don’t end up bathing until the evening once it’s cooled down a bit.  

So today when I woke up it felt like my legs, butt, and neck had been hit by a truck, but I knew he was going back out again to work and I didn’t want to miss another Nica Ag lesson.  This time he brought with him a big plastic backpack sprayer to apply a fertilizer and potassium mixture to the malanga.  One of his sons and two workers had already left to finish cleaning the malanga that we didn’t finish yesterday, so I just followed him around while he sprayed the leaves.  We were out there for about 3 hours, and there was nothing for me to do but watch him spray the plants and wander around taking tons of photos.  I felt pretty useless not helping with something, but considering how sore I was it didn’t really bother me that much.  It’s not like he had another sprayer I could use, and he probably liked my lack of “help” considering how slow I was the day before trying to keep up in my row.  So I hiked up to the top of a hill and took in the sights.  It was the first time I could really stop and watch the birds that are in the area.  I attempted to take some close-ups of some smaller birds that were frequenting  a nearby tree, and got some that are good enough to hopefully identify what they are (Jim, I’ll need your help on this one!).  I also had my first official crap in the woods (sorry, but that’s what we volunteers do, talk about our poop).  My stomach hadn’t felt too great when I first got up, and after about 2 hours just standing around taking in the scenery, I had to go.  Don Pantaleon seemed content with his spraying and just kept filling up the sprayer with more and more mixture, so I took the opportunity to go off by myself to find a secluded spot before it got unbearable.  Luckily, I’m always prepared with my little baggie of emergency necessities (hand sanitizer, various pills for various bodily needs, wet wipes, sunscreen, and, ta-dah! toilet paper), so I had no problem taking care of business.  

At 11am we started heading back, and let me tell you, it’s much harder (but still possible) to stop and take pictures when following steadily behind a person who’s lived here for 17 years, just spent the morning working out in the heat on the farm, is ready to head home to eat lunch, and doesn’t think to stop and “smell the roses” or take a photo every 10 seconds like I do (I mean who wouldn’t?  It’s freakin’ gorgeous here).  So I had to be quick and crafty with the camera in my right hand and the machete in my left, walking up steep hills, through rivers, on rocky pathways, through barbed wire fences, and through people’s chicken-filled yards, all with thinly soled rubber boots on.  A typical day trek for an Ag volunteer.  Overall it’s been great to get out, even if I hate getting up early.  It’s all worth it, and I’m trying to soak everything in as best I can, the agricultural learning experience as well as the scenery.  I can’t forget where I’ve been given the privilege to live for 2 years, in Nicaragua, in tropical Central America.  Why haven’t I been getting up early every day?

Sept. 19, 2011

So I have been making a point not to sleep in and waste the morning, which means for me, getting up at 7 am each morning, whether or not I have anything planned for the day.  I now consider sleeping in late 7:30, which is a milestone compared to my weekends back home.  This past week I didn’t have a whole lot planned ahead of time, so I found myself spending extra time to make breakfast (bowls of cornflakes with granola and two scrambled eggs with chicken hot dogs) from the new goodies I bought at the new grocery store in Jinotega.  Then I would do some laundry, or play with the kitten, or sit in the hammock and read the latest book I got my hands on (Somebody to Love? By Grace Slick, mailed to me by my dad, thank you, by the way!  I’ve already finished it).  Basically a whole lot of relaxing, procrastinating, and not a lot of working, except for that one day cutting malanga.  It had been in the back of my mind the whole week to go out and attempt to invite as many people as I could to another meeting to work on a needs list for the community.  I had nothing planned for Saturday, and that’s usually a good day to hold meetings, so I had no reason not to go out and at least try to organize these people for one more “Sarah meeting”.  I feel like they’ve caught on to how silly they can be, seeing as I’m following the protocol of the Peace Corps’ “getting to know your community” by doing a seasonal calendar, daily activity schedule, and community map (called PACA tools, or Using Participatory Analysis for Community Action) to find out Wale’s needs.  I’ve held 5 meetings so far, and the only meeting where more than 7 or 8 people showed up was the monthly Empresa meeting that I pretty much leeched off of.  They weren’t really there for me, but I used them anyways.  Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  But I did learn that that was an un-ideal situation seeing as I used about 2 hours of their meeting time.  So every meeting since then has been planned just for me, which means I usually get between 5 and 8 participants.  Ten if I’m lucky.  It’s just really hard to organize people here.  They just don’t want to show up to meetings.  But, after spending all of Friday morning and part of the afternoon walking to every single house down the hill from mine and inviting everyone I could to my meeting on Saturday, I had the “regulars” show up, who are all the people that I already know that live close to the school where the meeting was held.  Only one new person who I had met for the first time on Friday showed up.  But hey, at least they show up at all.  So we did the activity and I got mediocre results, with no real needs list as a result since they all like to talk at the same time and cut each other off and don’t really seem to understand the probing questions I have for them regarding improving their daily work load.  I think I just really need to improve my skills on holding orderly, productive meetings that produce results.  

Another issue I’ve been working on is getting my newly-made furniture to my house.  I had designed a little bed-side table and perchero (clothes rack) to be made by a carpenter in the local town of Praderas.  I have stopped by his workshop 3 times since he said they would be done, but he wasn’t there most of the time and I could see that they weren’t finished by looking at the pieces of the perchero in his workshop.  I attempted to go pick them up this morning (since he told me two days ago that they’d be done yesterday, but he was there still working on the perchero.   He has mostly finished the little table, minus the shiny varnish, and the two shelves plus the varnish on the perchero have yet to be completed.  So, hopefully this week sometime they’ll be done completely, then I’ll somehow have to get the furniture to my house, which means paying someone with a pick-up truck to haul it for me.  Don Pantaleon told me to just put it on the bus, but that seems way too sketchy.  The last thing I want is to haul my finally finished but broken furniture home off the roof of an old beat up school bus. 

In other interesting news, I noticed for the first time (I don’t know how I missed it before) this casita, a little house, located just down the road from where I’m living now that’s between the houses of two families I know.  I had never noticed it before (probably due to its small size), but it’s this little single room house that’s always closed up.  I asked one of the guys that’s part of the community bank group that lives right next to it who lives there, and he said no one does at the moment.  He told me his grandmother (who’s also a part of the community bank) owns it and built it to be leased (for 1/3 the price I’m paying my family now), but no one is leasing it right now.  I told him that that may be something I’d be interested in checking out in the future since I have the choice to move out after 6 months with my home-stay family.  I haven’t actually looked inside the place yet, but I don’t want to get too eager about it in case it turns out to be too much work to fix up to move in, plus I don’t want my current family to think that I want to move out so soon.  That’s going to be a tough conversation, telling my family that I want to move out of their house to live alone.  Ouch.  But, they have been told (I think) that that’s often what “we Americans” do since we’re used to a more individual lifestyle with more privacy.  It’s not common for women to live alone here, so moving into my own place will be odd.  If this little casita works out in the end though it shouldn’t be too weird I hope, because it’s physically so close to the houses on either side.  It’ll be like living with a family but having my own separate living quarters, which is ideal.  I can cook in private if I want to, and I don’t have to hear the people in the next room farting and coughing all night.  Sounds great right?  I think so. 

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to seriously prepare myself to start teaching English classes in my community.  I was finally able to download a copy of the TEFL manual (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), which is another sector of Peace Corps volunteers.  TEFL volunteers work in schools teaching teachers how to better teach English, and they have lots of resources that non-TEFL volunteers can use to teach in their own communities.  So I’m going to study up a bit and hopefully start classes on October 1^st.  My goal is to teach a 2 hour class once a week, on Saturdays in the afternoon.  Various people of all ages have been asking me when I’m going to start, so I feel I must.  Hopefully I can teach well and they learn something.   

Sept. 25, 2011

My furniture is here!  The carpenter surprised me by showing up at my house one evening a few days after I had last checked in with him.  Him and some guy with a pickup truck randomly showed up with my little table and perchero all done and ready to go.  I was so happy.  So they’re now in my room, happily holding my clothes and bedside items.  I love order and organizing, it’s one of those things that helps keep me sane sometimes when everything else is going against the plan.  Next up is the desk he’s going to make me.  I had a hard time haggling a price with him, since at the moment there wasn’t anyone else around to help me figure out what he was saying or help me try to get a decent price for a desk that’s going to be much less work than the two items he just made for me.  I agreed on a price he gave me after dropping down just a bit, but I still think it’s too expensive.  I need to work on my bargaining skills. 

School garden update: the fence has finally been started!  I realized I couldn’t put all my trust in the teachers to help me organize parents to come help build a fence, so I showed up to a parent’s meeting two days ago for the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade classes and asked them to help support the garden for their kids by helping build the fence.  Not surprisingly, it was like pulling teeth getting people to volunteer.  I would make my statement/request and then wait for an answer from the group, and they would just stare right back at me in silence, some of them trying not to make eye contact.  It’s so frustrating.  Luckily the teachers are still on my side and do want the garden to happen so they kept calling people out and telling them that it’s the responsibility of the parents to support the school and the activities of the students.  Don Pedro, my community counterpart, was also there, and he jumped in a lot to make sure people put their name down on the list of one of the work days.  But it was tough; people just don’t seem to want to help sometimes.  Or maybe they’re truly too busy and that makes them look like they don’t want to help, I don’t know.  I don’t want to straight up blame people, but all I know is that from my experience so far it’s hard to motivate people to show up for meetings and to participate in community activities that involve me.  

So the next day I gathered my tools and headed to the school, passing Don Pedro’s house on the way.  He had signed up to work on the fence with that group, so I wanted to make sure he didn’t forget since he was so helpful getting people to “volunteer” at the parent’s meeting.  I stopped at his house and saw him sleeping shirtless on the bench on his porch.  I paused, wondering if I should say something, but one of his sons from inside the house saw me through the window and called my name, which woke him up.  He saw me and I said something like “are you sleeping?”  He said my name in surprise and jumped up and ran into the house before I could say anything more.  A minute later he came out with a shirt on and an armload of tools, and we headed to the school together.  I didn’t want to ask him if he forgot, I think he honestly just dozed off on the porch and I surprised him.  It was pretty funny though.  He said he had gotten up at 2am that morning to start the molino, since he’s the local molinero that grinds everyone’s corn for masa every morning.  People show up at his house every morning at 3am, so I don’t blame him for taking a siesta.  

 We were the first ones there of course, seeing as we were right on time, but eventually the rest of the guys showed up and started working on the fence.  I was digging and loosening up the dirt that always gets packed down with each rain while they dug holes and cut fence posts.  The school had a roll of barbed wire that we could use for the garden, and they had strung up two strands before a storm started blowing in.  Literally blowing in.  The wind had picked up in an instant, tossing trash and leaves and dirt and anything else that moved all over the place, to the point that I couldn’t see unless I wanted an eye full of storm.  Then it instantly started to pour rain, so we all ran to the shelter of the eaves of the school and waited for the storm to pass.  We waited about a ½ hour and the rain died down a bit, so we went back out and tried to finish a little more of what we started, but the rain didn’t let up, so we called it good for the day.  They said they would come back in two days to finish the fence and finish putting cal (lime) on the soil that I had worked on breaking up to prepare it for planting.  The next work group is scheduled to come on Wednesday, including the president of the local women’s group who knows a ton about agriculture.  She’s going to help me plant the beet (remolacha) and cabbage (repollo) seeds with the students since I know little about the seed spacing for those plants.  The plan is to plant the beets and cabbage inside the school where it’s fenced in, and two types of squash and the cucumbers outside the school where they’ve cleared some space for the more viney plants to spread.  I have started a seed nursery at my house with onion (cebolla), carrot (zanahoria) and tomato (tomate), hoping to transplant those to the school if they start growing.  After getting the fence finished, sacks included, and planting the seeds, the next goal is to keep the interest of the students in maintaining the garden.  Plus I hope the plants actually grow, that’d be nice too. 

Sept. 26, 2011

Today I went to the school again for another parent’s meeting, this time for 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grades.  I showed up at 11am when the meeting was scheduled for, and we started at noon, with only about 7 parents showing up.  Even the teachers were frustrated this time that no one showed up and those that did were an hour late.  So I spoke with the few that were there about helping getting the garden started by finishing the fence and preparing the soil.  Unlike the last meeting, no one was there to really help me push the subject, so no one “volunteered” to help.  It all worked out okay though, since later in the afternoon the group that came out to work last Saturday came back to help finish the fence.  Well, two of them returned, plus one new guy.  But I’ll take what I can get.  I gathered my tools and headed to the school at 3pm like we had planned, and this time when I passed Don Pedro’s house his son called to me out the window if I had been asleep this time.  What?  He said that they were already at the school working since 2pm like planned.  I thought it was for 3pm!  So now I was the late one.  When I got there Don Pedro and two others were digging away, putting in more fence posts.  I was pleasantly surprised that someone actually got there before I did and had started working already.  But literally not five minutes later it started pouring down rain, so again, we all waited in the eaves of the school for the storm to pass.  This time it did actually completely pass, so the guys were actually able to completely finish the fence!  Huge sigh of relief!  One major step down; next is the addition of all the sacks to put up a visual barrier and attempt to keep out stray animals.  So far I’ve collected 12 sacks from random students, but hey, they’re bringing them at least.  Slowly but surely.  

Well, this Saturday is my first attempt at teaching English.  I’ll be giving classes every Saturday (when that’s possible) from 3-5pm.  I announced in the parent’s meeting today that I’d be starting classes, and they could pass it on, so pretty much all day at the school kids were approaching me asking if it was true that I was going to teach English and if they could come.  So at least the interest is there.  However, the community bank that I’m a part of will have to change the meeting times to earlier in the day since they normally meet Saturday afternoons.  I just had a meeting with them (well, those that showed up) about improving the bank for the next cycle starting in January.  I’m going by the community bank manual given to us by Peace Corps that gives all the details of a successful bank.  The group seems open to improving their meetings, including making rules for running the bank and actually making a box with padlocks to put the money in for safekeeping instead of just saving everyone’s money in someone’s closet.  The goal is to start a more successful bank for next year so that they can save more money, have access to larger loans, and set a good example for the community.  I’d like to try and start more community banks in Wale, since it’s a great way to teach saving money and it gives people access to credit and loans that they wouldn’t otherwise have.  Banks have been successful in other communities and I hope to get some started here. 

Spanish lesson for this blog: how the kids in my family say “mom”.  Normally kids say “mama” like really little kids do in the States, but the kids in my family call her “mita” (pronounced meetah), which is short for “mamita”, literally “little mom”, or a more loving or endearing way of calling someone.  For example, most everyone here calls me “Sarita” instead of Sarah, since it’s a sign of affection or a sweeter way of calling someone.    Apparently my home-stay mom used to call her grandmother “mita” when she was a kid, and it caught on with her children.  Often people refer to the little kids of the family as “mi amor”, my love, or I sometimes hear “mi palomita”, which is little dove.  However, “palomitas” is also the word for popcorn, so in my head I hear them calling their kids “my little popcorn”, which just sounds ridiculous. 

Well everyone, its Halloween season, and I’m super bummed that Nicaraguans don’t celebrate this awesome holiday.  It’s probably my favorite, so it sucks to be left out of all the festivities.  I’m hesitant to discuss the Halloween tradition here since lots of people are very religious and often associate “Noche de las Brujas” (witch’s night) with witchcraft and other devilish things.  Luckily, there is that feeling of autumn here in Wale at the moment, when the wind starts blowing the leaves around and the light changes colors a bit.  Plus it’s rainy, which sometimes comes with the beginning of the Fall/Winter seasons in the States.  I was really hoping for at least one pumpkin from the seeds I planted back in July, but only one plant actually started growing and it’s still very small.  Better luck next year I guess.  So you all have to e-mail me photos of your Jack-o-lanterns this year so I can celebrate from afar!

I have a kitten repeatedly crawling up my leg at the moment, crying for attention since he knows I’m the only one in this house who gives it to him, so I’d better end here.  I hope everyone’s doing well, having a good start to their school year or their continuing work year, and having fun thinking about potential Halloween costumes!

Until next time . . .

~Sarita~