August 17,
2012
The
ovens/stoves workshop in Chinandega went well.
I hadn’t been previously trained on the theory of how that particular
design of stove worked and what the actual studies were that proved that they
aided the environment and the health of the family. A doctor came to give a presentation about
the effects of smoke on the health of the family and the types of illnesses
caused due to over exposure (bronchitis, asthma) and a Peace Corps staff member
from the environment sector did a section on the effects of deforestation in
Nicaragua due to cutting firewood for cooking.
The use of these improved cook stoves decreases the use of firewood in
the house by 70%. So I was able to learn
some things during the workshop as well as teach how to make an oven. I had two volunteers and a handful of their
Nicaraguan counterparts help me make the oven.
There were some issues with the table that was built for it; the mud
used didn’t dry enough and due to the overly large size of the table the weight
of the oven started to cave the table in.
Half way through the building process we had to wrap the outside of the
table with chicken wire in an attempt to keep it together. So at the end of the afternoon we decided not
to put the roof on just yet in hopes that it would dry more overnight. The next morning we came back and put the
roof on, but it was visibly obvious that the oven itself was settling and
expanding due to the soft table, so I’m afraid it will fall apart over time and
will have to be redone. There are some
volunteers that live in the area that will help keep an eye on it and said they
would re-build it if necessary in the future.
It sucks thinking that whole day’s work might have to be redone, but at
least the people in the workshop were trained how to build an oven.
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| Mixing the mud for the oven workshop |
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| The oven workshop (you can barely see the mouth of the oven in the background) |
This past week
I helped my friend Alicia build an oven in her site for a women’s group that
want to use it for income generation. It
started raining during the building process and there was no roof built yet for
the oven so we had to scramble to find a plastic cover to keep it from melting
away during the rainstorm. Luckily the
mud we used was almost pure clay so it stayed nice and glued together as we
were building it.
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| Me and Alicia with our finished oven |
Over the
weekend some volunteers had put together an Opportunity Fair for 5th
year high school students (here they go to 5 years) to get job interview skills
and tips for writing their resumes. I
invited some youth from my community and 3 ended up coming. Last week I also visited a community where a
new couple of Ag volunteers from the new group are posted. They live near this place called La Bastilla
Ecolodge, which is a tourist lodging in the misty mountains of my region of
Jinotega. But it’s also a school for 3rd,
4th, and 5th year high school students to specialize in
agriculture studies. Families can send
their kids there to finish school with a more specialized focus, but they have
to pay for it of course. One woman in my
community has two sons that attend there so she invited me to go visit the
campus during one of their school fairs.
I thought we’d be buying produce and other ag products that the students
have produced, which is what it has been in past years. But this year it was just some dance
performances and raffles, kinda boring.
But we got there a little early and decided to walk up the hill from the
school to go visit the Ecolodge, which was really pretty. It’s a protected area so it’s surrounded by
mature growth forests up in the misty mountains. The buildings are fairly new, I think they’ve
been building the place within the past few years. There’s some hotel room like cabins, plus two
decks with tents and private bathrooms for those who want to “camp” up in the
mountains.
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| La Bastilla Ecolodge, Jinotega |
Another
interesting activity I did last week was judging an English singing competition
in a nearby Pantasma community called Malecon.
An English teacher there had met a Peace Corps volunteer friend of mine
who teaches English in Jinotega and she put me in contact with him since I live
in his area. So I took the bus to
Malecon and waited around awkwardly at the school until the English competition
was ready and organized. There were
three other judges; one guy who speaks novice English that I’ve run into in Las
Praderas, the main town in Pantasma. I
was kinda bummed it was him since he’s asked me multiple times for my phone
number so he can call me and practice his English (no way! Not wasting my time
that!). He’s actually a nice guy but
it’s really annoying having to deal with men all the time who think I’ll just
give away my number because they speak a little English. One of the other judges was asked at the last
minute (literally the last minute before the competition started) to
judge. He was another guy I had run into
on a bus from Jinotega that came and sat next to me because he wanted to
practice his English with me (catching a pattern here?). He’s also a teacher and speaks much better
English than the first guy, but was equally annoying in asking me for my number
on the bus so he could call me and practice his budding language skills. What I told him was that I don’t just give my
number to any random guy I meet, even if it’s for “professional” reasons like
wanting to chit chat in English. He was
surprised I said no, and was less talkative after that. So the day of the competition he was super
excited to see me and told me excitedly and expectantly that now that we’ve met
twice it’d be okay to give him my number now.
I couldn’t help being my annoyed sarcastic self and replied with “oh, I can give you my number now?” He didn’t get that I was joking and misread
my tone as being sincere, so I felt kind of bad since his level of English
doesn’t allow for much sarcasm. So I had
to go through the awkward rejection yet again of telling him just because we’ve
met twice doesn’t mean I’m going to give him my number, I still barely know him
and I don’t work with him. At this point
he’s already looking at me expectantly with his phone perched eagerly in his
hand to type in the digits, which is super annoying because it shows how much
he expects that I’ll just go for it so easily.
So again, he gets kind of annoyed and begrudgingly shoves his phone back
in his pocket. So these are the guys I
have to deal with during the rest of the afternoon. They were still being friendly, but it was
kind of uncomfortable trying to be nice to them when they thought I was being
rude by not handing my number over.
Whatever, call me a heartbreaker if that makes you feel better.
So the
English competition itself was interesting.
I thought it was going to be some kids stepping up to the mic
individually with their memorized American song. It was actually groups of kids doing a dance
routine with one or two people doing the singing. The dancing was pretty sad; most girls were
super shy and didn’t have one ounce of stage presence. I wish I could have given them more tips
after the competition but everyone kind of scattered afterwards. The singing was super hard to hear sometimes
because they either weren’t speaking loudly enough into the mic or the mic
seemed to actually be turned off. One
group of guys did “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by Guns ‘n’ Roses and dressed up
like the band. They air guitared with their bandanas and Slash hair and
everything. They were really funny and
ended up getting 2nd place.
The first place winners were a group of girls that did “Queen of Hearts”
(I honestly had never heard the song.
This country loves old 70’s and 80’s US songs that we don’t listen to
anymore really). The girl singing had
the best pronunciation of the words and the dancers were the most animated of
all the numbers. Honestly, none of the 9
groups really sang well. They either had
horrible tone and pitch or the pronunciation was so off that I couldn’t
understand a single word. But you have
to work with what you’ve got! The top 3
winners from this school will move on to the municipal competition which I
think is in October. The teacher asked
me if I could judge then too, which I told him I probably could.
August 26,
2012
One super
exciting goal of mine has finally been reached:
I’ve started teaching dance classes in my community!!! These two girls who come to my house often
have been asking me for a long time when I would start teaching dance classes,
and the other night they asked me again.
I had been dancing around in my house for exercise when they stopped by
to see me, and so I figured there was no way around it this time. So we picked a date, which was last Saturday,
for them to come over and learn some dancin’, Sarah-style. I told them we’d start with a basic
Bellydance class first and see how that goes.
I told them to invite all the local neighborhood girls that lived close
by, and I also did a little walking around myself and told my favorite families
to tell their daughters about the class.
In the first class I gave, 6 girls show up. In total there are about 15 girls that I’m
most close with in my community that I was hoping would all come, but some had
other things going on that day and couldn’t make it. I have my hopes up for more students in the
future, because I know they’re all interested.
So we started off with a warm up session where I just kind of danced
around with some basic “step-touch” moves to get our blood pumping a little,
then we stretched and I started the basic lesson on how to do hip locks, which
is a basic Bellydance hip movement. Some
of them are going to need a lot of time to get this stuff down. I had a hard time getting them to move their
hips independently than their torsos or their legs. It was a pretty silly looking scene, all of
these girls with their flip flops and tight jeans wiggling around the room with
confused looks on their faces. I had
them move on by trying to travel a little with the hip locks, stepping forwards
and backwards to the beat, then to each side as we moved together in a circle. Some got it okay, but most of them have
little to no rhythm, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. My goal towards the end of the second class
on Sunday was to simply get them to walk on tempo with the music. Even that was hard for at least half of
them. I don’t want to bore them all to death
by having them march around the room like little Bellydance soldiers, but I
need to teach them some rhythm lessons before we move on to move difficult
movements. Eventually I’ll work on
teaching them choreography so we have a solid goal to work towards. I’m also hoping they get excited and
motivated once I show them how fun and pretty the costumes could be. They could all have their own jingly hip
scarves (which I’d like to somehow make with them) and pretty flowers in their
hair. Not to mention all the fun jewelry
and make up they could put on. When I
was a kid it was always super fun to play dress up with all my mom’s
jewelry. I hope the moms here go for it!
Hopefully next blog I'll have some dance class pictures to share! Until next time. . .
~Sarah~
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