Housing addition has begun

Wow, is it October already?!  This year has seemingly flow by for me.  I only have 9 months left in my service.  I’m currently still working on getting 10 more ovens built in my community.  The funds have been held up for a while and I’m patiently waiting for the day when my bank account rapidly increases in size.  It was hard choosing the 10 families out of the 25 that were interested to receive the funds for their oven.  I went around and interviewed each family independently to get a better idea of the ones who would maybe benefit more from an oven than the rest.  For example, a family of 8, in my opinion, is more deserving than a family of just 2, considering the mouths fed.  If two neighbors who are good friends both want an oven at their house, I’m going to choose only one of them to receive the funding and they can share the oven with their neighbor.  If a family already has a little store or already makes food products to sell (bread, tamales dulces, guirilas) then they have precedent over a family that doesn’t want an oven to bake and sell food since they will be directly using the oven to improve their income and their business.  There are only a small handful of families I’ve built or will build ovens for that actually want to use it for their business, so most of my reasoning for choosing the recipients was based on family size and their apparent genuine interest in the project as a whole.  It was hard telling people no, but I finally whittled it down to 10 families.  The next problem to deal with (aside from waiting for the money to come in) is finding bricks.  In the winter my community stops making bricks because it’s harder to bake them in the rain, so I might have to wait until summer comes along (January) to actually find bricks.  Hopefully there’s another way.  I’d love to get all of them done before Christmas. 

Unfortunately for me, the construction on the spare room in the backyard at my house has begun.  The worker who put in my floor and doors when I moved in has finally finished this other project he was working on so now he’s available to start the extra room that I’m planned to move into.  So now every morning at about 6:30am a couple of workers show up at my house and start pounding away on their work, nailing boards, mixing cement and cinder blocks, and cutting rebar.  It’s not the noise so much that bothers me, it’s the fact that they’re working directly outside my door each day, so I get no privacy to just sit and read a book or cook food without their eyes bearing down on my back.  The other day after they finished and left, I went out with my measuring tape to make sure the dimensions are what the owner told me they would be, which was 4 meters by 3 meters, plus an attached bathroom.  Well it turned out to be a little narrower than 3 meters, which makes it that much harder to fit my furniture inside the space that’s about half the size of the room I’m currently in.  I figure it’s just another one of those inconveniences in my Peace Corps experience that I’ll have to accustom myself to, and it’s of course not the worst it could be.  If they in fact get the work done in time and I end up having to move to this other room, then it will only be for about 6 months of the remainder of my service, and I’m pretty sure I can deal with that just fine. 

The additional room construction progress

Due to the construction of this new room my Bellydance classes have come to a halt.  The space I was using to give classes in the front part of my house is now full of bags of cement, rebar, and 2x4’s.  Plus I’ve been out of site the past few weekends and couldn't give class.  So now I’m thinking I’ll start teaching the classes at the school, since it’s pretty much always available on weekends and has much more space than my little house.  Plus, that may attract more students since the school’s a more centralized location.  I really don’t want to let these dance classes die out because the girls are really enjoying them and it’s something good for me too.  Considering I’m not doing a ton of work these days, I really want to hang on to something good that’s fun for me and also benefits the community. 

Well it looks like I might finally be involving my community in HIV/AIDS issues.  There’s this workshop at the end of the month being presented by the Healthy Lifestyles sector focusing on educating about HIV/AIDS specifically with coffee producers who hire migrant workers during the coffee picking season.  I hadn’t asked around in my community because everyone who has coffee farms here is mostly a family run business that hires small groups of friends and neighbors to pick coffee each year.  Well, I got a couple of texts from Health volunteer friends asking me why I hadn’t applied for the workshop, and I told them that my community was too small of a production for what it seemed like they were looking for.  It turns out that not many people have applied to go, and almost no aggies, so yesterday I made a bold move and took advantage of the fact the the local Empresa (co-op) in my site was having it’s monthly meeting.  I attended the last part of the meeting and then asked to make an announcement to the group, explaining the workshop and how I’d like to go and bring interested members of my community with me to attend.  I felt really nervous getting up in front of this group of about 30 people, since usually the topic of HIV/AIDS makes people uncomfortable (because they don’t know much about it!), but my job as a volunteer is to teach and facilitate, and I have yet to do anything regarding this health topic in my community.  So I got up and announced the workshop and told them if they were interested they could see me after the meeting (I knew if I asked to see a show of hands of who was interested that no one would make a move in front of the whole group).  Well, I waited quite a bit for the meeting end (turns out they weren’t done yet), but during the waiting I had 3 men get up and come outside to talk to me about it!  One was a man I know well, and he told me he was really interested in learning about it, but that he couldn’t read, and if that would be a problem. I was super happy that he made a point to get up and talk to me because many people are super shy or embarrassed that they can’t read, so that was a good moment for me.  I told him that there may be other people there as well that couldn’t read, and that I’d be at the workshop with him to help him if he needed it.  Plus, he’s still going to be able to listen and learn a lot, which is the most important thing.  In total I had 5 people tell me they wanted to go, which was 5 more than I thought.  Now the only problem is figuring out if I’m allowed to bring 5 with me.  That’s actually why I’m at a ciber today, to send in the application for the workshop, and ask if I can bring that many people.  I sure hope so, cause I don’t like telling people no when they want to learn!

More updates later. . .

~Sarah~

Independence Day Celebrations and Dance Performance

This past Friday morning, on September 14^th, at 4:30 in the morning, I was woken up by the loud rhythmic pounding of drums driving up and down the highway in front of my house.  I was confused: Were they the marching band from the high school traveling to Jinotega city for a competition? Why were they drumming so early in the morning?  Was is the primary school in Wale and did they seriously have to start practicing that early in the morning before the parade that day? That was a silly question, because I knew well that people here regularly get up at 4 and 4:30 in the morning to start their day.  

September 14 and 15^th are national holidays in Nicaragua, the 14^th celebrating the anniversary of the battle of San Jacinto, and the 15^th celebrating the independence of Central America.  Each year all the local school bands get together and battle it out in Las Praderas, the biggest town and the municipal seat in Pantasma.  On the 14^th all the schools celebrated in their own communities, and this year is the first year a band has been formed at the primary school in Wale 1, where I live, so it was exciting to have the newly formed band march up and down the street through the community.  They’ve been practicing practically every day after school for the past few months preparing for the Independence Day celebrations, rehearsing all the band’s various rhythm patterns, the dance team’s dance choreography, and the group called “los guirros”, who play this metal raspy instrument in time with the drumming of the bands.  The uniforms were sewn, the hair was gelled, the make-up was applied, the tights were put on, and the band marched up and down the street throughout Wale 1 in the hot sun with sweat dripping down every forehead. 

Wale 1 marching band parade on Sept. 14th

The Wale 1 marching band and dancers

After the parade through the street, everyone gathered at the school for “el acto”, or the presentation of the band and various speeches and dances prepared by teachers and students to celebrate the anniversary.  Earlier during the week some of the girls who come to my dance class asked me to choreograph something for them to perform, so I put together a very basic Bellydance routine and we practiced it almost every night that week at my house.  There were 4 of them who participated, and they were all already part of the band somehow so they would already be wearing their uniforms.  I simply gave them some scarves to tie around their hips and put some flowers in their hair to create a more Bellydance friendly look.  Oh, and I had them tuck their shirts up so their midriffs were exposed too.  They were so cute! 

Of course just as the parade made its way to the school, the power went out so the computer that was set up with all the dance songs couldn’t play any of the music through the big amplifier that was brought.  Luckily I came prepared with my little iPod speakers and so the girls were able to perform the Bellydance routine for everyone, even though the speakers were a little too quiet for the size of the crowd.  I spoke briefly while they were taking their positions, telling the audience that this dance style came from the Middle East, and was called “Bellydance”, or in Spanish “danza de vientre”, and that it was something new to enjoy.  The girls performed the dance with smiles and poise while I proudly watched and took video and photos of their first Bellydance performance, of the first Bellydance performance in all of Pantasma, probably.  It was great!  They didn’t miss a single step, even after messing up several times during frustrating rehearsals at my house the previous week.

My little Bellydancers!

After they finished I hooted and hollered, causing everyone to awkwardly stare at me before realizing it was time for them to applaud the dancers.  Here people don’t really have the applaud etiquette that Americans have, and so sometimes the clapping is super delayed and doesn’t come until the dancers are actually leaving the stage.  It’s like they don’t recognize that when the music ends and the dancers stop that the dance has actually ended, and they need the prompt of the dancers actually walking away from the stage to start clapping for them.  So usually when I’m in large group situations and someone has just performed, I jump into applause at the appropriate time after a performance and that usually catches on quickly with the rest of the crowd.  But during the girls’ dance I had my hands full with my camera so I couldn’t applaud them right away, so I hooted and hollered until I could put my camera down to free up my hands, and that totally caught the audience off guard and they all turned their heads in surprise at this sudden uprising from the local gringa.  I didn’t care and wasn’t embarrassed or anything, I’m used to people reacting funny to me in crowd situations, and I was just so proud of the girls and their flawless dance performance that I had to shout out something!  It was a good moment, for them and for me. 

The happy dancers and teacher after a great show

I’m hoping that the impromptu dance performance during the 14^th celebration at the school will motivate the other girls in my dance class to perform someday.  I’m continuing to teach Bellydance every Saturday in the afternoon, and hope that it turns into something more.  Eventually I’d like to switch to hip hop or salsa or something a little more mainstream to attract more community members.  Maybe Thriller for Halloween?  We’ll just have to wait and see!