Baking group and other February activities

February has been one of the busiest months of my entire service!  I feel like I’m finally getting things done that I’ve been wanting to do since I started my service over a year and half ago.  I’m so close to finishing my second ovens project; only two more ovens to build and one improved stove.  I’ve been waiting for the families to collect their portion of the materials (some take painstakingly longer than others), but the end is in sight.  I hope the stove demonstration turns out well and the community becomes motivated to buy their own materials for the stoves.  I’ve told them I’m not going to be supplying any more money from Peace Corps funds to pay for the improved cookstove technologies, so if they really, truly want an improved stove to improve the health of their family, they’re gonna have to pay for it.  Stoves are much cheaper than the ovens and honestly, I think, much more useful as well.  I’ve talked up the stoves quite a bit and word on the street seems to be that there is a lot of interest in the community to make stoves. 

I’ve started one baking group with 5 women who have ovens.  We held our first class last week, starting with banana bread (this has become a popular recipe in my site among the women who I’ve made ovens for).  I had each woman bring her own ingredients for one recipe, plus one stick of firewood to contribute to heating the oven, and it was a success!  The breads turned out great and each woman took hers home to share with her family.  From what I’ve heard the bread didn’t last long once they got home.  In the next class we’re planning on making a pizza (also a very popular baking activity in my site due to the ovens).  I have a second baking group scheduled to hold its first class next week, and a third one pending (I’m still in the process of finding a date that works for all of them).  Between all the 20 ovens in the community I hope to have at least 4 baking groups formed within the next month. 

Baking banana bread

My first baking group

Two days ago I gave a charla (an educational talk) with a group from another sector of my community about starting a community bank in their part of the community.  This is something I tried to do over a year ago with no success.  But 11 people showed up to the charla yesterday and are all interested in starting a bank.  The next challenge is if they’ll all show up at the next meeting to choose the committee and make the official bank rules.  This is the step in which I’ve failed in the past.  It’s hard for people to take the next step in any project I try to start and actually show up to future activities.  And a big problem I always encounter is that people will always tell me to my face what I want to hear to put me at ease, but never actually make the further commitment.  I can’t tell you how frustrating this is!  But I have faith in this new bank group.  Most of the women of this part of the community are also the ones participating in the second baking group I’m starting.  Also in motion is the re-forming of the current community bank I’ve been working with the past year and a half that had some major problems this past cycle.  I’m working with them to start up the bank again with some improved management techniques and behavioral changes.  

I’m also moving steadily forward with the school materials donation project from my aunt’s school in Lompoc, California.  It’s been hard to coordinate time to visit the local principle to plan the order of 30 new desks for the pre-school classroom.  But just yesterday he told me he found a carpenter who can make us the desks for a good price and has placed the order to have them made.  Once the desks are made and paid for I can buy the remaining items to be donated to the school, which include a chalkboard for the pre-school classroom and various teaching materials and cleaning supplies for the teachers. 

My plans to start my own animal projects haven’t officially started yet, but I have been working with a woman from an NGO who has already started a laying-hen project with 24 women in my site.  By chance this woman sought me out to discuss doing an oven project with some women that she’d been coordinating with, and during our conversation she mentioned she was working on this chicken project.  So I jumped on the opportunity to participate in the charlas her group was giving to the community, and I’ve offered my services to the women in my community participating in the project to help them in their various activities, such as giving vaccine charlas and helping to coordinate future chicken activities within the group.  Hopefully by participating with the women who are already receiving chickens from this NGO I can learn and plan how to form my own chicken projects with other families in the future. 

Yet another project I’m hoping to start soon is a girls youth group.  I sent 5 girls from my site to two different camps earlier this month that were put on by other Peace Corps volunteers that dealt with youth leadership and girl’s empowerment topics such as self-esteem, making good life decisions, and other women’s health topics.  When the girls came back they seemed to have had a really good time and learned a lot of important life skills, and I’d like to continue their education in the community through a youth group.  One of the girls who attended the youth leadership camp asked me to help her plan and give some charlas to the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th graders, complying with her promise from the camp to educate others about what she learned.  So yesterday we gave an HIV and early pregnancy charla for the primary school.  This same girl and two others from my community are also participating in another local project that teaches youth how to give charlas, and I’m hoping to include them in helping me form a girls youth group in the community where we can do various activities that range from women’s health topics, life skills, games, dance, and maybe art or whatever else the girls would like to do.  I don’t want it to be all serious charlas that’s going to bore them.  I hope to make it a fun group that girls will want to be a part of. 

As if all that isn’t enough, I’ve also started the pen pal letters between my local school and my aunt’s class in California again, and English classes at my house with a few girls that live close by.  I haven’t had the time to coordinate starting the dance classes again, but maybe with the formation of a girl’s group I can cover that area. 

Whew!!!  So that’s what I’ve been up to the month of February.   I feel great and very productive.  It’s so much better to stay busy and feel like things are finally happening.  At this point I’m very happy that I’ve been accepted to extend my service because there are obviously so many things to work on! If I keep up this work pace this next year and a half will fly by for sure.  The hardest thing is getting new projects started, but I feel like once they get going and take hold it won’t be so stressful, hopefully.  

More updates later!

~Sarah~

Christmas vacay and the Nicaragua National Zoo

Happy belated New Year everyone.  The first month of 2013 is over already, and it's crazy to think I've been in country now for a year and 9 months.  Spending Christmas at home in Santa Barbara was great.  It was my first trip back to the States since I left for Nicaragua in May 2011.  I spent time with my aunt at her elementary school in Lompoc and did a photo slide show presentation of my service for many of the classrooms there.  Her school did a penny drive to raise money to donate to the primary school in my site for some much needed materials.  So I think the kids and teachers there were very interested to see where their donated money was going to and what my community looks like.  I also got to see my two cats (who are living with my aunt) and snuggle with them again.  They remembered me and that's all I really hoped from them.  Overall my visit home consisted of a ton of amazing food (Brie! Chocolate! Nuts! Appetizers! Pizza! Sushi!).  Every meal was absolutely delicious and I was basically totally spoiled and taken out to dinner multiple times.  Not to mention trips to the drug store and Trader Joe's to pick out goodies bring back.  And washers and dryers!?  Oh my God, have I been missing those miracle machines!  You just throw your clothes in and they wash and dry themselves?!  And in less than 2 hours no less!  Magic I tell you.  And water faucets and shower heads that pour water on your hands and body using no hands.  And toilets that flush, without the need to pour a bucket of water down the hole.  And putting toilet paper inside the toilet bowl?  Unheard of.  My sister didn't hesitate to remind me that in America we don't put our toilet paper in the waste basket next to the toilet.  Americans are so spoiled.  I miss being that spoiled. 

However, as great as it was visiting the States, my time here in Nicaragua will continue even longer than originally planned because I've been accepted by Peace Corps to extend my service for a 3^rd year!  That's right, so instead of closing my service this July to complete the normal 2 years of service, I'll be staying and continuing my work in my same site until July of 2014.  I'm just one of two volunteers from my agriculture sector group that was accepted to extend.  I feel very lucky that I was chosen to stay.  It gives me assurance that the work that I've done so far in my community has been valuable, and that Peace Corps believes I can continue doing good work in the future.  It also puts a fire under my ass to get some bigger projects going that may take longer to get going than the original 6 months I had left of my service.  Because really, at this point, I'm only half way through my 3 years of service.

My goals for my third year are to start some animal husbandry projects with local families that have chickens and pigs in the house (which is basically everyone) and perhaps some families that have goats and sheep (which are very few) and help them improve their basic animal care techniques, like having a solid vaccination schedule and improving the diet of their animals.  Animal care is pretty much my entire background, and yet I haven't done any projects relating to animals in my service so far.  I'm starting to read a lot of animal care manuals I've found here that are in Spanish (it helps to know the Spanish terminology of animal husbandry vocabulary) and have been talking here and there with some local families I'm close with to get a better idea of their interest in working with me.  I think at first I'll start with some basic vaccination activities and then go from there.  Ideally I can help start a small household egg-laying business with some families, or improve the nutrition and weight of pigs sold for butchering. 

Lots of piglets in my site!

The other project I'm currently working on is starting some women's baking groups.  I have people asking me all the time to teach them how to make a chocolate cake or to show them how to use their ovens, so I figure I could start doing monthly classes with different groups of neighbors and each class teach a new cake or cookie or bread recipe, and maybe some will become interested in selling the baked goods to make money.  I'm also currently building the ovens of the second ovens project I started last year.  I'm still missing bricks for half of them and hope to find a place to buy them in the next few weeks, but at least at this point I’ve finished 4 of them.  Six more to go! 

Three days after arriving back from my trip to the States my friend Jodi came to Nicaragua to visit me for a week.  We visited Selva Negra, a cloud forest in the department of Matagalpa where I also went with my family back in June, and we hiked around the mountain in the rain.  It's a really beautiful place and I would go there anytime.  She spent two nights in my site and got to see the house and community where I live, then we spend the last part of the week visiting Granada, the oldest city in all of Latin America.  We visited the Nicaragua National Zoo, where I hadn't visited yet, and did some shopping in the markets of Masaya, known for their artisan crafts.  The zoo was actually nicer than I thought it would be, although most of their big cat and monkey cages were inadequate.  I couldn't believe how many big cats they have! We counted, they have 30 big cats at that zoo, including jaguars, lions, tigers, pumas, ocelots, and margays.  There were too many cats per exhibit, and the exhibits were small and practically pure cement and bars.  There was one chimpanzee that was all by himself locked off his exhibit into a small holding cage, where he apparently was told to live by the vet because he was mentally ill and aggressive.  Another baboon lived on his own as well, in a small cement barred exhibit with nothing to do.  The smaller monkeys, including white-faced Capuchins and spider monkeys, had relatively more space, but still little to no enrichment or even plants and greenery provided for them.  The good things about the zoo were the variety of animals presented and the amount of local species available for education and conservation projects.  I'd love to plan a field trip to the zoo to show the people and kids in my site the variety of animals they have in Central America, including the chance to see other animals from all over the world, like the tigers and lions (they call their local cats “tigres” and  “leones”, not understanding that lions only come from Africa).  

Visiting neighbors in my site

Me and Jodi at the Nicaragua zoo with a couger

Check out my photo page for more pics: sarahinnica.shutterfly.com

~Sarah~