It’s time to catch you all up on what I’ve been up to these
past few months. My trip to Bluefields
on the Atlantic coast at the end of May for Palo de Mayo was a fun trip. Traveling there was the annoying part. When people travel there they usually take
the 9pm overnight bus since the trip is so long. It takes 5 hours on the bus from Managua to
El Rama, which is located about half way to Bluefields where you then get on a
lancha (boat) on the river Escondido to head to the coast. The boat ride is only about an hour and a
half, but the thing is you have to wait from 2am when the bus arrives in El Rama
until 5:30am when the boats first start to leave. So you’re all groggy and tired from the bus
ride and have to wait in line to get your boat seat number just to wait some
more. Lame. The boat ride could have been worse. It’s a fast little speed boat that blows your
hair all over the place. I couldn’t even
look up to see the scenery because the wind was pounding my face so hard and
drying my eyeballs out. I sat hunched
over trying to keep my hat on my head so I wouldn’t get sunburnt.
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| Waiting at 5am to get on the lanchas to Bluefields |
Once in Bluefields we all met up with the
volunteers that live there for some hang out time. They filled us in on the May Pole happenings
that we could see. One big event was
the parade where all the barrios (neighborhoods) of Bluefields danced in the
streets with their group costumes and youth leaders who were in a beauty pagent
running for Miss Palo de Mayo. Each
group was led by either an enthusiastic drumming group or a car blasting music
that they danced to. Us volunteers
staked out a spot up on a balcony to watch the festivities. After the end of the parade some of us (me
included) joined in the fun dancing along with the drumming and followed the
parade to the park where it all ended. I
ate lots of seafood (as was my goal for the trip), including a mixed seafood
soup, shrimp, fish, and lobster tail. I
must say I had to try the sea turtle that is so popular on the coast. Yes, I felt terrible because they’re
endangered (though the costeñas say it´s fine, yeah right), but it was just a
little piece out of this dish a woman had made at one of the food booths. It mostly just tasted like the yummy garlic
sauce she cooked it in. Another common
food item is coconut oil (I bought two bottles to take back with me). They use it to make coco bread and cook their
gallo pinto in it too. It’s not the
strong coconut flavor I was expecting, but it does add a different level of
sweetness that regular gallo pinto lacks (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE regular
gallo pinto!).
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| Palo de Mayo Parade |
One of the day trips I took was to The Bluff, which is a
peninsula neighborhood on the outer part of the bay of Bluefields. You have to take a boat out there of course,
and then we walked through the neighborhoods until we reached the beachy spot. There were only two of about 12 beach shacks
open that sold food and beer for the visitors.
I got eaten alive by these crazy giant yellow beach flies and left
itching and scratching like always. My
legs really took a beating that day.
Bluefields was really hot and humid while we were there, but it did rain
pretty hard a few hours here and there, which took the edge off. I wish I could have stayed the whole week of
Palo de Mayo to experience more of the culture there. We only went for 4 days. The population there is mostly black
Caribbeans who speak a mixture of Creole English and Spanish. I loved hearing them speak, it sounds so
cool! I didn’t know sometimes whether I
should speak Spanish or English. If I
asked a question in Spanish they would answer in English, or vice versa. One of my favorite moments walking around
was when I passed a house with a woman sweeping her porch, and was about to say
“Adios!” out of habit, but before I could say anything she cheerily calls out
“Marnin’!” in her English Creole accent.
It totally caught me off guard and made me realize how settled I’ve
become in my street greetings here in this country. It also just put a big smile on my face. It’s crazy that just on the other side of
this relatively narrow strip of land that is Nicaragua there’s a whole other
world and culture. It truly feels like
being in a different country.
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| Palo de Mayo dancers |
The second to last week in June I participated in Tech Week
with some of the new Ag sector trainees, which was held in an Ag site about an
hour bus ride away from my site. I was
one of 4 volunteers from my group invited to participate in teaching a group of
5 trainees from the new group who are currently in training. Amongst the charlas taught included making an
improved stove, making wine, making biofertilizer, working with youth, and
attending a community bank meeting. It
was a fun week and was nice to meet some of the newbies who are just about to
start their service. I remember how I
felt when I was at that point in my training last year: worn out on training,
frustrated with my Spanish, unsure about what I’d be doing as a volunteer, and
worried about where I’d be placed. All
of that’s behind me now (although I think I’m just always frustrated with my
Spanish), and it felt weird to be the “experienced one” telling these new
trainees what they might expect during their first year in service.
After Tech Week my family came to visit! My mom, stepdad, sister, aunt and cousin came
for 10 full days of Nica touristy fun. I
met them at Selva Negra in the department of Matagalpa, which is an organic coffee
farm owned by a German couple. It was
one of the most beautiful places I’ve been so far in this country. It’s all protected cloud forest with families
of Howler monkeys and tons of birds and other wildlife. We went on a guided nature hike in the forest
and were (kind of) attacked by a rogue agouti (small dog-sized forest rodent,
not known for being aggressive). It was
my whole family plus another group of 4 people on this nature hike, and we
heard this sudden rustling in the bushes like something was startled. All of our attention was caught by this thing
suddenly running through the underbrush, and all of a sudden it shot out from
its hidey spot and ran right into one the guy’s legs that was in the back of the
group. He and the woman with them shouted
and screamed like little girls as the agouti, no doubt equally shocked and
terrified, bounded off his legs and ran back from where it came. We were all beside ourselves with shock and
then just started cracking up uncontrollably at what just happened. It was so bizarre that this animal would
spook out of the bushes and then run right into this guy as it tried to get
away. We were holding our sides with
laughter. What’s also funny is that the
guy who was accosted by the agouti was the groom in a wedding that day at Selva
Negra. What a hilarious pre-wedding
memory!
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| Attack of the killer agouti! |
After some cool coffee and nature tours at Selva Negra, we
all came to my site and stayed at my house for one night. I spent the day dragging my family to 4
different family’s houses to introduce them to my community. I had arranged for one woman to make
nacatamales for my family to try. She
also made us the most delicious chicken and dumpling soup (one of my favorites
that I was so grateful she offered to make!).
It was probably the best soup I’ve ever had, and my family raved about
it as well. We also visited the school
and I handed out school supplies that they brought for the kids, including
pencils, erasers, books, stickers and sharpeners. The kids were all super shy of course, and
just sat there in their seats looking up with big confused eyeballs at this
group of gringos suddenly in their classroom.
The teachers were all thankful for the goodies and talked a bit with my
aunt Kathy who’s a teacher and speaks some Spanish (and really wanted to
practice her Spanish too :)). Overall it was a short but sweet trip to my
site. After that we headed to Leon and
hit up some museums. I had twisted my
back the morning we left my site and spent the whole time in Leon hunched over
like a crippled old lady. Luckily the
woman at the pharmacy knew exactly what to sell me to help with the pain, and
after a couple days I was better.
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| Enjoying homemade nacatamales |
One big pick-me-up during this trip was the compliments some
locals gave me on my Spanish. Two people
on separate occasions told me it was obvious I lived in the northern part of
the country because I spoke like a northerner.
Apparently I’ve done well and picked up the accent of my community. Imagine if some obvious foreigner approached
you in the States but had a thick southern accent. It’d be pretty apparent where they learned
how to speak English. Another woman at a
pharmacy straight up asked if I was Nicaraguan!
That’s never happened! After
Leon we spent 3 days on Ometepe island at Finca Mystica, an organic farm owned
by a young American couple who were super nice and talkative about their finca
and things to do on the island. We went
on a waterfall hike and did a nature kayak tour where we saw TONS of waterfowl. It was really cool. Their finca is beautiful and totally worth
the rocky, bumpy 2 hour taxi drive there.
The food we ate at this place was amazing, so healthy and flavorful
(fish filets with cabbage salad, chicken stir fry, coconut soup, homemade chocolate!). I recommend this place to anyone who visits
Ometepe. The last leg of the trip we
spent in Granada, the oldest city in Central America. My sister rolled her own cigar at Doña Elba’s
cigar factory, we drank Macuas, the traditional rum drink of Nicaragua, and hit
up the shopping amongst all the vendors in the park and at the old Mercado in
Masaya. Overall it was a great trip:
private drivers to and from each city, free hotel rooms and food (for me), and
a washer and drier in the private house we stayed in in Granada! Talk about luxury!
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| Rolling cigars in Granada |
Saying goodbye to my family at the airport in Managua was
sad, but this next week my dad’s coming for a week to visit during my birthday
(the 15th everyone!), so it’s another vacation for me! We won’t visit as many places as I just did
with the rest of my family, but it’ll be nice to maybe visit someplace new and
have some dad time. In the meantime I’m
working on finishing my next oven project proposal to send off before my next
vacation break. I’m planning on making
10 more ovens plus one improved stove to introduce to the community. Next month I’ve been invited to facilitate an
improved oven workshop for a group of health and environment volunteers and
their counterparts, since they are starting to build these technologies as
well. It’s the first big charla/workshop
I’ll have participated in so far, considering I have to teach the whole group
how to promote this technology in their community and lead the oven building
activity (in Spanish of course). No
pressure!
Well I hope everyone had a great 4th of
July! I spent the holiday recovering
from the trip, cleaning my house, restocking my fridge, and catching up on a
lot of laundry. It’s been raining
everyday so it’s not drying as quickly as desired. Hmph! Until
the next update. . .
~Sarah~
