The schoolwork part of this experience is beginning to pick up. This weekend I have to write two essays about the history we've learned. I need to begin to narrow down my Independent Study Project (ISP). We leave for the Coast on Tuesday, and we'll be gone for a week. I'm not sure if I'll have internet or cell signal, so I may be incommuniado. When I return from there, I need to have my ISP idea ready to present. We're back here for a week, and then we leave for El Salvador. We're in El Salvador for a week and a half and when we return we only have a week of classes left before the ISP period begins. Then I need to research, conduct interviews and write my paper. Then I'm back. Doesn't seem too long, does it?
I'd like to give you guys a more intimate idea of what it's like to be here, so here's what my Saturday morning was like. I woke up and stayed in bed for a while and finished reading a book on Marx. This was a mistake, because when I did force myself from bed the water was off. So then I got dressed and ate a breakfast of cornflakes and fruit salad provided by Cristhiam. Then I left for the office to get some work done. I succeded in doing some work, and then succomed to the lure of the computer where I checked in vain for an email.
Eventually I was joined in the office by Johanna and Rachel and they were going to the market. I decided to join them and we met up with Brian on the way. The four of us got a taxi and went to the market. Rachel needed a handbag and Johanna needed some ingredients for a wild rice and chicken soup thing she was going to make for her family. Brian and I weren't doing anything else, and so were basically tagging along.
The market is called Huembes after some hero or another. We looked around for awhile and Rachel eventually found her handbag. There is no way to describe a Nicaraguan market. It is chaos. There are thousands of sights and smells, some enticing, others revolting. I still get nauseous when I smell cheese (since the campo), so this part was unhappy for me. The vendors are oftentimes aggressive, as are the beggers, and you learn quickly when to be nice and when to be firm.
Buying the veggies and spices for Johanna's soup took longer, and we got to explore some. I bought a movie. C$20 (about a dollar) for three movies on one disc. Children of Men, Shadowboxer and The Last King of Scotland. It was no doubt illegally downloaded and I'll be surprised if it works, but I was craving Clive Owen and apocalyptic storytelling.
We then exited the Market and took a cab back to Maximo Jeréz (the barrio). There I went back to the office to make lunch and get reabsorbed into the computer. And I'm still here.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Not as bad as it sounds
I get the impression that I made my campo experience out to be much worse than it was. Yes, I had to deal with a drunk guy a lot, and that was probably the worst bit, but in general I had a great time. I had time to reflect upon my life, my way of living, and what I want to do in the future. I found the campo a desperately poor and unfortunate place, but at the same time I saw hope in some and happiness in places I didn't expect (bathing in that damned freezing river for one).
So I learned much through the experience. I was happy and relaxed for much of the time. I got sick at the end, which really was just a testament to the poor living condititions and poverty of the area. Whereas in Manuagua the houses are made of cement and have some holes in the floor where stray bugs may enter, la amancia has houses made of holes where some wood prevents very little from entering. At the same time, Meyling made me think a bit of Hamlet in the way she lived (I could be trapped in an acorn and count myself king of all the world or somesuch). She strove for education in a culture that neither supported nor made easily available such a pursuit. She was content with her son and husband (more or less), and was generally happy.
Anyway, just wanted to clarify that!
So I learned much through the experience. I was happy and relaxed for much of the time. I got sick at the end, which really was just a testament to the poor living condititions and poverty of the area. Whereas in Manuagua the houses are made of cement and have some holes in the floor where stray bugs may enter, la amancia has houses made of holes where some wood prevents very little from entering. At the same time, Meyling made me think a bit of Hamlet in the way she lived (I could be trapped in an acorn and count myself king of all the world or somesuch). She strove for education in a culture that neither supported nor made easily available such a pursuit. She was content with her son and husband (more or less), and was generally happy.
Anyway, just wanted to clarify that!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
La Amancia
On Thursday we left for the Campo. I and five others were destined for La Amancia, the poorest of the three villages our group was split up into. We drove for almost four hours to Matagalpa from Managua in our tiny bus-van, which I will eventually take a picture of. We took a break at Matagalpa for lunch, then continued on for thirty or so minutes to the small "city" of San Ramon. At San Ramon we met with the smaller organization that aranged our homestays, the CPC (Centro Promocional Cristiano), breifly and then left on three pickup trucks for our communities. This was the first time I had ever ridden in the bed of a pickup without feeling like I was breaking a rule.
After almost an hour standing in the back of the pickup, being able to relax rarely when there was continuous road rather than a series of potholes that looked like no-man's-land between the trenches in WWI, the six of us arrived in La Amancia. A tepid welcoming comittee of a few members of each of our families were there, at what I later discovered was the house of the community leader, and I met my 'mom' with a traditional psudo-kiss on the cheek.
Brief cultural note, unlike the traditional European double kiss on the cheek, here they go about 90% and make the kissing noise. Close, but no skin. A more hygenic welcoming.
My host-mom in La Amancia's name was Meyling. I had always assumed that this was an asian name, but I was apparently wrong. She had a five-year-old kid named Martin after his father. Meyling was 22 years old.
Martin senior was 40. They'd been married for about 5 years. This was one of the many cultural shocks that was to greet me in La Amancia.
The first night I made tortillas with Meyling. When I finally got it right (about the fifth try), she, her sister Blanca, and Martin jr. clapped for me. That was funny. I made real orange juice. Cut the oranges in half, squeezed the juice into a cup, added sugar and salt, and spit out the seeds when I came upon them. It tasted wonderful, and I usually hate pulp. It was probably all the sugar.
Later that evening I began to feel a bit dislocated. I was out of my comfort zone, which in Managua was really a very small mental space that I could access only rarely and more by happenstance than intention, and so I felt like talking to the other gringos. I arranged for us all to meet at Dona Julia's house, the community leader, so we could talk about the day and what we were planning on doing tomorrow. The meeting was relatively quick, and I met my host-dad, Martin, on the way there. He was kind enough, but I wasn't in the mood to talk and so I said my polite introductions and assured him we'd talk more later.
Everyone was in bed when I returned at a bit after 7 (it had been dark for an hour), and so I laid down in the cot I was given (mesh and tin), in what could only be described as the foyer of the house, but was really just the few feet before the kitchen that weren't quite the parent's room and covered myself with my skimpy sheets (so great for the Managua heat) which meant I woke at 4:30 shivering like Luke before Han cut open that strange winter bipedal horse on the ice plantet Hoth and covered him with it's entrails ("and I thought they smelled bad on the outside"). Anyone looking at my grammar, that was certainly a run-on sentence.
The next day (Friday) I had planned on going to the preschool where Meyling taught to observe. She, however, wouldn't be going because she had a paper to write for class on Saturday. So I was to go with Tom, Hannah, Ian and a young boy from the community who had appointed himself our guide, Marvin, to a neighboring hacienda to see if we could do some work. Unfortunately, they didn't quite get the message that I'd be coming with them, and so left without me. Meying wouldn't hear of this, and so she pulled a neighbor's young girl out of school to take me on the bus and overtake them on the way (because they were walking). This young girl was chosen for two reasons. A) She was young enough that I wouldn't have to pay for her bus fare and B) Her father worked at the hacienda, so she could stay with him. I was much too bewildered and out of my league as far as the Spanish went to protest, so we went. We caught up with them after a fifteen minute busride (which means they'd been walking for a bit over an hour), and we got off and walked with them. For another half hour or so. In the midmorning heat. Which is considerable.
When we arrived at the town of Santa Emelia, where the hacienda was located, we had a brief drama involving the little girl. Apparently, her father had beaten her mother, and so she most fervently did not want to stay with him. Marvin asked if she wanted to stay with his aunt and uncle, but she was a bit to distraught to compromise. I payed her fare and she took a bus back to La Amancia alone. I was sketched out by this, but Marvin assured me that she was fine with it and that she had done it many times. At this point I was wondering if my mother had known about this relationship, and if so I hated her for putting this girl in this position. But the day went on. We met up with some fellow who offered us a ride to teh hacienda (about five minutes) and we then recieved a tour that lasted almost two rain storms, the Campo equivelant of about four hours. This was a coffee hacienda, and so we toured the coffee groves, saw the workers quarters, the kitchens, the bathrooms, the outdoor kitchens for the families, the beneficio (coffee processing plant), and all of their environmental safeguards. This would never happen in the US. We pretty much walked onto this hacienda, and were given a tour by one of the main managers which was more comprehensive than the Norton Anthology of Shakespeare. We picked some coffee and learned to use the machete to clear away the brush, but we didn't actually do any work. The highlight of our tour were the school and the health center that the hacienda had built for the workers and the community.
We got a lift most of the way back to La Amancia from the same fellow who had driven us the five minutes previously, and spent the rest of the day exploring the countryside, forest (though I'd call it more jungle than forest), and neighboring communities. In the end Ian, Marvin and I wound up at a far off community called Cuatro Esquinas (Four Corners) talking with an indigenous woman named Tomasa Cortedano, who reminded me rather vividly of Rigoberta Menchu in the way she framed her discourse, talking about workers and women's rights in the campo.
That night I came home and my host-dad was drunker than all of the characters in Animal House put together. He was beligerantly attempting to communicate, but with the drool, the smell, and the fact that he really didn't have complete control over his muscles, I didn't get much of it. He was being nice enough, but because of the drunkeness was more offensive to both me and his young wife than was usually accepted. At one point she hid her head in her hands in shame. Quite a powerful gesture in real life as opposed to something overdramatic and cliche on TV. Anyway, I got out of the situation and went to bed. Later that night I got to hear him throwing up and peeing in his room (there are mud floors, so I guess it's not that big a deal) which is something that will keep me from ever drinking heavily. Ever.
The next day I was too sick and uncomfortable to go to work with my dad, and so I went to a neighboring community with Hannah and Marvin. We spread the word about a meeting that was to happen later that day and hiked several mountains, crossed several rivers, and picked much fruit. It was a wholely relaxing experience, and I very much enjoyed hiking through the mud, concentrating on what passed for a path (more a slightly cleared away area the water ran down fastest when it rained), thinking about the countryside. And not thinking about anything else. We met a good seven or eight families up on the mountains, and then returned for the meeting. The meeting was, I had first heard, about sexuality and violence. Then I heard that it was about la trata de personas, or the illegal slave trade where young women were kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. When the meeting came, Tomasa Cortedano and Dona Julia were the organizers. A few more than thrity people came, many of them male. Th first part of the meeting was vaguely about la trata de personas, but quickly was shunted aside for the more comfortable topic of workers rights and the plight of the campesino.
That night my father was drunk again, and this time Meyling wasn't there to be ashamed. She was still at class. So he was belligerantly comradely and insisted we cook together and such. I begged out, saying that I had to meet with my gringo friends again that night, and eventually escaped the uncomfortable situation. That night he didn't throw up, though he was certainly considerably more drunk than the previous night, as he had off on Sunday.
Sunday was relaxing and Monday I got sick. I'm sorry to abreviate, but the power is about to shut off and I don't want to lose all of this. I was nauseus and feverish all of Monday and well into today (Tuesday). Last night I had some of the more interesting dreams I've had before, lying in a comfortable bed in Matagalpa after taking a real shower. I'll go into more detail soon, just know that I am recovering quickly and feeling emotionally balanced.
After almost an hour standing in the back of the pickup, being able to relax rarely when there was continuous road rather than a series of potholes that looked like no-man's-land between the trenches in WWI, the six of us arrived in La Amancia. A tepid welcoming comittee of a few members of each of our families were there, at what I later discovered was the house of the community leader, and I met my 'mom' with a traditional psudo-kiss on the cheek.
Brief cultural note, unlike the traditional European double kiss on the cheek, here they go about 90% and make the kissing noise. Close, but no skin. A more hygenic welcoming.
My host-mom in La Amancia's name was Meyling. I had always assumed that this was an asian name, but I was apparently wrong. She had a five-year-old kid named Martin after his father. Meyling was 22 years old.
Martin senior was 40. They'd been married for about 5 years. This was one of the many cultural shocks that was to greet me in La Amancia.
The first night I made tortillas with Meyling. When I finally got it right (about the fifth try), she, her sister Blanca, and Martin jr. clapped for me. That was funny. I made real orange juice. Cut the oranges in half, squeezed the juice into a cup, added sugar and salt, and spit out the seeds when I came upon them. It tasted wonderful, and I usually hate pulp. It was probably all the sugar.
Later that evening I began to feel a bit dislocated. I was out of my comfort zone, which in Managua was really a very small mental space that I could access only rarely and more by happenstance than intention, and so I felt like talking to the other gringos. I arranged for us all to meet at Dona Julia's house, the community leader, so we could talk about the day and what we were planning on doing tomorrow. The meeting was relatively quick, and I met my host-dad, Martin, on the way there. He was kind enough, but I wasn't in the mood to talk and so I said my polite introductions and assured him we'd talk more later.
Everyone was in bed when I returned at a bit after 7 (it had been dark for an hour), and so I laid down in the cot I was given (mesh and tin), in what could only be described as the foyer of the house, but was really just the few feet before the kitchen that weren't quite the parent's room and covered myself with my skimpy sheets (so great for the Managua heat) which meant I woke at 4:30 shivering like Luke before Han cut open that strange winter bipedal horse on the ice plantet Hoth and covered him with it's entrails ("and I thought they smelled bad on the outside"). Anyone looking at my grammar, that was certainly a run-on sentence.
The next day (Friday) I had planned on going to the preschool where Meyling taught to observe. She, however, wouldn't be going because she had a paper to write for class on Saturday. So I was to go with Tom, Hannah, Ian and a young boy from the community who had appointed himself our guide, Marvin, to a neighboring hacienda to see if we could do some work. Unfortunately, they didn't quite get the message that I'd be coming with them, and so left without me. Meying wouldn't hear of this, and so she pulled a neighbor's young girl out of school to take me on the bus and overtake them on the way (because they were walking). This young girl was chosen for two reasons. A) She was young enough that I wouldn't have to pay for her bus fare and B) Her father worked at the hacienda, so she could stay with him. I was much too bewildered and out of my league as far as the Spanish went to protest, so we went. We caught up with them after a fifteen minute busride (which means they'd been walking for a bit over an hour), and we got off and walked with them. For another half hour or so. In the midmorning heat. Which is considerable.
When we arrived at the town of Santa Emelia, where the hacienda was located, we had a brief drama involving the little girl. Apparently, her father had beaten her mother, and so she most fervently did not want to stay with him. Marvin asked if she wanted to stay with his aunt and uncle, but she was a bit to distraught to compromise. I payed her fare and she took a bus back to La Amancia alone. I was sketched out by this, but Marvin assured me that she was fine with it and that she had done it many times. At this point I was wondering if my mother had known about this relationship, and if so I hated her for putting this girl in this position. But the day went on. We met up with some fellow who offered us a ride to teh hacienda (about five minutes) and we then recieved a tour that lasted almost two rain storms, the Campo equivelant of about four hours. This was a coffee hacienda, and so we toured the coffee groves, saw the workers quarters, the kitchens, the bathrooms, the outdoor kitchens for the families, the beneficio (coffee processing plant), and all of their environmental safeguards. This would never happen in the US. We pretty much walked onto this hacienda, and were given a tour by one of the main managers which was more comprehensive than the Norton Anthology of Shakespeare. We picked some coffee and learned to use the machete to clear away the brush, but we didn't actually do any work. The highlight of our tour were the school and the health center that the hacienda had built for the workers and the community.
We got a lift most of the way back to La Amancia from the same fellow who had driven us the five minutes previously, and spent the rest of the day exploring the countryside, forest (though I'd call it more jungle than forest), and neighboring communities. In the end Ian, Marvin and I wound up at a far off community called Cuatro Esquinas (Four Corners) talking with an indigenous woman named Tomasa Cortedano, who reminded me rather vividly of Rigoberta Menchu in the way she framed her discourse, talking about workers and women's rights in the campo.
That night I came home and my host-dad was drunker than all of the characters in Animal House put together. He was beligerantly attempting to communicate, but with the drool, the smell, and the fact that he really didn't have complete control over his muscles, I didn't get much of it. He was being nice enough, but because of the drunkeness was more offensive to both me and his young wife than was usually accepted. At one point she hid her head in her hands in shame. Quite a powerful gesture in real life as opposed to something overdramatic and cliche on TV. Anyway, I got out of the situation and went to bed. Later that night I got to hear him throwing up and peeing in his room (there are mud floors, so I guess it's not that big a deal) which is something that will keep me from ever drinking heavily. Ever.
The next day I was too sick and uncomfortable to go to work with my dad, and so I went to a neighboring community with Hannah and Marvin. We spread the word about a meeting that was to happen later that day and hiked several mountains, crossed several rivers, and picked much fruit. It was a wholely relaxing experience, and I very much enjoyed hiking through the mud, concentrating on what passed for a path (more a slightly cleared away area the water ran down fastest when it rained), thinking about the countryside. And not thinking about anything else. We met a good seven or eight families up on the mountains, and then returned for the meeting. The meeting was, I had first heard, about sexuality and violence. Then I heard that it was about la trata de personas, or the illegal slave trade where young women were kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. When the meeting came, Tomasa Cortedano and Dona Julia were the organizers. A few more than thrity people came, many of them male. Th first part of the meeting was vaguely about la trata de personas, but quickly was shunted aside for the more comfortable topic of workers rights and the plight of the campesino.
That night my father was drunk again, and this time Meyling wasn't there to be ashamed. She was still at class. So he was belligerantly comradely and insisted we cook together and such. I begged out, saying that I had to meet with my gringo friends again that night, and eventually escaped the uncomfortable situation. That night he didn't throw up, though he was certainly considerably more drunk than the previous night, as he had off on Sunday.
Sunday was relaxing and Monday I got sick. I'm sorry to abreviate, but the power is about to shut off and I don't want to lose all of this. I was nauseus and feverish all of Monday and well into today (Tuesday). Last night I had some of the more interesting dreams I've had before, lying in a comfortable bed in Matagalpa after taking a real shower. I'll go into more detail soon, just know that I am recovering quickly and feeling emotionally balanced.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
To the Campo
Okay, so I've had a pretty terrible past couple of days, but I'm looking forward to leaving behind civilization in it's more urban form and taking leave for the Campo. Campo is a word that roughly translates to a more rural area. I guess it could be ´countryside´or something, but I tell people just to think about the south when I say Campo. It is more or less the economic equivilant of parts of Louisiana or Missippi.
So, I will not have electricity, let well enough alone access to internet. Thus, I will update again next week, probably on Tuesday. There really isn't any running water, so that should be interesting. Baths are either in a river or in a communal bathing area. People go to sleep a bit after sunset (about 6 ish here) and wake up a bit before sunrise (around 4.30, an unholy and fairly evil hour by all accounts). I'll be doing what they do. We don't have classes, but the families we are going to be staying with have been told that they are to teach us what it is to be a rural campesino. We're supposed to live both gender roles, which are more strongly segregated there. It's only four days in our homestays, and then we come back, first to spend a night in Matagalpa and then back to our homestays here in Managua.
I look forward to this and hope to experience it as pretentiously as Thoureau experienced Walden. We have a few assignments on top of merely working the fields and doing the wash and cooking, which include conducting interviews with people (informal or formal) to investigate certain themes and a bunch of participant observation (both participating and observing). Then in Spanish class we present our observations and for FSS (Field Study Seminar) and RTSC (Revolución Transformación y Sociedad Civil) we write up our findings of our themes and interviews.
Anyway, I'll be living in a town called La Amancia, near the city of San Ramón in the region called Matagalpa. I'll be in the family of Martin Montenegro, which is nothing more than a name to me.
I'm hoping that this experience is cleansing and gives me some perspective to return with. If not, I'll be miserable until I can get on the internet and check my mail. I shall return with pictures and hopefully stories that don't involve me hitting myself in the leg with a machete when I return. Love you all and wish me luck.
So, I will not have electricity, let well enough alone access to internet. Thus, I will update again next week, probably on Tuesday. There really isn't any running water, so that should be interesting. Baths are either in a river or in a communal bathing area. People go to sleep a bit after sunset (about 6 ish here) and wake up a bit before sunrise (around 4.30, an unholy and fairly evil hour by all accounts). I'll be doing what they do. We don't have classes, but the families we are going to be staying with have been told that they are to teach us what it is to be a rural campesino. We're supposed to live both gender roles, which are more strongly segregated there. It's only four days in our homestays, and then we come back, first to spend a night in Matagalpa and then back to our homestays here in Managua.
I look forward to this and hope to experience it as pretentiously as Thoureau experienced Walden. We have a few assignments on top of merely working the fields and doing the wash and cooking, which include conducting interviews with people (informal or formal) to investigate certain themes and a bunch of participant observation (both participating and observing). Then in Spanish class we present our observations and for FSS (Field Study Seminar) and RTSC (Revolución Transformación y Sociedad Civil) we write up our findings of our themes and interviews.
Anyway, I'll be living in a town called La Amancia, near the city of San Ramón in the region called Matagalpa. I'll be in the family of Martin Montenegro, which is nothing more than a name to me.
I'm hoping that this experience is cleansing and gives me some perspective to return with. If not, I'll be miserable until I can get on the internet and check my mail. I shall return with pictures and hopefully stories that don't involve me hitting myself in the leg with a machete when I return. Love you all and wish me luck.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Good days, bad days
So, yesterday was a wonderful day. It was one of those rare times in life when I recognized that I was having a great day during the actual day. I don't recall which Kurt Vonnegut book it is said in, but he says that too often we don't know when we're having a good time. So whenever I have a good time I try to say, "if this isn't nice, what is." Not necessarily out loud.
I think I realized how good a day I was having when on the porch where a few of us US kids were hanging out a really good song came on. I really just relaxed and chatted for most of the day. That is what composes my favorite day.
Today however, was pretty terrible. Which is funny, because I did almost the same exact thing as yesterday. I just felt like I couldn't concentrate and couldn't focus on any of my work. I have days like this from time to time, and tomorrow I will be better. Of course, tomorrow I have an essay due, which is why I am procrastinating by writing on the blog. Hence the terrible day.
Anyway, I am now having a much better day, despite the fact that I cannot concentrate, and I will be showing the Departed (Martin Scorcese) later tonight. I'll finish my essay tomorrow.
I think I realized how good a day I was having when on the porch where a few of us US kids were hanging out a really good song came on. I really just relaxed and chatted for most of the day. That is what composes my favorite day.
Today however, was pretty terrible. Which is funny, because I did almost the same exact thing as yesterday. I just felt like I couldn't concentrate and couldn't focus on any of my work. I have days like this from time to time, and tomorrow I will be better. Of course, tomorrow I have an essay due, which is why I am procrastinating by writing on the blog. Hence the terrible day.
Anyway, I am now having a much better day, despite the fact that I cannot concentrate, and I will be showing the Departed (Martin Scorcese) later tonight. I'll finish my essay tomorrow.
A few more...
More pictures from Nadia's birthday. The woman on the left is Cristhiam, my Nicaraguan mom. The little girl near the cake is Nadia. 
This is my house as seen from across the street. I was in the office when I took this picture.
This is part of the porch of the office.
This is more of the porch of the office, and Tom reading something.
More pictures, now that I've got this
The pictures with the gringos were taken in León during the first week. The event was that we would be dropped off in pairs throughout the city of León with different questions, and we had to use whatever means we had to answer these questions. So we talked to people and looked in libraries and things. In the end we had to meet at this beautiful (expensive-touristy) hotel called the convent hotel (it used to be a convent), so I took some pictures of the beauty and some of my classmates because I was finally in a place where I wouldn't look like a fool for taking pictures.The other pictures are from Nadia's 4th birthday. I may have more...
Saturday, September 15, 2007
A land without water, without electric
Right so, some have expressed interest as to how people make it through the day with no water after 8 in the morning and no electric for a large part of the day.
Some of my fellow estadosunidenses friends have no running shower, or just get up too late to use one. So they bath out of a bucket, which they say is like getting a slow massage with warm water, and although it takes a while they've insisted it is quite relaxing. I get up early enough to take shower, and the water is always freezing, which isn't always as welcome as I'd like. The shower thingy where the water comes out is pretty gunked up, so I get a pretty steady dribble of water with the occasional spray. It is certainly enough to wash by, even if it is less than comfortable. Throughout the day the toilets are flushed by either filling the tank of the toilet with water from a bucket or pouring water into the bowl itself.
Washing clothes is very interesting. So every house around here has a large cement pila. A pila is part cement basin/sink and part washboard. When I figure out how to, I'll post pictures. Before you use the pila, you soak your clothes for a few minutes in soapy water in a bucket/basin. Then one by one you take out your articles of clothing and rub a kind of bar soap on them to get them soapy, then you add some water and rub the clothes against the cement washboard thing and against themselves until you need more water. Repeat until the water draining from the clothes is clear (as opposed to soapy white). This takes me hours. Unfortunately I haven't gotten used to washing my clothing daily or even every other day, so I wash all of my clothes at once, which is a bad call.
Watching TV is relatively new in Nicaragua. It became popular during the 90s as the neoliberal reforms of the Chamorro, Aleman and Bolanos administrations made things like TVs available in wide supply and things like healthcare and education pricy available to those who could afford it. Almost every family with a house has a TV, and they spend much of their free time in front of said TV. This said, the power goes out every weekday at 2 or 5 (usually obscuring prime time). So, when the power goes out, there's really nothing to do save talk to one another and try to conserve candles.
Readig by candlelight, while reminescent of Edmund Dantes studying under abbe Fariah in the Chateau D'if and thus totally cool, is difficult. My eyes aren't quite ready for it. Also, the romantic image of a candle lit dinner has been ruined for me as every dinner here is candle lit, and I've found that it just makes people slightly harder to see.
One of the things about Nicaragua is that when you have that feeling that something is crawling on your skin, rather than swatting at nothing as in the US, you usually do have something on you. This makes sense as the houses are made of concrete and such and are thus riddled with holes. Bugs generally run the place, and I have given up many firmly held beliefs about basic sanitation and food care. That said, when the candle's flickering casts scurrying shadows along the walls, I usually jump. Thankfully, I have yet to have my fears of man eating rodents leaping from the crevaces in the walls confirmed.
However, there was this cricket that looked like it could easily take a cockaroach in a fight. He was half jumping half flying around the room while we were watching 50 First Dates (in Spanish). I wasn't really worried that this monster would attack me, but I did make the half joke half serious inquiry as to if these crickets travelled in packs and foretold apocalyptic situations.
Some of my fellow estadosunidenses friends have no running shower, or just get up too late to use one. So they bath out of a bucket, which they say is like getting a slow massage with warm water, and although it takes a while they've insisted it is quite relaxing. I get up early enough to take shower, and the water is always freezing, which isn't always as welcome as I'd like. The shower thingy where the water comes out is pretty gunked up, so I get a pretty steady dribble of water with the occasional spray. It is certainly enough to wash by, even if it is less than comfortable. Throughout the day the toilets are flushed by either filling the tank of the toilet with water from a bucket or pouring water into the bowl itself.
Washing clothes is very interesting. So every house around here has a large cement pila. A pila is part cement basin/sink and part washboard. When I figure out how to, I'll post pictures. Before you use the pila, you soak your clothes for a few minutes in soapy water in a bucket/basin. Then one by one you take out your articles of clothing and rub a kind of bar soap on them to get them soapy, then you add some water and rub the clothes against the cement washboard thing and against themselves until you need more water. Repeat until the water draining from the clothes is clear (as opposed to soapy white). This takes me hours. Unfortunately I haven't gotten used to washing my clothing daily or even every other day, so I wash all of my clothes at once, which is a bad call.
Watching TV is relatively new in Nicaragua. It became popular during the 90s as the neoliberal reforms of the Chamorro, Aleman and Bolanos administrations made things like TVs available in wide supply and things like healthcare and education pricy available to those who could afford it. Almost every family with a house has a TV, and they spend much of their free time in front of said TV. This said, the power goes out every weekday at 2 or 5 (usually obscuring prime time). So, when the power goes out, there's really nothing to do save talk to one another and try to conserve candles.
Readig by candlelight, while reminescent of Edmund Dantes studying under abbe Fariah in the Chateau D'if and thus totally cool, is difficult. My eyes aren't quite ready for it. Also, the romantic image of a candle lit dinner has been ruined for me as every dinner here is candle lit, and I've found that it just makes people slightly harder to see.
One of the things about Nicaragua is that when you have that feeling that something is crawling on your skin, rather than swatting at nothing as in the US, you usually do have something on you. This makes sense as the houses are made of concrete and such and are thus riddled with holes. Bugs generally run the place, and I have given up many firmly held beliefs about basic sanitation and food care. That said, when the candle's flickering casts scurrying shadows along the walls, I usually jump. Thankfully, I have yet to have my fears of man eating rodents leaping from the crevaces in the walls confirmed.
However, there was this cricket that looked like it could easily take a cockaroach in a fight. He was half jumping half flying around the room while we were watching 50 First Dates (in Spanish). I wasn't really worried that this monster would attack me, but I did make the half joke half serious inquiry as to if these crickets travelled in packs and foretold apocalyptic situations.
Friday, September 14, 2007
A day in the life
So, as per requested, a normal day for me in Managua. So, I wake up around 6:30-7:00 in the morning. We lose water at 8, so I get my shower and such done early. Then I eat something small in the kitchen (usually granola and whatever else Crithiam (mi madre nica) thinks I should try before I go) and walk across the street to the SIT office - it's a risky business walking out your door in the morning, you just don't know where you'll end up. I'll refrain from quoting the Lord of the Rings in the future.
I usually hang out in the office (a typical Nica house with a front porch and such. Two girls live in the back and work in the office while going to school at the same time (Rosa y Norma). There are two computers and a lack of children's toys and this sets it apart from other Nica houses) for a few minutes, reading the paper or finishing homework.
Then we walk. In small groups, on our own, as one big collective, it depends. There are 18 of us, all very obviously gringos. It is about a 40 minute walk to the UCA (University of Central America) where we take Spanish in the morning. We usually take the path affectionately refered to as the "Zig-zag" (yeah, its the same in both languages) which is the shortest distance with the most shade, because even at 8 in the morning the sun is blazing (year round the sun rises around 6 and sets around 6 because we're so close to the equator). I buy La Prensa, a newspaper down here, from either the gas station on the way, or there's this family that sells it from their house which is slightly out of the way.
The rooms in the UCA are air conditioned, which means great when you just walk in, and bloody cold after an hour or two. The class goes from 9 to 12:30 with one break which is usually 30 minutes long. Class is chill, we have to present newspaper articles we read, do many gammatical things, and talk a lot about usually controversial topics. The break is when I'll stoop to buying a cup of coffee because the combination of the cold and the three hour long class is beginning to wear on me.
Some days, like once or twice a week, we talk with conversation partners. These are students from the UCA who are payed to talk to us in Spanish for an hour or so. There's usually two of us to one of them, and we scatter about the campus or go out to eat or something and chat with them about a variety of subjects. My conversatin partner is Yuritza, a 22 year old Nica girl who is studying something around communications. We agree on many things surrounding politics and the like, which makes our conversations much of one of us saying something and the other nodding sagely and saying, "Si, si."
Form lunch after class there are a few places to go. I like the cafe on school grounds becaus they sell these monstrous hot dogs for 15 cords each (a bit less than a dollar). Also, there's a soy place nearby and a great pizza place near our next class.
Which brings me to, we are usually in small groups or alone at this point, and we make our way to our next class. On Mondays this is Field Study Seminar which is kind of a reflection/methods class for our cultural immersion and research methods. On every other weekday we have RTSC (Revolution, Transformation and Civil Society), in which Guillermo, the director of this class, brings in promenent figures to talk to us on a variety of subjects. This past week we did an overview of the 80s, and Guillermo talked to us first about his experience, then we spoke to a contra (Luis Fley) of the northern front, and yesterday we talked to Eden Pastora, the leader of the fighting on the southern, Costa Rica, front. We either take the bus (always a risky thing, when they're packed (and they'r always packed) it's tough to see if someone is stealing your stuff) or walk.
Both FSS and RTSC are from 2:30ish to 5. Because they ration the energy here, the first week the power went out at 2 and came back on at 7. This week it went off at 5 and came back on at 10. In the CIES (I'm not quite sure what it stands for, but it is a branch of the UNAN which is the autonomous university of nicaragua or something like that) where we take our second class of the day there is a generator which keeps the lights on and can power the fans, but not the AC. This is not always a bad thing as this past week we've been getting rain during the afternoon and it's been freezing with wet clothes and AC.
After this class, I usually walk the block or two back to the office and do what homework I can before my mind shuts down. We can only speak spanish in the office, so usually its pretty quiet. Then we'll talk out on the patio/porch thing for a while just a few of the US kids and sometimes the girls who work here or some neighborhood kids about our age.
At about 7 or 8 I walk across the street to my house and chat with Cristhiam for a while as she gives me food fit for kings. Then, if Nadia the 4 year old is still up, we'll play for a bit or I'll chat with Cristhiam some more, or I'll go in my room and read by candlelight or write a bit. Depends. I'm usually asleep around 9-9:30 if no one is going to call.
So, that's pretty much a day in my life, for now. During the weekdays anyway.
I usually hang out in the office (a typical Nica house with a front porch and such. Two girls live in the back and work in the office while going to school at the same time (Rosa y Norma). There are two computers and a lack of children's toys and this sets it apart from other Nica houses) for a few minutes, reading the paper or finishing homework.
Then we walk. In small groups, on our own, as one big collective, it depends. There are 18 of us, all very obviously gringos. It is about a 40 minute walk to the UCA (University of Central America) where we take Spanish in the morning. We usually take the path affectionately refered to as the "Zig-zag" (yeah, its the same in both languages) which is the shortest distance with the most shade, because even at 8 in the morning the sun is blazing (year round the sun rises around 6 and sets around 6 because we're so close to the equator). I buy La Prensa, a newspaper down here, from either the gas station on the way, or there's this family that sells it from their house which is slightly out of the way.
The rooms in the UCA are air conditioned, which means great when you just walk in, and bloody cold after an hour or two. The class goes from 9 to 12:30 with one break which is usually 30 minutes long. Class is chill, we have to present newspaper articles we read, do many gammatical things, and talk a lot about usually controversial topics. The break is when I'll stoop to buying a cup of coffee because the combination of the cold and the three hour long class is beginning to wear on me.
Some days, like once or twice a week, we talk with conversation partners. These are students from the UCA who are payed to talk to us in Spanish for an hour or so. There's usually two of us to one of them, and we scatter about the campus or go out to eat or something and chat with them about a variety of subjects. My conversatin partner is Yuritza, a 22 year old Nica girl who is studying something around communications. We agree on many things surrounding politics and the like, which makes our conversations much of one of us saying something and the other nodding sagely and saying, "Si, si."
Form lunch after class there are a few places to go. I like the cafe on school grounds becaus they sell these monstrous hot dogs for 15 cords each (a bit less than a dollar). Also, there's a soy place nearby and a great pizza place near our next class.
Which brings me to, we are usually in small groups or alone at this point, and we make our way to our next class. On Mondays this is Field Study Seminar which is kind of a reflection/methods class for our cultural immersion and research methods. On every other weekday we have RTSC (Revolution, Transformation and Civil Society), in which Guillermo, the director of this class, brings in promenent figures to talk to us on a variety of subjects. This past week we did an overview of the 80s, and Guillermo talked to us first about his experience, then we spoke to a contra (Luis Fley) of the northern front, and yesterday we talked to Eden Pastora, the leader of the fighting on the southern, Costa Rica, front. We either take the bus (always a risky thing, when they're packed (and they'r always packed) it's tough to see if someone is stealing your stuff) or walk.
Both FSS and RTSC are from 2:30ish to 5. Because they ration the energy here, the first week the power went out at 2 and came back on at 7. This week it went off at 5 and came back on at 10. In the CIES (I'm not quite sure what it stands for, but it is a branch of the UNAN which is the autonomous university of nicaragua or something like that) where we take our second class of the day there is a generator which keeps the lights on and can power the fans, but not the AC. This is not always a bad thing as this past week we've been getting rain during the afternoon and it's been freezing with wet clothes and AC.
After this class, I usually walk the block or two back to the office and do what homework I can before my mind shuts down. We can only speak spanish in the office, so usually its pretty quiet. Then we'll talk out on the patio/porch thing for a while just a few of the US kids and sometimes the girls who work here or some neighborhood kids about our age.
At about 7 or 8 I walk across the street to my house and chat with Cristhiam for a while as she gives me food fit for kings. Then, if Nadia the 4 year old is still up, we'll play for a bit or I'll chat with Cristhiam some more, or I'll go in my room and read by candlelight or write a bit. Depends. I'm usually asleep around 9-9:30 if no one is going to call.
So, that's pretty much a day in my life, for now. During the weekdays anyway.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Right, so...
Yesterday we talked to two ex-contra. Contras were the armed irregular forces (read: terrorists, or according to Reagan, Freedom Fighters) who were trained and equiped by the CIA in the early 80s to fight the Sandinista government. They told us all about why they felt they needed to fight (one had much more persuasive reasoning than the other). One was Luis Fley, and he is the main character in a book called Commando (in English and widely available) which details the CIA involvement with the Contras.
Today we speak with Eden Pastora, the fellow who orchestrated the '78 (give or take) takeover of Somoza's National Assembly. He was a hero within the Sandinistas during the revolution, but after went to Costa Rica to fight the Sandinistas because he felt they'd betrayed the 'most beautiful revolution this world has seen' to Marxism. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he ran for president against Ortega and Rizo in 2006 (gathering around .3% of the vote).
I'm doing well, if tired. This is the last day of classes this week, las Fiestas Patrias (Patriotic Holidays) are occuring from tomorrow to Sunday. Should be fun.
Today we speak with Eden Pastora, the fellow who orchestrated the '78 (give or take) takeover of Somoza's National Assembly. He was a hero within the Sandinistas during the revolution, but after went to Costa Rica to fight the Sandinistas because he felt they'd betrayed the 'most beautiful revolution this world has seen' to Marxism. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he ran for president against Ortega and Rizo in 2006 (gathering around .3% of the vote).
I'm doing well, if tired. This is the last day of classes this week, las Fiestas Patrias (Patriotic Holidays) are occuring from tomorrow to Sunday. Should be fun.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Hey y'all
Well, I have spent a week in Nicaragua and have (as of yet) not died in the jungle (Sean you owe me five bucks) nor been killed by a hurricane. So good on me! Anyway, classes are from 9-12:30 in the morning and 2-5 (or 6) at night. I have one class that is taught in english (one day a week) and everything else is in Spanish. Yesterday we went to the Asemblea Nacional and spoke to two deputados (the equivilant of a senator in the US). One was from the ALN (a more conservative party) and the other was from the FSLN. Both were nice and very interesting. Both spoke a bit faster than I could quite grasp, but overall it was a great experience.
The day before that we spoke to the Executive Director of the NGO IPADE, which is both a watchdog NGO over the democratic process here (they train and supervise people (like last year's SIT class) in observing elections) as well as monitoring governmental goings on and helping with development progects. The guy was great (yet again he spoke too fast for me, but I got most of it). The biggest obsticle to better democracy in Nicaragua, he said, is poverty. Adding to that, the FSLN depuatado (who was barely 26 years old and told us that he'd had more power in his last job as president of the national student body - almost all social movements are begun by student movements-) was asked what he thought the best way to combat Nicaraguan poverty was, and he responded that only through improved education could unemlployment and poverty be solved.
Anyway, I'm doing great and I love this program. The woman who is (probably) going to teach us history was the woman who when she was 18 took over a building as a member of the FSLN. She led the capture of León as a comandante in the FSLN and held it until the Triumph. She broke away from the FSLN in 96 when she and Sergio Ramirez thought the leadership should be changed and that Ortega shouldn't run for office again, and was the vice president on the ticket under Ramirez in the 2001 elections.
In that way, this program is quite a bit like Bennington.
The day before that we spoke to the Executive Director of the NGO IPADE, which is both a watchdog NGO over the democratic process here (they train and supervise people (like last year's SIT class) in observing elections) as well as monitoring governmental goings on and helping with development progects. The guy was great (yet again he spoke too fast for me, but I got most of it). The biggest obsticle to better democracy in Nicaragua, he said, is poverty. Adding to that, the FSLN depuatado (who was barely 26 years old and told us that he'd had more power in his last job as president of the national student body - almost all social movements are begun by student movements-) was asked what he thought the best way to combat Nicaraguan poverty was, and he responded that only through improved education could unemlployment and poverty be solved.
Anyway, I'm doing great and I love this program. The woman who is (probably) going to teach us history was the woman who when she was 18 took over a building as a member of the FSLN. She led the capture of León as a comandante in the FSLN and held it until the Triumph. She broke away from the FSLN in 96 when she and Sergio Ramirez thought the leadership should be changed and that Ortega shouldn't run for office again, and was the vice president on the ticket under Ramirez in the 2001 elections.
In that way, this program is quite a bit like Bennington.
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