2 Weeks - In the Books!

Quick disclaimer: This blog is neither an official publication of the Peace Corps nor the US government; it is simply a personal testament of my experience in Nicaragua.

It is never my intention to observe this culture through an ethnocentric lens, however there have been and will always be certain aspects of life here that are more challenging for me to assimilate into than others. Therefore, I will not always focus entirely on all of the good parts of my experience here, because that is not how life goes. Peace Corps is like a rollercoaster, and knowing that you guys are along for the ride, I feel obliged to share with you as much as possible; including the bad parts. However, it is important to note that I never wish to reflect poorly onto the Nicaraguan people nor their country. I am only sharing my ups, downs, successes, and struggles, none of which are the fault of any part of Nicaragua, but rather the difficulty at times to adjust to this new, yet exciting, lifestyle.

I’m excited to finally give you guys the much-needed update on how things have been going here. We have just finished our second week at our training sites, but honestly it feels like we’ve been here for months. So much has happened and yet I have barely even been in Nicaragua for 14 days! It’s going to be tough for me to include absolutely everything, but I will do my best to get you guys up to speed. Ok, here we go!

We packed up everything and loaded the Peace Corps buses to take us away from our safe zone that was Hotel Ticomo all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready for service-training. All 41 volunteers were split up based on our sector: 20 Environment homies, 21 TEFLeros; the former to the region of Carazo, the latter to Masaya. We said our goodbyes and were off!

            The bus ride was like being a part of a heist movie. Peace Corps had everything planned out like clockwork: volunteers on the bus, our luggage in the truck following us, and we had an itinerary to drop off each set of volunteers at their respective pueblo. Just to explain real quick – each region of the country is like its own little “state” as compared to the US, and thus consists of a series of pueblos. The volunteers were divided into small groups of 3-5 based on language proficiency level, and then placed together in the same pueblo with different host families. Each group is assigned a language facilitator/teacher and takes the same Spanish class five days a week together (hence why the groups are assigned by proficiency level). All of the pueblos are relatively close together, and so the itinerary wasn’t too long, but what cracked me up was how well the system worked. Before we arrived at the first town, we stopped off on the side of the road to pick up the first group’s teacher. We then went to each member of the first group’s house one by one and dropped them off. Their teacher got off the bus with the last volunteer of that group, and then we proceeded on to the next town. Shortly after leaving we stopped off on the side of the road again, only we were picking up the next group’s teacher (who happened to be for my group because we were the next town), and the process continued until every group was dropped off at their site. It was such a small detail, but to me it was hilarious – there were no iPhones involved, no frequent calling and complaining, no driving separate cars, just teachers waiting on the side of the road at each stop along the way to hop in, move their volunteers into their houses, get off at the last house, and the bus would move on.

Sorry that was a long digression for a minor detail… now on to the more interesting stuff! My family is awesome. It consists of Mamá, Papá, and eight brothers and sisters. Yup, eight: one older sister, five older brothers, and two younger sisters. Three of my siblings have children (my sobrinos), and most of my cousins live in the house next door, so needless to say there are a lot of kids in my life. Well, basically a lot of people in my life! Love it.

The kids’ favorite pastimes: UNO cards, Egyptian Rat with regular cards (I taught it to them the first day and they’re obsessed – slapping the doubles is their favorite part. Surprise, huh?), and playing catch with my Frisbee. The little sobrinos are also sitting on my shoulders quite often. Can’t really tell if my Mamá is cool with that or not, but the chicos are all about it.

One of the nights this past week they put on a puppet show for the adults and it was hysterical. After a little while my older brother spontaneously busted out his phone and started playing some Spanish music and the kids were making the puppets dance. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while.

My favorite pastimes: All of the above, mototaxi rides (we’ll get to that), talking/whistling with Sonya the parrot, freaking my family out by petting Panda the dog (being nice to dogs is apparently frowned upon here. We will get to that as well), and watching television programs for children, like “123 TV” the Nicaraguan version of Sesame Street. Honestly though we don’t get much free time here because Peace Corps has crammed two years worth of knowledge into a three month training program. I’m literally deep-sixing my homework due tomorrow in order to write this blog. That’s how worth it you guys are.

Peace Corps has asked us volunteers to refrain from mentioning specific towns in specific regions for the sake of our safety, so I’m going to just refer to my town as my town. Cool? My town is pretty small; it only consists of one main road that runs north to south with a couple winds and turns, but many stores (pulperías), bakeries (panaderías), and little houses (casitas). There are also at least 123456765432 dogs wandering around all parts of the town. I have seen more dogs here than squirrels in Ohio and good looking women in Arizona (and that is saying something for BOTH locations). None are fixed and so the population is completely uncontrollable. Very few are owned by families, and those that are have the sole purpose of being watch dogs to provide the family peace of mind when they sleep. They are regarded as very dirty animals and so the act of petting them is looked at as either dangerous or incredibly unintelligent. Still, I have a cool bond with the dog in my house, Panda; she is very calm and friendly, unlike most of the stray dogs in the town. She usually gets shoo’d away by my family, but I scratch her behind the ears every once and a while and immediately go wash my hands after to avoid getting scorned by Mamá or my older sister. Pet the dog, wash your hands. Pet the dog, wash your hands. I’ll never forget the first day I arrived at the house and started petting Panda and literally four members of the family all exclaimed “NOOO! WHAA?? QUE NOOO!” at the same time.

Sonya the parrot is also very cool. She whistles and sings a lot and even knows how to say a few things. The word for “parrot” in Spanish is “lora” and Sonya will often call out “Looooraaaa” as well as “Papá!” when she’s hungry, and “Pandapandapandapanda” when the dog is bothering her. I think she is incredibly interesting, and so I’m often whistling and mimicking her sounds, which always makes my family laugh at me. I’m a constant source of entertainment for them.

As far as straight business goes, my usual day begins at about 5 am when the panadería next door starts churning whatever it churns, crunching whatever it crunches, and wraaanggg-THUDing whatever it wrang-thuds. I stay in bed in that strange rest-sleep-dream-awake state for another hour or so until I get up to take a shower. That’s when the reality of my situation hits. I’m in Nicaragua, I’m not in Ohio, I’m not in Arizona, I’m not home, I’m in Peace Corps, and another day is beginning. It’s not a bad feeling, but more of an odd feeling. Like I know where I am, I know I’m glad to be where I am, but it’s still so new that it feels strange. I don’t like to dwell there for long, so I turn my attention to the fact that it’s shower time and I start to get excited.

I’m obsessed with cold showers now. No joke. Possibly my favorite part of living in Nicaragua is taking cold showers in the morning. I consider myself very fortunate to have worked at freshwater swim places like Wyoga Lake and the Quarry back in Ohio, because I am so much better acclimated to being in cold water because of it. When you go to swim at the Quarry and the water is cold, you jump in… and it’s cold. You deal with it. Well, that’s the same mentality here. You stand there facing the shower, undress, get real pumped up, do a hop-step and BAM, cold shower time. The water feels so refreshing and it immediately wakes me up, I absolutely love it; hands down the best way to start my day.

Next comes breakfast. I could literally write a whole blog post just about the food. My older sister is an amazing cook. I’m eating like a king. Whoever thought (I definitely did, so myself included) that I was going to return from Peace Corps 20 lbs. lighter is sorely mistaken. If I eat this well for two years, the truth will be quite the opposite. Black beans and rice (Gallo Pinto) are a huge part of their diet, as well as chicken and fresh fruit. I drink freshly squeezed juice three times a day, and I can honestly say they are all the greatest tasting drinks I have ever had in my life. To me, nothing even compares. My favorite is Pitalla (Dragonfruit) juice. Does anyone like Power-C Vitamin Water? The Dragonfruit flavor? Well pitalla is that fruit – it looks like a magenta mix between a pinecone and a grapefruit – and my family buys them fresh almost daily. All I have to do is tell my little sister I’m thirsty, and the two of us can choose between making pineapple, granadilla, pitalla, maracuya (pasionfruit), or mango juice at any time; all of which are 100% fresh because they are cultivated and picked right here in the Masaya region of Nicaragua.

Pollo a la plancha - my favorite meal so far. The juice is jugo de pitalla!

After breakfast I leave to meet up with Isaac, another aspiring volunteer who lives about a 45 second walk down the street from my house, to catch a mototaxi ride to Spanish class to meet the other two volunteers in our group that live in my town. Mototaxis look like someone took a red aluminum box and placed it on top of a mo-ped with three wheels instead of two. They also don’t have doors, which makes the ride that much more exciting. With the wind in your face, cruising down the street at God-knows what speed, beeping at absolutely everyone, our daily rides to Spanish class are a blast.

Another interesting cultural note is the use of honking your horn here. In the states we do just about everything to not to have to use our horn, and heaven forbid if someone does, we all get self-defensive thinking they are honking at us. In Nicaragua, car/mototaxi/bus horns are essential to the flow of traffic and to avoiding accidents. There aren’t any sidewalks here, so people and dogs will walk on the sides of the street, bikes will cruise along, and buses, mototaxis, and cars are frequently zooming by. Therefore, vehicles are constantly honking their horns at the pedestrians on the side of the road and at each other to let them know their presence, thus avoiding any surprises or accidents. It’s not being rude, it’s being informative. A honk is a way of saying, “Hey! I’m coming up behind you!” or “Hey, you’re driving slow so I’m going to pass you!” Also, a mototaxi that is empty or has room will honk at people on the street to see if they need a ride. If you want to catch a moto, you simply start walking in the direction you want to go and either flag one down, or wait to hear a honk behind you.

 Isaac and I commute to Rebecca’s house for Spanish class where we find Deb and our teacher, Maritza, hanging out on the porch with a white board and four rocking chairs. We have class from 8-12, break for lunch, and then again from 1:30-3. I’ll go into much more detail about our projects, co-teaching at the instituto, and our youth group meetings on a later post.

Rebecca’s house is a calm, tranquil Eden surrounded by a beautiful garden of foliage, palm trees, bushes, flowers, chickens, incredibly annoying roosters cockadoodling all day, a couple pigs that walk by every once and a while, and bees. I’ve already been stung once. Still alive. Thanks, Benadryl. Seriously though, her house is extremely conducive to our Spanish classes and the porch and has become our work zone for planning our youth group meetings and doing homework.

After class is “free time,” and I use this term lightly because as “aspirantes” (because we are technically not sworn in as volunteers yet, we are aspiring volunteers in training), we have a large amount of homework and a mountain of reading to do each week. Regardless, I’ve been able to find time to hang with my family, play games with the kids, listen to music, and enjoy life here in “my town,” Nicaragua. I could seriously get into about four more pages of detail, but I’m pretty exhausted and should probably call it quits. I think I’ve left you guys with enough for now. I’ve been on some pretty cool trips so far and have the pictures to prove it, but I’m going to hold off for now. Until next time, I’ll leave you with a cool quote from Peace Corps that has stuck with me since day one of Orientation here.

Go in search of your People:

Love them;

Learn from Them;

Plan with Them;

Serve Them;

Begin with what they have;

Build on what they know

But of the best Leaders

When their task is

accomplished,

their work is done,

The People all remark:

“We have done this

Ourselves.”

Love and miss you guys. Hablaremos pronto,

Zach