Tikkun Olam in Nicaragua

Volcano!

2007-11-12T11:31:00.000-06:00

I'm posting some pics of the hike I took up Volcano Telica in the volcano belt of the West coast of Nicaragua. It was a beautiful scenic hike, through corn and bean fields. We rested under a grapefruit tree where I ate a tart green fruit. When we reached the top I felt like I was on top of the world. We had a beautiful view of the other volcanoes in the distance, fields as far as the eye could see far below, and the open steaming crater of the volcano. Later we climbed up to peer over the edge of the crater. It was like looking straight into the core of the earth. And scary too, because the walls of the crater were steep and it felt like you could just stumble right over the eduge. We camped below the crater in a flat valley strewn with volcanic rocks and watched the sunset from on top of the world.

Living on Coconut bread

2007-11-06T12:03:00.000-06:00

I just spent the last week on the Carribean coast of Nicaragua. There's really too much to tell here, so I'll just post some pictures.

The first picture is of the main street of Bluefields. The others are from Little Corn Island. I went with my friend Leo, who had to go for work. Despite the fact that it rained the first few days, the sun finally came out the last day and we enjoyed the colors of the water. I ate lobster in Bluefields, listened to coastal reggae and socca music on the wharf waiting for the boat to Pearl Lagoon, and learned some Creole sayings. I also took a variety of boat rides, from extremely scary huge waves on open sea to a speedy lolling ride from Bluefields to Pearl Lagoon. And of course, I ate a ton of coco bread.

Religion discussion

2007-10-17T11:25:00.000-06:00

My friend and coworker Maria at the centro bought me a beautiful hardcovered planner for my birthday. It's in Spanish, and it's a bible planner. Normally if someone in the states gave me a bible planner, I'd probably be annoyed about it, either because of the assumption that I'm Christian or that I would want to convert to Christianity. In this case I felt differently.

During the Rosh Hashanah celebration that I organized at the centro, we had a discussion about Christianity and Judaism. One of my coworkers noted when I translated the prayers that they were very similar to the prayers that they say, blessing God for the food and shelter that they enjoy. We talked about how Jesus grew up Jewish and that we share the Old Testament.

Maria told me that she knew that I'd like her gift, based on the discussions we've had about religion. She participated with Gustavo in a project with youth in a neighboring barrio based on liberation theology, and what they call the misa campesina. The misa campesina is a collection of songs, readings and practices based on the values of social justice found in the Bible and in the life of Jesus. Maria and Gustavo organized the youth and encouraged them to take and interpret these texts based on their reality, and to use them to make changes in their neighborhood. I told Maria about Tikkun Olam, and how the base values of our religions are so similar. Gustavo jumped in saying that many people think going to church and passively receiving the words of a priest or of God make them the most devout Christians. But he said that people need to take action on these beliefs to really complete the contract with God.

I hope with this planner that I can learn more about how the Bible propounds these values to build bridges between my faith and that of the community in which I'm working and living.

Rainbow

2007-10-11T16:56:00.000-06:00

It's been raining cats and dogs for about a week. It rained all day yesterday on my birthday, but I like the rain, so it was cool. Apparently October is the rainiest month. I remember when I came last year that it rained every morning, and in the afternoon usually as well. (as a side note, on Oct. 15 I will complete one year of being here!!!)

Today it started raining right when I was getting off the bus. I have to walk about 3 blocks from the bus stop to the Puntos office. At first I waited in the bus shelter, but decided to just run for it. I ended up getting totally soaked, including soaking through my shoes (they stink now).

It let up in the late morning, and started again in the afternoon. After English class with the kids, it had stopped raining and the sun actually showed its face. Reflecting on the clouds and the humidity that remained, a full rainbow stretched over the treeline in front of the classrooms. I think it might be the first time in my life that I've seen a full rainbow.

Whose got the biggest balls?

2007-10-05T10:36:00.000-06:00

No this is not a joke. This was the name of a contest sponsored by the Mayor's office of Managua to raise awareness about waste management and recycling. The youth in Walter Ferretti participated, collecting plastic bags, plastic bottles and cardboard, working tirelessly trying to make huge balls of garbage. They met every afternoon glueing cardboard, tying together plastic bags and rolling them up like a huge ball of string (think aluminum foil ball on Peewee's Playhouse). I was very impressed by how well they worked together, dividing up tasks between the four balls and coordinating the collection of garbage. They ended up winning 3rd place in the contest, which was $100, and they're going to use the money to take a trip to the beach with all who participated.

Leadership

2007-10-02T12:14:00.000-06:00

Gustavo and I planned a leadership workshop for the kids in the youth group that we facilitated on Sunday. It was a true collaboration in the planning process, as I contributed parts of the leadership workshop I did with Gina at Heartland, and he contributed his own ideas based in his 10 years of experience working with Nicaraguan youth. We both got really excited about our ideas and how to make the workshop as participative as possible.

Because we started late (an hour and a half!!), we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything we'd planned. The two activities we started with were fantastic! We did an activity called People and Things. In each group, one person was the "person" and denominated each person as a "thing" that they would use. In the first picture, Marling is sitting on her chair watching her TV, and in the second, the kids are sitting on their sofa. The idea being that they think about how it feels to be used and how it feels to treat others like things.

The next activity was a dramatization of the different kinds of leaders... autocratic, bureaucratic, paternalistic, democratic and passive. I was amazed by the kids' ability to improvise theater. They were hilarious and creative, and they didn't need hardly any props, just dialogues. I've definitely noticed that kids here are able to tell long stories from a young age, like their parents, with all the gestures and comments that adults make. It's pretty incredible.

The only things was that we couldn't really deepen the discussion. The kids started losing interest and didn't have the background knowlege I'd expected. When we asked them to think of a leader and the characteristics they admired in them, most answered their mom or dad because of the support they gave them throughout their life. It was very superficial. There wasn't time to talk more about leadership qualities and have them set their own goals for themselves about how to be better leaders. But the good thing was that they participated and maybe came away with something (including a good lunch!)

Participatory Evaluation

2007-09-27T09:35:00.000-06:00

The other day one of my students at Puntos, who actually works for the Central American Women's Fund across the street (http://www.fcmujeres.org/) said that her boss wanted a complete evaluation of the class, to make sure that the money they were making a good investment in English classes and that the students were making progress. I played it cool, but was panicking a little, because I felt like it was a test of how good of a teacher I am. Ahh!

So I decided to go back to the book that my friend Jana recommended to me, Making Meaning, Making Change about participatory ESL learning. They say that traditional evaluations have been very unsuccessful, and that evaluation is a process of learning and collaboration between the teacher and the students that continues from the beginning to the end, starting with the students' goals. I took a sigh of relief, and gleaned many ideas from the book for ways to involve the students in the evaluation process using activities and excercizes that are applicable to their lives. Today I started by having a discussion about the times that they have needed or will need to speak on the phone in English. Out came some of their fears about speaking on the phone (which is so hard to do in a foreign language!!!). Then they picked one of these situations and wrote a dialogue about it. As one of them was about giving a financial report to their accountant in the states, they had to look up a lot of relevant vocabulary. Hopefully some of these tools will come in handy when I'm teaching English in the states...

Another side of Nicaragua

2007-09-20T09:25:00.000-06:00

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long! Technological problems.

This weekend I experienced another side of Nicaragua, maybe the real side. It makes life in Managua seem like a shadow. The mountains in the north of the country are where the most intense part of the Contra war was fought. The slopes of the mountain are a patchwork of fields planted with corn, beans, coffee and pastures for cows and horses.

We stayed on a farm, of my friend's sister-in-law's mom, Doña Marta and Don Toño (see picture of Norma and Doña Marta above, mother and daughter). We had to cross a river on foot to get there (see picture). They welcomed us warmly, cooking us special tamales with chicken from the patio, atol, which is a corn-based dessert, and killing a pig for my friend's nephew's birthday party. Doña Marta and her family gave up their beds for our group of 8 people to sleep in, made us delicious breakfasts of gallo pinto with eggs, avocado and cheese, and told us all about work on the farm.

After the piñata (see picture above), my friend and I went to Wiwilí, a small town way up by the border with Honduras on the Rio Coco. I felt like I was in a different country here, in the midst of green folding mountains and farms. It took us 4 hours in a bumpy horrible bus to get there, but it was worth it. We walked 15 km to the tiny community that my friend worked in during his year of social service after medical school (picture of river and mountains). It took 4 hours, and the wife of his friend saved our lives by making us some food, as there was absolutely nowhere to go to buy food. After 4 hrs of walking it was necessary to eat (for those of you who know how I am when I'm hungry)

Despite the extremely long trip, it was amazing to share a piece of life with the people I met up north.

Pictures from Ometepe

2007-09-07T09:40:00.000-06:00

This past weekend my friend Eduardo and I went to Ometepe, the island in the middle of lake Nicaragua. Such a difference from Managua! Peaceful, very green, the people are extremely warm and welcoming. I'll write a little more later, but for now here are some pics...

1. Charco Verde, or green puddle, where we stayed, with Concepción Volcano in the background

2. Bird (for you grandpa!)

3. View of the Concepción Volcano from a little walk we took along the lake in Mayogalpa

4. Sunset on the ferry

5. Me in a little store in San Jorge, where the ferry leaves from

Hurricane Felix

2007-09-07T09:21:00.000-06:00

I'm sure a lot of you have heard about Hurricane Felix in the states. It passed over the Atlantic Coast Region of Nicaragua with force, but in Managua, just lots of rain and thunderstorms. In other words, I'M TOTALLY FINE. The towns it affected most are Puerto Cabezas (the biggest city in the north atlantic region), Bilwi, and Sandy Bay, where they say that all of the houses on the bay were destroyed.

The government today is saying that the death count is at 39 but could reach 70, 105 people missing, 18, 477 evacuated, 70,000 residents affected, and 7,795 houses destroyed. Bodies of those who drowned are appearing on shore. Search teams have found 17 unidentified bodies so far, and Honduran authorities found 12.

Most of the houses in the region are made of wood, and they say that the rooves simply blew right off the houses. Even in the schools that people were staying in as refuges, the rooves blew off. Right now there is a crisis because there is no electricity, no water and very little food. There's also the risk of disease spreading through contaminated wells and mosquitos.

People are organizing around the country to provide support to their fellow citizens, sending food, water, clothes, hygiene supplies and blankets, among other things. The centro is throwing a fundraiser with a raffle, music and dance performances. The Red Cross has been helping too.. (A lot of this info and the pictures come from today's La Prensa).

Photos of Cleanup Day

2007-08-29T16:10:00.000-06:00

Community Cleanup

2007-08-27T09:51:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I feel so inspired. Nowhere in the world are things perfect, but in some moments parts of life just seem to click so sweetly that you feel like there's some hope for the future. Organizing the jornada de limpieza (neighborhood cleanup day) this week, the strength of community amazed me. A group of about 15 or 20 kids from the Solidaridad de los Pueblos school and the youth group went door to door in their community, informing their neighbors about the cleanup day on Saturday and encouraging them to put out their garbage. To clarify, the garbage truck rarely passes in many areas of the neighborhood. How do people get rid of their garbage then? Burning it, throwing it in the drainage ditch, carrying it to places where the truck does pass, throwing it on the street. It sits in pools of water when it rains, becoming bloated and rotten. So we called and asked the mayors office to send a truck to the neighborhood to collect the garbage and they agreed. It's actually ridiculous that you have to arrange for the truck to come. It should pass regularly and help people manage their waste situation better. But very often here you have to call and demand to receive basic services, particularly when you happen to live in a poor area. So this was actually nothing of a sustainable solution, but a way to start dialogue in the community.

But the most beautiful part was wandering from street to street and seeing the kids really energized about talking to people about how to make the neighborhood cleaner. They ran from house to house, in the ridiculously hot sun of midday, racing to see who could reach the most number of houses. Kids inspire adults to action more than other adults... I mean who can resist an eleven year old engaged in positive activities. People have such a propensity to complain about the bad behavior of youth... But this day they couldn't complain...

Update

2007-08-22T09:19:00.000-06:00

Here is an update I wrote to my contacts at AJWS about how things are going at work. I have some pictures but am not so excited about carrying my camera around right now- I don't want it to get stolen...

I hope all is well with you. I wanted to send you an update on how things have been going in Managua at AMUCOBU.

I have been very pleased with how work has been progressing since I returned from the United States. I proposed to the staff here some of the ideas I had discussed with you when I was in NYC, and they were very open to implementing them. Last week I gave the first in a series of workshops to the staff on how to work with youth with drug and alcohol problems. First we discussed the nature of addictions, and then moved into treatment methods, particularly Harm Reduction, which I have extensive experience with from my past job. This week we will continue discussing Harm Reduction as well as practice some practical tools that they can use when working with groups of youth or individuals in counseling. Next I think we'll do some planning about how they can structure their programs here to include youth with drug and alcohol problems, because now they are not really invited to youth group events.

Also, we have had a series of activities related to the environment. I posted about one of them on my blog, with pictures, where we planted trees donated by the mayor's office. Last week I planned and facilitated a workshop with my counterpart, Gustavo, about the environmental impacts of garbage and ways to keep the neighborhood clean. This Saturday we will have a neighborhood cleanup day, with the help of the mayor's office who are providing a truck and 20 workers to help throw away and recycle trash. We formed an ecological brigade with the youth, who will go around the neighborhood on Thurs and Fri alerting families to put out their garbage, and to separate the paper, plastic, glass and aluminum. Hopefully it will go well.

I'm also continuing with English classes. I have a group of dedicated students who are motivated and perseverent. Today one of them sang a song by herself in front of the class, and another presented her, in English, using a marker as a fake microphone. It was fantastic, and very spur of the moment. Some things you just can't plan, and they turn out better than if you had planned them.

Tree planting day

2007-08-13T09:20:00.000-06:00

Even though ants are tiny little things, they do a lot of damage! Invade your shoes, bite like needle pricks, and inflame your foot like an air mattress. Then it goes away, like nothing ever happened. I ignored the warnings of Damaris, one of the youth involved in our tree planting day, as I filled up the hole she had made to plant her tree with dirt. When you talk about working collectively, the kids did a great job. Some brought tree saplings, others broke up the hard dry earth, others dug out the holes with shovels, and still others planted. Someone filled up the water bucked and watered the tree. In front of the centro, we cleared the grass and the garbage from the narrow strip of earth between the sidewalk and the wall (accidentally damaging a water pipe- just a minor unexpected crisis), put all the garbage in big sacks and planted a row of trees. Despite being hot, sweaty and hungry, all 35 of us worked on until our quesillos and tiste arrived and we had a chance to sit down and take a break. 100% difference between before and after. .. from garbage strewn to pure earth and trees.

2007-08-07T09:27:00.000-06:00

Here's some snapshots of my neighborhood and my neighbors. The first picture is of the houses across the street and the mango tree in front of the house. The second is my porch in the early morning light. The third are my friends Nico and Gladioska who live down the street. And the last one is a street late afternoon in the neighborhood (la Colonia Centroamerica)

electricity problems

2007-08-05T15:08:00.000-06:00

The barrio, among other places, has been experiencing some serious energy shortages recently. As I said in the last posting, there has been no electricity in the centro for over a week. Not only the centro, but other parts of the barrio as well have been without electricity. In Managua as a whole, we've been experiencing rolling blackouts for about 2 months, and it appears that there's no end in sight for the energy crisis.

Many people asked me about how Daniel Ortega's new government has been doing since they took power in January, and this is a story that came up often in these conversations. He's been building partnerships with the president of Iran and with Hugo Chavez, making plans to build more hydroelectric plants funded by their oil revenues. Today I read in La Prensa that Daniel met with the president of Iran yesterday to solidify and move forward on these plans, also including funding the building of 10,000 houses, a plastics factory, and a large health center. The projects wouldn't start though for at least a year, leaving citizens struggling to get by without basic necessities.

The barrio residents, having a tradition of organizing themselves when facing problems such as these, called Union Fenosa, the spanish-owned electric company, to send out a representative to the neighborhood to get some honest answers. Apparently, at the meeting on Thursday, some wanted to surround the UF truck and make their demands while others wanted to simply talk with the rep. I don't really know what ended up happening because I didn´t get the full story, but we'll have to see if the people will get their electricity back soon. In the meantime, we'll be trying to work in the office without lights, air conditioning or computers. This may mean going home at noon every day... we'll see.

Santo Domingo

2007-08-03T14:30:00.000-06:00

Even though I´ve only been gone for two weeks, it´s funny being back. I´ve traveled many times, but never come back home in the middle of my stay. I so quickly fell back into my Chicago life, my comfort zone, that it was strange to jump back to the chaos of Managua.

I ended up coming back the day of the patron saint festival. There was a procession across the city with a big altar of Santo Domingo, and an hipico, which is a kind of parade of horses. People come from all over the country with their horses, dressed in traditional costume, and march through the streets, making horses dance to the strains of music blasting from competing speaker systems. The city closed off some of the main arteries, the roads I take in the mornings to Puntos on the bus. It was cool to see them lined on all sides by food vendors and beer vendors, shouting out their competing prices for cans of Toña and Victoria. Collapsable stages every 20 feet tried to drown out their neighbors with strains of ranchera, reggaeton, or live music. One stage had some MTV-esque dancers shaking it on platforms. Vendors walked through the crowds selling straw and leather cowboy hats that I was very tempted to buy. The whole festival had this cowboy feel to it.

I of course came back to find my house a complete disaster and have been working on cleaning it little by little, including the nasty broken fridge, which is cleaner now than I´ve ever seen it before, thank god! And today I battled with Managuan traffic and heat again walking from my house to the centro, where I arrived to find that there hasn´t been electricity there for a week! (more about that later). But I felt more ready to enter this battle now that i had 2 weeks of just having to deal with Chicago and New York traffic, nothing compared to here!

Back in Chicago

2007-07-16T08:28:00.000-06:00

Being back home is great and weird at the same time. I knew it would be this way, but wasn't sure how it would play out. I've been dreaming about the food I would eat when I came home for months. Now I'm totally overwhelmed by it all. I've been to 3 grocery stores in 4 days, and pretty much bought out Trader Joe's yesterday. My mom and I cooked kale with raisins garlic and quinoa last night, and I fried up some tofu and put that Soyaki sauce from Trader Joe's on it. Delicious! I can't tell you all how much I've been craving kale.

But anyways, when I was in Caputo's supermarket with my mom, I suddenly became overwhelmed. Seeing all the produce made me think about all the things I wanted to cook, and made me jump back to my life of last summer, suddenly. Chicago summers are so amazing, so much going on, and I was feeling like I wouldn't be able to do everything. But I think I've chilled a little since then, and realized that I can just do what I can fit in, and I'll be back here next summer.

Great things about Chicago...

1. Hot showers!!!!

2. My bike

3. Kale

4. being able to talk to people on the phone whenever I want

5. the weather... who thought I'd ever say that? but it's been 80 degrees sunny and perfect!

6. green leafy salads

7. soul and hip hop music

8. parks

I'll probably think of more...

La señora next door

2007-07-06T14:21:00.000-06:00

(The photos are from Doña Telma's birthday)

My neighbor is crazy. I think she's probably diagnosably schizophrenic. It can be endearing, entertaining and infuriating sometimes. I actually have no idea what her name is. But she owns about 7 dogs, all of which are tiny and bark a lot. She spends most of the day screaming at them to get in the house or to stop making a mess, and threatens to hit them. As if they were little children. Let me set the stage. You're sitting peacefully in the hammock in your front patio reading a book, when suddenly 3 dogs start barking and the señora starts screaming. She also likes to play her music really loudly. Usually the music isn't bad... ranchera, bachata, even reggaeton. The problem is the volume and the time of day. She often starts at 6:30am, waking up my poor roommate who's window opens onto her porch.

Yesterday, she started talking to people who weren't actually there and laughing hysterically when she found a fallen branch from the mango tree in front of our house and brought it into her house. I have no idea what she wanted to do with it. She also has a fun habit of calling the police whenever someone she doesn't know walks by the house. One time, a guy wanted to pick some of the mangos from our tree, and we said sure. She got in a fight with him, saying he shouldn't be there, and proceeded to call the police. The police must know her phone number and ignore it. I usually find her to be entertaining, but my other roommates think otherwise...

The best students ever

2007-06-29T11:19:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I was at home all day recovering from the flu. In the afternoon, I was surprised when 4 of my English students showed up at my front gate. I usually have class on Thursdays and they had planned a surprise party for Teacher's day. So because I wasn't in class, they decided to bring the party to my house. They brought me little gifts, a loaf of bread to make sandwiches and a bottle of coke. We sat around the table on the front patio, ate, chatted and laughed. I think I have the best students ever!

2007-06-27T16:38:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the lapse in writing! I've been a little under the weather but am hopefully on the mend!

Currently I'm drinking orange-papaya juice out of aplastic bag with a straw, which definitely has to be one of those quintessential Nicaragua experiences... One of the things that I'm going to miss when I'm in Chicago... But there's so many things I'm excited about seeing, eating and doing in Chicago that I don't think I'll have too much time to think about my juice cravings...

Last week my favorite bus entertainment gave a little concert in the 119 on my way from Puntos to the centro. It's a duo, consisting of a boy about 12 yrs old with a guitar and agirl about 10, probably siblings... He strums the melodies of popular ranchera songs and the girl sings in a crooning voice that expresses a sadness that I hope she hasn't experienced yet in her life. One of the songs is Puño de Tierra, which means fist of dirt, that's about dying. My friend Tere says she wants a mariachi band to play this song at her funeral. The boy harmonizes with the girl while he's playing his guitar, and it really makes the ride a lot more enjoyable (you forget about the heat, that you're sticking to your seat, or that there's a bar sticking into your back).

Speaking of Mariachis, doña Esmeralda took all of the ladies (and one of the men) from the office out last week to celebrate Doña Thelmita's birthday in the Rotunda Bello Horizonte. The Rotunda is a traffic circle lined with fast food chicken restaurants, where mariachi bands ask you if you want them to play you songs. One of the groups played 4 songs for Doña Thelma as we sat outside of the Tip-Top chicken joint drinking beers, and she cried... We then went to a bar where a lot of people from the atlantic coast hang out and ate fish soup in coconut milk broth. It was amazing!

Little Snippets

2007-06-20T12:24:00.001-06:00

1. Fruit vendors. Every morning, I buy little baggies of cut up fruit from a woman at the bus stop in front of the Police station. From about 6:30 in the morning, she expertly wields her knife and cuts through the thick skin of a pineapple like it was butter. The fruit salad usually includes watermelon on the bottom, then pineapple, then banana then either cantelope or papaya. It's really an ingenious business. Who wants to buy an entire watermelon, lug it home, cut it up and then transport it with you wherever you're going? This way, you pay 5 cordobas for a variety of fruit already cut for you. Great deal!

2. Folklore. This is the traditional dancing of Nicaragua. For many events, groups of girls and teenagers will perform the dances in costumes like those in the picture... long wide dresses and flowers in their tightly wound hairbuns. The steps are simple, calculated and involve holding the ends of the skirt and swirling them around as you turn. Or having the ends of the skirt drawn in to the hips as you step ball change on one side. The event in the picture above is from the International Day of the Child event we had a couple of weeks ago.

3. Garbage. People throw it everywhere. Out of bus windows, on the floor of their house, into the lake. The little girls in my house in the barrio used to throw their used fruit peels, cookies and wrappers all over the floor, with the idea that someone was going to clean up after them, (ie, Ana). In the centro, people do the same, throwing their garbage everywhere... It makes for dirty streets, sticky floors and general pollution.

4. Fritangas. These are also everywhere... Little sidewalk eateries, sometimes just a table set up in front of someone's house, and some an entire restaurant in an actual building. The typical fare is carne asada, pollo asado (grilled meat or chicken), that comes with gallo pinto (red beans and rice), cabbage salad, fried plantain chips, and sometimes fried cheese. When I don't feel like cooking, I usually eat something here.

Play dates

2007-06-15T13:47:00.000-06:00

I finally can listen to Chicago Public Radio at the centro with our new turbonet!!! So I was listening just now to The Story, and they were interviewing a stay at home dad. The interview accentuated for me cultural differences in child raising between Nicaragua and the states. First, the phenomenon of stay at home dad. I would say that more common here is the stay at home grandpa. Even unemployed dads, like the dad in the story, usually find somewhere to be besides the house taking care of kids all day, even if it means hanging out with buddies at the local convenience store. Also, the dad in the story mentioned setting up play dates. The play date I think is a unique north american phenomenon. Here, kids are always on play dates. They play in the streets together all the time, play in the house with their cousins or neighbors, play soccer on the basketball court... There is no need to set up a date because there are always friends nearby. Another example of how in Nicaragua, it's really the whole community that raises the kids, as opposed to the states where kids are isolated in their houses much of the time and have to arrange special times to play with their friends.

Siuna

2007-06-13T12:52:00.000-06:00

Although the very back seat of the school bus was the coveted location of the cool kids in elementary school, it's not the best for a trip across Nicaragua. The overnight trip to Siuna took 8 hours and the pavement turned to gravel halfway through. My butt and back felt every bump! We arrived at 4am and went straight to the house where all the doctors live right next door to the health center.

In the morning Eduardo showed me around the city. It reminded me of being in the Wild West... lots of horses, houses made of wood planks like Little House on the Prairie and set up on stilts that prevent flooding during the rainy season. There are more horses than cars, and pigs roam around the streets (there was a pig hanging out eating garbage behind the health center... see picture). We saw the old gold mine which is full of water now(see picture) and ate at a little eatery across from the airport (which is pretty much just a strip where the 15-seater airplanes land.)

On Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party with Eduardo's doctor friends and then to the disco, which is the best disco I've been to yet in Nicaragua! They played socca, palo de mayo, merengue and reggaeton... so mostly music from the Atlantic Coast, which has significant African influence (now you see why I liked it!). There was also an act by a guy imitating a famous gay Mexican ranchera singer which was hilarious. The next morning we walked 4 km through greenery and farmland to a river where we went swimming (although most of the community uses it to wash clothes by scrubbing them on the rocks).

I wanted to go all the way to the coast, but the trip to Puerto Cabezas is another 14 hours away by bus... My body was not up for that ride!

Media bias

2007-06-04T17:19:00.000-06:00

So I happened to be on the Chicago Trib website today and came across this editorial, dated June 2nd, about the Eric Volz case in Nicaragua http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0602edit3jun02,0,5369321.story?coll=chi-newsopinion-hed. The 28 year old was accused of murdering his Nicaraguan girlfriend and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Honestly, I have no idea about whether the guy is innocent or guilty. But I have to say that this editorial is part of the media manipulation that Volz' family has been pushing across the US to try to free him. They are capitalizing on the ignorance of the American public about the situation in Nicaragua, raising up alarms that a communist Sandinista country is unjustly imprisoning innocent Americans. Also, saying that local hatred for Volz is "fueled by anti-American sentiment" is ridiculous. San Juan del Sur is a tourist town that thrives on American dollars. They warmly accept Americans to stay there and spend their money that helps to provide a living for their residents (although I don't think that American retirees buying up the coast and building huge homes in the second poorest country in the hemisphere is that laudable).

I read a couple of months ago in El Nuevo Diario that american journalists have been harassing residents of San Juan del Sur, witnesses and family and friends of the victim, trying to get them to change their position or say something to Volz' innocence. The article said that residents were sick of this harassment and wanted these journalists to stop bothering them and let them grieve in peace. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the guy killed his girlfriend and is trying to manipulate the media to show his innocence.