Christmas etc.

Although I missed going to the movies and dinner with Mom, Dad and Jake this year, I was glad to be able to celebrate Christmas here in Managua with my friends and family nicaraguense. People here celebrate on the 24th more than the 25th, and it's kind of like New Year's... Everyone stays up until midnight and then wish each other a merry Christmas as fireworks are going off all over the city. I went over to Tere's house and had a few Toña's with her, Miriam and José, another friend. Tere is an amazing cook, and made a delicious carne and pollo asada with rice, cabbage salad and tostones. Her 13 year old daughter Lindsey is in love with bachata music, so we danced a bit. Later, I went to Maria's house, where at midnight we all wished each other a merry christmas. We went to Brenda's, then to Doña Esmeralda's, then back to Ana's house.

On the 25th, I slept late and then went back to Maria´s, who had invited a bunch of people over to eat tripe soup. On their back patio was set up a coal fire with an enormous pot of boiling soup (probably about 3x bigger than the enormous pot you're picturing). I wouldn't have eaten it if it weren't for the vegetables, because tripe definitely makes me want to gag. We sqeezed around the table in the kitchen, had some shots of rum, and gorged ourselves on soup. Maria's mom Isabelle was smoking a cigarette and singing songs of lost love to Tere, who was lamenting the sadness of Lindsey and Alonso, her two youngest, who miss their father who lives in New Jersey (also the love of Tere's life). Isabelle later on told stories about seeing her dead aunt walking around her house soon after her death, and other times when the dead didn't really die. I sat with them on the front patio until around 9, when I was starting to fall asleep.

Happy New Year to all!!

Back home!

Photos: Me on top of Tajamulco at sunrise, our group of hikers with the mountain in the background, and nacatamale-making at the centro

I made it back to Managua safe and sound on Thursday night. The trip back from xela to guatemala city to Managua was long! But I had the chance to see some beautiful countryside. Guatemala is more mountainous than I imagined. My bus wound through the Western Highlands, past farms with a patchwork of fields, roughly rectangular, conforming to the sides of the mountains. The bus careened around a switchback turn and into a patch of fog that looked like wisps of smoke. We rose higher and the fog was below us, blanketing the villages below, breaking up into rain. Indigenous women wearing huipiles (skirts made of thick strips of woven fabric that are wrapped around their waist) worked in the fields, alongside their children and husbands. In Xela and in San Marcos, where we left for the hiking trip, indigenous women worked in the markets, restaurants, corner stores, tortillerias and selling fresh squeezed orange juice in the streets. They wore fabric around tightly knotted braids on their heads and carried baskets of breads and fruit on top, covered in another piece of fabric. They spoke to each other in K'itche or Mam, with a bit of spanish thrown in here and there. Indigenous culture seemed more a part of life in Guatemala than in Nicaragua. The government is now allowing indigenous law to supercede the national law in some cases. I also learned about some interesting ecotourism projects between foreign travelers and rural indigenous communities. And if anyone reading this is looking for a spanish school, xela is a great place to go. One of the schools is on a farm, where students learn about rural life and support the collective through their study.

It's really nice to be back in Managua, which feels like home now! I washed a mountain of laundry by hand and got caught up on all of the gossip. Ana and I went to the market to buy food for the week (and some vigorón packed in banana leaves, and cacao drinks in plastic bags) and I made spaghetti with veggies and loads of garlic for dinner. I also visited with Brenda to see how the little girl is doing. She had 5 chemo treatments this week and took them all very well. She's playing like normal and still her cute self. Brenda is still not doing that well, but is making it through day by day. Elipsia will have the surgery to have her eye removed Jan 8th and then have one more chemo after that. Things are looking better.

Have a great holiday for all of you who celebrate!!

Okay, I'm ready to write now

Man did I sleep well last night! It felt so good to wake up and be underneath 3 blankets... It gets cold here in Xela, as we're at a pretty high altitude (I don't know exactly how high...) After sleeping in a 6-person tent with 7 people in sub-freezing cold the night before, my bed in Casa Argentina was like heaven!

In any case, I want to try to give you some highlights from the trip. We met at the Quetzal Trekkers office at 4:45am with our backpacks all ready to go (they lend out equipment to the trekkers). Each bag weighed about 50-60 pounds. We rode in the back of a pickup truck through the dark streets of Xela to the bus station, where we got onto a chicken bus to San Marcos, where we ate breakfast. We then took another bus to the entrance of the hike. The first 15 minutes was tough, just getting used to the altitude. It was really hard to breathe, and I felt a bit nauseous the whole time. The trail leveled out at many points, so it wasn't straight up the whole time. We started pretty high up in the mountains, and had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains the entire time. There were clouds nestled in between them. At one point we walked through a foggy ridge with really tall thin pine trees. Later on in the afternoon, the sun beat out the fog and made the purple, yellow, and rust-red flowers shine brilliantly. We stopped for trail mix and then lunch later on. The QT guides cooked everything for us... potato salad, cabbage salad, guacamole, peanut butter and jelly from a local collective, bread and tortilla chips. The last ascent before we reached our campsite was the hardest... right after I thought I couldn't go any farther, it ended and we reached the campsite. After dinner everyone crashed, but no one really slept well.

The guides woke us at 4am, and we hiked in the dark 220 meters to the top of the volcano. It was really steep and again just when I thought I couldn't go much farther, we reached the top. There was a biting cold wind, so I wrapped up in a sleeping bag with Ana, another trekker, facing the volcanos to the east that you can see in the picture I posted yesterday. As we sat there, Santiaguito, all the way to the right, errupted twice. It felt like we were on top of the world... Behind us was Mexico, but all we could see was mist. Above us a million stars, and a crecent moon sat low above the volcanos. A few groups of Guatemaltecos joined us on top of the crater, and when the sun finally rose, everyone cheered. Our group then hiked around the crater, taking in spectacular views of the mountains around us, and the shadow of Tajamulco cast on the mist to the west.

The entire hike down was unbelievably beautiful... everything that had been couched in fog the day before was completely visible. We could see all the little towns in the mountains, forests, trees and farms, plus the spectacular mountains themselves. By the end my quads were shot. I can see how hiking can become addicting, although I'm ready for a break before I try another volcano... This trip was inspiring for many reasons... the people I met, the time I had to reflect, the physical challenge of hiking in high altitudes, and the exhileration of walking around the crater of the highest volcano in Central America.

Volcán Tajamulco

Í decided last minute, at the suggestion of some folks I met in San Pedro on Lake Atitlán, to join a hiking trip to climb the highest peak in Central America, Volcán Tajamulco. I went with a group called Quetzal Trekkers (check out the link). It was really hard but beautiful. We just got back a few hours ago, and I'm very tired, so I'll write more in a couple of days. In the meantime, enjoy the photos!

Guatemala

After a long and tiring journey across Central America, I arrived last night in Antigua. I travelled with my friend Brian, who I met at a Thanksgiving dinner at the Casa Ben Linder in Managua. Our bus left Managua at 2:30am. We crossed the Honduran border at sunrise, and soon after crossed into El Salvador where we wound through the mountains, past amazing vistas of green rolling valleys, sparse trees, villages nestled in between and layers of peaks in the background, the farthest ones looking like purplish-blue shadows. Crossing over to Guatemala, the mountains seemed to grow larger. We saw more indigenous people on the roadsides dressed in the colorful fabrics that you see in import stores in the states. Guatemala City seemed enormous... It reminded me of LA, encircled by mountains. The city has more tall buildings than Managua, and much of it reminded me of run down business districts of US cities. We drove by one of the markets, some municipal buildings with fountains and stone-etchings that resembled Mayan iconography, and this huge reflective glass shopping center-office building bedecked with Christmas lights spelling out FELIZ NAVIDAD. I was exhausted by the time we got to Antigua, but the first impressions I got from the dark were the cobblestone streets, little artisan´s workshops, and brightly colored houses a la Granada. Today we ate breakfast in this little Bohemian cafe where I had granola yogurt honey bananas and raisins. We then wandered around looking at the ruins. It´s really beautiful here and there´s tons of gringos... very relaxing, but tomorrow I´ll be moving on to either Lake Atitlán or Maya Pedal (www.mayapedal.org). Will keep you posted!!

There´s been sad stuff going on in Walter Ferrety recently. One of the ladies in the office, Brenda, has a 2 year old granddaughter who´s been diagnosed with this rare form of eye cancer. She needs to get chemo, and probably have her eye removed. Her parents are really young, 20 and 22, and totally destroyed, as is Brenda and pretty much everyone else. This kid is spunky and a bubble of light wherever she goes. She´s one of those kids who captures everyone´s heart when she enters a room. She was chatting with all the adults in the hospital, and lightening their experience, I´m sure. On the last day of Purisima, Brenda traditionally invites the neighborhood to her house to pray at an altar to Maria. The songs of prayer are really pretty and often incorporate elements of Liberation Theology. After singing them all night the previous evening, I knew the words and melodies pretty well and was able to sing with everyone else. After praying, all of the children lined up to receive their nacatamales (yes, we made 200 more nacatamales for this occasion). When everyone had left but friends and family, Brenda called everyone into a prayer circle, where each person had a chance to personally pray for the health of Elipsia and all of the other children in the cancer hospital. Everyone was crying, but found strength in looking up at the statue of Maria encircled in flowers, lights, balloons, candles and incense smoke. (The first picture is Elipsia and Itsita, the little girl who I live with. The second is Elipsia with her dad Nager, Doña Esmeralda´s youngest son).

Nacatamales

Pictures from the graduation... The woman in pink is Theres, and the girl is part of the youth group.

Today is Purisima, the holiday celebrating the patron saint of Nicaragua, Maria. People will be roaming the streets singing songs of praise from house to house. The people in the houses then give gifts, usually bananas, or sugarcane, or other little toys for the kids. I´m going to ¨gritar" as it's called, with Gabriela, Doña Esmeralda's niece. Yesterday, we prepared for Purisima at the centro. Every year, they make 700+ nacatamales (like regular mexican tamales, but bigger and softer, and they have pork, chile, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and whatever else you decide to put in). Gloria, Aida and Chilo came at 5am to start peeling and chopping vegetables. by 9:30, there were about 8 people at work. Doña Thelma was preparing the masa (the dough) in the kitchen, and everyone else was in the rancho in the schoolyard working at big tables. When I came back from running an errand with Fatima at 3, they had just started assembling the nacatamales. A few people washed the banana leaves. A few picked out 3 leaves, arranged them, put a handful of masa in the center, rice, a piece of pork, a piece of pork fat and potatoes. Then they passed it along to the next person, who added tomato, onions, chile, raisins, an olive, a slice of pepper, and a sprig of mint on top. The next person wrapped up the banana leaves, much like a burrito, and finally someone tied up the package. I spent a majority of the time adding the peppers and tomatoes. By 5pm, we were really just getting started. When Theres got back from her son´s graduation, she set up the fire to cook the nacatamales. She put about 60 wrapped nacatamales in a huge metal barrel, set it on top of the fire, added a couple of buckets of water, covered it with plastic to keep the steam in, and let it cook for an hour. By around 9pm, everyone was slap happy, giggling uncontrollably. I understood little of what they said at this point, a combination of being tired and not catching all the slang and plays on words that were setting people off. I looked up to the kitchen and could see Theres, her adopted daughter Karen and Maria's faces reflected the orange light of the fire as they cooked more masa. It was getting chilly, so I sat next to the steaming barrel of nacatamales while Maria and Theres were transferring them to a huge plastic bin with tongs. Gabriela was half asleep on a piece of plastic on the cement steps, and Theres' mom, sister and niece were testing out a cooked nacatamale in the rancho. I think we finally left at around midnight, but there´s still a lot more to make today!

Graduation

The graduation ceremonies went very smoothly this weekend. The one for the 6th graders and preschool was held in the church in the barrio. At one end is a pulpit and a picture of Santa Maria behind it. The national anthem played as each student walked down the aisle accompanied by a parent or sibling, dressed in their school uniforms. The parents dressed up for the occasion, some wearing what seemed like evening gowns. Even though none of the kids are mine, I felt proud of all of them, and could feel the pride emanating from everyone there. On Sunday was the graduation of the three workshops- Sewing, Baking and Arts & Crafts. We spent the morning decorating and preparing the rancho in the yard of the centro- hanging the board with the letters cut out of construction paper welcoming the graduates, red and green fabric, the red and green bows we´ve been working on all week, a makeshift christmas tree, floral arrangements, and the display case with the baked goods prepared by the participants of the workshops. After each student was called up to receive their diploma, 6 of the students from the sewing workshop modeled the clothes they made in the class. I was really impressed by what the ladies had made… (you can see in the picture). After the festivities were over, we ate one of the cakes in the display, some pasteles, which are like pastries filled with spiced chicken, drank a little beer and listened to some palo de mayo music, which is the carribean-soca type music from the people who live on the Atlantic Coast. The picture is of Doña Esmeralda giving the opening greeting at the graduation of the workshops...