Honduran Unrest

Thanks for the comments on the civil unrest in Honduras. As many know, Jess and I live only a few kilometers from the Honduran Border. According to the people in our Health Center, who manage the border for Porcine Flu, Honduran officials aren't allowing anyone in or out of the country. We've heard that there are tractor trailers backed up on either side of the border. Somoto hasn't seen much out of the ordinary, although the prices of some foods have risen significantly. In Managua we've heard of "Solidarity Demonstrations," as the Sandinistas are good buddies with the Zelaya government.

We'll send you more updates as we hear, so far it's totally normal here in Nicaragua...on that front.

We are dealing with our own mini-political crisis, however. The newly elected mayor of Managua died today. We went through a bunch of political turmoil in November throughout the election, and now it all might get stirred up again. We'll see....

Here's an article on the story:
Mayor of Nicaraguan Capital Found Dead

Back to Nicaragua!

Mural of Somoto on the Wall of the Market

Well, we are now back in Somoto after two very short weeks at home. The time was well spent with family and friends and despite driving all over New York and New Jersey, we managed to see almost everybody we hoped to meet up with. Getting back to Nicaragua wasn’t too bad. We arrived at the Augosto C. Sandino Airport in Managua around 11:30 Wednesday to a bunch of airport staff in gloves and masks – Swine Flue had finally reached Nicaragua during our time in the States. Before we ever got to customs we had to stand in front of a camera that reads your body temperature to see if you’ve got a fever. Fortunately, Jess and I made it out OK. We were on a bus to Somoto by 1:15 and home by 5 o’clock. Katie, our fellow volunteer in Somoto, was waiting for us at the house with Astro, who didn’t seem to have forgotten us.

Thursday was back to work and back to afternoon thunderstorms. Astro also got back into his routine of sleeping in the mornings and visiting communities in the afternoon. We made it to two youth groups before the week ended. Jess went back to SILAIS to find that the director of the Madríz health department was being replaced. So, while her specific office isn’t affected, most programming has been put on hold as the new director gets acclimated to the job. She’s hoping to start back up next week with some of the workshops she was doing before we skipped town.

In the many plains, cars, and buses it took to get home Jess and I tried to brainstorm some blog topics that you all might find interesting. We’d love to hear some more questions that we can possibly develop into full blog posts, so please leave your comments! The feedback from our Soy and Tire Garden blog was great, and we’ll be sure to answer the questions asked in the near future.

Today, however, we’d like to introduce you all to the Municipal Market here in Somoto. This building we put up about 3 years ago to replace a tangled mess of stalls on the other side of town. Since the market serves close to 50,000 (the entire municipality of Madríz) you can imagine how disorienting and unsafe a market like this can get. In the town we used to live in we were constantly on the lookout for pickpockets as we navigated our way through the dirty market. Here in Somoto, this new building provides a safe, clean space where people can come to do their shopping. Because the building is so simple and open in its design, most agree that it has been a huge success. We’re also hearing of other communities that are looking to build similar markets.

Basically, the market is like a big airport hangar with a few partitions that go up about 10 feet high. The space is divided into 5 separate areas: Produce, Meats, Dry Goods, Clothing and Shoes, and Eateries. Vendors can rent an 8 foot wide and 10 foot deep stall and sell there every day of the week. About half of the stalls are lockable, so things can be stored overnight. Maybe about a quarter of the stalls have electric outlets, so vendors can have fridges, freezers, DVD players, etc. We’ve got a picture for each section, and we’ll explain a little about each area with the pictures below.

The produce section is by far the biggest piece of the market. On the weekend there are probably 20 different vendors in this area. Everything comes from (relatively) nearby and prices are just about the same no matter who you go to. The quality can change quite a bit though, so Jess and I always walk through the whole area to find who has the best produce that day. We also try and buy from as many vendors as we can to spread the money around. While a lot of the produce is the same as you would find in the supermarket in the States, the biggest difference is in the seasonal changes. A lot of staple fruits and veggies are only around for a month or so each year. Some produce can be found in every stall one weekend, and then it´s not seen again for a whole year. Jess and I have to get creative about our menu when it comes to these seasonal items. We could go into detail about what kinds of fruits and veggies change through the seasons, but we could write a whole post just on the varieties that can´t be found in the States. Maybe we will!

The meat section is…well, different to what we’re used to in the States. It is very smelly, full of flies, and there really aren’t any measure taken to make sure the meat stays clean. The Health Department (my co-workers) try to get by every day to check the meat for worms, parasites, and other niceties, but they usually only get there once a week. So, Jess and I don’t buy meat there. If you were interested in buying meat in the market, you’d be able to find any cut of beef or pork you’d like, including testicles, hooves and intestine tracks!

In the dry goods area they sell by the pound coffee, corn, sorghum, corn flour, wheat flour, red beans, white beans, black beans, cocoa, dog food, cat food, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and anything else that can be dried and sold in bulk. Jess and I will get dog food here every once in a while for about 50 cents a pound. Jess will also come here if she wants to do some culinary experiments. Some of her most recent purchases include soy beans (see last post) and “dulce,” the unrefined product that comes from sugar cane. This is also one of the few places we can find baking powder and soda, which we go through pretty quickly in our cooking and smelly shoes.

In the clothing area one can find a bootleg version of any movie, and a knock-off version of any clothing or shoe brand. We’ve got it all: Abercrombie, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, and Hollister, but I tend to stick with brands more my style, such as Tom Cruise dress shirts and Nickel shoes.

The eatery area is home to 4 or 5 Doñas that prepare breakfast and lunch for the low low cost of a $1.50. These are good meals too, with each breakfast featuring one fried egg, a mountain of rice and beans, cheese, cream, two tortillas, half an avocado, and one cup of very strong coffee. The only disadvantage is that the eatery area is right next to the meat stalls, so the smells and flies tend to float your way. Jess and I will still eat there about once a month, and both of our parents have enjoyed a meal from the Doñas during their visits to Somoto.

So, that is the Somoto Municipal Market. We hope you enjoyed your tour. Now that we’re back in action things are starting to pick up again. Please stay tuned for blogs about the visit from the Irish, Hurricane Season 2009, and some of those crazy fruits mentioned above. Thanks again for reading!

Tire Gardens and Soy Food!

Well, as most of our family and friends know, we have been spending the past month wrapping up a few projects in order to prepare ourselves for a 2 week trip home. In fact, by the time you all read this we will already be in the States. We had (have) free internet the night before the trip, so we thought we’d stick up one more blog before we get back.

We’ll be home for two weeks visiting friends and family in NJ and NY, but feel free to call either one of our parents’ houses if you’d like to stay hello. As for those of you concerned for Astro’s wellbeing, we can assure that he is in good hands with a few of our friends in Somoto. He’ll have to wait until 2010 to see the US.

So, what has been going on in our lives? As many know, Jess is a huge fan of gardening. We’ve undertaken several projects in our patio in Somoto (grass, bananas, orchids, etc) and we have a pretty good success rate despite Astro’s omnivore tendencies and the pesky leave cutter ant colony that lives back there. Jess’s biggest problem is bad soil and a lack of safe, dry space to grow stuff. Luckily, Peace Corps has taught us a win win solution to grow veggies, conserve soil, and help get rid of some very pesky garbage. Old Tires!

A tire garden is, very simply, an old tire turned inside out and used as a planter. In Nicaragua, worn out tires are left all over, so it is very easy to come by a suitable tire. An ideal tire has little or no tread, no punctures, and flimsy side walls, which is pretty much as useless as tires get. We visited a guy who owns a few trucks and taxis, and he was able to dig out a tire for us for free. We have read that if you, in the States, are interested in finding old tires you can find them at junk yards and gas stations for anywhere from free to a couple of bucks.

So, we found our tire and rolled it home, which Astro attempted to herd the entire way. He wasn’t very successful, but I’m sure he had fun. The tire went into our back yard, because that’s our only place to do dirty work, but the tire is just as moveable once is has been transformed, so if we were in the States we’d probably have done the next few steps in a garage or driveway.

To get the tire ready for use, you have to cut out one of the walls, leaving about 2 inches of the wall.

Cutting the tire was very difficult for us, but we got it done with a non-serrated knife. It would have been way easier with a reciprocating saw, but hey, you make do with what you got, ya know? With better tools, you can even do fancy designs like scalloped edges and stuff. Anyway, we cut out our side wall in the simplest shape possible: The donut.

Next, we enlisted the service of Ian, our neighborly Peace Corps volunteer. Actually, helping Matt flip the tire was Ian’s payment for spending the night at our place before heading back to his site. Since he’s 7 hours from Managua by bus, it is almost impossible to do in a day. So, Ian and Matt ( and, of course, Astro) got to work inverting the tire. You want to invert the tire because it virtually doubles the space you have to plant in. Also, the shape helps with water drainage, keeping the soil damp, but not too wet.

Inverting the tire was kind of difficult. You want to start at one point pulling the side you’ve cut out back over the tread and to the side wall you haven’t cut. Then, with someone holding that in place, somebody else needs to work that cut sidewall around the tire, until the whole thing pops into it’s inverted form. This is where the flimsy-ness and old-ness of the tire really come into play. We had a good tire for size, but we couldn’t get it inverted without Jess sitting on the first inverted point and then Ian and Matt wrestling the rest of the tire into place. It was quite an effort. We would recommend that anyone who wants to try one of these should start with a smaller, flimsier ATV tire or riding lawn mower tire. Anyway, here’s our inverted tire:

Next, we laid an old burlap rice sack over the hole and places rocks in the tire to hold the burlap in place. We shoveled about 3 inches of sand on top of the burlap, to help with drainage. Next came about 3 inches of compost that we’ve been making out of our banana peels and other organic waste. Last came 3 inches of good top soil, which we were able to buy at a local nursery. Astro took care of the tire pieces we cut out.

Jess planted some green pepper seeds, some squash seedlings, and some hot chili pepper seeds. Matt stuck a few grape fruit seeds in there too, but who knows if they will go anywhere. Here’s a picture of the tire and some of the growth we’ve had. Despite the heavy rains, the squash is doing well and the peppers are coming along as well. This is about 3 weeks after planting. We’ll see how it looks when we get back from the States. The great part is that the daily thunderstorms will keep it all well watered.

Peace Corps is always working to better the situation of people in the countries it serves. However, the main goal of Peace Corps is to do this in a sustainable way, so that a community won’t always need a volunteer present to ensure a high quality of life. Sustainable Development, as it’s called, is very difficult to achieve and it takes a lot of training, planning, and patience. It is NOT just delivering a sack of rice to a family every single month. It’s also not just giving a family a rice patty in which they can grow there own rice. Sustainable development should be not only good for humans, but also good for the environment. So, that doesn’t leave a lot of options. Fortunately, there are some very good ones out there. That is why Peace Corps sends its volunteers, along with a Nicaraguan co-worker to trainings every 6 months to talk about new ideas in sustainable development. Jess and I are just getting back to Somoto after a 3 day training in Matagalpa.

We stayed at a very nice hotel. And when we say nice, we mean that this place actually had two dials the shower: one for hot and one for cold!! Some of the counterparts that came with other volunteers have never seen anything like that in their lives. One counterpart had never stayed in a hotel before this experience.

These trainings are held in different parts of the country so that volunteers (and Nicaraguans) have a chance to learn a little more about the country they live in. Our training was in Matagalpa, which some of you will remember from our visit to Kory and Heather earlier this year. Matagalpa is almost into rainforest territory, so it is very different from the dry, cactus filled mountains of Madríz, where Jess and I live. On our first full day our group was greeted by an animal that none of us had EVER seen in the wild. Say hello to the 2 toed sloth of Matagalpa!

Here is Jess posing with this guy, although he seemed to be more interested in the leaves of this tree than looking good for my picture. Oh well. The volunteers snapped a few pictures and this guy just kept moseying his way up the power lines and into the mountain jungle.

That evening, to get back to sustainable development, we participated in a presentation by the Nicaraguan non-profit SoyNica.

SoyNica, which is supported by the Presbyterian Church USA, offers trainings on the benefits of soy beans. We received a very informative talk about the nutritional benefits of soy foods, and then watch a cooking demonstration on some of the various ways to prepare soy. We made soy milk, soy cakes, soy sausages, and soy fried rice. Although soy beans are readily available here in Nicaragua, most of our Nicaraguan co-workers had never tasted a dish that used soy, let alone cook with soy in their own house.

Here are a few pictures of our Nica buddies analyzing, taste testing, and talking about what they would prepare when they got back to their homes.


This is Jess’s counterpart (Rubenia, woman on the right) who has been looking for healthier options that she can cook in her house. Several family members have hypertension and high blood pressure, so healthier cooking, which means less frying and less meats and more veggies, is a necessity. Rubenia enjoyed a lot of the dishes and took copious notes on how to prepare them. Hopefully we’ll get to sample some of her creations back in Somoto.

My counterpart, Rosa Elena in the white shirt, is helping to make soy cakes, which were then fried in soy oil. Uh oh! Fried?! Well, soy oil contains no cholesterol, which means it’s a healthier option for frying food.

Here is a picture of Pilar, on the left, and another volunteer. Pilar is actually our Nicaraguan boss. She is a Nicaraguan who works for Peace Corps and is the Director of the Health program. She speaks great English and lived in Toronto, Canada for 4 years. She is actually going to the States in June to visit Washington DC and participate in an activity with Peace Corps. She’s very excited, as she’s only been to Miami and never further North.

So, to wrap it up, a lot of Peace Corps is looking for easy solutions to complicated problems. We love to solve two problems with one idea, and tire gardens and soy cooking both fall into that category.

Tire gardens offer a constructive way to get rid of a waste product that is normally burned, which harms the environment. The tires are built to last forever, so the tire gardens we build today can still be used two or three generations from now.
It also offers a great way to plant and grow vegetables out of the ground, which helps avoid putting pollutants in the form of fertilizer in the soil, as well as ensure that your veggies won’t get washed away by a big storm. Nicaraguans normally only grow corn, beans, and coffee so that they can sell the harvest to pay for other necessities. Tire gardens are an easy way to grow household veggies to ensure better nutrition. Good idea? We say yes!

Speaking of agriculture, too much corn growth is bad for the earth, because it sucks all of the nutrients out of the soil. Nicaraguans, who need to harvest every year, just cut down more forest to plant their corn while the worn out land recovers. Soy beans, when planted in rotation with corn, actually put the nutrients needed to grow corn back in the soil. Because soy is a legume, the plants roots push nitrogen back into the earth, Corn, on the other hand, needs nitrogen to grow. It’s almost as if planting soy and corn in rotation is like a human breathing in and out – and it works pretty darn good. But what to do with the soy beans? Well, it turns out that soy beans offer incredible amounts of protein, good fats, and folic acid. The bean can also be very easily processed to be used as milk, cheese (tofu), meat, and even flour. By adding soy to the Nicaraguan diet we can begin to eliminate some very serious nutrition deficiencies without even changing the taste of a traditional dish. All this, while helping agriculture and helping prevent soil damage and deforestation. Good idea? Thumbs up!

If anyone is interested in hearing more about tire gardens or soy, please feel free to ask. These solutions don’t only work in the third world. By incorporating these ideas and others, the US can strengthen itself as well as better the health of it’s citizens.

If we get good feedback from this post we will try and put a few more Peace Corps project ideas up over the next few months. In the meantime, please look for a post from the States about the wild and crazy world of the USA.

As always, thanks for reading!

Astro reading up on Sustainable Development.

Top Ten Finalist!

Hello faithful readers.

As many of you have known for quite some time, Jess is a very talented writer. I believe her to be so talented, in fact, that I hope she will one day write a very successful book series and we will get rich...and I won't have to work.

Today she is one step closer to her goal. About 3 months ago Jess wrote an article for a competition that Peace Corps and National Geographic were having. It was supposed to be about Food Security and how that issue relates to our Peace Corps service.

Well, we just heard that while her story won't be published in National Geographic Magazine, she was chosen as a top 10 finalist! Congrats to her.

If you would like to read the article, as well as others written for the contest, please visit the following link:
http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.whatvol.foodsecurity.volstories

Also, we're thinking about you, Mom!

Los Quinchos

Early on in my service, I was looking for a place where I could work with youth on a fairly regular basis. It just so happened that our host family knew someone who was looking looking for a person tod work with youth. Sylvia’s (our host ‘mom’) sister Glenda is the director of an educational center called Los Quinchos, located in Somoto. And so my relationship with Los Quinchos was born.

Adolescents playing a Trivial-Pursuit-esque game that Matt and I made up. It has questions about health, random facts and how to translate words to English.

The Center basically functions like an afterschool/before school program for underprivileged kids. Nicaraguan students have school either in the morning or afternoon. The students at Los Quinchos who have class in the afternoon attend Los Quinchos in the morning and vice versa. Students are selected from families that are severely impoverished, or where there has been a history of abuse or violence. Children ages 10 – 18 may attend Los Quinchos, where they receive a free meal, help with their homework and attend one of a variety of technical classes. Young children learn what Nicaraguans call ‘ Manualidades’, basically, what we call ‘Crafts’ – knitting, cross-stitching, piñata-making, etc .. Adolescent girls attend sewing class and adolescent boys learn carpentry.

Some of my younger students in front of the mural that they designed and made about nutricious foods!

Kickball Time!

My work with Los Quinchos has evolved over the last year or so, but now I work with both the young children and adolscents. Once a week, I arrive in the morning, and work for a half an hour with the children, teaching them the basics of hygiene, nutrition, self-esteem, etc..I then move on to the adolescent, where we work on various projects and have classes about sexual and reproductive health. I stay for lunch and repeat the rotation in the afternoon with the new group of students that arrive after lunch. This past week, I had my first session with the students parents. Over 30 parents came and we held a participatory session on Family Violence, its effects, consecuences and how to detect and avoid it in the home. We structured the session in such a way that we, the facilitators, did very little lecturing, but instead left it up to the parents to share their existing knowledge with their peers. It was a huge success.

Kids eating the small meal that Los Quinchos provides them with. It usually consists of rice, beans and a tortilla. Sometimes there is chicken or beef, and lately there has been a lot of soup-like foods with yellow split peas in them because the World Food Program donated a mountain of yellow peas!

Matt is about to also be involved with Los Quinchos. The Irish student group that he worked with to build the El Cairo health post last year is coming to Somoto again this year, this time to work with Los Quinchos. They are planning on improving the water/latrine system, building a stove, a basketball court and (I hope!) a treehouse for the kids. So we will be spending a lot of time at Los Quinchos in July.

¡Sábado Gigante!

This weekend, Jess and I took a visiting friend to the city of Estelí, which regular blog readers have heard about in the past. Estelí is a decent sized city that is known as “El Diamante de Las Segovias,” or, The Diamond of the Segovias (the mountain chain through northern Nicaragua and Honduras). It’s on the way to Managua, and it’s also the city where we go to do banking, shop for special foods, and exchange books at the small satellite Peace Corps office. We have spent a little time in Estelí with virtually all of our visitors, so with Dana, visiting med school student and former roommate of Jess’s, we wanted to do something different.

We left Somoto around 7:45 and took an expreso bus that arrived in Estelí at 9. Our first stop was a late breakfast at La Casita, a organic farm that also sells light food, plants, and other nifty things. Here’s a picture of the food we got.

In the picture you’ll see whole wheat bread with brie and swiss cheeses, mango yogurt, pineapple yogurt, coffee, hot chocolate, and a Nicaraguan treat, arroz con leche, or rice pudding. It was a great meal, and the grand total at the end was 159 córdobas, or just about $8.

After breakfast, we walked around Estelí and made our way to the cowboy boot shop. This store makes custom cowboy boots in any color or style you want. They even make iguana skin boots, if you are willing to pay. We don’t have any pictures of the boot store, so I apologize for that, but we will show you a picture of Dana’s boots when they are finished being made. She found a sample she liked, and the owner of the store measured her foot by having her step on a piece of paper while he traced the outline. The boots guy says the boots will be done in two weeks, but Jess and I have learned to allow an extra buffer week, so they should be ready by the time Dana leaves. They are going to be quite schnazzy, and Jess and I are already thinking about the designs we’d like, which we’re planning to pick up right before we finish next year. The boots cost 1,500 córdobas ($75), which means that it’s a very pricey investment, but well worth it considering the quality.

Continuing on our way, we stopped in a few used clothing stores and tried on crazy outfits. Lots of fun. Jess found a great winter coat for $10, but who needs a winter coat in Nicaragua? After that we went to the grocery store where we bought chocolate milk, which isn’t available in Somoto. It’s a nice treat, and we only get it about once a month. We saw this truck outside of the grocery store. Jess wanted to buy it. Matt said no.

This tigrillo lives in a cage in Esteli. Very pretty animal, but he must have a sad life...

The next scheduled stop on our tour through Estelí was a cigar factory. The company is called Nicarao Cigars, and their product is available in the states. They even have a few pictures of famous cigar smokers, like Arnold Schwarzenager and Sylvester Stallone, with their cigars. Below are some photos that outline the steps taken to make cigars from tobacco.

Nicaraguan cigars are world famous and are one of the main products Nicaragua, and the Estelí region, are known for. It’s tough to look at the cigar business as a positive thing, but it’s one of the few industries where Nicaraguans can earn a fair profit in the international market. The cigar industry started after the Cuban revolution in 1959, when a bunch of Cuban exiles came to Estelí with the seeds of Cuban tobacco. They experimented with the volcanic soil and found that conditions in Nicaragua are as good as, if not better, than the conditions in Cuba. And, hindered by the US embargo on Cuba, these farmers found a way around the restrictions by selling their product in the states by labeling it as “Cuban Seed,” not as an cigar made in Cuba. Therefore, if you do see any cigar sold in the States with any kind of Cuban label, it’s probably grown in Nicaragua, making it perfectly legal to sell in the US. Slowly but surely Nicaraguan labels are catching up to the Cuban immigrants, and can boast that a few of their Nicaraguan cigars are ranked as highly as their Cuban competition.

Here’s the process:

A tobacco farm on the way down from Somoto. The picture was taken through a bus window, so the quality is bad, but you get the idea. The tobacco is grown, harvested, and hung to dry in the big brown barns you see.

The leaves take about a month to dry and come out looking like this. If the leaves are still in good shape, like those in the picture, they are used to make the capa, or the outside wrapping of the cigar by removing the leaf’s veins and then trimming up the edges. The scraps from the capas, as well as the leaves that dry up all crumply are used for the filling. This guy here is showing us a stack of “Cuban seed” tobacco, although he also uses tobacco that is imported from Indonesia and Connecticut (that’s right!).

Leaves waiting to be rolled.

The cigars are made by dampening the capa, placing the capa on a rolling device, filling the capa with the other pieces of tobacco and then pulling a lever that rolls the whole thing up. Next, the cigars, which aren’t very tight and can look lumpy, are placed in a mold that gets pressed together to smooth out the cigars. Here’s how it looks:

And the room they work in.

After about 15 minutes of compression the cigars can be trimmed and removed from the mold to dry. They are stacked in a warehouse in packs like this and can sit there quite a while until they are boxed and shipped to their destination.

The final product looks like this!

Here is a picture of the various brands that this factory makes. Overall, it’s a very interesting process, but, as health professionals, Jess and I still frown on actually smoking the cigars!

After our tour we caught an early dinner at a Cuban restaurant, where we all enjoyed great Cuban sandwiches. A basic Cuban sandwich is smoked pork with mustard and pickles on a thin, crusty bread. This restaurant has all sorts of varieties, all of which are delicious. They also serve a Cuban specialty called Yuca con Mojito, which is boiled yucca plant covered in a very garlicky, very buttery sauce. Also delicious. Sorry there aren’t any pictures. We ate too quickly to take any…

Driving home to Somoto.


A Concert in Somoto

To close out our Sábado Gigante, we all went to a concert in Somoto of an artist called Perro Zampopo. Perro Zampopo, real name Ramón, grew up in Somoto and has become fairly famous through Central America. This was his first concert ever in Somoto, and we were able to sit right up front for the show. Afterwards, Jess, Dana, our old friend Ian, and I all stuck around to talk to the band. In this photo, Ian is reinacting a moment from the concert and ruining a perfectly good conversation between Ramón and I. Ian begged me not to put this photo on the blog (apparently his parents read our blog), but I feel a little revenge is in order.

Jess, Dana, fellow PCV Katie and Perro Zampopo

Overall, it really was a Sábado Gigante, and we had a heck of a lot of fun. Now, on to answers to some of Mrs. Lyttle’s students’ questions.

Why haven’t we heard a lot about Astro lately? We want more Astro!

Astro is doing just fine, but right now we’re in the hottest part of the year, so he spends most of the day staying out of the heat. We promise to put up more pictures of Astro soon. Here’s one to tide you over for the time being.

How do you win at Bananagrams?

I’m not quite sure why this question came up so much, but you win at bananagrams by using all of the pieces up first.

What are some of your hobbies in Nicaragua?

Jess and I don’t have too much time down here for hobbies, because we spend so much more time cleaning the house of washing clothes. But, when we do have free time, this is what we like to do:

Matt Both of Us Jess

Play guitar Practice the xaphoon

Write Garden

Read

Cook

Watch movies

Go for hikes

Do you know about the Iditarod?

As Mrs. Lyttle’s son, Matt has known about the Iditarod for a very long time. Jess is just becoming familiar and really appreciates all of the information the students sent along. Plus, we also like thinking about cold places, because it’s so hot, so keep of the notes on the Iditarod.

A Trip to Los Limones, Cusmapa

The sun sets on Los Limones.

It’s been a few weeks since we last posted on the blog, and for that we apologize. We’ve been doing a lot, although very little has been work. We had a week of vacation with Jess’s college friends Becca and Richard, and then Holy Week, Nicaragua’s biggest holiday season. We also went to a fantastic brunch at Nicaragua’s nicest hotel to celebrate 1 year in Somoto. All of those things were fantastic and deserve separate blog posts, so expect a flurry of posts over the next weeks, starting with the Matagalpa post from this weekend, and now this one. We also owe Mrs. Lyttle’s class a blogpost with answers to their interview questions, as well as answers to their questions for us. Right now, however, I’d like to tell you about my visit to a fellow volunteer’s site.

Here's Ian just making sure that everything is in order with his horse.Ian came in with Jess and I and was actually in the same training town as Jess. He’s from Chattanooga, Tennessee, but travelled all over the world with his parents, who are teachers at international schools. Ian was placed at a community called San Jose de Cusmapa, which is a mountain community of about 3,500 people. It is located in the department of Madriz about 25 miles south west of Somoto. Ian has to take a bus from Somoto to get to his site, so we see him more than most volunteers. The bus ride takes about 3 and a half hours (to go the 25 miles) and climbs up some of the steepest slopes you can imagine. Plus, the busses normally are waaaaay over capacity (when I went to see Ian there were at least 50 people in the school bus, and another 25 on top) so they really do crawl up the mountains. In fact, it rarely stops for passengers. Instead, people have to run alongside the bus and jump on board, so that the bus won’t lose it’s momentum. So, let’s just summarize by saying that getting to Cusmapa is an adventure.

Ian works the same way I do, visiting rural communities to give talks on various health themes. He had a visit planned for a community called Los Limones and I decided to join him to see how his Peace Corps experience differs from mine.

Here´s Ian giving a charla in Los Limones
Los Limones is one of those communities that we, as Americans, can only really imagine in our mind’s eye. It is a 6 and a half hour horseback ride from Cusmapa and sits at the top of the world. There are around 200 people living there, and from everyone’s porch you can see the Pacific Ocean, Honduras, and half way to Managua. There is no electricity, no running water, no latrines and no roads accessible by vehicle. The villagers are virtually self-sufficient, growing all their own corn, beans, and some of the best fruit you can imagine.

This local dog guards the fruit trees. In this picture there are avocados, oranges, mamones, and mangos. When the lights are on (meaning the sun) it’s a paradise. When the sun goes down it becomes a misty mountain top, where you’d expect to see ghosts and fairy-tale mountain dwellers strolling down through the orchards. True to its image, Los Limones is actually home to some real life Nicaraguan legends.

This community was a strong-hold of Contra fighters during the 1980’s. Most of the village men currently over 40 spent that decade running through the mountains, causing havoc in the Sandinista army. They received their training and weapons from Honduras and the US and would skip back and forth across the border much like the Al-Queda fighters we now hear about in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Contras were always outnumbered, poorly organized, and didn’t have a chance of actually defeating the Sandinista army, which could put 250,000 soldiers in the field if needed. Hanging out with these guys in Los Limones, it became clear to me how dangerous a few mountain men with guns can be. A few of these pictures were taken just outside of the community at a scenic overlook. Ian and I had to jog just to keep up with these guys as they weaved in and out of the brush always “knowing” the way, despite my skepticism. They just went striding along, only wearing flimsy plastic shower sandals on their feet but never getting caught in the bushes and thorns that kept slowing Ian and I down.

Ian and the Locals.Nicaraguans are also some of the most hospitable people you can meet. Even though Los Limones is extremely poor, the doors of every home were wide open for us. We were offered several local dishes, lots of fresh fruit and a special Semana Santa traditional dish, Fish Soup. By the time we got to the house with the soup, the sun was long gone from the sky. We couldn’t see what we were eating, so we relied on this picture to avoid the fish bones and other unpleasantries that ended up in the soup. Let’s just say it was a good experience that I won’t be experiencing again.Cooking is, of course, a big piece of Nicaraguan life. The picture below is of one of the matriarchs of Los Limones. She is 78 years old and spends every morning grinding corn for tortillas. She starts by running dried corn kernels through a hand grinder. Next, the ground corn flour is put on a curved rock and further mashed by a stone that looks like a rolling pin. It’s very physical work, and very tiring, but she still does it for 4 or 5 hours a day. They were really good tortillas, too!
The next morning we made our way back to Cusmapa, taking a little extra time to take in the scenery. When we finally made it back (about 4:00pm) we said goodbye to our trusty steeds and headed back to Ian’s house. There we enjoyed an ice-cold Coca-Cola in a glass bottle and celebrated our return to civilization…relatively speaking.

This is my trusty steed: a mule...a very lazy mule.

Cowboys gotta have fun!

Matagalpa, Matagalpa

A few weekends ago, we went to visit the other married couple in our group, Kory and Heather. They live in a mountain community called la Dalia, which is in the Department of Matagalpa, right in the middle of Nicaraguan coffee country. Matt and I have been meaning to visit more volunteers in their sites, to see how their daily life and work compares to what we experience in Somoto. Visiting Kory and Heather provided us with an interesting window into the lives of two other volunteers.

Heather and Kory are both artists – Heather is a photographer (though she also has a Masters in Social Work) and Kory is an amazing watercolor painter/poet/creator of interesting things. We had a great time visiting them because you can see their creative spirits in everything that they do.

Our first day in la Dalia, we got to see the town and the house where Kory and Heather live, along with all of the cool personal projects that they have done during their first year in country. To start off with, we got to experience the pulley-based fan system that Kory has rigged up to keep the two of them cool while they are sitting in their hammocks. As you swing, the motion of the hammock pulls a rope over a set of pulleys, which moves a fan made out of bamboo and cloth. It’s pretty cool.

We also saw the solar food dryer that they made from Peace Corps plans, and their tire gardens in the back of their house, where they grow all kinds of vegetables. And, best of all, Matt got a lesson in chocolate-making from Kory.

On the second day, we took a trip about an hour up the mountain to a Park called las Penas Blanca (The White Cliffs). It’s a beautiful set of high cliffs and, apparently, waterfalls. However, we didn’t realize that word had gotten out about the beauty of the cliffs and that the local community is now charging $20 for entrance and a tour. With our cheap Peace Corps mentality, we decided that the price was too high for the short hike that we were looking for and instead just went for a walk down the road. So, we didn’t see the waterfalls firsthand, but we are thinking about a camping trip sometime in the future for the full experience.

On the way back into town, we stopped off at the Casa Materna in La Dahlia. Casas Maternas exist in a number of Municipalities in Nicaragua. They are houses in larger towns or cities, where pregnant women from the country can come and stay as their due date gets close. That way, they are close to the Health Center or Hospital, in the case of an emergency, which makes attending them much easier than it would be if they were still in a remote community. The national network of Casas Maternas is an effort to cut down on maternal and infant mortality.

Heather does a lot of work in her Casa Materna, and we got to see where she spends her days and the women that she works with. In addition, we were able to see a beautiful mural that the two painted last December, and to see the big project that they have been working on.

Some time in their first year, Heather and Kory became frustrated with the lack of permanent educational materials in the Health Center and Casa Materna. Everything is usually written on large poster paper and then discarded after the class or talk is done. So, in an effort to create something lasting and sustainable, the two have worked to put together an advisory committee of doctors and health professionals that is helping them to design a series of large posters which will be printed and hung in every Casa Materna in the country. Each poster has a theme, and they range from things like contraception to breast feeding, to the stages of pregnancy. The idea is that the posters will have information on them that anyone can use to explain health themes to the women who come to the casa maternal. And, given the artistic ability and vision of the two volunteers, the posters they have completed to date are absolutely beautiful.

So, we enjoyed our visit and learned a little bit more about how other volunteers spend their days. If you want to learn anymore about what Kory and Heather are up to, you can visit their blog at:http://theadventuresofheatherandkory.blogspot.com/

¡Que nos les vayan muy bien! (May you leave us very well!)

On Sunday morning Jess and I hosted a brunch to say goodbye to the three health volunteers that are leaving Madríz. Kadesha, Lisa, and Leanne have all finished their two years in Nicaragua and are heading home. They are the volunteers that have shown us the ropes to Peace Corps living, and Madríz, and our guest bedroom, will seem a little more empty without them.
There are some perks to saying goodbye, however. Because none of their sites are being replaced by the new group of volunteers they have a plethora of stuff to give away. We like to keep things in the Peace Corps family as much as possible, as the settling in allowance really isn´t enough to settle in with, so things like tables and chairs, pots and pans, blankets, books, and stoves are all up for grabs. Jess and I now have a bunch of new furniture, a great new 4 burner stove and a few extra pots! We´re also storing a bunch of stuff for other volunteers in Madríz, current and future. Needless to say, the house is a little crowded right now, but we´ll get over it.

Chatting over brunch.

Our first attempt at home-made bagels. Not much to look at, but they tasted great!

Spinach quiche!

Happy times in Somoto.

After a long morning of cooking and eating, we decided to just get a bite to eat from a fritanga, which is street food. It's almost like Nicaraguan fast-food, but with a much higher chance of getting amoebas. Tasty!

Grilled chicken, enchiladas, gallo pinto, fried plantain, tacos, and who knows what else...

And we're off for no more than a few bucks!

Monday morning we had our first good rain since November. It rained on and off for about an hour. The ground got just muddy enough to remind us what a hassle it is to have a dog who likes to run in and out of the house like it’s his job. It’s still early for the official rainy season, so this was probably just a fluke. We won’t see daily rains until May, but this was a nice change of pace.

Last Tuesday we helped our Nicaraguan host family move houses. Akhnaton and Silvia finally realized their dream and finished building their very own house. It’s not big at all by American standards, but it is about as nice as they get in Nicaragua. We learned quite a bit about the moving process in Nicaragua, and you’ll be interested to hear it is a little different than the way we do it in the States.

Nicaraguans are shameless about asking for things. As Americans, we’ve been trained not to give a dollar to the guy begging on the corner, and we find it socially acceptable to walk right by the Salvation Army guys in the wintertime. In Nicaragua, however, your average person might give out a cordoba to four or five people just on their way home from the grocery store. If an older person walks into a restaurant and asks for a little bit of money, a lot of Nicaraguans will get out of their seat, dig around in their pockets for a few cents, walk over and hand it to the person asking, and thank them for the opportunity to help. So, because the rate of success is so high for people begging, a lot of Nicaraguans go ahead and ask for anything and everything. Here´s a list of some of the things Jess and I have been asked for over the past year:
- money
- food
- water
- alcohol
- backpacks
- shoes
- Astro
- our computer
- Jess’s hand in marriage
- our passports

That list is almost in order of importance, but not quite. Anyway, back to moving, you can imagine the scene outside a Nicaraguan home as a well-to-do family pulls item after item out of their house and onto the moving truck. So, I ask you, how do you avoid the mobs? How do you avoid the awkward refusals to give your stuff away? Easy! You move houses in the middle of the night when no one else is awake!

That´s right, Jess and I helped Akhnaton and Silvia move house from 8pm on Tuesday night until 3am on Wednesday morning. Akhnaton kept on going until 10am! As crazy as it sounds the strategy worked. We weren´t asked for a single item, and we dealt with a lot less traffic as we bounced down the road with waaaaaaayyyyy to much stuff in the pick-up truck. Luckily, it was only a move of six or seven blocks, and the only thing we lost out of the back of the truck was a smiley-face magnet from the fridge.

It took us a few days to fully recover, but I have to admit, the late night move definitely has its perks.


The next group of photos are from a recent hike we took toward the town of Cacauli. This is Astro in his desert motif.

Astro helping the local cowboys.

Here's a building that recently went up in the country-side. They are built with adobe bricks, which means people mix straw and much in a mold and then let it dry in the sun. The same mud is used as mortar to hold the whole thing together. They don't last nearly as long as bricks or cement blocks, but this one is built very skillfully and will probably last 15 years. It needs a final coat of mud to protect the adobe bricks, but then it should be fairly durable.

Nicaraguans drink soda and juice out of a plastic bag. Here's Jess demonstrating proper technique. You bite a hole in the corner of the bag and then you have to squeeze the soda out.


That´s all for now. Jess and I have a busy week planned, and then a weekend trip to visit a few other volunteers in Matagalpa, which is a totally different part of the country. Look for details next week!

Peace Corps Partnership

So, in addition to the regular projects that volunteers work on with any host agencies or counterparts in their communities, Peace Corps has set up a number of ways that volunteers can recieve funding for additional projects that they think are of importance to their community. One of these ways is a program called the Peace Corps Partnership Program.

With the Partnership Program, volunteers have the opportunity to develop a proposal and post it online. Once online, donors from the states have the ability to directly contribute to Peace Corps-implemented projects around the world.

Recently, I went through the process of developing a proposal, along with the help of employees at the Departments of Health and Education in Madriz (Somoto, where we live, is the capital of the department of Madriz). Speaking with the indivdiuals from both agencies, we decided that, given the significantly high rate of adolescent pregnancy in Madriz (30% of births are to mothers under 19 years of age) and the rising risk of HIV/AIDS, that information regarding thest topics could be an important addition to the existing curriculum in the secondary schools. So, we developed a modest proposal and plan to use the money to make materials and resources for secondary teachers to talk about these and other health topics in the context of their math, spanish, civics and biology courses.

If anyone is interested in reading about my specific project, or in donating, the link is:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=524-069

To learn more about the Partnership Program in general, and/or to look for other projects, you can read up on opportunities at:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors&&