All Volunteer Conference, Turkey Day, and Somoto Carnaval

It´s been a wild couple of weeks here in Nicaragua and the hits just keep on coming. We apologize for not updating the blog recently,o but maybe after reading this post you´ll understand why. Last week Jess and I went to Managua to participate in the 2009 All Volunteer Conference. This is a time when every single Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua gets together to learn about other projects going on in country. On Tuesday morning over 170 volunteers arrived at Las Mercedes Hotel in Managua. The conference only lasted until Thursday morning, but it was several months in planning, as Jess can attest to. She was on the steering committee that organized the whole show.At AVC we had a chance to catch up with friends, meet newer volunteers, and plan for future projects. Our group, Health 46, is now the longest serving group in Nicaragua, which means we´re the next to head home. Also at AVC was a group that swore in as volunteers just a day before the conference started. So, we really ran the whole gamut of time in country. Also, every sector was represented at AVC. We´ve mentioned before that there are 5 different types of volunteers in Nicaragua:
- Health (us)
- Environment
- Agriculture
- Small Business
- Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)

Jess and I were able to walk around and see the kind of work these sectors are doing and imagine how their projects could be incorporated into the work of the health volunteers. For us, some of the most exciting projects are being done by the Agriculture sector, where improved stoves and ovens, biodigesters, and drip irrigation are all the rage. If anyone is interested in those ideas, let us know and we´ll put up a separate post.

The theme of AVC was “Food Security in Nicaragua.” Therefore, we were trying to tie in each sector’s work with the idea of improved food security. Jess led a session on cooking with soy, where she make all sorts of different veggie burgers. Another volunteer in the same session showed us how to make butter and buttermilk from scratch!

Another big piece of AVC was professional development. We had visitors from all walks of life who talked about their careers and the possibilities that lie ahead for returned Peace Corps volunteers. As you can imagine, that was particularly interesting for our group, as we´re all starting to polish up our resumes for March.

After AVC all volunteers had the option to spend Thanksgiving with an American family that works at the US Embassy. Jess and I, and about 15 other volunteers, ended up at the house of Richard Sanders, the Deputy Chief of the US Embassy in Managua. While the US ambassador is in charge of relations with the host country, Mr. Sanders is basically in charge of all embassy operations. He has an incredible house on a hill in Managua from where you can easily spot several volcanoes and one enormous lake. It was beautiful. Since we´re all so far from friends and family it was very nice to be able to spend some time speaking English and enjoying American traditions. And the food! We had a monster buffet that included all of the following:

- Turkey

- Mashed Potatoes

- Stuffing

- Gravy

- REAL cranberry sauce

- Eggplant Parmesan

- Meatloaf

- Vegetables

- Pumpkin Pie

- Lemon Meringue

- Brownies

- Ice Cream

- Cookies

- And more that I can´t remember but can still taste…

Friday morning Jess and I got up super early (4am) to get back to Somoto in time for work. We also had a lot of house cleaning to do. Saturday was Somoto´s famous Carnaval and we wanted to make the most of it. We invited a bunch of volunteers to our house for the weekend. Saturday morning we all went to the Canyon, and for the first time ever Jess and I made it through all 7km of hiking and swimming. It took about 7.5 hours in total. After the Canyon we all took a rest and got ready for Carnaval, which is a very famous Somoto tradition. Every November Somoto invites some of Nicaragua´s most famous bands to an all night music fest. 6 city blocks are fenced off and 8 separate stages are set up for the bands. The music started at 8 and didn’t end until somewhere near 6am. Jess and I only made it to 3 in the morning, but that was better than last year. Here are some pictures of the day:

These are the signs that were recently put up at the different canyon entrances. Hopefully they are the start of better protection of the area.

This is our Gringo Train just starting to enter the canyon. We walk for about 2.5 hours before finally cooling off in the river.

Here's Jess and our sitemate, Katie. Looking good, ladies!

This is fellow Nica 46er and married man, Kory, contemplating the route ahead.

You have to scurry your way back and forth across the river. A lot of fun, but it gets tiring!

This is our Peace Corps group, Nica 46, minus 3 people. We came into the country with 19 and now we're 14. With four months left, it's safe to say we'll all make it!
Here's a video from inside the canyon. This is the last part of the hike and the first part of the swim. You can see we had the option of lifevests or innertubes. The little boats were just for bags. Pretty exciting!

After a long day in the canyon, here's the group getting ready for carnaval. You can see the white blur of Astro, who was upset he didn't get to do the canyon. No doggie lifevests here...

Good friends were made at Carnaval, here's Kory and I with a couple of Nicaraguan friends.

So, as you can see, we´ve been very busy. Tuesday was a huge day for Jess. It was World AIDS Day (all over the world, surprisingly) so she organized a concert here in town. Jess was able to get a fairly famous Nicaraguan group to agree to come to Somoto and give a concert for free. We had an informational fair focused on HIV and then a concert from 5 to 7. Overall, we had an attendance of about 400 people. Look for more on this event and pictures later in the week!

Here´s some more photos for the Astro and Yoda book:

Photos of the Family

To all of our loyal readers,

Lately we have been receiving a lot of requests for photos of Yoda and Astro. So, here are a few of our two furry friends that will make you all go "awe..."

More interesting blog posts to come!

-Matt and Jess


Here's Astro pouting because he doesn't want to brush his teeth. Every night it's a struggle, but his breath can get really bad...

Yoda is truly a tropical cat. He loves bananas and all sorts of other fruits. Here he is getting fed an entire banana by a friend of ours.

After a long Saturday of doing laundry, it's good to relax for a while.

This is Yoda pondering his future, and his next escape out the front door.


A nightly tradition in our house. Astro gets brushed and the cat tries to help. Somehow the Yoda always ends up devouring the hairballs we pull off of Astro. We think it is a form of revenge for all of the times that Astro has plowed Yoda out of the way to get to the food bowl.


Ahh, to be inside the mind of a cat...

I think it's almost dead now...
The beast has been slain. We can all go about our lives without fear of being attacked by dust bunnies.

Costa Rica

Me, partaking in some authentic Central American Cuisine.....


Last week, Matt and I took a little vacation. We had been talking for a while about taking some time off from work and Matt had been talking to some people at the Regional Office for Disaster Assistance in San Jose about a possible informational interview. So, we decided to go to Costa Rica.

The trip started in Managua, where we caught a bus at 5:00 am for Costa Rica. The ride wasn’t that bad, only about 7 hours to a town a bit over the border called Liberia. It would have been a bit shorter if the driver had actually stopped and told us we were in Liberia – instead he just drove through. When we decided to ask how much further it was, he informed us that we had already passed it. Lucky for us, he just so happened to have a friend driving a bus in the other direction that let us get on and go back for free.

From Liberia, we made our way to Playa Tamarindo, one of Costa Rica’s more developed beaches. And when I say more developed, it is a different world in comparison to Nicaragua. There were a number of hotels, condominiums, grocery stores, surf shops and pizza places. We stayed at an adorable little hotel run by a retired Italian woman, and had an amazing room complete with its own little kitchenette.

Our Room at Los Flores, Playa Tamarindo

As many of you may know, Nicaragua and much of Central America has been suffering this year from a virtual lack of rainy season. It normally rains all of September, October and November, but for the months of September and October, there was no rain at all. As our luck would have it, the rain decided to return the week that Matt and I choose to go to the beach. So, while our hotel was great, we didn’t really get to take advantage of the ocean or pool because it was raining so much. But we did get to spend a lot of time watching TV and nursing upset stomachs after a bad piece of cheese cake.

The Pool at Los Flores, which we didn't use that much because of rain.

Our wonderful meal of bread, cheese, peperoni, black olive paste and yes....they do have Arbor Mist in Costa Rica.

From Playa Tamarindo, we decided to make our way to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. We were completely astonished. We are both used to Managua, a dirty, ridiculously hot, evidently third-world city. San Jose felt like New York after almost two years of frequenting the capital of Nicaragua. It was much more developed, there were people walking everywhere, and you felt safe walking almost downtown. We filled our two days in San Jose with visiting museums and other attractions, and eating really, really good food.

An amazing Argentinian Restaurant in San Jose. To give you an idea - my meal was homemade pasta, filled with ricotta cheese and smoked halibut in a broccoli, pistachio, garlic pesto. Again, amazing.

This was a reposteria/panaderia that we found. Also amazing.

This guy was our favorite at the San Jose Zoo - a dwarf Jaguar that was rescued from the wild!

Matt did his best to blend in and make friends, but I'm not sure that it worked all that well.

The Museo de Oro in San Jose (Gold Museum)

The next stop on the trip was La Fortuna and Volcan Arenal. La Fortuna is a tiny town about 4 hours north of San Jose, situated directly below the enormous and very clearly active Volcan Arenal. We stayed in a cabin just outside of town and filled the two days with hikes, visits to one of the local hot spring resorts (with 25 different pools of varying temperatures, sizes and themes) and a lovely evening trip up to the observation deck for the volcano. While the rain made it a bit difficult to see the characteristic red lava flowing down the side of the mountain, we were able to spend the evening chatting with a nice older couple from Oregon who accompanied us on the trip.

Matt and I on our way up the mountain in La Fortuna.

A lone Bromeliad, blocking the view of the volcano.

Volcan Arenal emerging from the mist.

After two days of outdoor adventures, we left La Fortuna at the crack of dawn to be able to make it back down to San Jose so that Matt could spend some time talking with the Director of the Regional Office of Disaster Assistance. For those who may not know, this office is a branch of USAID, the US Agency for International Development and it mostly does what its name implies – it provides international assistance in the event of disasters in Central America and the Caribbean. Disasters can include anything from hurricanes, to earthquakes and volcanoes to political coups. Mat is really interested in Disaster Preparedness and Response and spent a morning learning a lot about what the organization and its director do.

That was about it for the vacation. We came home to find Astro and Yoda happy to see us and just as energetic as ever.

A Very Successful Project

Hello again to all of our family and friends. Jess and I just got finished with a spectacular project, so we´d like to take this blog post to fill you all in on our recent activities.

A few years back President Bush created the “President´s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief,” more lovingly known as PEPFAR. The program makes funds available throughout the developing world to fight the spread of HIV. Here in Nicaragua, Peace Corps was given the charge of managing these funds and tasked its volunteers to spending the money on HIV prevention. So, in July of these year our group of health volunteers were asked by our program director, Pilar, to put together a few PEPFAR workshops around the country. Jess and I were grouped with the volunteers in the northern departments of Jinotega, Matagalpa, Nueva Segovia, and Madríz (ours). That made a total of 9 volunteers working on this one workshop.

As a group we decided on the date, time, location, content, and participants. Probably the easiest decision of all of these was the content, as we knew we needed to focus in HIV. As for participants, we were told there was a budget for a total of 50, but that was just the beginning. Should we work with men? Should we work with midwives? Should we work with nurses? Finally, we agreed that we would each invite 4 youths between the ages of 15 and 20 to participate. We went back and forth on the date because, believe it or not, any closer to November and we would lose a lot of participants to the coffee harvest. Any earlier and we would have trouble meshing with the bean planting season. We were able to find a compromise during the week of October 6th. The location was up in the air for weeks to come as volunteers scoured for locales that could accommodate 50 people with lodging, food, and meeting space, all for under $15 a day per person. We settled on a hotel in Estelí for it´s central location, charming atmosphere, and rock bottom prices.

So now, that the particulars were sorted out, we went back to the content, which is of course the whole reason we´re having the workshop. We have all worked on HIV prevention in our site, so it was clear from the start that our participants would already be familiar with the theme. We had to come up with something different and exciting that would really help the message stick with our youth. Jess and I thought it would be great to do an all night “lock-in” event with tons of sugar and activities to keep people awake and excited. We lobbied hard for the idea and the whole group got on board. Since the workshop would be three days, we decided to hold the lock in the first night, let the kids sleep well the following night so we could send them back to their parents more or less recovered.

A few other volunteers thought an all night event was a ridiculous idea since half of these kids don´t stay up past 7:30pm due to no electricity in the house. In retrospect, they were probably right, but we settled on 7 hours of activity between 8pm and 3am. Jess and I were put in charge of the planning and we came up with 5 hour long activities with 20 minute side activities buffering each main session. We designed each session around HIV-AIDS, to be sure the kids understood the information. Our sessions had the following themes:

Casino Night
Olympics
Jeopardy
Fashion Show
Channel X

In Casino Night, the Peace Corps volunteers dressed the room up like a classy casino, down to us in white shirts and bowties. We had 4 different casino games focused on HIV. I ran the roulette table where participants could win or lose chips based on their actions. For instance, the wheel had a spot for abstinence, which paid out 4 times the bet. Another spot, “sex with a prostitute” left the player without any of his chips. I put the game together without every actually having played roulette and my table was paying out loads, but the other tables had the house winning, so it all evened out in the end.
At another table we had a craps style game, where students rolled the dice to find out how safe the behaviors were. Low rolls meant abstinence, fidelity, and always using protection. High rolls meant promiscuity, not using protection, and risk of getting HIV.

We also had a card game and a board game going. The Casino Night was a big success and will probably be expanded in time and tables in the future. We´ll see.

In the Olympics we had in the sack races (your normal sack race) and condom tosses (like water balloon toss, except with condoms). The participants paired off and competed in each activity. In the end we had gold tuna cans for medals. It was all very competitive.

The Jeopardy session was exactly as it sounds, only with questions about HIV as opposed to random trivia. We split 10 volunteers into two groups and they competed in front of the “live studio audience” of the other participants. Kory, a volunteer from Matagalpa, even built little bells out of bamboo and old telephone ringers to that the kids would have something to smack when they thought of the answer. We were all surprised and impressed with the amount of knowledge these kids already had. Perhaps we´ll post some of the questions up here and see how all of you do…

In the fashion show activity we gave 5 different groups a bunch of old second hand clothes. They had to create three distinct outfits (men´s formalwear, women´s formalwear, and casualwear). Next we held a fashion show with dance music and spotlights (flashlights) and three judges. Neither Jess´s nor my group won the fashion show, but that´s life.

For the last activity of the night, Channel X, we had the students create 30 second TV commercials about HIV. We borrowed a video camera and actually recorded them, too. Here´s one of the better ones:

Throughout the night we had different side activities going as well, which included the painting of a mural, which went to the highest scoring community and a photo booth. Our Peace Corps buddies Heather and Kory made some awesome backgrounds for the photo booth, and Jess and I brought different dress up props. The photos ended up pretty funny. Here's a few, the first is Jess with two of the girls she brought.

Besides the lock-in we covered the information in more traditional ways throughout the 3 days. We were also lucky enough to have an HIV positive Nicaraguan participate for the whole workshop. Frank worked with the kids for two full days as “an HIV expert” and didn´t reveal he was HIV positive until the 2nd evening. His story is very powerful and had a profound effect on the kids. Frank has known he has HIV for 7 years now and only found out when his wife died of tuberculosis brought on by AIDS. He has always been heterosexual and never taken any intravenous drugs. Basically, he was unfaithful with his wife and most likely brought HIV into his family. Since the death of his wife he travels around Nicaragua telling his story to groups like ours. When he´s not speaking he is raising his two kids, who still don´t know he is HIV positive or how their mother died…

So, that was our PEPFAR workshop in a nutshell. Personally, I was not that interested in HIV prevention before Peace Corps, but it really is important – even in the U.S. If anyone would like to hear more about specific activities or has specific HIV related questions, please leave a comment and we´ll do our best to answer.

Again, thanks for reading!

Food, Food, Food

As many of you are aware, Matt and I love to eat. It’s one of our favorite pastimes. And cooking, it turns out, goes hand in hand with eating, as does gardening. We’ve had a month full of activities and, not surprisingly, many of them have involved food and plants. I thought that a quick narrative of these recent activities would give you a glimpse at some of the culinary and agricultural skills that we’ve acquired and shed some light on some of the other things that we do!

Peace Corps volunteers rarely work regular hours and rarely focus on one kind of activity. So, even though Matt and I are primarily health volunteers, we also do all kinds of other things in our community. In my case, this involves one-on-one English classes. One of my students, the daughter of a former colleague, has been very adept at learning English, a result of the fact that she is part German and part Nicaraguan and has grown up speaking the languages of both her parents. The fluency in both German and Spanish has given her an enormous advantage in learning English. Because she is so advanced, I’ve taken the opportunity to involve her in as many non-traditional learning opportunities as possible to expose her to more conversational skills. As part of a recent class I decided to share a favorite food with her – bagels. Matt and I shared our recipe, walked her through the process and chatted the whole time. The family loved the bagels and I think that we used some new vocab!

Matt and Sophie cooking bagels:

And they were delicious!

In addition to cooking, Matt and I have been slowly but surely been expanding our little patio garden. Many frequent readers will remember that we started a few months ago with a tire garden. Well, it turns out that Astro learned how to use the tire garden as a stepping stool, allowing him to jump through a hole in the fence, escape through construction next door and party with friend in the street while we were out of town. As one can imagine, these are not the most appropriate conditions in which to grow anything. So, after many reconstruction efforts and elevation of the tire, the garden has been reincarnated, and we have made the addition of two more tires. We’ve also built a small garden for mesculin greens out of old wood and an old sack. We’ve found that things grow best when elevated because at ground level they are susceptible to attack from zampopos or leaf-cutter ants that destroy anything in their path. After adjustments for the Astro factor and the plagues of ants, our plants (pepper, basil, parsely, cucumber, dill, lettuce) have been doing well, but only time will tell if we get another plaga of some sort.

Matt working on the elevated garden for the mescalin greens:

Working on the tire garden:

Some of our pepper plants growing in old yogurt containers, styrofoam cups, plastic bottles...


Lettuce! Lemon-Piccata eggplant with creamy rice and greens from our patio - ricco! (delicious!)
Many of you will also remember from previous posts that Matt and I lived with a Nicaraguan family for about 6 weeks when we first arrived in Somoto, and that we visit them every Thursday to eat, watch a movie, spend time with the girls and catch up. This week, we decided to show Ena Sofia and Adrianna (our two host sisters) how to make pizza. Matt made enough dough in advance to have pizza for the four family members and the two of us. He also made the sauce from scratch (its delicious!) and we used quesillo, a local cheese which melts and tastes very much like mozzarella, and a bologna-like product made from chicken. The results: deliciosa!

Adrianna rolling out pizza dough:


Sophie, with one of the finished pizzas:

Akhnatito, while he is adorable is really not of much help in the kitchen:




I also had the opportunity this week to share some of my culinary zeal with teachers from a local organization. Peace Corps has recently been very interested in the idea of food security. The term conjures up a number of ideas and images, but basically the gist is to help local people rely on available technologies and resources to aid them in creating local, sustainable food systems. The costs of food globally are difficult for already impoverished families. And, many countries, including Nicaragua grow food locally, export it for profit and then turn around and buy food for consumption. The sustainable food movement suggest that this seems a bit preposterous and that it makes more sense to simply eat locally grown foods. Many of you know that I am personally in agreement with this and a huge advocate (bordering on fanatic) of local food systems. So I was thrilled when I approached a local school founded by the Fabretto Children’s foundation (a catholic organization with its origins in Padre Fabretto, an Italian priest who spent many years working in Nicaragua) about a small school/family garden project. It turned out that they were already thinking about expanding their existing garden and invited me to help with a workshop about nutrition and huertos escolares (school gardens).

A teacher explaining what she learned about una dieta completa (a complete diet


The workshop was a huge success. I taught teachers about basic nutrition – carbohydrates, fats, proteins, water, vitamins, and minerals – shared some creative activities in which to involve students and then we practiced. We cooked! I showed them very simple ways to incorporate local vegetables and green leaves into everyday dishes, and they loved it. The second day of the workshop, the teacher responsible for the gardens showed them how to prepare soil, how to plant, etc.. We’re now in the process of planning how to follow-up on the activity and possibly make the school more reliant on its own garden system, saving it money.

Some of the teachers cooking in the school kitchen:



One of the recipes that the teachers made - chili (made with bought beans, and tomatoes, oregano and sweet potato leaves from the garden) with corncakes that have dried soy in them:


Gallo Pinto ("Painted Rooster" - beans and rice) with carrots cooked with butter and dulce (pure sugar cane product that resembles brown sugar with more molasses):

Teachers working on preparing soil for a garden:



So, all in all, its been a month full of great food and fun activities! For those who would also like an update on Astro and Yoda, the following series of photos says it all – they get along well, they have taken over our house (the following attack sequence happns in our bed) and they are just as cute and lovable as ever.


Everything's fine...every one is cute....
Until someone makes the first move...

A little paw swat is nothing....

Until it turns into a bigger paw swat...


A rebutal....

And finally a full-on attack - take that dog!....