Jess & Matt in Nicaragua

Chaco USA makes good on pro deal for Peace Corps volunteers!

2010-06-28T11:04:00.004-06:00

If you checked in yesterday you'd have seen the email below that I received from Chaco USA. Back in February I applied for their pro deal program in order to get some Chacos on the cheap. I didn't hear from them until yesterday when my request was denied.

So, I mounted a mini campaign to let other Peace Corps know about the result of my request. To their credit Chaco USA responded within a few hours saying the email was a mistake and inaccurate. So, I'm now in touch with their Consumer Relations Manager and it looks like we're on the right track.

Thanks Chacos for staying true in your commitment to Peace Corps volunteers! I'll definitely be getting a pair now. I'll let you all know when they get in.

-------------------------------

Their recent letter to me four months after asking for a pro deal discount, which is still possible on their website:

Dear Matthew Lyttle, Thank you for your interest in the Chaco Pro Deal program. Unfortunately we cannot extend special pricing to you at this time. Retailers are our livelihood, so we limit the program to select outdoor industry professionals and employees of Chaco retailers. A list of retail partners can be found on http://www.chaco.com/.
Thank you for your understanding. We wish you the best with your outdoor endeavors.
Yours truly,
The Chaco Team

And, my response:

Dear Chaco Team,

Thank you for responding to my request, albeit 4 months later. I am disappointed to hear Chaco no longer feels that Peace Corps volunteers are a valued group of customers and, more importantly, promoters. The 8000+ Peace Corps volunteers wear your products all over the world and offer invaluable exposure in otherwise impenetrable markets. In fact, the main reason I am looking to purchase a pair of Chaco sandals is the ardent praise I hear from my fellow volunteers.

Many of your outdoor gear competitors including Marmot, The North Face, Keen, Merrell, and Teva recognize the value of Peace Corps Volunteers' product support and offer significant discounts as a sign of that recognition. Please note that I will now be purchasing from one of these companies as opposed to Chaco.

I hope your team finds the time to update the various websites that promote a Peace Corps discount when purchasing Chaco footwear. For your reference, those sites include http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Volunteer_discounts, http://www.43things.com/entries/view/1930455, trip,buttermouth.com, and even your own http://www.chacoprodeal.com/. That particular site still includes Peace Corps as a "User Type." I have already updated my networks to this change.

Thank you for your attention and please note that Peace Corps volunteers in dozens of countries around the world will readily welcome Chaco's renewed support.

Sincerely,
Matt Lyttle

Visitors

2010-05-23T16:32:00.014-06:00

So, to make the transition home a little easier, our friends Becca, Richard, Alli and Adam decided to come down and spend a week touring around Nicaragua with us. We started off by visiting Granada, where we did a tour of the cloud forest on volcano Mombacho and went sight-seeing in the town, the oldest colonial city in the Americas.

Walking around on Mombacho, the volcano overlooking Granada

A barn at a coffee farm on Mombacho

From there, we headed to Managua to take a plane to Big Corn Island off the Eastern Coast of Nicaragua. It was the first time that matt and I had the pleasure to visit the east coast and it was a phenomenal experience (aside from the stomach issues experienced by nearly all). The island was a picture of what Carribean islands must have been before cruise ships and five store resorts made their way ashore. Funnily enough, Nicaragua had one last present in store for us on this trip, and it was a good one for a change. Our hotel plans fell through completely (it was holy week and so I had made reservations; however, the word reservation is a lot less firm in Nicaragua than in the US and when we arrived the rooms were not the ones we had wanted and were not suitable for staying in unless you were of the rodent family). Oddly enough, we had met an American in Grananda who happened to have a house on Corn Island. He was renting it to a group of Italians who were on the island helping to film the Italian version of the TV show Survivor, but they had bailed at the last minute. A quick phone call to him, a cab ride and one local tour guide later, we had ourselves a beachfront house for an amazing price. Not a bad way to see ourselves out of the country.

Our crew, in front of the plane that took us from Managua to Big Corn Island

Corn Island as we were approaching to land

The boys trying to figure out how to string up our hammock

The view from the front porch of our rental house...breathtaking

Richard and Matt...manly as ever

Waiting for the bus to Somoto

Chatting in Somoto

We returned to mainland Nicaragua with our friends and headed up to Somoto to show them the place that we had spent two years of our lives. A few last meals, a goodnight’s sleep and a free truckride later, we were on our way out of town to the airport to make arrangements for them, our animals and ourselves on our way back to the US of A.

Last Days in Somoto

2010-05-23T16:02:00.010-06:00

One last picture with Ena Sofia, Adriana and Akhnatito...

The last few weeks in Somoto were tough. Matt and I spent a lot of time saying our goodbye’s – to our host family, our neighbors, our colleagues and other Peace Corps Volunteers. As much as we had tried to make sure that all of our projects were done, we ended up working down to the end. It felt weird to be in Somoto and not go to work, so that’s what we did.

Taeko (Japaneses health volunteer with whom I worked), Rubenia (my primary colleague), me and Noehmi (head of nursing)

I finally finished up my Partnership project, spending hours and hours on end working with teachers who volunteered their time to review my books and painstakingly explain the finer points of Spanish grammar to me. The books are at the printer as we speak and will be helping Nicaragua secondary students in the coming academic year. Thank you again to all of you who contributed financially and emotionally to making the project a reality.

Matt spent the last few weeks making sure that the transition of projects would go well for the volunteer that will be replacing him at the health center when we leave. This involved a week showing her the ropes and a week coordinating on the coming year’s project with the Irish University group that visits Somoto annually. For those of you who read the blog regularly and know of Los Quinchos, you will be happy to hear that they have decided to make themselves a more sustainable center and are going to be setting up their own garden and chicken shed to help cover the costs of feeding their students. The Irish group will be helping them to build these things in July and the new Peace Corps volunteer will help them coordinate with local contractors.

A picture with Enrique at a 15 year-old's party that we were invited to in our last week

Staff from the health center where Matt worked after they threw us a going away party

The last meal that we made for our host family - an American-style breakfast to say thanks before going away.

So our work wrapped up, Matt and I set to packing up two years of our lives for a transition back to the states. But after our time in Somoto, of going through really tough times and really special times, it was harder than we thought to pack up and leave. In the end, we didn’t actually pack much. We left the vast majority of our Nicaraguan possessions to other Peace Corps volunteers, to local schools, libraries and neighbors, including English/Spanish dictionaries, children’s books, clothes, shoes, the futon that we had built by hand, the eggplant and chile tire gardens, the bed and fridge, sheets and plates. All of it was left to someone to be put to good use. We packed a suitcase a piece, two guitars a dog and a cat. Our last two days in town, we had a number of despedidas or going away parties. The health center and health department where I worked gave us both certificates and appreciation and said heartfelt words. Tears were shed, hugs given and email addresses exchanged with promises of staying in touch forever. It was hard. But it made us realize that we had impacted people and we knew that they had impacted us.

Matt and Aknatito saying goodbye (in their own special way)

With things packed and ready to go we set off to bridge our two worlds, spending our last week in Nicaraguan showing it off to great friends from home.

Ringing the bell, a Peace Corps Nicaragua tradition for all volunteers who have officially finished their service

15 Gems of Nicaraguan Filosofia

2010-03-02T21:25:00.007-06:00

As our service continues to wind down, I imagine these last few posts will be mostly in list format with just a sprinkling of narrative. There is so much we are trying to mentally process on our own that it is difficult at times to think of material that all of you will find interesting and relevant to your own lives.

In order to remedy this I've decided to post a list of 15 common Nicaraguan beliefs along the vein of "everything I ever learned about life a kindergartner taught me." Some of these apply 100% to life in the US of A. Others might seem quirky, unreasonable, or down right wrong. You, the reader, also might find some totally irrelevant or not the least bit interesting due to lack of context. For that I apologize. For better or for worse, however, many Nicaraguans spend their entire lives in a world where these beliefs hold true.

- When meeting the girl of your dreams, it is always better to confess your love immediately and as wholeheartedly as possible. If you save it for later, you'll have to explain your previous lack of enthusiam.

- On a hot day it is more refreshing to drink a hot cup of coffee than a cold glass of water.

- Pregnant women and old people always go first. Always.

- You should always look your best, even when digging a latrine.

- All food, no matter the ingredients, should only be described as either "rich" (rico) or "ugly" (feo).

- There is always time for chatting on the porch.

- Going fast is very fun.

- CocaCola from a glass bottle tastes way better than CocaCola from a plastic bottle.

- When riding on a school bus, a seat over the wheel is better than no seat at all.

- Cell phones are overrated. So is electricity.

- Children need to be educated. They are the future of tomorrow. (note: this is written on a very large sign near our town. We're still trying to work it out. It's kind of like looking between two mirrors.)

- Horror movies are the highest form of art known to man. Horror movies and the accordian.

- When walking long distances it is better to get the whole thing over with before the sun comes up. Therefore, 4am is frequently "a late start."

- Toilet paper is a luxury, not a priviledge.

- Politics are for rich people.

Super Bowl 2010 and “Tossin’ the ole cow hide”

2010-02-18T06:34:00.001-06:00

LAST WEEK´S POST

Yes, yes, we realize the apparent mistake in this blog’s title. However, when in Nicaragua it’s remarkable how some of the wildest situations imaginable make up a normal week of our lives.

Jess was in Managua these past Thursday and Friday nights, so that left me alone in the house with the animals. Ian, who you may remember from such exciting blog posts as “A trip to Los Limones” and “Making a Tire Garden,” came down from his mountain roost to keep me company Friday night. We went out for a hefty dinner of bistec con salsa jalapeña at a new spot on the highway. Afterwards, we headed to a local pool hall to shoot a few games. Pool halls are an interesting place in Nicaragua. It’s very taboo to see women at a pool hall, but most men are there at least one night a week. Nicaraguans normally bet 2 or 3 córdobas per game and come up with all sorts of crazy rules that I can’t even begin to explain. The most popular game is a form of 9-ball, but instead of racking the balls for an opening break, one of the players gathers up all the balls in his arms and pushes the whole lot across the table. The other player starts from wherever the cueball stops.

Ian and I just played good old stripes and solids, which confused the Nicaraguan spectators as much as their games confuse us. Overall, it was a good evening out. On Astro’s final walk of the evening Yoda decided to follow us out the door. While I was trying to herd Yoda back into the house (not a very simple task) Astro managed to live up to his name and step through some time portal into another universe. Or, at least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with. It was the middle of the night and nobody was out and he just up and disappeared. I jumped on my bike and started riding larger and larger circuits through the streets around our house, but to no avail. Sometime around 2:30 am I decided to call it quits. I slept on the floor right next to the open front door in case Astro came back. He didn´t, so I set an alarm for every 45 minutes and, each time it went off, got on my bike for a ride through Somoto. Finally, on my 6:15 bike ride, I found Astro in front of his dad’s house 6 blocks away and absolutely covered in mud. I was mad, but also very relieved and exhausted, so I went to sleep (in my bed this time) until Jess got home at noon. The rest of Saturday was spent housecleaning and such.

Sunday, we made our way to Ocotal for the annual Peace Corps Super Bowl Party at La Yunta, a fairly decent restaurant with satellite TV. As fun as it was to be with many of our fellow volunteers, the restaurant only got the game with Spanish speaking sportscasters and Mexican commercials. It was still a good time, though. There happened to be a bunch of American and Canadian doctors also at the restaurant. The group was in Nicaragua for about 2 weeks doing pro bono medical check-ups and basic surgery. We run into a lot of groups like that up here, and it’s always great to have the opportunity to fill them in on local customs and culture.

Now, on to the cow hide. As several of you know, Jess and I have been bringing some very nice leather products back to the States each time we make a trip. We met a great guy in Condega, a nearby town, who has 20 years of experience working with leather. He does baseball gloves, belts, wallets, bags, briefcases, and pretty much anything else you can think of that can be sewn from leather. Francisco, “the bag man,” as I call him; lives very simply and has never really had a chance to get wild with his trade. Jess and I are trying to promote his products amongst volunteers here and friends at home. Below you’ll find a few pictures of a big leather tote he does.

So, Tuesday morning I went with Francisco to Estelí to see how he gets his leather. We met at 7:30am to await a bus arriving from León. León is cattle country, so it makes sense that a lot of leather tanning is done around the city. Francisco always buys his leather straight off the bus from León because it’s cheaper and you get to pick the colors and qualities you want. So, there we were catching 50 pound rolls of leather as they were tossed off the top of a school bus. Things stayed pretty civil until the rolls were untied. Then it became a free-for-all between everyone looking for the best leather. Each piece is the size of half a cow, about 9 feet long and between 2 to 4 feet wide and varies in weight, depending on the thickness of the leather. The colors I saw ranged from really bright yellow, like a baseball glove, to shiny blacks and maroons, perfect for boots. Each cowhide is tanned one solid color, but it was still easy to see brands and other marks from the skin’s previous life.

Francisco and I bared our teeth and dove into the fray in search of 3 perfect pieces with which he makes his bags. We came out with 2 yellowish pieces and one matte black piece. The two yellows were 21 and 18 feet square. The black piece was 25 feet square. I had my eye on a lovely peanut butter brown hide, but some jerk with a bushy mustache snatched it from my grip.

So, how much is a leather hide of this size, you ask? Since Francisco bought the hides right off the bus, they were 15 córdobas, or about 75 cents per square foot. All of our hides came in at just under $50 dollars.

After paying the man in charge (I´m not sure of what he was in charge of, to be honest) we made our way to the buses heading back to Somoto. I was at work by 10:30, despite the morning’s adventure. As Francisco makes his next set of bags we’ll try and get some photos of him in his workshop.

Thanks for reading!

Güirila: So simple, yet so tasty

2010-02-03T13:09:00.009-06:00

Today, we would like to announce the opening of a brand new restaurant in Somoto: Cafetín la Milpa. During our two years here we´ve seen several restaurants come and go, most of which only offer the classic Nica fare, but this little spot deserves special recognition.

The reason we´re so excited about Cafetín La Milpa is that they have somehow managed to create a diverse menu even though every single dish´s base is corn. A “milpa” in Spanish is field of corn ready to be harvested, so it makes sense. Not only does the cafetín have the old standbys like enchiladas and tacos. They´ve branched out into some foods that we´ve never even seen in a restaurant before.

That doesn´t mean we haven´t seen them, though. You see, there are several different categories of foods in Nicaragua. Food can be broken down into food cooked at home, food purchased at a restaurant, and food purchased on a bus or in the street. Home foods are simpler, one pot dishes usually based on veggies. Restaurant fare is a little more complicated and almost always includes meat. Bus and street food includes everything outside and in between those two categories and is usually fried. I suppose the same applies in the US of A: I wouldn´t buy meatloaf at a ball game and I wouldn´t normally cook shrimp scampi at home on a Tuesday.

So, back to Cafetín La Milpa. The food that they have introduced to Somoto that was previously only available on a bus is called Güirila. Phonetically it sounds something like this: Gwee-REE-la. If you want to get it absolutely right you need to roll the “r” a little bit. Now, I suppose you are asking, what is this lovely dish that has so captured the attention of Somoto´s resident gringos? The truth might surprise you.

Güirila has one ingredient and only one ingredient: sweet corn. It’s pretty much a big corn pancake, but when prepared right it is fantastic. Here´s the steps:

Cut up a banana leaf and wet one side.
Scoop about a ½ cup of puréed sweet corn kernels onto the wet banana leaf.
Spread out the mush so that it´s between ½ and ¼ inch thick.
Cover with another wet banana leaf.
Place the whole banana leaf/corn mush sandwich on a hot griddle.
After about 5 minutes, remove the top banana leaf, flip the Güirila, and remove the now crispy bottom banana leaf.
Cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, or until the pancake is nicely browned.

You have to throw out the crispy banana leaf after each pancake, so you´ll need quite a few leaves to make güirila in quantity. Since the güirila is a pretty healthy snack, feel free to eat with salty, fatty stuff to make sure you get the full experience. We recommend eating it with avocado, sour cream, or a crumbly cheese like Feta.

Here in Nicaragua we eat our Güirila with cuajada, which is a soft homemade cheese. We also use cuajada cheese for stuffed shells and lasagna. Jess and I actually saw it for sale at a latino supermarket when we were home over Christmas. If you are looking for a truly authentic Güirila con cuajada you can find the cheese at Twin City Supermarket in Finderne, NJ.

We'd love to get some feedback from all of you out there. Is anyone brave enough to give this recipe a shot? If so, how'd it go? Also, if you like hearing about the food, we can try and put up some similar posts in the coming weeks...

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Back on track

2010-01-27T19:35:00.013-06:00

Our host sister Ena Sofia builing with her first LEGO blocks.

One of our New Year´s resolutions is to be sure that this blog is updated fairly regularly over the next 3 months, so here it goes!

It´s been a fairly busy week for both Jess and I. She´s working on her partnership project, which we´ve written about a few times on this blog. Things are really coming together and I think she´s going to have a very functional, professional-looking final product. I finally put my calculus class from last semester to bed. I needed to college credit as a prerequisite for the graduate program I am starting in the fall, so I tried online classes from RVCC (New Jersey) in the Fall. For the most part the coursework was very straightforward and easy to follow online. I did run into some problems at testing time, because both professors wanted the exams to be monitored by a university. That took a bit of coordination, but, as of yesterday, it went off without a hitch.

We´ve also been spending a lot of time looking for jobs we´d be interested in and we´ve even started sending in applications as of a couple of weeks ago. I actually got a bite, believe it or not. I had a phone interview and everything, but in the end they decided to go with someone else. It was good to find some interest, though.

I think over the rest of our posts you´ll find that we´re focusing more on getting home and starting back up in the US of A. It´s interesting, because we still have more than two months in Nicaragua, but it seems like all conversations, not only with Americans but also with Nicaraguan friends, always focus on our trip home. Clearly, there´s planning that needs to be done and all that, but I for one feel a little guilty about it. It´s pretty much 100% certain we´ll never find ourselves living in a Spanish speaking country again, let alone a third world country, but it´s tough to keep focused on the day to day.

I think one of the reasons why is because Nicaragua feels so normal to us. Standing on a bus for 2 hours pressed between 30 other people is easy. Cold showers are a daily occurrence. Even speaking Spanish 8 – 12 hours a day is second nature. When we got back to Nicaragua from our vacation over Christmas we fell right back into our routines without any of the grumbles or gripes we had upon returning from our trip in June.

The interesting part is that our time home over Christmas also felt everyday and regular as well. To drive your own car, to eat out, to wear winter clothes was a part of our entire lives before Nicaragua, so it wasn´t too surprising to fall right back into it. I have to admit, I was still completely blown away by Wegman´s Marketplace and I hope I will be every time I go for the rest of my life. All those cheeses!

I think that when we get back we´ll be able to find a happy medium between the comforts of life pre/post Nicaragua and the simplicity of Peace Corps life. Hopefully that means a better appreciation of things that are in short supply in Nicaragua. Just to name a few: family, stable government, seasons, safe food, general prosperity. I think we´ll also work to maintain the discipline we´ve developed here around household chores, exercise, sleep, and inexpensive healthy cooking.

I, for one, am looking forward to the next step. Wherever and whatever is will be the closest Jess and I have come to permanency since college. After HWS we felt like we were always skipping between internships, schools, jobs, and answers to that all important question, “So what do you do?”

So, without getting too philosophical, we hope that this blog will allow all the readers left to see into our lives and thoughts as we transition out of Nicaragua and into the wilderness of the US…

Here are a few pictures to be sure this blog stays interesting:

Here´s the cat reading E.O. Wilson´s Consilience. Go figure.

Go Hobart!

The latest puppies from Astro´s old family. They are 50 days old. This one is Benji.

This is Astrito, or Little Astro.

Astro meeting the mini Astros.

Astro practicing for his trip home.

Yoda bothering Astro while he´s locked up.

December

2010-01-14T20:57:00.018-06:00

First of all, apologies for such a long gap in posting. Matt and I have had a very busy month and a half. That said, I thought I would do a quick post to bring you all up to date and let you know what happened in December.

As Matt mentioned in the previous post, we had a huge event in Somoto for World AIDS Day (December 1^st). Working together with my sitemate, we applied for money from a program known as VAST. VAST funds are funds made available to Peace Corps volunteers through the United States PEPFAR program, or the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief. The “largest commitment by any country to combat a single disease in history,” PEPFAR was enacted in 2003 during the Bush Administration and provides funding internationally to HIV/AIDS prevention programs worldwide.

Me, working on the banner.

Using funding from VAST and local organizations, we helped to organize a World AIDS Day Concert in Somoto with a well-known Nicaraguan artist, Perrozompopo. The band agreed to donate their time for the event and we set to work organizing a health fair the likes of which had never been seen in Somoto, including games like dart and ring tosses, informational health booths, cultural acts and our own, home-made condom mascot suit. We had roughly 300 adolescents attend the concert and health fair, and were able to measure before and after results, finding that they actually did learn from the event. It was the first time that local organizations had seen an event like this, the first time they had ever thought to evaluate to see if it actually work, and most importantly the first time that they realized the benefits of multiple organizations working together. All in all, a great success.

The start of a long weekend....it eventually becomes a large, man-sized condom suit.

And here it, looking more like a crayon than anything else...

But in the end, he turned out pretty well!

The health fair was a success.

And the concert also went over well (with our banner in the background!)

Just after that, Matt and I headed down to the beach for our Close of Service Conference. It was three days chock full of information about the logistics of leaving Peace Corps and how to deal with the inevitable of returning to the States and finding jobs. While the conference was very useful and the setting beautiful, I unfortunately spent most of it in bed with the worst chest cold of my life. I managed to lose my voice completely for the first time in my life the day before our final language interviews (where they evaluate our progress over two years). Needless to say, I had to postpone mine. We did however get to see some adorable baby sea turtles hatch at a hatchery right in front of our room and head out to sea! And in the end, Matt and I both ended up with a Spanish level of “Advanced-Mid”. Two levels down from native speaker, so not too shabby.

Look at how tiny the turtle is!

Another guy just trying to make his way to the sea.

Finally, at the end of December we headed home for the holidays to spend some much needed time away with family and friend in the states. It was a whirlwind trip, chock-full of movies, bowling, chatting and lots of food. (Matt managed to gain 10 pounds over the course of 10 days. Still not in the positive though – he lost 25 when he first got to Nicaragua!). Thanks to our families for a wonderful trip home (and to Mrs. Lyttle’s class for letting us come and share our experiences with them for a morning).

Professional bowlers at work...

But we know who the real professional is....

Some New Year's Eve fun.

So, December was a good month. We’ve now settled back in to things in Somoto and are frantically trying to finish up projects and begin to make plans for the readjustment back home. It will be harder than it sounds. Two years is a long time to spend in one place and I think that we are both starting to realize how much it feels like home. We’ll see what the next three months bring us. Probably a lot of hard work and a lot of mixed emotions.

All Volunteer Conference, Turkey Day, and Somoto Carnaval

2009-12-06T08:41:00.037-06:00

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

2009-11-12T10:46:00.011-06:00

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

2009-11-03T21:08:00.014-06:00

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

2009-10-11T15:39:00.013-06:00

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

2009-09-18T18:44:00.028-06:00

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!....

Puertas Nicaraguenses (Nicaraguan Doors)

2009-09-09T14:58:00.011-06:00

Big questions about the future of Peace Corps

2009-09-07T22:02:00.001-06:00

Dear family and friends,

We’re sorry it has taken us so long to get some new material up on the blog. August was an interesting month for us, with lots of ups and downs, and we haven’t had much time for anything outside the realm of work, household chores, and sleep. So, here’s a quick few thoughts we’ve been having lately. We would love to see some comments from all of you about this post so please give us a shout!

Jess spent this past Thursday in Managua where she had the opportunity to meet with the new world wide director of Peace Corps. His name is Aaron Williams and he was sworn in about a week ago. Director Williams has worked for USAID, a private development research agency called RTI, and a few other interesting places along the way. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic in the 60’s. Sadly, he is only one of two or three directors who have ever actually been a Peace Corps volunteer, so it is exciting to know that he will improve Peace Corps from the mindset of an administrator but also of a volunteer. Jess will write a bit later on about her meeting with Director Williams, but let’s talk a little more about where Peace Corps is and what the future holds.

Peace Corps has about 8,000 volunteers worldwide right now, and surprisingly, that is not its highest enrollment. Earlier, I believe in the 60’s and 70’s, there were more volunteers than there are now. One of the big pushes in Washington D.C. is to expand Peace Corps to double its current size. You might actually remember hearing this from President Obama, who mentioned he would like to see Peace Corps doubled by 2012. Nobody really thinks that’s possible, but the spirit of it all is good.

There are others, including returned Peace Corps volunteers, who actually believe the number of volunteers should be lowered. They believe that by shrinking the size of the agency we can attract more experienced professionals and have a better impact in the places that really need (and want) our help. It’s tough to say what would be best of the agency overall. The last director pushed to increase the number of married couples and retired volunteers. Who knows, maybe that’s why we got a spot in the highly competitive Latin America region. The idea is clear: married couples offer twice the volunteer in the same community and retired volunteers have a career’s worth of knowledge that they can apply to their work. Those two categories, however still make up less that 20% of volunteers, with the majority being single recent college graduates.

For me, it comes down to what we expect from the U.S. Peace Corps. We have had the same three main goals since JFK set up the agency:
1. To offer technical experience in the form of American professionals to developing countries who ask for help.
2. To promote a better understanding of the U.S. and American culture in other countries around the world.
3. To promote a better understanding of other countries and cultures to Americans.

The goals, while maybe surprising to some of you first time readers, aren’t very specific in their purpose. There’s no Peace Corps goal that says, “Volunteers with effectively lower the transmission of HIV / AIDS between sex trade workers and those who solicit services from the sex trade.” In my opinion that’s a relief.

With such a non-specific mandate, however, we do need to set up some guidelines about priorities and resources. Is the goal of Peace Corps to put as many Americans on the ground as possible, trained long hours of sitting on a neighbor’s patio and chatting? Is the main goal to have a select group of development professionals working in the highest levels of program design to improve the way a country is run? Do we want volunteers to have to scrounge for funding (i.e. Jess’s Partnership Project) or do we want to give recent college grads American tax dollars to help third world countries at the volunteers’ discretion?

There are lots of questions above and beyond all this that get to the heart of what Peace Corps is. Somewhere buried behind the health care headlines (geeze louise, people!) you can find the stories about American image around the globe. While wars and industry usually are responsible for our global image there is the potential for Peace Corps, USAID, and other agencies to play a larger role. The bottom line is that someone needs to decide where and how. Maybe our new director is just the guy for the job. We’ll see…

Any thoughts from all of you?

By the way, there will be plenty of cute cat and dog photos in the next post. It's just around the corner, too!

Update: new member of the family

2009-08-07T13:26:00.015-06:00

Well, I suppose we´ve hidden his existence long enough. Jess and I think it´s time to introduce you all to the newest inhabitant of our house. Friends and family, meet Yoda:

We know, we know. You all are thinking how silly it is to end up with another pet when we only have 8 months left in Nicaragua. Believe me when I say that we, as well, are having those same thoughts. For now, he´s just a foster cat with a very slim chance of actually immigrating to the U.S. More likely he´ll stay as a house warming gift for the Peace Corps volunteer(s) that follows us up. Either way, we know some of you would be interested in hearing about him, so here it is.

Jess and I both work at the Casa Materna outside of town on a regular basis. I think we´ve explained the Casa Materna in past blogs, but for those who are new here´s a brief description. Nicaragua has always had a fairly high infant and maternal mortality rate, mainly because it has always been the custom to give birth in the house. There is a network of very well trained women here called parteras who serve as midwives at the birth. While most communities trust their partera more than anyone else in the area, the knowledge of these women does fall short when it comes to complications during and after the birth. Therefore, the government made a big push a decade ago to encourage institutionalized births, where a birth with complications could get proper medical attention and save the life of the woman and the baby. The Ministry of Health has been asking women from rural communities to come in to the hospital to give birth, which is all well and good, except for one little hiccup: most of these women live hours away by foot, and starting to walk in when your water breaks (which, I assure you, is a very Nicaraguan thing to do) probably isn´t a great idea. To the rescue is the Casa Materna!

A bunch of Nicaraguan women came up with the idea to have very low cost lodging available within a short distance of hospitals, where rural women could go a week or two before their delivery date to basically wait. The Somoto Casa Materna is one of the area´s best, as the lodging and food are completely free. The actual building is also located about a 2 minute drive from the hospital, so as soon as a woman goes into labor an ambulance is sent to bring her right in. Also, as our Casa Materna is managed by the Ministry of Health, there is a nurse at the CM 24 hours a day. Overall, it´s a great idea.

The CM also is a great place for Peace Corps volunteers, where we can go to speak to several women at once about maternal health, child nutrition, and the importance of family planning in the future. We have a lot of women come through the Casa Materna, but unfortunately, plenty still give birth in the home. Their reasons vary, but unfortunately the two most prominent are a general distrust in government services and a machismo attitude by the fathers and husbands. Jess and I have actually had conversations with men who say, “I don´t want some doctor looking at my wife´s private parts. Those are for me only.” So, you can see that we still have a long way to go.

What does this have to do with Yoda, our new housemate? Well, apparently the benefits of the Casa Materna are evident across species. Yoda´s mom came to the Casa Materna sometime in May and not being able to use the services at the hospital, understandably, chose to give birth to her litter of kittens right there on the Casa Materna grounds. We´re not sure how many were born or how many are still alive, but we first met Yoda when he must have been only a few weeks old. Jess and I were at the Casa Materna dropping off a mural when Astro pointed us to a wooden shack on the property. Inside the shack was Yoda, all by himself, and not at all interested in playing with “the white giant” drooling in front of him. We went home alone that day and prepared for our visit to the States. As Jess was making her rounds post-vacation, she came across Yoda again, not much bigger than the first time we saw him and covered in fleas. EVEN THEN, she was able to restrain herself another week and let him be at the Casa Materna. The next week, however, when Jess made it back to the Casa Materna, the nurses informed her that they had to do something with the cat because it was too dirty and annoying to keep around. That´s never a good sign in Nicaragua and usually involves a shovel. So, that day, Yoda came home.

Jess cleaned him up using Astro´s anti-flea shampoo: By the way, his name comes from this photo, if you can't see the resemblance.

And he settled right in:

Here he is next to a pineapple, for size comparison. We weighed him a couple of days later and he came in just under 1.5 pounds.

So, now we´ve had him for about a month, and while he´s grown, it isn´t much. Every day he gets a little more bold, exploring our backyard and the property next door. Astro has been great about sharing his food and his family, and they are just getting to point where you could call their interaction “playful.” Here is a photo montage of Astro's opinion of his new foster brother:

Welcoming a new family member to the house that is of a different species and 1/50th your size....confusing.

Sharing your food and water...unsettling.

Realizing that you have a common bond of abnormally large appetites...

Priceless.

So, that´s our new friend. More interesting things to come soon!

Tourist Video of Somoto

2009-08-01T15:47:00.004-06:00

Hello friends and neighbors. Below is our first attempt to upload a video to the blog. It looks like it worked. This is a video we just got a hold of that is being used as an introduction to Somoto for tourist groups. The song is about Somoto, as well. We'll try and translate the lyrics later. For now, enjoy!

-Matt and Jess

UCDVO 2009 - A Photo Diary

2009-07-26T09:38:00.022-06:00

Yesterday we said goodbye to this years UCD Volunteers Overseas. They were only here a month, but accomplished incredible amounts in just 4 weeks. Below are a bunch of photos that show the progress of their work, all the way to the finished product. Expect more this week, but for now, enjoy!

The Multi-Use Court:

The Tree House:

The World Map:

Thank you for a great month!

Honduran Unrest

2009-07-01T18:59:00.008-06:00

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!

2009-06-24T17:52:00.015-06:00

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!

2009-05-31T11:17:00.020-06:00

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!

2009-05-18T15:37:00.003-06:00

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

2009-05-17T10:42:00.007-06:00

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.