El Gran Viaje al Gran Cañon

This past weekend Jess, Astro, and I all went to the Canyon on what we like to call “the Gringo Train.” We had along with us three Peace Corps trainees, two travel writers, two Grand Canyon river guides, and two other volunteers. It’s volunteer visit weekend, which explains the trainees and the volunteers. The two travel writers are re-writing a book about Northern Nicaragua and the canyon river guides met the travel writers at a hotel in Somoto and both had their hearts set on visiting the Canyon. Being that I knew the travel writers and we were already planning on visiting the Canyon with our trainees, our group quickly doubled in size, with also cut our taxi costs in half. Therefore, we were all happy. Off we went on Sunday afternoon.

Jess and I made egg salad, tuna salad, and PB&J sandwiches for the Peace Corps side of the group, and the others brought ham and cheese sandwiches that they picked up at Palí, the Somoto grocery store. We also brought some cut up veggies, cheese puffs, and Ranchitas, the Nicaraguan version of Doritos. One of our fellow volunteers was kind enough to share a gigantic bar of chocolate that she had recently received in a package from the States. On top of all that we carried about 10 liters of water. We didn’t eat until we made it to the boat launch, which is about a 40 minute walk from where the taxis let us off. You can imagine the feast we had – the chocolate hadn’t even melted!

From the boat launch it’s either a 5 minute boat ride or a 20 minute scramble across the canyon walls. While the majority of us went for the scramble, Leanne, another Peace Corps Volunteer, chose the boat ride. As you can see in the picture, she had her own private float up the river with a very handsome Nicaraguan boatman.

At the other boat launch further up stream the scramblers waded back across the river. Leanne, of course, was able to stay dry the entire visit. The rest of us, weren’t as lucky, but went for the swimming. After the second boat launch it’s either more rock scrambling or a leisurely swim. At this point everybody went off on their own to find their own little piece of the canyon.

We made our way back about 4 o’clock and huffed our way out of the canyon by 4:30. Our goal was to get the two travel writers and the two river guides on the 5 o’clock bus out of Somoto. We pulled up to our house at 5:02, and the four travelers ran in, grabbed their bags, and jumped in a taxi. Even though the bus had already left, their taxi driver agreed to speed his way down the Panamerican Highway to catch the bus. We ran into the driver the next day, and sure enough, they caught the bus about 10 minutes further down the road.

Those of us who ended up in Somoto for the evening celebrated a successful canyon visit with tacos and Spanish rice. Delicious.

This being Volunteer Visit Week, Jess and I are being visited by Hannah and Jessie, two Peace Corps Trainees currently living in Carazo, where we lived last year at this time. We’re just supposed to show them a slice of our life, but it’s turning into a very busy week – so they might be getting more than they bargained for. Jess and I are both neck deep in several projects, which is also why we haven’t been blogging nearly as frequently as normal. We will get it back by to once a week soon, though.

Another exciting note, last week some Peace Corps volunteers came across The Travel Channels Andrew Zimmern filming in Nicaragua. They were invited to help out with the show and ended up joining Andrew and his crew for a feast of grilled boa constrictor and armadillo. Look for the show airing on The Travel Channel in June!

More to come, soon!

Here we are on our way into the Canyon. Gringo Parade!


Leanne taking the "easy" way into the canyon. How romantic!
First timers to the canyon.

Wading across the river.

Matt and Astro after a swim.

Here's Jess explaining the finer geological intricacies of the canyon.

On our way back.

Astro took the easy way as we left.

Back up the river.

Home in time for a beautiful sunset.

Welcome NICA 49!

On Thursday of last week Peace Corps Nicaragua received its next wave of volunteers. 21 people came in from Miami to begin their training as Health Volunteers. They will be training in the same towns that Jess and I were in for our first three months in Nicaragua. In April, they will swear in as volunteers and be sent all over the country to do the same work that Jess and I are doing. We´re hoping to get at least a couple in our Department of Madriz.

On the other hand, NICA 43 is preparing to head back to the States. This is the group that came in January of 2007 (a year before us). They will be finishing up their 2 years of service at the end of March and will be heading their separate ways. Jess and I live near 4 NICA 43ers right now, and we´ll be sad to see them go!

We, of course, are almost exactly at the middle point of our service in Nicaragua. We´ve got one more full year in Somoto before we are replaced by…who? If you guessed NICA 52, then you are correct!

Now, you might be asking yourself, “what happened to NICA 47 and 48?” You might also be asking, “who decides what sites these volunteers will live in?” Lastly, you might be asking, “What kind of interaction is there between Peace Corps volunteers during their service?” Luckily for you, this is the blog post that answers them all! Jess and I haven´t really talked about the structure of Peace Corps, and I think now is as good a time as any.

So, let’s start with country numbers. As trainees come into each Peace Corps country, their group is assigned a number. Here in Nicaragua we’re into the 40’s right now. In Honduras, they are only in the teens. Peace Corps has been in Honduras just as long as it’s been in Nicaragua, but their training style is different than ours, hence the big difference in numbers. In Honduras, all of the new volunteers are brought in once a year. They live together in a camp-like compound for their first three months. It is there that they have language and technical training. They don’t finally live with a Honduran family until they are sworn in as volunteers three months later.

Here in Nicaragua trainees are brought in every four months. We are divided into sectors, which determines when we come into the country. For instance, Health volunteers come in to Nicaragua every January and finish their service every March. Agriculture and Environment volunteers come in every August and finish their service every November. Small Business and English come in together at some other point during the year. Therefore, in a normal year three different groups come into Nicaragua and each of the three groups is assigned the next available number. In Honduras, there is only one new group number per year. And that explains the difference.

Another difference is in the training style. Our training is “community based,” which means we actually learn Spanish and technical skills while living with Nicaraguan families. I obviously can’t say our system is better than the Honduran one, but it was perfect for Jess and I. Nicaragua is also considered one of the best countries to train in. Pretty great, huh?

Now, on to site placement. Right now the two main people in charge of Health in Nicaragua are travelling around the country taking care of a process called “site development.” Every site that would like to have a Peace Corps volunteer must submit an application. Next, the Safety and Security Coordinator makes a visit to be sure the location fits Peace Corp’s standards for…well…safety and security. Once that’s been cleared, the Health staff make a visit to meet with the colleagues with whom the volunteers will be working for two years. If everything is in order, that community gets put on a list of potential sites. Because they staff know in advance how many trainees are coming into the country, they develop that amount of sites, and a few extra just in case. Therefore, every volunteer has a community and every community has a volunteer. A few weeks before the trainee becomes a volunteer, they are assigned a site based on their personal needs and interests. They are able to visit the site and meet their colleagues before officially moving there, which ensures a smooth start. A lot of thoughtful planning goes into site development and very few volunteers are disappointed in the site they are assigned.

Now, volunteer interaction. As you’ve seen throughout this blog, Jess and I are constantly seeing other Peace Corps volunteers. We are lucky enough to live in a central city that is a stopping point for many volunteers travelling to more rural sites. That being the case, we’re constantly having people over for lunch and dinner, and a few overnight stays as well. Those more rural volunteers, however, rarely see another gringo, as they tend to live at the last community at the end of a dirt road. Volunteers are encouraged to stay in their site as much as possible, but most leave for a weekend every once and a while to hang out with other Americans. This month’s meeting revolved around the Superbowl. It was a great game, but the commercials shown were all in Spanish, and none of the new ones highlighted in the States made it down here. That’s the part of the game I love the most, too! Oh well.

Sorry for the delay in blogs - we’ll try to get back up to weekly postings in the near future. Please keep reading!

Here's Astro on his first birthday. This is the little store in front of our house. He's been moonlighting as a security guard over there on the weekends...

Bananagrams, Jeopardy, and La Montaña de la Cruz

Jess and I have had an incredible week. We’ve now received virtually all the packages we’ve been waiting on since Thanksgiving, including two from my mom. Finally, we can hang up Christmas lights and eat Stove Top stuffing with our turkey! It might be a little late, but the Christmas music was still fun to listen to.

There was a game included in the package called Bananagrams, where players make their own crossword puzzles with a bunch of letter tiles. It’s kind of like free-form Scrabble. Even though I used more letters, Jess still won. Here are our crosswords.

Matt´s:

Jess´s:
This week was the first of the new year where we really worked our butts off. I had an activity to run virtually every morning and afternoon and Jess juggled finishing up a grant proposal with some workshops for the health department. I worked 3 days this week with brigadistas, who are Nicaraguans who volunteer to help with the health department. We have about 300 brigadistas in the Municipality of Somoto, most of whom live very rurally. People from these communities have to walk 2 or 3 hours just to get to a health post. Health posts have a nurse most weekdays, but only have doctors 2 days a week. Clearly, there is a big deficit in the care that’s needed and the amount of coverage available. Therefore, it’s the brigadistas’ responsibility to diagnose an illness or injury and decide whether that injury warrants a trip to the health center. If the brigadista feels it’s serious enough, they give a referral to the person and send them on their way to the health center. Anyone can just show up at a health center, but a referral from a brigadista gets priority, so people in the communities turn to the brigadistas first, before making the trek. The system can only work if the brigadistas are well trained in basic medical care and know the signs for more serious illnesses. To make sure that’s the case PLAN Nicaragua, an international non-profit, offers monthly trainings to the brigadistas in 23 principal communities (about a third of all the brigadistas). This month’s training covered illnesses in infants and child nutrition. Because it’s the first of the year, we also talked about the logistics of reporting to the health center in Somoto.

To review the information we learned, I introduced a new game to the brigadistas: Jeopardy. We had 2 teams of 5 participants each, as well as a “studio audience” of about 30. It took a while for everyone to understand the rules, but once we got going, it worked out quite well. We didn’t make them answer in question form, but other than that it worked them same. The best part about the review was that we had virtually no wrong answers, which means the brigadistas were paying attention and were well trained. Overall, a success!
Saturday morning Jess, Astro and I climbed a little mountain peak on the outskirts of Somoto called La Montaña de la Cruz. Going up took about an hour, but once we made it we had a bird’s eye view of our city and the surrounding countryside. The whole trip only took about 3 hours, but it was great excerise. One of our New Year’s resolutions was to visit all the pretty sights to see around Somoto. Slowly, but surely, we’re scratching them off the list! Here are the pictures from our trip to the Cross.

The view from downtown Somoto. Can you make out the cross at the peak?

Halfway up the mountain at about 7:00 AM.

Taking a break on the way up.

Looking down at Somoto from the peak.

Our house is somewhere down there!

Cactus flower.

Sometimes you have to climb a few fences to get where you want to go!

Looking South-East from the peak.

And in other news, our good friends Akhnaton and Silvia welcomed their third child into the world on the 13th! Their first boy (blog readers might remember Adriana and her sister Ena Sophia from previous posts), he’s named Akhnatontito (little Akhnaton) Corrales Espinoza. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 3 oz, and wakes up every 30 minutes crying to be fed. How exciting!

Up on the Mountain

Peace Corps Volunteer Matt Keenan at a recently completely well project in his site, El Volcán.

This Friday I made a trip up to the site of another Peace Corps volunteer with a visiting group of MPH students. Matt (the other volunteer) is in the agriculture sector, and therefore works with small producers farms. Basically, AG volunteers are trying to improve the farming class’s way of life, be it more money or easier work, without doing more harm to the environment than farming already causes. Because most farming is done outside of cities, AG volunteers tend to live in the smallest communities assigned to Peace Corps volunteers. Usually, that means no electricity, running water, internet, cell phone service and all the other niceties that us “city folk” take for granted. When you think of the Peace Corps way of life you’re probably thinking of Agriculture volunteers.

Matt’s site, called El Volcan, is situated on the mountain to the south of Somoto. To get there he has to take a 20 minute taxi to the bottom of the mountain and then walk 40 minutes straight up. Everything he’s got up there was either brought up in a backpack or in a hired 4X4 pickup truck. 11 Public Health students and I made the trip on Friday to take a look at two of Matt’s main projects: coffee farming and stove building.

Because the community is so high (3000 feet above sea level), the weather is much cooler than down in Managua (450 feet above sea level) or even Somoto. Plants like coffee are perfect in this temperature and really thrive in the constant fog that sits on the mountain every morning. The 23 families that live in Matt’s community have formed a cooperative which pools their harvest to get a better price. They also invest together in the equipment and facilities needed to maximize their farming and minimize their effect on the mountain. In terms of price, the coffee in El Volcan is almost as high a grade as it can get. It’s sold in Wegman’s under the brand “Las Segovias.” Because of their co-op status and the various benchmarks they’ve met (it’s all organic!) the families of El Volcan receive a fair market price for their coffee, which ranges between 200 to 250 dollars for 100 pounds. The community produces 20,000 pounds annually, which divided between 23 families is 3,000 córdobas a month per family: a very good salary in the country. Here are some baby coffee plants in a nursery.

Matt introduced us to a local producer who was kind enough to show us his operation. The pictures below highlight the process from start to finish. We started off looking at the baby coffee plants. These sit in a nursery for 2 years before they are planted on the mountain. Because the mountain has been so heavily deforested by previous generations and because coffee loves to grow in shade the farmers don’t have to do any clearing of the landscape to make room for the coffee. They simply plant it underneath the trees that are still around. The coffee plant then grows another year or so before it starts giving off little red fruits which contain the coffee beans. The plants can grow up to 10 feet tall and live up to 15 years, as long as they aren’t attacked by the many plagues and blights that happen in the cool climate.

Twice a year the entire village leaves all other work aside and heads up the mountain to pick coffee. Everyone is responsible for working, including the children. Unfortunately, said our tour guide, the children aren’t as careful as the adults when picking the coffee bean and damage a lot plants to the point where they can’t produce nearly as much After the coffee is harvested, the fruit is run through a machine that grinds off the fruity outside and separates the bean inside. This is the only part of the process that uses any kind of machine. Then the beans are washed various times and set out to dry. The fruity pulp is left to decompose and then is scattered among the coffee plants as a form of fertilizer. As the beans dry in the sun, workers pick through each batch and remove any shells or deformed beans. What’s left is bagged, put on mules, and taken down the mountain to be sold in Estelí. The coffee won’t get roasted until it makes it to its final destination, so at this stage it’s still very yellow, and the Nicas call it “café oro” or gold coffee.
After visiting the coffee plantation the group built an improved stove for a local family. Virtually all families in the countryside use wood stoves that are built from adobe bricks. The stoves aren’t very efficient and are horrible at moving smoke away from the house. Respiratory illnesses are almost epidemic in Nicaragua, so, while the improved stoves project is normally left up to Agriculture volunteers, we Health volunteers have a lot of interest in seeing them built.

This photo shows the group (and Matt) buiding the metal frame that will act as a skeleton inside the adobe mud that’s used to keep the stove warm. We used Matt’s model to make measurements and then cut pieces of metal and tied everything in place. Next we carried the materials to the house that received the new stove. To make it all work you need the frame, 17 bricks, 1 wooden board, and a whole bunch of mud.

After getting to the house we demolished the older, less efficient stove. We framed in the new stove with the bricks, used the mud as mortar and finally placed the metal frame on top of the bricks. Then the metal frame is coated with mud. The wooden board is used to keep the mud from falling and therefore closing the whole where the fire burns. Once the mud has dried for a week the board can be removed and the oven is ready for use. You may be asking, “what makes this stove any better?” Good question!

This stove has a ramp inside of it, which forces the heat from the fire up to each burner without actually having to burn a fire directly underneath the burner. In the old stoves, you have to have a 3 foot long fire, which means a heck of a lot of firewood. In this stove, you only need a 1 foot fire, which means one third the amount of firewood is needed. Also, the ramp forces the smoke all the way to the end of the stove and out the stovepipe that’s placed there. In the older model, smoke is leaving from all 3 of the burners, which means it stays in the kitchen with the people cooking.

So, just like that, you’ve fought deforestation and cut down on respiratory illnesses. Brilliant! The best part is each stove only costs $20 to rebuild. Matt has been raising money in his hometown in Maryland to construct stoves in the homes that need them most in El Volcán. So far he’s finished 16. Way to go, Matt!

Here are some other recent pictures from our life in Nicaragua. Enjoy!

Jess took this picture on a recent hike.

Jess and I make pizza a couple times a month from scratch. We are lucky enough to have a mozzarella in the grocery store in town, although it tastes nothing like cheese in the states. We use tomatoes and pretend they are pepperoni. No pepperoni here!

Pizza going into our Easy-Bake Oven. It takes about 30 mins to cook, but it comes out pretty darn tasty.

Astro is upset because he´s not getting pizza for dinner, just a little leftover bread with his normal dog food. He´s really got nothing to complain about, though. see below.

The way most dogs look in Nicaragua. People might let them sleep near the house, but they are left to fend for themselves when it comes to food. Very sad...

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Jess and I would like to wish everybody a fantastic 2009! We have some new year´s resolutions to share with you all, but first we´d like to describe the festivities that took place in Somoto.

As we explained earlier, the holiday season in Nicaragua stretches from the 7th of December, with the celebration of Purísima, until the 1st of January with the New Year. Other than church activities the 24th and the 25th were very low-key, which is unusual for any Nicaraguan holiday. The New Year, however, was nothing of the sort.

We had thought about leaving town and spending New Year´s with other Peace Corps volunteers, but with all of the traveling with Jess´s parents, we decided to stay in Somoto and spend time with our ex-host family. We met them at another relative´s house in Somoto about 8ish. Silvia is getting ready for their 3rd child, who is due on the 16th of January. She was at her sisters with the two girls, Adriana (10) and Ena Sofia (5). The new baby is a boy and will be named Akhnatontito, or little Akhnaton, after his father. Big Akhnaton did get to the party until later. The family just received a big loan to start building a house. They´ve had a plot of land in Somoto for a while now, but with building costs so high, they were waiting until the right time. Since gas prices have dropped a bit down here, they jumped on the opportunity to get started. Akhnaton, who is one of the most orderly Nicaraguans we know, has been ordering all of the materials from Managua, where it is cheaper to buy them in bulk and ship them to Somoto than it would be to buy locally. New Year´s Eve he was waiting for a truck loaded with 120 100 lb. bags of cement. Since they don´t use wood to build here (it rots to easily in the heat and rain) the main building materials are concrete, concrete blocks, and iron to tie the whole thing together. I don´t know if it make the building go faster, but it sure seems like it. Now that the building materials are here Akhnaton´s contractor is going to finish the 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in 2 months. We´ll see about that…

Anyway, Silvia and the girls were at her sister´s house with the rest of their family. Jess and I have had the opportunity to get to know most of the extended family, and even work with a few in a professional setting, so we´re very comfortable with the family. Visiting at the house were relatives from all over Nicaragua as well as Donald and Alison who now live in Boston, MA. Alison was the Peace Corps volunteer in Somoto before Jess and I. She met Donald, a Nicaraguan, during her service and they got married about 6 months before leaving. So, Donald has had only a few months less than us to learn English (when we were learning Spanish) and he´s doing great. His favorite thing about living in the States is the variety of food. He really likes Chinese food. The thing he hates most is the cold weather. I think Boston got hit pretty hard with ice and cold in the past few weeks, so it´s justified.

At Silvia´s sister´s house we were served Relleno (pronounced Ray-yay-no), which literally means ¨stuffed¨. So, it´s kind of like our stuffing that we use to fill a turkey on Thanksgiving. This stuffing is make of pulled pork and shredded chicken. Next they had a bread and milk pulp to give it a little body. Then come the spices and veggies, which include potatoes, carrots, olives, capers, raisins, and prunes.
Then the whole thing is cooked down and served over rice with bread. It´s tough to compare the taste to anything we have back home, except for maybe a pulled pork sandwich without the barbecue sauce. It was very rich, to say the least.

There was a piñata in the street about 10:00 and all the local kids took a swing. The poor guy got pretty well beat up, but that´s just the way the cookie crumbles in Nicaragua.



We stayed at Silvia´s sister´s house until about 11, when we walked back to Akhnaton´s house to put Ena Sofia to bed. Most of the family stayed at the other house, but a few of us walked over to watch the festivities more towards the center of town. There isn´t a particular television program that people watch to know when it´s midnight, but you just kind of know it´s the new year when all of the fireworks start going off. Out in the streets, anybody and everybody was lighting things that flew, things that sparked, things that blew up, etc. Old people, kids who couldn´t have been more than 6, and everyone in between. Chaos would be a nice way to describe it. Then came the viejos. A few families on each block donate old clothes and dress up a scarecrow like figure. The figure sits outside the house for the day, usually with a bottle of alcohol in his hand to express the festive spirit. Then, just before midnight he is stuffed with fireworks and moved into the street. Once he´s there, he gets doused in alcohol or gas and he waits. After the clock strikes 12 he gets lit on fire. Pretty soon, the fire works catch and man…it was quite a sight. Hopefully these pictures will demonstrate the event. Perhaps we should add piñatas and viejos to our list of afflicted peoples in Nicaragua.

Jess saying goodbye to a viejo who lived down the street from us. By the time we walked home at 3:00 he was just a pile of ashes...
A viejo being lit near Akhnaton and Silvia´s house.

1 minute after ignition.

2 minutes after ignition.

3 minutes after ignition....so sad.

Unlike the States, the party doesn´t end at 12:30 or so. Our Nicaraguan hosts told us that we weren´t allowed to go home until 5 in the morning, or we´d risk bad luck all year long. We made it to about 3, and then decided to take the risk. It turned out they were just pulling our leg and as soon as we left the party shut down. Everyone else was asleep by 3:30. We woke up around 7 the next morning to take Astro for a walk, and I´ve never seen Somoto quieter. Today is the 3rd and it seems like people are still recovering. Monday, however, things are back in business and we are back to work, with hopefully a bunch of fun adventures to come in 2009.

The New Year´s cake: Sopa Borracha, which actually means drunken soup. But it´s a cake...go figure.

Kids in the street with their sparklers.

Astro hanging out with some friends. He stayed home for the night.

Astro stayed home, but the fireworks kept him up. This is the morning after (10am), still recovering.

Jess´s New Year´s Resolutions:

1. Write more.
2. Work on my Spanish

Matt´s New Year´s Resolutions:

1. Keep in touch with friends from home.
2. Play more guitar.

Combined resolutions:
1. Exercise more.
2. Read more in Spanish.

Christmas in Nicaragua

Matt and I want to say a big thank you to my mom, dad and sisters, Tine and Jen. They all made the trek down to Nicaragua for Christmas, and despite a number of travel difficulties, they have since all made it back to the states in one piece.

The fam arrived the Saturday before Christmas, late at night, so we jumped across the highway and spent the night at Las Mercedes hotel before getting up bright and early. We headed to Somoto in the 16-passenger van that we had rented (the next smallest vehicle supposedly held 8 passengers and 2 pieces of luggage. But with all of the bags in tow and a promise to Matt that we wouldn’t abandon the dog for the week, we needed a bit more room, so a ‘microbus’ it was).

We made a quick stop at the famous la Casita for lunch and then we arrived in Somoto on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Mom, Dad, Tine and Jen checked into the Hotel Colonial in town and came over to meet Astro and see the house. We followed it up with a fabulous dinner at our host-family’s house, prepared by Akhnaton. The meal was absolutely over the top – salad followed by a steak topped with two traditional Nicaragua sauces, locally-made sausage, baked potato stuffed with queso and butter, and a desert of jello and ice cream. Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures so we don’t have any evidence of the meal, except perhaps a few extra pounds.

After a night in Somoto, we made our way down one of the worst roads in Nicaragua to the beach at Leon, las peñitas. We spent a relaxing two nights there, getting to know the local beach, food and dogs (yes, Astro went with us).  Then we headed to the famous Ometepe, where we spent Christmas. We went horse-back riding (the planned 3-hour trip rapidly devolved into an hour once we realized that few of us were actually cut out to sit on a horse’s back for any substantial length of time) we saw petroglyphs, monkeys and just relaxed. We planned to spend our last day exploring Masaya and the Masaya volcano, but due to some travel difficulties leaving the island, our departure was delayed 7 hours and we just made it to get the van back 5 minutes before the 8-oclock deadline.

All in all, I think that it was a good trip. We don’t have a lot of photos, because most were taken with my mom’s camera. Maybe she’ll write a post and we can see my family’s opinions of Nicaragua and some of the pictures that they have!