Buena para caminar

One of the first things that attracted me to my site when I first heard about it was the possibility for extending health care to some of the more remote communities surrounding my town. I had visions of me traveling on horseback for hours, admiring the hills covered in rice and corn fields, connecting with those so isolated from everything else. But months passed in my service and the only times I went out into the communities the health center personel and I would go in the ambulance. Bouncing in the back of a car down muddy roads so impossibly gouged and grooved by travelers so as to resemble mini mountain ranges did not fit into my idealistic imaginings somehow.

Finally when I chanced to hear about an outing leaving early in the morning, I simply showed up wearing my rubber boots and wide-brimmed hat. They had no choice but to take me with them. So after waiting for an hour for the attending doctor to arrive, he, a nurse from the center, and I headed to the hills to visit some patients.

You know the tired phrase be careful what you wish for? Hold onto that thought.

At first the doctor was worried about me coming along, seeing as women are dainty flowers or something of the sort, but Santos, the nurse, came to my defense saying, "No, hombre. Ella es buena para caminar." She's good at walking. Grateful to Santos, and not wanting to slow them down or appear weak, I kept up the pace. Well, at least the doctor and I kept the same pace, Santos is in another league, and was constantly well ahead of us both.

The man is a BEAST.

We visited ten houses, navigating empty corn fields, dried and dead after the recent harvest. At each one we stopped while Santos and I took vitals, and the doctor prescribed high blood pressure and anti parasitic medication. Afterwards we would sit for a little and enjoy the fresco, or the coffee, or oranges, or whatever the family would offer us, while we tried to steel ourselves to keep walking.

Santos taking vitals.

This particular area is built on very high, very steep hills, so that most of our walking was straight uphill, but for most of the time I felt good; I was energized and enthusiastic to be experiencing a unique day. We even traveled through a cacoa grove.

Asking for directions in the cacoa grove.

This is what the pods look like inside.  You can eat the white pulp, which is bittersweet, then let the seeds dry and make chocolate.

It wasn't until we reached the last house, with a woman whose eyes are so glazed with cataracts they look blue, that I began to feel the strain of the day. We had started out at eight that morning and it was past two in the afternoon, and we still had at least two hours hard walking to get back to town.

She asked me when I was going to visit again.  I said I didn´t know.  It took us more than four hours to reach her house.

With the local brigadista leading the way, we made it back by five, but by that time my legs were shaking, that I lost my footing on a particularly muddy hill, and fell on my butt. Just the doctor saw it, and he was just as tired as I was so I didn't lose too much face. He still offered to carry me back to town though. I declined. Politely.

That´s him with one of our last patients.

More and more people kept showing up from the fields to have their blood pressure checked as well.

Then this little guy showed up too.

Even though I was sore for days afterwards, and even though my prideful delusions of myself as still in shape after months of a sedentary life were utterly destroyed, I am glad I went. Seeing the faces of the people I met in these photos, and the fact that the perpetually serious Santos has smiled at me twice now since then, makes me feel like I made, if not a difference, at least a connection.

La Purísima and Graduation

Two big things have happened since I got back from a whirl-wind vacation with my parents.  The first was La Purísima, or the celebration of the Immaculate Conception.  This is celebrated as kind of a Mary themed trick-or-treat.  Houses put up shrines to Mary and then people go from house to house, singing prayers, and then the family hosting the singers will give out candy and plastic buckets, cups, and other items with the Virgin Mary´s image imprinted on them. 

My host family´s shrine.

The crowd waiting for their treats.

Also there are fireworks.  Lots and lots of fireworks.

(I tried to load a video of the fireworks here, but after thirty minutes of waiting, I gave up.)

Then, yesterday, I was invited to the graduation for a CICO, which is kind of like a Kindergarden graduation.  All the kids were looking very cute in their uniforms, and the parents were very proud.

Then, after everyone got their diplomas, there was a Santa-shaped piñata to destroy.

To the victor go the spoils...

And then what kind of party would it be without some dancing?

Sweet Treats

I was at the local corner store buying some bananas and oranges when I saw something that caught my eye.

Jelly-filled marshmellows.  I had to buy a few.

 

I decided to try the sour apple first.   Where are these from I wonder?  Does anyone recognize those characters?

 Mmmm.  Tastes like sugary...green.

But then I found something amusing on the wrapper.

Marshmarllow.

Soya Success

A while ago, after finishing a charla at one of the three day-care centers in my town, I asked the mothers gathered there what they would like to learn about next.  One of them surprised me by saying she and the other women had been curious about cooking with soy, and would like to learn more about it.  It turns out the organization that helps out this day-care center gives the women in charge a whole sack full of soy beans every month, but never having cooked with it before, they didn't know what to do with it.  So the next time we met, I brought some recipes and the ingredients, and they brought two pounds of soy beans that had been soaked overnight.  It's quite a process to turn the raw bean into soy milk and soy meat (and even longer if you want to make tofu), but two of the mothers, one of the women from the daycare, and I worked as a team...okay, actually they did most of the work because I am not confident in the kitchen...and we were able to make some darn good soy milk, flavored with cinnamon and sugar, and soy chorizo.  Once we were done sweating and gossiping in the kitchen, I took some pictures of the kids with their lunch.

Serving up the soy chorizo.

This little boy picked out all the onions, but said it tasted good.

 The best soy milk I've ever tasted.

Here I am with some of the leftover chorizo I took home with me.  I experimented by putting some beans in the mix when I heated it up again, but it tastes good either way. 

There were definitely some hiccups with our little cooking experiment; it took us longer than we expected to get it done, and some of the kids had already gone home by the time we got around to serving it, and we forgot to cook rice to accompany it, since a meal with no rice is no meal at all.  In the end though it went really well, mostly because the women took charge, and learned through an actual hands-on experience, but most importantly because they invited me back to cook with them again.  So what soylicious recipes should I make with them next time?

Spaced

Last night a toad decided he wanted to be my new roommate.

I prefer him to the chickens who will occasionally sneak in and poo on the floor, but I didn´t want him in my room if I could help it, so I started trying to shoo him out with my shoe.  He proceeded to hop around and hide behind things, until I had finally chased him under my desk when he started hissing at me.  At that point I decided I needed help, mainly because I had never heard a toad hiss before and was freaked out, so I called my host cousin who promptly screamed and ran away when she saw the toad.  I stood there, alone (except for my new warty friend) with my shoe in my hand, thinking that maybe it was a bad idea to have told someone, and deciding that I would have to take care of this myself.  I eventually got him out from behind the foot of my desk, and had him hopping away when my cousin can back, and with a squeal, threw a steaming liquid on my departing friend.  She told me it was hot lemon juice and salt, which would kill him.  Apparently there is the idea that these toads leak a poisonous "milk" from their skin, making them extremely dangerous.  I´m not sure if this is true, in fact I´m fairly certain it´s not, but it explains the screaming...I just hope the lemon juice doesn´t actually kill him, otherwise I will feel like a terrible host.

The Return of the Baby Alien Fruit!

While I was in Ecuador I discovered the granadilla, a fruit that looks like the pod for dozens of alien eggs, at least that is how one friend of mine described it.  I though that was as weird as most of my fruit adventures would ever be.  I underestimated Nicaragua.

This is a mamon chino on the outside, all spiky and blood red.

Inside it harbors its sweet tasting alien goo...I mean fruit. 

They are in most markets now, and cost about 70 cents the dozen, which means that for less than a dollar you can infect your face with as many baby aliens as you could possibly want.

Don´t You Mean Sardonic?

Sarcasim is a languange not spoken here often in Nicaragua, but obvious questions are very frequent.  This will help to explain what happened when I carried my dirty clothes and laudry soap over to the lavandero one day, and my host niece asked if I was going to wash my clothes.  Slightly amused with what I thought was a silly question I told her no, that I just like carrying around my dirty clothes and soap arround.  Just por gusto.  She then said good because she had a lot of washing to do, and proceeded to wash for one hour while I waited for her to be done.  Serves me right, I suppose, for being a smarty pants.

Favorite Things (Way Better than Oprah´s)

If I were in the U.S. I would say that my prized personal possessions were things like my computer or other electronics, but since I don´t have many of those fancy new fangled devices, my priorities have changed a bit, and I have, perhaps, a surprising list of things that make my life a whole lot better here.

1.  Headlamp  My wonderful brother Daniel gave me his, complete with extra batteries, before I left the states, and it has been of immeasurable help to me.  Not only is it useful for power outages and for trips outside my room at night, but it allows me to read before I go to sleep without getting out from under my mosquito net to turn off the overhead light.  Speaking of which:

2.  Mosquito Net Or mosquitero, which is pretty much my favorite word to say in Spanish now.  Mosquitero.  Not only does it protect me from malaria carrying mosquitos, but from all other sorts of creepy crawlies in the night.  When I´m under it, I imagine that I am surrounded by a force field that keeps me safe from cockroaches and snakes and scarab-like beetles, and now that I´ve discovered that they are, indeed, entering my room, rats.*  If I had to pick just one thing from this list to keep, this would be it, because I wouldn´t be able to sleep without it.  It is the emotional safety blanket that just happens to hang above my bed.

3.  Jumbo Box of Crayons  I´m not sure my mom knew what a great thing she was doing when she put one of those huge boxes of crayons (complete with sharpener) in a care package to me.  In the work I do, I make a lot of posters for presentations and the like, and because I always have to be aware that some of my audience might be illiterate I draw out most of waht I want to say.  Now I actually have crayons to make my drawings look good.

4.  Jackpot This is my electronic kettle that has a distinctly retro feel to it (I think it´s to do with the goofy flowers on the side), but it works wonderfully, at least when there is electricity.  I imagine it symbolizes independence for me since with it I don´t have to rely on my host family for breakfast in the morning, which can be a hectic time.  Instead of waiting for the beans and tortillas to be done, I can instead make instant oatmeal and tea for myself without getting in anyone´s way.

So there you have a brief list of my prized possessions here in Nicaragua.  All I need now is a good mouser, and I´m set.


*On my scale of emotionally distressing discoveries, this ranked higher than finding cockroaches, but not quite as high as finding fungus growing on my clothes and shoes.  My mom is convinced the only solution is get a cat to eat up all the rats.

Dropping Anchor

I have been at site for three months now, and though I am still struggling to find my niche here, I have carved out a bit of a schedule which has helped me keep sane, and avoid the common temptation of new volunteers to ensconce themselves in their rooms reading book after book until they have left a pile of novels in their wake. 

Nicaragua seems to wake up at around 5:30 am, at least that is when the chickens outside my room begin clucking and I can hear abuela splashing water around to start cooking and cleaning.  I usually, with a kind of futile stubbornness, stay in bed until around six, telling myself that I might be able to sleep for a bit longer, but by that time my host family is pounding out tortillas, blue smoke from the cooking fire is drifting through the crack between the wall and ceiling of my room, and there is no reason for me to pretend that I will sleep anymore.

A little before eight I set out for the health center, greeting the people I know, ignoring the catcalls, and avoiding the many puddles of mud.  When I arrive at the health center there is always a huge group of people waiting for appointments, which makes it difficult to give educational talks to them since I inevitably end up yelling across the waiting area to be heard.

Then I play this game I call "Keep busy, or Fake it."  It involves sitting in my shared office and either preparing materials for charlas or reading one of the many Peace Corps books on how to be an effective volunteer.  Sometimes I write out a blog entry in my notebook to type out later in a cybercafé...just an example.  This game does serve a purpose though, as I am visible to the staff and patients, so they know me better and are more willing to work with me.  As I start to involve myself in more projects though, I am spending less time there pretending to work, and more time out in the community actually working.

After lunch, and after I have sweat to an unprofessional degree in the tropical heat, I head to the Casa Materna to hang out with perhaps my favorite people in site-the pregnant ladies.  I really do enjoy spending time with them as it is time to just sit and chat with the women.  I often give little talks on nutrition or breastfeeding, and lately I´ve been trying to teach them how to crochet, but most of the time we just sit there enjoying the company and teasing each other.  One of the doctors at the health center said to me once that he liked to go over to the Casa Materna to joke around with the women, and, more often, have them make fun of him, because there is nothing more beautiful than a laughing pregnant woman.  When he said it I thought he might be right; it really is wonderful to see a woman, one hand on her back, one on her baby belly, laughing happily.  I think that is why I enjoy my afternoons so much, the woman in the Casa Materna don´t seem to be as shy as in other regions of Nicaragua, and we are able to laugh together, which is a beautiful thing.

By the time I arrive home, my host family is stationed around the tele, flipping through a variety of shows, occationally landing on a news program, which is one of my few opportunities in the day to actually catch up on what is going on in the world.  But, at this point I am exhausted, and I usually retire to my room to knit or read, and fall asleep by eight.  That might seem a bit early, but that is my daily schedule, which my mother assurred me would not be boring to read, which doens´t seem like to best precedent on which to base a blog post but there you go.

Happy Fourth Day of the Seventh Month of the Year

My cousin sent me a letter a while ago, and in it she said she didn´t know many people who would put their lives on hold for two years to serve in the Peace Corps.  When I read that I immediatly thought, "I´m not putting my life on hold, I´m living more than ever now," but in some ways I think she is right.  My mom also sent me a postcard not too long after that telling me the african daisies were blooming in Phoenix, and I was shocked.  It seemed I had forgotten that the world back home was still going on ahead without me.  I left Phoenix in the winter, it should stay that way until I get back, those daisies should have just kept their little orange spring-heralding heads under the sand for two years.

Maybe it has something to do with the lack of discernable seasons here.  A friend of mine in Ecuador explained to me that the sheep get all sorts of confused there since there is only one season, seeing as how it´s on the equator.  The non-native sheep then don´t know when it´s time to make babies because they need the change of seasons to tell them when the time is right.  That´s not a perfect analogy for my situation since there is no baby-making going on here except for the several buns in the oven over in the Casa Materna, but it might explain my state of general confusion.

Since I don´t have much access to internet, or newpapers, or television, or anything of that sort I loose track of holidays.  Without the bombardment of advertisments, I forgot which Sunday of the month Mothers´and Fathers´Day was, which resulted in slightly awkward phone calls back home.  The highlight of my phone call on Fathers´Day was when I asked my dad what he had been doing and he said, "well, we just got back from dinner since today is Fathers D-"
"HAPPY FATHERS DAY, I totally knew it was today...yes."

And then, about a week ago another PC friend asked me if I wanted to do something for the Fourth of July.  I had just been going over my schedule, looking up important dates - when I would have to go to the capital, when a medical brigade would be coming in - and I totally neglected to notice our nation´s day of independence.  I feel like I am suspended in my own personal little bubble, full of my own thoughts and frustrations and insecurities, and I have forgotten to come out of my head and look at the world around me, not just in my own little site.  My life is not on hold, that much I know, but I cannot expect that others, or nature for that matter, will put theirs on hold either.  Nor can I sit in my own head, only acknowledging what I feel is important to me in my own self involved way, which does not include, apparently, holidays.

Anyway, be it weather or narcissism related, I vow to break free of my own personal time-space contunium flux-thingy.  So happy Fourth of July everyone, I´m going to celebrate by doing something very American, like refering to the United States as America.
...
America.

Don´t Worry, Be Happy

A number of people have asked me, after my last post, if I´m doing alright, and if I have enough water, and should they worry about me?  I´m fine.  My host family is lucky in that we get water for at least two hours a day, and we have a big cement holding tank, so we just let that fill up and use the water throughout the day.  Even with nine people in the house we´ve never gotten to less than one-fourth of the way full.

Also, the rain has started so, now we can just set out garbage cans, and barrels, and buckets, and they fill up fast.  Like really fast.  And they tell me that this isn´t anything yet.  I spent four years in Oregon, I thought I knew rain, but this is a different beast.  It´s not constant yet, but it will be, and apparently when it is, it will be pouring like I have never seen, as opposed to the steady, but reasonable amount of Oregon rain.  This will be an absurd amount of rain...speaking of absurdity, have you ever seen a wet chicken?  It is the silliest looking thing ever.  That´s all for now.

Water´s for Fighting

It was a normal afternoon at site-me sitting in the Casa Materna chatting with the pregnant ladies; one of the doctors from the health center writing down blood pressure, belly measurements, fetal heartrate; the smell of burning trash filling the air-but there was something tense in the atmosphere.  A sense of desperate anticipation that had been mounting since the day before had us stiff in our rocking chairs.  It was the doctor who first noticed, necessity no doubt lending him superhuman senses, so that he looked up from his paperwork and gasped,¨"viene el agua," before sprinting out of the room to next door where he started yelling for someone to bring him a barrel.  I, along with the fastest moving pregnant ladies I have ever seen, started grabbing empty liter-and-a-half soda bottles to fill up and save for later.  The water was back on.

We were able to fill up the several dozen soda bottles and two barrels about the size of a ten year-old in the hour before the water was shut off again, only to be turned on again at some undetermined hour the next day.  That was two weeks ago.  Since then the water situation has gotten worse.

When I first came here I wondered why my host family, with perhaps the nicest house in town, complete with tile floors and a large t.v., would choose to use latrines and bucket baths.  Now I know that toilets don´t flush and shower heads don´t drip when there´s no water, and there hasn´t been water for quite some time.  Río San Juan has one of the longest and wettest of the rainy seasons in Nicaragua, but we still suffer from water shortages in the dry season, and the Casa Materna was down to just two liters a few days ago.  When the water was turned back on a few days ago no one was around to notice, and it all fell on the ground, and it´s been difficult to bring water in from outlying streams. 

Dishes are sitting unwashed in the sink and cooking is difficult since even rice, beans, and tortillas all need water to prepare.  The women have to go to the stream to bathe, and numerous of them have contracted UTIs, and since they are all in their last month of pregnancy this can be a dangerous problem, and I don´t even want to think about what would happen if one of them slipped and fell in the stream.

Two days ago, during a meeting with the health center, the director suggested building a well for the Casa Materna, and I silently wondered how I had been so slow as to not even consider the idea.  It won´t be easy.  True to Peace Corps philosophy of sustainable development, I would have to make sure I was working with the community as opposed to for them, so I´d need their full support.  That means community meetings, estimations, supplies, someone who actually knows how to build wells, and waiting until the end of the rapidly approaching rainy season to begin construction, but I am very anxious for the community to support the idea. 

I am almost scared to write about this on here, because I don´t want to get other people´s hopes up along with my own, but I feel as if someone keeps whispering "well" in my ear every five minutes.  The gestation period will be long, but I hope that before my time here is done, the Casa Materna will have a beautiful baby well.

How Radio Disney Saved a Bus-full of Nicas...

...and one very patient Peace Corps Trainee from a not so patient PCT.  This is the story of the bus ride from my site visit in Rio San Juan back to the capital Managua.

In the very early morning two weeks ago I woke up and dressed by the light of my headlamp, took my bag, and woke up my host brother to walk me to the one direct bus from my site to Managua.  The one that brought me there was an actual touristy bus with comfortable seats and a television.  I was under the impression that I would be on the same bus on the way back.  I was wrong.  Before me stood a big yellow school bus that probably had failed to pass safety regulations in the U.S. ten years ago, and so was sent to Nicaragua to die.

Under the yellow light of the only open pulperia, or cornerstore, in town Ismael and I said sleepy goodbyes, and I claimed a seat on the bus.  I looked at my watch.  3:50am.  Surprisingly though, I felt good, and forty minutes later we passed the next town where another Nica 55 trainee go on ready to return from her own site visit.  Then we sat.  The busdriver, the yeller, and the cobradora all got off the bus to eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, or take a nap, I´m still not sure, but they left us waiting for fifteen minutes.  It was a sign of things to come.

An hour later we arrived at the departmental head of San Carlos where I had a quick breakfast of coffee and a piece of bread, and chatted with the other trainee.  Then it was back on the bus, and we were off...for five minutes, until we had another arbitrary fifteen minute wait, after we had just been sitting in the bus terminal for thirty minutes.

This is when things started to go bad.  I had not planned well for the trip, and brought no food with me for the ten hour bus ride, thinking I would be so tired I would sleep most of the way.  I had not counted on the school bus, nor on how crowded it would be, so that I was forced to stand when I gave up my seat to a mother and child.  The other trainee was the first, actually, to give up her seat, and when I pointed out a free seat to her I was surprised to see her standing again only minutes later.

"The guy next to me threw up, and then other people started too," she explained, "I don´t do well when people around me get sick."

Usually one of us had a seat while the other was standing so we were able to switch off a few times, but by this point, about four hours in, I was a foul cloud of grumpiness.  My plummeting blood sugar, lack of sleep, the bumping of the unpaved highway, and the resulting dust that coated my hair and face, along with the blaring ranchera music drilling its way into my unwilling skull made me hate everything and everyone.  Especially the people squished up against me, and the chicken that little girl was holding.  Did you pay for your ticket, bird?  I thought not.  I´m going to have the cobradora take care of you, and then I´m gonna fry you up and eat you, you flapping nuisance.

Then, miraculously, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, the bus driver changed the station to Radio Disney (to be said Rahdio Disnehy), and instead of nasally trumpets suddenly the bus was filled with all the cheesy Spanish-language pop my little corazon could desire.  Chino y Nacho, Selena Gomez, and Tito el Bambino, along with all my other guilty pleasures came to keep me company.  Then next thing I knew, a gentleman gave up his seat for me, and I spent the rest of the hours drifting between sleep and the serenades of teenage heartthrobs until two in the afternoon when we pulled into Managua, took a taxi to the Peace Corps office, then on to the hotel where I took the most satisfying shower in my whole life.

And even the chicken was spared...at least until dinner.

Site Placement and Visit

On my 23rd birthday, I, along with the forty-three other health volunteers found out where we would be living for the next two years.  We had received information over the possible sites, then had an interview with our programming director asking us what we were looking for in the site, and everyone was obsessing about which sites they wanted and which they would hate to get.

During my final site interview I put the information away, didn´t mention any specific sites, and only stated what I wanted in a site: 

climate didn´t matter

being the only PC volunteer in my site was ok

I wanted to do a lot of trips to outlying communities

smaller was better

I wanted to work in a casa maternal

internet had to be available within at most two hours.

After the interview, I systematically when through the information about the sites, trying to determine which site my programming director, Ximena, would pick for me, based on the criteria I had stated.  I figured that she would put me in either near Jinotega to the north, or in Rio San Juan to the south.  During the site placement ceremony, by the time Ximena got to my name on the list, I pretty much knew what she was going to say next, and I was put in Rio San Juan.

I was happy, it fit with everything I wanted, but I was also suddenly terrified as the reality of two years in this place that I only knew of from a piece of paper hit me.  It was overwhelming, especially when I read further in the information and realized that it was a ten hour bus ride from the capital to my site.  I knew it was isolated, but I´m not sure I knew it was that far away, and it´s not really that far away, it´s just that the highway isn´t complete, and travel over dirt roads makes the going rough.  But my experience with the trip there and back is another story, now I present to you my new home.

 I met two of my counterparts, the people I will be working with most, on Friday the 11th, and on Saturday I rode the bus with one of them, Ana, arriving at 5pm.  The next day she took me to a farm in one of the communities where we will work.

Ana, she´s in charge of education at the health center.

One of the doctors from the health center, and the little girl from the farm.  She never did tell me her name, she just giggled and looked away…

...just like this.

Picking guayaba.

They dye the chicks pink so no one will steal them.

We then went to a poza, which was fun.

Two of the doctors from the health center where I will be working.

It is a rural community, meaning that there are animals everywhere.

As we hiked the hour and a half back to the actual town, we ran into a party and this man decided he wanted to sing…just for me.  That is an awkward smile right there, also Dr. Chileno there, encouraging the guy on…thanks for that.

 Despite my occational moments of panic, (which are apparently normal at this stage of training), I think I will be happy here for the next two years.

The First Month

This month I have:

• Eaten more beans and rice than I ever have in my entire life
• Gone to bed by 8pm most nights
• Had three-ish women´s group meetings
• Created and implemented a community survey
• Invited myself to a girls´ volleyball practice
• Subsequently hit two people in the head with a volleyball
• Given one charla (talk) to the women´s group, and one to patients at the health center
• Learned about many technical topics like childhood development, illnesses, pregnancy risks signs and factors, etc.
• Learned about the theories behind non-formal education, sustainable development, and facilitation
• Listened to way too much 80´s-90´s pop
• Tried to call home (I hate Claro)
• Cried
• Laughed
• Made friends

Community Integration

Community integration is one of the foundations of Peace Corps, seeing as how two of the goals of PC is to learn about a culture and share your own.  That can´t happen without a community accepting you.  Also, you´re not going to get any work done if no one in the community trusts you.  This is especially hard for someone who is shy and doesn´t talk a lot in English, let alone Spanish.  Even though I´ve been trying to go out of my way to talk and meet more people, last night I walked into a room where my host mother, sister, and brother were all laughing, and as soon as they saw me, they stopped.  I felt so...different.  They didn´t do it to be mean, and they´ve been very kind to me.  I´m just not part of their club.

So today, during a session in Masaya with the other health trainees, I volunteered to participate in a roleplay of community integration.  I thought I should challenge myself.  There were only five ¨volunteers¨ out of the fourty-four people there, everyone else roleplayed the community.  We five were give no instructions other than to integrate, and we were given pamphlets on STD´s, condoms, and pregnancy.  When we reentered the room, everyone else was formed into four groups who were talking amongst themselves. 

I first went to a group of ¨campesinos¨ working a field, and asked if I could help.  Someone gave me a hoe and I started to ¨help¨ them out, I tried engaging them in conversation, but most were laughing amongst themselves or listening to the other volunteer as he handed out the pamphlets about condoms.  One community member told him it was offensive and refused to talk to him.  Another community member mentioned that he had a sick son.  I asked him if he had taken him to the health center.  He told me he didn´t know where it was, so I offered to show him.  Everyone was still giggling at the fact that we were just pretending, and then the bell range to switch groups.

The next group was gathered around a main person who was leading a discussion.  I introduced myself to one person on the side, and asked what they were doing.  She told me it was a bank meeting.  Then I asked if I could sit in, she said yes, but to reach the only open seat I had to cross in front of the whole circle.  Not the most graceful entrance, but it got everyone´s attention, so I introduced myself and asked if I could help or just learn about what they were doing.  Someone asked if I could give then money.  I said I could help raise some funds if they had ideas.  Then someone suggested a bake sale, but they needed supplies, so someone else took out a loan for them.  In everything I´ve been reading, this is the kind of help that is best, when you just mediate ideas from the community, but I´m not even sure if I did that.  I didn´t feel very involved at all.

The next group was awful.  Just awful.  A classroom full of twelve-year olds gossiping and not paying attention at all.  Plus the ¨teacher¨ was the man in charge of technical training, someone I should try to impress.  He mentioned that they liked candy, which should have been my cue to pull out an imaginary bag of goodies, but I was too distracted by the maddness before me.  Confidence might be an issue of mine as well.  It got worse when another volunteer showed up and tried integrating as well.  I´m not even sure I was able to tell them my name.

The last group was my best, I feel.  It was a group of pregnant ladies, just the kind of group that I will be working with when I am an official volunteer.  I started again by introducing myself to just one person, and asking if I could sit with her.  Then I introduced myself to some of the other woman once I actually sat down and they notice me.  At first they asked me a ton of questions: How many children do you have?  Are you married?  How old are you?  Each time they were horrified with my answers, ´So old to not have children!´  So I tried to ask them the questions, like if this was their first child or if they went to the health center for check-ups.  One woman said this was her first, but that she couldn´t go to the health center in her condition because it was so far away.  She told me that she relied on the advice of the other, more experienced, woman.  Went I asked another woman, she told me this was her sixth pregnancy, and that she helps the other women.  I asked if we could meet sometime later to talk, saying that I had some information I would like to share with her.  Then I handed her the pamphlet on pregnancy.  She passed it to the next woman, who passed it to the next woman, who passed it to me.  As she did she whispered, ´we´re supposed to be illiterate.´
´Then we´ll just talk later´ I said.  Then the bell rang, the exercise was over, and we all returned to our seats.

The facilitators asked if anyone had any comments, and someone from the bank group congratulated the volunteer who figured out that they met once every two weeks, and organized to meet them again next time. And then I thought that I probably should have done that.  Then someone from the pregnant ladies group called me out, saying I did the best, and another person commented on how I found the natural leader and organized to work with her, which was great.

I´m glad I got outside my bubble and volunteered.  I learned to start small, and focus on questions...also to figure out meeting times.  I feel more motivated to interact more and integrate myself more fully into this community.  It was exhausting, but it was good to practice for the reality, which does not end at the ring of a bell.

First Impressions

After delays in D.C. due to snow, I have finally arrived in Nicaragua.  Instead of going to Granada as planned, our three day orientation retreat has been in Managua, in the Best Western situated directly across from the airport.  I was actually in the first group to reach Nicaragua, since after the snow canceled our flight they had to scramble to get us on other flights, and splitting us up was easiest.  We left the hotel in Arlington at 1:30am on Thursday and arrived the same day in Managua after detouring to Panama.  The first eight of us arrive a day earlier than everyone else so we were able to go to Peace Corps headquarters, meet the Country Director, do our languange interviews, and recieve our first vaccines (typhoid and flu). 

Since then all 44 of us have been busy learned about what it means to be a Peace Corps Trainee and what will happen during our three months of training.  I just found out who my host family is, and I will be leaving tomorrow with three other trainees to the little town of Dolores, which is just outside of Jinotepe, another small town just fourty minutes outside of Managua.  We are all Health trainees, but this is the first time in Nicaragua that the Peace Corps has split the groups so that one, called Health Lifestyles, will focus on HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, while my group, Maternal and Child Health, will be working in Casa Maternas and with children from ages 0-5 years.  In previous years they have been combined, so I am excited to be in the pioneering group.  Go Nica 55.

P.S. I just hit the spell check and everything (except Nicaragua) was highlighted, apparently it´s set to Spanish, so please excuse any typos my sun-soaked brain has missed.

Packing

What constitutes a two-year supply of underwear?  I sure hope it's as many pairs as I have since, apparently, Nicaraguan underwear of comparable quality to those in the U.S. can be quite expensive, so the Peace Corps suggests bringing a two-year supply.

Anyway, I've pretty much packed.  I keep fluctuating between the horrified feeling that either I've packed too much or too little.  I'm sure there will be things that I never use, and I'm sure I will discover things that I wish I would have brought, but right now I am feeling that Goldilocks "just right" feeling.

Besides normal things like toiletries and clothing (professional pants or knee-length skirts, blouses, no spaghetti straps, and practically everything made of cotton) I am bringing a few notable items:

• Swiss Army knife
• Travel iron
• Headlamp that my brother gave me...it's supposed to be useful for late-night trips to the latrine
• Gardening gloves
• Knitting supplies, I'm just bringing sock-weight yarn, my collection of DPNs, and the two Addi Turbos my aunt gave me, I figure I can make baby hats and booties since I'll be working with mothers and children
• Watercolors, brushes, and a journal
• Two double-size flat sheets
• A few thin books...I'm still trying to decide if I can fit my Sherlock Holmes anthology into my carry-on

All the advice I have read from previous volunteers has said to pack less than you think, and I imagine I will be well below the eighty-pounds limit, so hopefully I'll be alright.  I just hope I have enough underwear...do underpants gnomes live in Nicaragua?