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.