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Published: July 12th 2008
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Old Church
One of the many churches and cathedrals in Granada. Hola me Amigos! Well my first week here has been great. It's turning out to be a real good find. I'll update this blog in a little bit, but until then here are some photos of this weeks' adventure:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pete.walton/NicaraguaJuly2008 Ok, now I have some time to write. Where to begin... I guess the easiest way is to tell you is to explain how my average day goes. Every morning I get up around 7/7:30 to have breakfast. For breakfast I go out to the first house next to the volunteer house for some sweet bread that they hand make. It's really quite tasty. Afterwords, some of the volunteers and I go down to the project and work on the houses. At this point a lot of the houses are done. But there are other things to be done. The big to-do this week was to dig a hole for the house septic tanks. It needs to be 8 cubic meters, so that means we need to dig about 6 feet deep. However, there are massive boulders lodged in the ground and makes it near impossible to get them out. We have been forced to try to smash them
Dinner a me casa
Eating dinner that one of the locals cooked us. And yes, that is spaghetti and rice in those buckets. up in to little pieces and pull them out but it is a slow and difficult process. But outside of that, there is electrical work, cementing, weed pulling, and moving bricks that needs to be done.
We are right next to the school so there are lots of kids out and about and are fun distraction. They are all very friendly and like to play around with most anyone. I have busted out my juggling moves once or twice. They were all quite impressed. Around 1 a clock everyone stops construction to have lunch. One of the local ladies makes a dish for us. It is always arross y friolas (rice and beans) but usually another dish as well. It is nothing crazy and is not completely foreign to my system and I have been impressed everytime. We've had queso potato mash dishes. We've had chicken, beef (yuck!), and other local items. And the best part are the juices. I have no idea what kind they are or what they put in it, but it's phenomenal. That's right. Phenomenal.
For most my time here I have been hanging out with Elliot, the english guy in the house. He is quite good at spanish so it makes things a bit easier for me. But soon he'll leave and I'll be stuck learning spanish. One of the spanish girls is teaching me espanol on Tuesday. I want to take real lessons in the town but this should still be helpful as well. Speaking of language lessons, Monday I'm giving my first English tutoring. I'm teaching one of the local mothers English for some reason. I really have no plan of attack for it, but I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out.
The other volunteers here are really great and outgoing. Very fun personalities and everyone here immediately becomes friends. We've had a couple group meetings to both team build and to figure out our roles as volunteers. Despite sounding boring on paper, this turned out to be quite the experience. About 4 of us are native english speakers and the other 15 spanish. So we have to have translations going both way for everything we do. And we have to communicate in other ways without using any language at all some times. But the real fun was figuring out how we should volunteer. The spanish got extremely fired up about this. We had a yelling in the house for two hours going back and forth. One of the spanish girls, Ixchazo (spelling?) did all the translating back and forth while arguing through out it. We would have to have breaks where she would translate the last 10 minutes of discussion. Crazy. But we talked until 1 in the morning about it.
I know. What is there to talk about? You go down, you build houses and help families and then go on your way. Right? Well a question came up about husbands that beat their wifes and children. Sadly, it is popular in La Prusia. But one instance came up where the father of one of the families that were moving in to our project beat his 18 month old with his belt. This all happened well before I came by the way. One of the volunteers went up to him and screamed at the man that if he ever did it again he would beat the snot out of him. The family was kicked out and now we have rules saying that we will not help build you a house if you beat your family. Good right? Well the question came what are we really trying to do? Is putting an entire family, and possibly more, back on illegal shacks the best solution for La Prusia? Yes, it is horrible for them to beat their kids, but we are trying to help these people. Kicking them out won't stop the beatings necessarily. Some believe that for us to impose our rules, our morality, our beliefs on the people of La Prusia is a form of colonialism. Even if the belief seems so necessarily right to us.
One of the problems is there is no organization here outside of what these random volunteers produce. The only contact person for Casas de la Esperanza isn't around us and is only there as a relay to the heads of the organization. So there is no real guidelines or philosophy we are to universally follow. It is only what the volunteers choose to do. We've all decided to not give the people of La Prusia any money or any of our stuff (for the most part). If one of us starts giving, they town will think the others are not as good volunteers or start expecting us to always do it. I really find it amazing what the volunteers have done here. All the woman's groups and classes, tutoring, games, and events are due to individual volunteers who just decided they wanted to make it happen. There is no direction or help from the organization. They only really give us the opportunity to enter this little part of the world and help develop it in our own way. So the group obviously has some advantages and disadvantages. Either way it should be interesting to see how we progress as people come and go.
On a lighter note, a few of us went out last night and will again tonight. Lots of live music and dancing and a decent mix of gringos and locals. I have more stories, but they will have to wait. There are just too many things that happen here to fill in here. Till next time, adios.
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Uncle Alan
non-member comment
Thanks for news
Pete, thanks for your emails. I'm glad to have the chance to learn what you are doing in Nicaraqua. It's really interesting to learn how unstructured your life is there, in dealing with the people and their culture. I'm proud of what you are doing. /Alan