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Published: July 24th 2008
Dinner for 27
Here's me attempting to make dinner. Went great!Sorry for the late entry. My computer has been upset at me, but it seems to be working now.
This past week has been very exciting for those of us in Nicaragua. Julio 19th is the anniversary of the revolution some 30 years ago. It was when the real fight between the Sandinistas and the Samozas broke out. The Sandinistas were Che Guavara and Fidel Castro inspired and had adopted the Marxist philosophy. In the end, they had won the battle. However, the government was no better if not worse than before. Presently, a former prominent figure in the movement, Daniel Ortega, is in power. Many do not like him and he does not have a very high approval rate. The government shares friendly relations with countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. All of this information will be relevant in this weeks report.
The goal for this past week was to continue working on the septic tank holes. Some of us have shifted our focus to more feasible holes, rather than the rocky fortress we tried to break through the week before. We have made quite a bit of progress on our hole for Marco’s casa and at this
Aftermath
It was like a volcanic explosion. I can now further sympathize with the former citizans of Pompeii point the digging is basically complete. Currently there are 3 more septic holes that are being dug, minor construction on 4 houses, some electrical work and painting rafters. We also have classes for English, computers, tutoring, guitars, salsa, and maybe for swimming in the near future.
I’ve been trying to coordinate my English class with one of the local woman, but she flaked out twice. Both times I went to her house and she had left to go to Granada. Sticking to the schedule is not a big theme here. However, this week I did manage to pull together a class with her with the help of some Vermont girls, who are far better at Spanish than I. For my first class I think it went fairly well. We went over numbers, some useful verbs, some construction vocabulary and some future and past forms. Roserrio is very smart and she was picking up the English quickly. She wants to go to the local university to study English as well, so hopefully some pre-lessons can make it easier for her.
Speaking of language classes, I’ve been trying to figure out still what to do about getting some lessons. I
You'll poke your eye out...
The favorite toy amoung la Prusian children under the age of 5. I think I know what I'm getting Mark, Elise, and Diego for Christmas... Kidding Lauren, kidding. went to the best school in town, but it was fully booked for several weeks. I’ve been gathering feedback form other volunteers on which language schools are most helpful. One of the cheapest and most popular is the Mia school, so I’ll probably sign up for it this week. Spanish is coming along. My vocabulary gets bigger everyday and I can understand when people talk to me sometimes. Well, less often than not, but it’s still nice to always be completely lost.
The way dinner works at the volunteer house is that one volunteer buys and cooks dinner for everyone. We go in sequential order from when we got here. So the English guy Elliot and I decided to cook chili for everyone when it was our turn. This turned out to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. At the store there was no chili powder. Hmmm, well maybe this will turn out to be something if we just find whatever spices and vegis we can and just put them in. So we started the tomato-something-something by a bag of chili peppers in each pot. They didn't taste very hot so it could only really add some
Football Tourney
Was a good way to get everyone together. flavor to it. We weren't sure what else to put in, so we just put everything we could. Just about every spice in the house played a part. There was broccoli, carrots, corn, orange juice, and some carne as well. Oh but the real fun was when we realized the burners can not turn down very low. The lowest setting is still very hot. This made the soups bubble up like a volcano and splash on the walls, floor, table and stove. It was an absolute mess, but it actually tasted really quite delicious. It had some kick to it, but it wasn't really spicy or anything. Well, as we learned that night, not everyone has the same palate as us. All the Spanish there thought the chili was incredibly hot and some couldn't even eat it because of the spiciness. All the English speakers thought it wasn't really spicy and most actually enjoyed it. It was sort of humorous to see how drastically different everyone's reaction was depending on the point of origin.
Pencho, the volunteer who set up the team building event, had created a football (soccer) tournament here this past week. There were four teams to
be constructed by the following stipulations: At least 2 continents are represented, 3 countries and 1 female. The minimum age was 14 years. My name was named ‘Salvaje Men and Woman’, which refers to the common phrase used here, Savage Man. Although the number one sport here is baseball, most are very enthusiastic about football and are quite good at it. There were two games everyday with the final being the Monday after. The winner of the tournament were The Chilos, but everyone received the same prize: Coke, candy, and dinner. There were 60+ happy La Prusians there for the final’s fiesta. I believe Pencho paid for all of it, which was a tremendously nice thing to do.
Saturday was a very exciting day. Julio 19th: The day the revolution started. Managua was having a huge celebration and many of the volunteers decided to go experience it. The event is so popular, the government funds many buses to give free rides to and from Managua. All the buses along the way were decked in black and red, the colors of the FSLN, the current Sandinista party. Managua was very lively and and energetic. Many streets were blocked off and
Street Food
Getting food in Managua in accordance with all local and international health codes, I'm sure. filled with vendors of souvenirs, flags, liquor and food. We got to Managua around 12, but the big speeches didn't start until 4 or 5 or 6 o'clock. There's a nasty habit down here that people have. When they don't know when something is, they make up a time. Usually it's the latest time that you hear, though. With some time to kill, we just found a nice table in the shade and kicked back a couple beers. It was incredible how big a groups that were coming in through the streets. 100s of people storming through wearing red and black.
There was a big park with a stage where everyone congregated for the festivities. Gringos were sort of an oddity there. We saw maybe one other small group of foreigners and that's it. This was a Nicaraguan event for Nicaraguan people. Some drunks came to us to ask for cash, but for the most part people were very friendly towards us. We would be called over a lot to other groups for a drink and to hang out and dance to both reggietone music and some sort of imperial communist march music. They thought it was great to
Sandanista!
Classic Nicaraguan Pride. share their holiday with us. They liked to dress us up in FSLN colors and gear quite a bit, as you can see in the photo album. There was one guy I met who was pretty interesting. He lived in San Diego for 12 years illegally and has a wife and kid there. About a month and a half ago he got deported to Nicaragua. He gave me a first hand account of what it takes to cross the border to the States. There are two fences that you have to jump, patrols you have to avoid, electric sensors and such. But when they catch you, they just throw you back right over the border usually. He claims to have crossed the border 20 times in one month until he finally broke through. I have no idea if that number is correct, but he did seem to know a lot about entering illegally. Right or wrong, it was really great to hear the firsthand account of the happenings of border jumping.
About now we realized that some men had begun their speeches. The political speeches here are a bit different than the ones back home. Here they are very enthusiastic and the crowd rallies like a soccer match. From where we were it was hard to see the stage so we decided to move it to get a better view. Who was speaking was extremely heated and had a lot of passion. Lo and behold when we move into view it's our good old friend Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. He was one of the guest speakers, along side the president of Guatemala, Paraguay, Daniel Ortega. But maybe the most interesting people present were two female members of FARC, the Colombian rebel group. What made these woman especially interesting is that they were survivors of the Colombian attack in Ecuador that killed the second highest ranking officer in FARC. But it was really great to see Hugo up that spilling his deal. It was difficult for anyone to understand, but he kept dropping names like Castro, Estatos Unidos, and revolution. I'm sure he was singing praise about all three. The problem was he just kept rambling and rambling on. It was an hour long speech of the same thing repeated over and over. He probably picked up that habit from Fidel, who had speeches that would last for hours. I'm skeptical on how constructive that is. All and all it was a really great event to see and was an added benefit to see these significant figures in action.
On Sunday, we had promised to take some of the local kids to Laguna Apoyo, the big lake just west of Granada. It's only a 40 minute walk from our house and it gives you a beautiful of both Granada and Mombachu, the local neighborhood volcano. This lake is the deepest in all of Central America and is loads of fun to swim in. Keven is one of the kids I know best here. He is very strong and shows the other volunteers how to use the pick-axe and shovel. I think he's 10 years old, but he claims he's 12. He's rather sarcastic and likes to sucker punch volunteers. Made for an interesting day at the lake.
I think that's all the highlights for now. Hasta Luego!
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Lauren
non-member comment
Wow!
Hey Pete, Thank you for taking the time to update your blog with such details. It is incredible to hear about all that you are learning, from how to handle the families you are helping to the political rallies. Stay safe! - Lauren