random thanksgiving thoughts

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Oh, where to start?

Just had Thanksgiving dinner here in Estelí with several Ag volunteers, mostly from Ag45, and four of us from Ag48, and our Country Director, George, and his wife. And it was lovely. Two turkeys, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn, MIXED VEGETABLES, squash, and passion fruit frescos. Oh, and chocolate ice cream and 4 pies, two of pecan and two of apple.

And it was glorious. There wasn´t a bean or a tortilla in site and there were such delicacies as green beans, carrots, and broccoli. And we have leftovers in our hotel room wrapped in tinfoil. And it cost each of us $10.

So happy Thanksgiving. I have been trying to explain Thanksgiving to the people in my site. Telling them that it´s a day to think about what you have to be thankful for. I am thankful for my health - even though I am sick at the moment. And I am thankful for my parent´s health and their support. And for my brother, Ben, and what a cool guy he has become. And for the rest of the family that is watching and keeping up with my time here in Nicaragua. I am thankful for my friends who are far away but who still keep in contact and have the patience to realize that I don´t have internet access 24/7 anymore and that writing letters is more my speed at this juncture in my life. I am thankful for the opportunity to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Because it is a great opportunity, and I am lucky to have taken it. I am thankful that I am becoming fluent in Spanish and that I get to be an ambassador. I am thankful for the new friends that I have made here, both other volunteers and Nicaraguans, alike. And I am oh-so-thankful that Barack Obama is our new President.

Well, I have been in my site for four days. I´ve done a bit of laundry by hand on the concrete block every morning. My days, thus far, have gone like this:

Wake up between 5.30 and 6.30. Take my TP, towel, shampoo, and soap and head to the baño. Drop off bathroom stuff on my way to the latrine. Come back and bucket shower.

Now, it´s chilly here in the mornings. And a cold bucket shower is not so awesome. However, once I pour that first cup of ice water over my head, I am usually fine. And when I´m done, I feel much warmer than when I got in because the air is a lot warmer than the water. Kind of like drinking hot tea or hot water in the summer. Once you drink it, the air and your body feel cooler than the hot drink. Strange logic, but it works.

After I bucket shower I go to my room, put in my contacts, and get dressed. Then I go sit on the porch and either read old Newsweeks and/or Time, or write in my journal. My 19 year old sister, the only other occupant of the house, makes coffee and brings me coffee and usually some sort of bread or cookie with it. Nicaraguan for dunkin donuts. After she boils coffee, I wash out the percolator and boil my water for my Nalgene. And I usually continue to sit and read for a few minutes, and then we go to Nita´s house, grandma´s, for breakfast. For breakfast there are always beans. Sometimes they´re fresh boiled. Sometimes they´re smashed and fried. Sometimes they´re dried and soaked. But there are always red beans. Sometimes there´s fried egg. Sometimes scrambled. Sometimes it´s egg scrambled with - gasp! - tomatoes and onions. Sometimes it´s just beans. And always a tortilla. Every day.

Then I sit on Nita´s porch and read for a while or write in my journal or study Spanish or just watch the morning pass by, as her porch is at the crossroads of town.

Usually around 8.30 or 9.00 I usually return to the house and do some laundry, and then I´ve taken to going over to my neighbor, Glenda´s, if she hasn´t come to my house already. She´s 27 and her daughter, Alessandra, is 14 months and adorable. Her sister, Anna, is 22 and a fireball, and her mom and brother are good people. After laundry and visiting, I go and visit with other members of the community and introduce myself.

Aside...Yes, I live in a poor, rural community in Nicaragua. Unfortunately... or fortunately? there are a lot of NGO´s and ministries that come to help out in Nicaragua, too. This fact is both a carrot and stick. Clearly Nicaraguans need help. But most NGO´s and ministries come in and give and give and don´t ask for anything back. There is no accountability for the Nicans. So they are used to foreigners coming in with money and providing large scale projects. Like building houses. Or schools. Or putting in latrines. Those are the most common. But then we Peace Corps volunteers come in and we don´t have a budget. We are here to be on the ground, getting to know them, and helping on the smaller scale one on one. And sometimes it´s hard for them to understand this. And they expect big projects and lots of money from us. And that´s not what we are here to do.

With this in mind, I find that right now it is better to focus on the assets of the community instead of focusing on how poor and downtrodden they are and asking, ¨What DON´T you have? What do you WANT?¨ So, as I visit families and introduce myself as the new PCV, I generally try and write down their name, how many kids they have.... and then we stare at each other for a while... and then I tell them what a pretty house they have and start asking the names of flowers in their patio. There are mango trees EVERYWHERE, so I´ll be like, oh, I see you have a mango tree, what other kinds of fruit trees do you have? Or squash is in season now and is pretty distinctive, so I´ll be like, so I see you have ayote, what other vegetables do you grow? Or they´ll have an arial seed bed or stuff planted in old tires, and I try and focus on that.... for my first awkward days, I am trying to learn new trees and plants and focus on what they have. Most everyone has mango, jocote, and either lemons or oranges. Have also seen papaya, gineos and bananos, phitaya, and ... am blanking out on the others. Unfortunately, the dry summer season is starting so none of them are in season at the moment, except perhaps papaya. But still good to focus on what they have.

So I visit families for an hour or two. Then I go back to Nita´s on the corner and go over what notes I just took so I can actually recognize people in my site and place them. About noon-ish I have lunch at Nita´s. Usually beans and rice in some form, possibly egg if there wasn´t egg at breakfast. And Tang loaded with sugar.

Although, I was thinking about it, and growing up evenings at Guy and Nolie´s in rural Missourah as a kid, there was always bacon frying and sweet tea. And anyone who has ever lived in the south, or even the southern part of a swing state, knows how much sugar is in sweet tea. And while I kind of grimace while I drink the electric orange glass of sugar, I think that it was pretty much the same in rural Missourah as in rural Nicaragua.

I appear to be writing a book. But these are my random thoughts.ç

For the afternoon.... I don´t really know where the afternoon´s go. Sometimes I go and do more laundry. Sometimes I go visit the other family that I have come to enjoy... who happen to be the pastor´s family at the Evangelical church. There are three churches in my site, one Catholic, and two Evangelical. The big Evangelical church sits right on the road. They have services every night, Tues-Sunday, at 6pm. And you can hear them all over town because they have microphones and are clapping and singing and the piano travels for kilometers. It sounds like it should be a baptist church in the deep south. I have been invited by my charming cousin a few times, but I´ve declined.

At any rate, the pastoral family owns a venta and it´s the only place in town to buy more minutes for my cell phone. So I have ended up sitting there for hours at a time on their porch chatting. It´s strange, but I feel more of kinship with them than with most in my community. Maybe it´s because they´re tall and light. And most everyone else, while very handsome in their own right, are short and dark and indigenous looking. And the pastoral family seems to be a little better off, as in they have cell phones and the things that come along with owning a venta - or a corner store. And, honestly, they remind me of the people around Estelí. And, having just moved to the community 9 years ago, they are foreigners, too, when most have lived here for generations. And they are generally happy and outgoing and pleasant to be around. And I might be speaking too soon, but they haven´t asked me a thing about religion or invited me to church, and that suits me just fine.

It gets dark around 5.30pm, and usually I go into Nita´s dark kitchen with its single bulb and eat dinner... of rice and beans in some form or another. The boys in the community have taken to playing cards on the porch under the porch light. I usually watch for a bit or talk to my cousin, who always wears a Che Guevara hat and thus will be christianed Che for the purpose of this blog.

Or we go over to the aunt´s and sit and chat and play on the hammock and try to get as many people on it without tipping it over.

By 7pm my sister and I are back to our house. I brush my teeth, take out my contacts, and put on my PG´s. And then I usually write in my journal and read for a couple of hours and fall asleep to my ipod between 8.30-10pm.

And that is how life is going thus far in my site.

Now that I´ve written this book of a blog, suppose it´s time to check my emails!

Happy Thanksgiving with love from the wilds of Nicaragua.

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Friday
Nov 28

Other fun things that have happened.

Yesterday, on our way to Thanksgiving dinner, three of us Americans were stopped in downtown Estelí by the Imigration Police. They wanted our passports, which, of course, none of us carry... and those of us who are new volunteers don´t even have our PCV passports as they are still working on our visas and residence cards. At any rate, it was a good 15 minute convo with them saying our PCV ID´s weren´t good enough, they didn´t prove that we are legal citizens of Nicaragua, etc.

At the end of them writing down our names... one guy ouside the truck copying them down and the capitan inside who was explaining how our ID´s weren´t good enough.

Which, sidenote, if our PC ID´s are good enough for us to withdraw money from our accounts at BanCentro, which is guarded by men with sawed off shotguns, I think they´re valid enough.

Anyway, he wanted the nuber to call PC HQ in Managua, and we were like, well, the office is closed because it´s a holiday, so he took down names of our bosses to call them.

And since they were going to call our office on our behalf, I naturally asked for his identification. And the guy, no joke, was like, ¨My identification? This truck is my identification. This hat is my identification. These captain´s bars on my uniform are my identification.¨ And I looked at him like he was crazy, and asked him for his contact info and his name so we could refer to him when Peace Corps asks about us.... And he wrote down his name and all contact info for me in my notebook.

So that made for a fun Thanksgiving dinner story.

Um, not thinking of anything else that has happened thus far that´s worth writing about...

ALSO. I have a new mailing address! If you want it, drop me a line... and then a few letters into the mail!

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Comments

[Zeeke]

Comment
Thanks for your reply I will be looking into it. Happy holydays.

[Mom]

You ARE your Father's Daughter!
Ha! You and the police Captain...yep, sounds like what your Dad would tell you to do! Just watch it a teeny bit, though, as we want you doing something totally rewarding while there (as opposed to sitting in the clink!). Am so glad you got to spend some good times with other Volunteers! Soon now, I need to get some info to you about other various Nica acquaintances that you should look up in "spare time"!