mass email

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Hey from the wilds of Nicaragua!

I don’t remember when I wrote the last mass email was. Been a long time!

I have been here in the Nica for over a year, having arrived in country last September. I swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer just before Thanksgiving and was placed in the community of Moropoto, Madriz. At the end of next month I will be half done with my service!

This year has been rough, not gonna lie. There have been moments when I’ve thought about throwing in the towel and returning to the States to fight for a job. But then I realized a few things.

First, I have an extraordinary amount of pride, which keeps me from running when things get tough, and usually propels me until the end. Second, no one ever said the Peace Corps was going to be easy, least of all me. Didn’t I want a challenge? And third, the next year is going to fly by and soon I will be done and back to the motherland fighting for a job and paying student loans.

Some kind of big things have happened in the past year.

I am fluent in daily Spanish. Yeah, there’s a lot of room for improvement. Okay, there’s a LOT I still am learning. But! I can understand pretty much everything these people throw my way! Annnnd they all compliment me on how much I’ve improved, which is always nice to hear.

Part of my fluency comes from … my fiancé, Lenin. Who EVER would have thought I’d have to come to Nicaragua to find love? Not me, but here I am! Lenin (leh-NEEN) and I started dating within my first month in site… and somewhere along the line love blossomed. He proposed and the answer was clearly yes! I live with his extended family in Moropoto and we’ve gone to visit his parents and siblings twice when he had vacation tine. This Christmas we hope to be coming home to Missouri for Christmas so he can meet my family. The wedding will be here in Nicaragua the weekend of July 17, 2010, and we should be back home by the next Christmas after my service is finished!

Besides surprising myself by falling in love, I have also developed a real interest in the coffee process. This is something I knew nothing about before coming to serve here, but it is absolutely fascinating to me. I am astounded at how the fruit is grown and the beans go from the mountains to the coffee cup. The coffee harvest is November through February and I am so ready to learn more. Last year when I arrived my Spanish was low and I was so busy adjusting that the harvest came and went and, yes, I learned enough to realize how interested I am… but this year! I want to learn EVERYTHING!

There are a million and a half things that I have learned in the past year, most of which can be found on my blog, mytb.org/mbaade. There are photos and bloggy goodness, and there are some photos on facebook, too.

But, for the sake of sanity, both yours and mine, a summary.

There’s no running water in the houses of Moropoto, which means we haul it from the local spigot to the house in five gallon buckets, do laundry by hand, take bucket baths, and use a latrine.

We do have electricity… which means reggaeton blasting at 5:30 am. There’s also better cell phone service here than at my parent’s house at the Lake. There are a boatload of pirated DVDs, the problem being that they are almost always dubbed in Spanish. However, when in Managua, a theater with stadium seating and movies with Spanish subtitles only costs $2.50.

Kidney beans and corn tortillas make up the bulk of the meals here. We buy rice and cheese and cream and tomatoes and avocados and onions and potatoes and eggs to go with beans and tortillas. There are insanely strange fruits that we eat and make fruit drinks out of. But when I get sick of rice and beans, we buy instant noodles or I splurge on peanut butter and a loaf of bread. Or I run away for a night or two in Esteli or Matagalpa and spend obscene amounts of my volunteer salary eating in western restaurants and drinking iced coffees.

These prices would not be obscene to the average traveller, by the way.

I’ve read about 40 books in the past year.

I’ve lost about 85 pounds in the last year.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Agriculture & Food Security sector in Nicaragua, I am supposed to be implementing sustainable rural development projects.

With the very generous help from family and friends in the States, I was able to start a Women’s Vegetable Seed Bank with a group in my community. Basically, the women had very, very limited seeds for family gardens. Starting last May, I asked my people in the States to throw a few packets of vegetable seeds in an envelope and mail them to me. I got an overwhelming response and am still receiving packets of seeds, which are all going to use in my community.

At this point, about 40 women have received seeds. If 40 gardens are planted, those gardens will feed at least 400 people, as 10 people in an extended family is about average around here (grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, kids, grandkids). There are only 600 people in Moropoto, so the seeds that have been sent at feeding two thirds of a community. If that’s not agriculture and food security, I don’t know what is. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone who sent (is sending) seeds!

I teach English in the primary school in Moropoto, classes preschool - 8th grade. This is a secondary project, but I enjoy it. I only teach Tuesday - Friday for an hour or two a morning. I do preschool and the combined 1st/2nd grade classes on Tuesday; 4th grade and the 3rd/5th grade on Wednesdays; 6th on Thursday, and combined 7th/8th Friday. That is, when there’s school and when I am here and don’t have other engagements.

I enjoy teaching kids English. It’s fun for me and fun for them. I have no delusions. Most of these kids won’t use English in their lives unless they immigrate to the USA or Costa Rica or Spain… which is a real possibility. But I like teaching them because it opens their minds. They get to learn some English and some American culture and get to know someone from outside their community. Being an ambassador is one of the goals of Peace Corps, and the kids are so receptive. By gaining the trust of the kids, I’ve gotten to know the parents and have become great friends with my coworkers, the teachers who walk for hours from other communities to teach the kids of rural Nicaragua.

Besides family gardens and English classes, I am looking into building improved ovens. Moropoto, being close to both San Lucas, where the county courthouse and mayor’s office are, and to Somoto, the capital of our department of Madriz, has more than a few families that cook and bake and sell products on the busses or in San Lucas or Somoto.

Since these families, about 10 households, have already taken the initiative to make products to sell, it makes me want to help them more (The Peace Corps helps those who help themselves…)

There is a kind of improved oven made out of a metal barrel and covered in bricks and mud that I have learned how to build, and I think it would be a great project here. I am going to pay out of my pocket to build one ($60) with a family. If she likes it (I don’t know why she wouldn’t), and other women want their own barrel ovens, then I will look for funding to build a few more.

These ovens heat up faster and use less firewood than traditional ovens, and they’re smaller so only one person can man the oven. There’s no need for someone to bake and someone else to feed firewood into the stove.

Okay, this has gotten ridiculously long. I will end this here and sign off. Photos on facebook and bloggy goodness on mytb.org/mbaade.

x’s and o’s from the mopo,
-molly

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Comments

[Mom]

Finally,.......
I'VE REALLY MISSED YOUR BLOGS, MOLLY! What a wonderfully energetic summary of your year!! Hey,...new readers, the pictures are so very informative (AND, of course, it is so good to SEE Molly and MEET Lenin and his family through them! Molly, x's and o's from home! Mom