Advertisement
I guess it's nice for people to have the option of school.
My classmates and I stayed in a barrio called El Trapeche but since Jalapa was the closest "city," I put that down as our location. Jalapa is the agricultural capital of Nicargua.
We worked in Nueva Esperanza, a small barrio whose people had requested a school. It is my understanding that the school was a reward to the people for working together to build a potable water system for their small community. Last year, people in the community were dying of plague. Yes, "the" plague.
My teacher, Deb Young, has been building relationships with the people in that part of the country for twenty years, originally drawn to the area by the war (think Sandinistas). She works with the people in and around Jalapa through a local organization called PIEAT (translated, it means "Integral Program for Educating with Love and Tenderness). She is also the director of Americas Association for the Care of Children in the states.
My Poverty Matters class raised $12,000 at an auction in Boulder to build the school that they requested, and we set aside several weeks to travel down to
Adobe bricks
this is how we made 500+ bricks Nueva Esperanza to help them start the process of building (among other things). I really wish we could have stayed for longer. A few weeks isn't a long time, but the intensity of the experiences we had down there made it enough to change my life forever.
Here are a few excerpts from my paper journal while I was down there:
"Latin America is so perfect for me! People are late for things, everything is really colorful, expressive, passionate…! Definitely coming back. I’m in love. That’s all there is to it."
"The noise level is definitely higher here. There’s about three different kinds of music playing, whistles blowing, someone shouting into a loudspeaker, people walking around yelling for me to buy different items, birds chirping, and the indistinct roar of conversation.
I was so excited yesterday that I forgot to eat. I love it here.
"(About the people at the dump, see "Poverty Matters") I felt like that easily could have been my life (it could have). The kids were all so dirty. I wanted to be dirty. I was dirty. Maybe that should have been my life. But now, I am on the outside. I
have the option of two lives. Maybe that was meant to be."
"Reasons to bring a tape recorder next time and other notes:
The rhythmic thudding, a corn-crushing stone. Dogs barking in alternating pitch, resembling the sound of a jigsaw through a wooden board (roo RUH, roo RUH, roo RUH…). The roosters begin crowing at midnight, so by the time 6 rolls around, you can sleep through it. The men still ride horses through the unpaved roads of Jalapa, lifting dust to the brims of the downcast sombreros. Boys in wheelbarrows, just watching. There is a man with a rifle guarding the door to the bank. Men and women whose eyes speak my language until the mouth tries to define. Estoy consada? Did I say that right? Stupid high school French."
"My bed feels like a fort with the bug net draped the way it is. It sinks in the center, so there are two little nooks. The bugs can bite me where the netting touches my skin. Good thing it’s not rainy season. The electricity is out ( a regular occurrence here) and I am using my flashlight. It’s daytime, but my room is very dark. I
feel a little better now. I went to Charlotte’s for a while to nap and use the bathroom. The electicity just came back. I kinda wish it would go out again. The music is fuzzy on the transistor radio outside and it’s annoying me. Actually, I’m more annoyed with myself for not being able to concentrate. I'm really excited that my future is becoming more clear. I can see my life through the year 2012, then I don’t know. But I think I’ll find an answer if I follow the path that I imagine. I have so much of my life ahead of me, I can’t believe it. So many options. I am so lucky. Why am I so lucky?"
"So that was scary. I just went to a dance party at Sara’s, and I have never had “baillar?”said to me so many times in my life. As Julia and I approached the house, I could already tell what kind of night it was going to be. Outside the front entrance to the house, spilling into the road, was a swarm of around sixty young men between the ages of six and twenty. Inside the house, five American girls
and two American young men. The Nicaraguans were just staring, gaping as the gringos danced uncomfortably in the spotlight. I was soon among them. The first to ask me to dance was around ten years old. That was pretty safe. But it opened the flood gates. After that, everyone thought they had a shot with the gringa in the loose black dress and boxer shorts (I thought it was just going to be the delegation, okay?) I felt really self-conscious all night. I danced a bit, but it was really hard to do with about 100 male eyes on me and the four other white girls. Why are we such a novelty? Everywhere we go, people stare. I need to learn how to say, “Haven’t you ever seen a white girl before?”in Spanish."
"I don’t want to go back to the United States! I feel like I don’t belong there (but there was probably some purpose to being born there, possibly to have some affluent ties so I can redistribute the wealth somehow?). I felt it most last night at the gas station, with the french fries and the greasy expensive food, sitting at the window bar, watching a
Playing games
who else remembers the parachute? truck pull up with about fifteen Nicaraguans in the back, wishing I was there instead…"
To see more pictures from my trip to Nicaragua, follow this link:
http://naropa.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000113&l=40847&id=165100034
and/or this one
http://naropa.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000114&l=b08a8&id=165100034
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0265s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Joe R
non-member comment
Hola Gringa!
A que te mira(s)?....No ha(s) visto una chica blanquita/una gringa/una norte americana nunca?...a good of the moment phrase would be phrase would be...El perro ha comido su(tu) lengua?- in English -'Cat got your tongue?'..(in Spanish the dog eats it)...I think I'm not sure that may not be used where you are...I tend to mix castellano with latin american spanish a bit too...it would startle people even more I think... ....I just stumbled across this 'blog' and I think it's very well written - quite eloquent and evocative (I think) and I have very much enjoyed reading it... Good luck and keep up the good work! Joe R.