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Published: August 26th 2009
2009.08.24
Tuesday 3:10 pm
I am cold, hungry and homesick. As a Peace Corps Volunteer who is stationed in a small mountain village in Nicaragua, Central America, these sentiments are not altogether new, though they rarely all fall together at the same time.
I never thought I would be cold in Nicaragua. Central America brings to mind lush, tropical jungles shrouded in mystery and mist. All of these are true of my mountain, but there is also cold wind and colder rain. I am dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt and wrapped in a blanket as I type this.
I actually am rarely hungry here. We all eat at Mamita’s, or grammie’s, house. There are always beans and tortillas and coffee. And my fiancé and I bring in fresh cheese and cream and vegetables and avocados and rice to add to the mix, with a touch of Ramen noodles for variation. The first bean and corn harvest is in, which means there is roasted corn on the cob, boiled corn on the cob, tamales covered in cream, sweet corn tortillas with fresh cheese, and other such corn delicacies unknown to most Americans.
I am rarely hungry, but then again I have lost 85 pounds in 11 months.
And I am homesick right now. Things that normally don’t bother me are getting on my nerves.
Dubbed, pirated movies; I just want to watch something in English - without subtitles!
Spanish music, reggaeton, ranchero; I long to drive down my dirt road and listen to 107.9 The Coyote. I miss driving; we are not allowed to as Peace Corps Volunteers.
I actually don’t mind washing my clothes by hand on a cement slab, but oh! to have them properly machine washed and dried and come out smelling like Downy!
Running water. Hot running water. What luxury! I will most definitely NOT EVER miss hauling water every morning. Oh, for a hot shower and a freshly laundered, thick, warm towel.
What I wouldn’t give to flop on a couch! As opposed to the lawn chairs that populate the living room here.
Yup, cold, hungry, and homesick.
I know things will get better. The sun will come out and warm things up. I will leave my computer and go to Mamita’s to eat. And with a full belly and warm extremities the homesickness won’t hit me as hard.
I am coming up on being in Nicaragua for a year. September 4th marks one year in country. Peace Corps service, though, is for twenty-seven months, which means I have until November to hit the one year mark in my village.
And what have I been doing for the past year here? The first three months were spent in training. We were placed with host families and spent exhausting days in seven hours of Spanish class - three to one student to professor ratio. We also had technical training to somewhat prepare us to be Agriculture & Food Security volunteers in rural Nicaragua.
After three months of training, we swore in at the US Embassy as Peace Corps Volunteers and were deployed to our individual communities.
The first few weeks in my site were rough. I wasn’t used to the accent. There had been another volunteer in my site before me, so they had some contact with an American, but it was nothing compared to my training host family who had been hosting volunteers for the past decade and were well versed in the ways of foreign volunteers. There was no purified water to be bought, so I boiled my water in the coffee percolator, which means my water always tasted faintly of coffee.
After two weeks of being alone in my site, only actually talking to my host cousin, I was ready to get out! I decided that I would drink the local water, and when I got amoebas and diarrhea I could call the Med Office and go to Managua and be put up in a hotel while they sorted out my intestinal problems. Clearly, that was the answer! So I filled up my Nalgene with water from the community spigot, drank four bottles full throughout the day, and waited anxiously for the horrendous trips to the latrine to begin.
They never came. Turns out the water in my community is potable. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to drink boiled coffee water for two years.
Things have steadily gotten better since those first few weeks in my village. My host cousin, one of Mamita’s grandsons, and I became fast friends. He was the one who wanted to know about my life before the Peace Corps, my family, my aspirations and dreams. Friendship turned into a relationship that turned into love, and we recently got engaged. He is still the only person who continually corrects my Spanish and I am busy helping him learn English.
I also teach English in the rural community school to preschool through 6th grade. I began teaching English shortly after arriving in my site. It was work that involved little Spanish and would ingratiate me with the kids, and thus with their parents. I love teaching kids English as a second language; they pick it up very quickly and it is gratifying to see results immediately.
Nicaragua has two seasons; the wet season and the dry season, each six months. When the rains started in May, so did planting season. I was constantly asked for vegetable garden seeds from the women in my village. I had none. So I emailed friends and family at home and asked them to put some vegetable seeds in envelopes and mail them to me so I could start a Seed Bank with the women in my village. I had an overwhelming response and am still receiving seeds to this day.
I called an informational meeting to discuss setting up a Vegetable Seed Bank. By the end of the first meeting, 30 women had elected a president, secretary, and seed bank box holder. The seeds from the first batch were distributed and recorded, and subsequently planted. The 2nd and 3rd meetings were held by the executive board and new members who needed seeds for their family gardens. I also gave seeds to some Health Peace Corps volunteers to plant in the women’s center and the maternal house in Somoto.
Of course Mamita got her pick of seeds for her garden, and Lenin and I built an above ground garden and planted seeds sent so generously from friends and family in the States.
I figure if close to 40 women received seeds in my village, and let’s say of those 40, 30 gardens are planted successfully and grow. The other 10 will probably have been eaten by fowl or leaf cutting ants or simply ill planted and won’t produce much.
Thirty gardens will feed about 300 people. Most people have a few children, some married with casitas of their own, but they probably still eat at mom’s house every now and then. Or grandma’s house. At least 10 family members will profit from fresh vegetables from a small family garden.
For example. Mamita’s kitchen cooks for herself and Abuelo, who is around occasionally. Also five grandchildren, one child, one gringa, and occasionally the other grandkid that is married and has his own house but comes for food sometimes. That’s nine all the time, and sometimes eleven.
Lenin and I provide the majority of the necessities and extras. One hindered pound bags of corn, bags of bread for morning and afternoon coffee, rice, oil, cheese, vegetables. The daughter and one grandchild haul water for the house in the morning and another sweeps. Sometimes Lenin or I buy a load of firewood for the house, as the kitchen stove is wood burning. There is no oven. When others have money they also provide what they can.
I teach English. I started a vegetable seed bank with the women in my community. I haul water and provide for the Torrez family.
I have also started working with an NGO, the Padre Fabretto Foundation. The primary focus of Fabretto is education. They have a heavy influence in this part of the country and contribute to numerous after school programs and improved lunch programs in schools between Somoto and San Jose de Cusmapa.
However, the newest Fabretto project is working with a coffee cooperative. The idea is that they will loan coffee plants and money to the more than 300 coffee farmers. The farmers then must repay the loan with their coffee harvest. Fabretto will then export this coffee to the States to be roasted, and then they will offer it to their benefactors in the States and Spain. The proceeds from the sales will cycle back into Fabretto to improve schools in the areas where these farmers and their families live.
Although I am skeptical of the finances and probability that it will actually work as well in reality as on paper, there are some huge coffee viveros around. A vivero is basically a word for a nursery. In this case, there are 180,000 baby coffee trees that have been sprouted from seed and are growing in black plastic bags, waiting to be replanted in the cooperative farms. There are three huge coffee nurseries. One is literally down the hill from my community, so I have been going down to help take care of the coffee plants and learn.
Eventually, I want to learn the exportation of coffee from Nicaragua and then the importation into the States.
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Mom
non-member comment
Dear dear Molly,
I was rereading some of your blog entries thus far. It sounds to me like you and Lenin contribute a great great deal to the family (i.e. work, water hauling, wood hauling, many groceries, garden, supplies, etc.). As I read your entries over, I began to realize where your ever-so-meager income goes. Sounds like it goes mostly to living expenses. No wonder you're strapped for ca$h, not to mention any left for $avings!