EZ goes to Nicaragua: Matagalpa!

Sorry for the absence; I was on the road last night and had a busy day today. We left Granada a few hours late, as a student in our group had gotten mugged the night before and needed to pick up a new phone and the like. Muggings are common all over Central America, especially when one is alone late at night, so as long as one avoids these two factors, one should be fine. We all got a talking to about communication however, since this particular student hadn’t called our leaders until the morning after...hopefully there will be no more incidents in the future.

Remember how I was wondering why a guy from Holland had a restaurant in Granada? The very next day after I asked this question, I found out that he’s a wanted criminal in the Netherlands and so is currently hiding out in Granada since Nicaragua can’t extradite him. I’m not too clear what his crime was, but it seems he embezzled government funds and booked it to Nicaragua, where he opened one of Granada’s most popular bars/restaurants. It seems that everyone in Granada knows about this and still go to his joint. Apparently, there’s a well known Italian criminal who was implicated in some political assassination living in Granada as well. Remember what I said about loving Granada? It’s an interesting place to say the least.

The ride to Matagalpa was less than three hour, and I passed those hours very quickly by reading my Spanish copy of Eclipse while playing twenty questions. Surprisingly, no one knows who Aung Sang Suu Ki is...disappointing. We arrived at our hostel, La Buena Onda, which is awesome. The hostel is pretty large, and we have the bottom room that fits six people though we only have four girls. There’s free coffee and filtered water, a great space open to the elements with hammocks, a huge bunny that hangs around a lot, and best of all, free wifi. I discovered that the rabbit after almost tripping over it. It just kind of hops around and weaves its way around peoples’ legs. I’m always fascinated by the kinds of people hostels attract. For example, the receptionist is from New Jersey and here for an entrepreneurial internship, but half of the management is local Nicaraguans. All very chill and laid back; I highly recommend staying in hostels when traveling in groups. There’s also a cafe attached to the hostel, behind the reception desk where they serve excellent meals and smoothies for affordable prices. I’ve sworn to eat all my dinners here this week, especially since I had an awful sandwich at some cafe the first lunch here that seemed to consist solely of the horrible combination of rubbery mushrooms and mustard.

The weather in Matagalpa is known for being relatively chilly since it’s in the northern mountains. Whereas Granada is very flat since it’s right next to the shores of Lake Nicaragua, Matagalpa lies in between two mountainsides, in a valley. The busiest and most developed part of town lies right in the middle. As we were driving into Matagalpa, on a highway elevated above the entire city (we were driving down into the city) you could see the gradual disaspora of Matagalpa. Houses were clustered in the middle and as you looked farther and farther up the adjacent slopes, the houses grew more sparse and steadily more poor. We’ve been strictly forbidden to go into these barrios, where extremely sketch things happen. A lot of the villagers living on the sides of the mountains travel down to the center of the city to do their weekly errands and then make the two hour journey back at least once a week.

Matagalpa is a much less tourist-y town, and it’s therefore a bit more ramshackle and disorganized. It also means that I haven’t seen many gringos, but surprisingly I haven’t received a lot of catcalls or ‘chinitas.’

Today, we took a bus ride up into the mountains to talk to Fernando, who has started a non profit tourism organization that seeks to promote local artisans, tour guides, and businesses in San Ramon, a small town outside of Matagalpa. The bus climbed its way painstakingly up the mountain, where along every turn were these little metal, mud and wood huts. There were some houses that looked completely inaccessible, hidden in little nooks and crannies in the mountains.

Fernando was very enthusiastic, very well spoken and impressively committed to the project. I plan on buying a few things from his store to support his venture. At the moment, he gets only a little income from the gift shop, serving more as a supportive father to all the little businesses and groups that exist in San Ramon. He called them a “family,” which I thought was cute. I also noticed that I’ve been able to understand almost all of what he was saying! Hopefully my Spanish is really getting better. Half of our group will be working with Fernando in helping him market and publicize his group, networking with others, and specifically will be consulting with him to create a better Facebook group and essentially teaching him how to use websites. Pretty difficult stuff, but he seemed really happy with what we were able to accomplish today.

My group will be working with Jessenia, an incredibly woman who is heading a group of local artisan women called Las Mujeres Ecologistas. They make, completely by hand, these beautiful paper products. All the paper is collected and recycled and mixed with local, organic ingredients to give it color. They also collect and press flowers to decorate their notebooks, envelopes, cards, and gift bags with. Jessenia has done an amazing job pulling this all through, but she has done almost nothing in the way of advertising. She essentially relies on three non profits in the area to help her make contacts and bring tourists in, something that is completely not sustainable and leaves her at the whim of tourist groups that happen to make contact with these three non profits. To this end, we’re helping her make a product inventory, a product catalogue, and I spent all evening making five different marketing flyers that she could possibly use for publicity. The catalogue is also looking great; we’ve got some photographers on the team whose SLRs have not only inspired me to get one and start doing some amateur photography, but have also helped our catalogue look great. We also have to somehow develop some kind of mechanism in which Jessenia will be able to manage the inventory and catalogue on her own, as well as possibly emailing the catalogue out to her client list (something we also have to help her build), keeping in mind that Jessenia has absolutely no idea how to use the computer and has limited to access to one as well. In addition to these intensive projects, we have a presentation to prepare in spanish to 200 people on Saturday. No big deal. Apparently, this town has been making radio announcements about us for the past few weeks, so we’re expecting a huge turnout. Wish me luck!