Diriomito

I had a busy day yesterday, so I didn’t get a chance to blog. Or should I say, it’s so much harder to be efficient in a rural setting like this. I always have to walk from place to place to meet people, pick up things, etc, the sky darkens completely at around 6 o clock and there is constantly noise in the background, such as dogs, telenovelas, roosters confused about the time of day...

Speaking of noises, I’m woken up a good three or five times a night by noises. The dogs have this caterwauling session for about half an hour every night, where all the neighborhood dogs begin barking louder and louder, seemingly feeding off of each other’s barks so the noise increases exponentially. I imagine that they’re shouting insults to one another. Either way, I have to put on my sound-canceling headphones and listen to some calming nocturnes ironically at high volume to overcome the barking noises, and drift off which isn’t difficult because I’m oddly exhausted every day despite the fact that the air is much cooler and fresher up here in the hills around the laguna. 

Because we live on the elevated ridge around the Laguna, the town is essentially located on a huge hill that is one side of a larger hill surrounding the laguna. To go anywhere, one much traverse the one, main road, which runs either uphill or downhill depending on your direction. My backside and hamstrings have gotten their fair share of exercise from walking up and down the hill everyday. 

Yesterday for example, we walked up the hill, up and up and up until we reached the outskirts of Diriomito and reached the neighboring town of Pacaya. From there, we worked backwards, administering surveys about filters, stoves and solar lamps to every house on the road. We collected almost 70 in total between the eight of us, which beats Iniciativa’s record of 40 between two occasions, by a wide margin. What can I say? We’re kind of a big deal.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again, but I love doing surveys! It’s a great way to improve your Spanish, and I love experiencing the warmth and generosity of Nicaraguans. We had some good conversations and more than one family had us stay longer to ask us about where we were from and our lifestyles in the United States. While I’d say Americans are on a whole nicer than average, especially to foreigners and those of different cultures, they aren’t as willing to open their homes immediately to strangers and give them their time. Then again, there’s much more of a culture of keeping the door open for neighborhood guests and way less commitments that fill up or lives with meaningless busywork here. 

At night, I read my new book by Salmon Rushdie, wrote a bit for some assignments we have for the internship, and talked with the family. One of the daughters, Carla, has the cutest baby (almost one year old) named Juliana. The little kids here are absolutely gorgeous and Juliana is no exception. She’s cherubic, with dark curls, large eyes, and tiny little gold studs. Out of her little puckered mouth can come surprisingly loud shrieks, but her capricious affection makes up for her misbehavior. Because it was one of the group’s birthday, we went over to her house and watched Anchorman, which was the first time I had seen that movie. 

In addition to the dogs, an extremely loud rain, which sounds like drums being beaten on a tin roof, woke me up, in addition to the fear that the ants would appear again right after it rained. Finally, because there is no insulation between the rooms whatsoever, as soon as people got up and began to move, I woke up as well. 

The excessive amount of television my home stay family watches has helped me immensely in my Spanish, which I’ve found has grown by leaps and bounds since I first got here in Nicaragua, but has also noticeably improved in terms of fluency and comprehension since I got here to Diriomito two days ago. I’ve resolved to watch more TV in spanish when I get home to keep up my Spanish. We’ve watched the Discovery Channel, makeover shows, I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant, My Strange Addiction and many, many other shows together, all in Spanish. 

Today, we traveled to Güisquiliapa, a town about an hour away that is the hometown of four of our asesoras. We’ll be having a campaign for the first time in their hometown. Because the asesoras knew about half the people in the town, they did an excellent job doing publicity, having in depth, personalized conversations to each of the people about the campaign this Saturday. Finally, they went the extra step of making a map of the town and planning, down to the last detail, who was responsible for each section, making this one of the best-run publicity campaigns I had been to. 

We’re already starting to talk about what we need to do our last week here, which is a substantial amount of work. Our final report and product recommendations are due by the end of the week, which entails going through our hundreds of surveys, entering them into a spreadsheet and analyzing all the data, and then extracting conclusions. We also need to use this data to come up with recommendations and next steps for SolCom and our asesoras in the future. Also on the agenda is a reasoned conclusions of what to do with the money with which we’ve been entrusted; who do we invest a couple of hundred dollars in, and why? In addition to all this, we’ll be planning a national conference for all SolCom employees and affiliates in Nicaragua for next Friday and coming up with workshops and presentations. Finally, there are the sundry small things to do, like finishing our how-to article, writing my essay, coming up with charla scripts, etc. The work never stops. 

Luckily tomorrow we’ll be having our free day. In the morning we’ll be heading to the Laguna to a place called Monkey hut that has swimming, kayaking, tubing, etc. In the afternoon, we’ll be going back to Masaya where we’ll have a chance to use the internet (at last! Though my hiatus from the internet week to week has barely been noticeable) and go back to the markets to buy my hammock! 

Goodnight.

Ants on ants on ants

Today was our first day in Masaya, in a small town outside of Masaya actually called Diriomito. The two towns in this area are Diriomito and Pacaya, which are both relatively rural, though very welcoming and nice. The outstanding feature of both towns is that they have an amazing view of the Laguna de Apoyo, which I’ve mentioned in at least one blog post before. It’s essentially a giant volcanic crater formed 23,000 years ago which is now filled with water and has created an amazing, otherworldly place where situated between volcanoes. If one walks along the main road through Diriomito, one can see the Laguna shimmering ethereally in the distance on one side. 

The view from the top of the main road in Diriomito.

Before traveling to our home stays however, we stopped by for about an hour at the famed artisanal market of Masaya. It covers an entire block and is ringed by restaurants and food stands. Inside is stall after stall of ceramics, cloths, bags, jewelry, scarves, etc of all kinds. My goal was to find hammocks, which were rumored to be extremely cheap here, but they really weren’t. I did practice my haggling skills quite a bit; there’s really no trick to haggling at all, only to be shamelessly cheap, asking for prices you know they won’t give you and feeling to traces of remorse or guilt at being so stingy. I didn’t get a hammock (I hear they’re cheaper at the commercial, and not artisanal market) but I did pick up a few things to bring back home.  

I’m living with Julia, a grandmother, and her husband. The house is also inhabited by her extended family and grown-up children, though due to the traffic in and out of the house I’m not sure who lives here and who doesn’t. The people I’ve met so far include: Julia (of course), mi papa nica (Carlos, but Julie introduced me to him as my papa nica, which I had a good laugh at), Camelo (Julia’s grandchild), Daniella (another grandchild), Margarita, Carla and Blanca (her daughters), and the baby of Carla, who kept shrieking and making faces at me but was otherwise completely adorable. Papa Nica went straight to his room to watch TV when he got home and has been there ever since. 

The house itself is one of the nicer ones from what I’ve heard from people in the program and the girl who stayed here the week before. I have to admit, it’s relatively nice and looks extremely welcoming from the outside, having been painted a vibrant yellow. It appears to be well taken care of with an iron gate and cleanly painted lines. My room is also very nice, with its own armoire and TWO mirrors. Que lujoso! The only downside are the ant. I discovered the ants somewhat accidentally. I noticed a few huge ants crawling around and promptly snuffed out their meager lives, thinking nothing of it, only that they were the largest ants I’d ever seen (they were about half an inch big). Then I noticed a few more, and a few more, and realized the were a handful crawling on the walls, until I traced them back to the source, which was a huge fissure in a corner of the wall, about a foot away from my pillow. Through this fissure there was quite literally a flood of huge brown and black ants, some with wings, pouring through, milling around and swarming on the floor in the corner. There were so many that the corner was almost black. I screamed a little inside, composed myself, and ran out to tell Julia that there were a lot of ants all over my bed. 

We proceeded to spent the next hour systematically killing and sweeping up piles and piles of ants. I took my handy Repel spray, meant for clothing and equipment as it will stay in the fabric even after repeated washings, to douse the entire corner with toxic chemicals. Many of the ants kind of convulsed for a bit, while the rest began a mass exodus across the room and into the waiting feet of Julia, who was also armed with a broom. We’d sweep the masses of ants into the center of the room where Julia would crunch-crunch-crunch away and then Camelo would come in and push the pile of black bits into the backyard. I was alternately consumed with laughter and disgust. Afterwards, I thoroughly doused the bed frame and the underside of the mattress with more Repel and moved to the top bunk while also pulling out the bed farther away from that grim corner of death, site of the ant massacre. Apparently, these “ants” (I put quotation marks because they’re really more like dirt dwellers with wings) come out every time it rains, which is everyday. I’ve hopefully poured enough noxious chemicals on the walls to keep them out for a couple of days. 

I also taught Camelo and Daniella how to play BS; they were highly amused by my translation of “bullshit.” Meanwhile, we’re test driving the filters and stoves here with the families. So far, the families love the stoves and we’ve just started using the filters. Julia was immediately fascinated by the filters when we introduced them and inquired about the price ten seconds into the presentation; I’m really glad to see the immediate need and demand for our products and witness the cause and effect our work can have on real live people here. 

Goodnight for now! It’ll be a relatively early morning for me tomorrow since I didn’t realize there are no lights in the outhouse here, so I’ll have to take my shower tomorrow morning. I actually got to use the solar lamp today while brushing my teeth! It truly is a good product and now I can do my sales pitch with more authenticity. The bathrooms here, speaking of, consist of a hole in the ground with a wooden seat built over it (don’t get me started on the smell) and it’ll be bucket baths all around for the next seven days. 

Warning!

I will not have Internet access for the next week!

Fishing in the Pacific

This was definitely one of the best weeks that I’ve spent in Nicaragua. Then again, that shouldn’t be a surprise to me since I knew that San Juan del Sur was going to be right up my alley what with the whole beach-sand-sun-surfing thing. I’m already dreading our departure tomorrow to the middle of nowhere in Masaya, where I’ll be lucky to have electricity and a mosquito net. Then again, my Spanish could use some touching up again so I’m looking forward to the intense language and cultural immersion that we’ll be experiencing tomorrow. 

Today I dragged myself out of bed at 8:30 to get my free breakfast, which ends at 9. I’m not sure if the lady who runs the hotel knows this, but her clock is always about twenty minutes and she gives every sign that she thinks it’s the right time. Either way, it means I get breakfast for twenty minutes longer than I normally would. 

I promptly went back to sleep for another two or three hours after breakfast and after sorting out my laundry. Somehow (and this typical of me) I couldn’t find any laundry places that my fellow peers had used that very morning but all the ones I found were closed or told me that my laundry would be done the next day (Monday). I’m going to be cutting it very close by picking up my laundry pretty much at the same time our bus is coming. The laundry situation also meant that I had to go without a towel for the entire day, even on our boat tour and after I showered, yet at the same time I couldn’t NOT wash my towel which had been dragged all over the beach and back the day before. To substitute, I used my bed sheet, which was surprisingly absorbent. 

After waking up from my nap/extended night’s sleep, I took a walk around, buying some souveneirs for people back home and exploring the few blocks around our hotel around a bit. I later found out that Hotel Estrella, the hotel we’re staying at, is the oldest hotel still in existence at San Juan del Sur. There’s a photo behind the main counter showing a railroad track that originally existed right in front of the hotel. I’ve also realized how small a country Nicaragua is. Or, should I say, how self-contained the tourist track is. I’ve run into people I’ve met in Granada and Leon and Matagalpa, who either took tours with us or were a friend of the friend or happened to work at the hostel where we formerly were staying. There’s an immense feedback loop that goes on amongst people here as students/sometimes tourists and we end up running into one another over and over again. 

At two we departed for a sunset cruise, which I had been looking forward to since we got here to San Juan del Sur. My only regret is that I didn’t get to take surf lessons, though that regret is my fault because I was too cheap to splurge on lessons. The “cruise” took place on this dingy little boat with a netted roof, a boat which I did not mind at all, since that’s what we’ve been taking on tours all the time. However, I tried hard during the entire 5 hours we were out on the water not to spend too much time pondering the fact that we were on a small, plastic bathtub with a motor attached out in the mighty Pacific Ocean. 

We sailed out on these gorgeous waters, past amazing cliffs and small rock islands. We even spotted from far away Playa Maderas, where we had spent the day before. I wonder how the beaches here got formed, since they’re all these little scallops of sand that are carved out from the cliffs on the shore of the coast. The geological formations reminded me very strongly of Capri, my favorite place in the world besides home. The water was crystalline, flat and clear, and wondrous rock formations and crests would rise out of the water around us. 

We sputtered around for about a half hour before reaching our destination, a beach I think was named White Sands. The beach was completely deserted and un-commercialized, with the exception of some seemingly abandoned straw-thatched houses, completely untouched as well. Like all the beaches here, it was nestled in a little cove which looked like a hidden scallop of sand from the ocean. The water was a beautiful green-blue color and clear enough that one could see right through. On both sides we were surrounded by tall black cliffs. The sand was incredibly soft on the beach, but before we could reach the beach, we all donned snorkel gear and flippers and jumped off the side of our boat to explore the life on the floor of the ocean. There wasn’t much, but I had fun anyways learning to snorkel for the first time, which wasn’t took difficult except for the fact that I had leaky goggles that kept causing me to snort/swallow burning salt water. Sitting on the beach and looking out of the bay through the cliffs was almost unreal. Except for some pricy yacht floating off in the distance (it looked straight out of a J. Crew catalogue shoot), it was just us with our colorful snorkel gear, a small boat, and the waves, sun and sand. 

Afterwards, we headed out to deeper waters where we began fishing with some crude bait and tackle. We managed to catch a few small ones, but those served as bait for the real catches later on - two huge, two foot long fish that we caught within the span of half an hour. I’ve never understood the appeal of deep-sea fishing (or fishing really, at all) until today; fishing is in fact one of the most exciting pastimes. We connected (by we I mean our tour guides) three fishing lines together to create a stronger, fortified fishing line which we loaded with an entire fish. We caught a two foot long sturgeon first. Then, we landed a massive fish called a jack (I think?) which took Greg about ten minutes of hard core wrestling to bring up.  I just about died with laughter when Greg had to wear a pelvic brace thing from which he could put the fishing rod to create more resistance with which to reel the fish in. One of the crew would be waiting near by to spear the writhing fish with a harpoon. Then of course, it was the obligatory victor’s shot with the fish. Our overflowing cooler had to be sat on because the fish would still flop around even after being harpooned and having their spinal cord cut. 

We stayed out long enough for the sun to set on the water. Beautiful sunset, great catches of fish, general chill atmosphere and laughter...it was the perfect end to a good week. We dismounted the boat on the beach, seemingly emerging out of the water with huge fish in our hands. I wonder what people walking on the beach thought. We also found a restaurant that would cook our fish for us, and it turned out to be not only economical but also delicious. One of the fish (the jack, whatever it was called) turned out to have extremely dark meet, so that grilled, it looked like steak. 

I also heard some interesting conversation about Daniel Ortega and FSLN on the boat.The two drivers were NOT fans of Ortega, noting that in the seventies and eighties when Nicaragua’s civil war raged, he mandated that all young go into the army and sending them out to extremely rural places, often pulling them from college. Additionally, his administration seemed to behind the killing of the father of one of the tour guides. The two guys also said that there was a healthy mix of people both for and against Ortega in San Juan. They called him a communist, no better than Fidel or Chavez, which are extremely strong words in a country where I see trees and electric posts painted with the black and red colors (death and blood) of FSLN and pro-Ortega slogans painted over houses, sidewalks, the sides of buildings, etc. Ortega has almost unanimous popularity among the poorer Nicaraguans. Carolina, my Ometepe mom, told me that Ortega had been the only president for the poor and done admirable things such as give out free roofs and food, which I found to be nice, but dangerous because a) populist campaigns like that tend to obscure the real issues and let radical leaders get into power and b) that only ameliorates the symptoms of poverty rather than solves their root cause. Perhaps San Juan del Sur is so touristy that it is more capitalist than the rest of the country and so many people are opposed to him on economic policy issues. Ortega does say, directly on his ubiquitous political billboards (even though the election was more than two years ago) “Socialist, Christian and Solidarity,” something you could never get away with, not to mention win on, in the US. 

Goodnight! I’ll be sleeping without covers tonight...

Playa Maderas

AHHH! Soy enamorada con San Juan del Sur! I’ve always been something of a summer person, and I was a summer baby. Give me sun, sand and water and I’ll guarantee you that I will be happy. Today was one of our free days and we crawled out of bed to take a shuttle (read, the back of  a truck fenced in with iron bars) to a beach called Playa Maderas, about 20 minutes away from our hostel. The dirt roads were surprisingly good about 75% of the way, after which the ride became hell as we swerved and dunked our way over huge potholes down a hill. 

Casa Oro, the guys who took us out to the beach. 

The shuttle is organized by a company that rents surfboard and gives lessons, and so the people in the two shuttles with us were all surf bums. I’m not sure what this was for, but some of the guys were wearing green paste all over the upper top half of their face. I’m assuming it’s some kind of sun protectant, but why green and why does it have to be so visible? Maybe it helps with glare or reduces the sting of salt. Speaking of salt, my lips were completely chapped and stinging by the end of today due to the amount of time I spent in the ocean. 

One view of the beach. 

My first impressions of the beach: gorgeous. The sand was extremely soft and relatively white. There were also three independent restaurant joints there, populated by the usual raucous/tanned/hippy/chill surfer types, that served all kinds of typical beach-y food like tacos and burritos and fried chicken (which is always appropriate, anywhere, anyways). The water was the clearest I’d ever seen of an ocean. I could see all the way down to the perfectly smooth, sandy bottom even four or five feet deep of water. The aquamarine water was also the perfect temperature; not too cool but not warm at all, feeling like weightless ether over our burnt limbs.

There were also a number of dogs that kept stepping on us. I believe they belonged to the restaurant owners, and looked extremely well fed. However, they had no qualms about coming directly up to you, not even looking you in the eye, and stepping all over your towel and shoving their butts in your face. Force mandates force, so I spent a good half hour literally just pushing dogs away from me. At one point, I was pushing the head of one dog who stubbornly kept trying to walk forward right into my face. 

The dogs

Although surf lessons were offered, I decided against taking the lessons because a) they were 15 dollars, which is expensive (I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to the US, because I’ll be shocked at the prices of everything) b) I really don’t think you can learn something as difficult as surfing in one hour and c) there were so many surfers there that I probably would have made a fool of myself. However, I did cave in and rent a boogie board, which was one of the best decisions of my life! I spent a solid three or so hours just floating in the azure ocean with the sun on my back, catching waves and body surfing them to shore. At first, I had absolutely no idea as to what I was doing, but some nice surfer folk taught me some tips and what to look for in a wave, and by the end of our day at Playa Maderas, I was spending most of my time paddling on my stomach and body surfing. At one point, I paddled out so far that there weren’t even any surfers around me, though I only ended up so far out because I had taken a short nap on my board and had drifted farther and farther out. Catching a wave is exhilarating. You have to wait, sometimes for tens of minutes, in the right place, judging where the waves will break and finding the "A" of the wave where the force is the strongest. Then you have to start paddling like crazy at the right moment, catching the crest of the wave but not getting sucked into it. All of a sudden, if you do these things correctly, there's a huge surge of speed that the wave gives to you and you're lifted up four or five feet by the wave. At this point, I often couldn't see due to the spray, so I held on desperately as my board rocked this way and that and trying to steer the board to shore. I think I may try surfing tomorrow. 

The beach also had spectacular views, some of which I captured on camera. The beach is surrounded by cliffs of shale or something, which had fallen in huge, diagonal slabs as if sheets of it had slipped millions of years ago. Amount the rocks were crabs, hermit crabs, and snails. Speaking of crabs, the forest around the beach has tons of these black, red and yellow crabs, vividly colored, that remind me of huge spiders. They don’t seem to need water, but burrow amount the roots of the tree. Strange!

The shale (??)

Leaving my mark.. 

The beach during sunset!

Now I’m exhausted and probably going to be sore/a little burnt tomorrow. At least I don’t look like the guys, who laid out way more than the girls surprisingly, and are now a bright shade of scarlet. Dinner soon! 

Success!!

All of a sudden, it’s begun raining. While I was in the water, I did observe a thick mass of dark clouds that had blotted out the sun, but I didn’t think there would be a storm. In the span of twenty minutes, it’s begun pouring. I think I’ve seen the heaviest rain here in Nicaragua, where storms in the wet season begin out of nowhere and end ten minutes later. The rain is coming down so hard that it sounds like people are drum rolling on the roof. To add to the cacophony, there seem to be a host of tropical birds that they keep in the hostel who were squawking by the time I began my shower, but now are wailing and shrieking like banshees. Whereas the beach was littered with street vendors and tourists before, there’s virtually no one on the roads anymore, a picture of desolation and abandon. 

In about 45 minutes, we’ll be giving the workshop on the power of ideas, entrepreneurship, cost-benefit analysis, and goal setting/planning. As I was making my way back to the hotel from the beach, I spotted Jamie, the teacher who has been spearheading the whole effort to get us here, riding a bicycle with a little boy perched on the handlebars. Her eyes darted to my face and then away in a split second, so I’m almost sure she recognized me. I hope she doesn’t get the wrong impression - that we’ve been chilling all day only two hours before the actual presentation. 

The swim however, was amazing, barring the fact that the sun ducked behind the clouds permanently only about ten minutes in. Our hostel is right on the beach, in a great central location. From our bedroom window and the perpetually open doors of the main space one can see the beach and the bay. All I needed to do was put on a bathing suit and hop my way over the fifty feet to the beach. The water was the warmest I had ever seen 

I find it amazing how much work here is done by hand. In the US, we’re used to, and oblivious to the fact that, a lot of work being done by machines, as part of a mechanized, standardized process. Right outside the hostel, I watched men paint by hand yellow lines on the side of the road, whereas in the US, we have machines that paint out a perfectly straight line at who knows how many feet per minute. Here, these guys were doing it by hand and some string. The roads are often paid with individually laid tile and the grass mowed with machetes, by hand. Then again, that’s not to say that Nicaraguans are extremely on top of everything; they’ll put in the hard work and sweat to get what is needed done (like cutting the grass, laying roads) but what ain’t broke, they feel perfectly complacent to leave in its natural state. 

Anyways, we’ve been working all day on our workshop and I’m fairly confident it went amazingly well. Although we kind of halfheartedly practiced (probably because we were so sick of saying the same things over and over again) when it came to the final delivery, we kicked ass. I think we sounded better than the script (I might be kidding myself there, but we definitely have improved our Spanish by a mile since coming to Nicaragua). Unfortunately only about 15 people showed up for the workshop because it got rained out. The rain (especially the kind I described above) is the equivalent of a Nicaraguan snowday; people generally stay in, because one can get sick, because one will get wet and then sick, etc. Optimistically then, we had good turnout considering the circumstances. 

The feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive as well. We ended the workshop with a poster of a vase of flowers, with the words “miremos florecer nuestros sueños” (let’s watch our dreams blossom”) and everyone filled out a sheet of paper with a goal/dream, folded it in the shape of a flower, and stuck it on the poster. The poster looked way better than I expected, and although the workshop was for adults, the students all seemed receptive to the idea. Jamie, the teacher, is keeping it behind her desk. We also had a hilarious skit between two of our group in which, genders switched in the skit, a man tries to ask a girl on a date as an example of goal setting and planning. Peter went all out, stuffing paper up his shirt and saying ridiculous things. The audience ate it up, oftentimes roaring with silent laughter. 

To celebrate, we went out to Iguana’s, which seems like the happening place to be on the beachfront. Iguana’s has two floors, the top one of which is the largest and functions as a eating space, bar and dance floor. I finally got my craved after chicken fingers and danced the night away to a surprisingly number of American songs that were blasted on speakers all around the top floor. After six or so hours of sleep, it was off to Playa Maderas the next day!

Some pictures of San Juan del Sur

Our room...the views are magnificent (see below)

The view from our shared balcony. When I wake up I can hear the sound of waves and see palm trees. 

San Juan del Sur welcomes you!