I have been toiling over the thought of missing my best friends wedding (Sean McC) for months since I learned he was engaged and planned the wedding for while Jenny and I are in Nica. How dare him not to check with me before proposing! I wasn´t expecting it until early next year. But seriously he is getting married to a beautiful young lady named Kate and Jenny and I could tell from the very beginning that they were a great match. So to my point, we are coming home to attend the wedding, and I even get to be a groomsman!
We will be coming home late on Nov. 6th into DCA (Washington Reagan), then returning on Nov. 12th afternoon out of DCA. It will be only 5 full days at home but I am sure we will cherish every minute of it. I just couldn´t miss Sean´s, Seany Bawny´s, Bon McMarfney´s wedding. Oh yeah, I think its Kate´s too.
I did a last minute flight check and found $100 each way/person tickets with Spirit airlines out of Managua. So we got a crazy deal and I said if I get a crazy deal, I am there, so here we come. You know me, there is no way I could do it with out a crazy deal. I can´t believe I found one this late in the game, damn I am good!
We also get to be home for Katie K´s birthday and hopefully we will see our adorable neice and nephew too. I can´t wait to be taking a real shower and stuffing up toilets again. I also am already dreaming about Mom´s cooking, and maybe even a night cuddled up on the couch to watch a movie (with Jenny of course). I´ll also be stocking up on all kinds of supplies and donations to bring back to the community with us so we will be posting some needs to give you all a heads up when we have some details.
Sorry for all you C.J. Colavito fans who won´t be in NOVA during this time, the chances that Jenny and I will travel anywhere else are about zero. I still love you all and appreciate your support.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Hermanos Locos
A couple weeks ago our brothers and sister took us on a hike to the mountain top behind our house. We knew it was going to be an adventure when Marcel and Jeni showed up for the trek with a sweat towel and a water bottle. Usually, they just have their flip flops and nothing more! The hike was a lot of fun, but definately tiring - even Van Dam was tired by the time we got to the top. It was worth the hike though; we were rewarded with amazing views of the village. The kids also had a lot of fun hanging out at the top of the mountain. Above is a clip of Harold jumping off a cliff. Enjoy!!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention
It’s Hard to pay attention in la iglesia (church) to be specific. Mom, you will be happy to hear that Jenny and I have been good Catholics here and we have been going to the local service on Sundays. It is sometimes very hard to pay attention though. Of course the obvious reason is that it is all in Spanish and I easily get lost, especially during the homily, but there is a lot more going on there than just a guy rattling off God’s message in Nicañol. First of all it seems like the women of the village use church as their forum for the weekly breast feeding contest. I don’t think there is a week that goes by where less than 7 or 8 women breast feed during mass. I am not just talking infants here either, there are kids that barely fit in mom’s lap who are chowing down. Also, last time I checked, it wasn’t necessary to breast feed your baby more than once an hour, but some of the women will go a few rounds during one service. The only explanation that I could come up with is that it must be the weekly contest.
The breast feeding is a little weird and I guess just a cultural difference, but all in all not that distracting. What is distracting is what some of the kids do during mass. So I know that sometimes there is a stray kid or two back home at church that gets loose and makes a dash up the aisle, but that is more the exception than the rule. In Sabana Grande it seems like everyone just lets their kids have free roam around the church. Most people just focus right on the service as if there is nothing going on, unless one of them jumps in their lap. The community here is so small and close knit that all the kids feel comfortable with everyone. Sometimes I can’t tell who the parents are because the kids have bounced between so many laps. The other week there was this one little boy that must have been about 2 ½ was bouncing between his grandmother in the seat directly in front of me and his family, a few aisles back. He started off by just switching back and forth like 10 times during the readings. Then he returned once with a small bag of chips that was torn open so carelessly that it was torn all down the middle and the chips were precariously balancing in a little pocket. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, just waiting for the chips to spill all over the floor. Sure enough he crashed into grandma’s lap and left a pile of chips in her skirt with out her knowing. Grandma noticed the chips in her lap and was thoroughly ticked about it, then gathered them up as carefully as possible and put them back into his broken bag and sent him on his way. Just as I was thinking what was going to happen to all the chips on the floor underneath the seat and in the aisle, a stray dog roamed in and took care of the mess for us—how convenient. Then a few minutes later the boy returned, this time chewing something that I figured was gum. Then grandma suddenly got really mad and upset and tried to wrestle the gum out of his mouth. Then a lady one aisle ahead joined in and shoved her finger in his mouth. The little rascal wiggled free and ran away laughing, still chewing the gum. I then realized why they were so upset; none of them had given him gum. He must have found it on the floor or stuck to the bottom of another seat. At this point I just couldn’t contain myself and I started laughing, which got Jenny laughing and it took all I had to keep quiet and not draw attention. Imagine all that this one boy was doing, then add 3 or 4 other kids acting the same in a small church of about 100-150 people. It’s hard to pay attention. Add to that a bat or two hanging from the rafters trying to sleep, but stirring every so often, just enough to keep Jenny worrying that one might dive bomb her.
Another thing that makes it hard to keep up is that even though they say you can always find familiarity in catholic mass around the world because the same readings are used every where, I doesn’t seem like mass is the same each week here. There is always something a little different. For example, many times I definitely notice that they never consecrate the Eucharist and we sometimes skip the Our Father. Some weeks we say the Creed, others we don’t. A couple weeks ago mass went on for over 2 hours and we spent a chunk of 30 minutes straight kneeling on hard stone floor alternating between prayers and singing. We learned that its hard to tell when mass has officially ended because most people don’t get up and leave. They just chat amongst each other for a while, then sometimes start back up into singing and praying for another hour. Since the week of kneeling Jenny always tries to get us out before we get pulled into “extra innings”. I never know what to expect each week.
Aside from all the distractions the mass is beautiful. They don’t have a normal preist anymore because in our second week here he actually passed away from a heart attack at 4am on a Sunday morning. Mass was pretty sad that week, though I didn’t realize why until Alejandra explained it to me afterwards. Usually they have one of about 6 different guys take over as the “MC” who reads the gospel and gives the homily. It keeps it interesting with different styles each week and new faces. They also have a lively music group, which includes an electric guitar, and a couple acoustic guitars. The congregation is very active and there is even a Southern Baptist feel with Amens and responses during the homily. Most people sing too, though I haven’t figured out the words to their most common songs yet. I think I am slowly understanding more and more of it each week. I hope by the end of the year I’ll actually know a few of the songs.
The breast feeding is a little weird and I guess just a cultural difference, but all in all not that distracting. What is distracting is what some of the kids do during mass. So I know that sometimes there is a stray kid or two back home at church that gets loose and makes a dash up the aisle, but that is more the exception than the rule. In Sabana Grande it seems like everyone just lets their kids have free roam around the church. Most people just focus right on the service as if there is nothing going on, unless one of them jumps in their lap. The community here is so small and close knit that all the kids feel comfortable with everyone. Sometimes I can’t tell who the parents are because the kids have bounced between so many laps. The other week there was this one little boy that must have been about 2 ½ was bouncing between his grandmother in the seat directly in front of me and his family, a few aisles back. He started off by just switching back and forth like 10 times during the readings. Then he returned once with a small bag of chips that was torn open so carelessly that it was torn all down the middle and the chips were precariously balancing in a little pocket. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, just waiting for the chips to spill all over the floor. Sure enough he crashed into grandma’s lap and left a pile of chips in her skirt with out her knowing. Grandma noticed the chips in her lap and was thoroughly ticked about it, then gathered them up as carefully as possible and put them back into his broken bag and sent him on his way. Just as I was thinking what was going to happen to all the chips on the floor underneath the seat and in the aisle, a stray dog roamed in and took care of the mess for us—how convenient. Then a few minutes later the boy returned, this time chewing something that I figured was gum. Then grandma suddenly got really mad and upset and tried to wrestle the gum out of his mouth. Then a lady one aisle ahead joined in and shoved her finger in his mouth. The little rascal wiggled free and ran away laughing, still chewing the gum. I then realized why they were so upset; none of them had given him gum. He must have found it on the floor or stuck to the bottom of another seat. At this point I just couldn’t contain myself and I started laughing, which got Jenny laughing and it took all I had to keep quiet and not draw attention. Imagine all that this one boy was doing, then add 3 or 4 other kids acting the same in a small church of about 100-150 people. It’s hard to pay attention. Add to that a bat or two hanging from the rafters trying to sleep, but stirring every so often, just enough to keep Jenny worrying that one might dive bomb her.
Another thing that makes it hard to keep up is that even though they say you can always find familiarity in catholic mass around the world because the same readings are used every where, I doesn’t seem like mass is the same each week here. There is always something a little different. For example, many times I definitely notice that they never consecrate the Eucharist and we sometimes skip the Our Father. Some weeks we say the Creed, others we don’t. A couple weeks ago mass went on for over 2 hours and we spent a chunk of 30 minutes straight kneeling on hard stone floor alternating between prayers and singing. We learned that its hard to tell when mass has officially ended because most people don’t get up and leave. They just chat amongst each other for a while, then sometimes start back up into singing and praying for another hour. Since the week of kneeling Jenny always tries to get us out before we get pulled into “extra innings”. I never know what to expect each week.
Aside from all the distractions the mass is beautiful. They don’t have a normal preist anymore because in our second week here he actually passed away from a heart attack at 4am on a Sunday morning. Mass was pretty sad that week, though I didn’t realize why until Alejandra explained it to me afterwards. Usually they have one of about 6 different guys take over as the “MC” who reads the gospel and gives the homily. It keeps it interesting with different styles each week and new faces. They also have a lively music group, which includes an electric guitar, and a couple acoustic guitars. The congregation is very active and there is even a Southern Baptist feel with Amens and responses during the homily. Most people sing too, though I haven’t figured out the words to their most common songs yet. I think I am slowly understanding more and more of it each week. I hope by the end of the year I’ll actually know a few of the songs.
A place to chill
At the beginning of football season Jenny and I found our favorite post game spot. There happens to be a pretty decent sports bar in Ocotal that serves an awesome steak, beers at temperatures below freezing, and delicious fries. Finally, a retreat where we can eat some American style food and watch sports! They even have ESPN and ESPN2. Unfortunately, ESPN here runs different programming than the one in the states. Uncle Dan, you would love it, they seem to have a Yankees game on nearly every time we go there. Baseball is the big sport of Nica, everyone around here is always wearing MLB hats. Sometimes I wonder if some of them even know what it means. It’s just the cool thing to wear so many people just randomly have an Atlanta Braves hat or Marlins, but most commonly the Yankees. The bar owner is a Yankees fan too and he’s all about it. The great thing is that a little American culture can be found in a pinch when we really need it. The best part is ESPN2 runs the same program as the states, including college football highlights and everything is in English! Heck yeah! The agenda for every Saturday is hit up the internet café to catch the game on yahoo radio, then the good ‘ol Deportivo for a steak, chicken strips, and some Hokie highlights. I have to say, thank God for Tyrod Taylor. Hokie Nation can look forward to a bunch more offensive highlights this year.
Another place worth noting is that we found an Italian Pizzeria in Ocotal!! Yes, that’s right, after 2 months of no pizza we found a place that knows how to find cheese that melts. I don’t think I have mentioned the stuff they call cheese here. It’s awful. It is sooooo salty that you need a whole glass of water with every bite. It’s chunky and crumbly like feta but doesn’t really taste anything like it. It tastes like salt, funky moldy salt. It also doesn’t melt. I didn’t know it was possible, but there is such a thing a cheese that doesn’t melt. I would say that I miss cheese a lot, or should I say missed cheese a lot. Now we have our pizza place. Cos, if you ever have to make a tech service call to Ocotal, you are in luck, they have pizza with chicken. They also have Hawaiian style and salami and others that I haven’t tried yet. The only bad thing is that it’s not at those loveable dirt cheap Nica prices; it costs about 3 nights stay in a crappy dorm-like hotel for a pizza pie ($8).
Another place worth noting is that we found an Italian Pizzeria in Ocotal!! Yes, that’s right, after 2 months of no pizza we found a place that knows how to find cheese that melts. I don’t think I have mentioned the stuff they call cheese here. It’s awful. It is sooooo salty that you need a whole glass of water with every bite. It’s chunky and crumbly like feta but doesn’t really taste anything like it. It tastes like salt, funky moldy salt. It also doesn’t melt. I didn’t know it was possible, but there is such a thing a cheese that doesn’t melt. I would say that I miss cheese a lot, or should I say missed cheese a lot. Now we have our pizza place. Cos, if you ever have to make a tech service call to Ocotal, you are in luck, they have pizza with chicken. They also have Hawaiian style and salami and others that I haven’t tried yet. The only bad thing is that it’s not at those loveable dirt cheap Nica prices; it costs about 3 nights stay in a crappy dorm-like hotel for a pizza pie ($8).
Business trip to Estelí
This week I got to travel with some of the women from the Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa to help out with the 1 day training session that accompanied the delivery of the 22 solar cookers for the mayor of Estelí.
Let me start off with saying that business trips with Grupo Fenix are quite a bit different from the business trips I used to take with Printpack. With Printpack I would usually fly with a preferred airline, and because I used them so much I would get special treatment like upgrades, exit row seats, priority security line and all kinds of little perks like that. Then I would stay in a pretty nice hotel like Holiday Inn or something and they would also give me special treatment for being a frequent guest. I would get the nice big room with the fridge, couch, mini-bar, and of course the king size bed with a decent TV to catch some ESPN highlights before bed, even sometimes a candy on my pillow. Don’t get me wrong, business travel with Printpack was often really stressful and had long hours of work and travel, but at least you were treated well.
“Business travel” with a non-profit NGO is a totally different experience. With my travel experience I started off with carrying my bag and my back pack (heavy because they were full of painting and cooking supplies) about a mile walk to the bus stop. Then I took the public bus to Ocotal and waited for my transfer to Esteli. It’s nothing like waiting for your connecting flight in the airport. There is no fighting for a seat next to an outlet so you can charge the cell and plug in the laptop. You just fight for a seat that doesn’t have soda spilled all over it or a stray dog sitting next to you. Of course while I waited I got all kinds of attention from vendors. I started getting self conscious about my shoes when a third guy offered to shine them for me.
Next we got onto the “Expresso” bus to Esteli. There are two types of buses, the “Expresso” and the “Routeado”. The Routeado is basically the version that stops at every bus stop and makes a one hour ride into 2.5 hours. If you accidentally get on a routeado and intended to take the expresso, you are in for a ride. The expresso surprisingly has assigned seats just like the airlines, except instead of a lighted placard to tell you the number, it is scribbled in sharpie on the wall. Also, if you thought the plane seats were cramped, try riding the same bus you used to take to elementary school as an adult. Yeah, so I remember not being able to fit my legs into the seats when I was in 6th grade, they really don’t fit now. The expresso isn’t really that bad beyond the tiny seats; we ride with the windows down taking in the fresh mountain air and some of the best landscape views you can see.
The hotel is by far the best part. A reasonable deal on a room while traveling in the States is about 100 bucks. Our budget for this trip: $6 each. We found a “hotel” for $2.50. Yes, that’s right $2.50 a night can buy you a place to sleep. Amazing. Unfortunately, I have learned being wise beyond my years is that price isn’t everything—unless you are a non-profit NGO. There were 3 middle-aged women and 2 señoritas with us, and at first the hospedaje owner wanted to put us all in one room. We finally talked him down to a room for the women, one for the señoritas and a closet sized thing for me. My room was pretty small. We had to wiggle the door to get it open because the bed was partially in the way. The room was about 3 single beds wide and had 2 single beds in it. There was an isle in the middle exactly the width of the door. The length of the room was exactly the length of the twin beds. Unfortunately, I am longer than the room was, so I curled up for the night. There was no mint on the pillow; actually there was no pillow case on the pillow, or sheets on the bed. The bathroom was in the hallway. There was one bath room for the whole hospedaje with one toilet and one shower and a sink outside in the hallway. I asked for some sheets and a towel and he promptly brought me something that looks like the rag for drying your car that I used as a towel and a top sheet, nothing else. I also asked if I could turn on my fan so that I could try to dry my clothes, which were soaking wet from walking 6 blocks in the pouring rain to get there. He said “no problemo Senor!”, and quickly returned with a piece of cord with a plug on one end and nothing on the other. He stripped with wire with his teeth, twisted them together with the wires of the fan, and then taped them up with masking tape. The real problem was when he went to plug it in the plug was one of those safety ones that had one fat prong and one skinny one, which didn’t fit. He tried his hardest to jam it in, and then left and returned with a grinding stone. He made the plug fit. He didn’t have much to work with, but darn good service! I had the fan on all night, which dried my clothes and provided a little white noise so I could sleep. I actually slept pretty well and the bed was more comfortable than the one I have in Sabana Grande.
The next morning I was relatively refreshed and ready for our solar cooker training class. Teaching about solar cookers is pretty cool. It’s a technology that has been around for a long time but not a lot of people know about it or understand it. It’s kind of feels analogous to spreading the word that Jesus came from heaven to save us. We’re telling these women, look, you don’t have to spend 15 hours a week looking for wood anymore, you don’t have to drop 15% of your income on gas; these things can fully cook chicken on a cloudy day! It’s a cultural shift because you have to prepare lunch by 9:30 or 10 am and get it in the oven, but if they are willing to make a change these wooden boxes can actually cook just about anything. So we gave our class with demonstration and food tasting to about 30 people who come from 13 different area schools where the 22 cookers will be distributed. The cool thing is that these schools are starting their own programs to teach the students and even bring in their parents to show them how solar cookers work. If this catches Grupo Fenix could be making a lot more solar ovens. Apparently the mayor of Esteli is known for being pretty liberal and on the cutting edge of these types of social movements.
After the training we took a taxi to the bus stop. We took the first bus that came by that was headed back to Ocotal. It was a routeado, but no big deal; I’d say it was all worth it. I didn’t even feel stressed for one minute the whole time.
Let me start off with saying that business trips with Grupo Fenix are quite a bit different from the business trips I used to take with Printpack. With Printpack I would usually fly with a preferred airline, and because I used them so much I would get special treatment like upgrades, exit row seats, priority security line and all kinds of little perks like that. Then I would stay in a pretty nice hotel like Holiday Inn or something and they would also give me special treatment for being a frequent guest. I would get the nice big room with the fridge, couch, mini-bar, and of course the king size bed with a decent TV to catch some ESPN highlights before bed, even sometimes a candy on my pillow. Don’t get me wrong, business travel with Printpack was often really stressful and had long hours of work and travel, but at least you were treated well.
“Business travel” with a non-profit NGO is a totally different experience. With my travel experience I started off with carrying my bag and my back pack (heavy because they were full of painting and cooking supplies) about a mile walk to the bus stop. Then I took the public bus to Ocotal and waited for my transfer to Esteli. It’s nothing like waiting for your connecting flight in the airport. There is no fighting for a seat next to an outlet so you can charge the cell and plug in the laptop. You just fight for a seat that doesn’t have soda spilled all over it or a stray dog sitting next to you. Of course while I waited I got all kinds of attention from vendors. I started getting self conscious about my shoes when a third guy offered to shine them for me.
Next we got onto the “Expresso” bus to Esteli. There are two types of buses, the “Expresso” and the “Routeado”. The Routeado is basically the version that stops at every bus stop and makes a one hour ride into 2.5 hours. If you accidentally get on a routeado and intended to take the expresso, you are in for a ride. The expresso surprisingly has assigned seats just like the airlines, except instead of a lighted placard to tell you the number, it is scribbled in sharpie on the wall. Also, if you thought the plane seats were cramped, try riding the same bus you used to take to elementary school as an adult. Yeah, so I remember not being able to fit my legs into the seats when I was in 6th grade, they really don’t fit now. The expresso isn’t really that bad beyond the tiny seats; we ride with the windows down taking in the fresh mountain air and some of the best landscape views you can see.
The hotel is by far the best part. A reasonable deal on a room while traveling in the States is about 100 bucks. Our budget for this trip: $6 each. We found a “hotel” for $2.50. Yes, that’s right $2.50 a night can buy you a place to sleep. Amazing. Unfortunately, I have learned being wise beyond my years is that price isn’t everything—unless you are a non-profit NGO. There were 3 middle-aged women and 2 señoritas with us, and at first the hospedaje owner wanted to put us all in one room. We finally talked him down to a room for the women, one for the señoritas and a closet sized thing for me. My room was pretty small. We had to wiggle the door to get it open because the bed was partially in the way. The room was about 3 single beds wide and had 2 single beds in it. There was an isle in the middle exactly the width of the door. The length of the room was exactly the length of the twin beds. Unfortunately, I am longer than the room was, so I curled up for the night. There was no mint on the pillow; actually there was no pillow case on the pillow, or sheets on the bed. The bathroom was in the hallway. There was one bath room for the whole hospedaje with one toilet and one shower and a sink outside in the hallway. I asked for some sheets and a towel and he promptly brought me something that looks like the rag for drying your car that I used as a towel and a top sheet, nothing else. I also asked if I could turn on my fan so that I could try to dry my clothes, which were soaking wet from walking 6 blocks in the pouring rain to get there. He said “no problemo Senor!”, and quickly returned with a piece of cord with a plug on one end and nothing on the other. He stripped with wire with his teeth, twisted them together with the wires of the fan, and then taped them up with masking tape. The real problem was when he went to plug it in the plug was one of those safety ones that had one fat prong and one skinny one, which didn’t fit. He tried his hardest to jam it in, and then left and returned with a grinding stone. He made the plug fit. He didn’t have much to work with, but darn good service! I had the fan on all night, which dried my clothes and provided a little white noise so I could sleep. I actually slept pretty well and the bed was more comfortable than the one I have in Sabana Grande.
The next morning I was relatively refreshed and ready for our solar cooker training class. Teaching about solar cookers is pretty cool. It’s a technology that has been around for a long time but not a lot of people know about it or understand it. It’s kind of feels analogous to spreading the word that Jesus came from heaven to save us. We’re telling these women, look, you don’t have to spend 15 hours a week looking for wood anymore, you don’t have to drop 15% of your income on gas; these things can fully cook chicken on a cloudy day! It’s a cultural shift because you have to prepare lunch by 9:30 or 10 am and get it in the oven, but if they are willing to make a change these wooden boxes can actually cook just about anything. So we gave our class with demonstration and food tasting to about 30 people who come from 13 different area schools where the 22 cookers will be distributed. The cool thing is that these schools are starting their own programs to teach the students and even bring in their parents to show them how solar cookers work. If this catches Grupo Fenix could be making a lot more solar ovens. Apparently the mayor of Esteli is known for being pretty liberal and on the cutting edge of these types of social movements.
After the training we took a taxi to the bus stop. We took the first bus that came by that was headed back to Ocotal. It was a routeado, but no big deal; I’d say it was all worth it. I didn’t even feel stressed for one minute the whole time.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
More Pictures
Two links to more photo albums.
They include pictures from the pulsa, my wild solar panel installation, and the secondary school parade for the Nica independence day. The second album is pictures from a solar cooker training course done in Sabana Grande for the local women. enjoy!
view photos
second album
They include pictures from the pulsa, my wild solar panel installation, and the secondary school parade for the Nica independence day. The second album is pictures from a solar cooker training course done in Sabana Grande for the local women. enjoy!
view photos
second album
Who’s Felix?
September 13, 2007
One thing that I haven’t discussed in the blog is the weather. And since I’ve had a lot of questions regarding Felix, this seems like a timely topic. To start with Felix – he didn’t affect us at all. We live in the north-west part of Nicaragua, very close to the Honduran border and the hurricane only really affected the east coast of both countries. We wouldn’t have even known about Felix except for the e-mails from the consular and our families – plus we watched the evening news after the fact. It rained of course, but it rains everyday, so we didn’t notice a difference.
Right now is what the Nicas call invierno, meaning winter. It isn’t really winter as we know it in the states… it is just the rainy season. Here in Nicaragua, there are only two seasons: wet and dry. During the wet season, the mornings are usually sunny and in the 80s, and the afternoons are usually rainy and much cooler. Right now it is 5:10PM, raining, and 73 degrees. People keep asking me about the heat here, but it really hasn’t gotten that hot. If you’re out working in the sun, then yeah, it’s hot – but not unbearable. The only time when the heat is uncomfortable is under the tin roofs on a sunny afternoon. We had a spell of mini dry season during our solar culture course, and it got pretty hot in the afternoons. But, out where there was a breeze, in the shade or under a clay roof it was quite pleasant. I guess the worst heat was when we were in Managua – it was really hot at night. Here in the Mountains though, we have to cuddle up to keep warm.
The interesting thing is that winter (wet season) is during summer and summer (dry season) is during winter, as far as the Northern Hemisphere knows it, and Nicaragua is above the equator. So, when summer does come around, it is actually winter, so it won’t be as hot as it would be if summer was during summer. You may doubt my logic, but Marcio said that it gets pretty cold during the nights in December, which is summer. Of course, my other theory is that since there is a 6 mo. drought, the air must be dry, and if you’ve ever been to the desert, you know that it is hot during the day but cold at night.
One thing that I haven’t discussed in the blog is the weather. And since I’ve had a lot of questions regarding Felix, this seems like a timely topic. To start with Felix – he didn’t affect us at all. We live in the north-west part of Nicaragua, very close to the Honduran border and the hurricane only really affected the east coast of both countries. We wouldn’t have even known about Felix except for the e-mails from the consular and our families – plus we watched the evening news after the fact. It rained of course, but it rains everyday, so we didn’t notice a difference.
Right now is what the Nicas call invierno, meaning winter. It isn’t really winter as we know it in the states… it is just the rainy season. Here in Nicaragua, there are only two seasons: wet and dry. During the wet season, the mornings are usually sunny and in the 80s, and the afternoons are usually rainy and much cooler. Right now it is 5:10PM, raining, and 73 degrees. People keep asking me about the heat here, but it really hasn’t gotten that hot. If you’re out working in the sun, then yeah, it’s hot – but not unbearable. The only time when the heat is uncomfortable is under the tin roofs on a sunny afternoon. We had a spell of mini dry season during our solar culture course, and it got pretty hot in the afternoons. But, out where there was a breeze, in the shade or under a clay roof it was quite pleasant. I guess the worst heat was when we were in Managua – it was really hot at night. Here in the Mountains though, we have to cuddle up to keep warm.
The interesting thing is that winter (wet season) is during summer and summer (dry season) is during winter, as far as the Northern Hemisphere knows it, and Nicaragua is above the equator. So, when summer does come around, it is actually winter, so it won’t be as hot as it would be if summer was during summer. You may doubt my logic, but Marcio said that it gets pretty cold during the nights in December, which is summer. Of course, my other theory is that since there is a 6 mo. drought, the air must be dry, and if you’ve ever been to the desert, you know that it is hot during the day but cold at night.
3 hours into the Nica mountains
The other day I got to go on my first solar panel installation trip. I kind of thought that I knew what I was getting into but, as with all Nicaraguan adventures, you can never plan for everything. I got the opportunity to fill in because one of the other volunteers that normally go wasn’t going to make it so I was all over it. I was told to show up at the solar work shop at 5 am en punto, which is the Nica way of saying don’t be late. I don’t know about you but 5 am is pretty early, even by Nica campo dwellers’ standards. I got all ready the night before, got to bed by 8:30 pm and woke up well before the crack of dawn at 4:15, about 45 minutes before the crack of dawn to be exact! I showed up so ready that you could swear I was a boy scout—but I wasn’t. I had my backpack with a water bottle full of agua pura, I made up a peanut butter and guayaba jelly sandwich, I did the Colavito thing of packing a million snacks for the trip, I had my wind up flashlight, my rough and tumble jeans, my mountain hiking sneaks and even remembered sunscreen and bug spray- just for you Mom!
I was told it was just a day trip, so no big deal, we will be back by mid afternoon and in plenty of time for dinner. Well, the day started off slow, but this is Nicaragua so no surprise. I got to the workshop at 4:55 am and the whole area was completely dark with not a creature stirring. A minute later I saw Marcos, the head dog of the solar panels, creeping through the darkness to the latrine. I was reaffirmed that the truck would be here any minute to take us and our freshly assembled solar panel to the installation sight. The truck showed up at 6:30, we were on the road by 7:15 am. I didn’t feel too bad because the other volunteer, Julio, was waiting at the bus stop for us since 5:15. We drove to Ocotal, about 20 minutes away, and we stopped at the house of the truck driver for some unknown reason. After 10 minutes of waiting a taxi showed up and I was informed that one of the guys was taking it back to Sabana Grande to get the compact fluorescent bulbs that were forgotten. So they estimated he would be back in 30 min, he was back in 50. We finally got on the road for real at 8:40am—why did I wake up so early?!
The fun started once we got on the road. It was a beautiful sunny day, like it is just about every day here, and there were 5 of us riding in the back of the pickup truck with all the solar system equipment. Pretty much standing room only going about 50 mph down the highway because that was as fast as the truck could handle. So about 45 minutes down the road and we make a sharp left onto a really narrow, REALLY bumpy, dirt mountain road, then we drove on it for nearly 3 more hours. It was actually pretty cool. The weather was just gorgeous, sunny, breezy and getting cooler as we drove deeper into the mountains. We would drive for 30 minutes and see maybe one house with nothing more than mountains and farmland, then we would pass through a small town, lasting about 30 yards, and it seemed like every single person that lived there was on the side of the road staring at us like we were from mars. A big smile and an “adios” would crack the stone looks and I would receive an equally large smile and “adios” in return. We probably passed through 5 or so towns like this. Another cool thing is that the whole way along the road was mostly farm land and all along the sides were many different kinds of fruit trees like jokote (ho-coat-ay), orange, coffee bushes, guayaba, lime, banana, plantain, and probably a bunch more that I just didn’t recognize. You can bet that everyone standing in the back of the pick up truck was leaning and grabbing fresh fruit right off the trees anytime the driver got close enough. It was pretty neat, I don’t really eat fruit and all but I tried a jokote—they are really sour and bitter and taste like crap so tossed it after the first bite, at least I tried it. I think its kind of an acquired taste because the locals love them.
We had been driving for a while, and as far as my mental map of Nica goes I was thinking that Ocotal is only about an hour from the northern border with Honduras and I didn’t think it was possible for us to be driving for another hour an a half after leaving the highway and still be in Nicaragua. I was a little worried because I didn’t have my passport or anything so I sure as heck was hoping that we weren’t crossing any borders. I asked one of the other guys and he said we were still in Nica and then pointed out at the next peak we reached how a few mountain peaks away you could actually see Honduras—cool. So maybe about 30 minutes after I was worrying about crossing the border we come across two guys dressed in full army fatigues and heavily armed with what looked like semi-automatic AK-47’s. They were standing on opposite sides of the road and signaled for us to stop—sh*%! My heart instantly began racing. One of them leaned over to the passenger side window and spoke to Marcos while the other one eyed us up. The conversation took about 20 seconds and then they gave us the big Nica smile, waved us on and said “Que se vayan bien”, which means good travels.
We continued on our ridiculously bumpy path, I just can’t call it a road, and were blessed with some of the most breath-taking country mountain views, which I tried to take pictures of largely unsuccessfully. You should check out our walmart pictures link again to see a bunch of new photos. Another little surprise we had was as we passed around a long curve in the road that dipped down really low we came upon a small stream that we crossed and I looked off to the right to find two women huddled together covering themselves who appeared to be bathing in the stream. No, I did not take a picture; I actually turned away out of respect, and was impressed to see that all the other guys did the same.
We finally got to our destination, which was a small town with a paved road and we stopped in front of a pretty nice looking office; then I realized it wasn’t our destination, we were just there to pick up a couple of people that I think were associated with some group that was helping to pay for the system. So then we had 7 people in the back of the truck with all our equipment and standing room only and got back onto the even bumpier dirt path. We drove for another 10 minutes and coincidentally passed by the guy whose house we were headed to walking with his son. What did we do? Pick ‘em up of course! We then had 9 people in the back of our pick up with 2 in the front, all the equipment and standing room only. We arrived at the house a few minutes later and were greeted by what looked like a whole neighborhood of kids, but I think were all his. I really don’t know how many there were, but I think it was somewhere between 7 and 12. The only reason that I don’t doubt that they all belonged to the owner and his wife is that they all looked just like him.
Edwin estimated that the installation would take about 2 hours, we spent 4. Its nica time baby! We put up one 75 watt PV panel on the back of the house, installed a single deep discharge battery, a charge controller and 4 independent compact fluorescent lights. It was a pretty sweet little system that put a bulb in nearly every room of their house and is now giving night time light to a family for the first time in their lives. I actually thought that 4 hours wasn’t bad considering we assembled the mounting system, put up the panel, mounted the charge controller and wired up for lights throughout the house and had everything hooked up to the system and working before we left. It was a pretty rewarding experience and when we were finishing up and testing the system the little kids were running around yelling “Tenemos luz! Tenemos luz!” (We have light!)
The ride home wasn’t nearly as fun as the ride out to the site. Less than 10 minutes after we left it started down pouring. We found a large sheet of dirty, stinky, black plastic full of holes in the back of the truck and unfolded it and draped it over all of us to minimize the soaking. The rain continued for about an hour, and then finally let up. After it rains in the mountains it’s really cold. It’s also even colder once the sun goes down, and it was pitch black out before the rain even stopped. I didn’t even think about bringing a jacket because, hey, its nica we have temperatures in the mid 80’s every day. We all froze for 3 hours in the back of the truck driving home and the worst part was the 45 minutes on the highway at the end. Just think 50 mph in the back of a pick up truck, 65 degrees out and nothing on but a damp t-shirt and jeans—not cool. I finally got home around 9pm and I wore a sweatshirt to bed all night just to get the cold out of my bones. That was one heck of a one day business trip. I thought Printpack sent me on some boondoggles. I tell you one thing though; I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Only next time I’ll bring my rain jacket.
I was told it was just a day trip, so no big deal, we will be back by mid afternoon and in plenty of time for dinner. Well, the day started off slow, but this is Nicaragua so no surprise. I got to the workshop at 4:55 am and the whole area was completely dark with not a creature stirring. A minute later I saw Marcos, the head dog of the solar panels, creeping through the darkness to the latrine. I was reaffirmed that the truck would be here any minute to take us and our freshly assembled solar panel to the installation sight. The truck showed up at 6:30, we were on the road by 7:15 am. I didn’t feel too bad because the other volunteer, Julio, was waiting at the bus stop for us since 5:15. We drove to Ocotal, about 20 minutes away, and we stopped at the house of the truck driver for some unknown reason. After 10 minutes of waiting a taxi showed up and I was informed that one of the guys was taking it back to Sabana Grande to get the compact fluorescent bulbs that were forgotten. So they estimated he would be back in 30 min, he was back in 50. We finally got on the road for real at 8:40am—why did I wake up so early?!
The fun started once we got on the road. It was a beautiful sunny day, like it is just about every day here, and there were 5 of us riding in the back of the pickup truck with all the solar system equipment. Pretty much standing room only going about 50 mph down the highway because that was as fast as the truck could handle. So about 45 minutes down the road and we make a sharp left onto a really narrow, REALLY bumpy, dirt mountain road, then we drove on it for nearly 3 more hours. It was actually pretty cool. The weather was just gorgeous, sunny, breezy and getting cooler as we drove deeper into the mountains. We would drive for 30 minutes and see maybe one house with nothing more than mountains and farmland, then we would pass through a small town, lasting about 30 yards, and it seemed like every single person that lived there was on the side of the road staring at us like we were from mars. A big smile and an “adios” would crack the stone looks and I would receive an equally large smile and “adios” in return. We probably passed through 5 or so towns like this. Another cool thing is that the whole way along the road was mostly farm land and all along the sides were many different kinds of fruit trees like jokote (ho-coat-ay), orange, coffee bushes, guayaba, lime, banana, plantain, and probably a bunch more that I just didn’t recognize. You can bet that everyone standing in the back of the pick up truck was leaning and grabbing fresh fruit right off the trees anytime the driver got close enough. It was pretty neat, I don’t really eat fruit and all but I tried a jokote—they are really sour and bitter and taste like crap so tossed it after the first bite, at least I tried it. I think its kind of an acquired taste because the locals love them.
We had been driving for a while, and as far as my mental map of Nica goes I was thinking that Ocotal is only about an hour from the northern border with Honduras and I didn’t think it was possible for us to be driving for another hour an a half after leaving the highway and still be in Nicaragua. I was a little worried because I didn’t have my passport or anything so I sure as heck was hoping that we weren’t crossing any borders. I asked one of the other guys and he said we were still in Nica and then pointed out at the next peak we reached how a few mountain peaks away you could actually see Honduras—cool. So maybe about 30 minutes after I was worrying about crossing the border we come across two guys dressed in full army fatigues and heavily armed with what looked like semi-automatic AK-47’s. They were standing on opposite sides of the road and signaled for us to stop—sh*%! My heart instantly began racing. One of them leaned over to the passenger side window and spoke to Marcos while the other one eyed us up. The conversation took about 20 seconds and then they gave us the big Nica smile, waved us on and said “Que se vayan bien”, which means good travels.
We continued on our ridiculously bumpy path, I just can’t call it a road, and were blessed with some of the most breath-taking country mountain views, which I tried to take pictures of largely unsuccessfully. You should check out our walmart pictures link again to see a bunch of new photos. Another little surprise we had was as we passed around a long curve in the road that dipped down really low we came upon a small stream that we crossed and I looked off to the right to find two women huddled together covering themselves who appeared to be bathing in the stream. No, I did not take a picture; I actually turned away out of respect, and was impressed to see that all the other guys did the same.
We finally got to our destination, which was a small town with a paved road and we stopped in front of a pretty nice looking office; then I realized it wasn’t our destination, we were just there to pick up a couple of people that I think were associated with some group that was helping to pay for the system. So then we had 7 people in the back of the truck with all our equipment and standing room only and got back onto the even bumpier dirt path. We drove for another 10 minutes and coincidentally passed by the guy whose house we were headed to walking with his son. What did we do? Pick ‘em up of course! We then had 9 people in the back of our pick up with 2 in the front, all the equipment and standing room only. We arrived at the house a few minutes later and were greeted by what looked like a whole neighborhood of kids, but I think were all his. I really don’t know how many there were, but I think it was somewhere between 7 and 12. The only reason that I don’t doubt that they all belonged to the owner and his wife is that they all looked just like him.
Edwin estimated that the installation would take about 2 hours, we spent 4. Its nica time baby! We put up one 75 watt PV panel on the back of the house, installed a single deep discharge battery, a charge controller and 4 independent compact fluorescent lights. It was a pretty sweet little system that put a bulb in nearly every room of their house and is now giving night time light to a family for the first time in their lives. I actually thought that 4 hours wasn’t bad considering we assembled the mounting system, put up the panel, mounted the charge controller and wired up for lights throughout the house and had everything hooked up to the system and working before we left. It was a pretty rewarding experience and when we were finishing up and testing the system the little kids were running around yelling “Tenemos luz! Tenemos luz!” (We have light!)
The ride home wasn’t nearly as fun as the ride out to the site. Less than 10 minutes after we left it started down pouring. We found a large sheet of dirty, stinky, black plastic full of holes in the back of the truck and unfolded it and draped it over all of us to minimize the soaking. The rain continued for about an hour, and then finally let up. After it rains in the mountains it’s really cold. It’s also even colder once the sun goes down, and it was pitch black out before the rain even stopped. I didn’t even think about bringing a jacket because, hey, its nica we have temperatures in the mid 80’s every day. We all froze for 3 hours in the back of the truck driving home and the worst part was the 45 minutes on the highway at the end. Just think 50 mph in the back of a pick up truck, 65 degrees out and nothing on but a damp t-shirt and jeans—not cool. I finally got home around 9pm and I wore a sweatshirt to bed all night just to get the cold out of my bones. That was one heck of a one day business trip. I thought Printpack sent me on some boondoggles. I tell you one thing though; I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Only next time I’ll bring my rain jacket.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Tienda Verde
I just wanted to let everyone know about one of the neat projects going on in Sabana Grande that C.J. and I are not directly involved in, but that Charlotte is heading. It is called Tienda Verde, which means Green Store. The idea is that the women from Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa can use their volunteer hours to purchase donated items. The Tienda Verde is set up once a month with clothes, shampoo, sports equipment, solar ovens, and tons of other great stuff for the women to buy. Most of the items were donated by past volunteers, but some of it comes directly from Grupo Fenix.
The women´s hours are valued at $1 for Tienda Verde purchases, which is actually better than most of them would make at a real job. By tracking and giving value to the volunteer hours, it gives the women motivation to keep working towards their dreams. In addition, the donated items are not given away, but are earned by the women, which gives the items more value.
C.J. and I attended our first Tienda Verde on Saturday, and it seemed to go really well. Our family was able to buy a backpack, shampoo & conditioner, and a new flashlight with some of Alejandra´s hours. It was pretty neat!
The women´s hours are valued at $1 for Tienda Verde purchases, which is actually better than most of them would make at a real job. By tracking and giving value to the volunteer hours, it gives the women motivation to keep working towards their dreams. In addition, the donated items are not given away, but are earned by the women, which gives the items more value.
C.J. and I attended our first Tienda Verde on Saturday, and it seemed to go really well. Our family was able to buy a backpack, shampoo & conditioner, and a new flashlight with some of Alejandra´s hours. It was pretty neat!
Our project got in the national news paper!!!!
I am so excited, the project I have been working on for the past 5 weeks got in the national news paper: EL Nuevo Diario, this week. Here is the link to read about it! http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2007/09/10/contactoend
It is about the 22 solar cookers that we constructed and sent to Esteli, which were ordered by their mayor to help promote renewable energy. I actually helped build the ovens in the background of the photo! Sweet. I think it can also be found in English by some organization called the Nica Times, but I couldn´t find it, maybe you will have better luck.
It is about the 22 solar cookers that we constructed and sent to Esteli, which were ordered by their mayor to help promote renewable energy. I actually helped build the ovens in the background of the photo! Sweet. I think it can also be found in English by some organization called the Nica Times, but I couldn´t find it, maybe you will have better luck.
What´s been going on lately
At the beginning of our volunteer stay, for several weeks, C.J. and I helped construct the 22 solar ovens for Estelí, and then the cooker stands that the group from Cornell left for us. But, once those projects were completed, we would often times find ourselves unsure what we should be doing any given day. Our roles just aren´t that well defined, so we´ve been working the past couple of weeks on figuring out what we´re supposted to be or could be doing.
I think that C.J. has more easily found his place working with Nemia on the oven project and writing scholarship guidelines with some of the women in the community. My job, which is to help manage the solar center project has been a lot more challenging. The main problem is the language barrier - I am just not good enough or confident enough in Spanish to communicate with the right people. Plus I´m a lot more timid since I don´t really know the people I need to talk to that well. This is particularly hard for me because, even in the states, it often takes me a while to feel comfortable approaching people for the things I need - now add Spanish. It has been hard for me to approach the problem because the things I know I have to do are way out of my comfort zone. This has become the biggest challenge of living here - bigger even than the latrine.
Fortunately, Susan is helping me out by setting up some meetings for me, and Charlotte has promised to help with translation. I am going to Managua on Monday to meet with some of the Fenix staff, and hopefully get the rest of the picture of the center that I´ve been missing. I will also have a chance to buy a hammock while I´m there - which I am totally excited about!
In the mean time, I have been helping out with some manual labor at the solar center. Most of it has involved sifting various types of dirt. Depending on which type of dirt, and which type of sifter you are using, this can be real back breaking work. All the sifted dirt is for the repello - which is basically the stucco type stuff. To get a break from the sifting, we did have one job that C.J. really liked, which was using a hand pick to scuff up the edge of the foundation for the application of some sort of repello or cement mixture. We were wondering why we were chipping away at the foundation of a brand new building, but it was kind of fun all the same.
Most recently, I have been helping hoe up the field for the planting of papaya trees with a big group of high school students from Utah who came to Nicaragua this week. Charlotte and Jonathan also helped them repello the latrine. I think it has been really good for the students, I can tell they are learning a lot about the world.
So, the center is coming together and so is my role in this community. I just need to get more comfortable with the language and the people. Hopefully that will come. I have decided to spend more time studying Spanish, but that´s hard without a class or instructor. I think we need to re-look into lessons.
Life goes on... I´ll keep you posted
I think that C.J. has more easily found his place working with Nemia on the oven project and writing scholarship guidelines with some of the women in the community. My job, which is to help manage the solar center project has been a lot more challenging. The main problem is the language barrier - I am just not good enough or confident enough in Spanish to communicate with the right people. Plus I´m a lot more timid since I don´t really know the people I need to talk to that well. This is particularly hard for me because, even in the states, it often takes me a while to feel comfortable approaching people for the things I need - now add Spanish. It has been hard for me to approach the problem because the things I know I have to do are way out of my comfort zone. This has become the biggest challenge of living here - bigger even than the latrine.
Fortunately, Susan is helping me out by setting up some meetings for me, and Charlotte has promised to help with translation. I am going to Managua on Monday to meet with some of the Fenix staff, and hopefully get the rest of the picture of the center that I´ve been missing. I will also have a chance to buy a hammock while I´m there - which I am totally excited about!
In the mean time, I have been helping out with some manual labor at the solar center. Most of it has involved sifting various types of dirt. Depending on which type of dirt, and which type of sifter you are using, this can be real back breaking work. All the sifted dirt is for the repello - which is basically the stucco type stuff. To get a break from the sifting, we did have one job that C.J. really liked, which was using a hand pick to scuff up the edge of the foundation for the application of some sort of repello or cement mixture. We were wondering why we were chipping away at the foundation of a brand new building, but it was kind of fun all the same.
Most recently, I have been helping hoe up the field for the planting of papaya trees with a big group of high school students from Utah who came to Nicaragua this week. Charlotte and Jonathan also helped them repello the latrine. I think it has been really good for the students, I can tell they are learning a lot about the world.
So, the center is coming together and so is my role in this community. I just need to get more comfortable with the language and the people. Hopefully that will come. I have decided to spend more time studying Spanish, but that´s hard without a class or instructor. I think we need to re-look into lessons.
Life goes on... I´ll keep you posted
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
To the Pulsa
On Sunday, after church, which thankfully was only an hour (not an hour service and then an hour knealing like last week), we decided to check out the ¨pulsa¨ that Marcel keeps talking about. From what we understood of Nicañol, it is a lake or swimming hole of somesort that we can hike to and swim in. Apparently they took their last volunteer there, and it has been a big attraction for other volunteers as well. Marcel said it would take about an hour to get there on foot, so we packed our backpacks with pleanty of water and snacks for the journey. We were suprised to see that Marcel and Harold were ready to go in just their flip-flops and regular shorts. Alejandra said that the can´t swim, so they don´t have suits... which made us wonder why they love the pulsa so much.
The hike started off with about a 15-20 minute walk along the road, and then we headed down a small path - all down hill, with lots of rocks. We were thinking, ¨this is easy, but what about on the way back?¨ When we got to the end of that path, we walked though a small opening in a barbed wire fence and arrived at a little house with lots of children running around. One of which was a little albino boy, about 6 or 7 years old. He was totally excited to see me, I think he thought I bas albino also. He kept saying ¨¡Chele, chele! ¡Blanca, Blanca! ¡Como mío, como mío! ¡Su pelo, su piel, como mío, como mío!¨ (Literally that means ¨Milky, milky! Whitey, whitey! Like mine, like mine! Your hair, your skin, like mine like mine!¨) We saw him at church a few weeks ago, but I guess he only just noticed how fair I was because I was wearing shorts... and my legs never get much sun. C.J. thought it was pretty funny that my skin was the same color as the albino.
Anyway, after stopping to say hi to that family we headed to Marcel and Harold´s grandmom´s house, where we saw cute little Angelito, their 18 month old cousin. I tried so say hi to him, but he just screamed and cried and called for him mama. I figured we had made enough trouble, so we headed on tward the pulsa. That´s where the really hard part began...
After walking through a few corn fields, we arrived at the river bed where we were apparently supposed to cross over a few large rocks and then arrive at the pulsa. Marcel and Harold took of their flip-flops so that they could more easily navigate on the rocks. We thought we were really close, so we asked Marcel if we should take off our shoes too. He said yes, but as soon as our shoes were off we realized our mistake. We had a 30 minute rock climbing and hiking adventure ahead of us, and it would have been impossible for gringos without shoes! Marcel doesn´t think of these things, he and his brother were like little spidermen on those rocks.
I think I have offically confirmed that rock climbing and extreme hiking are definately not my thing. I was definately wishing I had opted not to come, like Jeni, once we go to the hard rocky part. I was constantly scared of slipping and falling... and I didn´t really consider any of that part fun. Finally when we arrived at the pulsa, we had to climb down a 15 foot (essencially) cliff to get to the water. Marcel said we should just jump off... that is what the other volunteers did. LIKE HELL! We had no idea how deep the water was, or what was in there, because it was pretty murky.
C.J. finally got the courage to shimmy down the rocks to the water - he walked around the and then waded in on the oposite shore. I stayed up top for a while, until this middle aged woman cam buy and walked down the cliff with the ease of a mountain goat and made me look like a complete chump. I actually did make it to the bottom to swim, and we even convinced M & H to splash around in the shallows too. The pulsa is actually very deep... I don´t know how deep because I wasn´t about to put my head under... but too deep to touch amost everywhere except near the shore, if there happened to be a rock to stand on.
Once we had swam our fill, we climbed up the rocks again with incredible difficulty. The trip back was also full of many obsticals, that stopped us up for several minutes trying to climb up. Even Marcel and Harold had trouble in a few spots. The strangest part was when we came accross a bunch of cattle in the river bed... I think C.J. has a picture somewhere. By the time we saw the cows, I was just happy to be near the end. The rest of the trip back went by pretty fast, and wasn´t as tough as we though it would be, although I did cut my leg on the fence post of one of the many barbed wire fences we had to cross. It wasn´t bad though.
I was so happy to be home by the end. Like many of my other adventures in the past... the views were beautiful, but I don´t think I´ll ever do that again.
The hike started off with about a 15-20 minute walk along the road, and then we headed down a small path - all down hill, with lots of rocks. We were thinking, ¨this is easy, but what about on the way back?¨ When we got to the end of that path, we walked though a small opening in a barbed wire fence and arrived at a little house with lots of children running around. One of which was a little albino boy, about 6 or 7 years old. He was totally excited to see me, I think he thought I bas albino also. He kept saying ¨¡Chele, chele! ¡Blanca, Blanca! ¡Como mío, como mío! ¡Su pelo, su piel, como mío, como mío!¨ (Literally that means ¨Milky, milky! Whitey, whitey! Like mine, like mine! Your hair, your skin, like mine like mine!¨) We saw him at church a few weeks ago, but I guess he only just noticed how fair I was because I was wearing shorts... and my legs never get much sun. C.J. thought it was pretty funny that my skin was the same color as the albino.
Anyway, after stopping to say hi to that family we headed to Marcel and Harold´s grandmom´s house, where we saw cute little Angelito, their 18 month old cousin. I tried so say hi to him, but he just screamed and cried and called for him mama. I figured we had made enough trouble, so we headed on tward the pulsa. That´s where the really hard part began...
After walking through a few corn fields, we arrived at the river bed where we were apparently supposed to cross over a few large rocks and then arrive at the pulsa. Marcel and Harold took of their flip-flops so that they could more easily navigate on the rocks. We thought we were really close, so we asked Marcel if we should take off our shoes too. He said yes, but as soon as our shoes were off we realized our mistake. We had a 30 minute rock climbing and hiking adventure ahead of us, and it would have been impossible for gringos without shoes! Marcel doesn´t think of these things, he and his brother were like little spidermen on those rocks.
I think I have offically confirmed that rock climbing and extreme hiking are definately not my thing. I was definately wishing I had opted not to come, like Jeni, once we go to the hard rocky part. I was constantly scared of slipping and falling... and I didn´t really consider any of that part fun. Finally when we arrived at the pulsa, we had to climb down a 15 foot (essencially) cliff to get to the water. Marcel said we should just jump off... that is what the other volunteers did. LIKE HELL! We had no idea how deep the water was, or what was in there, because it was pretty murky.
C.J. finally got the courage to shimmy down the rocks to the water - he walked around the and then waded in on the oposite shore. I stayed up top for a while, until this middle aged woman cam buy and walked down the cliff with the ease of a mountain goat and made me look like a complete chump. I actually did make it to the bottom to swim, and we even convinced M & H to splash around in the shallows too. The pulsa is actually very deep... I don´t know how deep because I wasn´t about to put my head under... but too deep to touch amost everywhere except near the shore, if there happened to be a rock to stand on.
Once we had swam our fill, we climbed up the rocks again with incredible difficulty. The trip back was also full of many obsticals, that stopped us up for several minutes trying to climb up. Even Marcel and Harold had trouble in a few spots. The strangest part was when we came accross a bunch of cattle in the river bed... I think C.J. has a picture somewhere. By the time we saw the cows, I was just happy to be near the end. The rest of the trip back went by pretty fast, and wasn´t as tough as we though it would be, although I did cut my leg on the fence post of one of the many barbed wire fences we had to cross. It wasn´t bad though.
I was so happy to be home by the end. Like many of my other adventures in the past... the views were beautiful, but I don´t think I´ll ever do that again.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
What have we been doing?
Ok so not a single one of my blogs has said anything about what we are doing here, I just pretty much complain and joke about how many nightmarish critters we have and how pooping down a hole can be fun. We actually are doing some serious work here and I’ve got a sore back and some fresh calluses to prove it. I’ll start by giving you a synopsis of our first month, and then I’ll tell you what we think we are going to do for the next eleven.
We started off our time here by attending Grupo Fenix’s Solar Culture Course, which is a 10 day cultural experience mixed with some cool solar energy activities and sustainability awareness. It is intended to be kind of an “eco vacation” for some and for volunteers it serves as an orientation. Grupo runs this course usually 2 times a year, once at the end of July during what the Nicas call “little summer” and again in early January during dry season. “Little summer” is a two week period at the beginning of August during Nica’s dry season when it just doesn’t rain. The weather is beautiful, warm, sunny, and dry for 2 weeks and it comes every year like clock work, up to the point that Grupo Fenix can even plan their course around it. So, the solar culture course was pretty cool. We met some really interesting people from all around the world who attended with us. I could write a whole article about our new acquaintances but for now I’ll just tell you that we had two Australians from Germany who work with the UN, a Uraguayan Italian New Yorker, a Harvard boy from California, a Georgia Tech EE student, and another fellow volunteer, Julio, who Spanish, has a PhD in Physics, is fluent in English and came from Ireland for the course. It was a great group and we had some fun together while we worked. So during the course we did some pretty cool stuff. We started by visiting the for profit solar panel manufacturing company that was founded with the help of Grupo Fenix, called Suni Solar. They are located in Managua walking distance from UNI (Universidad Nacional de Ingenieros). Next we took at 4 hour bus ride to northern Nicaragua where Sabana Grande is located. We spent the rest of our time in Sabana Grande doing the fun stuff. We worked for two days building a solar oven out of wood, roofing tin, glass, and wood shavings as insulation. It’s pretty amazing what these ovens can cook; from plantains to chicken to cakes and cookies, all with only the power of partially sunny day. We also spent a day building adobe bricks for the solar center. The Solar Center is a dream of Grupo Fenix, which is slowly being realized. The solar center is eventually going to be a small campus of buildings and land that will contain a manufacturing facility or solar ovens run completely off of solar energy, a small store where natural remedies, organic foods, and solar products are sold, a small eco hotel, and a community center. Currently the solar center is a large beautiful adobe building that is still in the process of construction. This first building is slated to be a temporary community center and meeting facility and eventually an office for CIPPER (center for research, promotion and production of renewable energy) and manufacturing facility for solar ovens. So we made adobe bricks to help contribute to the construction. Adobe bricks are pretty amazing, they are pretty much just mud and pine needles formed into a brick shape and then dried. There are thousands of buildings in Nica built with this construction, including the house Jenny and I live in. We spent another day building solar battery chargers, where we even got to solder and assemble our own miniature solar panels for the chargers. It actually works, just hook up a few batteries and put the charger in the sun and you can charge up regular alkalines 4-5 times. On our last days we built a solar panel mounting frame, installed it at the solar center along with 4 fluorescent lights, a charge controller, batteries and a 75 watt solar panel to run it all.
Since the solar culture course we have been working on various things every day but staying plenty busy. Like Jenny mentioned in one of her earlier blogs, the mayor of Esteli has ordered 22 solar ovens that he plans to distribute to some select women in his community. This is a big deal for Grupo Fenix because it means paid work for several women for 2 months, it means good publicity for what we are doing, and it means that others are taking to this solar culture. So the women had been working on the ovens for a little over a month before we showed up and for our first 3 weeks after the culture course we have spent the majority of our time doing good ól manual labor constructing the ovens. We just completed the ovens this week. We have also spent one day a week working with the crew at the solar center doing some real manual labor. We are talkin´shovel in hand, sweat on the back under the hot Nicaraguan sun for 8 hours a day. Our first day the foreman pointed out three large mounds of dirt and told us to move them, spread them out and create a nice gradient from the base of the center away so that the heavy rain water would flow away. That was a good days´work! We have also done some sifting, wall preparation for ¨repello¨stucco and lots of fine material sifting for repello mixes. All hard work and is much harder than it looks. After a few days I am really glad that its only once a week so I have time to heal. Of course I am sure they are giving all the hard work to the gringos to see if we will quit or come back next week. So far we are 3 for 3 so take that! Also from speaking with our host family I realized that they have a solar panel and a small 12Vdc pump to run their well water that isn´t working, so I am working on this also. I hope to help get them the right pump and design a system so they can feed a tank on a 8 ft stand and enjoy running water for showers and washing.
Jenny talked about defining her role some so I guess I´ll talk about my offical position too. Last week we had about 2 solid days of meetings with the Grupo Fenix staff and Sabana Grande community leaders. As a result of all the meetings I have found myself working on a couple long term projects. My main assignment is to work with one fo the community leaders, Nimia, on the solar oven research, design and development. This will include cooker design improvements, manufacturing process improvements, and continuing research from some previous work as well as new efforts. Throughout the whole year I will be working closely with community members on projects to help improve their project management and problem solving skills, the whole idea here is sustainable development. I hope that when our year of service is complete and we return to Virginia, we will leave a capable group of leaders rather than a void. I am also working closely with a small group of women to develop policies for a new secondary school scholarship for children of the village that will be funded by a former solar culture course participant. All in all I feel like I am getting to do some interesting stuff and I think what I am working on will make a real difference.
We started off our time here by attending Grupo Fenix’s Solar Culture Course, which is a 10 day cultural experience mixed with some cool solar energy activities and sustainability awareness. It is intended to be kind of an “eco vacation” for some and for volunteers it serves as an orientation. Grupo runs this course usually 2 times a year, once at the end of July during what the Nicas call “little summer” and again in early January during dry season. “Little summer” is a two week period at the beginning of August during Nica’s dry season when it just doesn’t rain. The weather is beautiful, warm, sunny, and dry for 2 weeks and it comes every year like clock work, up to the point that Grupo Fenix can even plan their course around it. So, the solar culture course was pretty cool. We met some really interesting people from all around the world who attended with us. I could write a whole article about our new acquaintances but for now I’ll just tell you that we had two Australians from Germany who work with the UN, a Uraguayan Italian New Yorker, a Harvard boy from California, a Georgia Tech EE student, and another fellow volunteer, Julio, who Spanish, has a PhD in Physics, is fluent in English and came from Ireland for the course. It was a great group and we had some fun together while we worked. So during the course we did some pretty cool stuff. We started by visiting the for profit solar panel manufacturing company that was founded with the help of Grupo Fenix, called Suni Solar. They are located in Managua walking distance from UNI (Universidad Nacional de Ingenieros). Next we took at 4 hour bus ride to northern Nicaragua where Sabana Grande is located. We spent the rest of our time in Sabana Grande doing the fun stuff. We worked for two days building a solar oven out of wood, roofing tin, glass, and wood shavings as insulation. It’s pretty amazing what these ovens can cook; from plantains to chicken to cakes and cookies, all with only the power of partially sunny day. We also spent a day building adobe bricks for the solar center. The Solar Center is a dream of Grupo Fenix, which is slowly being realized. The solar center is eventually going to be a small campus of buildings and land that will contain a manufacturing facility or solar ovens run completely off of solar energy, a small store where natural remedies, organic foods, and solar products are sold, a small eco hotel, and a community center. Currently the solar center is a large beautiful adobe building that is still in the process of construction. This first building is slated to be a temporary community center and meeting facility and eventually an office for CIPPER (center for research, promotion and production of renewable energy) and manufacturing facility for solar ovens. So we made adobe bricks to help contribute to the construction. Adobe bricks are pretty amazing, they are pretty much just mud and pine needles formed into a brick shape and then dried. There are thousands of buildings in Nica built with this construction, including the house Jenny and I live in. We spent another day building solar battery chargers, where we even got to solder and assemble our own miniature solar panels for the chargers. It actually works, just hook up a few batteries and put the charger in the sun and you can charge up regular alkalines 4-5 times. On our last days we built a solar panel mounting frame, installed it at the solar center along with 4 fluorescent lights, a charge controller, batteries and a 75 watt solar panel to run it all.
Since the solar culture course we have been working on various things every day but staying plenty busy. Like Jenny mentioned in one of her earlier blogs, the mayor of Esteli has ordered 22 solar ovens that he plans to distribute to some select women in his community. This is a big deal for Grupo Fenix because it means paid work for several women for 2 months, it means good publicity for what we are doing, and it means that others are taking to this solar culture. So the women had been working on the ovens for a little over a month before we showed up and for our first 3 weeks after the culture course we have spent the majority of our time doing good ól manual labor constructing the ovens. We just completed the ovens this week. We have also spent one day a week working with the crew at the solar center doing some real manual labor. We are talkin´shovel in hand, sweat on the back under the hot Nicaraguan sun for 8 hours a day. Our first day the foreman pointed out three large mounds of dirt and told us to move them, spread them out and create a nice gradient from the base of the center away so that the heavy rain water would flow away. That was a good days´work! We have also done some sifting, wall preparation for ¨repello¨stucco and lots of fine material sifting for repello mixes. All hard work and is much harder than it looks. After a few days I am really glad that its only once a week so I have time to heal. Of course I am sure they are giving all the hard work to the gringos to see if we will quit or come back next week. So far we are 3 for 3 so take that! Also from speaking with our host family I realized that they have a solar panel and a small 12Vdc pump to run their well water that isn´t working, so I am working on this also. I hope to help get them the right pump and design a system so they can feed a tank on a 8 ft stand and enjoy running water for showers and washing.
Jenny talked about defining her role some so I guess I´ll talk about my offical position too. Last week we had about 2 solid days of meetings with the Grupo Fenix staff and Sabana Grande community leaders. As a result of all the meetings I have found myself working on a couple long term projects. My main assignment is to work with one fo the community leaders, Nimia, on the solar oven research, design and development. This will include cooker design improvements, manufacturing process improvements, and continuing research from some previous work as well as new efforts. Throughout the whole year I will be working closely with community members on projects to help improve their project management and problem solving skills, the whole idea here is sustainable development. I hope that when our year of service is complete and we return to Virginia, we will leave a capable group of leaders rather than a void. I am also working closely with a small group of women to develop policies for a new secondary school scholarship for children of the village that will be funded by a former solar culture course participant. All in all I feel like I am getting to do some interesting stuff and I think what I am working on will make a real difference.
Does anyone know what this week is?!
First of all, two days ago was Jenny’s 24th birthday. We celebrated a little before leaving for Nica because I knew there was no way I could buy her any good birthday presents here, plus my family was all over it and they had a little “Jenny’s birthday gift shower” the night before we left. I even got her the new Harry Potter book before we left and kinda tolerated it for 2 weeks while she read it every free moment possible. All that aside, I still feel crappy about it because it wasn’t much of a special day at all. I remembered it was her birthday first thing in the morning and greeted her with a happy birthday kiss when she woke up (at 5:30 am)—mad points for me! But after that I think her day pretty much went down hill. She got 3 birthday cards in the mail ahead of time, which is pretty sweet because that means our mailing address here works and Jenny has some thoughtful and on the ball family. Anyway, back to the downhill part. We started the day off with a nice breakfast of fried chicken, rice, french fries, and cucumber & tomato slices, with fresh orange juicy drink. Not bad, but then she spent 2 hours doing laundry by hand, then joined the rest of us as we spent 8 hours painting solar oven stands with the really nasty paint ultra diluted with paint thinner. This time I wore a bandana as a mask and it worked like a charm. We had a lunch at noon of rice, a dry bean cake thingy, and some cucumber and tomato slices. Then back to work painting. The good news was that we finished in time for us both to take our “shower” before it got dark at 6:30 pm. We had dinner with our Nica family, then we went to bed drowsy-eyed by 8:30pm. No birthday cake, no happy birthday song, no presents. I could have taken here to Ocotal for dinner, but last time we were in Ocotal after dark just about everything was closed already, by 6:30! Also it take 15 minutes to walk to the bus stop, 20 min bus ride, then another 10 min to walk into town. The last bus back to Sabana Grande comes sometimes at 6:45pm, sometimes never. So if you don’t leave by 3pm, you have to pay a taxi to take you home, which cost 10x or more what the bus does. And we had work to do with painting, so no Ocotal for dinner and icecream. :o( Sorry for your crappy b-day honey.
So now to the second point of my entry, Do you know what week this is?!! It is opening week of college football season!!!! YEAH!!! Wooohoo! Go Hokies! Ranked # 9 preseason by both poles, picked by all the experts to win the Atlantic division and the ACC championship, and slated to play #2 LSU next Saturday in what is rumored to be a preview of the national title game. O hell yeah its going to be a good year!! So I did some research and found that there is a local sports bar just down the street from the internet café that opens at 12:30 and has ESPN, our first two games are on ESPN, sweet! Unfortunately todays game starts at noon eastern and in Nica we are 2 hours behind you there so I have to go to the internet café to follow the first half or so of the game. Here is the plan: logon to ESPN and watch the game on gamecast, while being logged into my new ESPN insider account which gives me access to a streaming scoreboard update realtime, in addition I found that Yahoo broadcast offers an online subscription for only a few bucks a month and they cover all the VT football games!!! Sooo sweet, I can listen to even the most worthless games this season (like VT vs. William and Mary) on live radio from Nicaragua! So I am really hoping that this sports bar thing works out because that means that I’ll get to watch VT vs. LSU live next week if I can get them to stay open late enough (kick off at 9 pm eastern 7 pm Nica) otherwise we are headed to Managua to find some venue to see this awesome game. I hope all you jerks have fun flying to Louisiana to watch it live.
So in spite of Jenny’s birthday being pretty sucky, this isn’t such a bad week. Now we are in Ocotal awaiting kick off and all decked out in our Hokie gear. After the game we plan to do some double celebrating, and if we are lucky we will be able to get our hands onto something that resembles a steak if the sports bar ever opens, then finally some ice cream and special birthday treatment for Jenny. Happy College Football Season everyone, and Happy Birthday Jenny!
So now to the second point of my entry, Do you know what week this is?!! It is opening week of college football season!!!! YEAH!!! Wooohoo! Go Hokies! Ranked # 9 preseason by both poles, picked by all the experts to win the Atlantic division and the ACC championship, and slated to play #2 LSU next Saturday in what is rumored to be a preview of the national title game. O hell yeah its going to be a good year!! So I did some research and found that there is a local sports bar just down the street from the internet café that opens at 12:30 and has ESPN, our first two games are on ESPN, sweet! Unfortunately todays game starts at noon eastern and in Nica we are 2 hours behind you there so I have to go to the internet café to follow the first half or so of the game. Here is the plan: logon to ESPN and watch the game on gamecast, while being logged into my new ESPN insider account which gives me access to a streaming scoreboard update realtime, in addition I found that Yahoo broadcast offers an online subscription for only a few bucks a month and they cover all the VT football games!!! Sooo sweet, I can listen to even the most worthless games this season (like VT vs. William and Mary) on live radio from Nicaragua! So I am really hoping that this sports bar thing works out because that means that I’ll get to watch VT vs. LSU live next week if I can get them to stay open late enough (kick off at 9 pm eastern 7 pm Nica) otherwise we are headed to Managua to find some venue to see this awesome game. I hope all you jerks have fun flying to Louisiana to watch it live.
So in spite of Jenny’s birthday being pretty sucky, this isn’t such a bad week. Now we are in Ocotal awaiting kick off and all decked out in our Hokie gear. After the game we plan to do some double celebrating, and if we are lucky we will be able to get our hands onto something that resembles a steak if the sports bar ever opens, then finally some ice cream and special birthday treatment for Jenny. Happy College Football Season everyone, and Happy Birthday Jenny!
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