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