A rewarding experience

Our German volunteer buddy, Martin, lived with one of the poorest families in Sabana Grande. He lived with a middle-aged single mother, Dona Elia, and her 12 year old daughter, Alba Rosa. They were a little bit off from the main pathway of Sabana Grande and none of the houses on their path have electricity, except for Mauro, one of our solar panel experts and more recently Dona Ilda and her family of 12, who just got their own solar electric system a few weeks ago. All the other volunteers knew that Martin had it rough. He was the only one with a true dirt floor, the only one who had no form of modern lighting, and even more unfortunately he lived with the consensus-worst cook of all the Mujeres Solares. This was on top of all the discomforts that the rest of us deal with also.

To Martin’s credit, he stuck it out for the whole 5 months. He knew it was rough, but that is what life is really like for the poorest of poor, and the last thing he wanted to do was move because he was uncomfortable and deny Elia the $50 a month income he was providing. Martin made the best of it and kept a smile on his face. However, he did take the opportunity to escape when he could. He came over and watched corny telenovelas with us and our family every evening. When he wasn’t with us he would go over to Noel’s place and plug in to his outlet so he could use the computer. Martin watched our house for us while we were away in the states for a week. It was convenient for him because he could enjoy the lights, electricity, and even watch DVD’s on our laptop. It was convenient for us because he enjoyed it so much that he would stay nearly all night, which kept away the critters and mischievous neighbors. As a thank you Jenny and I brought back a LED crank lantern for Martin, which was a God-send for him.

As hard as it was for Martin to live with Elia and Alba Rosa for five months, I could imagine how hard it is for Elia and Alba Rosa to live like that their whole lives. Martin decided he wanted to do something really special for his family before he returned to Germany. He was working on a project with a Canadian group who ordered a bunch of tiny five watt solar panels to assemble into small LED home lighting systems for some of the rural families in Nicaragua who don’t have lights. Martin was able to convince his business partners to donate a system to Grupo Fenix. When he asked Elia if he could install a small lighting system in her house she told him it was her dream.

On Martin’s second to last day in Sabana Grande I got the honor to help him install the novel little solar lighting system. Martin purchased all the supplies with his own money and we installed the five watt solar panel and three LED lighting fixtures, which combined only consume 500 mA off a 15 volt battery, thats only seven and a half watts! Go look at one of our incandescent bulbs to see how many watts it consumes and you will understand what seven and a half watts means. Along with the lights we also put in a seven amp-hour battery, which allows all three lights to stay lit for nine hours continuously with no input from the panel. Needless to say it was a pretty rewarding way to spend the day. It was especially nice that I got to lend a hand because Elia and Alba Rosa are the ones who gave us our kitten, Virginia. They have three grown cats and who just had six more adorable kittens!

Ometepe and Katie´s Visit Pictures

Sorry it took me so long to post these, but here they are.
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More Costa Rica Photos

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Costa Rica is Rica

C.J. and I just got back from Costa Rica on Monday. We needed to renew our visas (which were already 24 days overdue) and we figured we´d take the chance to have a little vacation. We would have gone sooner, but we´re so American that we feel guilty taking vacation from our volunteer responsibilities. We just can´t do it, Martin. (Martin is our German friend who spends more time vacationing than working... just kidding :-) )

So, we set off to Costa Rica last Wednesday. The plan was to take the express bus to Managua (3.5 hours) then the Tica Bus to Liberia, Costa Rica (5 hours), spend the night and then figure out how to take local buses to Monte Verde, our final destination. Tica Bus is supposed to be the quick, comfortable way to travel because it is a real express bus that only stops at the border, has air conditioning and movies. We were looking forward to a stress-free trip, but when we arrived in Managua to catch our Tica Bus, we found out that the guy in Ocotal never actually called in our reservation and we didn´t have seats! Fortunately, the boss got us on the bus with no problem but a little added stress our our side. It also turns out that the air conditioning was broken, but they wouldn´t let us open the windows because the air conditioning was on, so we cooked all the way to the border. How TIN.

At the border, we had no problem with our expired visa we just payed the $1 a day fine. The guy was actually very chatty, especially when his friend came in to show him the passport of the guy he swore was Jean Claude Van Damme. It clearly wasn´t him, but they were convinced. They went on and on, looking at the guy´s visas and saying ¨Look, he was everywhere that there was a Van Damme movie made.¨ TIN, seriously.

At the border we also met a couple who had a newer version of the tour book we were using, and it didn´t have any information about busses from Liberia to Monte Verde. We kind of paniced and decided to take Tica Bus all the way to San Jose (4 extra hours) so that we could be sure to get an express to Monte Verde the next morning. Fortunately the air conditioning worked for the Rest of the bus ride (how unTIN... ironic isn´t it), and we watched a Jim Carey marathon in Spanish.

When we got to San Jose, we shared a cab with a backpacker couple and we got unwittingly tricked into staying at a backpacker place with dorm rooms. Ick. I´ll never do that again, I´ll always pay more for a private room, thank you. The next morning we took the 4 hr. express to Monte Verde and arrived at our final destination only 28 hours after we left home! When we got off the bus we were imediately bombarded with people selling tours and handing out maps, but we quickly slipped away to the Tica Bus office to make our return researvations. We found out that you can take Tica Bus directly to Monte Verde (WHAT?!), well sortof, and so we faxed in our reservation, since they wouldn´t pick up the phone at the office.

Then as we were walking around town I suddenly realized we left our bags on the bus!! Ahhh! How could we have been so stupid, we were so distracted by all the people in our face that we forgot our luggage! Crap, we quick took a taxi to the bus station, where luckily our bus was still being serviced for the return trip and claimed our bags, and we only paid double the normal taxi fare. Whew!

The following morning we went for our zip lining canopy tour. Now that was awesome! We zipped from the top of a tree on one mountain, over the valley, to the top of a tree on another mountain. We saw the most gorgeous views of the rain forest and we had so much fun. We also have tons of pictures to share later. Zip lining wasn´t scary for me, it was an amazing experience that I would do again in a heart beat. We also took a walking tour over a set of suspension bridges in the forest, which was neat because we got to see the forest up close. One of the cool things about Costa Rica toruism is that everyone speaks English and since C.J. and I speak Spanish we get special treatment everywhere... just for asking nicely in Spanish we got to see the Hummingbird exibit for free!

Since, we were planning to take a more direct route home, we were able to stay another night in Monte Verde, and go on a canyoning tour - that is repelling down waterfalls! That´s me at the tippy top of the waterfall on the left! Now that, my friend, was scary! You have to really rely on your rope and you have to actually know what you´re doing... which is why I have a huge scape on my left shin. We went down six water falls, and after about two, I was like, ¨OK, been there, tried that, ready to go home.¨ But no, there were four more to go! I made it out alive thankfully, and I do have to admit that it was really fun. I would definately recommend it to anyone who likes adventure and adreneline!

The next morning we took the recommended 6AM bus to the highway to catch our Tica Bus. Our bus driver took his sweet time getting us there, he even took a five minute snack break at one point. That´s actually very unTIN, because the busses in Nicaragua are serious business. Anyway, we arrived at the highway at 10 minutes to 8, and apparently just after the first Tica Bus passed. We waited there until like 9:35, when the 2nd Tica bus came. We yelled, we held up our tickets, we ran after them and waved our hands like maniacs, but the Tica Bus passed us by, leaving us on the side of the road in Costa Rica with no plan an no more Tica Busses coming until 2PM.

Ok, 1, 2, local busses to the border, then an express to Managua. Not actually that bad, if we had been planning for it. Unfortunately all the time we wasted waiting for Tica Bus got us to Managua too late to get home, so we were delayed until the next morning. We stayed near the Tica Bus office so that we could give them hell in the morning... which we did and we were reimbursed for our return ticket. We were still ticked though because we had spent twice that to get to Managua and to stay an extra night, plus we were stressed beyond belief.

So in summary... travelling was horrible, but the activities were fun (yet ridiculously expensive). We´re glad to be back in Sabana Grande and we have lots of pictures and videos to share later!