Bienvenidos a Bluefields!

                                                                                                                                This past week of training has been hectic.  Every single trainee has been bombarded with classes they need to teach, projects they need to finish, and national anthems they need to learn in key (whoops). That is why I am not going to feel guilty for slacking on my blog post especially since it’s on Bluefields, the city where I will be living for the next two years.

                                                                                                                                Anyways, two weeks ago (That’s right I am a week behind on my blog. No shame.), in a country not too far away, all of the Nica 62 trainees set off to travel to their future sites for a week. For me and the other two trainees on the Atlantic coast, this was a slightly more arduous process than for the rest. On Monday, the whole training group met up with our counterparts in Managua. What is a counterpart you ask? Well they vary for each sector, but essentially they are the one or two people that Peace Corps chooses to be your point of contact in the community. They are responsible for both introducing you to your site and supporting you in your work for the next two years.  In addition, you are required to report to them about the work we are doing in the community. For the environmental sector, these are the directoras (essentially the same as principles) of the schools that we will be working at.

 After a full day of charlas, we stayed in Managua for the night and I got to enjoy the comforts of a HOT shower with water pressure (honestly, what more could I ask for?), air conditioning, and free wifi. That almost made up for the fact that I had to wake up around four to travel to my site. At six, me, my two counterparts, and two other trainees with their counterparts left Managua and embarked on a six hour bus ride to El Rama, which is the furthest point East in Nicaragua by road. Now let me give all of you a word of warning about the Nicaraguan transportation system. Its slow, there are very few bathrooms (and for those that are available you have to pay and provide your own toilet paper), and it’s usually done on an old school bus. Now this is fine for a two or even three hour trip but for six hours, it’s too long. Despite this, I have to admit that the views are incredible. Since you are passing through the whole country when you travel from Managua to Bluefields, you get panoramic picture of all that this country has to offer in terms of natural beauty. I saw mountains, river, undeveloped rain forest habitat, and of course, the sea.

               
From El Rama, we took a Panga on the Rio Escondido for two hours to Bluefields. This was by far the most fun/terrifying point on the trip, and ended with a first glimpse of my new home. I have to admit that Bluefields is a bit different than I imagined. As with any tropical city on a coast, I immediately got this image in my head of it as a white beach paradise. I had been warned that this was not the case beforehand, but it’s an image that was hard to shake. Instead of being right on the Ocean, Bluefields is located on a bluff within a protected bay area. In addition, there is absolutely no beach culture that exits in the town.  There are beaches in the area but most of them take at least a five minute panga ride to get to. Sorry to all my beach loving friends! You should still come and visit though. I promise that my site has many more redeeming qualities than simply being a coastal paradise.

After settling in with my host family (who did not realize that I was coming on Tuesday), I went to bed ridiculously early. The next two days I spent introducing myself in the two primary schools where I would be working: Santa Rosa and Ruben Dario. This was by far one of the times that I have felt the most nervous here. As was the first impression that all my students and future colleagues would have of me, I of course felt like it should go perfectly. Long story short: it definitely didn't. I made grammar mistakes, pronounced students names wrong, couldn't understand questions that the teachers and students were asking of me, and spilled food on my shirt. Despite, this I feel like everything went relatively well. It may have even been that all the mess ups made me more relaxed than I normally would be.The majority of the teachers seemed really friendly and ready to work with me, and the classes they taught were significantly smaller and more well-behaved than those I had taught in training. As I will be the first person from an outside organization to work with Santa Rosa, I feel like my work there will be more challenging than at my other school, Ruben Dario where the directora has been collaborating with other environmental NGOs and aid groups for several years. However, both have a ton of experience in working in schools and I am sure that I will learn a lot in working with both of them, no matter what I am able to accomplish.

On Friday, both my counterparts gave me a whirlwind tour of the city and I got introduced to the Ministry of Education, Ministry of the Environment, the Mayor’s office, and two environmental organizations in the area. I was also introduced to the most delicious food on earth, pan de coco, which is a sweet bread made with coconut milk. I may or may not have eaten two loaves (spoiler alert: I did). After that, I unpacked one of the huge suitcases that I was planning on leaving in Bluefields, and went out to dinner/drinks with the other volunteers in site. With me and the other trainee, the number of volunteers in Bluefields is now at five. There is a small business volunteer, two English volunteers, a health volunteer, and me. We all seem to get along really well and I’m excited to start doing some cross-sector work them. There are also several other volunteers over on the Atlantic Coast, most only an hour Panga ride away in Peal Lagoon, another creole community on the coast. We may all be isolated, but at least we can be isolated together!

The next day was my ten hour trip back and with that ends this ridiculously long blog post. You may not believe it when I say that I slacked, but if you knew how much I didn't put in that I could have, you would definitely agree. Thankfully I’ll be living in Bluefields the next two years so there’s plenty of time to write more. There’s so much I could say about the city where I’ll be spending the next two years. Get ready for some long blog posts headed your way! (Sidenote: Skimming is totally acceptable) 

Booze, Horses, and the Virgin Mary

Hey all! So at this point in my training, I do know what my site is. However, there was so much to put in this particular post that I’m going to save it for the next post. Please send all your hate mail to my Hotmail account since I never check that one.

I do want to start with talking about the one big event in El Rosario that’s been going on for the past week which is Dia de la Virgen. Essentially it’s a whole week dedicated to the Virgin Mary (You will find out in later blog posts that there are at least three festivals a year dedicated to honoring Mary. She’s a pretty big deal down here). Each day starts promptly at 6 with the bells of the church ringing loudly to announce the start of mass. Then at seven, or whenever mass is finished, the church sets off polveros (fireworks minus the  pretty colors) for about 15 minutes while a procession carries a statue of the Virgin Mary to a new house to spend the night. That is the time that I usually wake up. Our house is night next to the church and so I literally wake up “with a bang.” Pun so intended. During the week, the Virgin Mary spends each night in a different house. Each night, the family that is hosting the Virgin Mary invite everyone in the town to come eat food and hold a vigil at their house.

The best part of this particular festival happens on the first and the last day.  After the night mass, the church sets of fireworks and the whole town participates in “Juegos de Polveros.” Literally this translates to “fireworks games.” As you can probably glean from the name this is definitely not something that would fly in the states. What happens is that a man will run out from a hiding place carrying a wooden bull on his back. This is no ordinary wooden bull though. It is a wooden bull completely covered in polveros that shoot off at random. The trick is for people on the street to try and avoid getting hit by one. Being a naïve American, I assumed that since children were allowed to participate, this was not a dangerous activity. However, when I asked my host mom and brother to confirm, they simply laughed at me and replied “Of course it’s dangerous.” Therefore, I don’t think that’s something that I will be bringing back to the states anytime soon.

In addition to Dia de La Virgen, my town also hosted an Hipica festival. Although the real focus is supposed to be on locals showing off their horses, the event has evolved to consist of a 75% focus on drinking and a 25% focus on horses. People start drinking at 2:00 in the afternoon and continue well into the night. The horse parade, which is supposed to be the focus of everything lasts for all of an hour. After hours of drinking, the event ends with a town fiesta. I had the pleasure of being able to go to this town fiesta stone cold sober. It was a blast. Geri, one of the other trainees, and I learned how to dance cumbia in the rain. I also got to meet a lot of locals from my training site. If anyone wants advice on how to better integrate I have two words for you: town fiesta. They are seriously one of the best opportunities to meet and talk to people.

Well as they say in Nica “Aqui Muere.” (I’m done). Tune in next time for a blog post about my site visit to…..BLUEFIELDS. I am stoked to finally start getting to know the place where I will be spending the next two years. I know that I’m going to love it. 

The Issue of Trash In Nicaragua

 One of the environmental concerns that consistently comes up when talking about Nicaragua is the issue of trash in public areas (i.e the streets, parks). As a training group, we recently completed a mock survey, or encuestra, to further investigate this issue on a more local level in El Rosario. The overwhelming sentiment seems to be that it is the government’s response to clean up the trash that seems to litter all public places. After all, after hundreds of years throwing organic material on the ground that would decompose quickly, it’s hard to switch to the habit of throwing trash in specific receptacles.

It seems that this is the response that is most quickly offered is to educate students about the importance of making sure they dispose of their trash in a responsible manner. The first lady of Nicaragua (who most Nicaraguans think is a witch, but that’s a different story) has actually started a campaign called “Viva Sano, Limpio, Bonito,” which roughly translates to “Live Safely, Live Cleanly, Live Beautifully.” The whole focus is to get people to pick up their trash, and the slogan is particularly ubiquitous on trash cans and pack benches.

While I think that this may be a good first step in addressing the issue of trash in Nicaragua, I’ve also had a lot of time to think on this issue (When it takes you about 30 min to eat a bowl of gallo pinto, you have a lot of time to think).  While trash on the streets is an issue that needs to be solved, it also brings to light the problem of trash that is worldwide. Nicaragua is a country produces significantly less trash than the United States. However, the problem of trash appears to be much greater simply. Why is this? It is based on the impact that the visibility of an issue has.

As humans, sight is one of the most important senses that we possess. The question, “Would you rather be blind or deaf?” most frequently produces the response “Deaf” because we rely so much on this one sense. Thus, it is only logical that the more visible an issue, the more likely we are to act on it. The issue of global warming is an especially potent example. This is a potentially dangerous phenomenon, but because of its lack of visibility to the human eyeit’s been hard to convince people of its existence.

In the United States, we have largely surpassed the issue of trash in public places that seems to be a focus of development efforts in Nicaragua. My question is though: has this indeed solved the issue of trash, or simply made it less visible? While I am certainly not an advocate for the current mode of trash disposal in Nicaragua, I can’t help but think that the way we address the issue of trash in the US isn’t much better. Does hiding the problem really solve the issue? The trash may be buried, hidden from human eyes, but has it really gone away? Perhaps this method of trash disposal has even aided in hiding the true problem presented by the disposability of the products that we buy. While I feel inadequate to post solutions to a complex problem on my PC blog, I’m at least beginning to feel that the solution being presented in Nicaragua may not be the best one.

This could also be a wakeup call to try and change my eating habits a bit. As I told you earlier, when it takes over 30 min for me to finish Gallo Pinto (and I have it almost 3x a day), I have a lot of time to think about things like this. I promise that my next entry will be more fun and informative of what I am actually doing here. Miss you all!