A Woman´s World

When I studied abroad for two semesters in Spain, I thought that I was getting a real taste of a “machismo” culture. I’ve come to realize that Spain has nothing on Nicaragua.

Men have control here in virtually every facet of life. The man is usually the sole breadwinner, decides when and how many children the family will have, and makes all important household decisions. Men are allowed, even encouraged, to drink publicly and the only bars in my town are men-only pool halls. Men drive buses, make laws, build cities, plan community events, and are more often elected officials. Coming from an egalitarian American culture, some days I can become furious just walking down the street, having to either ignore or confront the whistling, catcalling, and just plain rude vagos (men who just sit around with nothing to do on the streets).
In my host family’s homes, the household has surprisingly been absent of dominant male characters. The men either having died, or run-off a long time ago, I have been able to witness strong Nicaraguan women who raise their sons to be respectful, hardworking men who are not afraid to wash their own clothes or help out in the kitchen.

A typical day in the average Nicaraguan family would go something like this: The mother gets up at 5:30 am (or even as early as 3 am) to collect water in large containers, as it frequently goes out mid-morning, and she has to collect enough for the day’s washing, cooking and drinking. She washes dishes, starts the fire in the kitchen stove, sweeps and mops, takes a shower and prepares breakfast. During all of this, she also wakes up the children and gets them ready for school, which usually starts at 7 am. This means she has to iron their school uniforms and prepare a snack. The husband may get up a little later (however if they live out in the village, he may get up early as well to go out to the fields), eats a breakfast of rice and beans, cheese and tortillas prepared by his wife, and leaves for work (perhaps he is an agriculture worker, policeman, bus driver, truck driver, construction worker…) Throughout the day, the wife stays at home, usually accompanied by two or three small children who are not yet old enough for school. She takes care of them; washing the family’s clothes and the baby’s cloth diapers, constantly sweeping the floors since there is a thin line here in Nicaraguan between “inside” and “outside” and dirt, mud and trash are a constant nuisance. She begins to prepare lunch early; sorting and cleaning beans, cooking rice, cutting chicken…all of this she makes over a wood stove which constantly funnels smoke into the kitchen, her eyes, her lungs… Since the older children are gone at school, she will need to run to a nearby pulperia or tiny convenience store to buy daily necessities (matches, cheese, tortillas, bouillon cubes, toilet paper), and this can be done up to five times a day. The husband and children will come home at lunch time, and she will be expected to have the food ready and waiting for them, and also do all the clean-up (unless of course there is an older daughter around to help her). Then the whole process begins again for dinner. If she’s lucky, she’ll have a few spare moments in her day to visit a relative, play with the baby, listen to some music, or watch her favorite telenovela.

And this will be how she lives out her life. And this life starts early, as soon as they’re old enough to help run errands or cut vegetables. I’ve talked with Nicaraguan women who were married at 15 years old, their husband being twice their age. Teenage pregnancy is also common, with girls as young as 12 or 13 walking around with large pregnant bellies, their skinny frames barely supporting the extra weight. When these adolescent pregnancies occur, the father of the child usually doesn’t stick around, and the job of raising this child will be even more of a challenge. The girl will probably live with her own mother, relying on her monetary and child-raising support.

I recently saw an article about a man from the department of Rio San Juan, Nicaragua who claimed to have 30 children in four different countries; Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. What shocked me wasn’t the actual number of children (I’m sure it was exaggerated, right?) but the fact that he seemed to be bragging about it, and about the fact that he had no contact whatsoever with these children or their mothers. It’s perfectly acceptable here for men to shrug-off a pregnant girlfriend, claiming that “It’s not mine” and ride off into the sunset. It is also the man here who decides how many children he wants to have. Getting women to use family planning methods to avoid having up to 10 children is still a battle since men often refuse to use condoms, and don’t like the fact that their wife might use another method of birth control behind their back.

When hearing all of this, it becomes immediately apparent that it is a man’s world here in Nicaragua. Or is it? As I learn more about the culture and witness more interactions, I am becoming to realize the power and strength that women possess.
This realization occurred to me during the annual national Vaccination Campaign. I tagged along with my Health Center staff giving educational health talks and helping to give out anti-polio drops and anti-parasite pills to the children. What surprised me was the that little boys cowered in fear, sobbing relentlessly and clutching to their mothers at the thought of an injection or even just oral anti-polio drops, whereas the little girls were the bravest ones, putting on tough faces and squeezing their mother’s hand tight, but never making a peep. There was one case of a tough-looking boy who was 15 years old who was so scared of having a Tetanus booster shot that he retreated to the back of the classroom (we were vaccinating in the school) and refused to come close to us or even make eye contact. Despite multiple pleadings on behalf of the nurses and myself and even his classmates, he still flat-out refused to get the shot. After we waited for about a half an hour, we had to eventually give up on him and move on. Once again, he was 15 years old.

I thought this was pretty strange, but after talking to fellow Peace Corps volunteers who had also been working in the Vaccination Campaign, I found that our experiences were actually very similar. They too had seen more wimpy boys than girls, and often had amusing stories to tell as well. Wait a minute, weren’t the Nicaraguan men supposed to be the tough ones??

I started thinking about this phenomenon and realized that little boys are brought up by amazing, caring, nurturing Nicaraguan mothers, not having much contact with their fathers until they are older and big enough to help out in the field/shop, etc. These little boys were so dependent on their powerful mothers, who took-on the lion’s share of raising them, that they didn’t know how to be “men” yet. Howerver, I can even see this in older men (especially those who still live with their parents, which is common). One of my 33 year-old Nicaraguan male friends was complaining the other afternoon about being hungry; apparently he hadn’t eaten all day. “Why not?” I asked him, “Go eat something!” “My mom is out of town…” he replied rather sheepishly. Apparently this grown man was incapable of fixing himself his own meal in his mother’s absence.

What would happen if all the women in Nicaragua suddenly disappeared for a few days? I really think the country would fall apart. Despite all of the country’s machismo tendencies, it is really the Nicaraguan housewife who holds it all together. She cleans, washes, cooks, feeds, keeps in touch with relatives, comforts sick children - and she does it without stopping. Mother’s Day in Nicaragua is May 30th, and the whole country refers to May as “The Month of Mothers.” They go a little crazy down here for their Mothers, and now I understand why, and I’m glad they do. Behind every macho, tough-guy, Nicaraguan man’s man, there is a sweet, hard-working mother, someone who will gladly drop everything to wash a few of his clothes or heat up a plate of beans and rice whenever he decides to drop-in and visit. So, who wins the battle of the sexes in Nicaragua? Well, I think the women just like to let them men think they do.

Peace Corps as seen from the U.S. and the host country

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the words “Peace Corps?” If you’re like most Americans, you picture a dreadlock-wearing, Birkenstock-clad, shower-hating, peace-love-and-harmony hippie walking the streets of some tiny African village helping them build latrines. This is not unlike the view many of my friends and family members had when I announced to them that I was really joining the Peace Corps and would be serving in Nicaragua. “You mean, you’re joining the hippie corps?” one individual (who shall remain nameless) from my family asked me in a surprised tone when they heard the news. While I have always enjoyed being environmentally conscious, am a vegetarian, and have volunteered at various organizations over the years, the word “hippie” is definitely not a synonym for my own name. It may have surprised people that I joined, and I have to say that I was surprised when I finally met the other volunteers in my group since many of them didn’t fit the mental mold that I had created for the typical Peace Corps volunteer. The answer is; there isn’t a typical volunteer.

There are about 180 PC volunteers in Nicaragua, and every one of them has a different story of how they came to apply to Peace Corps. They range in age from 22 to 61 and come from a variety of backgrounds: farmers, married couples, single 20-somethings right out of college, teachers, biologists, aspiring med students, business majors… I have yet to see a dirty hippie (except for the European and American backpacker tourists you glimpse on the buses and in hostels every once in a while. They give us “gringos” a bad name. I have been asked before why we westerners don’t like to shower…) The Peace Corps requires quite a commitment; both of time and of effort. We have to community-organize from the grass-roots, and those roots can be difficult to find and hard to hold on to in a developing country like Nicaragua. While there are some volunteers who manage to waste away their days and slack-off more than they should, the majority that I have met are dedicated and professional, and are doing some amazing projects in their communities of service.
The Nicaraguan (or arguably any country that hosts Peace Corps volunteers) view of Peace Corps is quite different from the average American view.

Every Nicaraguan I have met who is familiar with the Peace Corps, from my Health Center Director, other counterparts, NGO directors, host families, bus drivers, and even waiters have practically hugged me and started regaling me with a story of a previous volunteer they met or worked with and how they collaborated together, how the volunteer showed them some pictures of their family in the U.S., how they chatted away an afternoon talking about Nicaraguan recipes, or how the volunteer still remembers to call every once in a while to say a quick “hola.” I even met a Nicaraguan Señora who had hosted a Peace Corps volunteer in her home in the 1970s. She remembered his name and his home city, his family’s names, and even what he studied in college after all these years had passed. The Peace Corps has had a remarkable impact on these people. The Nicaraguans I have met all view Peace Corps volunteers as very professional, motivated, inspiring, creative, and friendly people who are all undertaking a very challenging task in order to help out the people of Nicaragua. Often, our ideas and projects, being seen as ¨foreign¨ and somehow ¨better¨ are taken more seriously, and we are thought to have a world knowledge beyond most of the people that we work with. We are looked at as professionals, not as lazy hippies looking to take two years off to play around in the jungle.

Most people I meet here in my site can’t believe that I’m 22 years old and live so far away from my family, or that I went to college so far away from them in the first place (I did go to college in-state, but since Alaska is so large, it took about a half a day by plane to get there). Nicaraguans can’t understand why we as Peace Corps volunteers would all want to leave our comfortable, washing machine-and-dryer lives to come down to a developing country and get dirty making a brick oven, talk about diarrhea, get bitten by scorpions (yes, that happened to me last week), live on a couple hundred dollars a month and go without hot showers just in order to help them. Although they might think us Peace Corps volunteers are a bit on the crazy side, they see no “hippie” or “slacker” in us. To some people that I meet, especially youth, I may be the only American they have ever met, and I may be the only educated female role model that some of these young girls that I work with have ever had.

It can be difficult at times ¨fitting in,¨ things like my height and blonde hair certainly don´t help. Some people may feel threatened by an American presence or intimidated, so right now at the beginning of my service, I´m working at trying to integrate and make as many friends as possible. It´s hard to balance my ¨American personality¨ with the ¨Peace Corps image¨ that we have to project as well. You definitely have to watch what you say and do here since you´re constantly under a microscope.

The contrast between how many Americans view the Peace Corps and how the host countries do is often diametrically opposed. However, I think that this view is changing. There are the many returned volunteers who have gone on to complete higher education, obtain successful jobs in the government and private sector, and establish their own foundations, NGOs and activist projects. These volunteers are highly respected and seen as adaptable and talented individuals. Another bright spot: the Obama Administration promised to double the size of the Peace Corps in an effort to improve our international relations and to instill the spirit of service in more Americans. I can’t think of a better foreign policy.

Mango Land

“Nope. Worm-infested” pronounces my nine year-old host brother, Kairo. I sigh, defeated and drop the yellowed mango to the ground. I have not yet mastered the art of picking out mangos. “Here, just wait. I’ll find a good one!” he exclaims, and before I can say anything to stop him, Kairo has scurried up the mango tree in our backyard and is balancing his 70-pound frame (which he sustains with a balanced diet of tortillas, cheese, potato chips and sugared-down juice) on a slim branch, reaching out for a mango that he has deemed worthy of my consumption. The mangos that he can’t rustle down with a long stick that he has saved over the years for this very purpose must be grabbed by hand, and he is the only one in the family eager enough to take on this task. I have given him the nickname of “The Mango Hunter.”

My daily intake of Vitamin A has increased probably five-fold in the past few weeks, due my host family’s enormous mango tree. The fruit is just coming into season, marking the beginning of the six month-long rainy season here. Every morning we wake up to a patio littered with ripe mangos which have fallen during the night.
Kairo was my informal mango professor as we watched the mangos ripen, giving me all the Nicaraguan tips. He explained that the bright yellow color of some mangos that fall indicated that they are not ripe, but have been infested by worms and are inedible. Kairo also explained to me how you can tell if a mango is ripe: just look for part of the mango to be a rosy-yellowish-burgundy tint. The ones in that receive the most direct sunlight ripen faster. I can tell he enjoyed sharing this information with me, realizing that he knew more about it than I did. Hunting mangos is one of his favorite hobbies and this is his favorite time of the year. He east about nine mangos a day and can often be bribed with mangos, ex. “Kairo, go take a shower. If you don’t, you can’t have any mangos today!” his mother will threaten. Although he guards these precious fruits close, he is also limitlessly generous, and if he even hears a hint come out of my mouth about desiring a mango, he’s up in the tree fetching down three for me.
Right now, the markets are full of ripe fruits: watermelon, pineapple, coconut, grapes, melon and countless others that do not have English translations because they simply don’t exist in the north. Fruits that I used to eat daily, like apples, are a luxury down here, but I have found worthy replacements.
Although mangos may be more expensive in the states, I’m going to post a few mango recipes my host family has shared with me, so if you’re feeling exotic, give them a try.
Mango “Fresco” (Pulp-laden juice which you can make from just about any fruit or vegetable: melon, watermelon, pineapple, beet and lemon, carrot, orange…)
1. Slice up 3-4 ripe mangos and add one and a half cups of water and bring to rolling boil on stove for a few minutes, lower heat and let simmer for five-ten minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Put entire contents into blender, adding a couple more cups of water, and blend until smooth.
3. Add more water or sugar to taste. Serve chilled.
Mango Jam
Equal quantities of mashed fruit and sugar.
Juice from one lemon
1.Combine fruit, lemon juice and sugar and boil. Immediately lower heat and simmer slowly for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2.Boil glass jelly containers and lids for five minutes.
3.Pour liquid into glass containers while hot and secure lids immediately.

You can also dehydrate mango slices, make a mango cobbler, or put it on ice cream… Also the Nicaraguans like to eat mango slices (and pretty much any fruit) with salt and sometimes with chili powder. Green mangos can also be sliced and eaten alone or with salt.
I hope you’ll try one of these ways of eating mango, if you close your eyes, maybe you can imagine being here in Nicaragua, eating it beneath the tree it came from. Just don’t overdo it as Kairo did the other day…you’ll be in the bathroom for a while suffering the consequences.

Jornada de Vacunación – The Great Vaccination Campaign

Well, I’ve arrived in my “site” for the next two years, and what better way to be welcomed into a community than with a Tetanus shot?? Not for me, but for all the youth in the municipality. Every April marks the annual Vaccination Campaign in Nicaragua, something that the Ministry of Health despite its lack of resources and organization, does quite well. The Health Center staff is divided up into groups of two to four and “take-on” each small village at a time. There are 24 communities in my municipality, so they do three to four villages a day. After the past nine days of doing this (there are still two more to go), I am exhausted – and I’m not even vaccinating! The Ministry of Health workers have really amazed me with their energy every day, their care in giving the vaccines, and their attention to detail. The records system here consists of old notebooks marked with faded pencil. The dates of past vaccinations are frequently illegible, and often we come across a child whose mother doesn’t remember when he was born, or a child who has not been recorded in the national census. These health care employees have been working for this Health Center for years, if not decades, and they practically can recite the names of all the children in the surrounding villages; no small feat in Nicaragua where women have children almost annually.

So every day, starting promptly at 8 am (in “Nica time” that means about 8:45) all of the workers fill up the American Red Cross donated coolers full of anti-polio drops, Tetanus, DPT, dT, MMR, Rotavirus and Pentavalente vaccines, grab a disposable cardboard sharps container (donated by Norway), paperwork listing all the children and “MEFs” (women of “fertile” age), anti-parasite pills and Vitamin “A” drops. We all climb in the back of the Health Center pick-up truck and take-off for that day’s communities. As we weave along the dirt roads up into the mountains of the north of Nicaragua, we all find ourselves clutching to whatever object is closest to avoid falling out: a shoe, a leg, a shoulder, a vaccination cooler… Crossing small rivers, stopping for cows to cross, and occasionally picking-up a hitchhiker, the trip is anything but uneventful. I really enjoy looking around and seeing all the flora of Nicaragua. Mangoes, bananas, coconuts, limes, oranges, and corn abounded. If we were lucky, some of the mothers or village health care volunteers, “brigadistas” would gift us some of these summer treats. Note from my experience: mango can be a very messy fruit that permanently tints anything it touches (face, hands, clothes) bright orange. Should be avoided when one does not have soap and water…
We are gradually dropped off in our vaccination teams, and we head to the house of the brigadista who is in charge of that year’s vaccines. Ideally, ideally, that brigadista will have already notified all the parents in the village of the date and time that they should come to the vaccination house, and the parents will arrive punctually and with their child, who is no doubt, ecstatic about the thought of receiving his vaccine. But of course, being the real world, sometimes parents wouldn’t come to vaccinate their children, because they forgot, or also because they, like their children, don’t like vaccines. There is a lack of education about preventative medicine in Nicaragua, and most parents avoid the vaccination campaign, not knowing that they are ultimately hurting their child. My role during the vaccination campaign was to support the nurses and doctors doing the vaccinating and tabulating of children. I gave out anti-parasite pills, handed out balloons, helped hold down screaming children, explained to parents what each vaccine was for, and also gave mini-talks about diarrhea, malaria, purification of water, etc.
After we had spent the morning at the designated vaccination house, it was time to track-down those children who hadn’t come to receive their vaccines. This wasn’t always easy since streets here don’t have names, houses don’t have numbers, and people are more peripatetic (yes, I used it in a sentence!) than Humpback whales. This was the part that wore me out usually, since we had to hike up and down windy roads in the 94F heat to search out a lone house which contained perhaps just one four-year-old child who needed her anti-polio drops. However, as one of the nurses told me as we hiked, “We have goals to complete!” (Each municipality has Ministry of Health determined numbers of vaccines given they try and reach). Often, we found ourselves wandering the village, asking passing children if they knew where “Doña María González” lived, and if they knew if her “niño” was with her, only to be met with blank stares or a shrug of the shoulders. We usually ended up returning to the Health Center at 4 pm or so, to do the entire process again the next day in another far-flung village.
Although the heat and the long hours of waiting for mothers to arrive with their children took a toll on me, I really enjoyed getting out into the small communities to see how people live in my municipality. There are 6,000 people living in the immediate town where I live, and 16,500 in the entire municipality. What I saw and heard during the vaccination campaign really helped me gauge the health of the municipality. In some communities, people barely had latrines, and pigs and cows wandered loose, their feces littering the yards of the houses, causing danger for the barefoot children who constantly played in the dirt. Other health volunteers in the villages told me of contaminated well water which they believed was making the children sick. They said that people were bathing in the well and washing clothes, infecting the water. In other communities however, I saw glimpses of hope: mothers that were “planning” (using a method of birth control), children who looked healthy rather than hungry and full classrooms at the elementary school.
I’ve yet to tell you though my favorite memory of the vaccination campaign. One evening, I was at the Health Center making a bulletin board about vaccinations to put up in the Center, when my counterpart realized that we had yet to announce to the city that we were vaccinating tomorrow. “I almost forgot!” she exclaimed, “Let’s get the megaphone quick!” I would have burst out laughing, but I was already familiar with what was coming. In Nicaragua, when you need to announce something to a large group of people (say, a town of 6,000 like mine), you do so not by radio or poster, but by a huge megaphone strapped to the roof of a vehicle with a microphone attached, and you drive all over the city saying what it is you need to announce. “Come on Penny, I need your help.” She beckoned towards the truck. Her voice was almost inaudible because of a bad cold, so I knew it would be me who would be doing the announcing. Great.
We hooked up the microphone to the Health Center pick-up and started sounding the emergency alarm of the vehicle to announce our presence as she pulled us out of the Health Center and down the streets of the city. She had advised me on what to yell: “Attention! Attention! Mothers of children! Tomorrow we will be vaccinating all children under 5 years old at the brigadista’s home in your sector, the house of Don Luis Cruz. After 9 am bring your child with their vaccination card to be vaccinated. There will be candy, clowns and balloons! If you do not bring your child, we will come and find you!” It’s a pretty funny, but actually a very successful way of getting a message out, since most Nicaraguans are always at home with the doors open, chatting with neighbors or watching TV. I can just imagine them thinking, “Where did that gringa come from and where is her voice coming from?” as we drove around the city for about an hour, my voice becoming hoarse by the end.
I’m looking forward to sleeping-in after this whole campaign is over, but I feel pretty satisfied, even if I’m just borrowing the glory of the dedicated Health Center employees. If there remains any child in Nicaragua who has yet to be vaccinated by the end of this campaign, it won’t be because we didn’t try!

Officially Volunteers!

Last Tuesday “Nica 49,” as my Peace Corps group is called, (the 49th Peace Corps group in the country) was sworn-in as official volunteers. We are no longer trainees! Our two years of service have now begun. The ceremony was very nice, held in the best hotel in Managua, with all of our host families present. The U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan was present to lead us through the oath in English, and the Director of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health Dr. Solis was also there to do the oath in Spanish. The Peace Corps Country Director, George Baldino said some wonderful words, talking about the number of children who die each day in the world from things like malnutrition and preventable diseases. His words were sobering, but he told us that the only way we can react to shocking statistics is community by community, person by person. This is why, he told us, we are here as Peace Corps volunteers in Health. These behavior changes and community education are often the most successful when done on an individual basis. The U.S. Ambassador also told us that we are the real face of the United States that Nicaraguans will see and know. We aren’t Hollywood actors – we are real Americans who will exchange our culture with Nicaraguans. The three goals of Peace Corps are: To impart technical skills to countries that request Peace Corps services, for Americans to learn more about other cultures, and for the host country nationals to learn about the U.S.
As I start my service, I will keep these three goals in mind. Part of that, actually, is this blog you are reading. I know that friends and family back home in Alaska, and perhaps in other states and countries may read it, and they might learn a little more about Peace Corps, public service and Nicaragua. I am also participating in a Peace Corps program in which I periodically correspond with an elementary school classroom in the U.S., telling them about my daily life, projects, etc.
Our swearing-in ceremony was bittersweet, since it meant that the twenty volunteers in my group finally had to say goodbye to each other. After three months of training, we have become rather close, and we are each other’s sources of comfort when we’re going through tough times or just need to talk. Now, we are going to be spread out across the country, some volunteers being placed up to 10 hours away from Managua by bus. We will see each other periodically for Peace Corps trainings and conferences, but I was definitely sad to see us all split-up. However, no one is more than a phone call away, or a weekend visit perhaps. We all made the best of swearing-in day; dressing up like it was senior prom, and going out dancing afterwards. It will probably be the last time we get dressed-up for quite a long time.
And so it begins. Another plus: now that I’m officially a volunteer I start accruing my two vacation days/month!

To be or not to be (a tourist, that is)…

This past Thursday-Sunday was the famed “Semana Santa,” or “Holy Week” for many Latin American and Catholic countries. What this translates to in Nicaragua is a long weekend full of cooking, going to the beach with family and friends, watching religious processions, and basically relaxing. The tourist hubs in Nicaragua (León, Granada and San Juan del Sur) apparently spill over with visitors from both Nicaragua and abroad. My host family didn’t have anything very special planned for the weekend, and I finally convinced my partially introverted, quiet, yet very sweet 22 year-old host sister, Mercedes to accompany me to visit the city of Granada. She had only been there once previously, for a school trip, although the picturesque church-filled city is just a 45 minute bus ride from her town, situated on Lake Nicaragua. Granada is supposed to be “the oldest city in Central America,” and is famed for its colonial atmosphere, the 364 little islands “isletas” that are right offshore, and also for its many cathedrals and churches. I had heard of Granada from fellow Peace Corps volunteers and other tourists passing through and knew that there were some nice hostels to be found there (with free internet, hammocks and coffee) and also a delicious restaurant with the inviting name, “Kathy’s Waffle House.”
Mercedes and I planned to stay just one night in Granada, and we stayed at a nice hostel called “Hostel Oasis.” She was the only Nicaraguan in the entire hostel. We met some of the dirtiest backpackers I’ve ever seen (no wonder people from Central Americans think that us Westerners don’t shower). They hailed from France, Denmark, Poland, Russia, England, and Panama. Hostels were virtually on every corner of the city, and I felt myself walking around and seeing more “gringos” than Nicaraguans - for the first time since I’ve left the states! It was a surreal trip, and it was quite a contrast to the “pure” Nicaragua that I have been experiencing during training, and the living conditions that I’ve been used to. I overheard Americans complaining about the horrible diet of Central Americans, how Nicaragua was just like Costa Rica (they obviously had not been outside of Granada), complaining about the heat, the beggars, the men, and also marveling over how cheap everything was. This was pretty funny to me since now as a volunteer, I am paid in córdobas, not in dollars, so my view of money and reasonable prices has drastically changed. The prices in Granada were astoundingly higher than in most of Nicaragua, although to an American they would be very thrifty: $10/night in a hostel, $4-5 breakfast at that Waffle House, $1.50 iced coffee, $1 for a loaf of whole wheat bread.
However, despite the huge differences, it was clear that I, as an American who is used to traveling, staying in hostels, and meeting people from different countries was without a doubt more comfortable in Granada than my host sister, despite being in her own country. When we first arrived at the hostel, I had to explain to her how to use the luggage locker, and also how to climb up and down her bunk bed since it was her first encounter with one. “It’s so weird not to hear my own language in the streets here…” she mused as we walked down the street, being passed by Americans and Germans talking animatedly about a boat tour they were planning on taking later. For the first time, I felt like I knew more about our surroundings than she did. I found myself, for a change, doing a lot of the talking and business transactions wherever we went, while she simply gazed around, wondering, I think, if she was still in Nicaragua.
This says a lot about Nicaragua. For one, most Nicaraguans don’t travel much outside of their home town, because of money, and lack of curiosity. Mercedes has all she needs in her home town, attends the university once a week in a nearby city, and in her spare time, she helps around the house and gets ice cream with friends. None of her friends were doing anything as “adventurous” as us for Semana Santa. Secondly, Nicaragua has not yet felt the shock of mass tourism. This is supposedly one area that the government and universities are trying to push in the future, especially “eco-tourism” which is so popular in Costa Rica. Travel here is not popular due to safety and security issues, lack of transportation, and frankly, an environment that is not always welcoming to the westerner. It would also be very difficult to travel down here without knowing the language.
Although Mercedes and I were both “tourists” this past weekend in Granada, I, strangely felt more at home than she did. I came away from the weekend feeling refreshed after speaking a little bit of English, eating some real granola, and not being the only blonde in the city. I think our little trip disturbed her a bit, making her feel out of her element, and “different” – something that most Nicaraguans never feel in their own homogeneous culture. However, I think the trip has sparked her interest for traveling more in her home country, and opened her eyes to the fact that these foreign countries that oftentimes feel so far away and separate from Nicaragua, are actually more accessible than once imagined.
I am reminded, as I write this, of a man that some other volunteers and I met in a café one evening a few weeks ago. He was English, and alone, and as we started into conversation, I was shocked to find out that has been traveling with his wife and three children in Central America for the past three months. The children’s ages were 12, 9, and 1. (Wait, it gets better) And they didn’t speak Spanish when they came. Yes, he was backpacking with a one-year-old infant in developing countries. He was extraordinarily nonchalant about the whole thing (as English people tend to be), saying that the trip has been pretty uneventful in the sense of emergencies; that they had only been robbed once, and the baby had only suffered a minor rash for a few days. The other volunteers and I were left with our mouths open. Was he crazy?! This country felt dangerous enough to us at times, let alone traveling with children. In one sense, I simply shook my head and wished him luck as he winded-down his trip, but also I was left with a sense of jealousy. What did he have that most people didn’t? He and his wife seemed to possess some sense of adventure, of wanderlust, or perhaps craziness that the majority of the world doesn’t. I really admired their attitudes and also their determination.
So, on one extreme we have my host sister, Mercedes, and on the other, this English guy and his wife. Where do I fit? Somewhere in the middle, although unquestionably more towards the adventurous couple…

Alaska and Nicaragua: Could there really be similarities?

I know what you’re thinking – Alaska and Nicaragua couldn’t appear to be more different places. In one, some schools in the north don’t cancel recess until the temperature reaches below -20 F. In the other, people refer to the weather as “freezing” when it dips below 70 F. However, during my approximately two months here “in-country” I have been noticing too many similarities between these two places to not write a blog entry about it. Overlooking the many nuanced differences in culture, demographics, government, physical location, climate, etc. I have observed quite a few similarities between my home state and my host country.

The first similarity I noticed was in the rural life and remoteness of many Nicaraguan and Alaskan regions. Some Peace Corps volunteers have been placed in sites that are up to 12 hours away (by bus or boat) from the capital of Managua. Even in my own site, in the north of Nicaragua (and readily accessible from Managua) people often must travel to the Health Center from the surrounding communities, walking up to three hours on foot or by horse. This instantly reminded me of Alaska. I was born in a community that only had float plane access and weekly ferry service. In the “bush” of northern Alaska the situation is much worse, especially in the winter, and snowmobile and small plane use is often the only means of transportation. In both Nicaragua and Alaska, residents of these rural, small villages need to buy their groceries and daily necessities during bi-weekly or monthly trips to the regional hub – a trip which may take up the entire weekend. Although I don’t think that Nicaragua has a Costco or Sam’s Club to stock up on bulk items like we tend to do in Alaska :)

Alaskan pregnant women who live in the isolated small communities have to come into the larger city where the Health Center or Hospital is located weeks before their due date to ensure a safe delivery, as the medical personnel and supplies are limited in their home village. My own mother had to first travel by float plane out of our small fishing community with a population of a few hundred, and then by jet to give birth to me in Washington. I was surprised to learn when I arrived in Nicaragua that they actually have special “Maternal Houses” in most departmental capital cities where these pregnant village women can live while they are awaiting a birth for free. (Maybe this is something Alaska could consider!)

I’ve also noticed that in Nicaragua, just as much as in Alaska, people in these small, remote communities have very strong ties to one another and their family and friends are held close and relationships are not superficial or sporadic. People have known each other’s family’s for generations. There are no secrets in small towns, as we Alaskans well know, and perhaps even more so in Nicaragua this is true. In Nicaragua, families often are “extended” to the point of up to twelve people living in a two-bedroom house. Children are raised just as much by their Aunts and Grandmother as they are by their Mother or Father. Cousins, second-cousins, adopted brothers and sisters of all ages are common and the word “family” often includes half of the town you live in. I think this is true of some Alaskan villages just as it is here in Nicaragua. Since isolation and lack of stimulation are common to both places, it is logical that family members would support and be involved in the lives of each other.

Another similarity I have noticed is in the economic situation of the rural communities. Alaskan villagers are struggling to heat their homes as the price of fuel rises, and this affects everything else that is brought in by barge, plane, or vehicle to the community including food. Nicaragua is a poor country (2nd poorest in the western hemisphere I believe), but in the Nicaraguan rural villages, this poverty is augmented by a lack of job opportunities, limited access to electricity and running water at times. Compared to those who live in the larger cities, such as Managua in Nicaragua, or Anchorage in Alaska, the economic situation of rural villages is strikingly different. The health of the community is correlated with this, and more respiratory illnesses, diarrhea, maternal and infant mortality, etc. is seen in the rural areas.

Nicaragua, like Alaska, has a strong presence of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that are doing the work the government cannot or will not. Alaska has the highest per capita number of NGOs per person, and in Nicaragua I see a similar situation. Development workers from Japan, Spain, Germany, United States, and Denmark are the most common. Unlike Alaska, many of the projects are infrastructure-related rather than socially-oriented. However, the culture of development, the target-audience in the small communities, single mothers, and homeless persons, are the same.

The diet in Nicaragua also resembles rural Alaska. Junk food and soda replace fruit and vegetables more than they should (although they are readily available here in Nicaragua). In both places, Type II Diabetes rates are high in both places, and childhood obesity is rampant. And in both Alaska and Nicaragua, this disease has disproportionately higher levels in the Indigenous populations.

Some of these comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt, since I realize that Alaska is part of a developed nation and these similarities may be more superficial than I have seen them to be in the past two months. Being able to see these similarities has helped me tie my work here as a Health Volunteer back to my previous life experiences, and I can think of strategies and reasons for behaviors that may be similar. When I go out on a “salida al terreno” (a visit to outlying communities) to go house-to-house to administer health surveys, it helps me to think of the family I talk to as being not that different from an Alaskan rural family. Replace the chicken and cheese they are eating with moose meat and herring eggs. The chickens running around the yard with sled dogs. The horse grazing nearby with a snowmachine (as they both are used for transportation). While some Nicaraguans must collect their water from a community well, many Alaskans who live in “dry” cabins without running water must do the same, although they usually haul it in their pick-up truck rather than by donkey. The husband who works seasonally in the coffee here in Nicaragua could be an Alaskan man going to fish, or to work in the oil fields on the North Slope for weeks at a time.

So it seems, although I’ve traveled halfway across the Americas, I can see glimpses of familiarity in my new country.

HIV/AIDS breaking down my reservations

Before my Peace Corps training here in Nicaragua, I wouldn´t have been able to summarize with much eloquence what HIV/AIDS was. Thanks to hours of training in just that topic however, I have made leaps and bounds in my comfort level in talking about these subjects and have even done things, (in the name of education) that I would never thought I would do in my life.
When Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) enters the body, usually through unprotected sex (at least here in Nicaragua), it begins attacking the body’s immune system. The white blood cells are overtaken and slowly killed as the virus multiplies, and over the years debilitates the immune system and develops into Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Once a person has developed AIDS (it can take anywhere from 5-15 years from the initial infection date), they are easily susceptible to opportunistic diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, or even the flu, which attack the greatly weakened state of the immune system and cause death.
The past week, my training group was immersed in five days of intense HIV/AIDS training. We began learning about NGOs present in Nicaragua and their diverse target audiences and mediums. Some NGOs were funded by USAID and had different agendas from, for example European, or World Bank-funded organizations. We saw NGOs using soap operas and radio shows to get out the information, youth groups, conferences, health care worker trainings… For all of this training, my group traveled to the Department of Chinandega, which is in the north of Nicaragua and due to its border with Honduras and port location, this department has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country. Despite being in the north, it is also famed for being the hottest department of Nicaragua, and after sweating constantly for the entire time we were there even after taking two showers a day, I can now attest that that is true.
Our training group was split up into teams of 3-5 and we gave educational talks at high schools on STDs and HIV/AIDS prevention, and also to a much more intimidating audience; sailors at a naval base. Men are the “target” audience here in Nicaragua to talk about HIV/AIDS since they are the transmitters of the virus. They are the ones having extramarital relations and bringing HIV back to their wives. They are the ones who refuse to wear condoms, and don’t believe in getting tested. At the naval base, the sailors were full of machismo, scowling, wearing their uniforms, and not excited to hear what we had to say. Needless to say, it was a tough crowd.
Talking to these men about the difference between HIV/AIDS and how to avoid infection is one thing, but then there is the practical application piece of the presentation. Could I stand up in front of a group of people and show them how to use a condom on a wooden dildo? No thank you… However, it’s not really a choice in Peace Corps. This is practical information that these people need to have. If they saw embarrassment or unwillingness on my part, they may be less likely to use one themselves. We have been told that many Nicaragua men and women simply don’t use condoms because they don’t know how to use them, and they are too embarrassed to ask. If these demonstrations will help reduce the number of STDs, HIV/AIDS infections, and unwanted pregnancies….well, then I guess I can do it.
After observing quite a few demonstrations by other volunteers and staff, and memorizing the “seven steps to using a condom,” I finally felt ready during our Chinandega trip to give it a try. What the heck, I’ll probably never see these people again, right?
The first one I gave was actually an impromptu decision I made to get it over with while we were at a billiards tournament aimed at increasing HIV/AIDS education in older men. It was held at a billiards hall (picture this: florescent lighting, smoke, beer, rum, and men of all ages yelling and laughing over pool. No women in sight.) Sort of like an Alaskan bar actually… All of us trainees were gathered there to observe a pool tournament that a current Peace Corps volunteer was organizing. He would give talks about HIV/AIDS in between the rounds of pool, and when the final two players were left, they had to answer questions about the previous presentations in order to win. A local NGO had agreed to donate the prize money, which was USD $100 - more than most people make here in a month. Needless to say, the men were all riled up about the tournament and really engaged in the talks that were being given and in the games that were being played. During the last round you could hear a pin drop in that room of 100 drunk men as they stopped their yelling and listened intently to as the Peace Corps Volunteer asked “What are the four fluids that transmit HIV/AIDS?” The winner was hoisted on men´s shoulders and the noise was audible for blocks, I´m sure.
At a nearby table, there were some representatives from a Nicaraguan NGO helping younger men learn how to put on a condom using a wooden dildo (an integral part of our Peace Corps tool kit). I walked over to observe and realized that they were doing it “wrong.” After a minute or so, I guess they noticed my puzzled expression as I watched them, and they asked me if I could show them how to do it better (in a sarcastic tone of course). I don’t know what got into me, but all my fear about working with machisto, cat-calling, intimidating Nicaragua men disappeared as I proceeded to go through each of the seven steps. From what I hear from the other trainees who were watching, it got quite a bit of attention, and surprisingly, the men didn’t give me a hard time, but they actually gave me a big round of applause when I had finished the demonstration and the NGO representative turned to a few of them and challenged them to do it as well as I had.
Sometimes, I wish I was a male volunteer here since they get more respect, people are friendlier, they are gossiped about less, and women come over to cook for them and do their laundry. However, this past week of HIV/AIDS education and practical application helped me not fear being an American woman and attempting to work with Nicaraguan men. I realized if you are professional and confident, they will listen to you, and with time, maybe respect you as well.
As our week of training went on, I could feel my reservations and nervousness about these intimate topics being broken down slowly with the support of Peace Corps staff, my fellow trainees, and hands-on experiences. As I acquire these skills, I also feel more self-confident, sure of myself, and empowered to facilitate behavior change in others. If I would have been told I would be doing a condom demonstration in a smoky bar, or talking about the female reproductive system in front of a group of middle school students before I came here, I probably would have laughed at you. However, I am in the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, surrounded by different problems, and I have realized that these problems are bigger than my embarrassment. If the end result will help this country to improve their health situation, then that’s my job as a health volunteer. Soon, I too will be the proud owner of a wooden dildo to give condom demonstrations to women and men, and will be talking about other embarrassing or sensitive topics such as puberty, spousal abuse, sexual rights, and adolescent pregnancy. If I can do all these things without blinking at the end of two years, then I will be ready for anything. Wish me luck!

A Better Oven

This past week, week number five of training, I had the opportunity to visit a current Peace Corps (PC) volunteer here in Nicaragua. The visit was supposed to serve many purposes: allow us to see what sort of projects PC Health Volunteers are involved in, their struggles and successes, what they spend their days doing…basically what life as a PC volunteer is really like. I visited a girl who has been placed in the department of Nueva Segovia which is in the north of Nicaragua, next to the border with Honduras. The trip was about seven hours total in bus from the town I am currently living right outside of Managua.

The buses were an interesting experience to say the least. They were packed full of mothers, babies, children, farm workers, students…and then almost the same number of vendors as there were passengers who walked up and down the aisle (more like squeezed in and out of miniscule spaces they could find) selling mandarin oranges, salty crackers, empanadas, apples, and water in plastic baggies. None of the food was “safe” enough for me to want to buy it. I’m a little more paranoid now that I have recently been diagnosed with parasites. The bus did not stop at all in their long trips of up to four hours, so I didn’t drink or eat anything except for the multiple medications I’ve been given to kill the parasites (it’s a 13 day process to kill the adults and then the eggs).
I really enjoyed Nueva Segovia and my few days there with the volunteer who goes by “Lucia.” The landscape reminded me a lot like the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. There were green mountains, pine trees, rivers, and even rain! It was a nice break from the dust, wind and noise I have become used to further south in Nicaragua.

Lucia’s town has 6,500 and is surrounded by many smaller communities, and there are also three Peace Corps agriculture volunteers who leave close by. Lucia takes advantage of this to organize fruit and vegetable markets with them - involving local farmers, and she also helps out with a PC agriculture project where volunteers help Nicaraguans make hornos mejorados or “better ovens.” These ovens are made of brick and mud with a large steel barrel inside. A fire is built underneath the barrel, and the food is placed inside. Hot air circulates around the barrel to evenly cook the food. The oven is “better” because it uses less wood, and also has a chimney to disperse the smoke. Most stoves and ovens in Nicaragua use burning wood and the kitchen area is constantly filled with tear-causing smoke. Lucia told me that many Nicaraguan women have small hairs on their eyeballs as a result of all this smoke exposure.

One afternoon, Lucia and I decided to help two laborers make one of these ovens in the house of a woman who has wanted one for a long time. She bought the materials (barrel, bricks, steel rods) and paid the two laborers 50 córdobas each (USD $2.50) for the day of work. When Lucia and I arrived, the men had already built the base for the oven, and were working on constructing the layers of bricks (about nine in total) which would surround the barrel. Trying to stay clean was useless, and soon we had mud everywhere – in our shoes, on our faces, in our hair… I would have taken more pictures of the process and we progressed, but my mud-caked hands made that a little difficult.

With four people, the work went fast. Soon we were ready to place the barrel inside, and then we started the more careful work of ensuring that there was always at least a two inch space in between the barrel and the brick to make sure air could circulate. As we started to curve the bricks inward to cover the barrel, we had to measure each side to make sure they were even, and use pieces of steel rods to balance the bricks on. Each of the four of us had different duties. One man made the mud (yes, there is actually a method to making mud. You first build a mini-volcano out of dirt and fill the middle with water and then you slowly cave in the sides of the volcano to mix in the water with a shovel). The other laborer, his son, was the brick-cutter. He cut the bricks into the different shapes we often needed: triangles, round shapes… He did this using a machete knife which is apparently something that every respectable Nicaraguan man with at least an ounce of manliness knows how to operate quite skillfully. Lucia and I were the ones who were making the layers- first placing a layer of thick light brown mud, then fitting the bricks, then sticking more mud in between each brick. The barrel that was used had previously held gasoline, then beans (hopefully it was washed in between…) and the chimney was made out of cement and we fitted it on top and it was held in place by of course, more bricks and mud.

It took six hours total to finish the oven, and I think that was relatively fast since there were so many of us, and all three of them had been through the process before. After eight days of drying, the oven will be ready to use! For all our efforts, we were given a free lunch of rice, beans, and a sweet oatmeal-like drink. I felt extremely satisfied to have done something with my hands that had a real impact on someone’s life. It was obvious that the woman we made the oven for spent most of her day in the kitchen, and she was already talking about how she would use her oven for: bread, chicken….she even was joking that she could squeeze an entire pig in the barrel and cook it too!

I can’t wait to return to that village to visit Lucia in the future and go see the finished and working oven and try some of the bread made in it. Although this “better oven” project wasn’t necessarily in my official “sector” of health, I really enjoyed getting dirty and helping people in a tangible way. Sometimes, as a health volunteer, you may wonder if people are really listening to all your educational talks, or really taking your advice about family planning, malaria prevention, and HIV/AIDS. With this project, I really felt like a real PC volunteer. This was the sort of project I had always imagined volunteers doing – getting dirty out in the country alongside host country nationals.

While I can’t always play in the mud every day as a health volunteer, hopefully I will have a chance, like Lucia to work with volunteers and projects from other sectors. Maybe I will start a community garden to improve nutrition. Something I really took away from my volunteer visit was that every volunteer’s service; their projects, their counterparts, their living situation, how they choose to spend their time, etc. is as diverse as every volunteer. I can focus on maternal health, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, parents, nutrition… My service, which will officially begin in mid-April, can be however I choose to make it. Hopefully there will be a little dirt and manual labor thrown in there to make my service “better” as well.

A Day in the Life...

To give a glimpse of what life is like here, and what I see/hear/do every day, I thought I would go through aspects of daily life piece by piece and describe what it is like to live in Nicaragua:

Food: One word: carbohydrates. All meals contain rice, potatoes, tortillas, or white bread. Simple starches abound, as do plantains and bananas. Bananas used to be my favorite fruit, but I think that could very well change at the end of these two years. Did I mention that bananas and plantains are constipating?? Well, they are. Nicaraguans also like to fry everything. People here mainly opt for the cheaper food options, and those aren’t always the healthiest. I have yet to see wheat bread, or a child eating something other than saltines or cookies for a snack. As a vegetarian though, I’ve been pretty happy: beans, mangoes, papaya, melon, tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkin, squash… My host family has been very accommodating; some families have no fruit or veggies in sight from what I’ve heard. Despite Nicaragua being a prime coffee growing spot, instant coffee is what everyone drinks. I can’t describe how much I am craving a 20 oz. drip coffee from the US… I have been dreaming about coffee beans (perhaps effects from our Malaria medication which induces dreams). Lunch is the biggest meal of the day here, and food is always prepared by the women (including me!)

Weather: Not as hot as I had imagined, actually. I think it has been somewhere in the mid to high 80s F most days. The one thing that I cannot stand however is the WIND. The wind has been so intense the past few weeks that boats have been advised to not navigate on Lake Nicaragua, and some small cars have had accidents crossing long stretches of freeway. I’m not sure what speed the winds have been exactly, but in Alaska terminology, they are at least “gale force.” The ground here is so dry that dust, or “polvo” is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. In my ears, in my eyes, my hair, in my suitcase, on my clothes, on my books, on my shoes… Cleaning it all up makes no sense, because a few minutes later, it will be covered again. My room has lots of wind and polvo blowing in and out since there is no glass over the window, and a large space between the roof and the walls. When I go running, going against the wind is also a challenge, and I’m afraid of being hit in the eye with a large rock (yes, it happens). I think I’ve already lost a sock to the wind. The clothespin holding it on the line lost the battle and I think my sock is now in the neighbor’s yard.

Clothes: As I hinted above, clothes are washed by hand and hung dry. My host family washed my clothes the first week, but now I have chosen to take over. These Nicaraguan women don’t know the meaning of “delicate cycle.” We use a big bar of blue soap to wash, which smells sort of like some sort of ointment you would put on a rash… The other day, I took a towel out of my suitcase that I had brought from the States, and it smelled like Tide and Downy, and I almost broke down…haha Not really…. I actually really enjoy washing clothes by hand. You can pay attention to where there are stains and make sure to get them out, and it’s really much more satisfying than simply pushing a button on a machine. The outdoor sink area is also a great place to hang-out for 45 minutes washing my clothes from the week. It has a great view of the sky, and I can see all the stars if I wash them at night. I have never seen stars as clearly as I can here. Also, a few notes about Nicaraguan clothes. The majority of the clothes are the t-shirts that didn’t sell at American second-hand stores. It’s actually pretty fun walking around and seeing the different t-shirts which often say something hilarious in English (“Best Grandmother Ever” on a teenage boy, “Made in America,” “Harvard University” on a homeless man…) My host family also has a mini-store in the front of their house, and they sell some of these old second-hand t-shirts. I went through and folded all of them the other day and about died of laughter. There were lots of University t-shirts, 5 and 10K run t-shirts from some random NGO in Vermont, church club t-shirts from Ohio, a breast cancer fundraiser one from Florida… But the funny ones were a few with words in English: “Naked and Hungry” (???) and another that had a picture of a rocking chair, then a caption that read, “I rock.” If I could take pictures of these people when I see them, I would start a collection.

Sleep: I am exhausted all the time here. I don’t think Nicaraguans ever sleep. It is such a contrast to Spain where getting up at 8 am was “the crack of dawn” and the siesta nap was almost mandatory. Here, rising at 6 am is normal, if not sleeping in a little bit. Some people only have running water for a few hours very early in the morning, so they (aka the women) are up from 3 to 5 am collecting water for the day. There is so much to do right when you get up: collect water for the day, heat water for coffee, sweep, start breakfast, shower… My family also rents out their large empty lot as a parking lot for neighbors, so they are up to let the first car in at 6 am. I get up at 5:45 usually to go running before P.Corps class at 8. No one takes naps here, not even my four-year-old little host sister. I crash at usually around 8:30 or 9 pm. I don’t think I’ve done that since I was in elementary school. All the other P.Corps trainees do the same. One of the things that I am SO happy I brought with me is earplugs. They are a necessity here since the street outside is filled nightly with honking, noisy cars, loud music from the neighbors and passing cars, fireworks, barking dogs, and worst of all – whistles. There are night watchmen here that patrol the streets all night long to watch out for suspicious activity. They each carry a whistle and they blow it in a certain pattern to communicate with the other watchman ALL NIGHT LONG. And they are not shy about it. I can’t count the number of times I have been woken up (earplugs and everything) at 4 am to the sound of an obnoxious whistle going off directly outside my window. Looking on the bright side, I guess I know my street is safe…

P.Corps Training: We are about to enter week four of training, and the language “facilitators” that were giving my language level classes, are now leaving us on our own (yes!) We now get to plan our own weekly schedules, and as long as we still get done what we are supposed to (a certain number of educational talks in the health center, schools, and with our youth group) then we are on our own! It’s going to be really nice to have our own time to work on assignments, do readings, and explore the town. Today we had a large P.Corps session on culture shock. I think that the culture shock I’m experiencing here is much different than what I experienced in Spain. The initial “honeymoon period” did not exist for me here in Nicaragua – it was more of an initial shock. I have slowly been adapting ever since, and am feeling pretty comfortable and happy in my routine so far. I know the far greater and more intense transition will come when I finally am assigned to my site and settle in for two years…

Fun fact No. 1: today I met a fellow Alaskan here in Nicaragua! She is also a P.Corps volunteer who has been here for some time. She is an environmental education volunteer from south central Alaska. Small world! Fun fact No. 2: Valentines Day here is not just for lovers, it’s known as “Love and Friendship Day.” Much more inclusive holiday. Hasta pronto…