Nicaragua – Week One
(Originally posted July 2009)
Hello!
Melony and I arrived in Nicaragua one week ago and have been having a great time since the plane landed in Managua. We’ve learned our way around Granada and are getting used to eating rice and beans at each meal. Melony has started her Spanish classes and I’m volunteering with an organization that works to end domestic violence.
We are each staying with a Nicaraguan family. I live with a thirty year old lady and her boyfriend in a large three story house that has twice as many rooms as people. Vilma takes in students and volunteers so my housemates have included Johnny from New Zealand and Klara from Germany. We eat lots of fruit, rice, beans, plantains and chicken. I have a room with a shower, cable TV and most importantly a working fan. Nicaragua is hot…I haven’t stopped sweating since I got here, even when it’s raining.
Granada is a great town with lots to see and do. One of the first days we visited Volcano Masaya a few miles out of town. We drove up to the top and could look right into the cloudy crater. Then, we hiked down the back side and explored a deep cave (with helmets and flashlights like real spelunkers). The climb back up to the top was really rough with the heat and the sulfuric cloud rapidly approaching with the shifting winds pushing us to climb even faster. Another day we went down to Lake Nicaragua and walked around the very green forest, ate tostones and played in the water. I’ve spent many days walking around the city, peeking into beautiful churches and soaking in the busy colonial streets. The first day I was here, Carmen, a girl that I’m working with, gave me a nice tour and helped me locate the important places (market, ice cream store, pizza place, coffee shop).
I feel like I’ve hardly left the Midwest as I’ve seen Meaghan Tuohy everyday since we arrived. She’s been here for a couple of months and we’ve had a great time catching up, eating pizza, drinking Flor de Caña rum and going to a baseball game. Much to Melony’s delight, we saw the Granada Tiburones play at the baseball stadium last weekend in the semifinals. The game started at eleven and the stadium was so full we could barely see the field until we luckily found some connections on the upper deck. I don’t know much about baseball in English but fortunately most of the vocabulary is the same (out, strike, safe, home run). Also entertaining was the dancing bat boy and an entire stadium of fans drinking beer for breakfast.
This week we visited a town, San Juan de Oriente, outside of Granada to see the people make the beautiful ceramics sold in Granada. At the workshop, we saw the whole process of preparing the clay, from using the kick wheel to taking the pieces out of the kiln. They let me try to make a vase but my pottery skills aren’t what they used to be. The top was a little lopsided and it was maybe big enough to hold a few dandelions. As we walked through the pottery place I ran into my neighbor, Sandra, that lives downstairs from me in St. Paul. She’s doing a grad school seminar for two weeks in Nicaragua and we happen to run into each other. Small world.
I’m working a presentation to share with women’s groups in the community about domestic violence. Carmen and I are making posters to leave with the groups and I’m looking forward to our first presentation coming up soon. I enjoy meeting the leaders of the groups as their passion for equality, justice and the rights of women are a huge motivation.
This afternoon I am going to meet with another group of women. This one is involved with micro financing for women and business classes to help women becoming more economically independent. This weekend Melony and I are going to a beach on the Pacific Ocean, San Juan del Sur. Next weekend, I’m taking a bus down to San Jose, Costa Rica to visit Maria. It’s been a year since she moved home to Costa Rica and I am so excited to see her again for a few days.
