An Unexpected Adventure

Carrie and I now have two youth groups going on. The first is in San Gregorio, a neighboring community a mere 1.5 hour walk away. We have only had two meetings, the first of which we played the most unruly game of basketball ever, and the second of which we cooked what basically amounted to fried leaves (steamed Yuca leaves, eggs, flour and seasonings) that came out supprisingly good. But the most exciting thing is how into the group these kids are. There are around 11 in total and they all cant wait for our next meetings. We are also trying to take them to a waterfall in another town and try and teach them how to swim, help teach them English and break down gender roles by encouraging all sexes to do all activities, no matter how much it goes against Nicaraguan culture. Even their parents are excited and want to get involved. Our other group is a cooking group in Murra, which is basically what it sounds like. Right now we have 8 girls and one boy and thus far we have cooked two forms of cookies and fried bananna fritters (Nicas LOVE to fry their food). Not really much more to say on that other than it is a load of fun, very messy and the kids love it.

Well, today officially marks 3 months since I left the states and things are still going very well. I have some up days where I love everything, and occasionally some frustrating down days where nothing seems to go as planned, of course, but as a whole Im very happy and still am not ready to leave. My Spanish continues to come along…I can get by just fine, but often forget words and misconjugate things. A personal favorite was on Carries bday when I told the kids we were all going to eat kaka, which I though meant cake, but in fact meant what you think it means. Ooops! And as for the English teaching group I was trying to start, because it is currently bean harvesting season, we still havent met since before we left for Thanksgiving, but my fingers are crossed.

Our new neighbors are also over 24-7…after Carrie and I get home from a hard day of work and just want to unwind, they come over within 2 minutes of us getting there. And they are the nicest people ever, so we cant really ask them to leave. There is also a non-stop cycle of giving, with various foods being exchanged between our two houses daily. The mom stops by to give us tortiallas every day, and we usually bring over a sample of the dinner we made that night, which is usally something they have never tried before. The new house itself is finally our home, as we have decorated it and gotten it set up like we want. Its a bit less private than our old one, and much smaller, but it already feels like weve been living there for ages. Our shower, and I use the term loosely, is 4 pieces of wood sticking out of the ground with black tarp surrounding it and pieces of wood on the ground to stand on while we bucket bath behind our house. Oh, and we have a nice new latrine (no sarcasm there…our old one was awful!). Photos to come eventually.

I have to leave Nicaragua every three months because I dont have a Visa. So today I went to the Nica-Honduras border, got my passport stamped in Honduras and snuck back into Nica. Technically Im supposed to be in Honduras right now, but in a month or so I will go back to the border and get a Nica stamp and be legal again. There is really no security there and I will have no problem getting it done, its just funny that I had to come to the third world to become an illegal immigrant. Oh, and an interesting fact…Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Northern Hemisphere (after Hatii), but with corruption and kickbacks, the president makes more than any other leader in Latin America.

Check it out, I have two photo galleries on Snapfish right now….

New Photos

Older Photos From My First Month Here

I found the following description of Murra in some Peace Corps materials Carrie had lying around. Hopefully it will give you more of a picture of where we live.

Murra is a small municipal head in the department of Nueva Segovia. The tiny pueblo has a population of approximately 1,000 inhabitants and is made up of four barrios (neighborhoods) squeezed into a narrow valley high in the mountains. The people in MUrra make their living primarialy farming corn and beans and raising coffee. Although its population is small, Murra is the center for many rural communities (about 17,000 people in total live throughout the entire municipal region) so many people also make a living as shop owners and vendors. Situatied in a high mountanious region, Murras climate is significantly cooler than much of Nicaragua. Murra has electricity and a running water system. There are several pulperias (shops) in Murra, three comedores (resturants) and two hospedajes (very small hotels). The community has one Catholic and two Prodestant churches.

As I mentioned in my last email, I am currently in Leon by myself, as Carrie has a two day meeting in Managua and I had no desire to just hang around the hotel room all day (theres nothing much to do in Managua). Anyway, so I hopped on a bus to Leon, on which I met a very nice 18 year old named Francisco Rico (Frank for short) who spoke great English and was very excited to be my guide around Leon. He offered for me to stay with him and his family, but I was kind of excited to stay in a hostel and meet some backpackers, so I declined. We got off the bus and I followed him around for a while, met some of his friends, and he showed me my hostel and we went to the bar in front for a beer. After it was over, he made no effort to throw in a few cents for his share and actually asked if he could borrow a few bucks for a cab home. I agreed and we made plans to meet at 10am the next day. This should have been my first warning sign.

Tomorrow comes and Frank shows up at 10am on the dot. We start to walk around and I quickly learn that his idea of being my guide means that he is going to show me a bunch of shops where his friends work and basically show off his new gringo to everyone. But I keep going along with it, because every once in a while we see something cultural. However, he begins to get hungry and explains to me that he has no money, and would really love a hamburger. OK, I think, this guy is showing me around all day and a burger costs like $1. Sure! So we eat, walk around and see more stuff, and he wants to go have lunch at his grandmas house. He spends the whole day talking about how excited he is for us to have lunch with her….needless to say, we never do. We just keep wandering around, going into every store he knows of that has air conditioning. I have determined that hes obsessed with AC. Every time we entered a place with AC, he would stop, smile, point in the sky and say the word, FEEL! Eventually I come to realize that theres really not that much to see in Leon, but I am beginning to get to know the city well, in addition to all of Franks friends.

The last stop on the tour are some ruins, which happen to be next door to this 18 year old girls house, who he also wants to ask to his graduation party the next day. He gets his date, manages to get another few bucks out of me (what can I say, Im a sucker sometimes), and says his goodbyes, telling me that the girl (named Reyna) will show me how to get back to the area of the city where my hostel is. But first we need to look at every family photo she has ever taken, while her mom sits next to her and smiles at me and asks me tons of questions. Now, from the beginning I am sure to mention that I have a girlfriend several times, but the girls mom tells me that its ok, my girlfriend is in Managua. I should have a girlfriend in Leon as well. My girlfriend in Managua will never know. The 18 year old, Reyna, laughs uncomfortably, but agrees. I continue to stress the word GIRLFRIEND as I spend the next hour looking at all her family photos and seeing all the art that Reyna has done in her life.

Finally, its time to hop on the bus to get back to the center of town, and of course, my new guide has no money, so its gringo to the rescue. So Reyna, me and another of her friends hop on the bus, as they have a dance class to go to and want to show me where their dance classes are. The dance class is of course cancelled and the next two hours are spent wandering around the city, stopping at various shops. I also have the privelage of meeting Reynas sister, who also thinks I should be Reynas girlfriend, and chatting with her for a while. Before bording the bus in the first place, I told the girls that I had no more money because it was all in the hostel. But to get home, the girls needed more money (like 25 cents) so to keep up appereances we walked back to my hostel and I give them the change. They wanted to keep hanging out, but by this time it was almost 8 and I was tired and told them that I just wanted to relax and eat. To which Reyna replied…were hungry too…we want to eat too… HA! Not a chance at this point. I told her I was a volunteer, had no money, thanked them for showing me around and finally said goodbye.

So over the course of when I got off the bus the first day untill when I said goodbye to the girls the next night, these folks managed to get (although it was all worth it for the experience) around $8 out of me. I met half of Leon and had one new girlfriend proposal. All in all, a very interesting day for the first day I have not spent with Carrie in over two months.

As I said last email, Im not going anywhere any time soon. As I approach the 3 month mark, I have to briefly leave the country for a few days, as Americans are only allowed to be in the country for 90 days without a Visa, but a simple trip to another country for a few days can get around that regulation. Carrie and I are looking forward to getting back to Murra and getting some projects back on track that have lost steam because of the hurricaine and the move and whatnot. My Spanish continues to improve, though I still have a long way to go and still get frustrated sometimes. Since a few of you have asked, I have lost around 15 lbs since Ive been here. I have a new digital camera on the way, since the old one was unable to be fixed. Photos should be online soon…the past 3 towns Ive stopped in have been out of order for putting digital prints on CDs. I miss everyone and thank you all for your emails and support. And please understand if it takes an eternity to get back to you, I will eventually…internet time is just at a premium here and I try to get these mass emails out above all else to keep everyone in the know!

After taking a day to rest a little, Carrie and I found ourselves at the base of the Volcano Maderas, with a local guide, some water, and designs to hike it. The 8 hour, 10K hike was one of the toughest Ive ever done. It was only around 1400 meters high, but the entire thing was a mud pit. From start to finish, we were slipping and sliding around, falling on our rear ends, hanging on for dear life (well, maybe thats a bit of an exageration) and more. And, to top it off, Carrie was still super sick from our crazy move week, but the trooper did the whole hike anyway! So yeah, needless to say, we made it up and down and it was a great feeling of accomplishment. Our guide was a 24 year old, with a 10 year old daughter, and was also one of the nicest people Ive ever met. And the highlight was by far lunch atop the volcano in the crater, which was filled with a lagoon, as the volcano is now inactive.

So after hiking the Volcan Maderas, Carrie and I decided that we did not want to stay at the backpackers hostel for another night and were going to return to the other volunteers house we had been staying at. So after a strenuous 8 hour hike, we quickly packed up our bags to catch the 4:30 bus, which we were told was the last one out. While I was checking out, Carrie was talking with some older woman who, along with four of her friends, had chartered a mini tour bus for the day. So at about 4:25, Carrie and I leave the hostel and begin the 1km run to where the bus is, hoping to make it on time. When we finally arrive, the bus has not come yet and there are 4 other backpackers waiting along with us. After roughly 30 minutes, the bus has still not come, but Carries tour bus came down the hill and we flagged them down and begged for a lift.

These poor women could not have known what they were getting themselves into as six smelly, just hiked a volcano and didnt shower, backpackers tossed our bags on the roof and piled into the mini bus. The smell disgusted me, and half of it was coming off my body. I can only imagine what was going through their minds. Anyway, after about an hour drive over some of the muddiest, bumpiest, worst terrain Ive ever seen, we come to an impass, as there is a stalled out bus stuck in the mud. There are about 25 people trying to push it into the middle of the road, while a Toyota truck ties a line between the front of the truck and the front of the bus. Finally, about 30 minutes later, the truck, aided by a bus pushing the stalled out bus from behind, is able to jump start the stalled bus, which finally gets moving.

This whole time, all of us on the minibus have left the bus and are standing around watching the show on the side of the road…in the middle of nowhere. We also realized that the stuck bus is actually the bus that we need, which still needs to go all the way back to where we were and then come back. Which in Nicaragua probably means that it will drive to the end of the line and not go back until tomorrow. The women suggest we get on this bus, probably sick of our stink, but we have no intentions of doing that. Instead, one of the drivers finds a driver of an empty mini bus behind us who offers to take us to where we need to go for a small fee. We agree, and to get the ball rolling, I hop up on the roof of the new bus to pull up everyones bags, which are being handed to me from the roof of the old bus. Finally, around 2.5 hours after we left the hostel, we pulled up to the house, completely exhausted, in desperate need of a shower and some sleep. Too bad the bed Carrie and I were sharing was barely big enough for one and I spent most of the night half off it. But thats a different story!

So upon returning from Managua for Hurricaine Beta, Carrie and I have two days of normality before learning that our next door neighbor, who has been talking for years about buying the house we were living in and had never done it, finally got off her you know what and bought it. How did we find out about this you ask? Through a letter written by the PASTOR owner who lives in another town, sent on a bus, that basically said…sorry, I know we had a contract (that gaurenteed Carrie could live in the house through August 06) but I had a debt that I had to repay and I sold the house. You have 12 days to find a new place to live… That was it. And Carrie and I were leaving town in 7 days, so we had a week. As if this is not absurd enough, Murra is a tiny town with no open spaces and no room to grow…so there arent even any easily available places to move into.

After talking to lawyers and townspeople, all of which said that we were totally in the right and should refuse to move, we decided to just give in. See, the neighbor who bought the house is a schoolteacher and we didnt want her badmouthing us. And the neighbor had sold her old house (for $150, which we easilly could have afforded if she had just TALKED TO US FIRST) to someone else who then sold their house, setting off a chain reaction that left us gringos out in the cold. Anyway, after exhausting every idea we had and every option for housing in town, getting super stressed out and Carrie getting sick as a result, we finally came across the one option…basically, a giant rectangular box made out of cement. The owner put in a thin wood divider wall, some light, a pila (the water thing) and some other comforts, but it has one window, grainy gray walls, and is out in the middle of nowhere, not accessable to the kids we are working with regularly. But oh, its the only choice, so its our new home. Thanks for coming down to volunteer, now eat crow!

The best part was moving day. The neighbor told us she had a car we could use to move, so Carrie and I sat around all day waiting for the car to come, which it finally did at 530, after sunset, the day before we were leaving for 10 days. So we had to quickly move everything to the new house, unpack what we could, set up what we could, while the house was still being finished, in the dark, getting ready to leave the next day! Oh, and while we were physically moving out of the old house, the neighbor was inside sweeping and cleaning and getting it ready for her to move in. Its like jeeze, cant you even wait till our dust settles? Needless to say, Im very anxious to get back to Murra on Friday to finally unpack and settle into our tiny new house! I really think we can make it into a home and it will be all good, it was just a stressful week.