Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - A. I really enjoyed this book and like the new dark turn the series has taken. It’s a shame it’s taken me so long to get into reading, but I’m glad I finally picked up this series, though I was quite against reading it for a long time.
Also, I’m heading stateside on Monday the 14th with me tentatively heading back to Nicaragua on the 30th. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to handle the culture shock. If you’d like to see me in the first days I’m there, you might have to come see me in my house since I’ll be scared to leave.
Once again, I had class cancelled on Wednesday. While this was nothing new, I went about my day like I have the past couple of weeks. I kept practicing my cooking and came down with symptoms of a stomach illness. Fortunately, it appears that it turned out to be just food poisoning. This was quite exciting news since it was my first case of actually having food poisoning and not something more damaging…like a parasite, giardia, bacterial infection, etc. It may seem odd that I would be so jazzed about this, but as I’ve mentioned in previous entries – my health is just not something I take for granted. With that scare over and done with, I’m not pushing 5 months without a major stomach illness. Such a champ.
Thursday, I headed to Telica (a large-ish town near León) to be a judge in their business competition. I had to wake up at 3 AM to catch the bus down there, and rolled in a little before 7 AM. Once there, I met up with the new volunteer there, Pieter. I figured I’d help him out with doing errands to help with the competition, and instead I was treated to seeing him have a typical Peace Corps experience (at least for a business volunteer). We went to the Casa de Cultura to grab some speakers and microphone that he got donated, only to find out that they were going to use the equipment for another event that morning. After some quick deliberation, the guys decided they had to give him the equipment (it was signed by the mayor after all) and we waited for the vice-mayor to show up with a truck to transport all the chairs and equipment to his school. We waited and waited before heading to the mayor’s office, “Oh, the vice-mayor is in Managua with the truck. Sorry.” Nevertheless, Pieter pulled it together and got the local government to come through on their end. His competition was pretty good, aside from being unbelievably hot (we’re having a severe drought right now – things are turning brown now and this is supposed to be the heaviest part of the rainy season). After the competition, Jordan and I (she was a judge as well) caught a ride with our project specialist to León. In León, we grabbed the mail, discussed the school year, and took a dog she’s dog-sitting for a walk (he looks like the dog from the TV show Wishbone and is named Pasa or Raisin in English).
After killing a couple of hours, we met up with Brie and made some rounds of León to try to fundraise some money for our regional business competition. We then hit the grocery store (it’s always great to at least look at all the things I don’t have in Achuapa) quickly before catching the last bus to Malpaisillo.
That night, a combination of an egg salad sandwich (hallucinogenic hard boiled eggs?), Brie’s whining baby of a dog, and being completely exhausted yielded some crazy dreams. The only really vivid one that I can recall was me cooking fried eggs on my leg, only to be scolded for the inappropriate nature of cooking food on a leg. Go figure.
The next morning, I had a small breakfast and caught the morning bus back to Achuapa. Like usual, I read the whole way back (who’d have thought reading for fun would become a usual for me?), but in the small town just south of Achuapa, Wiquili, I noticed a few police officers around. “Who cares?” you may ask. Well, Wiquili is a tiny “suburb” of Achuapa with a mere 300 people in it. I have a handful of students who live there and just about all my friends have family down there. Basically – there’s no reason to have a couple, or even one, police officer in the town. Well, when I got back to town, I got a phone call from another volunteer who told me to turn on the news. I headed over to my neighbor’s house to see that the National Police, and the Nicaraguan version of the DEA had busted a meth lab in Wiquili. One of the guys was from Achuapa, a relative of a friend’s family, 2 were from Mexico, and 2 were from Managua. Not only that, but they confiscated 5 million dollars worth of meth tablets, a whole bunch of barrels of chemicals and a lot of unprocessed powder.
What are the chances? Nuts.
September 12th – September 15th
Another weekend without doing much that was productive aside from improving my cooking. I finished another book, and Independence Day passed by without me seeing much of it (I just went to the store to buy pancake mix). While it is quite possibly the most important holiday in the country (I mean the kids miss upwards of one month of class preparing for it), I protested and did not go this year. Development does not come by having ten billion holidays a year (this is an approximate count of how many they have here). The kids miss too many days already, so I’m done going along with it. There will be no wilful compliance from me. Unfortunately, all this lost time has meant my kids who won the business competition have done nothing to improve their presentation or plan. While they’re probably in the same boat as the majority of the other groups in León, they still need that time to improve if they want any chance of winning the regional competition and going to nationals. We’ll see how they do.
Fast Food Nation – A. A book that is more like an investigative report into how the fast food industry has affected our country. Talks about the health implications (some of which are super super serious – obesity doesn’t have anything on some of these diseases), how food manufacturers have been affected, and even talks about how all the flavours are concocted à they’re fake flavours! I don’t eat fast food anyway, but this book made me scared to eat any food, or at least made me temporarily want to be a vegetarian.
Most of the day on the 15th was boiling hot, so I took a bike ride around town and hung around and talked with people. On this vuelta of the town, my buddy Esteban told me that they’re dog is pregnant, and I could have a puppy if I wanted one. This news effectively ended the productivity of my day as I could not pay attention to anything for the rest of the night. I kept on going back and forth with the pros and cons, thinking about how I’d only want a dog if I were able to raise it from the beginning. I also threw getting a cat into the mix, but an outdoor cat that periodically comes home is not what I’m looking for. I want a cat to hang out and chill with me. Raising a dog from a puppy would make it more loyal, or so I think. However, what it boils down to is this à I don’t know if my landlord wants a dog in her house, a puppy cries a lot, and I’d be leaving in July. The pro to getting one would be that I would have a pet that I’ve wanted for so long. Up until now, I’ve been getting my pet experiences by going to other people’s houses and playing with their pets. It’s always given me a warm and fuzzy feeling that I’ve missed from being back in the States. But is it too late for that now?
The most exciting part of the 1st and 2nd was planning for my classes. With Independence Day celebrations approaching on the 14th, the kids end up forgoing class to practice playing the drums/xylophone/dancing. Even though I get a break from class (the 9th and 10th mark 4 consecutive weeks without classes), the real people that lose are the students. Nicaraguans are indeed super competitive, and that can be great (all the schools in my town will compete against eachother, with the winner going to compete in León), missing a month of classes does far more harm than good. I mean the country is trying to prepare the youth for the future, but I just don’t see how playing the drums does that. I’d be really interested to see a cost/benefit analysis that could justify missing classes for a month.
On the 3rd, I did much of the same (see à nothing), I was able to successfully kill time, which is perhaps the skill I’ve honed most during Peace Corps. Not surprisingly, I finished another book as well:
Three Cups of Tea – B+. A story about a mountain climber who stumbles into an impoverished Pakistani town after a failed attempt to summit K2, and left with the desire to build a school there. While he eventually did build it, and many others (more than 50), he lives almost two separate lives and has a style of management that can leave those he works with quite disenchanted. While he definitely has some characteristics that make you not really like him in the book, you can’t help but point out that what he’s done in Pakistan and Afghanistan is anything but great.
On the 4th, El Sauce (the town an hour south of me) was having their business competition. With my vacation being postponed, I went to go check out the projects that the students had – so I knew how the competition will be at the regional competition for my group. Originally, I just went to see the projects, I ended up judging the business plans because one of the new volunteers was too scared to do them. With ample time before the start of the competition, I sat down with the volunteer and went over all the business plans with him to discuss what we like to see, and what we don’t want to see.
There were some good ideas, but for lack of explanation and justification, I was left wanting more information from every group. The winning group, a honey based shampoo, definitely has potential…they just gotta keep working on it. I missed all the morning busses, and to avoid missing the first afternoon bus, I had to take off before the presentation of the prizes (which I didn’t really want to be present for either due to a potential backlash from the students).
Due to the competition ending a whole lot later than I counted on, I ended up catching the same bus to Achuapa that Brie was coming on. While it was nice to not have to be waiting at home for her, I got back to my house being completely trashed since I had no time to clean it – whatever, next time. With her in town, we took my “new” toaster oven for a spin a handful of times, and I learned to cook even more. I figure by the end of my service, the food I cook will at least be respectable, and I’ll actually have some variety for the first time in my life.
Come Monday and Tuesday I continued the normal pattern of not having anything to do and read and watched some movies. While normally I’d at least venture out in hopes of doing something productive, it’s simply a lost cause to do anything before Independence
Day. After that’s all said and done, I’ll get back on things.
With all this free time, I have been working out a whole lot more consistently though. So it could be worse. I still hate jogging though.
My first full day back after a long weekend was not as action packed as I thought it’d be. My class in my campo school was cancelled, and I also learned that my classes in my other schools would be cancelled the following day as well. Thank god I already had my business competition.
With nothing else to do, I did some major yoga (I’m getting back into the rthym of it again), and continued reading my book River Town. In fact, I finished it:
River Town – A. The memoirs of a Peace Corps volunteer in China. While this volunteer lived in a large city in China, most of his experiences were reminiscent of my own here in Achuapa. Furthermore, he changed as a human in ways he thought he wouldn’t. It’s a great perspective of Peace Corps service and a really well written book.
Later that Wednesday, I went to the birthday party of my now 5-year-old neighbor, Omara. Being the first official birthday party I’ve attended I had the expectation that it would be similar to a party in the States – and I was wrong. It’s a custom to show up late, so I planned on arriving late as well. However, a handful of kids were yelling at my from my neighbor’s yard because they wanted me to show up, so I got changed and headed over right around when the invitation said the party would start.
I dropped off my gift among the anonymous gifts (I wrote my name on mine), and sat down and awkwardly waited with everybody else for the rest of the invitees to show up. When everybody showed up, it more of the feel of a structured board meeting than any birthday I’ve been to – very systematic. Once everybody showed up, they set up the piñata and a couple kids tried breaking it. Once it was broken, and the kids had grabbed their candy, they handed out food to all the guests. This same process was followed with a drink, then once again with rice pudding for. Omara then blew out the candle on her cake, and the cake was distributed (with me getting the first piece since I took pictures of her). Everybody finished eating the cake, they all left. From start to finish, the birthday party was an hour and 15 minutes long. There was close to no socialising, no singing happy birthday, no opening presents, and no dancing. It all went by so quickly that I stuck around and helped clean up.
Some of the neighborhood kids
I had planned on spending the better part of the night at the party, but when everything was said and done, it was only 5:30 – not even dinnertime! So without much else to do, I cracked open another book, thus continuing my insane month of reading. Being so early, I once again assumed (incorrectly once again) that I’d spend the whole night reading. However, come 7 PM, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open (even though I’d done practically nothing the entire day)
Thursday was much of the same of the previous day – I spent the majority of the day reading and spoke with 2 of my counterparts to discuss plans for the rest of the school year.
I also continued my return to intense yoga sessions. Before I left for Peace Corps, I downloaded a bunch of yoga PDF files with the intention to do yoga all the time. While this worked out in training, and I got a lot of mileage out of routines, after a couple months in Achuapa, I stopped using them. It was clearly a foolish thing to do because I feel a whole lot better now that I’ve started doing them again.
This day, I also noticed that I’m pushing 4 months without a stomach illness (my 1 week stint in Managua doesn’t count because it wasn’t stomach related). While those of you that are reading may not realise the significance of this, let me tell you that it’s big. Getting a bacterial infection, parasite, worms, or something like giardia is almost unavoidable over long periods of time here.
That said, while I’m stoked that I’ve held out this long without getting massively sick, I’m paranoid that the next bug will hit me soon. In the past, I’d averaged almost 3 months exactly between getting sick with stomach illnesses. The longer these periods of time in between being sick last, the better you start to feel about everything. It’s great to wake up in the morning without having to question my health for that day. From that point when I realise that I’m still good for yet another day, the endorphins start going. Never did I think that I’d celebrate such a basic thing, but I’ve realised that I’ll never take advantage of good health again.
Friday mostly went the same way the rest of the week has gone – I read, and finished another book:
Jennifer Government – C+. In this book, the government is privatized and the world is virtually run by corporations. Everybody is driven by profit – even the police require funding for every case they want to undertake. While the book itself really wasn’t that bad, it has been so long since I’ve read a over the top fiction book that I wasn’t too entertained with it.
I didn’t want to start another book and fall into the same cycle, so after eating lunch, I watched a movie and then went to my friend’s farm where I spent the better part of the afternoon. It was good to get out of the town and just chill out on their farm where there was nothing going on. Another plus was that I could hang out with their cat Chungo. Basically, it was social interaction without the pressure of actually interacting. I can just hang out there and relax instead of having my host feel they need to entertain me. Definitely a good way to end the day.
August 22nd – August 31st
The 22nd I spent the majority of my day hanging out in my house and reading since the potential of doing activities on the weekends is severely diminished. During this time, I finished yet another book (I’ve lost count of how many I’ve put away recently):
The Other Side of the River – B-. A book about a murder in St. Joseph/Benton Harbor, Michigan. The two towns are physically divided by a river and are super racially charged due to the racial barrier that this river has created as well. The book was written to solve a murder of a black teen in the white part of the town, but the author discovered nothing new and only delved into the potential theories he had. The book is well written, but the book was more about race relations between the two towns as opposed to the solving of the murder.
On the 23rd, instead of waiting around, I headed down to Malpaisillo to help Brie with organizing her competition. I helped wherever I could, and we made the final preparations on Monday before the competition.
The 25th really left me with a sour feeling all over. I won’t discuss what happened, but rather detail my perspective on how I now feel about development. I realised that no matter how hard one tries to do good things for anybody, there can always be somebody whose goal it is to ruin the outcome. There doesn’t even have to be any reason for the deplorable actions of this person aside from being prejudice. I don’t understand what drives people like this. The people that are most hurt by these actions are the people from this country. It was super disheartening to see a completed bigoted person ruin something that would have benefited so many. I was so shocked that I briefly considered quitting and going home due to the disenchantment of seeing people who claim to be there to help the people but do the exact opposite. I quickly reconsidered since what happened did not happen in my site – I couldn’t punish people that didn’t do anything. However, at the same time, the incident caused me to lose a lot of faith in what I’m doing. Definitely the lowest point of my service (even though it didn’t directly happen to me).
I headed back to Achuapa on Wednesday for a couple of days of classes and activities before heading down to Managua on Friday for an in service training session. While I initially had no interest whatsoever to go to the session, I ended up grasping more from the session than any other session I’d attended in the 15ish months I’ve been here. The meeting also scared the crap out of me because we started talking about post-Peace Corps plans.
While I’ve always had a problem living in the now with all the decisions I make, professionally, living in the now is the only way I’ve ever approached it. I always had the goal of joining Peace Corps. Well, after realising that goal, I’ve had no fixed plan since. I know I want to keep studying (looking at Environmental Economics) for a master’s degree, but aside from my personal education, I’m not sure. I know I’m not interested in a government job or a development job. I would like to keep teaching though – perhaps I could make a career out of that. However, I don’t know when I’m going to get into the “OK, let’s get into career mode.” I love studying and learning new things, but going in and out of an office every day will never appeal to me. I don’t care what I’m doing. I need a job interacting with people on a regular basis. I want to be tested and challenged. If I don’t have a job that’s not constantly challenging, then it’s not for me – and the job that fits this description best is teacher. I know that after Peace Corps, I’m not going back and taking it easy in the States – I’m going to pack my bags and go somewhere else for some new experience. So we’ll see how it goes and when I finally kick into that mode.
Saturday we had a meeting in León with all the volunteers (a sort of welcome meeting). I’m not big on hanging out with the volunteers, so after about an hour of that, I took off and chilled out in my hotel room. Later that night, I went out for a nice dinner and had a glass of wine. It’d been so long since I’d drank (around 6 or 7 weeks), that I got a headache. In spite of the physical discomfort, the day in the hotel really helped me calm my nerves and gave me the feeling of having spent the day in a spa. It doesn’t take a whole lot of luxuries to release all the tension I build up while in site.
Sunday, I headed back to site in the afternoon, and went and visited a friend of mine that’d gotten in a motorcycle accident. She’d been in the hospital for around 40 days and won’t be able to walk for 3-6 months apparently. I spent a couple of hours talking with her before heading home for dinner.
I have no interest whatsoever in cooking a huge dish of rice and beans, so I buy them from my neighbor every night and make some other dish with it. This time, I went over there to hear an off comment of, “Oh, Richard, did you hear? One of you best students died on Friday.” After further inquiry, they told me it was one of my good students in my private school. The explained that he went to the stadium for a while, and then later in the day, he collapsed in the street and died. It wasn’t all that clear who they were talking about though. They told me his name 2 million times, but their descriptions of him didn’t fit the kid I was thinking about. I headed back to my house to grab my camera (I took pictures of every one of my students), and asked my neighbors to confirm that it indeed was my student who died. It was then that I learned that it was another student who died, but was the brother of one of my students. While I was relieved that it wasn’t one of my students, it was sad because I did know the boy.
Death and severe injuries here happen so frequently, I can’t believe it. While it’s shocking that so many catastrophic things can happen to such a small town, what’s even more shocking for me is the fact that a death or serious injury can be such casual news. I guess that really illustrates the kind of history this country has gone through. In spite of this though, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to view such events as they are here. All in all, this was by far the most trying week for me professionally as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was one of the first times that I’ve been really pushed with something that didn’t involve something away from my main job. I’m glad to have had the experiences of the past week for what I learned from them, but at the same time, I’d really rather not experience such things in the future (as if I had some influence on them).
The 22nd was much like any other Wednesday for me – I went to my campo school to teach. The previous week none of my kids had anything ready to present in class, but this time they all had their marketing (though I wanted their entire business plan, it’s better than nothing). Presentations were not very honed, but then again that’s why I’m giving them a month to work on everything.
Thursday the 23rd marked my 3rd site visit from Peace Corps. This time around my boss visited me (the project specialist, who was also a business volunteer, alternates with my boss on site visits), and it made me so nervous I lost sleep over it. I don’t know why I’m so nervous when my boss comes, I guess it’s because I’m always expecting her to say, “Goggins, what the hell kind of operation do you have going on here?” While her visit didn’t yield anything negative, I figure it’s because our project specialist was a volunteer and I feel more of a connection/understanding with her since she went through it all.
Not only was I scared, but my students were also terrified. Today was also the first day that my kids would be practicing their full presentations. I was glad that my boss would be there because then my kids would understand that everytime I grill them on their product, it’s not just me being me – it’s how the judges are going to be. Her questions were so on the money that the next week my students didn’t want to present the following week in front of me because they were embarrassed.
The rest of the site visit was good and not as scrutinizing as I imagined it would’ve been. I took my boss to the new comedor (“restaurant” but on a much smaller scale), and I asked her a handful of questions considering how to approach starting some new projects and extending old ones. I also got some tips on things to put in my presentation for the new training group. Following our lunch, we had a meeting to all my counterparts, my delegada (the top Ministry of Education official of every school in the municipality of Achuapa), and a few other MINED employees. We cleared some things up with my counterparts, and then the rest of the session turned into an unexpected gossip session – about me.
“I saw Ricardo walking around town with that white girl!”
“Yea, I saw them the other day too! She’s a volunteer too! I’ve even met her!”
“Oh yea! I told all my friends when I found out!”
“Why have you never presented her to me?”
“I haven’t met her either! Why not? I want to meet her next time.”
It went on like that for a little longer before I tried to change the subject. Instead of changing the subject everybody just laughed at me and said I was embarrassed. So I told them I was going to quit Peace Corps if we didn’t change the subject – and they laughed some more, “No you won’t! You’re already halfway done!” Eventually my private life details had been examined enough and my boss headed back to Managua – phew.
That weekend I headed to Malpaisillo before going to Managua on Monday. I was giving a presentation on the types of secondary projects that the volunteers could take part in. I did my presentation in the office during the day and headed to my hotel later that night. By chance, this day was also my 1-year in site anniversary. I had originally planned on just going to the grocery store and getting some yoghurt and whatnot for dinner, but a couple other volunteers were going out for dinner. Being a “significant” (or rather, a milestone) point in my service, I decided to renounce my economic ways for one night and splurge for the night.
The next day, I gave my presentation to the new volunteers and it went…terribly. I was expecting to walk in there and have it be exactly like giving a class to my 4th year kids – but it wasn’t. I was nervous and my voice was trembling (for the first time since I started doing presentations back in high school), and in the midst of all this, I totally ignored my PowerPoint presentation and made up everything as I went along. Oh well, whatever. It’s good practice.
After getting back to site the following day, I continued putting things together for my competition. My classes went pretty well this week, but I still had some groups that hadn’t done anything/enough. Nevertheless, I’m sure they’ll pull it together come competition time (I’ve told them they will receive a zero in the class if they don’t present in the competition).
August 1st to August 18th
The opening weekend of August I headed to León for the most needed payday in my Peace Corps service. With so much time spent in Managua due to medical reasons, I dumped around 67% of my salary in around a week, leaving me teetering on the brink of financial insolvency. However, I was able to hone my inner cheapness (though I suppose it’s pretty out in the open) and make it until the weekend with room to spare.
For whatever reason, I decided to catch the early Achuapa bus so I could do some errands in León, then double back to Malpaisillo later that day. Generally, waking up early for the bus stresses me out due to all the rushing I’m doing making breakfast, getting ready, and washing my dishes (without running water this really increases the amount of time I have to spend to get ready). So as is, I’m always nervous about missing the bus (there are ony 2 morning buses – 4 and 5 AM), but the bus driver (a man whom I known by the name of Negro, literally black) kicked it up a notch for me. Negro is known around Achuapa as the fastest bus driver in town. While there aren’t many, it could be argued that he’s one of the fastest drivers in the country. That being said, starting at 3 AM (when I rolled out of bed), he started doing loops of the town. Everytime he passed by my house freaked me out. I was never sure if he was gone for good or if he was going to do another vuelta (more or less trip or loop). After a couple of loops I couldn’t handle the stress – after scrambling my eggs, I just dropped them into my hand (I make a block of eggs to save on wasted food) and shoved them into my mouth. I was too worried to miss the bus that I skipped brushing my teeth (probably the most religious routine I have – I’ll do it no matter how I feel or if I’ve just come back from the bar at 4 in the morning) and just grabbed some gum.
Once in León, I met up with Jordan and chatted a bit before doing some errands – checking the mail, and picking up a load of gum. After my chores, I spent the weekend at Brie’s house in Malpaisillo. This is generally my place of retreat for a variety of reasons. However, the proximity of the town to Achuapa – a “mere” 2.5 hours away – makes a weekend out of a site a whole lot more comfortable (logistically) than when I would do weekends away in Chinandega with Luis (who completed his service and went home).
It was during this weekend and my trip back to Achuapa that I realised my “visibility” has been extended. Now, even though I don’t live there, people are recognising my in Malpaisillo and ask me how I’m doing. All the bus drivers and guys who work on the bus drivers know me too. My favourite morning bus to Achuapa has a cheery plump guy with a huge belly as the cobrador (the guy who collects your fare). While on his bus on my way back to Achuapa, I was forced to stand in the aisle. After collecting the fares, the cobrador came up to me, “Oy, Richard. That lady over there is going to get up in a couple of stops, go get close to that seat so you can get it when she leaves.” Looking out for me. This also happens to me when I take the morning bus that leaves an hour later. On this bus, it is not the cobrador but the fresco guy (think a super sugary fresh fruit juice) who tells me who points out people who are going to be getting off soon.
Once back in Achuapa, I semi-jumped into preparation mode. My local business competition is the next week (Thursday the 13th), so I wrote up a letter soliciting donations and got the MINED stamp of approval. My goal was to get something for prizes as well as other things that would improve my competition. After a couple vueltas of town over a couple days, I managed to scrounge up 3 free hours of internet time in the internet café, 5 ice cream bars from the ice cream shop, 5 notebooks and 2 pens. It was a strange array of prizes I’d have to split between 3 groups, but one way or another it’d work. During this time, I was going around finding judges for the competition, confirming a location, and helping all my student groups to get ready for the comp (unfortunately, some of them hadn’t done anything in the 7 months we’d had class).
I gave a month in class for all the students to just work on their presentations, papers, etc., but here we were in the last classes before the competition, and a lot of them were haphazardly throwing things together. The groups that had finished were doing some major polishing on their projects and it was good to see that everything I’d been blabbing about through the year had stuck with some students. Still, I had higher expectations. With classes out of the way, I did some reading on Thursday and a major cleaning of my house.
Friday the 7th was the first day of the 9th annual Achuapa Music Festival. Last year it fell on my 2nd weekend in site and really left a huge impression on me. I was super stoked about it this year, and told tons of volunteers about it. Because of this high praise, Brie, Jordan, and Churro (Brie’s friend from Malpaisillo) all came up and volunteered for a day at the festival with me. To mark the event, we were going to make some rum raisin cookies (they were absolutely amazing) in my new toaster oven.
Before our volunteering was scheduled to begin, we had lunch at my favourite comedor Buen Sabor. I had translated their entire menu for them so they’d be able to professionally cater to English-speaking visitors. However, after asking them, they told me they weren’t using it yet – so much for that.
The rest of the day we “volunteered” in the most passive sense of the word. Last year on the first day, I spent the whole day translating, but this year I only had to translate a handful of times. The organization of this year’s festival really seemed to fall through and overall it affected the quality of the festival. The promotion for this year was really poor and it showed in the attendance by international and national visitors. On the 2nd day, some 45 bands were signed up to perform – and at 15 minutes apiece, they’d take forever. It was this year that I realised that it’s not really the festival that I enjoy, but the work that comes with making it a success. That being said, once my shift ended on the second day at 7:30 PM I was reluctant to even watch some bands play. Nevertheless, I threw my 4-year old neighbor Omara on my shoulders and we watched for 30 minutes before we got bored and left – and that was the end of my 2009 Achuapa Music Festival experience. While I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did last year, I got 5 new t-shirts (they were better than the year before) and a professional looking certificate (didn’t have that last year either).
Team León (and Colorado)! Me, Brie and Jordan
Another reason for my not watching the festival was because I had to be in El Sauce the next day at 6 AM to talk to the new volunteers (who were going to be judges in my business competition). Upon waking up that morning, (at 4:15 AM), the music festival had yet to end from the night before. The way it ended up going, I was able to jam out to some music the entire time I was getting ready.
Down in El Sauce, I saw Richard and Fran (Richard is the volunteer who visited me, and Fran, an agriculture volunteer, is his wife) and briefed them on their responsibilities for being a judge in the competition. Afterwards, we chatted a bit and had some breakfast before I ran some errands (which via ridiculous problems took too long and prolonged my stay by another hour).
Back in Achuapa, I spent the days leading up to the competition getting everybody up to speed – including students, counterparts, judges, etc. My kids seemed to be ready or in the position to throw together a satisfactory project for the competition, so that took off a lot of pressure.
Everything seemed to be going smooth and steady until the day before the competition. I’d noticed on my jog that morning that the bus from El Sauce to Estelí, hadn’t come through Achuapa, but I figured it was a fluke and would be late. A few hours later, after arriving at my campo school, I was helping my kids with their business plans together and their visual aids when Richard called me. He told me that the early bus I’d planned for him and Fran to come on wouldn’t be leaving. I had two choices – find 2 other judges or push the competition back a couple of hours. Following fifteen minutes of frantic internal deliberation, I decided I’d remain unscathed if I just postponed it a couple hours. Then back in Achuapa, while running around doing my final preparations (I told my kids they couldn’t come ask for help the day before so I had time to finish everything for the competition) I heard that the place I was going to use for the competition had a birthday party, thus eliminating any hope that I’d be able to have the room ready to go the night before. While a tad peeved, it wasn’t anything that would hold up the competition in anyway, so I didn’t worry too much about it. The next setback came when I talked to one of my counterparts. Her dad, the vice mayor and my maestro de ceremonia (my announcer), wasn’t in town and wouldn’t be around for my competition. Luckily my counterpart said she’d do it, thus ending that problem. My next holdup came when I was telling my judges of the new time of the competition, and one of them wasn’t able to come. I had a replacement judge chosen, but this was one of the bigger problems as my replacement judge was chosen at the last minute and didn’t really have the qualifications I wanted. In spite of these issues, I survived the night, but got no sleep due to worrying.
Though lacking a good night’s rest, I was definitely more calm regarding the competition because I knew it was too late to fix anything – I’d just have to roll with things now. Be that as it may, I still ran into other problems. At 8 AM when I went to set up for the competition, the man with the key to the room was nowhere to be found. While he showed up momentarily afterward, it was just another thing that tested my nerves.
When I finally got into the room I’d rented, I found the place covered with birthday decorations (balloons and streamers), which was perfect since I had no decorations whatsoever – it made it look like I put in more effort than I actually did. Not even that, but there were 85 chairs and 15 tables around from the birthday party the night before. I got everything set up and ready to roll by 9 AM, and my last judge finally showed up at quarter past ten (despite living across the street from the competition location).
The competition went super well in comparison to last year and my attendance was pretty good as well. I managed to get all the principals and counterparts I had as well as a representative from the ministry of education to attend. By the time the competition had ended, I had my predicted 1st place winner, but my 2nd and 3rd place winners completely blew me away. My smart kids from my private school got 4th place (which really disappointed them), and my campo school didn’t have any groups in the top 3. While my smart kids from my private school took the loss with silent accepteance, my campo school reacted with rather unsportmanlike behaviour. Though I had nothing to do with the grading by the judges, people yelled at me even though I’d spent weeks organizing the event by myself (because nobody would help me). I was annoyed for sure but managed to keep it together. A little later that night, the group of delinquents in my town that call me a terrorist did it again and I reacted the wrong way. That, combined with several other issues led to a complete meltdown on my part and too much stress for me to handle the situation.
In light of my meltdown, I hastened my departure from Achuapa (I was originally going to leave on Sunday), and took off on the noon bus. My goal was to sit tight in site since I’m going on vacation the 27th, but I figured me being infuriated for a couple days in site wouldn’t benefit anybody.
Friday and Saturday I spent the rest of the day chilling out in Malpaisillo and coming back from from the angry cloud that had formed over me. Sunday, Brie and I headed to León to meet up with Jordan because they were going to take advantage of some beauty event that had all the proceeds going towards cancer. I decided to skip the manicure and I hung out for a little bit with the new volunteer in Telica (near the city of León), Peter. He seems like a pretty cool guy and a good fit for León (his whole group seems a whole lot more with it than my group was). After he took off, I met up with Jordan and Brie again and we grabbed a pizza for lunch (we all were thinking the same on this one, I’d even been dreaming about pizza). Following lunch, we caught a movie (The Orphan). Come Monday morning, I headed down to pay another visit to the dermatologist for my plantar warts. I spent the morning hanging out with some volunteers from Rio San Juan and caught a bus with one of them to the hospital later on (she had a tattoo of a cob of corn on her forearm – something I’d never seen, nor expected to see). After my doctor showed up 30 minutes late (every appointment she has showed up 30 minutes after the appointment time, always coming straight from home – what’s she doing?), and 10 minutes of burning my feet with liquid nitrogen, I was out of there. I got to León without a problem and took an unsanctioned microbus to Malpaisillo (via Telica, which I was able to see for the first time). I put a good dent in a book (River Town) during the trip has well, thus convincing me to abandon my IPod for travelling in favour of a book (it makes those 5 hour trips so much more bearable).
Tuesday morning I headed back to Achuapa on the first bus back (for the first time – I was able to catch it), saw fresco man and rolled into Achuapa a good 30 minutes early. While I left completely enraged, it was good to be back now that I was in a better mood. I knew this would be the case and didn’t take to heart anything I was feeling in the peak of my “crisis”. That’s just how I take my service – if I’m off the wall angry, I just need a few days to unwind and it will be ok…and it was. It definitely helped to get back to have my soon to be 5 year old neighbor Omara invite me to her piñata birthday party tomorrow. It’s all good again.
During these two weeks, I did some major book reading (for me):
A Long Way Gone – B+. A book about a boy from Sierra Leone who had to flee his village when he was young to fight with the national army against rebel forces. A powerful look into the life of these child soldiers and what they have to go through. Though it was too gruesome for me to get through the first time, I’m glad I picked it up a second time.
Ugly Americans – B+. A book about the a bunch of Americans that were involved in high-risk trading firms in the 90’s on the Japan Nikkei. They exploited a weakness in Japanese rules to make tons of money (or lose a ton and cover it up). In the process, one of them (who the story follows) managed to make be enormously successful thus leading to the book. A super fast read.
The Brooklyn Follies – A-. One of the first fiction books I’ve read in a while. A good story about a retiree and the happenings in his life. I had no idea where it was going for the first half of the book, but when it all came together, to came to be a very enjoyable book.
In the U.S. when something unjust happens, it’s accepted that people will go out on the street corner and bitch and moan until the head of the organization that did the shafting says, “O.K. guys, they caught us, let’s stop being the total asshats we were trying to be.” Here in Nicaragua, that isn’t the case – but it’s not going to stop me.
As I have mentioned many times before, water has been a huge issue in Achuapa, particularly in the last couple of weeks. They just installed a motor to give us water the whole day (at least that’s what they told us, which was a lie), and due to the power being knocked out by wind, we’ve been waterless and powerless for a huge majority of the time.
Well, we got our water bills the other day to find out that there was a new ‘minimum’ consumption that we would be charged for. I thought the fixed rate fee that everybody gets charged covered the minimum consumption, but I guess I miscalculated. The new minimum consumption is 16.5 ‘units’ (whatever the hell that is), and is 12.5 more ‘units’ that what I use. So, instead of paying 24 cordobas, I now pay 84 cordobas due to this new ‘minimum rate’ we all have to pay. But do we all have to pay it? After a few phone calls to many volunteers, I found out that no, we don’t all have to pay it. In fact, it appears that only people in Achuapa pay this new minimum fee. My huge problem with this minimum fee is that A – we had a minimum fee already, B – we never have any water anyway, and C – if I left every single faucet open so water drained for the entire month, I STILL wouldn’t used 16.5 ‘units’ of water. We never have water, but now we’re being charged a huge amount. Everybody is outraged. But I think I’m the most outraged.
The water company is engaged in thievery right now. That’s all I have to say.
Maybe I should start a march!
December 6th
With the whole having the government steal from me as well as everybody else in Achuapa being a thing of the past (so I keep telling myself), l kept myself relatively mentally and physically occupied for the most part. Some of my soon to be 4th year students have pen pals in Florida, so I did a bunch of translations for them so they could send responses. Additionally, today was the graduation for students at one of my institutes (though I didn’t go – I don’t know any of them, or so I thought), and I did some reading up on places to bring my parents to when they come next month. I also caught that Mel Gibson movies Apocalypso – it was nice to watch a movie with subtitles instead of watching horrible dubbing.
But that aside, I had one amazing high point of the day. A couple of days ago, I noticed that the fruit stand down the street now had watermelons. Being the glutton that I am, I bought an entire watermelon as opposed to buying a slice like everybody else in the town was doing. I’d wager that it was about 7-8 pounds for 30 cordobas (about $1.50 – I think I overpaid, but I don’t care).
Today, I really dove into that watermelon and ate roughly half of it. This unleashed a torrent of endorphins that quickly overtook my body, thus rendering me in a sort of euphoric state. It reminded me of summer (though it’s December and summertime here) where I’d have access to all those super great summery fruits like cantaloupe (in Spanish it’s ‘melon’ for those of you interested), honeydew, watermelon, etc. Totally gorging myself seemed to almost transport me to a sunny park out in Denver – I completely forgot I was standing in my kitchen in Achuapa.
Those are the kind of simple things you appreciate in Peace Corps. Simplicity never tasted so good.
December 7th
Since I forgot to write it 2 days ago when I finished it, here it is:
Mountains beyond Mountains – A. A book about a doctor devoted to improving conditions for the poor. Real good book that was pretty inspirational – it surprises you just how much one person can do.
Today was a normal day for me. Nothing too exciting happened – this stems from the fact that it was a weekend, but also because I live in the campo. That being said, I did my normal round of visits.
I have developed a new hobby though – peeling oranges, the Nicaraguan way. It’s a great way to pass time, act Nicaraguan, and people watch at the same time. So every day, I buy a handful of oranges (10 cents a piece no matter what size they are!), and sit in front of my house and peel oranges with a big huge knife. This way, I get to ‘adios’ passer-by’s, enjoy the weather, and eat tons of oranges to boot.
While I’m on the topic of food, I’ve been eating extremely healthy lately. I easily eat about 2 lb. of bananas, oranges, and watermelon (now that it’s in season) everyday, and I’ve started eating chicken livers frequently too (though it’s not my choice), which are loaded with vitamin A. All this combined with my new hardcore exercise routine, and I should be getting into mad good shape in a matter of no time (speaking of which, one of my counterparts says I’m fat because my shoulders are wide – ?????)
December 8th
Today, I was under the assumption that it was the “purísima”, but upon waking up and asking a couple people, I discovered that all the parties and fireworks that I slept through last night was in fact the “purísima.” Whoops. I guess I’ll just have to wait until nextyear.
On that note, I wasn’t really in the mood to sit in my house the entire day, so I hopped on the bike and did a couple rounds of the town visiting people before borrowing the key to the gym. I have access to the gym whenever I want, and I don’t even have to pay for it. I might ask if I can make a copy of the key so I can just stop borrowing it. After a couple of hours in the gym, and an hour on the yoga mat, I ate some lunch (first time I’ve had tuna fish in more than 7 months!).
On that note, it appears that I’ve fallen into a routine; when I went to buy my tortillas from the lady on the corner, she didn’t even ask how many I wanted, she just gave me how many I always ask for.She’s not the only one either – whenever I go to the fruit stand, the lady always asks me if I want 6 bananas or 3 oranges. I gotta start mixin’ things up.
I hung out with Edys (like the ice cream!) at his shop for a couple of hours during the afternoon. I also ran into Claudia and Kenis from the cooperativa while I was at Edys’ shop. The big thing during the summer time is swimming in the river in a part of the river that I’ve never seen before – and this is nothing new. I find myself asking people very frequently about the location of places. My town is only 4ish blocks by 4ish blocks, and I rarely travel outside of that square. I know there’s supposed to be a river some 100 meters to the north of the last street and a waterfall to the east of the town, but I have yet to see either. I should really go exploring with all this free time.
I helped a new ‘student’ with English today as well. So we started the whole assessment process for her so I can figure out where she struggles. She took off at 6 (after she left I realised that I have absolutely no idea what her name is), and I headed to my counterpart’s house for dinner. It was his 6 year anniversary with his wife (he’s 2 years older than I am), so they made a huge gigantic dinner of grilled meat, rice, tortillas, and the mountain of vegetables that I bought this morning. (Mom and Dad – we’re going to eat at their house when you come visit)
Comparatively, that was a pretty productive day.
Oh! A volunteer from the business group before me got medically separated yesterday. So while she’s not from my group, her loss brings the total number of SBD volunteers to around 28 I think. Each group started with 20 people. Nuts. Peace Corps kills you, well, at least small business volunteers.
As you’ve (hopefully) quickly come to realise, I’m on vacation. That being said, I’m doing very little.
Today’s highlights include my friend Kenia telling me that me with no hair makes me look nicer. I also got a similar comment from somebody who works at the enormous pulperia. This makes me think – do I look like a serial killer with hair? What’s the deal? So far, I’ve just had once person doesn’t like my haircut, Melba. Her remark about it was something to the regard of, “What barbarity!” which was preceded by, “Noooooooooooooooooo!” So, while everybody else does like it, I intend to grow my hair back ASAP (as if I had some control over it).
I used the new cyber for the second time today as well. Now with water most of the day, a cyber, and not having to worry about making dinner, living here isn’t so mentally (and sometimes physically) straining as it once was. Sure, in terms of what I’m doing resembles little of what I did in the States (like reading – what the hell?), but at least I get through the day without any major hiccups.
I also saw a dog get hit by a truck today, and it was about as pleasant as it sounded. It couldn’t get up and walk, and when I tried to help it, it preferred to lay in the road wailing as opposed to being dragged under a tree or something.
Oh yes, exciting – I know.
December 2nd
Just when things start to look up, something else hits – typical. I’d be so overjoyed with my seemingly endless supply of water that I refrained to think about problems the wind could cause. In Colorado, lots of wind meant that my bike ride home would a little slower (but it’d be a challenge!) than usual.
Here in Achuapa however, the wind brings on an unforeseen problem – no power. No problem right? I mean, it’s sunny during the day anyway, so power isn’t that much of a necessity. However, when the power goes out, so does the water. So my living situation gets downgraded yet again because the quality of all the power lines and whatnot is absolutely terrible. That being said, the power lines don’t break or blow down so I don’t exactly know where the power goes – maybe the wind blows it away?
Today was more reading (gotta do something to get out of the sun), but I also met some girl who goes to the university in León who studies English. So from what it sounded like, I’ll probably start helping her with her English.
I should start working on some of my secondary projects…
December 3rd
I only read a little bit today, but this was because I finished my book, so on that note…
Bobby Fischer Goes to War– A-. The story about Bobby Fischer’s road to the world chess championship. Really portrays him as a paranoid, ungrateful jackass. My opinion of him has definitely changed.
I did a little more socializing today than in previous days. It all started out at my counterparts house where we ate oranges from his tree, and then taught his son how to hit curve balls (this is done by throwing bottle caps – since the caps curve when you throw them, it’s just like a curve ball). After this, I headed to the cooperativa where I chatted with Karelia and Claudia (the vice president) about a wide array of things. After this, it was back to the normal routine – read, workout, visit. Rinse and repeat.
Posted by thegoggins 
Team León (and Colorado)! Me, Brie and Jordan
