Richard’s Reckless Travels

July 19th

Well, good or bad, I intended to document my experiences here in Nicaragua so I could look back on them in some years and say “OH YEA!”

Today I had a complete meltdown.

All the stressors of the week:
-    Last due dates for projects
-    A youth group without a tangible result
-    Some issues with the host family
-    Word choice blunder
-    Finishing ASBO project
-    Finishing youth group prep/presentation
-    Bobby getting sent home
-    No clean clothes
-    Mold growing on all my hats (save the Goggins hat) due to rainy season, total loss
o    Losing my sense of identity with this one
-    Lent my sandals to a fellow volunteer, came back with a not so nice smell

All in all, they were all small things, but holy crap did they ever pile up. I canceled everything I was planning on doing right as I was walking out the door because I realised I just couldn’t handle it.

I ended up locking myself up for 5 hours meditating and being introspective. This session helped a lot.

Not regretting being here at all – love it here. Not wishing I could leave – excited about what I’m here to do. It was just a completely new experience. When they said you’d be exposed to extremely stressful situations, they weren’t kidding. Intense experience.

The field trip into my mind was all I did today. That was an intense enough activity for one day.

July 20th

The day today started relatively bright an early at 6:30 (still not able to sleep in) because I had to get out of the land of SBD volunteers. I was just craving contact with my fellow TEFLers, particularly following my meltdown of yesterday. The game plan was to meet Danica and Dianne in Diriamba (whoa – mega alliteration!) just to hang out. However, while I was getting ready Dianne called with dreaded news – she was sick so she wouldn’t be coming (it turned out that most of the TEFL volunteers were sick with an amoeba and bacterial infection (double whammy!) that they got from food they got in a workshop with the ministry of education. So with her out of the picture, I called up Danica and planned on just hanging out with her.

The bus ride down to Diriamba was a…new experience, as it appeared to have 2 clowns on it making the ride to Jinotepe. They were just bickering back and forth with jokes and making balloon animals, making the ride itself quite entertaining and tolerable. I ended up buying 2 balloon animals from them to give to Danica and Dianne, as well to support these guys who obviously put forth an impressive effort for out hard earned cordobas.

When I got into Diriamba, Danica and I chatted about the whole situation with Bobby, then met up with Maria, a new TEFL “aspirante” who is a transfer volunteer from the Republic of Georgia (she came straight from Georgia following her 2 years there). We walked around and hung out for a bit, then went to the Pali to put together a care “sack” (cookies, banana, and juice boxes) for Dianne since she wasn’t feeling too well.

Dianne was super surprised by our unexpected visit, but she ended up needing the visit just to improve her mood (it’s the end of training blues, everybody’s got them), in addition to improving her health. We ended up spending about 2 hours there before convincing her to go to Jinotepe to go indulge in some pizza.

Our lunch trip to Jinotepe was full of distressing, as well as poking Maria’s brain for info about spending 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer – how it wears on you and whatnot. However, the conversation covered several million topics (I can rarely remain focused, but apparently other people couldn’t either), and it was just a good way to relax following the overly stressful week. Apparently TEFL had been pushed to their limits after the last week as well, so we had a good venting session. This venting session was continued as we made our way to a bar in Jinotepe to meet a bunch of other TEFL volunteers – good times.

Coincidentally, the bus ride home included the same entertainment that I enjoyed on my trip down to Diriamba this morning  – that’s right, the clowns were back. This time, I was able to refrain from buying one of their balloon animals, and just donated a cord to their cause (yea, only around 5 cents, but 5 cents goes far here).

Definitely a good day spent unwinding and getting out the tension, for all involved parties it seems.

July 21st

Today started early. I woke up at 5 AM so I could be out of the door by 6 AM because Peace Corps wanted us at the UCA at 7:30. I got out after a few issues (my host sister was sick), grabbed Jordan, and we headed to the bus stop. After a quick stop by the ATM, we were in the bus and I was seated on a bucket (they were out of seats).

Our cobrador was anything but pleasant and insisted on giving crap to pretty much everybody. He made me move to a different seat 3 different times, as if it were more efficient. However, in the end he got his own – the bus got pulled over and was ticketed because we’d crammed 25 people in the bus and people were standing. He continued to whine before the guy sitting in front of me, a 20-year officer (I think a general) in the Nicaraguan navy just told him to shut up and quit his whining.

Jordan, Owen, and I ended up being the first people to show up at the UCA. We ended up finding Douglas, the awesome Peace Corps party bus driver waiting for us and enjoyed all its air-conditioned goodness (it’s about 87 degrees here at 7 AM everyday). After we got the majority of people in the bus (Avi was sick, and Joey was severely bitten by a dog), Douglas proceeded to take us to La China, Matagalpa. The ride itself was absolutely gorgeous and reminded me of how Colorado would be if it were incredibly lush all the time.

La China is situated in a mountainous community just outside of Sebaco, Matagalpa and really is quite a beautiful place. All the SBD volunteers went there so we could observe an agriculture volunteer and learn more about agrobusiness opportunities (well for those of us that are in small sites). There we had a 3 hour presentation by the program director for Peace Corps Ag program, then broke for lunch. One of the projects the volunteer had done was create a park for the town. This involved getting 55 dump truck loads of dirt brought in to level the ground, a bank donated a stage for the park, they put in a tetherball pole, and he recently just got funding to build a basketball court. In addition to that, he’s been working with a woman who started growing mung beans in a garage. She went from having absolutely nothing to building a house, installing running water, a flush toilet, and buying a flatbed truck to deliver her beans as well as other goods in the community to the supermarkets in Managua. She really was a rags to riches operation and really amazed us all – just an incredibly talented, driven, and smart woman.

In addition to the aforementioned, we talked with some farmers from the area that the volunteer worked with. One is getting certified to be an organic farmer, one was lauded for having for “good farming practices”, and we talked with a few others that were creative/innovative farmers in the area. We ended up getting a tour of the organic farmers farm where he grew papayas, tomatoes, and passion fruit. He had all these incredible methods of naturally keeping pests off his crops it was unbelievable. But not only that, his papaya trees had at least 100 papayas sprouting off wherever there was room on each tree. All the other papaya trees I’ve seen in the country have not even compared, generally there would be 10 to 15 on an enormous tree.

After seeing the farm (and getting papayas for free!), we got to observe a methane storage area that a previous ag volunteer had created. In involved taking horse manure and mixing it in a gigantic concrete vat with water. The methane gas would rise after mixing it with the water, and in turn, this gas was used for the stoves in 3 houses. It was really incredible and one of the most sustainable things I’ve seen in the country – totally cool.

We ended up leaving around 4:30 (an hour and a half after we planned on leaving), but it was worth it in the long run. I’m excited about the opportunity to potentially find ag projects to work on when I get to Achuapa. Furthermore, PC is going to give us a ton of ag resources for those of us with the opportunity to work with farmers. Douglas, with his fearless driving, got us down to Managua in about an hour (instead of the 2 hours it normally takes), and I ended up getting back to Masatepe at around 7 PM.

The days tend to go by pretty quickly whether it’s a good or bad day.

July 22nd

Well, as our last day in our training towns, you’d think the day would go a bit differently – and you’d be wrong. The day started out at 7:30 AM so Jordan and I could arrive at Olla de Barro on time for our 8 AM charla. To say we were stoked to be having our last charla in our training towns would be an understatement. The wear and tear of training really has started to set in on us, particularly after this past week. Nevertheless, we stuck with it and will just hold in all the tension until we’re alone at our sites so we can explode there – just kidding.

Actually, the charlas today were halfway useful on top of being straightforward and non-sugarcoated, something that is always welcomed after 11 weeks of charlas full of icebreakers. The end is just over the horizon, and we’re ready to just get to it. The charlas themselves weren’t really noteworthy, but provided us with the information we’ve been pondering from the very beginning – at least we finally got it.

We ended up getting out of Olla de Barro at around 4:30, completely charla-ed out, and with but a mere afternoon left in our training towns. Katie, Lindsay, Jordan, and I ended up grabbing going to the Pali in Masatepe, then hanging out in the park for a while to do some reflecting on the day/enjoy some ice cream/oreos/chocolate milk. However, as luck would have it, it started to sprinkle after very little time, and we had to split ways.

On the way home, I stopped by the Tiendita, the shop my host mom’s cousin owns, because I heard she had a guayavera (a lightweight Nicaraguan shirt) that was in my size. Unfortunately it had 4 pockets, and struck me as more of a lumberjack shirt than one that would scream “authentic Nicaraguan,” so I ended up holding off on the purchase and will just swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in my normal clothes that I teach in – I’m not here to impress anybody (with my looks anyway).

The rest of the night just held the always-dreaded packing. It’s awfully strange to have packed up my entire life in a bag 3 times since December. I’m actually looking forward to getting to my site and having all my stuff in one place (well, when I move out of my host family’s house) for an extended period of time. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find more of a sense of myself than I did in the U.S.?