September 2nd
Today, after waking up and killing some time, I headed to Malpaisillo to be the judge in the LEC competition of one of my friends in Leon. Coincidentally, she’s from Colorado too (Centennial to be exact), so it helps when I’m missing Colorado. The bus from Achuapa dropped me off on the highway on at the entrance to Malpaisillo and I had to take a sizeable trek into town. I rendezvoused with Brie outside one of her institutes (where we’re going to have the LEC competition tomorrow), then headed to her house. She lives roughly 4 blocks from the institute in a quite cozy house. We hung out and talked for a while before Greg, an environment volunteer from our department showed up.
By agreeing to be judges in her competition (all her judges were PCV’s because of political issues surrounding judge selections), Brie cooked us an amazing dinner (sure beats the pasta and corn flakes I’ve been making myself) and to top it off, made a cake too! She doesn’t have an oven, so it’s done the Nica way. In other countries, I’ve read it’s done with a rock inside of a pot, which then radiates the heat. I heard that here, it involves a tuna fish can inside of a pot…or something. I’m clueless, I should’ve learned some culinary skills before I left, if only to give myself some variety.
It was good to get the perspective of volunteers who have been here for a while. Greg’s service ends in November, while Brie is an SBD volunteer a year into her service. They both reassured me that the first 3 months of service are the longest – and that gives me hope. Some of those days are pretty long, but for the most part, I’ve been able to pass every day more or less without too many issues (unless I’m dying from mysterious tropical diseases). On top of getting their perspective, I got the chisme (gossip) about fellow volunteers, while in itself seems to be a past time of PCV’s. As soon as something happens to you, it spreads across the country to every volunteer faster than a bacterial infection throughout your body. The only good that comes from this is that you tend to get phone calls from people you haven’t talked to in a while. So perhaps it could be said that chisme is key to the maintaining those friendships with other volunteers.
Competition tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.
September 3rd
We woke up pretty early because the competition was due to start at 8 AM. Brie took off to get things ready at about 6:30 AM after a quick breakfast, leaving Greg and I to our own devices. We got up to date on the world news (She just got high speed internet – I’m jealous. Everybody has the opportunity for things like this where I’m just hoping to get landline telephones in my site.), before Adam, an agriculture volunteer from a tiny town of 400 randomly, showed up. After talking for a bit, we headed over to the school for the competition. Brie had bought Pico (a REALLY sugary bread), and frescos for everybody in her school (via fundraising or something), and it was our job to haul all of it to the school.
The competition was due to start at 8:30 AM, but unsurprisingly, it started an hour and a half late. There were students from all of her schools there (if I were to put a number on it, there were more than 500 kids there), and after it was our job to review all their projects. Brie was to narrow down the projects to 12 finalists, but we had to go around the tables and pretend we were actually making judgments and that we were super important. Whatever table we’d go to, we’d have about 200 students form a circle around us, to see our reactions to this specific project, even though we were just observing them.
Finally, the competition started after we were all introduced on stage in front of the 70 billion students that had arrived, and after some long words from the delegada of the municipality. A table was put in front of the stage where we (the 4 judges) all sat, completely ready to scrutinize the groups. With 4 people, we had 3 people evaluate the presentation, and I volunteered to evaluate the business plans and finances. I was the only business volunteer among the judges (aside from the project specialist), so I just evaluated the reports themselves.
Brie had some 42 groups competing, so she would be sending 5 groups to the competition. There were about 4 groups that really warranted being sent there, and another that kinda fit in/kinda didnt. When we finally went to present the top 5 awards, we all stood on stage while the winners were announced. We were to shake the hand of each winner when they came up to the stage to accept their prize. However, each group that won sent up one of their girls and all of us had to give a very awkward kiss on the cheek to the winner in front of the 5 zillion people that were there. Incomodo.
After the competition was over, Erick (our project specialist) gave me a ride into Leon so I could check my mail before heading up to Chinandega for my buddy Luis’ competition. Oh if things only went according to plan. I wanted to pop into the post office, grab my package that I had waiting for me, and then hop a bus to Chinandega. However, upon arriving, they told me that the guy who could get me my package was eating and that I just needed to sit down and wait until he came back at 2 (it was 1:30). Since I won’t be going back to the post office for 3 or 4 weeks, what else could I do? Two o’clock came and went, and so did 2:30. Finally some random dude walked in and the lady at the desk told me he could get me my package. After giving him my package form and taking me to an office, we found that it was locked. After speculating whether or not we could break the lock off of the cabinet my package was stored in, he ultimately decided that wouldn’t be the best idea. We came to an agreement that he would put my package on a bus and it would be at the Enitel (the cell phone building) by Friday (so…yesterday). Hopefully your package arrived Heather! After my experience in the post office, I hopped a bus to Chinandega where I met up with Luis.
After arriving in Chinandega, there really wasn’t much to do since it rains in there all the time. Plus I heard we’re in some sort of tropical depression, which makes it even more unpleasant than normally. We did the Chinandegano thing and headed over to the bar where we met up with Danica and another Nica 47 volunteer, Elizabeth. Danica ended up hanging out with us the whole night and we watched movies (as if there was an alternative with all the rain).
September 4th
Thursday was the day before the competition…meaning Luis would have to go to school to plan some more. I just had to kill time, and that’s exactly what I had to do. Unfortunately, this came in the form of me hanging out in his apartment for a very extended period of time. While it did get kind of boring, I really have to look at this as a vacation and realise that all the outlets I have here in Chinandega (high speed internet and cable) just aren’t available in Achuapa. I should enjoy it while I still can! Danica called me around 2 and I met up with her and Elizabeth for lunch and some beers. Luis showed up some time later and after Elizabeth took off, we headed back to Luis’ for more movies – it was raining. We got a pizza that night and did more of the same – wow, life in the city is a lot less…exciting for me than Achuapa. So there you go – Peace Corps can be pretty much exactly like the U.S. – except with a little more Spanish.
September 5th
Had to wake up early today because today was the day of Luis’ LEC competition. He advised me to leave around 8 AM to get to his competition for the start time at 8:15. Like I initially suggested to him, there was no way in hell that he would start on time, but he seemed to think otherwise. Just before I was about to leave, he gave me a call and told me that his competition would be starting a whole lot later.
I eventually showed up at 9:15 to find everybody still not ready. I met two of the judges (2 Nicaraguans) that would be judges along with Coburn (a Nica 47 volunteer) and I. Luis originally had 14 groups to present, but he told us only 7 would be presenting because half of them didn’t do it. We reviewed the business plans of each group to give us an idea of which group had the best business plan (since that was one of the prizes that would be awarded). It was a radical change from the Malpaisillo competition – none of these groups even stood a chance of competing against the worst groups in Malpaisillo. The students just didn’t care. One group (which would have won) took off running and could never be found after being told they were going to present first – they just didn’t want to present first, so they dropped out of the competition. Another group dropped out because they said Luis made them feel bad (they would’ve been the other winner probably). I just don’t understand it. It turned out that the other judges (Coburn included) were super easy and I was the only person who actually graded according to the criteria indicated on the evaluation checklist. Therefore, I essentially selected all the winners since the other judges gave marks of 53/60, 59/60, etc., whereas I didn’t give any groups above a 30. It was disappointing to see so many students not care at all, but if they’re not motivated, you’re out of luck. Actually, now that I think about it, all my groups in Achuapa that aren’t ready at all could have won the competition in Chinandega. Gives me hope about my students.
After the competition, I met up with Danica where we had a nice…’chat’ about our thoughts about Nica students. It’s just overly disappointing that many don’t have the motivation to do anything in school. After this, we followed it up with another movie (Brick). That was the story of my day in Chinandega – again. We watched TV/movies/hung out and talked most of the night before heading out for Chinese food – I know, such an authentic Nicaraguan experience.
