Hola from Nicaragua!
Christine, Rachel McCullagh and Andrea Heyse are in Nicaragua this summer by way of the Mev Puleo Scholarship in Latin American Theology and Culture. Here are two recent emails from Christine about their experiences.
from 5.24.2007
Hello my family and friends!
I´m currently writing to you from the “cyber river” just down the street from where I live here in Managua, Nicaragua. It´s now Thursday and I arrived here Monday afternoon and although it seems like we´ve had to be here for a while to do so many things, time has flown by. The heat is definitely something that I will have to get used to because it´s really muggy here too. I´ve been putting on plenty of sunscreen cada dÃa.
Well, what have we done? Monday we just kindof walked around the neighborhood a bit because our guide, Holly, was here for 2.5 years as a Jesuit Volunteer and lived in the same neighborhood. She´s very handy to have around because she knows all of the little things that only someone who´s been here would know…like not to wear sunglasses because they will rip them off of your face. Other than that, I feel pretty safe. Managua is a lot poorer than I expected. There´s trash everywhere and it is not a pretty city. It actually reminds me a lot of Haiti, especially Cap Haitian.
Our first meal was “fritanga”, also known as street food. Basically it´s rice and beans and fried plantains, but it´s pretty good. Here the codoba is the system of money and it´s about 18 cords to a dollar, so things are very cheap here. We went to the market and did some other kindof touristy things just getting to know the city a bit. We´ve been doing a lot of walking, but it´s good for the health you know…We´ve also been buying bags of water on the street for 1 cordoba (sound familiar Haiti people?).
Yesterday we moved in with our families and mine is pretty cool. I have my own room in Doña Nyves´house. She has two grown children of the same names as her and her husband and she talks a lot. The language has not been a problem at all though, I´ve understood just about everything. I think they speak a bit slower, but I got into a discussion about politics today with Doña´s son. Anyway, I only have three minutes left on my account at the computer here, so I should wrap up. Please write to me if you get a chance because I would LOVE to hear from everyone and how you´re all doing in los estados! Okay me voy–besos a todos!
Christine (pero aquÃ, Cristina)
from 6.2.2007
Well I´ve now completed week number 2 here in Nicaragua, and things are starting to settle down a little bit. Yesterday afternoon we got back from the campo–basically a community called Miraflor in the mountains in the northern part of the country. We left early Monday morning, the 28th and drove in a little microbus for 3 hours until we got to a small town called Esteli. There we picked up our guide, Edwin, and drove another 2 hours on questionable terrain literally through the mountains until we arrived at the little community. Most of the people there belong to a cooperative, which provides them with a cow to basically make their living. Andrea, Rachel, and I stayed in one house with a lady and her little boy, and our guide, Holly, and our bus driver, MartÃn, and his cousin, Juan Carlos, stayed in another house up the hill a little bit.
Pigs and chickens ran around our feet under the table while we ate and the cows were across the “street”. All of the cooking was done with fire and there was no refrigeration.
Hammocks hung outside of our room next to the bucket shower. That was definitely an experience, especially since the temperature in the mountains is about 30 degrees colder than that of Managua. We relieved ourselves in the hole in the ground in front of the house–there was a door though…and at least we didn´t have to worry about not flushing the TP. There was only one light on the porch and none inside, but the light attracted so many bugs that we couldn´t sit outside after it got dark (approximately 6:30pm), so the first 2 nights we went to bed at like 7pm. I had no problem sleeping though because I had felt sick ever since the bus ride.
The first thing we did was tour the organic coffee plantation. While we were standing there I got really dizzy and blacked out again, I thought from dehydration. So basically after that I went to bed at 4 and didn´t leave again until 9 the next morning. My stomach hurt so badly too and I had this horrible taste in my mouth, so I thought I might have a parasite, but a couple days later I felt better so it´s all good.
While we were there we also talked with the leaders of the Catholic church there and heard what they were doing. We also had an interesting talk with the women of the cooperative and heard their stories about how their houses were burned and they were kidnapped and stuff in the 80s for belonging (or knowing someone belonging) to the cooperative. This was really interesting to me and one of the ladies was interviewd in the documentary that James, Tina, and Megan made last year.
We also attended an evangelical service in someone´s house. Here evangelism is really popular and apparently taking over central america. It was definitely an interesting experience–kindof intimidating when a lady was so overtaken by the spirit that she started hissing and knocking things over…long too. we left before it was over after more than 2 hours. When we came outside Martin, Juan Carlos, and Edwin were sitting on the grass laughing at us because we were suffering so much.
The next day we went to another cummunity like 30 minutes away and it was much prettier–so many beautiful flowers, but it was more used to having tourists too. They had some superbueno coffee, but the weather there was even colder. We saw a ginormous tree, some climbed it, and we saw a lot of different plants and stuff from that area. It was like a reserve sortof. Can you tell I´m not proofreading this email? I´m trying to get used to this kind of keyboard too.
Anyway, that day it was also continually raining, so naturally, we went swimming in a waterfall, which was superfrio. It was definitely an experience though and definitely worth it. MartÃn, our bus driver is probably one of the funniest people I´ve ever met. He and I converse in spanish a lot. He´s 42 and has 2 kids and his wife was a model and professional dancer. One time in the waterfall, I was trying to pull myself up on a rock when I looked back and saw MartÃn swimming like a beached whale under the waterfall and I laughed so hard I lost all strength in my arms and had to wiggle my way up, looking absolutely ridiculous. After that, we were all frozen anyway, so we went ahead and took our bucket showers in the rain and put on all the warm stuff we had with us and cuddled up with some of that superbueno coffee. That night after dinner was so funny, MartÃn told us all of the dirty jokes that he knew and some of them had me in tears they were so funny. Maybe I´ll repeat them to some of you…
Anyway the next day we came back to our families in Managua and back to real toilets and showers.
This Monday we start our work and Tuesday we start our spanish classes. Rachel and I will be going to a place called La Oya de la Soya. It´s basically a place for kids to come and eat before and after school I think. We´re still kind of unsure about what exactly we´ll be doing, but I´m excited. Anyway, I´ll let you know how that goes once we get started.
Hasta luego,
CK