Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

9-26-07 Today’s very exciting topic is the plants of Nicaragua . I n the US , I had a Guide to the Flora of South Carolina, and I wish I had a similar book about Nicaragua . Especially now because it’s the rainy season, and everything is in full bloom. Rig ht now, it rains here every day. Some days it is a constant downpour, other days it’s sunny for a long time and then the whole sky falls down in about fifte en minutes. Either way, we are guaranteed rain, and my clothes are guaranteed to take forever to dry. Yesterday, I washed a lot of my laun dry and got very lucky with some serious sun during the earlier part of the day, so my clothes dried in record time. While this may seem like a minor inconvenience, clothes that take 4-plus days to dry (no exaggeration) come out smelling much worse than they did before they we re washed. Here are my clothes hanging in our garden today. We hang clothes there when it’s sunny. This is our lavandero, which is wher...

9-22-07 Saturday We built our vivero today. We had the first meeting time of all the pueblos, 8 AM, so we had the kids meet at 7:30 because of the whole Nica-time thing. We did not anticipate that when we got there at 7:30, there would be kids who were actually early! Our group is bimodally distributed. My science friends get my meaning, but basically we have two distinct age ranges. We have youths who all have 18 and more years, and then we have the kids from our school, a few of which I am sure are about 10. Amazingly, these two groups of kids work very well together. The older kids help the younger kids (and us, when we need some help with giving directions in Spanish). The younger kids have a lot of enthusiasm, which the older kids think is cute. So far it’s worked out really well. So today we had 10 kids show up. We were ecstatic. This is a really good turn out for 7:30 AM on Saturday morning to build a tree nursery. I am pretty confident that this would be difficult to swing in t...

Thank you for being impressed, now if I could only get up enough courage to take the bus alone, I´ll be set. It´s not about the safety, it´s about my language. I´m afraid I´d end up in the totally wrong part of the country... A vivero is a protected trench in which you plant trees. There is a lot of preparation involved, but you want to give them the best possible start, so... The trees are planted in small containers and protected by a fence. In 3-6 months you transplant them. One of the biggest environmental problems here is deforestation, so the viveros are a big part of our environmental education work. And the other topics... 13 Sept 07 We had our first youth meeting!! And it went better than expected. Our youth group is a little older than we anticipated, but youth here is anything between 13 and 20. Some of our “kids” are at the limit, but that’s okay. If they’re into working on the environment, we’re going to work with that motivation, and try to recruit some younger kids in th...

Okay, so it has come to my attention that right now you guys might not be aware of what I’m supposed to be doing here. Up until a week ago, I didn’t know either, so that makes a lot of sense. During training, there are a LOT of projects that we have to complete, but they’re all meant to give us practice doing stuff we will need to do once we’re at our sites. There are 3 main areas: in the schools, youth group, and PICA. Here’s a brief summary of each, for anyone who cares. In the Schools: Once we get to our sites, we have to teach in at least 3 elementary schools about Medio Ambiente (the environment, henceforth MA). We get to practice here. We observe a few classes, and then we have to give 3 charlas, which are like talks with interactive activities. The first one we have to do is 20 minutes, but we get to split it up between the 4 volunteers. Now that’s only 20 minutes, but it’s 20 minutes in Spanish, which for us right now is a challenge. The second and third are both 45 mi...

It’s amazing how much your life can change in a week. There’s so much to write about, so this post might seem a bit disjointed, but I’m going to try to hit all the topics I’ve been making notes about. First, I am not a volunteer yet. I am an aspirante, or a trainee. I don’t get to be a volunteer until I make it through training and get sworn in. In training, I have a LOT of classes where we do language studies, but it’s integrated with technical and cultural studies. So we learn about family members and then come home and interview our families and make a tree. I must be honest and admit that I am in the lowest language group, but I am learning so much so fast already, that while I am terrified about giving charlas and having to round up a youth group, I feel like I just might be able to do it with the other trainees in my village. We make a good team, so here’s hoping. Our language instructor for the first three weeks is wonderful. She is amazingly patient, which is good sinc...

The first few days have been a bit of a training blur, as we have had a lot of charlas on safety, our jobs here in-country, what competencies we will be expected to achieve before swearing in, that sort of thing. It’s great information, and I’m glad we’re moving into things slowly, but I am ready to get out there into my training site and really get started. Today we took a whirlwind tour of Managua, and I managed to remember to take some pictures. We went to the Peace Corps office, and saw some of the sites of the city, but only very briefly. Lake Managua – There’s actually a movement to change the name of Lake Managua back to its traditional indigenous name, which unfortunately I can’t remember right now, and don’t have the internet time to look up. You’ll just have to do a little research of your own! Another Lake Managua – Almost all the way to the left in this photo, you can see a white wave-ish object. That’s the National Ampitheater, and then to the right of the large...