As my last post described a Catholic ritual, let me make it clear that there are a number of other sects present here in my little metropolis as well. There is a very active Evangelical church on our main street, a very modern center for the Jehovah's Witnesses, a tiny Presbyterian church, and a church in progress for the local Mennonite families. While I haven't seen a church here, I have also heard that there are Baptists, and there was quite a large Baptist church back in Masatepe. Back to the Mennonites for a second. I have only seen a few of them, but they are definitely a presence here. Unlike in Belize, where I saw quite a few Mennonites, all the ones I have seen here are native Nicaraguans. In Belize, they were clearly Caucasian immigrants from other places. While the religion was obviously brought here by European immigrants, it is interesting that it has taken hold enough here to have native Nicaraguan converts. Right now I don't know much about the history of how this came to be, but in the future I hope to learn more.
I felt like this needed a clarification because at times, religion is a very big deal here. This partially has to do with the historical timing of the proliferation of many of the Protestant sects that are here now (about 120 in total). Many of the churches grew sizably in number during the 1980s and in some towns religious affiliation seems to be a proxy for political affiliation. Currently, more than 25% (it may be more, that number is kind of old) of Nicaraguans are members of some type of Protestant church, with much higher concentrations on the east coast, where most Miskito people are members of the Moravian church.
Now, in my town, religious affiliation doesn't seem to be a problem. From what I've seen everyone gets along just fine. I think the larger risk is that I will work more with people of one denomination than another, simply because in a place where religion forms the basis of so much social interaction, people of different denominations form communities within their community. The family I live with right now is Catholic, so many of their friends and associates tend to be Catholic as well. Luckily for me, this problem is easily remedied. I just need to make sure that I reach out to people in the whole town, and don't just rely on my family for social connections (not to say that they don't talk to the Evangelicals or anything, I'm just talking about tendency here). I already have a few Protestant connections because my counterpart who lives here in town is Evangelical, and the one friend I have made by randomly talking to a stranger in their yard is also Evangelical. And my piece of anecdotal evidence for interfaith harmony is that one day after a La Purisima, Ana (host sister / my 15 year old mom) and I stopped at a pulperia for something, and all the people from the Purisima were passing by, and the woman in the pulperia sighed happily and said, "Look. Everyone going home from La Purisima, Catholics and Evangelicals together. I guess everyone has the Virgin."
And of course, a picture. This is my and my host brother Javier at his graduation from high school. Here the school year runs from the very end of January to the end of November, making the school year coincide with an actual year, which I think must make for much easier record keeping.
He is currently in Managua taking his entrance examination to go to college. What score he gets will determine what he can major in. The system here is quite different, but here's what I've learned so far. Each college has a different entrance exam that they use, and in order to major in something at a college, you have to take their exam and receive a qualifying score. The scores are non-transferable from college to college, and just because you qualify to study something at one place doesn't mean you'd necessarily qualify to study the same thing somewhere else because they have a different entrance exam. There are public and private colleges of different sizes, different costs, and offering different things. You take your entrance exam in December after you graduate, get your scores a couple of weeks later, and start college somewhere between January and the beginning of March. Most start in the earlier part of that range, but there are some places that start quite late for some reason that I haven't figured out yet. And, as in the US, there are places that are more sort of technical-oriented, and places more like what we think of as a liberal arts college.
One of these is in San Marcos (next town over from Masatepe), and it is the most expensive college in Nicaragua. It's called Ave Maria, and therefore obviously Catholic. More interestingly, it's also bilingual, with classes in English and Spanish, and with a slew of professors from the United States, many from its sister campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During training we received an introductory lecture from a biology professor there about the current environmental problems in Nicaragua. He works full time here now because he discovered that with his salary, he can live quite comfortably here and study anything he wants about tropical biology.
Anyway, to backtrack, I would ask that you all send up a little prayer or think a happy thought, or whatever you do, for Javier so that he will get good scores and be able to major in whatever he wants!!
I felt like this needed a clarification because at times, religion is a very big deal here. This partially has to do with the historical timing of the proliferation of many of the Protestant sects that are here now (about 120 in total). Many of the churches grew sizably in number during the 1980s and in some towns religious affiliation seems to be a proxy for political affiliation. Currently, more than 25% (it may be more, that number is kind of old) of Nicaraguans are members of some type of Protestant church, with much higher concentrations on the east coast, where most Miskito people are members of the Moravian church.
Now, in my town, religious affiliation doesn't seem to be a problem. From what I've seen everyone gets along just fine. I think the larger risk is that I will work more with people of one denomination than another, simply because in a place where religion forms the basis of so much social interaction, people of different denominations form communities within their community. The family I live with right now is Catholic, so many of their friends and associates tend to be Catholic as well. Luckily for me, this problem is easily remedied. I just need to make sure that I reach out to people in the whole town, and don't just rely on my family for social connections (not to say that they don't talk to the Evangelicals or anything, I'm just talking about tendency here). I already have a few Protestant connections because my counterpart who lives here in town is Evangelical, and the one friend I have made by randomly talking to a stranger in their yard is also Evangelical. And my piece of anecdotal evidence for interfaith harmony is that one day after a La Purisima, Ana (host sister / my 15 year old mom) and I stopped at a pulperia for something, and all the people from the Purisima were passing by, and the woman in the pulperia sighed happily and said, "Look. Everyone going home from La Purisima, Catholics and Evangelicals together. I guess everyone has the Virgin."
And of course, a picture. This is my and my host brother Javier at his graduation from high school. Here the school year runs from the very end of January to the end of November, making the school year coincide with an actual year, which I think must make for much easier record keeping.
He is currently in Managua taking his entrance examination to go to college. What score he gets will determine what he can major in. The system here is quite different, but here's what I've learned so far. Each college has a different entrance exam that they use, and in order to major in something at a college, you have to take their exam and receive a qualifying score. The scores are non-transferable from college to college, and just because you qualify to study something at one place doesn't mean you'd necessarily qualify to study the same thing somewhere else because they have a different entrance exam. There are public and private colleges of different sizes, different costs, and offering different things. You take your entrance exam in December after you graduate, get your scores a couple of weeks later, and start college somewhere between January and the beginning of March. Most start in the earlier part of that range, but there are some places that start quite late for some reason that I haven't figured out yet. And, as in the US, there are places that are more sort of technical-oriented, and places more like what we think of as a liberal arts college.
One of these is in San Marcos (next town over from Masatepe), and it is the most expensive college in Nicaragua. It's called Ave Maria, and therefore obviously Catholic. More interestingly, it's also bilingual, with classes in English and Spanish, and with a slew of professors from the United States, many from its sister campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During training we received an introductory lecture from a biology professor there about the current environmental problems in Nicaragua. He works full time here now because he discovered that with his salary, he can live quite comfortably here and study anything he wants about tropical biology.
Anyway, to backtrack, I would ask that you all send up a little prayer or think a happy thought, or whatever you do, for Javier so that he will get good scores and be able to major in whatever he wants!!
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