Week in Matagalpa

View from our host-house

As I sit here on the porch of our host family's house in Matagalpa, the sounds of cheesy Colombian soaps blare from the TV. No one can feasibly argue that our first week in Nicaragua has been as dramatic as those forlorn Colombian lovers, but it has been quite an adventure.

We flew into Managua on Monday and experienced one of my favorite moments of every cross-cultural journey: leaving the airport and racing through the busy city streets with your eyes chock-full of billboard ads and neon beauty salon signs and snack carts and on and on . . .

Food and pithaya (dragonfruit) juice

We stayed with our Managua host-mom, Mary Luz, that night and woke up the next morning to the sounds of roosters and to our first Nicaraguan meal – gallo pinto (rice and beans). Then Sam, who is one of the current VMM volunteers at the Batahola Center in Managua, picked us up that morning and sent us off on a rickety bus to Matagalpa for a week of language school.

Matagalpa is a nice-sized city situated in the cluster of mountains north of Managua. Its elevation makes it a bit cooler than Managua and also super-scenic. September is the height of the rainy season in Nicaragua, so it rains predictably every day for about 20 minutes. Taking naps while the rain beats against the tin roof is one of our favorite Matagalpa activities.

We're staying with a host family here who lives on a very steep hill overlooking the city. Our host mom, Marlene, cooks us enormous meals of rice, beans, eggs, fried plantain, cheese and homemade fruit juices.

Every morning I put my meager Spanish skills to the test in 3-hour one-on-one lessons that leave me feeling exhausted and saying things like, “donde como!” My Spanish is definitely still hiding in its shell, but with some gentle coaxing and a lot of forced communication, I think it will come out eventually. In the mean time, Davie is our resident conversationalist.

View of Matagalpa from the Cerro de Apante

A few days ago, we visited the “Castillo de Cacao” (castle of cacao) in the campo outside Matagalpa. We got to sample the different kinds of chocolate they make with locally-grown cacao beans and bought a few bars to tide us over. We've also been on a hike in the Cerro de Apante nature reserve, which involved some spectacular waterfalls, some grand views of Matagalpa and some crazy-big spiders. At the end of the hike we ran into a sloth that was just hanging out on its back in a tree above us.

Drummers in one of the desfiles groups

Throughout all of this, our daily activities have been set to an incessant soundtrack of beating drums. In all of the schools all over Matagalpa, students have been practicing their drum and dance routines for months for the annual Independence Day parade that happened last weekend. It was this huge communal event, with people packed against each other and lining the streets to see the girls twirling batons and the boys beating rhythms on their drums. The great energy of Nicaraguan pride was tangible in how enthusiastic everyone was to press up against each other, even in the dire mid-day heat, to see the people streaming past. But it was also unlike any patriotic Independence Day parade I've ever been to in the US; because in spite of all of this proud nationalism, we noticed that some of the paraders were also carrying flags from other countries too.

Los desfiles, as the parades are called, were a brilliant introduction to Nicaragua; it was so cool to be able to observe Nicaragua's Independence Day during our very first week here.

Antes de Nicaragua

Here we are – three weeks after our wedding, a month after we left Seattle, and one day before we move to Nicaragua – at a retreat center next to tiny Lake Beulah in the middle of Wisconsin nowhere.

I will always remember this place for being the first place I ever ate deep-fried green beans. I will also probably remember it as the place where we met our fellow missioners for the first time, where we did some intense preparation for our cultural transition to Nicaragua, and where we sat up on the roof watching the sun set and the stars come out.

Of course, it's been hard to fully appreciate the beauty of this place with the knowledge that we'll be in Nicaragua (Nicaragua!) in just a few days. And since we don't really know what American commodities we'll miss in Nicaragua, we've had to stock up on luxuries just in case we won't see them for two long years. Here are some last things we've tried to get in:

• Last chance to shake our heads and say “bleh bleh bleh bleh” to our baby nephew, Andresito (in Pennsylvania, on our last visit to Davie's family)
• Last Korean barbecue meal (visiting my brother in Chicago, with my mom and him)
• Last Frostee from Wendys (on our drive to Wisconsin from Chicago)
• Last swim in a weedy lake instead of a pristine ocean (after pontoon boat driver/priest Father Vince abandoned us in the middle of Lake Beulah and told us to swim to shore . . . That is only a slight exaggeration)

It has been really good to have this time to get to know our fellow volunteers: Kelsey and Erika, who will be working at the Batahola Center in Managua and who we'll see somewhat regularly, and Tommie, who will work as part of a literacy brigade in El Salvador. Learning more about the core values of Volunteer Missionary Movement has also reinforced that we can, in good conscience, completely sign on to the mission of this program.

We're processing lots of issues having to do with the delicacy of entering a culture not our own and figuring out how to accompany the people of that culture without forcing our own assumptions onto them. But one passage in VMM's “Spirit and Lifestyle” handbook by Edwina Gately makes me sure that whatever the struggles involved, this bridging of cultures is ultimately a good thing.

“We are first called and moved by the very love that lives within us,” she says. “It must reach out to others, spilling out, touching and transforming the world in which we live . . . We wish to challenge and dissolve the barriers that divide people and church and nations. We stand for oneness in the body of Christ.”

P.S. Thanks so much to those of you who have donated to our service already - we've succeeded in raising half of the funds we need for our two years in Nicaragua. If you're interested in supporting us, check out our page on VMM's website and click "donate." Thanks!

With our fellow volunteers: Kelsey, Tommie, and Erika

With the VMM board and S.V.D priests

From the roof of the retreat center