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.