So What Are You Guys Doing Here?

Sometimes I'm a little jealous of the worker ants in our back yard. Even at night, you can see this huge long single-file string of them, crawling along in an organized fashion from the anthill next to the latrine and up the mango tree a few feet away. They crawl 10 or 15 feet up the tree, cut these very precise little pieces of leaves and then descend back down the line of ants, delivering the leaf pieces to their hill. They do everything with such precision and purpose. And at the end of the day, I bet they have some pretty cool mango-leaf furniture hidden away in their anthill to show for all their work.

Davie and I, on the other hand, have no mango-leaf furniture. Neither do we have such precise daily goals; and we certainly don't have as much control over our work as our neighboring ants do. Much of that will probably come with time. I know that for now we should just embrace our role as “accompaniers,” worrying less about what we're doing and focusing more on developing relationships with the people of San Nicolas. But it can be difficult to banish the Western to-do list mentality and still feel successful about our work.

The school year here in Nicaragua is drawing to an end in December, so if Davie and I want to start any new classes or clubs, it doesn't make sense to do it until February, when school starts again. In the mean time, we are plugging into a few different projects that are under other people's ownership:

 --  Co-teaching English at the high school. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays we put on our high-school-cool faces and help teach three or four English classes a day. Part of this involves going to the front of the class to pronounce vocabulary words like “statisticals” and “hellow” that the teacher has written on the board. The other part involves taming the students, who often leave class after the teacher takes attendance and run around and around the school, chasing each other until they collapse. Davie is beginning to perfect the stern teacherly air; yesterday he confiscated one note and reprimanded a group of girls who were doing each other's makeup during class.

--  Preparing produce for market at an organic farm. On Thursday we take the bus part of the way and then walk the remaining 3 miles to La Garnacha, a village that offers a lot of cool ecotourism activities and also has an organic farm. They make Swiss cheese, coffee and herbal teas as well. We have been helping clean carrots and green onions and package green beans on Thursday mornings. We have a few other ideas for things we could do at Garnacha: teach computer classes or ecotourism English classes, work on their web site or improve trails and trail signage in the area.

 --  Helping sell Garnacha's produce at market. On Friday we've been going to Esteli, the closest big city, to help sell produce at a cool farmers market in the town square. They usually don't need all that much help, so we'll probably start rotating which of us goes to the market on Friday.

- We have also begun to get a few requests for one-on-one English conversation sessions with people in the community. Knowing English really opens up the job market to people (or so we've heard), so we're excited to work with people who are really serious about improving their English.

When the new school year starts, we have a few ideas for projects of our own. Until then, we will continue to invite people over for dinner and talk to people in the streets. Our primary work in the next few months is to make friends.

A Morning in San Nicolas

San Nicolas, nestled in the mountains

There are few proper addresses in Nicaragua (at least in the way that Americans think of addresses). But in the province of Esteli, in the town of San Nicolas, on the house next to the mayor's office, at 5:50 a.m. a crow scratches its claws noisily across the tin roof and then leaps into the air, cawing.

Just next door, the rooster in the yard two houses down from the mayor´s attempts a crow that sounds more like a final rasp of breath. This is the 20^th crow it has attempted since 4 a.m.

A dance class performing outside the school

On the street outside, the brightly repainted American school bus announces its 6 a.m. departure for the city of Esteli by uttering seven beeps in quick succession. The grey bench seats are already full and 23 people stand pressed against each other in the middle aisle. Everyone slides back the slightest bit to make room for the 24^th person, a woman wearing a butterfly clip in her long hair. The woman with the butterfly clip is returning home to her husband and two-year-old daughter for the weekend. Every week, she leaves her family and travels four hours to San Nicolas so that she can earn enough money to support her family by teaching English at the local school. The woman with the butterfly clip likes the velvety feeling of baby's skin. She dislikes the harsh sounds of the English language.

The bus begins its slow chug up the mountain, swerving out of the way for two cows walking down the main street in San Nicolas. The cows give a lazy moo. They have large wishbone-shaped sticks hung over their necks so that they can roam around the town on their own and not escape into gates or bushes. The cows like nibbling on the beans between the cracks in the pavement. They dislike carrying the heavy sticks around their necks.

Preparing produce for market at the organic farm, La Garnacha

The cows belong to a man who wears a cowboy hat. While they are roaming around the town, the man with the cowboy hat is refilling the water tank in his back yard. The town water comes on for two hours in the morning every other day. It takes exactly 38 minutes for the tank to fill up. After he fills it, the man with the cowboy hat will climb onto his horse and ride off to the small bean farm where he works on a nearby mountain side. The man likes the feeling of putting his feet in stirrups.

While the man with the cowboy hat is filling the water tank in the back yard, his wife stands over a wood fire inside the house. She mixes together corn and flour and water and heats oil in a griddle over a cement stove. The woman places the 46^th guirilla she has made this morning into the basket that she will bring to the school later on, so that she can sell the thick tortillas for 5 cordobas each, or about 20 cents. The woman likes braiding her daughters' hair. She dislikes watching the older students at the school drape their arms all over each other.

English lessons

Six miles away, at a tiny shack along the Pan-American Highway, one such student sets off from her house. She wears her favorite Aeropostale t-shirt because her school uniform is still drying on the line. It takes her 1 hour and 45 minutes to walk over the mountains to the school in San Nicolas, so she starts early, just as the sun is rising. As she walks, she thinks about the boy she likes with the swirly design shaved into his scalp. The girl with the Aeropostale t-shirt dislikes having to step out of the way for cow droppings. She likes the feeling of bright new clothing.

Meanwhile, back in the house next door to the mayors' office, the two Gringos sleeping beneath the tin roof begin to stir. In 2.25 hours they will pass the two cows nibbling beans in the street. They will enter the classroom where the girl in the Aeropostale t-shirt sits, waiting for her English class to start. At lunch they will buy one of the 77 guirillas that the guirilla woman has cooked that morning. The Gringos dislike the drops of water that creep through the holes in their roof when it rains. They like saying “Adios” to every person they meet as they walk to school.

Notes, Coast to Coast

In the last weeks, our feet have traveled four different regions of Nicaragua – and still, we haven't reached our final destination.

After our week in Matagalpa, we traded the mountains for the sea and sped off to the Corn Islands off of the Caribbean coast for a week of honeymooning. There, we stuffed ourselves with lobster, snorkeled clear turquoise waters and lay in hammocks reading Game of Thrones out loud. In the vein of footNOTES, we also found a mysterious note in a juice bottle that may or may not have led to a pirate's treasure.

Years ago, the British controlled the eastern coast of Nicaragua, bringing African slaves and the English language to these isles before the Spanish kicked the English out. This makes for an interesting cultural mix of African-Latin ethnicities who speak an array of English, Spanish, indigenous, and creole languages. Apparently, there were also pirates on these islands at one point. Anyway, we were quite busy partaking in our obligatory honeymoon beach-lying, so we didn't get to truly experience much of this Caribbean culture. Someday, we will have to return.

We got back to Managua last week and promptly left for a weekend retreat with the other VMM volunteers on the opposite coast, near Leon. The Pacific coast was a little less idyllic than the Atlantic coast, but the huge, crashing waves were really fun in a different way. We spent some quality time thinking and talking about how we've been doing with this transition to Nicaragua and what it will mean to accompany or to be accompanied by the communities we'll be living in.

This week we're back in Managua, and it is HOT. So far Managua has been like a train station for us – we've stopped over here briefly in between our trips to other places – but since we're here all week, we're hoping to learn a bit more about the capitol. I still feel pretty ignorant, but here are a few notes that I've gathered:

• Managua is sticky hot – maybe the hottest place I've ever been – especially in the middle of the day.
• The city is built on fault lines. Since the huge earthquake of 1972 leveled almost all of the city, no main city center has been rebuilt. Much of Managua was built in the last 40 years, and much of it centers around neighborhoods.
• Managua seems to have a lot of cool arts things going on – e.g. the Ruben Dario National Theater, named after Nicaragua's most renowned poet.
• There are a lot of pulperias (little convenience shops) in Managua! There are also a lot of banana chips in Managua.
• Managua is built for cars. Lots of people get around via taxi here.
• Yesterday we visited the Parque Historico Nacional Loma de Tiscapa, where Nicaragua's former dictator Somoza lived and where he also had an underground torture chamber. Now it is covered with quotes and photos of Nicaragua's biggest hero, Augusto Sandino – the inspiration for the Sandinista movement.
  
  

I'm sure there are more notes we'll take on Managua – the capitol will be the place we come to replenish our supplies of chocolate chips and peanut butter, after all. Right now, we're mostly just excited to get to San Nicolas, settle into our house, and meet the people who will be the central characters in our lives for the next years.