A Goat Called Cena

We've been talking about it for a while now, and it is finally happening: we got a goat! Little Cena is only about two months old – he will be of a very tasty age when we serve him up at our going-away party in August. In the mean time, we'll take advantage of having a gigantic yard and no city laws about animal husbandry to learn a few things about castrating, raising and slaughtering our very own goat. Who knows when the next time such a brilliant opportunity might present itself?

How Cena came to land in our particular back yard is a somewhat regretful story. Cena was born in the community of La Garnacha, where we help out on an organic farm one day a week. On just such a day, Cena had gotten out of his pen and happened to wander into the building where we clean vegetables. He hopped around, climbing up on stacks of vegetables and nibbling on carrots, while our coworker Clemente tried to chase him out. After Clemente had chased him out four or five times and Cena had persistently returned for more each time, Davie took Cena in his arms like a baby and carried him back to his owner, Carmelo. On the way to Carmelo's house, Cena fell asleep in Davie's arms.

We had already been thinking about getting a goat for our despedida, and since Cena seemed like about the right age, Davie asked Carmelo if he was for sale. Carmelo offered to sell the goat for 700 cordobas – less than $30 – so we were pretty convinced to go for it. We told Carmelo that we just needed to build a fence around part of our yard and we would buy the goat the following week.

This is where the drama and regret creep in. During that week, as we found out later, Carmelo had sold the goat to his sister, Azucena, who wanted the goat as a pet for her two-year-old daughter. When we showed up on Thursday, Carmelo tried to convince us to buy an older goat instead, but Davie wasn't having any of it. When Azucena found out what had happened, she pulled Davie aside and told him she didn't mind giving up Cena and buying another smaller goat for her daughter. So it was that Cena very narrowly missed out on leading a long, happy life of prancing around a grassy field with a two-year-old; instead, he has ended up in our carnivorous hands.

But although this story will end tragically for Cena, there is redemption. This goat has given us an amazing opportunity to learn, and for that we are very grateful. Here is what I mean.

We've given a lot of thought to what a perfect way this will be to send ourselves off after our two years in Nicaragua. Here in the Nicaraguan campo, raising and slaughtering your own chickens, pigs, cows and goats is pretty par for the course. When little Roberto's second birthday rolls around, his parents are not going to go out and buy a package of hot dogs from the supermarket – no, they're going to go out and kill the chicken that has been running around their yard, laying eggs for them since before Roberto was born. For every special occasion – graduations, birthdays, weddings, funerals – some type of animal is killed to feed the community that comes to pay their respects.

Davie and I admire this culture of eating meat from an animal that you have personally fed and nurtured and then ultimately, an animal that you have looked in the eye and brought yourself to kill. Meat produced like this is not only super-local; it also grants its eater a truer perspective on the full costs of eating meat. Davie and I have both eaten meat all of our lives; now we'll have to come to terms with actually killing the animal that we'll end up eating, and everything that that involves. Since this is a fairly common Nicaraguan practice, we think it will be a fitting challenge for our last few months in Nicaragua. And we will certainly have to depend heavily on our more experienced Nicaraguan friends for advice in every step of the process of preparing Cena for our despedida dinner.

Recipe: Nacatamales

Blog by David

The most important room in a Nicaraguan home is the kitchen. Usually the walls and roof are caked with soot from the wood-fired fogon, which roars with heat while a woman or girl conjures up all the necessary sustenance for her entire family. In a normal day, most Nicaraguans eat rice and beans, or gallo pinto, for breakfast with cuajada (farm cheese) and a tortilla. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, sometimes featuring a meat dish and always including gallo pinto, a fried plantain and a tortilla. For dinner people often eat leftovers. It may seem that Nicaraguan cooking is somewhat monotonous, but when you look further, it turns out that there is plenty of depth to the Nicaraguan culinary repertoire.

As I am extremely excited about anything to do with cooking, when I heard that the mayor's office was offering a class on Nicaraguan cooking, I signed up immediately at no cost at all. Every Saturday for the past 2 months, I have been getting together with 30 women to learn how to prepare a variety of Nicaraguan entrees, desserts and beverages.

Of course I am the only male pupil – a fact that I emphasize by wearing my pink, polka-dotted apron to class. And I've received an extremely warm welcome in this territory that traditionally does not belong to men. On these Saturday mornings, I've learned all kinds of uses for corn that I didn't even know existed, and I have also shared with these women more efficient ways to prepare food that I learned when I worked at a restaurant in the US.

Corn is an amazing food. I have learned how to make main dishes like Indio Viejo, a deliciously thick stew; atol, a sweet pudding; and pinol, a nutritious drink made with corn, cacao and cinnamon. (Nicaraguans are often called pinoleros, i.e. folks that like pinol).

Last week my class made nacatamales, a traditional Nicaraguan food made for special occasions. Everyone, including Sarah and I, loves nacatamales. A nacatamal is a banana leaf pouch that contains corn dough, pork, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, rice and mint. They look like little green packages ready for a picnic. Early in the morning, we sometimes hear vendors walking through town announcing “Nacatamaaaaaaaaaales.” Hmm...I'm getting hungrier and hungrier as I talk about them. If you are too, try out the following recipe. (Keep in mind that nacatamales are pretty easy to make, though they are somewhat time-consuming.)

Nacatamales

3 lb Maseca

½ lb lard (or butter)

2 lb pork loin, cubed

2 lb beef loin, cubed

2 Tb achiote

¼ cup red wine vinagre

3 lb tomatoes

2 tsp beef bullion

3 lb potatoes

2 large green peppers, sliced

2 lb onions

4 garlic cloves

3 oranges

1 bunch mint

½ L milk

1 cup rice

60 banana leaves

1 bunch twine or food rope (each about 1 m long)

Combine 2 lb of sliced tomatoes, 1 lb of onions, 1 green pepper, the juice of two oranges, 2 Tb achiote, 3 tsp beef bullion and ½ bunch of mint in a blender and blend them all up.

Hand mix the maseca and the water. Once it is thoroughly incorporated, add the blended mixture and place in large pot over high heat. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens enough to create a deliciously thick and moist dough.

While the dough is thickening, have someone slice the leftover potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and carrots. De-leaf the mint stems and set them aside.

To construct your Nacatamal, place two banana leaves on your work table (one as a rectangle and another in a diamond). Place a dollop of the cooked dough in the middle. Place a slice of each of the veggies and mint. Fold up the parallel sides and fold down. Then grab one side and fold towards the middle. Compact the open side, then fold towards the middle. Wrap the twine around the nacatamal like you would tie a gift, creating a cross in the middle, and tie the twine to secure the banana leaf. Place the nacatamal in the large pot of boiling water.

Boil for about 2 hours.

Let cool and serve.

P.S. Sarah and I have been compiling recipes during our time here in Nicaragua, and we are putting them together into a cookbook. We are hoping that by the end of our service term we will have completed it and perhaps can get them printed too. We plan on featuring recipes old and new, east coast and west coast, corn and other ingredients. Let us know if you are interested in buying a copy once we print it.

Welcome to VMM, Alli and Kyle!

Now that it's May, it suddenly feels so real that our two years in Nicaragua are drawing to an end. We only have four more months left in San Nicolas. When our contract ends in September, we'll travel up to Guatemala to visit a friend before heading back to the US to settle, we've recently decided, in Philadelphia.

People in San Nicolas have started to ask us when we're leaving. Often their subsequent question is, “Can you give me your bike when you leave?” But we like to humor ourselves that their interest in our departure date is really more sentimental than that. One of our students, Samari, talks about writing a petition to our supervisor asking that we stay here for two more years, and having all of our students sign it.

We're usually not quite sure what to say when people ask us if we have to go back to the US, or if we'll ever come back to live here. Our position here has been so much about becoming part of the community and living a truly Nicaraguan life that in some ways it feels false to suddenly uproot and say, “Well, our two years here are over – we're going home.” And then there is the fact that while we have genuinely loved our time in San Nicolas, there are also so many people and places and luxuries in the US that we're anxious to return to.

What assuages our guilt about leaving is the fact that a great and extremely capable couple is coming to take our position in San Nicolas: Alli and Kyle Stiffney. Alli and Kyle will arrive in Nicaragua in August so that we have a few weeks of overlap and orientation together before we leave in September. People in San Nicolas are already excited to meet them.

We think that Alli and Kyle will be perfect for San Nicolas. They graduated from the same small Mennonite college that we did (Goshen), which is how we know them. Since then, many of their life decisions have been based on values that are critical to living in a place like San Nicolas. Their commitment to service and social justice is evident in Alli's profession as a school social worker and in Kyle's service on the board of the nonprofit Global Gifts and previous mission trips to Nicaragua.

Kyle and Alli have also lived in Nicaragua before, so they are prepared for all of the challenges and joys that Nicaraguan life entails. Both of them studied abroad in Nicaragua during college, living with Nicaraguan host families and doing service in the Nicaraguan campo for six weeks. Since then, they've been looking for a way to get back to Nicaragua for a longer period of time.

Kyle and Alli will bring their own unique skills to the community of San Nicolas. We think that Kyle's education and experience in accounting could hugely benefit various businesses and organizations in San Nicolas: the high school, the organic farming association at La Garnacha, and the various farmers and business owners in town who often conduct their financial affairs in a haphazard fashion. Alli's background in school social work should also be a huge asset to the town. We see lots of possibilities for her to use her social work skills: visiting students' houses to check in on their family situation, holding one-on-one consultations with students, or giving sex education classes at the high school are only a few options.

Whatever Alli and Kyle's roles in San Nicolas end up looking like, we feel confident that their sociable, caring personalities will serve them well as they carry on the VMM volunteer position of living among the people of this community.