A Culture Connected to the Cosmos

These days, the hillsides that circle the San Nicolas basin grow lusher every day, drinking in the rains that are finally feeding us. The papaya tree in our back yard has grown at least three feet in the last month, and when we look up to the bowl of mountains that surround us, everything is emerald.

In a place like this, so bursting with life just waiting for expression, the earth itself sometimes seems alive. Everything – people, animals, plants – seem to be connected by tiny veins of life. And as we are learning, this sort of belief in a cosmic world is something of a tradition here. Many people in this area strongly believe that humans can attune themselves to the natural world and, in doing so, can work with nature for their mutual benefit. Here are a few of the ways that people do this.

Planting

According to several local farmers, crops planted under a new moon or luna tierna (tender moon) will be less successful. The danger period is from the day before the new moon begins until three days after it begins. Crops planted during this time, many farmers claim, won't flourish like crops planted at any other time. One friend of ours, Toño, believes that this is only true for leafy crops like lettuce. Another friend, Marlon (who is a highly educated farmer and veterinarian), always postpones planting until at least three days after the new moon.

Water

During the drought earlier this year, one of the most common topics of conversation was water. Everyone wanted to know whether you had it, and if so, how you got it. One way that people find water around here is with a divining wire. Not everyone has the touch, but people who have a strong connection to the earth can use this wire to find wells under the ground. Padre Patricio, the Italian Catholic priest for this municipality, is one such person. Padre Patricio holds the u-shaped wire at his waist, with a hand on each end of the wire, his hands poised at his hips. He slowly turns in a circle, asking at each turn, “Is the water in this direction?” When the wire floats up of its own accord, you know that the water source is in that direction. With subsequent questions you can find out depth, gallons per second, and size.

Medicine

Doña Victoria, the woman who used to work in the natural medicine clinic in front of our house, has the closest ties to nature of almost anyone else we've met here. Walking along a dirt road, she can point out the names and medicinal uses of almost every plant that lines the road. She also has a special technique for diagnosing ailments, using bio-energy analysis. We visited her last week with some friends who were visiting us. We sat in her living room while she showed us the shelves of natural remedies covering one wall, with herbs for coughs and kidney infections and almost any other kind of ailment you can think of.

To diagnose what medicine our friend Elise needed, Doña Victoria put a bag of some kind of herbs in her lap. She told Elise to put her thumb and forefinger together and try not to let Doña Victoria pry them apart. When she wasn't able to pry them apart, this meant that those herbs were not the medicine Elise needed. Next she put a natural lotion in Elise's lap, and this time, when she tried to separate Elise's fingers, she could do it. Elise needed the lotion, she said, for her mosquito bites. Somehow, Doña Victoria claims, the body instinctively knows what remedies it needs and unconsciously receives the natural energies from those remedies when presented with them.

While we're not totally convinced that these cosmic techniques are always completely accurate, there is an undeniable beauty in these ideas. The fact that these kinds of beliefs have existed in traditional societies all over the world for hundreds of years also lends them a certain amount of credibility and respect. We're interested to know more about these ideas though; if you know anything about any of them, leave us a comment!

Fiestas Patrias, or Happy Birthday Nicaragua

After several months of unannounced marching sessions in school, loud band drumming for the whole town to hear, and much planning, San Nicolas celebrated Independence Day last weekend along with Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. All of the modern Central American countries achieved independence from Spain in 1821, so they all celebrate the same independence day; it wasn't until 1838 that Nicaragua actually became its own country.

For some reason the celebrations in San Nicolas took place on September 14^th instead of the official day of independence of September 15^th. On Sunday, San Nicolas swelled with people from all over the municipality seeking to enjoy the festivities. Folks here really know how to make an event spectacular without hot dogs, hamburgers, or fireworks.

In San Nicolas they created a river of people making noise, dancing, and marching in sync, slowly moving through town to the beat of boom-boo-pack-boom. At the head of the human tide was the mayor and her husband, smiling and waving. Next came several queens of the festivities (the academic queen, the municipal queen, and the crowd favorite queen). They were followed by preschool students, primary school students, the band, and high school students. The procession was so long that if I were at the front chatting with the mayor or at the very end talking to the long-winded town character Don Alejandro, I would not have been able to clearly make out the sounds of 15 snare drums, 6 noise makers, 2 cymbals, 2 bass drums, and many other assorted drums, all combining to make a cacophony of sound.

Marching – left, left, left, right, left – this long procession slowly snaked through the streets busy with onlookers. Sarita and I were able to go up and down the river taking pictures and admiring the costumes and marching techniques. It was so much fun seeing our students smiling and laughing enthusiastically, even though marching can be tiring.

One of the most surprising things for me was that this small town of about 1000 people managed to march about 500 students through town in one of the most exciting events this whole year.

Footnote: Maydorcito, the neighbor's baby boy, was born on September 15^th, 2013.

- David

Happy Nicaversary to Us!

Today we celebrate our one-year anniversary of being in Nicaragua and the half-way mark in our two-year term here in San Nicolas.

We like to measure our time here with the growth of our neighbor-baby, Maydorcito, who was born on September 15, 2013, just six days after we got to Nicaragua. According to this measurement, we have been on Nicaraguan soil long enough for a brand-new human being to start learning how to walk. While Maydorcito has been learning how to turn over and then crawl and then start eating real food and then start walking, we have been learning how to speak Spanish and cook beans and wash our clothes by hand and chop down banana trees.

The Maydorcito measurement is also an apt one because when we first got here, Maydorcito would shriek in terror every time he saw Davie. Men around here don't really have beards, and Davie's bushy red beard just freaked him out. But just within the last month or two, Maydorcito's 11-year-old cousin Isa has been bringing him over to our house every day. And maybe it's because Davie gives Maydorcito his heart-shaped key chain to play with, or maybe it's just because he sees Davie more often, but Maydorcito isn't scared of Davie anymore. So it is that over the last year, people in San Nicolas have gradually become more accustomed to the gringos in town (most people don't even stare at us anymore), and we have gradually become more accustomed to them.

Today we celebrate all that we have accomplished here in San Nicolas this year. Here are some of those accomplishments:

- We have co-taught about 450 hours of English classes with the Nicaraguan English teacher, Vilma, at the only public high school anywhere around San Nicolas. On Monday-Wednesday mornings, I (Sarah) co-teach 7^th through 9^th grades and Davie co-teaches 10^th and 11^th grades. We help Vilma (whose English isn't great) teach correct English pronunciation and discipline the students. When Vilma doesn't show up to teach (which happens not infrequently), we fill in to teach her English classes, attempting to bring more games and activities into our lessons. This is tough and often discouraging work in a community where so few students will ever actually use English, but there are moments of inspiration. Last week, for instance, Davie carried on a conversation for several minutes totally in English with one apathetic-seeming senior boy, who had obviously learned something in his five years of English classes.

- We've planned and taught 90 hours of our own after-school English class for students who are really enthusiastic about learning English. We hold these classes on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons in our house, and have about five students who attend semi-regularly. This class goes at a much faster pace than the normal public-school English class, and with such a small group, we're able to incorporate lots of games, movies, and field trips into our lesson plans. The students who attend this class are all notably better at English than the rest of our students.

- Together we've worked a total of 320 hours at a local organic farm. On Thursday mornings, we ride our bikes to La Garnacha, a nearby organic farm and ecotourist center, where we help clean and bag carrots and other vegetables. We try to support this association in whatever ways we can; La Garnacha is very unique in this area for its organic methods, local art, and community orientation. Weird-shaped carrots and gossip from our coworkers keep us entertained on these Thursday mornings, and in the afternoon we often help package coffee or solve technological mysteries that our coworkers encounter.

- Davie has spent 160 hours hawking organic produce and local art at the farmers market in Esteli on Fridays. La Garnacha has a stand at this weekly market, where they sell a collection of organic produce, their own renowned Tilcit cheese, earrings made from pine needles, and other locally-crafted food and art. Lots of gringos pass through this market, so La Garnacha likes to have a fluent English-speaker like Davie on hand.

- I have intensively tutored two women in English. These women, Maria and Nidia, are both much more advanced English-speakers than anyone else in San Nicolas, and at this point they just need regular practice to feel confident speaking in English. I enjoy being able to speak in English with someone besides Davie, and Maria and Nidia have become two of my best friends here.

- We've hosted or participated in at least 30 cooking “classes” with various community members. Most of our social gatherings here center around cooking; people are always telling us they want to learn how to make pizza or cupcakes, and we've asked them to teach us how to make various Nicaraguan dishes in return. Our most frequent cooking companions are a group of elementary-school kids, who whenever they see us invariably ask, “When are we going to cook next?”

- Davie has typed up at least 70 letters and documents for the school. Since no other teacher has ever taken a typing class or had much experience with computers, Davie has become the unofficial school secretary. Davie has also attempted to make computer navigation and document-writing easier by organizing all of the 'My Documents' folders and creating templates for grading purposes.

- I have helped the local library organize its books by the Dewey Decimal System. In the small, unlit, and frankly uncreative library you can find me on Friday mornings working away with pen, stickers, and tape. The collection of books is small, but at least now you can easily find a book you're looking for.

- Davie has raised funds to buy seven new balls for the school sports program. Thanks to our supporters, the school now has three new basketballs, three new volleyballs, and a new soccer ball, all of which the P.E. teacher, Reynaldo, has been using every day to teach sports. It is really exciting to see the P.E. program be able to get more kids involved in the activities.

- I have started a book club with four high school students, who have begun to read The Hunger Games. Books are scarce here, so most people have never read any books for fun before. We'll see what happens, but I'm hoping to get these four students hooked on reading.

Of course, not all of our accomplishments are significant – much of our work is just the normal, day-to-day work of any person working in the Nicaraguan campo. What has been most significant in our year in San Nicolas is the connections we've developed with people whose lives have been so different from our own. Connecting with someone from a different cultural background is the surest way to broaden and enrich your world, I believe. And if this is true, our worlds, along with the worlds of our fellow San Nicolaseños, have certainly been broadened and enriched significantly this year.

The San Nicolas Times

If San Nicolas had a daily newspaper, this is what today's issue would look like.

News: Local Teenager Elopes

Etni with her father

When English teacher David Wiegner took attendance in his 10^th grade class on Monday morning, one student, 15-year-old Etni Salas, was absent. Normally, this would have passed unnoticed. But as Etni's friends Katherine and Keyla told it, this absence wasn't a normal one: over the weekend, Etni had eloped.

No one knew about Etni's plans to get married – not her teachers, not her parents, not even her best friend Katherine. And as of Monday morning, none of these people know where she is either. “I really hope police are investigating her disappearance,” says Wiegner. “It sounds a little shady.”

Five months earlier, Etni's family had celebrated her quinceañera, a big party that traditionally marks a girl becoming a woman. Though she has never been a top student, Etni is a sociable young woman, enthusiastic about singing and cooking, who just a few weeks ago led her group to win the school's English song competition.

In rural San Nicolas and surrounding communities, getting married at 14 or 15 years old is certainly not unheard of. Every year, young women drop out of school because they've gotten married and are now required to stay at home and take care of a husband. But Etni's sudden marriage and subsequent disappearance seem to be a different case altogether. “I just hope she is safe,” says Wiegner.

Weather: Torrential Rains Finally Flood Streets

After months of drought, “la niña” finally decided to make an appearance last Saturday. Many farmers had all but given up on planting anything this year, having lost four months of the normal rainy season to drought. But on Saturday, everything changed.

All day, rain dumped from the clouds that had enveloped San Nicolas for the past week. The streets became rivers and people's yards became lakes. The rain pounding on tin roofs made all conversation impossible. “I have never seen such huge rain drops,” said local gringa, Sarah Rich. (Though admittedly, this is her first rainy season in Nicaragua.) “We thought we had fixed all of the holes in our roof, but on Saturday we had eight buckets out, collecting drips in our room.”

Farmers are unsure whether the rain is here to stay (in which case they can finally plant the crops they have held off on for so long), or whether it was a one-day fluke. For vegetables like pumpkins that need at least five months to grow, it's already too late; the rainy season is scheduled to end, as usual, in November.

Sports: Women Play a Fierce Match in First All-Women's Soccer League

The Barcelona-San Nicolas women's soccer team

For the first time ever, women have their own official soccer league in San Nicolas. On Sunday afternoons it has always been typical to see men out on the field in town, kicking a soccer ball around or playing baseball. But finally women are in on the soccer action too, and they are taking it very seriously.

The two San Nicolas women's teams played a heated match on Sunday, ultimately tying 1-1. The first goal was scored during the first half by the Manchester United team, launching an amazing ball into the upper corner of the goal. At the end of a scrappy second half with lots of injuries, Carmen Noelia of the Barcelona team scored the second goal.

“I hope that this women's league will be really good for women in San Nicolas,” said gringa Sarah Rich of the Barcelona team. “It is the first athletic outlet of its kind for women here, and I hope that it can start to change some of the very traditional ideas people have about what is a woman's domain and what is a man's domain.”

Balls and Books

We've mentioned our Balls and Books program in previous blog posts, but it's about time it got a formal introduction. The idea came about when we started comparing our own high school experiences with those of our secondary students here in San Nicolas. Here is the kind of thing we were thinking about:

Pretty Much Any US Public High School	The San Nicolas High School
Students have the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of organized after-school sports.	There are no organized school sports teams.
The school owns a huge collection of quality sports equipment to make practicing easier.	The school owns a flat, battered volleyball, a rimless basketball court, and a flat basketball.
There are tons of other after-school clubs and activities (choir, band, drama, etc) for students to participate in.	There are no after-school clubs or activities.
Students not only have textbooks (or even iPads with textbooks) for all of their classes; they also have access to a school library that will lend them books.	There are no textbooks – students copy what teachers write on the board into their notebooks. The only library in town (which consists of a couple of shelves of books) doesn't lend books out.

We had noticed in our English classes that many of our students had a serious lack of confidence in their own thoughts and ideas. Even if they absolutely knew that their answer had to be correct, they refused to say it out loud until we had confirmed that they were correct. This puzzled and frustrated us for a while. (*Footnote)

But then it occurred to me: there must be a direct link between participating in sports and activities and a person's self-confidence. More important than learning how to kick a soccer ball or play the flute is building up the confidence to do these things for an audience, and then receiving positive affirmation for your efforts. Because these kinds of activities aren't available to them, most San Nicolaseno high school students have never had to perform anything under pressure, and in turn have never been affirmed for their own ideas or talents.

Anyway, the money just didn't exist within the public school system to get any extracurricular activities like this going in San Nicolas, so in the end we took matters into our own – and your own – hands. We created an official “Balls and Books” fund through VMM's web site, so that all of the donations that go into this fund will go directly to starting extracurricular activities in San Nicolas.

We have already raised enough money through this fund to buy six new sports balls for the school and start an after-school book club. (More on this below). But there are plenty more expenses to come: buying more books for the book club, painting the basketball court with basketball and volleyball lines, purchasing soccer balls, buying instruments for a potential future band . . . The list goes on. So please, with the goal of instilling talent and self-confidence in the teenagers of San Nicolas, consider donating to our Balls and Books fund. (Scroll down to our bio and click on the second "Donate" button under our bio).

Want to know more about the extracurricular activities we're working on? Here is a little recap.

Balls

Students playing with the new basketballs

During the world cup, Davie did a fundraiser through the school. Students bought and filled out brackets, and the student who predicted the bracket closest to the actual world cup won a soccer ball. With the rest of the money and some of the money donated to our Balls and Books fund, we were able to purchase three volleyballs, three basketballs, and one soccer ball for the school P.E. and sports programs.

The P.E. teacher, Reynaldo, is working on developing a high school soccer team. This year the team played one league game in Esteli, but he is hoping that next year it will be more successful.

Books

I have been working in the community library one day a week, helping the librarian organize the few shelves of books they own by the Dewey Decimal System. Thanks to friends and family who have donated books in Spanish, the town library has also inherited several nice new books.

This week we had our first book club meeting. A nice-sized group of four high school students showed up, interested in reading. When I asked them how much reading they had done before, one girl said that she had read two books. Another girl said that she had read a few Shakespeare quotes on the internet. We voted on what book they wanted to read together, and The Hunger Games won.

I am hoping that getting a couple of copies of The Hunger Games into these students' houses will spark a bit of enthusiasm for reading, but we'll see. We'll meet to discuss the book as we read it together, and I also want these students to help me with a reading program for elementary school students. My plan is to bring the high school students into the elementary school once every other week or so to read picture books to the littler kids. My hope is that this will not only instill a bit of curiosity about books in the elementary students; it will also give the high school students that sense of self-confidence and leadership that they so need.

*Of course, this also has a lot to do with the one-right-answer educational methods that still reign in the campo of Nicaragua.  

Nicaraguan Idol

The whole San Nicolas high school crowded into a room in the mayor's office this morning, sitting on the floor, sprawling out the door. They had been practicing for the last six weeks (some more than others), and finally their singing-in-English abilities would be put to the test.

Apparently, the English song competition is both an annual and national event in Nicaragua. As part of the curriculum for all public high schools in Nicaragua, every year around this time, students have to get together in groups and sing a song in English while also performing some kind of dance. It's like a Nicaraguan-accented, slightly off-key version of Glee.

This year, the songs that the students chose ranged from classics like “You're the Inspiration” to Enrique Iglesias' “Heart Attack” to Miley Cyrus's “Butterfly Fly Away.” (Our Beatles and Bob Marley suggestions were shot down right away with bored looks and thumb-jerks to go to the next song).

Planning for the contest became a little more complicated when the normal English teacher stopped showing up at school because of some health issues her daughter was having. Davie and I took over the contest as best as we could, but details like when the contest would be and how we would grade the participants somehow didn't reach us until the last minute. Add to that all kinds of technology crises (The electricity is off today, I guess we can't practice), and the whole thing became a bit rocky.

But there were also some pretty cool results. For one, this contest brought out some of our most apathetic students to produce some of the best performances; it was perfect proof that everyone learns in different ways. There is a group of girls in 10^th grade who spend most of their time in class staring down into their laps, hiding their cell phones behind their notebooks. But if you had wandered by the school just after classes let out any day during the last few weeks, you would have heard this same group of girls belting with all their might, “It's too late to apologize . . . It's too late!”

Davie also noted that the different songs that each grade chose reflect their varying identities or life stages. The 9^th graders who sang “Heart Attack,” for instance, have just begun dating and accordingly are just experiencing their first heartbreaks. The 10^th grade girls who sang “Apologize” have by this time had some discreet dating experiences and are feeling a bit of jaded nostalgia for their romances-gone-bad. And then there is Alondra, the quiet, amazingly intelligent 11th-grader who sang “Butterfly, Fly Away” (and who will also probably “fly away” herself one day to much bigger places and things).

Today as we sat at the elaborately-tableclothed judges panel, watching our nervous students get up and sing, all of the stress we've been feeling because of this contest became worth it. Cheesy as it sounds, it is totally true. One by one, each of the five groups did a little introduction in English, passing the mic around to announce their favorite English phrase: “My name ees _____.” Then they got their game faces on, rolling their eyes up to the ceiling to remember their words, beginning to sway back and forth with the music, and finally, in front of all their classmates and several fluent English speakers, singing and dancing their hearts out.

In the end, the 10^th grade girls won the competition with their elaborate dance moves and belted singing. They will go on to represent San Nicolas at the departmental contest in Esteli in September. But the thing that impressed us most today was the amazing courage it took for all of our students who got up and, in front of the whole school, sang a song in a language that they aren't fluent in.

Everyday San Nicolas in Photos

Davie's dad came to visit us last week, bringing with him a backpack's worth of camera equipment and a huge suitcase of dark chocolate, sun screen, raspberry jam, new white shirts, and six volleyballs and basketballs.

Davie had ordered these balls online with the money that a few of our supporters had so generously donated to our Balls and Books program. We also raised a bit of money within the community through the World Cup bracket raffle that Davie organized at school, and all of this money has now materialized into six brand new balls for the school sports programs. With his dad, Davie presented these balls in front of the school last week.

But this isn't all that materialized of Davie's dad's visit. Jim Wiegner is renowned among his family and friends (and really anyone who has ever met him) for being a tireless photographer. He knows that to find the very best photo, you need to be snapping pictures pretty much nonstop, just waiting for the photo that will perfectly capture a story.

So without further ado, I will let a few of Jim's pictures tell the story of everyday life in San Nicolas.

San Nicolas soccer field from a road out of town.

Davie talks to his former baseball coach.

Main form of transportation to communities: horses

"Ya casi."

Where the 11th graders spend most of their time: just outside of class.

7th grade

"Oye chele!"

Everyone in the campo has a clay oven out back.

5-year-olds in Nicaragua are way stronger than in the US.

Cow traffic

If you don't have a horse or a moto, you hitchhike.

Street soccer

The pulperia where we get most of our groceries.

Barbed wire laundry line

When you're not at work, you're here: watching the people go by.

English class lovin.

"Me next! Me next!"