Happy Graduation!

We've just finished up the school year here in San Nicolas and our neighbor kids tell us that they're bored already. Lucky for them, the elementary and high school graduation ceremonies that happened last weekend, while maybe not alleviating their boredom, at least provided them some big events to get gussied up for.

Promocion, as they call graduation here, is a big deal. It's a big deal in the pomp and circumstance involved, and it's a big deal as an accomplishment. In the seventh grade class that I teach, the year began with around 40 students, which is a normal-sized seventh grade class for San Nicolas. By eleventh grade – the final year of high school here – the class size usually shrinks to around 12 students. So in those intervening years between seventh and eleventh grades, more than half of the class drops out of school. The causes for these drop-outs are numerous; students have to quit school to work at their family's convenience store, or they get married, or they decide that it's too far to walk every day, or they're just kicked out of school for bad behavior.

With the two principals of the school programs and a teacher

Of course, some of the students who drop out of normal, daily high school still have the chance to complete high school by attending a long day of classes only on Saturdays. For the students who live miles and miles away from San Nicolas and whose only mode of transportation is by foot, Saturday school is a good alternative – they can still complete high school, but they only have to walk the 10 or so miles to school and back again just once a week. For this reason, there are over 300 students who attend Saturday school and come from various tiny remote communities surrounding San Nicolas, and only 120 students who attend regular, daily high school. We are still a little skeptical that the quality of education they receive by attending class only once a week is the same as that of students who attend school every day, but it's a good opportunity for them nonetheless.

One of the Sandinista government's newer initiatives is to offer classes on Sundays as well, for adults who want to go back and complete high school. So last Saturday, in one gigantic four-hour long ceremony, seventy students graduated from all three of these high school programs. We went over to the parish the night before to help spruce up the church where the service would be held, and spent several hours painstakingly gluing block letters onto a large piece of cloth to create a banner.

Everyone arrived the next morning an hour late but dolled up in their fanciest clothes. More than 500 people filed into the church, crowding at the back. One of the starkest differences between Nicaraguan and American public school graduations is that here, the graduation ceremony, like all important events in Nicaragua, is preceded by a church service. After the church service, the graduation banner was unfurled in front of Jesus and Mary and the repetitive graduation theme song commenced.

We are so proud of all of our students who graduated from high school last Saturday, and we want to congratulate them and honor their accomplishments by posting a few photos of them.

December Holy-days

There have been so many fireworks going off around San Nicolas for the past few days that if I didn't know better, I would think the Evangelicals and Catholics had finally gone to war with each other. But this is not war – this is celebration. We were surprised to realize last December that people in this pocket of Nicaragua don't celebrate Christmas nearly as much as we do in the US. Instead of spending early December preparing for Christmas, San Nicolaseños spend it celebrating other holidays. Here are the two most important ones.

1. Las Fiestas Patronales (The Patron Saint Celebration, or San Nicolas Day) – December 5

We were woken up on December 5 at 4:30 in the morning to mariachi music and fireworks. We stumbled out of bed to turn on the lights, but the electricity was out. The day had already begun in true Nicaraguan fashion, we told each other grumpily. When we peered out into the dark streets to try to see the mariachi band strolling around town, all we could see were a few other people's flashlights down the street. Everything was dark.

Later we asked Maryluz, the woman at the parish who coordinates masses, if she had been woken up at 4:30 too. No, she told us. She had gotten up at 4 a.m. to start cooking food for the San Nicolas Day feast for the entire town. That put is in our place.

On December 5, San Nicolas celebrates its own unique holiday by holding a mass for over 500 people and subsequently feeding them all at different people's houses all around town. The bishop from the entire department comes to give the mass, and people wait on the edge of town with a mariachi band to greet him and escort him into town. A long procession snakes through town, with the bishop at its head, to the Catholic church, which overflows with people. People come from all of the 30ish tiny communities surrounding San Nicolas, some of them walking for hours to get there.

Many of these people have only a tiny plot of land and an adobe shack to their name, but they come bearing gifts nonetheless. When the bishop pulled up in his fancy pickup truck and got out, these people flocked to him, just wanting to grasp some shred of holiness from his touch. (It reminded me of the part in the Bible where everyone clamors for Jesus to perform a miracle, reaching out and touching him). Later, during the mass, they held an offering. A long line filed from the back of the church, and these same people, clutching sacks of beans and bags of oranges from their trees, brought them to the front of the church to give them to the bishop.

2. La Purisima (The Immaculate Conception) – December 8

The Purisima might be the biggest Nicaraguan holiday. It celebrates the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, and since Mary is the patron saint of Nicaragua and the Purisima tradition is somewhat unique to Nicaragua, it seems to be a thing of pride for many Nicaraguans. The Purisima represents not only a religious tradition, but Nicaraguan patriotism.

Just like the fiestas patronales, the Purisima also began with fireworks, though at a slightly later hour. And just like with the fiestas patronales, the fireworks were followed by a mass. (Mass seems to be the main way Catholic people celebrate any special occasion here in San Nicolas).

In other parts of Nicaragua – mostly in cities, I think – the Purisima celebrations are a bit more extravagant. It sounds kind of like Halloween. Kids go from house to house, and at each house people have set up alters to the virgin Mary. The kids sing a Purisima song and then the people at the house give them candy or fruit or a bag of beans.

Here, the Purisima celebrations all happen at mass. People come from distant communities, and kids seep out the doors of the Catholic church. Lots more people appear at the end of the mass, when things really get good. This year, a brass band from Esteli showed up and played music in a corner while the local mayors office handed out treats from huge cardboard boxes. They gave out candy, sugared squash, bananas, oranges, sugarcane, toys for the little kids, and lots of other things. As they are handing out candy, someone shouts, "Quien causa tanta alegria?" and the crowd responds, "La virgen Maria!" Each person totes home a bag with all this loot in it, and I imagine that for many of the people, this is the only time of year that they have access to such luxuries. Throughout the month of December, the Catholic church travels to lots of little communities in super-remote areas and repeats the Purisima at Catholic churches all over.

It's worth mentioning that both of these big holidays at the beginning of December are really only celebrated by Catholic people, who are an overall majority in this area, but certainly not the only denomination. We were curious what our Evangelical neighbor kids thought of the Purisima. Are they jealous of all the little Catholic kids who get these big bags of goodies? So after coming home from mass yesterday, we offered them one of our bags and, well-trained as they are, they politely declined. Tensions are high between Catholics and Evangelicals, but one thing can be said for both of them: they cling strongly to the religious beliefs that guide their lives and traditions.  

How to Find a Note

I love notes. Before we came to Nicaragua, Davie and I lived in Seattle, and in Seattle we made a game for ourselves. As we walked to work or down the block to the grocery store, we scanned the sidewalks for handwritten notes that people had dropped on the ground. And when we spotted one, the rule was that we absolutely had to stop and pick it up, no matter how silly it might make us look to be scrounging around on the ground for an old wrinkled piece of paper. In this way, we collected two large shoe boxes of handwritten grocery lists, bus directions, manifestos, and love notes during the two years we lived in Seattle. We fancied that these little slips of paper told us things about the strangers that we would never know.

Here in Nicaragua, notes are an even bigger deal. Because most people don't have smart phones on which to send messages and look up directions, good old fashioned pen and paper are still the prevailing media for written communication. We've found so many notes here, in fact, that we've given up trying to collect them all.

The high school in San Nicolas is the town's note jackpot, and lucky for us, we work there. Although passing notes is technically against school rules, the town's most skilled note authors have their ways. And as teachers, we are specially authorized to confiscate these notes.

Of course, note-confiscating isn't as easy as it might sound; there is definite skill involved. First of all, you have to develop a sixth sense for note writing. The dead give-aways are the students who spend all class yawning and drawing tattoos on themselves and then, all of a sudden, start scribbling away furiously in their notebooks, forgetting even to glance up at the board.

To verify that it's a note they have and not, say, a dialogue in English, you have to wait until the note gets passed. An easy way to tell that a note is about to be passed is if a student looks up directly at you with a sort of shifty-eyed look, and if both of their hands are hidden under their desk. Sometimes this is a good time to swoop in and grab the note out of their hands. Sometimes, it's better to wait until the student passes the note. Whenever it is that you decide it's time to get your hands on that note,you sneak up on the student from behind, moving slowly, and get a firm grasp on the note before they even realize you're taking it away. If the student realizes what you're doing before the note is in your grasp, you run the risk of them shoving it down their shirt, where it's as good as unattainable to you.

The notes that do survive this rigorous note-confiscation system often go to their graves, ripped into tiny shreds, in the gutters lining the road that descends from the school. Free at last, students prance into the streets and rip up the day's secret conversations, tossing the note confetti to the whim of the wind. What they don't know is that the local gringo note-hunters occasionally pick up these bits of note later and piece them together with scotch tape like a jigsaw puzzle.

Kendall also loves peanut butter.

One of my favorite notes, however, is not one gotten in stealth, but rather given to us directly. The story that goes along with this note is about a little boy named Kendall. Kendall, who is in fourth grade, loves riding bikes. Unfortunately, Kendall doesn't have his own bike, so for a while, I used to lend him my bike. He would come knock on our door and say, "Hi Sarita, can I borrow your bike to do errands for my mom?" We both knew that he wasn't actually doing errands at all - he just wanted to ride around town and decorate my bike with Oreo stickers. But I would usually let him.

Then one day after I had lent Kendall my bike, his sister Josary came back with it and told me that Kendall had been shirking his homework and almost gotten into an accident with a truck, and his mom forbade him to borrow my bike ever again. After that, every time Kendall came by and asked if he could borrow my bike so he could do errands for his mom, I told him no.

Then, one Sunday, he showed up at our house with this note:

Translated, it says: Profe Irela (his mom). Gringos, my mom can't come. For this reason, she sends this paper. Lend the bike to Kendall, only on Sundays.

Note collecting here is a whole different sport than it was in Seattle. I suppose the main difference is that here, we're not reading the handwriting of complete strangers; we're reading the thoughts and feelings of people we know.

Quinceañeras and Womanhood

In the past two weeks, we've been to two quinceañeras, or 15^th birthday parties. These parties, which compete with weddings in their level of importance and extravagance, are the Latino equivalent of the debutant balls that you see in Downton Abbey. They are a very public way for a community to acknowledge a girl's transition to womanhood.

At the quinceañera that we went to for our student Ninoska, there was a moment when Ninoska's aunt publicly presented her with a doll, announcing that it was the last gift she would receive as a girl. And then in the next instant, she handed Ninoska a pair of high heels and told her to put them on. When Ninoska stood up in her new gold high heels, her aunt announced to the crowd of 150-200 people that Ninoska was now a woman.

Putting aside the silly suggestion that high heels are equivalent with womanhood, that moment fascinated me. In a western culture like the US, a girl's transition to womanhood is a long, gradual process; you stop taking baths with your brother, you go through puberty, you do adult things like go to college or get a job. But the whole time, you lack a certainty in the back of your mind about whether you are a girl or a woman. I am 25 and people still sometimes call me a girl. But in that single instant when Ninoska strapped on those high heels, she knew for sure that she had become a woman.

Although I think that the gradual transition to womanhood probably reflects more accurately how it actually happens, there is something really appealing about a symbolic moment of label-changing. As a public celebration of this label-changing, a quinceañera could have the power to hold a community accountable for treating a woman as a woman and not as a girl.

But then, this begs the question: How is a woman treated differently from a girl? Here, the quinceañera is traditionally a patriarchal custom. So rather than urging the community to treat her with the respect that her new status demands, it seems to me that the quinceañera functions instead to put the woman on the dating market. This is why, in the quinceañera ceremony, the father gives his daughter away to her symbolic first dance with a man. The quinceañera is basically a way to let an entire community know that a woman is available for marriage and baby-making.

We saw this exact narrative play out quite literally with one of our students this year. We went to Etni's quinceañera in April. Four months later, she was “robbed,” as they call it here, by her boyfriend and disappeared for over a month. When she finally came back with her boyfriend, she was pregnant. Not long after, her boyfriend abandoned her, leaving her with all of the responsibility of giving birth to and raising a child, at the age of 15.

As I thought about the quinceañeras we've been to recently, I started to wonder why boys don't have them. Why isn't it as important to mark a boy's transition to manhood? Is it because in a way, a boy is always a man? My friend Maria has a 4-year-old son named Hansel, and he already acts like a man, bossing his older sister around and making fun of his older brother when he helps his mom cook. Maybe people assume that boys are born with the control that defines men, whereas girls have to be socialized to behave as women.

Or maybe a boy's transition to manhood is important, but it's just a much less public matter. Maybe it happens when he's helping his father harvest beans and his father chucks him on the shoulder and says, “Now you're a man.” Maybe instead of requiring an entire community to affirm him as a man, a boy only needs his father to give him that label.

I suppose it also comes back to the fact that in this culture, men pursue women, not vice versa. A quinceañera marking a man's entry into the dating pool would seem ludicrous, since traditionally women never make the first move romantically and therefore don't need to know which boys have become eligible young men. Women are like objects on a supermarket shelf, and men do all the choosing.

All that said, I don't think the quinceañera is an inherently sexist tradition. In fact, I quite like the elaborate princess dresses and the religious component and how the whole community comes together to celebrate a specific person and her transitioning life stages. It's not often in a poor community like San Nicolas that people have an excuse to celebrate so luxuriously, with table decorations and fancy dresses and a meal for almost everyone in town. It's a beautiful way for a community to share with each other.

It also has the potential to be a beautiful way to affirm women and to give young women confidence in themselves. If being a woman in this culture meant being strong and independent and deserving of respect, then the celebration that marks this transition into womanhood could be one of the happiest days of a woman's life.

Seeking Volunteers to Live Here:

Our two-year term with VMM working in San Nicolas, Nicaragua ends next September 2015, so we're starting to look for two volunteers to fill our position. This is a place for people with a spirit of adventure, who like living in rural areas and get excited about working on a variety of different projects while getting to know a small community really well.

The position lasts for two years, so it would be from August 2015 till August/September 2017. It's an ideal placement for a married couple, but could work just as well for two individuals. Please pass the following job description along to anyone who you think might be interested. To find out more about the job or to express interest, you can leave a comment below or email sarah.f.rich@gmail.com or davidjwiegner@gmail.com.

Description:

San Nicolas is a small town located in the northern highlands of Nicaragua, approximately three hours from Managua.  Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) is a small, ecumenical Catholic organization that, in its vision for accompanying marginalized people around the world, supports this position. Over the course of the volunteers' two-year commitment to VMM, the volunteers will live and work in San Nicolas.  There are many challenges to this work, but by being flexible and willing to experience life as rural Nicaraguans do, this can be a life-changing time.  The volunteers will share their talents and skills with the community and learn from the traditions, history, and lives of the people in this town.

Main Responsibilities:

- Participate in the local public high school, helping improve class dynamics
- Teach an after-school English class for high school students motivated to accelerate in English
- Assist the principal in administrative and organizational tasks
- Possibility of helping to create extra-curricular activities (examples: sports teams, music or theater groups, art club, book club, etc)
- Possibility of teaching a computer class for teachers and principal
- Possibility of helping teach daily English classes
- Work at La Garnacha, an ecoutourism destination and organic farming association close to San Nicolas
- Help the farm get ready for Friday market
- Help advise the association on how to attract more tourists – what do gringos like?
- Possibility of helping the association with communication/outreach materials: website, brochures, facebook page

Other Options:

- Assist the Catholic Church with catechism classes, youth groups, or adult Bible studies
- Work with the local library to improve their offerings
- Tutor local adults in English
- Pick coffee when needed
- Offer a weekly English class for elementary school kids
- Host cooking classes or gatherings for people in the community
- Visit, support, and pray with Catholic communities in rural villages

Desired Skills:

- The volunteers must be flexible, creative, and open to having new experiences.
- They should feel comfortable being in charge of their own time and possess the initiative to start new programs under their own direction.
- Training in education or a background in teaching is a plus.
- Experience with agriculture or business is a plus.
- Volunteers should speak at least basic Spanish.
- Experience living in Central America is a plus.
- Volunteers should approach this position through their faith and should adhere to VMM's vision of accompaniment towards a more just world. (Read more about VMM here).

Applicants Should:

- Be college graduates, ages 22 or older
- Be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident
- Be willing to live in two-person intentional community
- Be in good physical and psychological health
- Be single people or married couples with no dependents
- VMM welcomes women and men of all ethnic origins, gender, economic status, and sexual orientations.

Volunteer Provisions:

VMM provides volunteers with:

- Medical and life insurance, including three months of medical insurance after completion of service.

- Monthly stipend.

- Pre-departure orientation

- Visa expenses

- Spanish language training

- Annual retreats with other volunteers in Central America

- Re-entry stipend upon completion of service

How to Apply:

Send a letter of interest and your resume to sarah.f.rich@gmail.com or davidjwiegner@gmail.com. We will be receiving applications until February 28, 2015. Feel free to email us with any questions throughout the process!

After reviewing these documents, we'll send you an application. Follow-up skype or phone interviews will be conducted in English and Spanish with eligible candidates. We look forward to hearing from you!

VMM: An Amazing Mission in Cycles

Last week we had the amazing opportunity to help with a delegation of people who came down from the US to learn about Nicaragua and our work here. They were all in some way connected to Volunteer Missionary Movement, and as we heard their stories throughout the week, I became more and more impressed with VMM, the organization with whom we've been here all along.

One of the best parts of the delegation was getting to meet Edwina Gately, the woman who actually founded VMM in 1969. Up until Edwina started VMM, there were plenty of Catholic missions organizations in the world, but none of them were for lay people. At the young age of 24 (a year younger than us!), Edwina felt called to missions, but because she wasn't a nun, she had no outlet for her calling. As a young woman, which put her at a disadvantage right off the bat, she went around to all of the bishops and important Catholics in England, trying to convince them that normal lay people could do missions too.

Thus was Volunteer Missionary Movement begun. Since then, it has grown and separated into a VMM-Europe faction – in which 55-60 Europe-based volunteers serve in Africa, Asia, and Europe – and a VMM-USA faction – in which seven USA-based volunteers (including us) serve in Central America.

What strikes me as being unique about VMM, as mission organizations go, is its strong emphasis on humility and accompaniment. In a VMM position, volunteers live simply. Instead of being provided with a nice house and a car, VMM volunteers live in modest circumstances, just like those around whom they're living. Rather than bringing all of the means and the skills to their relationships with the people who they're serving, they share with the people; the relationship is made of give and take.

Of course, Edwina puts this all much better than I can, in VMM's Spirit and Lifestyle mission statement, so I'll let her demonstrate what VMM stands for:

“We believe that God calls all people to peace, unity and interdependence through justice, and a sharing of the world’s resources and goods. We wish to challenge and dissolve the barriers that divide People and Church and nations. We stand for oneness in the body of Christ. We commit ourselves to the service of our God to work among all people seeking to break down all forms of injustice and oppression and all inequalities of sex, status, color, creed or nationality.”

“We live with the people. We work with the people. We rejoice with the people. We become part of the people. Our sharing becomes a journey we walk together towards liberation, community, and a reaching out together for growth and fulfillment. But we do not impose ourselves or our way of doing things. We are at the service of those to whom we go.”

“We are aware that through our service, we receive far more than we are able to give. We realize that we are enriched by our encounter with people of other cultures and beliefs . . . We see, therefore, that mission is not a one-way process, and the monopoly of one church or religion. But it is a cyclical process, going from one church to another church in continuous, mutual sharing. This is the dynamic of mission.”

Throughout the delegation, we enjoyed sharing with people who have lived out these words in their own lives, in many different ways. We got so excited about VMM and its mission, in fact, that we are already starting to think about recruiting some new volunteers to fill our shoes when we leave in September 2015. We'll post a job description soon.

A Day at the Doctor

For the 14 months that we've been in Nicaragua, today was the first day that we had to go to the doctor. We've had the occasional food poisoning, but up until now we've both been pretty healthy. Having heard horror stories about the local health center in town, we always dreaded the day when we would have to see the inside of those brick walls. But when Davie woke up last night with a fever, vomiting, and a bad headache, we conceded that that day had finally come.

So it was that we trudged two blocks through town this morning to the health center, a small single-story brick building surrounded by a chain-link fence. As miserable as Davie felt, I was actually the tiniest bit glad for the chance to find out what the health care system in rural Nicaragua really looks like. But I tried to be in solidarity with Davie's misery while also taking mental notes on everything I saw.

By the time we got there at 9 a.m., the courtyard was already filled with around 30 people, waiting on hard wooden benches to see a doctor. I didn't recognize many of the people, and lots of them wore the worn faces, missing teeth, and pencil skirts of campesinos who live even further afield than San Nicolas. Many of these sick people, it seemed to me, had probably walked miles and miles through the hills to arrive at this clinic.

We were confused about whether we should just plop down on the benches or if we had to check in, and since there were no signs, we asked a man whose face bore the scars of a serious burn. He directed us to a cluttered office, full of manila file folders. While we waited there, a nurse sorted through about a hundred of those folders. Then she finally looked up and said, “Yes?” “He's sick,” I explained succinctly, pointing at Davie. She asked what Davie's name was and wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper, and that was it. There were no medical history forms to fill in; apparently, all they needed was Davie's name.

We went to sit down on the benches outside in the courtyard. There were maybe three doctors and five nurses attending to all these people, running around from room to room. Some of them wore scrubs, but some of them just wore a kind of medical-looking shirt with jeans.

We probably would have waited a couple of hours to be seen if Davie hadn't had a sudden urge to throw up. The only toilets in the health center, we quickly discovered, were locked and reserved for employees. So instead, we dashed outside and Davie leaned over the grass on the side of the road. He didn't actually end up vomiting, but he must have looked so awful to all the other patients and doctors that they took pity on him and called him in to see the doctor next.

The doctor was a young, casual-seeming man. He took Davie's temperature and blood pressure and listened to his symptoms. Then he sent Davie in to get a blood test and a urine sample. From what I've heard, this is fairly standard procedure when you go to a public doctor in Nicaragua; most doctors want to see a blood test right off the bat. Since the latrines smelled awful, Davie hid out in a nearby old latrine, now filled with trash, to give his urine sample.

After that, the blood test lady told us to go find a nurse who would stick an IV in Davie to rehydrate him. I was surprised by the number of needles everyone was sticking in Davie, but he handled it well. After she finally found his vein and hooked him up to the IV, the nurse led us into a small room with three beds. There was an older woman from a nearby community on one bed and a mother and baby with a mini cast on her wrist on another bed. Davie took up residence on the third bed and lay down on the plastic mattress without a sheet. The nurse told us to come find her when 500 milliliters of liquid had dripped into Davie's veins.

But when the IV had reached 500 milliliters, the nurse was nowhere to be found. I searched all over the clinic for her, and finally found her in the reception office, acting as a secretary of course. Later, I saw the same nurse functioning as a janitor, taking out the trash. Anyway, she turned off the IV drip without explaining what she was doing and disappeared again.

Things proceeded in this same manor for the next couple of hours, with Davie curled up in a miserable ball on the plastic mattress and me hunting down nurses and doctors to make sure they hadn't forgotten us. But in the end, it actually worked out. We walked past the doctor's office several times, hoping he would see us, and before long, he did. He called us into his office and told us that the test results indicated that Davie's infection was probably bacterial, not Dengue, which is what we were worried about. He helpfully wrote down some antidotes on more pieces of scrap paper, scheduled a check-up test, and sent us on our way.

As we were stepping out of his office, I had a feeling that we were forgetting something. “Do we need to pay?” I asked. The doctor shook his head and laughed at me like I was crazy. “No, no,” he said. “Of course you don't pay!”

It's true that this rural public clinic was not nearly as sterile as any American clinic. The nurses didn't smooth-talk you as they stuck needles in your veins, and they didn't role out a sheet of crinkly new paper for every patient to sit on the examining table. Patients sat out in the open air with no jazzy elevator music or inspirational posters, and there were random cardboard boxes of discarded needles plainly visible in the check-up rooms. But we did, in the end, receive solid medical advice from a certified doctor, and even as foreigners we didn't have to pay a cent. The success of this public clinic is still up in the air, but the next time, I don't think we'll dread going there quite as much.