Welcome to Nicaragua

Reflection:

After spending six days in Nicaragua I now understand what they mean when they say that Nicaragua is the second most impoverished country in Central America. There are animals that look like they haven't eaten in weeks, there are small children begging along side their mother, their grandmother, their brothers and sisters. It is shocking how far the American dollar goes here and how different the two cultures are. In America education is very important and is required. There is also medical attention readily available, whether it is expensive or not, we have access to it. We have a stable government, no mater what your political party. And hungry here, is much different than hungry in the States. 

Day 1

My mom woke me up this morning at 7 AM so I could spend more time with her before I left; I wasn’t scared then. I called and talked to my dad; I wasn’t scared then. I spent the next two hours re-packing my suite case, but still wasn’t scared. My friend drove me to the Kansas City airport and still not scared. He dropped me off at the gate, not scared. Getting my tickets, airport security, boarding the plane: not scared. Disembarked my flight into Houston, got a drink, called my sister, talked to my mom, sent some text messages, checked my email: not scared. Boarding my flight to Managua, my stomach sank. Thank God for the sweet gentleman sitting next to me, who probably related me to his, #7 in the state of California for Cross Country granddaughter, but I could have listened to an endless number of stories about Pepperdine University, his time in the Japanese Embassy, his daughter and his son, it was so comforting to talk to someone who wasn’t scared about me getting stolen or reminding me to not drink the water. He was in the same boat as me, he had never been to Nicaragua, he didn't know what to expect, he couldn't drink the water or walk alone in the night. But then he fell asleep and I was left alone, again, thinking about all of the things I was scared about, mostly little things that would carry little weight on my trip, I could always buy a toothbrush if I had forgotten to pack it, no one is going to be mad at me for not calling to tell them I was boarding my flight, etc.. I looked out the window for long durations of time hoping to see my new home for the next couple of weeks but as we left Houston all I saw was a lot of boats on the ocean then those boats faded into the dark blue of the ocean. Once we exited American airspace, the flight attendant showed me how to switch over my screen so I could see the flight map. I ate dinner over Mexico and watched the sunset over Brazil. And now I am looking down on the city lights in Honduras. I have escaped my fears by choosing to write, to think about all of the amazing challenges and opportunities that this trip will bring. I am about to enter a seemingly new world – where you can’t drink the water and were you have to carry toilet paper in your pockets. I am entering a world were politics aren’t stable, where the people are hungry, where some homes don’t have running water or indoor bathrooms or flooring. I have been given a home placement in an apartment complex with a women named Gloria, her bio says that she is 55 and a single mother – this excites me because my own mother is in her 50s and has been a single mother most of my life. Gloria has children and her children have children. I am excited to meet her tomorrow and present her with the gifts I have brought for her and her family, including a Royals flag and a baseball as well books and puzzles. I can’t wait to meet the woman who has agreed to allow me into her home. I am excited to meet the other workers whom I will get the pleasure of growing much closer with. But both of these bring with them new concerns; What if Gloria and I have trouble communicating because of the language barriers? What if the other interns have more Spanish exposure and therefor are able to connect more with each other, the community, and the host families? I know that these are silly concerns, this internship has been running for years and I’m sure that they have had speakers who lack Spanish language skills. We will soon be crossing the Nicaragua border and touching down in Managua where I will check in to a hotel by myself, using a credit card my mother had made for me, and try to sleep while I anxiously think about all of the things that will be thrown at me in the upcoming weeks, challenges I am more than excited to accept and ready to begin.

Day 2

My sleep was dreadful. I was nervous to sleep my first night alone in Nicaragua that I turned on the TV, which happened to be highlights of the Hilary Clinton email deboggle, as well as the overhead lights. Somehow this gave me a sense of peace, a false sense of peace I understand but peace all the same. I woke up many times to the sounds of the birds, the sounds of someone arguing in support of Hillary, someone arguing against Hillary, someone that checked in late to the hotel, etc.. When I finally actually woke up, I wondered around the hotel looking for the free breakfast buffet and at least one familiar face. After twenty minutes of walking passed the same four landscapers I made my way into the restaurant where I found one of the other girls I had meet leaving the plane that was with the same trip as me and she was sitting with someone else who appeared to speaking English. There were four of us that ate breakfast together that first day, we talked a little politics and a little about each of ourselves, we discovered one of us spoke Spanish, and we ate a lot of food. We took about an hour and walked around Managua in search of some candies and some carsick medication, along the way we found many markets, a kitten, quite a very dogs and hungry horses. We made it back to the hotel just in time for the shuttle to pick us up and bring us to Leon. In the van there were two interns waiting while the five of us loaded our things into the shuttle. We made small talk at first, many had done travel like this before and some where much older than myself. We soon found out about or diverse backgrounds and all of the aspects each of us had to offer to the organization.  There were two men and five females. Most from the West Coast, while one of the other girls was from Virginia so we shared the some confusion over China Town and other California things. The shuttle played American music the whole ride. The shuttle dropped us off outside of the “meeting place” which was one of the host mom’s house that is positioned in the middle of Fundesi with a large patio and lots of room for us to hang out and, amazingly, wifi. We each carried our bags into the fence that enclosed the patio, inside the gate there were seven Nicaraguan women waiting to meet us, each of them would be housing one of the interns for the duration of our stay in Nicaragua. We then followed our homestay moms into their homes. I had two very heavy bags and a backpack which I carried about one American block and one flight of stairs up to Gloria’s home. Gloria lives in a small apartment, it was four concrete walls with a roof, however the walls do not touch the roof. The living room has, what Americans would consider, a loveseat, two rocking chairs, a dining room table, an armoire, a tv stand, a small tv and a refrigerator. The kitchen is separated by a small wall and has an oven, a sink, and a small counter. Then there is the bathroom which has a shower that has opening to the outside, a toilet, and a sink. Then is Gloria’s room which I did not go into but she told me that her dog is in the room as well as her bird. Next was my room, it is large for the size of the apartment but it is bare, I have a door that  has only one handle on the outside and a small lock, a fan, and a decently large bed. The walls are thin, made of plywood, but the home is beautiful. And compared to what I was told to expect this apartment feels like a hotel. We only have a short time to meet our homestay families; Gloria and I tried very hard to have a conversation but my Spanish is awful and she knows no English. Then we shuttled into the center of Leon and got the chance to tour one of the cathedrals; it was large, white and made of Limestone. The views for the roof were amazing. You could see for miles. We were able to see 12 different volcanoes and much of the town of Leon. We walked around for a little while and got to see a little more of the city. There is a lot of poverty here and a lack of American industry like many of the other countries I have visited. There were a couple  Pizza Huts and construction on a new McDonalds. This was very intriguing because those companies usually are easy to find in other countries. We returned back to our host families and they had prepared dinner. For dinner tonight Gloria prepared a large amount of fish with rice. It was amazing. I could eat this everyday for the rest of my time here. I was exhausted from all the travel and the emotional stress, I feel asleep very early.

Day 3

The program coordinator meets us at the meeting place at 8 am to help us get taxis to the office. We are too big of a group for one taxi so we take two separate taxis and divide so that one of the guys is in each car so they can answer any of the Spanish questions. We travel to the office and meet with the staff that is in charge of each of our programs. I am assigned to work with Brenda on the Youth Program in Guyena. Brenda knows no English and, again, my Spanish is very bad, so Allison is assigned to work with us. She is a my age and speaks English very well. We make a plan of activities that we want to do and I show them a couple American games to teach the children. I ask her more about the community of Guyena; she tells me how impoverish the community is, the high teen pregnancy rate, how people age much quicker, and about someone in the community who recently died of cancer of the blood. We then discussed the purpose of the program, she told me that it was to help teach the children life skills, show them how to make things to sell, and give them something productive to do instead of sitting inside. Next, all of the interns and many of the workers file into the shuttle and we head out into the communities to better understand what it is we are doing and who we are doing it for. We first stop at one of the farms that the organization is has help one of the villagers build. She is growing tomatoes on her land with a dip irrigation system. We were educated on the ways in which the gardens are fertilized and how they are maintained from year to year. We then loaded the bus and headed into the community center in Guyena where we got to see the space in which I would spend my time while in Nicaragua. It was like many of the buildings here, made of concrete with orange clay roofing, but it had a beautiful mural on the front of a tree which appeared to be Mother Earth providing for the other aspects of the mural – the mural seemed to be a community symbol of hope. We enter the community center which has on main room which houses a couple chairs made of pallets and shelves for the girls to put their stuff. There is an outdoor area where there is a small garden as well as two bathroom, which do no have running water, and many rooms along the perimeter of the main room. The interns are divided into two groups and provided all the supplies needed to make our own pallet furniture. Many of the pallets were falling a part and the wood did not look as beautiful as the American pallet furniture you see, this furniture was more raw. We worked for hours to saw, nail, hammer, and build these chairs. Each group finished one chair before we had to leave the community center. We shuttled back together to community where the homestay mom’s had been working to make up dinner. Gloria and I attempted to carry on a conversation but again my lack of Spanish served as a barrier for interaction between us but we both smile and laugh with/at each other. After finishing dinner Gloria. All of the interns met up with Allison and one of the other homestay children and they took us to the city center to get ice cream and a couple drinks. While we were out they played a Taylor Swift music video and the discussion at our table was about how Taylor Swift had the perfect body. One of the Nicaraguans in our group told us that Taylor Swift was too flat to be the perfect body. It’s interesting to see the differences between the American definition and the Nicaraguan definition. In many of the Caribbean islands I know that they see being larger in size as a benefit and people lose weight when they lose money or get sick. It is interesting how the ideal body is similar in here as well. We returned home around midnight and the rest of the night was very quiet. There were some dogs barking but for the most part quiet. My bed was made nicely with a fitted sheet, a flat sheet, a mosquito blanket and a pillow.

Day 4

The morning starts early, with Spanish class at 8 am sharp, my alarm went off at 6:30. I changed and put my hair up but when I walked out of my room Gloria told me I needed to shower. Because it was in Spanish it seemed much nicer. She prepared breakfast while I showered and finished packing my bag for the day. I met at the meeting house at 7:40 where we caught a taxi to take us into the office, there is not a taxi large enough to take all seven of us at the same time so we split up based on having one person in each taxi that could speak Spanish. When we got to the office we were greeted by two Spanish instructors who first gave us a quiz. We were to answer a list of seemingly impossible questions and then based on how many we got right determined which group we were placed in. I failed miserably. All of the girl interns were matched in the beginner group. When class finished we went back to preparing for our time in the villages until Indiana got to the office. She was there to answer any questions that we had about our work here in Nicaragua, specifically each of the villages as well as Leon. We started with a brief history of Nicaragua and the presence of non-profit organization. Indiana told us that our organization began in 2000, but originally they were partnered with another organization and their originally purpose was to provide aid for the villages. However, they soon learned that handing out aid to the communities was proving to be causing damage to the communities. She said that three things became apparent, 1) the people got lazy, they began to see being poor as having an advantage because the poorer you were the more aid they provided for you. 2) There was a lack of participation, other organizations were taking the participates away from our program and 3) the amount of depression in the communities was not increasing. Our organization broke away from the partner organization in an attempt to reevaluate the mission of the organization and in 2010 they partnered with an agency in Japan that taught disaster prevention. This was important for the communities because it allowed three things in the community: 1) education, on economical, farming, family, women’s issues, etc., as well as 2) provided opportunities for groups, and 3) build a skill set. We then talked a little bit about the people of the community. Most of the population is under the age of 40. There is a lot of early age marriage, religion causes many barriers and women’s rights are limited, as well as lack of political stability. From there we continued to talking about the organization and what it is currently doing, one of the many things we discussed was the human capacity training. This relies first on creating a foundation, building the communities self-esteem and lowering depression rates. Some of the ways they discussed doing this was creating educational programs geared towards the women in the villages because of the lack of the women’s rights to education them as well as the men on gender equality as well as to speak out of against domestic violence which Indiana said is a issue for many of the women in the communities we serve. The overall purpose of this training is to educated the community members on interpersonal skills, communication, community, leadership, and how to building a community bond. Along the way the organization has faced many challenges, including the lack of women’s rights, religion, lack of medical attention, divorce, and lack of sexual education. These are all issues that the program has worked to address. Indiana told us that the organization had some things they had to learn the hard way, for example don’t lie. The organization didn’t mean to lie but they misinformed their participants which caused a lack of trust and it was difficult to regain that trust. Other things that have been leaned along the way include understanding that the community members are different and that sometime you have to give up on things. Many of the points that we discussed in our conversation were very interesting there was a lot of talking and back and forth between the interns and the staff. I found it most interesting how they suggest that the first thing you have to do is build self-esteem because in my American education I learned that according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that you cannot develop self-esteem without first meeting three other categories (physiological, safety, love/belonging) that these members of the community, to my knowledge, do not meet. When our conversations concluded many hours later we went to lunch as a group. We returned to the same place we had eaten lunch yesterday. It was very good. Then we traveled by shuttle into our individual assignments. I went into the village of Guyenna and when we opened the doors of the community center immediately two children were at the door ready to play/work. We went into one of the many rooms and pulled out one table and we each grabbed our chairs. Brenda brought out supplied to make jewelry. There was boxes and boxes of beads, clasps, string, etc.. We worked for a couple hours to make earrings, Brenda, Allison, three villages and I. Other children started to show up later in the day and we all walked together to the school to watch the men’s soccer program. It was the championship game between the two villages. There were hundreds of bikes lining the side of the field, there was a stand set up selling fried plantains and wild, hungry dogs running around. There was a small black dog about four feet from my foot. One moment I looked over and it was chewing it’s raw exposed flesh and the next it was laying on it’s side allowing bugs to crawl into it’s mouth and eyes. I asked Allison a question about the dog and she believed it was dead. It was no actually dead but many of the dogs running around the village were starving, ribs showing, and seemed very lifeless. We returned back to the community center, while walking back I noticed that one of the older girls in the program was talking to a man that looked 15 to 20 years older than her. This was the first time I understood what I had heard about teen pregnancy. Allison told me that a lot of the girls like older men because they believe they can provide for them. With all of the poverty in the village I can understand their thought process in wanting to find someone who is going to be able to provide for them, especially if they believe that they can provide them with a better life than what they currently live. The bus picked us up from the community center and I met up with all of the other interns. We went to the grocery store to get items that we needed for our weekend getaway to the volcano and the Laguna. Then we went back to the homestay. Gloria and I had to run to the grocery store to get supplies for breakfast tomorrow. After eating dinner we had Salsa dancing classes. These were so much fun. The teachers came to the meeting house and we danced on her front patio. Then we returned to our host families and I fell asleep almost immediately. 

Day 5

We woke up very early today. Salvador was at the meeting house to pick us up at 8 am. We traveled via shuttle to Masya to visit get lunch and visit the market before heading to the Laguna. We arrived to the Laguna around 2. We immediately went into the water. It was stunning. Rolling jungles and refreshing water. The views are jaw dropping and it’s nice to have a hotel room. Four of us swam around the edge of the Laguna and found a couple lemurs and other tropical birds, we found beautiful birds nests. The four of us interns shared a hotel room, it large in comparison to my homestay, there was one large bed and bunk beds with a TV in the corner and a private bathroom. We had a sit down dinner with all of the interns, it was very good, it was interesting how they served us French fries and the flavors were more conservative than what was served in the homestays. Compared to many of the areas that we have visited there was more English speakers. There was a lot of Americans in this area. It’s interesting where the tourists go visit and what the areas that are high in tourism look like compared to the areas that lack the tourist interactions.

Day 6 

Today we woke up without an alarm for the first time since arriving in Nicaragua. It was refreshing to just wake up whenever. Breakfast was served at 8 am and we went down as one large group and divide between two tables that overlooked the Laguna. The view was, again, amazing. The four at my table order traditional Nicaraguan breakfast; gallo de pinto, plantains, eggs, and fruit. We then went and jumped off the docks into the Laguna. I was very scared to jump and may have said a few choice words on the dive in but I made it. Three of us decided to go kayaking but the water was very rough from the strong winds. We were out for about 40 minutes before we decided to beach our kayaks and swim. We spent the rest of the morning swimming/jumping. Then we loaded the shuttle and ate lunch. Then we headed back into Masya to spend a couple hours at the market. There was beautiful baskets, blankets, wood, paintings, etc. There were stalls selling silver, hammocks, food, smoothies, and other Nicaraguan goods. After we all finished up at the market be got back in the car and headed back to Leon. When we arrived back at the meeting house we sat around and talked about our trip so far before we each broke off to go to dinner. One of the guys and I walked home one of the other interns and on the walk home we talked about our expectations of what we thought this trip would look/feel like and he mentioned that we were living with the middle class families. This caught me by surprise, if these homes were in America they would be considered barely scraping by. Things here, economically, are very very different. For example, when I spoke to my mom today she asked me if I had charged $3.29 to the credit card from the grocery store and I told her I had in order to get some snacks. In the States $3.29 would get one bag of chips and maybe a drink, here I got four bags of chips and a drink. Gloria met us at the door and when I got inside she was finishing dinner while I unpacked my bags and put things back where they belong. After dinner, I wrote for a little before I fell asleep just before 9 PM.