Two weeks of rice and beans

Hi all,

I am  two week into training. I am in a small town near Jino Tepe, about an hour outside of Managua, called Guiquiliapa (sounds like whiskey – li - Apa) I live with a wonderful family of 8 sibling. They are all grown up and most of them have kids. The father Don Eugenio is 67 years old and still walks 4 km from house to field every day and works really hard. I can’t stress how lucky I feel with this family I love them. The two sister are like my mothers here, they take such good care of me. When I had my first case of "Nicaragua" and liquids were coming out of me all over, they helped me clean up, nursed me back to health and took me to the clinic. 

Today May 30^th is Mother’s day here, which is a very big day here, everyone has off work and there are a lot of festivities. The sisters are the youngest of the family. Their mother died tw years ago. Maria is 32 years old and Claudia is 24 years old. They are wise beyond their years and we laugh together every day. Today we decided Maria is my relaxed mother and Claudia is my uptight mother, and it is good because I need a balance! Claudia has a 15 month old girl called Gladicita, named after their mother who passed away. She is so sweet and gives me hugs and kisses everyday. Ofcourse, nothing fills the void of my two little guys in California or my own mom taking care of me when I am sick, but they sure make a great second best!

I was nervous at first about have 5 brothers and the macho culture of Nicaragua, where men cat call and I have heard do not respect women as equal, but, in my family it is not so at all. They are the sweetest brothers. Two of them live at the adjoinging house and the other three have houses further down the road. They all come visit every day as do their kids and their wives, and they all patiently listen to my broken Spanish and make conversation. Even after the father and the youngest brother David (22years old) have worked in the field all day and are rendered exhausted they still ask me how my day was! These men are really incredible, I have so much respect for the whole family. David is studying pharmacy two days a week but also works with his dad. Nelson (the only one who can say a couple phrases in English- and when he see’s me never fails to say “Hello my sister” also works all day with the oxen in the field and comes home and washes the dishes! Everyone has their own unique qualities but I hope from this sample you can see how diverse my family is here and how contradicting they are to some of the cultural assumptions!

As for me, I mostly find myself really busy. I can hardly find time to hang out with my family (let alone help out at my house here) We have class almost all day, and usually have community activities like youth groups, or sports games at night. Therefore, I am finding myself waking up earlier and earlier just to have some time to myself, to either study Spanish, or exercise or wash myself. 

I have been thinking how I would be able to explain what my life has been like here, because it has been so regimented, there are no big adventures to speak of right now, just daily activities. I thought that the best way to explain it would be to do an activity we had to do for Spanish class. A day in the life of Alicia.

Between 5:30 and 6 am I wake up (or as they say in Spanish, I rise myself from my bed) and stumble out to the outhouse.  I think part of the reason I wake up so early is just because I need to pee! (and the guilt of knowing that the other members of my house have already been up for 2-3 hours with the dogs, the oxen, and the damn roosters) -Any of you who thought roosters were beautiful and romantic must never have lived near any. Miracurasly my sleeping self has adapted and they no longer wake me up. But you should all know roosters do not just crow once in the morning like a nice alarm with a snooze button. NO, one crows and then the other one responds, and then the neighbour’s roosters on either side respond and by the end the whole freaking town is cock a doodle doing. – sorry for the side note-

After I wake up. I have to sit and wait 15 minutes because my sisters think it is bad to shower after just waking up, after just having eaten, after just having walked or run or worked (pretty much you always have to sit and rest before you shower) Sometimes I do a short yoga tape in the living room in the morning or I do some Spanish homework. Then I go to the shower which is near the outhouse and we have running water every other morning, so on days we have running water I wash my hair and on the others I just do a bucket bath. The water is always cold which is wonderfully refreshing!

After my shower I get dressed, eat rice beans, and juice for breakfast. Sometimes with eggs and a tortilla and I go to my Spanish class. I have Spanish class from 8am-12pm. It is held in one of the other volunteers houses (there are 4 other aspiring volunteers in my town and we are all in the same lanuage level, Novice-mid) Spanish class is the most important thing in training because we have to move up three levels in Spanish over three months in order to be sworn in to become volunteers for the Peace Corps.

I go home to eat lunch at 12pm. I always eat beans rice and something fried, either chicken or eggs, or bread. Then I try to help do the dishes (which I am usually not allowed to do) or I do homework or take a siesta. Then it is back to class from 12-4pm where we walk around the town and learn about trees and talk to members of the community. These classes can get rather redundant but I think I am learning a lot.

At 4 pm we usually go to the park to play soccer with the girls team (which I am now a part of- we have our first game on June 5^th, there are eight of us in total). After we hold a youth group meeting two days a week from 6pm (really no one shows up until 6:45pm) to 8pm (really no one leaves until (8:30pm). Our youth group project is a competition with other aspiring volunteer youth groups in other communities to make a product using natural resources and market it for sale in small towns in Nicaragua. The youth seem really into the idea!

On the weekends we always have one full day of technical training (composting, running a community bank, making natural fertilizer, ect.) and one day of working in our community gardens on site.

This has been my life for the last two weeks. I have learned so much! Including how to wash my clothes on a washboard ( what a work out) how to pee in chamber pot (part of the reason I just hold it and wake up at 5am) and soooo many other things.

Sorry the blog entries are few and far between but as you can see I don’t have that much time!

These pictures are of my life here.  The first of a technical training where we are using machetes to chop up compost. Kesiah and Sarah are in my training group community. The next is the first rain here, a huge deal as it had not rained in 6 months. It is loud and beautiful and one of my favorite things here. The enxt is little Gladicita, Kesiah and I on our way to our training site, my two sister/ mothers Maria two the right and Claudia to the left. Finally my other two group members Sarah and Brett.

Hopefully the next entry will be sooner than two weeks!

Much love to all!