My Nica life

A buddy back home (thanks Andy) asked a couple good questions so I thought I share them with you all.

What’s your favorite part so far?

It’s really hard to choose a single favorite part so I’ll narrow it down to two.  I absolutely love not being in the “real world”.  Don’t get me wrong, Nicaragua and the Peace Corps are as real as it gets; I just consider myself lucky to be living such a tranquil life.  The longest days I have are when I have to teach two 90 minutes classes so I generally do official “work” for less than four hours a day.  Please don’t let that fool you, teaching 160 seventeen years olds, weekly, in a different language is exhausting.  Plus after you throw in commuting and co-planning and the million other secondary tasks I have to, it adds up.  But the pace or life down here is so slow (a popular phrase is “Si dios quiere…” or “if God wills it”.) that it’s nothing short of contagious.  Add to that the falling off the 21^st century grid (only having internet when I feel like paying for it), not cooking, cleaning nor doing laundry and not having to sit in a cubicle and it makes for a darn easy life.  I’ve jokingly considered that after my service concludes I’m going to bust my butt working in the USA for 3 years and then retire here.

Thing two: enjoying the random things.  This one is impossible to describe.  There are SO many things that happen every day where I chuckle and say “Oh Nica, you win again”.  Example, last night I had a 30 minute conversation with my host uncle about how Nicas' English pronunciation is awful.  Every time I try to buy a Gatorade, I have to repeat myself three times and point to the refrigerator because Nicas are convinced it’s pronounced “gAY-tor-aid”.  I physically can’t butcher the articulation so I, an American, am stuck gesticulating an ENGLISH word.  Get the irony?  Anyway, it’s these small everyday experiences that I adore.

Am I used to the food?

Sadly, yes.  With a high degree of confidence I can say that 55 of my 65 dinners have been this: gallo pinto (rice and beans), a hunk of salty bland cheese and banana chips.  Sometime substitute the greasy fried banana chips for fresh avocado (my preference) and there you have it.  And the funny part?  I can see how the Nicas like it.  Since I have no control over what I eat, it’s actually kind of comforting to know what I’m going to be eating tomorrow night and July 22, 2013 (my projected close of service) and every night in-between.  It does need hot sauce though.  I go through one of those little bottles every two weeks.

Of course I would LOVE to be eating more fruits, vegetables and meats but I’m coping.  In addition, and I’m not proud of this, I’ve also stopped exercising.  During training I was running every other day or so but with the bacterial infections my clothes were beginning to not fit.  Now that I'm getting healthy again I’m pretty much the same size and shape I was in the states, just a little less muscle and more skinny.  This was to be expected and is a trend among PCVs worldwide.  Males lose weight and female gain it.  I can’t provide any conclusive evidence but I can only assume that substituting all those fruits, vegetables and meats we were eating stateside for SO many carbs has to be the culprit.

After classes end in November and I’m going to alter my new diet and start a workout plan so stay tuned!

Exchange Rate

I just found this on Yahoo Finance and thought it was interesting.  This is the exchange rate between the USD and the Nicaraguan Cordoba.  Drop me a comment if you wanna know what something costs!

Election Season

Not sure if this is garnering any attention in the USA but we’re one month from Election Day (November 6^th)!  There will obviously be multiple posts on this topic so let’s consider this a general overview, mmk?  In true Peace Corps fashion, I’m going to try stay completely impartial and only share my observations.

Daniel Ortega is the current President of Nicaragua and he has held that position since 2007.  He’s a member of the FLSN party—fans of the revolution in the 80s and socialism.  Mr. Ortega is running for reelection semi-legally.  As of a couple months ago, the Nicaraguan constitution stated that no one can hold back to back terms as president.  As luck for Danny would have it, the Supreme Court overturned this law and Ortega got a new law passed allowing him to run for reelection.

More interesting background on Dan, he’s a big advocate of helping the poor.  I guess that’s his socialism philosophy in action.  What Danny is not a fan of is competition.  To vote in Nicaragua you need to be 18 years old and have a celula (national identification card).  When applying for a celula, one must state his or her political affiliation.  Strangely enough, the applications for members of the opposition party keep getting lost.  This not only keeps Ortegas competition away from the polling booth but sometime out of work too (it’s like trying to get a job in the USA without a Social Security card.).  Additionally, his administration committed fraud in the 2009 municipal elections.  I don’t know the exact details but what I heard was that MANY mayoral elections ended EXACTLY 70/30% on the nose in favor of FLSN.  Ortega forbids foreign observation of Nicaraguan elections so I don’t know how the truth came out but many prominent NGOs have withdrawn all aid to Nicaragua.

Now I need to preface my next statement as that it is not rumor mongering.  It is a belief of the vast majority of Nicas.  The story is that Daniel Ortega had sex with his oldest daughter.  When she tried to report it to the authorities, Ortega and his wife denied it and stated that their daughter was crazy.  Oh that brings up another fun fact; Mrs. Ortega has been reported to be a witch.  I believe the basis is that she has stated that she believes in witchcraft, wears a LOT of jewelry (when I shook hands with her I thought her arm was going to fall off from so many bracelets) and she redesigned Daniel’s reelection posters to be bright and have better energy.

Another interesting tidbit, Danny Ortega is good friends with both Hugo Chavez AND Moammar Gadhaf.

Ok it’s obvious that most of these things are perceived as negative but I’m sure that Ortega has done great things for Nicaragua.  How do I know this?  Because people LOVE Ortega and his FLSN party.  The posters are everywhere and “FLSN” is painted on everything from streets to donkeys (poor burros).  Everyone from old people who participated in the revolution to college and highschool students are avid Ortega supporters.  Last month there was a support parade and I think 2000 people must have attended (half of my town) and marched in solidarity.  Of course not everyone is an aficionado of Daniel and they’re equally passionate about it.  So passionate that the US embassy has discouraged traveling to Nicaragua and the Peace Corps is placing all of us on stand-fast.  What is ‘stand-fast’ you ask?  Well besides making us sound hardcore, it forbids us from leaving our sites for two weeks.  I don’t foresee any problems in my part of the country so don’t fret!

More posts about this to come!

Internets!

As you may have recently noticed, I’ve been having much more consistent and reliable internet service.  But how?  Well at one of the cyber cafes (the previously preferred method) used really strange Ethernet jacks which somehow broke my Ethernet port.  So without a hardline and the cybers not knowing their own wireless passwords, I was forced to use their computers or no internet at all.  Clearly I was not a fan of either option so I began to investigate other alternatives which led me to: Claro’s 3G broadband modem.  Claro is a major cell phone and ISP for Central and South America (and I heard the owner is now the richest man in the world?)  Since hardline telecommunication infrastructure is SO poor, cellphone bands are the preferred way to communicate.  After a little research I purchased my modem for $33.75 and got two weeks of unlimited internet.  Afterwards, the standard rate is exactly the same as the cybers’ $0.45/hour.  Luckily my host family discovered some hidden promotion that is 24 hours of internet for $0.89.

The process is simple.  All I have to do is walk a couple a couple blocks to one of the many tiny convenience stores that offer recarga services.  Then I give them a phone number and C$20 cordobas.  Done.  Unfortunately, the speed probably falls somewhere between a snail’s and a turtle’s pace (less than 256kb/s for my nerdy followers).  I can video chat and stream videos but the quality is very low.  Also generally the connection is worse at night because I'm assuming more people are using it.

So as always, feel free to call or email me and I’ll get back to you!  And happy birthday mom!

Winter = rainy season

So last time I checked, Nicaragua was located in the tropics. This generally necessitates that June-Dec must have heavy rains. I’ve traveled through Costa Rica on three different occasions and the rain may as well have been on a timer. “Uh oh, it’s 3:53pm. We better head for shelter or we’re going to be taking an involuntary shower.” This hasn’t been the case in Nica. We’re exiting the cosecha (the period of time during the rainy season when it…doesn’t rain.) so it’s only starting to rain regularly—with a vengeance. Out of nowhere, the hellishly hot clear afternoon skies (still 90+ degrees here) will inexplicable turn black and UNLEASH. So now I try to be home by 4pm or I prepare to be inconvenienced.

This is also probably a good time to mention that rain REALLY is an inconvenience. Why? Well for starters rain jackets don’t often exist here, umbrellas may as well be porous and only a small fraction of the population own cars. All of these add up to cancelations and things not getting done. If it’s raining, it is universal knowledge that whatever you WERE going to do is now postponed. Be it school (students or teachers), work, or meetings it doesn’t matter, canceled. To compound the effects even if it LOOKS like it’s going to rain, people won’t attend. This is due to the fact that no one wants to be stuck in a location if it’s gonna be a long storm. For example, Wednesdays I go to my rural school (a 20 minute bus ride). To get there the bus has to literally ford a river. There is no bridge right now there’s a constant stream of 2-4 inches (depending where you cross). I’ve been told that during a rainstorm, this can easily double. Therefore, there’s a fair chance then when I leave for school at 1:30pm it’ll be bright and sunny and when I’m ready to leave 4:15pm, I’ll be stranded in a monsoon.

Anyone wanna send a kayak in my next care package?

Marito's brithday

Host brother, Mario Noel, had his birthday last week. What is a typical nica birthday you ask? A nice dinner (I had a chicken breast, aka the most meat I’ve eaten in one sitting). If the family has money, sometime there will be a small gift given or a piñata.
So being the awesome hermano that I am, I classed up the fiesta by making popcorn. Now the Nicas know what popcorn is but usually only eat it twice a year at the local festivals. This means that they most certainly had never seen it popped in a microwave. Cue the madness. With every kernel popped, there was a jump and scream in the form of an interpretive dance to the popcorn. After the necessary three minutes, the feasting began. They inhaled it like it was going out style. Even after I tried to convince them that there were nothing but un-popped kernels and salt left, they had to dump the entire contents on the floor to make sure. Luckily this mess was quickly (and enthusiastically) cleaned up by Rex, our dog.