Life as I know it...: Nicaragua

Well, it has been quite a while since my last blog. To catch everyone up, I’m happy to report that my trip home in for Christmas was amazing. It couldn’t have been better, except perhaps if had been longer. It was just what I needed. Going home, I was worried that I wouldn’t want to go back, but it wasn’t as heartbreaking as I thought it would be. I came back, had a great New Year’s on the beach with friends and finally had to return to my life at site. Readjusting to life in my community was a bit more difficult than expected. Since school was out, there was basically nothing to do. Even my exercise class died. I can’t say that I wasn’t warned, but it still sucked. Good thing I had a bunch of Peace Corps meetings and activities (helping out at a sports camp, Peer Support Network meeting, and a rock climbing adventure) to keep me occupied and out of town, otherwise I may have gone crazy. School finally started up again, and I jumped on the opportunity to start new projects and get back to work. Right now, I am starting an intramural sports league for the school and an English night class. Both are still in the preparation stages. I am really excited to get them going and have high hopes for their success. Now that you’re all caught up, I figure that I’d write about my adventure in my latest vacation to Nicaragua…

Back in December, my friends and I decided that we would go to Nicaragua around March as it marks a year since coming to country and also everyone just wanted to go to Nicaragua. So, we made a plan, packed our bags and went. Before our trip, I really didn’t know what to expect since everyone in Costa Rica gave me mixed messages about Nicaragua. Some told me that they had been there and it was amazing. Others questioned my decision to go since it is a poor country full of danger at every corner. I went in expecting it to land somewhere in the middle of those two perspectives. Well, I’m going to have to say after being there myself, I would have to side with the former camp. Nicaragua is beautiful.

Costa Rica is beautiful for its nature. Nicaragua is beautiful for its conservation of history and culture. It was an interesting mix of old and new. In Managua, we went to some malls and restaurants where things were incredibly modern. We walked into a mall and we could have been in America. There are malls in Costa Rica also, but they feel different. They feel cluttered and disorganized. Walking into a mall in Nicaragua caused a bit of reverse culture shock, which was a bit confusing since we weren’t anywhere near home. It was obvious that these places were targeted at the wealthier people of Nicaragua.

On the flip side, Nicaragua also has some areas that seem like a step back in time. It was wonderful to go to places where there were still cobble-stoned streets and buildings that maintained the Old Spanish style architecture. The old churches and horse drawn carts only added to the charm. It is the scene you imagine when you picture yourself in Latin America.

So, how did we spend our time? Mostly, we wandered around soaking it all in. We divided our time between having lunches by the lake, bouncing around from restaurants/bars, celebrating a birthday, and karaoke-ing. We also made our way to the beach where we stumbled upon a bunch of Nicaraguan PCVs. What started out as a day trip to the beach ended up being an overnighter to party with a whole new group of volunteers. That was incredibly fun and interesting.

We learned a lot about the differences between the Peace Corps Costa Rica and Peace Corps Nicaragua. Firstly, they have five different programs whereas we have four. They have 2 sectors of health, business, agriculture and English. We have rural community development, community economics development, English, and my program, youth development. (Oh, did I mention earlier that my program is going through changes? Yeah, we are no longer Children, Youth and Families, but are now Youth Development. I like it better.) I think the differences in the programs offered in these countries speak loudly about the differences between the two. Also, we found out that we get paid double what the volunteers in Nicaragua get paid. On the one hand, this makes us feel better. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make much of a difference since everything in Costa Rica costs double what it would cost in Nicaragua. As for living situations, Nicaragua just changed their policy about letting volunteers live on their own. They are now required to live with host families for their entire service. It seems that their volunteers seem to have a lot more restrictions due to safety and security. I’m sure if we spent more time with them, we would have learned a whole lot more about each other, but we only had about 24 hours and believe it or not, we did not spend our entire time discussing Peace Corps. Funny enough, we were able to identify them as Peace Corps by overhearing them gossip about Peace Corps. There are some things that are just universal.

Other random things that I learned while over the border: I realized that I am grateful that where I live, water is pretty reliable. It’s a rare occurrence for it to go out. In Nicaragua, the water went out on us approximately 4 out of the 7 days we were there. Ironically, two days after getting back into site, my water and electricity went out for an entire morning and afternoon. While in Nicaragua, and bathing with a bucket and limited amounts of water, I did learn that all I need to get myself clean and fresh is one gallon of water. Isn’t that crazy? It makes me wonder about how much water we waste by showering. How much water could we save if we all bathed with one bucket of water? I don’t know, and you probably don’t want to find out. I’m not going to lie; I am back to showers and appreciate every moment of it. I learned that the mosquitoes in my site aren’t as bad as I thought. At least here I can see and hear them and hide in my mosquito net if I need to. In Nicaragua, they were like ninjas. My legs will never be the same and I never saw it coming. I also re-learned that I love the adventure of traveling and never knowing what’s coming next. It was a great trip and I can’t wait for my next adventure.

Well, that’s all for now. Sorry about taking so long. I’ll try to be better next time.

A random church in León.

A bum hanging out in the doorway of the church.

A random book store down a random street in León.

Sitting down to a nice dinner just after getting to León.

Allen browsing through some crafts in a park.

Rosie, Maitreya and Melissa chilling in the hammock. There were lots of hammocks.

Tom and Rosie making serious decisions at the grocery store. I'm pretty sure the thought process was this, "How do we get the most from the small amount of money we have collectively?"

This was basically what a good chunk of our trip looked like. A big blur of fun times and me not really knowing what's going, but just throwing my hands up and going with it.

View of Managua, the capital.

The lake that we ate lunch by in Managua.

Other things that happened in January:

All the PCVs and our shadows celebrating our accomplishment at Stephanie and Chris Starr's sports camp. This was one of the best nights I've had as a volunteer. It was also one of the prettiest fields I've ever been in.