Five Nights in Candelaria

Today is the official FIVE-MONTH mark that we have been in MCC.  We can both say that the time is flying by and we continue to accumulate many stories and adventures of our lives.  If you want to learn some Nica Spanish, I wrote some words in italics throughout for you to try it out!

Ten days ago, we returned from a five-night visit in the country.  This time we went to the community-la comunidad- of Candelaria, where we will be working for entire term.  Candelaria was the first community that AsoFénix worked with to install a solar-powered water pump, which brings water to 42 houses. This project was initiated in 2004, and is still allowing families to access water from a faucet in their houses or right out their back door.  Before they had access to potable water, they would have to walk to the nearby river, which is a 5-30 minute walk depending on where one lives.   Everyone we spoke with was grateful for the convenience of potable water in their home.  Most people are on the national grid for electricity in their homes.  The average family has 5-7 children, significantly higher than in other communities we work in, therefore poverty is greater!

Our week went well and we learned A LOT!!  Many learning experiences made for an interesting week!  We weren't really "bored" at all, which was good.  We stayed with Maria & her husband Apolonia and their SEVEN children-niños (ages 16 to 4 months)!  So never a dull moment with that many people around, plus a new intern from AsoFénix, Arielle, also went with us for the week.  Maria is on the committee in Candelaria, and she is accustomed to hosting people from AsoFénix so that was nice.  She is a super-sweet woman (age 35) and talked with us A LOT about the community and the people.  We're grateful to be working with people like her, because other people we met were not too receptive to us and didn't have much to say, so that was hard! 

Highlights

• At Maria's house we learned how to make lots of new things in the kitchen!  
• Tortillas (included: washing the corn, grinding the corn, making the tortillas and eating them for every meal!)  

Washed corn kernels going through the grinder to make the dough.

• Baked Goods-Cosas de Horno (Direct Translation: Things of the Oven).  All items were corn-based with a few variations in ingredients and shape.  Baked in a clay/earth oven outside with the fuel being corncobs and wood.  All VERY DELICIOUS fresh from the oven and still HOT!

  

  Rosibel putting the ojaldras in the oven!

• Coagulated Milk-Cuajada- It's not "technically" cheese but the closest thing to it in the campo.  Maybe it’s more like cottage cheese, but without the liquid.   Need to do more research on what makes cheese, cheese!  We ate this with two of our meals every day!
• At Maria's house learned ALL about COWS-Vacas!!  We watched them being milked every morning around 7:30am.  We learned how to milk a cow....kinda cool but freaked me out a little!!  AND last but not least, we watched a baby calf being born!!!!  Pretty cool, but not a glamorous birth by any means.  The mother got freaked out by the neighbor dogs and promptly rejected the baby.  Apolonia was working with the mom and calf so hopefully she will start being more attentive to her baby.  The past two nights the baby calf-ternerito- slept in the kitchen (for protection).  He's a cute little thing!  At one point I woke up and heard a little racket in the kitchen, I think since his mom wasn’t feeding him he decided to make his own dinner.  
• Other projects that AsoFénix organized in the last year included a lavendero y jardin system in eight houses.  The lavenderos are made of cement where people wash their clothes and dishes.  The used water is piped to their garden-jardin nearby.  Seeing people's gardens filled with fruit trees of ALL kinds and lots of veggies was very exciting!  People were very proud to show us their gardens.
• Outdoor "bucket" showers at night=feeling like a million bucks before you retire for the night!  One night I almost showered with a scorpion.  I was rearranging the fabric on the shower with my headlamp on, I thought I saw a spider but looked again and it was a scorpion about 1.5 inches long.  Apolonia killed it with his machete as soon as Arielle took a photo. 
• Playing baseball and outdoor games at dusk with lots of kids (under 11).   It became the evening ritual, and on the last night we taught them Bocci ball. 

Difficulties

• Sleeping in a "twin" cot-tejida- for FIVE nights=lots of togetherness!
• Eating a lot of starches for EVERY meal-RICE, beans, and CORN tortillas! (arroz, frijoles, y tortillas)
• Conversation...sometimes it was really hard to figure out what to talk about with someone you've just met that could care less that you’re paying them a visit.  This lead to awkward moments on occasion.  Understanding campo Spanish has its challenges, and we have about three pages of new vocabulary words to prove it!
• Seeing how people live with very little! Small, deteriorating houses made out of sticks and mud, with 5-7 children per family, no variety in diet and lack of education (including high illiteracy rates).  Very hard to soak in all the sights of poverty. 

The baby calf is finally eating the next day!

The day we left we woke up at 4:30am to be off a little after 5am to catch the "last" bus out of Candelaria.  It’s almost a 30-minute walk to the main road and we missed the 5:30 bus by 5 or 10 minutes.  At 6:30 the 6 a.m. bus hadn't come so we caught a ride in the back of a pickup truck.  Had some great views of the countryside as the sun was rising, with a cool breeze blowing in our faces!  We arrived back at our house at 7:30 a.m., and the first thing Nate did was make REAL coffee.  I ran to the store-pulperia- and made us eggs and potatoes for a big breakfast(that didn’t consist of rice and beans) and we both showered up before we ate.  Glorious showers should not be taken for granted!!  They’re not even warm here but feel great!  

Well, that gives you a taste at least of what our lives our like when we go to the country-el campo.   If you come visit us, you too could experience some of what we are experiencing.  Looking for tickets yet?

Check out our album for photos from the week!  

http://transitiontimes.shutterfly.com/pictures/492

Our “Pet” Iguana

Iggy on his favorite jocote tree!

We’ve been watching our “pet” iguana outside on a regular basis.  He lives in the cement chimney of our sauna in our backyard.  Sauna you say, yes, we have a sauna in our backyard made by Finish people that lived here previously.  The stones for the sauna were even imported from Finland!  Why do we need to have a sauna when we sweat enough as it is?  Who knows!  That is besides the point, the topic for the moment is our pet iguana or as locals call the male iguanas, garrobos.  I have named him “Iggy” for iguana and Nate is calling him “Gary” for garrobo (obviously we haven’t come to a consensus yet on his name)! 

Every morning, he usually pops his head out of the chimney and props himself up for a good, long look around.  How he comfortably does this is still unknown to me!  He hangs out on the roof, being super stealthy and still, checking it all out.  Occasionally, he’ll move his head to have another view.  It’s fun to see him around our yard and it feels like we have a pet since we see him almost daily.  We’ve even seen him crawl up the orange tree beside our house to get into the area between the ceiling and the roof.  The first time we heard him, we thought it was pigeons on our roof.  We confirmed it was an iguana on my birthday (Dec. 10^th) when I awoke at 6 am to noises above us.  I looked up and saw something staring at us through the gaping hole we had in our ceiling panel.  When I went to grab my glasses to get a better look, he scurried off on top of the ceiling panels. 

Hopefully our landlord won’t kill him and eat him!  He killed one recently in our yard and told us about it afterwards.  From my understanding, iguanas are protected species (illegal to kill, catch or trade) because they are rapidly declining in numbers, from over-harvesting and habitat loss.  In terms of regulating and enforcing laws that do exist, that is another story.  I did a little research and I’ve narrowed down Iggy to either the Cetenosaura quinquecarinata (Club Tail Iguana) or the Cetenosaura similes (Black Spiney Tailed Iguana).  Iguanas are generally omnivores (eating fruits, flowers, foliage and small animals and insects).  This surprised me because I always imagined iguanas to be herbivores, but our neighbors who have a lot of chickens, have mentioned that iguanas like to eat their baby chicks.  They too have been keeping an eye on the iguanas in our yard. 

Iguanas and their eggs are a delicacy and worth a lot of money in the black trade market.  Our little buddy, Iggy, is about 2 ½ feet long (including tail) and would go for 200-300 cordobas (about 10-15 dollars).  On the highway from Teustepe to Managua, there is one area where we regularly see someone standing on the side of the road holding one or two dead iguanas in their hand, trying to make a sale to the cars passing by.  This activity is illegal, but not regulated by police.  We’ll try to keep our yard a safe haven for iguanas passing through.  They love eating the fruit from our massive jocote tree, plus there is a great comedor (little restaurant) next door in our neighbors’ yard, with plenty of chicks to choose from! 

He was still enough for me to walk around him and take a few photos!