Wild Weekend in El Jocote

Last weekend we spent three nights in the community of El Jocote where we work.  It is always an adventure going to these communities, with unexpected new experiences.  I thought I would share our highlights and low points to give you a taste of what we experience when we are in the campo

Highlights

1. Restful sleep!  We had three solid nights of sleep on a hard full bed.  Let’s just say we were fortunate to have a full size bed for the two of us and not a twin cot!  Mattresses are thin and pillows are hard, but one adjusts the best they can!  We had about nine hours of sleep every night and it was great!

Nate working on the porch with a view.

2. Laughter!  Our gracious host, Marta, gave us coffee and a piece of sweet bread (baked locally) for breakfast on their porch with an amazing view.  I sat my bread down on the bench for a second to adjust my cup of coffee in my hand and their small cat saw the opportunity and took the whole piece of bread in it’s mouth and ran!  Nate yelled and I turned to grab my bread out of the cat’s mouth before it got away. Only an edge was chomped on, so I ripped it off and fed it to the defeated cat, while I enjoyed my sweet bread and coffee!  It was quite the comical act!
   

   

   Lineth seeing how heavy the turkey weighted.

3. New connections!  We had the opportunity to visit many new families as we were working on collecting data through surveys on reforestation.  So we talked with new people, and learned more about their families and their passions.  It was great, and we met some real characters!
   

   

   Joselyn interviewing Asunción who was quite the talker at 78.

4. The best pinolillo I’ve ever had!  Note:  Pinolillo is a typical Nicaraguan drink, made from toasted, ground corn; ground spices:  cinnamon, cloves, black pepper; and ground cacao (where chocolate comes from).

One woman who I had met before and talked with is such a fiery one at age 78.  I made it my goal to visit her!  I had heard from another AsoFénix intern, that Angela’s pinolillo was the best in El Jocote, so I wanted to see for myself.  I went to visit her with my journalist, Joselyn, and we interviewed her for one of our surveys.  She was a bit sick, yet still as animated as ever.  Seeing her and hearing her talk puts such a smile on my face.  We were getting ready to go and I was disappointed that she hadn’t offered her famous pinolillo yet.  So we said goodbye, and I walked outside to admire a huge guanacaste tree that is simply beautiful behind her house.  She talked about the tree for a while and then she did the drinking motion with her hand to her mouth (a Nicaraguan thing) and asked if I would have something to drink.  I accepted and can confirm that she does have the best pinolillo in El Jocote and probably the best I have ever had in my time here in Nicaragua.  It was great and we chatted more in her house and she wouldn’t let me leave until she refilled my glass once more. 

The HUGE guanacaste tree under Angela's home.

5. Cooler temperatures!  I thought it was still pretty hot, but Nate thought it was nice.  Nights cooled off and that was refreshing.  There was one brief rain that also cooled us off in the afternoon.

 

Low Points

1. Too much food!!  Nicaraguans just don’t understand that we Americans don’t eat as much as they do!  It is a constant struggle when we go to the campo.  I wrote a blog post about this back in November.  Read it, if you haven’t already!   http://transitiontimes.blogspot.com/2011/11/too-much-food.html

2. Latrines.  I will say no more, but if you want a story, ask us!

3. Sad news.  The previous Sunday (17^th) there was at least 7 hours of rain.  It was a torrential downpour in Teustepe and the surrounding area.  Rivers rise quickly and can be really dangerous, and people are swept away every year during the rainy season.  On Monday 18^th we learned that the bus driver’s father from El Espino had died in the river that night.  El Espino is a community about 1.5 hours from Teustepe.  We have to take the bus to El Espino and then walk 40 minutes to get to El Jocote.  We arrived to El Jocote on a Friday (22^nd) and therefore this was the main news buzzing around the community.  We heard several versions and police are investigating the cause of death.  One version:  the man in his mid-fifties was on his horse at night.  He had been drinking and crossed the river not realizing how high it was.  The river washed him downstream and his horse made it out and returned home without the man.  The next morning community members found the man dead, his head badly bruised.  The second version (which was more speculation) was that he was beaten, robbed, and left to die in the river.  No matter which version was really true, it’s a sad story! 

4. Corre de Gallos (running of the roosters).  So we worked a very long day on Saturday and were looking forward to a quiet Sunday in El Jocote.  The natural beauty is abundant and peaceful moments in nature can be found.  Sunday morning came and we learned that the 24^th of July is Día de San Juan (the day of Saint John).  It is celebrated with the Corre de Gallos.  One would think, okay, it’s a chicken race of some kind, this should be fun to watch, right?  No, not the case at all! 

Men from the community tie a rope across the main road, from which they hang a live rooster by its feet at the height of 8-10 feet off the ground.  The goal of this traditional activity is to have your horse at a gallop as you run by the rooster hanging in the road.  The object is to grab the rooster’s head and pull it off.  This takes a long time to do.  Many men on horses have to gallop by and grab this poor rooster’s head before it actually falls off and bleeds to death.  They first did this with a large duck and then a rooster!  It was a terrible scene to see.  Not to mention, the house we were at had a perfect view of this whole scene and they put on the loudest music to accompany the activity.  Nate and I could not take much of this scene, nor tolerate the deafening music.  We went on a walk and found rocks to sit on for two hours while we waited out their game. 

Note:  This has been a tradition in communities in Nicaragua for as long as people can remember.  In older days, they used to bury the live rooster and just have the neck and head sticking out of the ground.  They would then blindfold the player and give them a machete, and with music playing, they would have to dance around and try to find the rooster’s head by swinging around their machete.  You can imagine the injuries that occurred, plus add a little alcohol into the game and it becomes a dangerous tradition.  They stopped doing this in most places and now do it as described above.  

Stone wall and pathway where we walked.

View of Catholic church from Toño's porch, where we stayed.

Little puppy sleeping in the sun.

12 piglets and 12 teets.

Elberto, Liz & Nate checking out the inside of the water tank.

One full bus in a small world

Yesterday we had a full day in the AsoFénix office in Managua.  We left our house at 6:05 am to catch a taxi in town to take us to the highway.  That was about a half-hour wait and then waiting for the bus did not take long at all.  We hopped on and it was empty!!  What a nice surprise for once!  We found seats in the front and were able to work on the bus as we commuted into the capital. 

We got off at the airport and bought latte’s to jump-start our day, which is a rare treat!  Later we walked to the office, just ten minutes away.  We met in our outdoors “conference area” which has a tin roof in full sun.  From 8:30 am to 12:30 pm we were sweating like crazy in the humid heat in our meeting with three others.  The day went well and we were able to accomplish a lot, so that felt really good!  To be honest, we cannot usually say our office visits are that great, so it was refreshing to have a positive and productive day there! 

We left the office to catch a bus home in front of the airport at 4:30 pm.  It was taking forever to catch a bus and we were standing in the beating, hot sun with our heavy backpacks filled with clean laundry and laptops!  Finally a Boaco bus stops for us, but only sees us at the last minute and goes way beyond where we were standing.  We thought, "well, got passed again by a bus," but then he stopped.  We ran the equivalent of a block to catch the bus as it was waiting on us!  Have in mind that this is an old school bus from the states, so the back emergency door is used as a normal entrance to the bus. We climbed up into the back of the bus and it starts rolling before our feet even left the pavement.  The ayudante (bus helper) began yelling and shoving us into the people in front of us as we could hardly fit.  It was horrible and I told the ayudante that this was ridiculous and I wanted to get off because it was so full, and Nate still had his butt hanging out the back door as we were going.  So they keep yelling at people to move to the front (even though it's full throughout) and keep shoving us further into the bus.  It was a headache!  So we make our way through to the middle with our two big backpacks on our shoulders.  We find a little area to stand and I see a clearing in the luggage rack above but several people down.  Sine I couldn’t reach from where I was standing, I beg the young guy with headphones to help me get our backpacks up on the rack.  He did and we breathed a sigh of relief.  It was so hot and we were packed in the metal bus like a can of sardines.  All windows were open, yet everyone was sweating profusely.

I try to make a little more room for myself and note the woman on the seat below me is on the edge of her seat taking up precious inches of isle room where I could stand.  I was annoyed by her, and thought, why is she trying to take up even more space when she has a seat!  I commented to Nate in English how she was pushing into my legs and kept inching off the seat in my direction.  As I continued to access why she was being that way, I realized there was something (sticky, perhaps?) on the middle of her seat and she was avoiding sitting in it.  Okay, more reason to not be annoyed with her. 

The ride continues, and then the five-gallon buckets lying on their side near Nate start dripping oil onto the woman below us.  Mystery solved as to what was on her seat, but now it was slowly dripping on her face and clothes.  The leaking buckets were not claimed by anyone, nor did anyone pitch in to help out when she asked for a rag.  My backpack was too far to reach to get some tissues.  Nate, the woman and I all felt helpless in the situation.  Finally the man beside me left and I could move a little closer to my bags to reach the handy wet ones I keep there in case of random instances as such.  So I passed wet ones out to the woman and Nate as they were cleaning up the mess. 

As soon as the woman wiped up herself and her seat, she offered me the edge of her seat to share with her and her daughter.  I kindly accepted and thought back to how I was annoyed with this woman just twenty minutes earlier and now she was offering me an edge of her seat on the bus.  It goes to show how a small act of kindness can go a long way!

We began talking and she asked me which state I was from.  I said, Colorado and she was so surprised.  She lived in Westminster, Colorado for nine years (a fifteen-minute drive from Boulder).  She was working in a McDonald's on Federal for nine years and living with her husband and daughter.  She was back in Nicaragua for two months to visit her family. She grew up in a small community called San Diego (about 20 minutes from us in Teustepe), but has lived in the states for 14 years.  I work with several women in San Diego and we discovered one woman was her neighbor and she went to high school with her.  Such a small world!  We were both floored as we shared these details and talked for over a half hour, sharing a seat in a very full bus. 

Thank you, Selmira for sharing your seat with me on the bus.  It was great to hear your stories and share experiences with you.  Sometimes it is these chance encounters that make our lives richer and help us to realize how interconnected we are in this small world. 

Celebrating one year and nine months in Nicaragua!!

It's been awhile since we've updated our blog, but Liz tries to keep our photo blog up-to-date every few months!  

They say, a photo is worth a thousand words...  

well, here's a million words for you!

 

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