Halfway Mark!

Liz & Nate enjoying the waterfall and beauty in Malacatoya.

On the 22^nd of March, we hit our halfway mark for our time here in Nicaragua with MCC!!  It’s hard to believe that we have been here in Nicaragua for 1 year and 6 months!  In some ways it feels like we’ve been here forever and this is just our life now, and in other ways I feel like the time has gone by so fast!  It’s weird how time can go so slow in the moment sometimes, yet feel so fast overall!

We have in many ways become accustomed to our lives here in Nicaragua and things feel generally normal but mundane would never describe it!  We live with no daily routines (expect maybe for making coffee every morning).  Our travels keep us moving—from visits to communities and trips to Managua, our weeks and months are filled.  It’s exhausting sometimes, packing, unpacking, repacking and repeat.  I guess we find some kind of routine in all of this, at least we know what we need to take where and what we can do without.     

It has been quite the journey indeed, and family and friends keep reminding me of this!  What was once our norms in the states, feels so foreign and far away to me now.  The norms that we have been accustomed to in Nicaragua probably seem so unnatural and foreign to our family and friends in the states.  All the things or foods we once needed and couldn’t live without are now rarely thought of as we prepare our meals.  It is interesting to see how this process has evolved from foreign to familiar. 

Additionally, it’s been interesting to observe how we have changed our expectations, ideas and ideals, and our outlook over the last year and a half.  There are stages and seasons to the process as we became accustomed to our lives in Nicaragua.  Adjusting to daily frustrations (big and small), finding patience when the timing is not what you expected, going to plan b, c, or d when plans are not working out, encountering the little joys that daily life can unveil if you look for it, sitting and chatting with the unexpected visitors that appear at our door as we are trying to leave, seeing the genuine smiles of individuals as you pass, and listening to people’s life stories as they open up to you.

All of these things we have experienced here have impacted us in some small or large way.  It is these experiences that we draw from as we try to make sense of the absurdity, chaos, and challenges that we are presented with.  At times, it seems impossible to make sense of situations, specifically relating to poverty.  I see signs of poverty all around me, yet I don’t know how to change any of it.  It becomes numbing in ways because there is no sense to it.  Yet we try to draw on the positive experiences and interactions we’ve had with individuals in the communities where we work.  We try to see change not in drastic numbers and sweeping line graphs, but rather in small steps—steps that are being taken in the right direction towards positive change.  Yes, there are setbacks; yes, we sometimes feel like we’re not moving at all; but if the general direction is moving forward, then that is all we can ask for:  small, positive steps towards growth and change.

Mango Season

On Wednesday, Cassie, Kevin (MCC friends) and I collected 168 mangoes from the MCC roof and yard!!  It was crazy!!  Cassie was up on the roof throwing them down to Kevin, and Kevin was throwing them to me to take inside.  It was quite the exciting scene!  I made granola, mango muffins, and mango sauce.  For the mango sauce, I boiled down 40 mangoes (without the peel) with two cups of water and it cooked for close to three hours.  Then I squeezed all the good juice off of the mango pits, I felt like I was "milking mangoes," which resulted in a thick mango concentrate!  No sugar added!   All natural and so delicious!!  Now we can eat it on pancakes, fruit slushies, mango lassies, and add it to curries...  The options are endless!  When we stay in the MCC office, we can hear them falling on the zinc roof all night long, it's sometimes quite loud and startling!  Every morning I wake up and go the back yard to see how many mangoes I will discover.  It's like easter egg hunting!  These particular mangoes are called Mango Rosas, which are one of my favorite varieties.  I never knew how many varieties of mangoes existed, and my goal is try them all!  I love mango season!!

Five Days in the Highlands!

Last week we finally got away from "our norm" for some adventures in Matagalpa - the highlands!  It started on Saturday morning at 6 am with a phone call from a friend, Irene.  She lives in Potreritos, one of the communities we work in.  She wanted to travel with us to Matagalpa, since she had never been, to visit some friends for an overnight.  So Irene got us going and on the road earlier then we would have on a Saturday morning, but I appreciated the the travel time with her!   

We had Saturday and Sunday to ourselves - to walk around the city, sit in the central park and people-watch, we found some new cafés, and eat delicious food (handmade pizzas and ravioli from our favorite Italian restaurant in town)!  It was great to relax and take it easy! 

On Monday, three other MCC'ers (David a Nicaraguan from our team, Miriam a Canadian from the Mexico team, and Patrocinio a Bolivian on the Bolivian team) all met up with us for a learning tour.  We went further north to communities outside of San Ramon to see agriculture projects of one MCC's partner.  It was interesting to hear what worked and didn't work for people, and what people were experimenting with on their own.  Bunny projects didn't go so well, but goats were thriving!  The scenery and drive was gorgeous!  Mountains and hills, green and lush, a stark comparison to dry Teustepe right now! 

Drinking coffee in El Tuma.

Tuesday we drove even further to communities outside of El Tuma.  There we visited a site run by a NGO, Christian Medical Action (AMC).  Our friend, Beth, used to work for AMC but finished her term in January.  They have been working with land banks in where the organization buys an area of land and parcels it off into smaller plots to then sell to individuals without land.  They have 10 years (interest-free) to pay off their debt of $1500 for 3 manzanas~5.5 acres of land.  There are strings attached, they can't be owners of other land (in the beginning), they aren't allowed to burn the land or cut down trees (no slash and burn, which is what most do), they are not allowed to use chemicals (or only in small amounts in the beginning), they need to grow a diverse array of crops, and they need to live on the land.  It was really fascinating to meet with the 17 partners that are apart of this particular land bank.  Some had paid off their debt in five years and bought additional land, others where working to pay off their 
debt in the eighth year of the project.  These people were so inspirational to me!  They talked about how it was really challenging in the beginning to not use lots of chemicals, and that the soil wasn't good, and their neighbors would make fun of them and ask why they weren't burning their fields.  These individuals had perseverance to carry on and learn new techniques that in the end resulted in good yields and was environmentally friendly.  To see the transformation in these people's lives was incredible and so encouraging!  It was a great day talking with them, having dialogue, and walking around and seeing their parcels of land!  We saw many shade-grown coffee trees flowering, cacao pods on the tree (where chocolate comes from), chomped on some fresh sugarcane (very juicy, my hands were all sticky afterwards), slid around on some muddy paths, saw 70 boxes of beehives that they were learning to care for, and learned so much in the process!  Definitely my highlight, visiting this project!    

Beans growing in Malacatoya.

Wednesday we were in a community, Malacatoya, where our organization, AsoFénix, is working.  There has been more rain up north then usual, so it rained a good bit in the morning when we arrived.  We took the time to talk to one community leader, Orlando, for a bit and drank a cup of his coffee from the December harvest.  We geared up (in rubber roots), and hiked to the hydro-electric water turbine that powers the community of 40 houses with electricity.  It was SO MUDDY and I was sliding all over the place, it was quite comical to everyone around.  One of my community journalists, Elicelda, accompanied us throughout the day.  She was amused by my inability to walk in mud as she easily hopped over areas and avoided deep areas.  We learned more about the system, saw a beautiful waterfall and were quite muddy by the end!  Later we toured Orlando's fields of passion fruit on trellises, red beans, and coffee.  It was so beautiful and the landscape was hilly and green!


We returned home on Wednesday evening and were completely exhausted, plus I was started to get a cold from the climate change from cold to hot!  It was a great experience and we learned a lot.  I really appreciated getting to know Miriam and Patrocinio more.  They are great people and we had some wonderful exchanges of experiences.  We hope to pass on some of this knowledge in our work with community members.  

Patrocinio, David, Miriam, Liz & Nate

Too Much Food!!

* Disclaimer:  I realize there are some generalizations about people and cultures in this post!  There are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule and these are observations Nate or I have made in our 13 months living in Nicaragua, so take it as that and nothing more!  Plus, it’s our personal blog, we can say what we want!!  Comments, observations, suggestions, advise—write us!

Food is something we all have in common across cultures—we all have to eat!  Nicaraguans are very proud of their dishes and generally not very experimental with new dishes and foods.  Many Nicaraguans do not like spicy foods and if are given something new, probably won’t like it.  In my opinion, many are picky eaters and like their mama’s gallo pinto (rice and beans) the best!  So we do not attempt to replicate anyone’s mothers’ home-cooking.  We bring our own culture into the kitchen and try to introduce new things subtly and slowly to friends and neighbors who are willing.  It’s best not to be offended when a Nicaraguan adds three more spoonfuls of sugar to their already sweetened coffee or homemade fruit juice you have made for them.  It’s also best to just offer salt to them when you give them food because chances are we didn’t salt it enough!  The small but noticeable culturally differences we encounter.

Since food is something we share in common with everyone, we realize it’s important to not be picky ourselves and to accept what is given to us with gratitude and a smile!  Although we are vegetarians and have kept it that way while living here, there are exceptions.  If we are offered meat in a situation that we can’t just tell them we’re vegetarians, we will try to eat what we can without getting ourselves sick.  One example:  We were invited to our pastor’s house in Teustepe for lunch.  We completely forgot to mention in advance that we don’t eat meat, so we arrive and are served arroz aquita (soupy rice with chicken).  We couldn’t say in the moment that we wouldn’t eat this dish after they graciously invited us and prepared a meal for us, so we ate as much chicken as we could off the bone.

Portion sizes are something we both struggle with, especially in the campo.  I’ve mentioned before that tortillas are the size of plates, right?  Well they are!  Rice is served on one half of your plate and red beans on the other half, plus a huge chunk of salty cuajada (campo cheese) and a tortilla the size of your face. 

What method will I choose? 

1. Can I manage to eat it all fast enough before I feel how full I am?  I’ll deal with the consequences of heartburn and acid-reflex for the rest of the day or night. 
2. Can I try eating slowly to attempt to aid my digestive track, but in the process my brain realizes how full I really am.  The last half of my plate I am fighting to shove it in without getting sick from the feeling of how full I am. 
3. Attempt to hide some food and feed it to the dog or pig nearby when no one is looking!  This is tricky when in a household of 5 or more people, but it has been done!!
4. Try to be in the room with the person serving your food and tell them you want less. (This is only an option if we know people better and feel comfortable doing this.)  We then end up with a large portion instead of an EXTRA-large portion. 
5. Choosing not to eat it all!  Really we don’t feel like this is an option!  (This option is very tricky because you could easily offend the cooks or it could be seen as food wasted that someone else would have eaten.) 

What would you choose?  These methods are completely healthy, right?  All in the name of cultural sensitivity!?!?  How will I survive this for two more years?            

Not too mention the amount of sugar, salt, oil and sometimes cream that people use in their cooking here is INSANE!!!  This is no joke!  If I come out alive without diabetes, high cholesterol or obesity issues I think I’ll be in good shape!  It’s no wonder diabetes, kidney and gall bladder issues are so common here!

I struggle with finding the delicate balance between being culturally sensitive and listening to what my body can handle!!

Matagalpa Getaway!

Beautiful adorned Cathedral

Garden at our Hostal!

We finally had our getaway anniversary weekend!  We went to Matagalpa in the the northern highlands.  It was about a 3 hour bus ride from Managua, but only 1.5 hours back!  The climate was cooler, the air was fresher and the lush, green mountains surrounding us made us feel like we were back in Colorado, well almost!  The city buzzed with energy-people actually walked faster than anywhere else I've seen in Nicaragua!  We walked around, enjoyed the sites, people-watched and ate really yummy food!  Not to mention, all the wonderful coffee shops they had in town!  It was a great trip, minus Liz getting a sinus infection from the start and feeling lousy!  We will be back again when we are both healthy-to explore, go hiking and of course for more local coffee!  

Nate enjoying the local coffee!

Liz enjoying an iced mocha!

Night lights and hills of Matagalpa!

Happy Anniversary!

We celebrated our anniversary on July 28th!  It's hard to believe that we've been married for nine years already!  Time sure flies!  We had community meetings all day, about an hour north us, so we didn't have a full day of relaxing and celebrating.  We're planning a weekend away up north in the mountains, which will happen some time this month!

In the Central Park in Teustepe!

Household Chores

In the States, I agonized over chores, such as dusting, cleaning the bathroom and dealing with piles of papers on our dining room table.  The time, energy and hours I spent cleaning our Boulder apartment on Saturdays or other days in the week were many.  I’m not saying I did it all alone either, Nate helped out substantially with household chores (whether he enjoyed it or not).  My priority to have a clean house was always near the top of my list. 

Throughout the past ten months, I’ve had time to reflect on my household chores, and the similarities and differences to my previous life and life here in Nicaragua.

Sweeping & Mopping vs. Vacuuming

• In Boulder, I always vacuumed our whole apartment because we had carpet.  It was fast and easy with noticeable results!
• Sweeping is a daily task that most women partake in.  In attempts to “fit in” and clean up, I regularly sweep off my front porch and stoop outside.  I actually did this a lot in Boulder too, but here I find (almost daily) chip bags, juice boxes, mango or jocote pits (when in season), plastic water bags, candy wrappers and such that kids drop behind our wall as they go to and from school.  We live on the same street as the grade school so there is A LOT of kid traffic on our road!
• Additionally, there are always a variety of bugs to sweep up daily—dead or alive they go outside!  We have also noticed “seasons” of bugs, whether it is ants with wings, beetles or crickets. 
• With tile floors, a broom and dustpan is all one needs to get the job done!  Although the quality is lacking in the brooms here since I've broken two already.  But there always is mopping to do if you want to really get things clean!  This is much more time consuming and tiring than vacuuming.  It happens in our house, but not as often as people here tend to mop.  Many mop their houses daily!!  I can’t imagine, it’s hard enough mopping every other week! 

On Water

• In Boulder I had houseplants that started overtaking our living room.  It was a weekly chore to water them all and make sure they were all happy and healthy.  Plus in the summers, we had a garden, which needed nightly watering at times. 
• In Teustepe, I don’t own one houseplant!  I know, it’s quite sad but true.  We do plan to have a garden, but as of yet we are still planning.  So no watering as of yet!
• In Teustepe, we always need to consider is our water supply.  We have two huge plastic barrels in our shower to save water, and several water jugs in our kitchen to fill and save for when our water turns off.  Sometimes we just don’t have enough pressure to take a shower.  We always keep our water filter full for drinking, and keep all receptacles full just in case!  Something we never had to think about in Boulder.
• When it’s really hot, keeping up with our ice supply turns into a daily chore!

Dishes

• In Boulder, dishes at times got seriously out of hand (and we didn’t have a dishwasher either)!  Two days of dishes meant two sinks worth of dirty dishes that typically extended themselves out onto the counter or even the stove.  Nate and I had to tally who did dishes last, because the task at hand was often overwhelming.     
• Since our water supply fluctuates, and bugs are persistent, we usually try to do dishes immediately after a meal.  This makes the quantity of dishes less when you’re doing them more often, so disputes on who’s turn it is to wash dishes are fewer.  Plus, we don’t have a kitchen sink with a drain; we just have a dishpan, which we have to dump outside, so we use less water doing dishes here.

Laundry

• In Boulder, we had access to a washer and dryer in our apartment unit.  With enough quarters on hand, I could do all our laundry until my heart was content!  Washed, dried and folded within three hours!
• In Teustepe, we have a lavendero or pila, which we hand wash some of our clothes on.  I know we’ve mentioned this before, so I won’t go into more detail.  It’s a lot of work, so we have a tendency to haul our laundry into Managua to wash at the MCC office in a washing machine.  No dryers though!  All laundry is hung up outside to dry, and in the rainy season you have to find enough space under a roof to hang it all.  It can be a couple days till it dries when it’s really rainy and cloudy outside.

Dusting

• In Boulder, I attempted to dust every week or every other week.  There were always lots of surfaces to cover, things to move around and get under—definitely not my favorite thing to do!
• In Teustepe, when it’s not the dusty-dry season, dust isn’t all that bad!  Maybe I choose to ignore it!  During the dry season, we were wiping off surfaces every thirty minutes if we were going to eat or work on the computer.  Otherwise, it was a lost cause trying to keep things clean.

Bathroom

• Cleaning bathrooms is equally un-fun no matter what country you’re in!  Our bathroom in Teustepe doesn’t get quite as shiny white as it was in Boulder.  Again, a chance to lower standards and overlook areas.

Random Chores

In Boulder—

• Mail always seemed to accumulate in piles on our dining room table.  It became a weekly chore to deal with it all!  Most headed to the recycling bin! 
• Trash—we always had a dumpster at our apartment, so we could take out our trash whenever we needed.  We accumulated a lot more trash and recycling in the states then we do in Nicaragua.  And we honestly didn’t have more than one kitchen-sized garbage bag of trash in Boulder! 
• Grocery shopping—I usually tried to do one big trip to several places about every week or ten days.  It usually took about two hours including the drive. 
• Errands—I would always use our car to get around and locations could be all over Boulder and perhaps not even completed in one Saturday!  So I split my errands up and prioritized them to do the most important ones first.  Plus I always devised an order of where I would go first, second, etc. so I would make best use of travel time!

In Teustepe—

• Mail, what mail?  We don’t have any piles of junk mail to wade through here!  Yet it still amazes me how random piles of papers can still accumulate here even though we don’t have incoming mail!
• Trash—since there is no trash service here in Teustepe, Nate is now the proud trash-burner of our household.  Recycling, what’s that?  We save recyclables and haul them into Managua to be (hopefully) recycled there.  We also find creative ways to reuse plastic bottles.  In the near future, they will house our seedlings for our vegetable garden.
• Grocery shopping—in Teustepe, it consists of one of us walking around the corner to buy milk, eggs, or other basics.  Not very far to go, and shopping is done in about ten minutes!
• Errands—in Teustepe every place has their specialty, or they are a pulpería, which means they have a little bit of everything.  So when I want tortillas, cuajada (a cheese equivalent), cooked beans, and a fresco (juice) for dinner, I would go to four different locations to buy each one.  The nice thing is every place is within three blocks from our house!  So all errands are by foot and still don’t take very long!
• When it’s really hot, carrying a fan to whatever room I am in becomes a chore!  It’s like a new and necessary appendage!
• During the rainy season, there are more frogs around (both tiny and large).  We catch them and put them outside, where they should be, and not in our shower or living room!
• Mosquito swatting!  Nate has personally taken it upon himself to kill as many mosquitoes as possible on any given day!  He’s perfecting the mid-air/one-hand kill, but those buggers still bite!
• Killing ants!  Additionally, Nate has a mission to kill colonies of ants that lurk in the cracks of house!  Boiling water (sometimes mixed with detergent) is what wards them off best!

Here in Nicaragua, my priorities have changed a bit in regards to household chores.  My house in Teustepe will never be as “clean” as my apartment in Boulder, and with this realization, my standards have dropped and my priorities have changed.  I don’t really feel like this has been a “bad” thing in my life; really it was a necessity to preserve my sanity (and Nate’s).  Additionally, it has been a healthy release of my OCD tendencies towards cleanliness.