Back home!

Last games with the niños

I’m writing this on an Amtrak train, not a Nica bus.

I miss those Nica buses. I really do think that Pimp My Ride could learn a lot from what those choferes rig for their vehicles: the mandatory bullhorn to announce your arrival, the neon-colored electrical tape wrapped around every handle and railing to give it a little flair, the endless array of images mounted on the walls…soccer player cutouts…pictures of Disney characters…and above all else, Virgin Mary’s.

Seeing a few of my bus drivers for the last time

But, Amtrak has got its perks too, and frankly it feels really great to throw my bag on, sit on a big poofy blue chair, lean back, and know that I can nap all the smooth way up to campus.

So, yes, I’m back in the States, finally getting around to this blog posting after an incredible final week in Nicaragua and a day-and-a-half turnaround at home.

This week all started with the Despedida: August 8^th had been the looming deadline for our vols all summer, the daunting little square on their calendars marking the day when they knew they would have to leave their communities and with that, say good-bye to their second family and their second home. So most of them they cried. A lot, just in the same way I bawled my little 16-year-old eyes out as I left my host community in Mexico, and my host brothers refused to walk me to the bus stop for fear of being seen crying in public as well. But then we made all the vols come together (and bring a few people from their host families) for a going-away party in the city so that they could cry some more. I didn’t think I was going to join in...until I saw one of the host fathers of my vols, a big strong invincible old Nicaraguan man with a spark in his eye and a marshmallow in his heart, starting to tear up. Then I did, too.

We then whisked the vols off to Granada for a day and a half of “Debriefing,” their time to see Nicaragua from the tourist’s angle, communalize the AMIGOS experience, and decompress at a halfway point for reverse culture shock.

Then came the stupidest day I’ve ever attempted: we woke up at 2 o’clock in the morning to take the volunteers the two-hour bus ride from Granada to the airport in Managua. After figuring out a few flight changes and seeing them off, we left Managua at 7:00 to head back to Matagalpa (another 2 hours). With an hour or two for me to pack my bags, turn in paperwork, and drink a whole lot of coffee, I turned around and headed back out the door for my Close-Out Survey. That same day, I took the two-hour bus to my first community, held a large community meeting to evaluate the project this summer, had a going-away party, and said bye to everybody. Then I walked forty-five minutes to the next community to do the exact same thing all over again, finally crawling in to bed with nothing left in me. I was lucky to have been a gymnast, and even luckier to feel extremely attached to those two communities and fueled by their hospitality…or else I wouldn’t have had the energy for this day.

Staff leaving the hostal in Granada at 2 a.m.

I repeated that going-away process two more times, then came home to Staff House for the last time. I really loved my two days of Close-Out: true, I came back sad and tired from far too many good-byes (good-bye to my vols at the airport to begin missing them immediately despite the sense of relief that I’d finished my job and finished it well, and good-bye to four communities back-to-back-to-back-to-back). But I also came back very content, very proud of how everything went this summer, and thoroughly refreshed after two days of community members piling on their love, their sadness the vols were gone, their joy the vols were there...while I was just a little too tired to feel anything but beautifully raw emotion inspired by all that love.

Everybody wanted to carry my bag for me the last times I walked between communities...

Then, it was really just one final push to finish up paperwork before bursting out of Matagalpa into the paradise of Laguna de Apoyo for a two-night Staff vacation. Floating in the lagoon, reveling in how little worries or responsibilities any of us had any more, reveling also in how the AMIGOS Standards of Conduct no longer applied now that we had finished the official project…it was a very tranquilo, very relaxing, very fun way for the group to say good-bye in a much less stressful situation.

And then it was over. It was wonderful to have Caitlin—the other Supervisor from Arlington—with me all the way back to National Airport, by my side to voice the memories that we suddenly missed about vols and communities and Staff, and to rest our heads on comfortable shoulders. The “reverse culture shock” just isn’t that intense the third time you do AMIGOS, I suppose, but I still noticed some things acutely: running the figures in my head about how much that George Washington poster on the wall in the airport cost and thinking about whether or not we really needed to spend that money, jumping startled as the paper towels dispensed themselves for me, laughing as I remembered again just how many Starbucks there really are here.

My parents have thoroughly spoiled me in these few hours that I’ve had home. Now the goal is to keep my momentum going as I chug up to New Haven for a week leading 7 Freshman to a local sustainable farm for them to learn about sustainable agriculture, but mostly for them to pump some of their nervous anxieties out of their systems and get a group of real friends before they jump into the exciting chaos of Orientation. I just hope I don’t feel as though I’m cheating on my group of vols…

This won’t be my last posting; I’ll be sure to send you all at least one follow-up. Trying to explain what I can about a week of AMIGOS in a posting each week has been a fun challenge this summer, and I do think I’ll miss writing these. It’s been interesting what does and doesn’t make it into this blog, what I feel I can articulate well and what I can’t, what seems appropriate to permanently emblazon on the Internet’s iconic face...and what doesn’t.

Maybe I’ll talk about lessons learned from this experience. About my new understanding of AMIGOS and appreciation for it. About understanding what it’s like to live with the same people you work with. About feeling more comfortable moving between the drastically different worlds I exist in. About new thoughts on liberal guilt. About all the different ways there are to learn outside the classroom. About what I did well, and what I didn't. About being impatient to not start my next AMIGOS project immediately. About being extremely excited to be a Sophomore at Yale with a feeling that it’s exactly what I want to be doing.

Or maybe I’ll just shut up about all this earnest crap and say that I’m really happy and proud to have helped make AMIGOS possible for four communities and nine volunteers, enjoy the scenery that is passing by outside the train window (and passing much faster now than it ever did on a bus in rural Nicaragua), and get ready to make sure Yale’s class of 2015 doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Back home.

Cuídense,

Only one week left!

More gorgeous scenery on route

Coming down to the end, we’re even busier than usual here at Staff House, although this whole process is getting even more exciting and fulfilling than usual as well…so even though I’d love to talk more about how proud I am of how each of my vols has grown, how frustrated I’ve gotten at gender relations here, how much I’m looking forward to dancing and stuffing my face with tamales during my last visits to communities and how much I’m not looking forward to saying good-bye to four communities in two days…but I feel as though I’ve only got time for a burst of photos, a quick update, and a list of things I’m going to miss.

The amazing mural my girls are painting. We're pretty excited.

A little recuerdo from the girls on my shirt

I just saw my volunteers in community for the last time. Projects are wrapping up, educational summer camps with kids are turning into giant good-bye parties, volunteers are getting reflective and sad to leave and anxious to go home and—you might never have thought it would happen for some of them but gosh darn it, it’s true—downright grateful to their dear Project Supervisor. I’m so incredibly proud to see how far they’ve come…and to be allowed to claim however much credit for it as I want because I’m their P-Sup and there are no witnesses to tell you otherwise :P

Their teary-eyed good-bye comes tomorrow, and mine is a few days later. Some of the things I’ll be missing:

• This one incredibly warm family whose house I can never manage to walk by without eating a meal, who brag about the 145 grandchildren and 60 great-grandchildren of their still-living abuela. I’m not sure how much I believe them on that one
• Being asked to explain how it’s possible that the Chinese-American volunteer in one of my communities 1) lives in the United States and not in China and 2) no, does not know Jackie Chan personally
• Spontaneous dance parties at Staff House
• The gap-toothed grin of this one guy super-ripped guy who I have seen in literally every one of my four communities who I have also literally never seen not smiling
• Buñuelos. Like funnel cake: fried donut-hole-sized balls of dough but really fried not just donut-fried, soaked in syrup. Also tamales, fried plantains, and mango

Beautiful fresh corn, all you need to make tamales

• Spanish. And people understanding me when I speak in non-stop Spanglish
• Watching the rain move in from miles away across bright green rolling hills until the downpours finally swoops in, cooling everything off as giant rain droplets pound down on tin roofs like little mallets on steel drums
• The incredibly friendly and helpful bus driver…who also can’t stop proposing to my vols and asking me to give him one in exchange for his fiancé
• “Que le vaya bien,” “Adios,” “Va pue’ ”
• This one dog on the way from Q to C that always, always, always barks like mad and chases after me. Always, that is, unless it’s after 2 p.m. in which case the sun makes him lazy and he just slowly lifts his head to look at me before deciding not to bother
• The feeling of satisfaction after surviving that dog and crossing the river and finishing my 2 ½-hour walk to C alive…and that feeling of changing into a fresh shirt afterwards
• And the one thing I will not miss: rron-rrones. These are big loud harmless-but-annoying beetles that come out at night. They sound like flies with loudspeakers lodged in their mouths, buzzing around for only about three seconds at a time before they inevitably run straight into a wall and crash to the ground, usually landing on your head on the cot. Then they squirm on their backs, unable to turn over or get up, for about five minutes before the cats finally eat them. Then fifty of their closest friends come to keep you up all night. Rron-rrones are spawned from the deepest pits of Hell, to where they will soon return as soon as they stupidly die because of their own damn fault

Hiding from the rron-rrones on this cool folding cot that one host family has

In some ways, the summer already seems to be over: I saw my vols in community for the last time, I finished my evaluations of them and read their evaluations of me, and I feel so proud with how they’ve grown and how I’ve done…most of what really matters about this summer has ended, and most of it has gone really well.

Now I’m looking forward to this exciting set of back-to-back-to-back good-byes. First we celebrate in Granda with the vols before sending them back home. Then I return to communities one last time for more celebration and more good-byes. And then I have two days with my Project Staff to wrap up everything and relax before we all head home too.

Painting the school. Yum.

Well, they painted this guy, too...

...and got it all over my fancy red AMIGOS polo...there's nothing quite like bathing in paint thinner.

So, hopefully I'll get some time to blog about all those other things next week.

Until then,

This post was supposed to be about everything I'm going to miss but instead it's just about all I got to do...

After ending my posting last week on a truly Hallmark note, I figured I’d start this week’s with a slightly less serious one…so I’ll explain the snake in a bit.

I absolutely loved this week. I’m blogging about it now before I dive headfirst into a massive pile of end-of-summer paperwork that awaits me this weekend and next, while it’s still fresh in my head how fun everything was on route. My vols have finally slipped into much more of a comfortable rhythm: they’re still being challenged, but at last feeling more at home, more used to their new surroundings, with more energy to really enjoy the experience instead of using up all they’ve got just plain freaking out. It’s now when even the most homesick vols have an occasional moment of, “No! I don’t want to leave!” And with them, I’ve slipped into more of a rhythm as well, less hectic figuring out to do, more time to enjoy the communities that even I—with my measly twenty-four hours I have in each community every week—have gotten to know so well.

I spent the week scarfing down all the delicious soups and tortillas that communities are starting to make from the baby corn cobbs that are just peaking out, admiring coral snakes (oh, I think I'll wait until next week to explain that), and trying to apply as much tact as possible in forcing my vols to absorb and reflect upon every single precious moment left in community…and trying to do so without being too melodramatic…so, a few stories from the whirlwind week:

We held a big dance party at the school in one of my communities right after an educational activity with the kids…And it eventually devolved into a break dance class: one joven showing me ridiculous spinning popping Latin American dance moves across tile and dirt floors, me teaching a few handstands and Pommel Horse skills. How he learned all of it, I have no idea. Definitely a new kind of “multicultural exchange.”

My hair was getting a little long: I started to look like Justin Beiber, and to suffocate from the heat. So I went ahead and got a cortacabello al estilo Nica. My neck is pretty well razor burnt from the dry shave I got, and the side of my head has some pretty interesting layering, but for the most part I’m actually pretty pleased with the new look. Add in the jeans I bought at that local Mi Favorita—which, like any good pair of Latin American pants, serve mostly to showcase the ass—and I appear to slowly be transforming into a true Nicaraguan.

There’s this one gorgeous little waterfall by the side of the road to one of my communities; I always stop there to breathe and take a break. So this week, I drop my bag, plant my feet on the ground, my hands on my hips, and stare at the crisp clear water for about three minutes…until I feel a bite on my arm. I flick off the ant that bit me (in Nicaragua, every ant bites). I feel another, this time on my other arm. I start looking around my arms, and rub off about three or four more. It’s another thirty seconds of searching around my shirt for ants before I realize that when I put my feet down, I planted them solidly on top of an anthill. My left foot is absolutely covered in them, half my pant leg now polka-dotted black. I stumble backwards to realize that ants have made it up my pants to my arms and my neck, down my shirt, up under my pants—luckily not past my knee—and are chomping away. I gave myself a good pat-down and got rid of most of them, but the bites kept coming from stray ants for another half-hour. Lesson learned: walk around while enjoying the view.

The best moment, though, came at the most rushed moment. I had just spent two hours clearing up confusion with a rotating meal plan, then walked an hour to the nearest store that sells rice and beans to buy some “food supplements” for a host family that ran out of food having to feed the vols one too many times when the meal plan fell through. So I’m three hours late to my next community, booking it down the hill. And a young boy shouts out my name, beckons me over to the house when I turn around. He ducks back inside to come out carrying what the community now knows to be my favorite: guirila, baby corn tortillas with a chunk of cuajada cheese on top, resting on a bright green banana leaf. I go inside with him to eat it with the thoughtful lady who had prepared it. And she can see I’m rushed. So she pulls out an old wise half-cliché saying on me: “Hay más tiempo que vida. La vida se acaba, y el tiempo se queda.” “There’s more time than life. Life ends, and time stays.” Ah, the joy of ceaselessly laid back Latin American lifestyles…

Va, pues,

Three Weeks Left?!

Monopolio game we found lying around

I'm pretty happy with how this blog has gone. I promised myself I’d update it at least twice all summer, and until now I’ve managed to do it every week. So what I’m really trying to say is, I don’t feel that bad that I missed my posting last week.

That first week was fun but frustrating. I had a blast the whole time on route, seeing my vols settled in during their second week: we made bread at the awesome women’s bakery that uses profits to pay for the owners to continue their education, finally figured out the [literally eight!] different kinds of bananas that grow here, and introduced one community to volleyball. But by the time I got back home, I realized that it had also been an incredibly stressful and aggravating week as well. Some vols weren’t talking to community members at all; others seemed set on thinking of each day as an epic struggle that had to be overcome, making it impossible to enjoy any of the fantastic opportunities they were being offered; hardware store quotes that were supposed to have happened a week ago never appeared. I drowned my sorrows in 40-cent “Eskimo” ice cream bars and homemade tamales.

I came back to a well-earned nap, and a Regional Director. The lovely Kate McGuire (the permanent AMIGOS staff member who spends all year maintaining all of the relationships AMIGOS works so hard to forge during the summer) paid us a visit for a few days. She’s a wise, highly sexual, calming, inspiring women who’s high on life, has really really long hair, and possesses an unparalleled ability to capture every single AMIGOS moment on her camera to use in publicity. We had to leave a day early on route this week, so it was a rushed shortened weekend at the end of a long week, but talking about AMIGOS with Kate (and showing her my communities!) was a refreshing way to turn around and head out on route more excited than ever before.

And so I left for route with Kate and our APD Mary Ann in tow, with the honor of having chosen two of my communities as the two that Kate would see while in Matagalpa. On the way, I got to meet the national director of CARE—the most motherly warm creature on this planet—while Kate met with her, and she even got us a car and driver to get to community when our other plans fell through.

I love my communities, think they’re gorgeous, spend plenty of time reminding myself to be extremely grateful for the chance to spend more than half my week with the rolling hills and loving families that live there…but I still felt great feeding off of the excitement of Kate and Mary Ann, who spend most of their AMIGOS time doing administrative work and were glowing with joy to finally get back into community. It was also just fun to be the expert on the communities, especially in one that is always super excited to see me and where I feel like the most loved human being to ever set foot in Nicaragua, save perhaps Augusto Sandino himself.

In community with Kate

I got another special visit from Alberto Reyes, the poster child of Latin American youth involvement in AMIGOS. Traditionally, and somewhat lamentably, AMIGOS has been an organization that provides the opportunity for American teenagers who can afford the program to travel to Latin America and do all that AMIGOS does. I’m extremely proud and grateful to have had the chance to be one such American, and I know that AMIGOS has also always done a good job promoting “youth leadership” with the young people living in the AMIGOS communities…but the organization has only just started making a much stronger push to provide the same opportunities to teenagers from Latin America. It always seemed like a great idea to me, but having one of my vols come from Boaco, Nicaragua, and talking a lot this week with Alberto (who is the first ever Latin American member of project staff, after being a youth counterpart in his community in the Dominican Republic and then a vol in the DR and Ecuador) has made me a true believer. These youth—often ones that have already proven themselves as absolute superstars working with AMIGOS in their own communities—offer such a refreshingly new perspective to AMIGOS, they make us rethink how we do everything that we are used to doing only with Americans, and they come into the experience with such a heightened appreciation for what an amazing opportunity AMIGOS is and all that they stand to gain from it. Love it.

I learned how to make cajeta candies, watched each of my communities begin work on their construction projects, and witnessed how much more patient I’ve learned to be by talking out challenges and misunderstandings with my vols. I lectured the super-friendly and even-more-super-womanizing bus driver who drives the route back to Matagalpa about women’s rights after he proposed that I take his fiancé back to the United States with me in exchange for one of my chela vols. I began missing home—Arlington and New Haven—a little more when I got sick again this weekend, but a few heavy doses of Cipro later I’m feeling resolved to get back out on route with all the enthusiasm and wisdom that I’ve got left in me for these last few weeks. And I feel better about being able to balance devoting my entire being to dealing with other people’s problems, and taking care of myself too, after these last two weeks.

The view out the window of my friendly womanizer's bus

I’ll leave you this week with a thought about loving life. Latin America does seem to have a certain flair for loving to live, an attitude that’s definitely affected me over the past few years. …A few host families ran out of food this week, last year’s harvest not quite lasting until this year’s. They’re still feeding the vols more than they can eat, though. And however depressing or overwhelming poverty can sometimes seem, I do notice in these communities a pervading sense of gratitude for what they do have, of that experience of life being a little more uncertain and a little more dangerous and a little more painful making it possible to appreciate much more deeply all the times when things are certain, when they are safe, when they feel good. In the words of one mother of fourteen, the hardest part of raising such a big family was never being able to give her kids all they wanted; the best part was seeing them all start their own families, live their full lives.

Con cariño,

Route!

After two days spent mostly sleeping, I’m updating this blog about an awesome first week on route. It was a full week, a fun week, an exciting week, a calming week…and an exhausting one too.

OFFICIAL AMIGOS SIDENOTE: From here on out, I’ll be telling you about some of my adventures in vague and obscure ways for the sake of my vols’ privacy and confidentiality. So for whatever gossiping I do on this blog, all subjects will remain anonymous and asexual.

It was so heartwarming to return to all of my communities for the second time, this time to see my volunteers in action: working with community members to fill out solicitudes (applications for funds) for the main projects, starting their summer camps with the kids, and generally adjusting to a very new lifestyle. I was—for no apparent reason—a rock star on route, the center of attention as both the only AMIGOS authority figure, and the funny new chele who’d passed through town once before but been gone for a whole two weeks (see pic of welcoming dance party!). So the communities loved having me there (sometimes embarrassingly so in front of the less rock-star vols), and the vols did even more: somebody who speaks English? A familiar face? Somebody with answers to my questions? Somebody with good Spanish? Hooray!

Four times, I went through the pretty intense experience of showing up to a community with no idea of what to expect, and then acting with limited time to sort out whatever I found. I had to be the one to stay calm through whatever happened, and so I actually felt very calm and at peace all week. The same goes for trying to be being, and supportive, and willing to listen, and endlessly energetic and enthusiastic…for when my vols maybe weren’t. A few choice stories:

1. One host mom cooks delicious food…with about a pound of salt a day. The food’s good, but it’s also really really hard to finish when a single egg has about 500% of your daily sodium. So what do I do? I tell her that we received calls at Staff House this week from both of her volunteers’ doctors in the Estados Unidos to warn us that they have high blood pressure and should limit their intake of salt. So por favor, a little less salt from here on out.

2. A vol addresses a community on the first day, at a big community meeting. This vol intends to say he/she is extremely gracious to be there. But what words come out of this vol’s mouth? “I am extremely generous to be here.” Woops.

3. But the Spanish adventures continue: there’s an unfortunate little coincidence that the word “nudo” in Spanish means both “knot” and “naked.” So, when one volunteer is trying to explain how to untangle a “human knot” of interlocked and overlapping hands, he/she shouts excitely, “Ahora, ¡nos desnudamos!” Does this mean “Let’s de-knot ourselves?” Sorry, but no…it actually means: “Let’s get naked!”

There’s a great mix of vols on my route. It’s been fun to build up in my head my dreams of how AMIGOS can be an amazing and unique experience for each of them, how I can try to lead them towards all those wonderfully cheesy but real realizations of perspective and confidence and maturity and the amazingness of people that this organization has to offer…

I loved being back in the communities, dealing directly will all that makes AMIGOS what it is. I got to comfort vols, and encourage them, and generally rant to them about all that I love about AMIGOS and life. It was absorbing and non-stop, leaving me totally focused and alert during the day, and ready to fall asleep the instant my head hit the cot at night.

But I just about ran out of steam by the end: the hike to the last community is a two-and-a-half-hour monstrosity uphill through the mud. Luckily, I was able to leave early in the day and hitch a ride halfway, reaching community before the rains come and make the rivers impassible. But I’d had diarrhea for a day, I was sweating buckets, and the three barefoot kids who were showing me the way didn’t quite understand that I was about to pass out. So I convinced them to grab a seat on a log while we exchanged songs, me singing “American Pie” and “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” them reciting hilarious little ditties about drunk grandmas and smelly horses and of course, love.

It’s been a really useful experience to deal with a wide variety of vols’ issues, and to get more and more comfortable moving between the world of AMIGOS communities and the world of posh city living, fighting off reverse culture shock more easily every time, and to get a sense of how sometimes I just spew out inefficient endless reams of advice as I try to guide vols towards what’s actually very concise truth: you will be less homesick—and you will get more out of this experience—if you push yourself outside your comfort zone to actually get to know people and try to take advantage of every last little awesome opportunity here that will evaporate when you leave August 8^th.

Back in Matagalpa, Staff has been having a great time napping, watching Mean Girls, hiking up to the top of the city (see below), and buying up the whole city's stock of peanut butter for our vols.

It’s their experience to make of it what they want; I’m excited for them, yeah I’m still a little jealous of them, and I’m happy to be munching on the chocolate chip cookies that Kayleigh and Caitlin just brought out of the oven as I head off to bed.

My fatherly instincts are running wild as I think of every last possibility, every last mishap, every last thing that might be going on with my nine volunteers in my four communities right now. Mostly, though, I have to say: I feel comfortable with how well [I think] I was able to set up my communities and my volunteers for a good summer, and the main thought going through my head is raw excitement that my volunteers have set off on what will likely be the most unforgettable experiences of their lives. No matter how homesick or awkward or rough these first few days might seem, I have faith that in a few weeks (and definitely in a few years!) they’ll be looking back on these days as the beginning of something much bigger. Well, I feel that, and I also feel jealousy for my volunteers who get to have the true AMIGOS experience of total immersion in an amazing and loving community that will become their new home in only a few short weeks.

In case you couldn’t tell, the vols are off. They came in to the airport in Managua (see pic) on June 28^th, and everybody was in Matagalpa by the 29^th for an intense two days of…BRIEFING! We welcomed the vols with everything from a somewhat sensual Staff Dance—to great meals of beans and rice and nacatamales and beans and rice and chicken and beans and rice and, well, yeah, more beans and rice—to activities on how to hold campamentos with their kids and how to fight diarrhea—to a ridiculous Route Olympics (see pic): each supervisor’s volunteers faced off in battles to the death that included peeling and eating mangoes without using your hands, answering AMIGOS trivia questions, and playing musical chairs. My route, of course, won at the most important event: setting up and taking down their cots as quickly as possible. ¡Viva la Ruta-Rracha Romántica de SETH! (SETH = Super Excelente Talentuoso Homies :) (see pic of our "flag")

Many tears and hugs later, the vols were taken off to their communities by their youth. The combination of adrenaline overdose, paralyzing nervousness, and Spanish/culture-clash-overwhelmingness of leaving briefing for your first AMIGOS community can be rather spectacular.

And so for now, after welcoming the new supervisor who was able to swoop in with perfect timing and take off from me my fifth community, I’m running a few errands in the city while I eagerly (but with a surprising sense of calm, even to myself…) await Tuesday, when I get to be back in my wonderful communities and see for the first time how my vols are doing.

All of this makes me realize, though, that I didn’t do a very good job of painting a general picture of what this place is like in my last post. Here goes:

It’s rainy season (“winter”) in Nicaragua, which means 1) that it will reliable pour a little bit each day, and 2) that we live in a paradise of Eternal Spring: dozens of varieties of flowers—of every color under the sun—burst out at you in all directions from the thick lush growth sprouting up along the misty rolling hills of the countryside. In other words, gorgeous. (See both pics.)

The city of Matagalpa is at the heart of it all, and this town generally strikes a nice balance between bustle and calm. People are almost universally really sweet and helpful everywhere we go, and then there are always the few piropos (cat calls) and shouts of, “¡Ey, chele!” to make things more interesting and exciting. It’s a surprisingly sexually progressive town: we’ve seen public service announcements about condom use, AIDS prevention, and tolerance of homosexuals; and Project Staff is becoming fast friends with the gay rights group in town. There are regularly dance parties of scantily clad women out in front of the Police Station, side-by-side with the cows that occasionally wander the streets munching on grass along the median. And walking around is always a joy, a journey of discovering what new funny contorted building you’ll come across, or what beautifully eclectic jumble of cement and tile and dirt the sidewalk will be made of.

But, it only takes about a thirty-minute bus ride on a colorfully painted bus packed full with 120 people (plus their bags of rice, bags with live pigs, bags of onions and fried papitas snacks that they’re trying to sell to you at the bus stop) to get into the very rural campo. All four of my communities have electricity (which means one light bulb and maybe a little TV in each house) and running water (which means one spigot per house that empties into a big reserve tub for your cooking, your bucket baths, etc), but that’s all new within the last five years. People’s houses are often fairly big compared to what I’ve seen in other AMIGOS communities, having maybe three or four rooms instead of one or two, though beds are usually planks of wood with a sheet on top.

And inside the houses, two things: food and people.

I love the food from Mexico more than anything: everything scooped up with fresh handmade tortillas, and everything burning with the spice of the chil piquitín…mole, tamales, enchiladas, flautas…Panama was much simpler, but also delicious: yucca, rice, fried plantains, grilled plantains, boiled plantains, raw plantains…and here is more simple still. Most meals consist of beans, rice, a tortilla, and the cuajada cheese. It’s generally really fresh and good-tasting, albeit bland as hell. Not that many calories, though: I lost about five pounds my week on survey (but I guess a lot of that was from getting sick).

But people are really what make AMIGOS what it is. The vols who sign up for this program are generally awesome, and the people in these communities who agree instantaneously to house them and feed them and look after them when they’re homesick or sick and be patient when they have no idea how to speak Spanish and teach them about their lives and learn about the USA…they’re generally awesome as well. Those are the people who are taking care of my vols right now, who are giving me so much peace of mind.

All my best to the awesome people in my life back in the States,

Survey!

¡AMIGOS! This past week was one of the longest, hardest, and hands-down most amazing of my last 996 (special thanks to Google Calculator on that one).

The five of us showed up to Staff House in Matagalpa on the 16^th…or, at least, to the old Staff House. Senior Staff (our bosses) finally made the call that our house was in too much of a rough part of town, and they moved out in a day. So I dropped my bags, saw the kitchen and living room of where I would have been living, and booked it out the door to a taxi to a bus to Managua to pick up our last supervisor in a grinning sweaty mess, arriving back in Matagalpa five hours later to find my bags moved in to Staff House #2.

It’s a posh establishment we’ve got here: half of us actually get beds, all of us get a kitchen twice the size of mine back home, and the cute little lizards who scamper around our walls get an equally cute little courtyard (complete with lots of potted plants) to sunbathe in. You can see it on this blog’s background :)

The first few days were spent getting up to speed on what our Senior Staff has been doing, and learning what we’re going to be doing. It was very helpful, very packed, and generally a blast to hang out with a terrific team of enthused AMIGOS-ers.

It’s time to take another break now…last time I gave you a history lesson, and this time it’s AMIGOS 101:

AMIGOS de las Américas: an absolutely amazing organization founded in 1965 when a few idealistic Texans from one church hopped in a bunch of trucks with boxes full of polio vaccines to go inoculate rural Honduras. The organization has evolved a lot since then, and in 2011 it’s sending about 700 volunteers off from chapters around the United States (and abroad—about 20 from the Dominican Republic!) to live with host families in rural communities all over Latin America to run educational summer camps with kids, to work alongside community members on development projects ranging from latrines and aqueducts to community centers and gardens and murals, and to generally have a spectacularly challenging once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to know an entirely new place and its people.

I was a vol in Mexico and then in Panama during high school…I might go into more detail at some point about how amazing my experiences were, and how much I absolutely fell madly in love my two communities, and how much I got out of it. But long story short, I thought it was great, and so I’m back as a Supervisor this year.

The first major thing you do as an AMIGOS Sup is…survey. This is when you tromp around your “route” of the four communities you’ve been assigned so that you can introduce community members to yourself and to AMIGOS, in addition to finding housing and food for the volunteers and getting the ball rolling on the projects that the community wants to work on. It sounds pretty simple, right?

We’ll call my first community “F.” It’s a new community for AMIGOS, and I’m basically going to skip over the important details to just tell you about the absolutely adorable three-week-old dog that got cold in the middle of the night, and so he crawled over towards my cot on the dirt floor in the main room of the host family’s house, ducked under the mosquito net, and managed to pull about half of the net over onto his side to make himself a soft bed and a warm blanket and keep my company all night. I was 10% freaked out that I was going to roll over and squash the little guy with the metal frame of my cot, but 90% content to have some company as I tried to fall asleep at the universal bedtime of rural Nicaragua: 8 o’clock, two hours after the sun goes down. The dog still wasn’t as cute, though, as the two-year-old kid who was fascinated by clicking my flashlight on and off and on and off and on and off over and over and over and over again…for about two hours.

Next up was “M,” another new community. Now, in these rural communities, sometimes people can be incredibly shy and reserved. Once those people get to feeling comfortable with the strange gringo/chele who’s wandering around their community, though, their honesty and openness and eagerness to get to know you can be extremely impressive. But it was a little easier here in M: it only took about five minutes of [massively failing at] playing soccer with the jóvenes, and about five seconds of Simon Says with the niños, for them to open up. They were endlessly cheerful, receptive, and interested in learning about my life—and sharing theirs—from the get-go. The kids even left me with a dozen really really sweet letters with drawings. Things got a little rougher at 7 p.m. when I threw up, and continued to do so every hour on the hour until 3 in the morning…but the old host father was miraculously able to find me Ritz crackers, and luckily I had a big Ziploc bag readily available, and really luckily it was gone by the next morning.

So it was with a kind of achy stomach and tired body that I trekked on to “Q.” Q is basically the dream AMIGOS community. I’d had contact with one person in the community and told her to expect me around 3:30…but because of the rain, I got a little held up and arrived at 4:00 instead. As it turns out, the community had set up a meeting and been waiting for me since 1:00. And they were still waiting for me when I got there three hours later. About 80 of them. In a community of only 200 people. I literally walked into a room full of strangers at the community center (which they had built last year with the AMIGOS vols) to a standing ovation. Everybody is brimming with energy and joy and excitement, and the community is a total machine that seems to accomplish whatever it sets its mind to: organic fertilizer…monthly trash cleanups…a palatial community center constructed for $1,000 in four weeks last year. This place is simply awesome.

Finally, “C.” This might be a rough one. A two-and-a-half-hour hike up the muddy mountain from Q, C was not nearly as bright. AMIGOS was there the last two years, but classes with kids kind of didn’t happen, and the main project kind of didn’t happen, and the youth group kind of fell apart, and unlike other communities that arranged meetings in 12 hours, here everybody told me it would be absolutely impossible to arrange a meeting 36 hours in advance, even if I spent two nights there to make it happen. Allow me to read a little much into it: I got this strange vibe from many people in the community, as though life had slowed and saddened from the crushing poverty, the endless rain, the reams of latrines that have long since filled past capacity. Even the kids. It’s a stark contrast to all the communities I’ve had the honor of knowing where people seem to find a simple and raw sense of joy from out of a simple and poor life.

But, I was actually really pleased with how much I was able to gather information and talk about how AMIGOS can work successfully with communities and get to know community members in the few hours I had before the one daily bus left at 6 a.m. It’s a community to put things in perspective. And I do love a challenge :P

So I came home to Staff House—kind of surreal to suddenly find myself in a city, standing in front of our colorful comfortable home—in love with three of my communities, happy with the week, and exhausted as it sank in just how intense survey had been. You never quite realize that while you’re in the throws of it.

The last few days were a little rough. Filling out the post-survey paperwork took about 20 hours, and yesterday I worked on it from 8 in the morning until midnight. My dinner break was marked by a few dozen children coming begging to the table; one of them asked for my chicken bones to suck them dry, and I let him take them off my plate. Today, diarrhea and a fever set in. And we lost one of our Supervisors, so for now I’m taking on a fifth community. But I’m extremely grateful to be doing all of this with such a great team on Staff, I keep on racking up the good stories, and honestly I’ve been enjoying almost all of this immensely. And now I’m extremely jazzed up to meet all the vols and do the “supervising” part of being a Supervisor.

So rather than finish on a somber note, I close with a funnier story about my two favorite walks of the week:

Second place: I found two host families in M. That would mean that one volunteer would live in each house, and they’d have to walk to meet up each day. The community didn’t seem to think it’d be a problem. So when I asked to be taken to the house to see it, I was surprised when I was met with wide eyes asking if I really wanted to take that hike. Turns out, the house is actually a fifty-minute hike down a steep mountain into a different community altogether, past the roaring river that during the rainy season ( = now) sometimes is impassible even by cars and horses, meaning that the volunteer would occasionally walk 50 minutes home at night, only to find that river and then have to turn around and climb 50 minutes back up to sleep for the night. No vols there, it seems.

First place: There’s one place to find cell phone reception in Q. Where, you might ask? Well, all you have to do is…walk past Teliofila’s house up the hill until you come to a footpath to your left. Walk up that footpath for as long as there’s corn growing to your right and beans to your left. Once the field on your left switches to corn, that’s when you duck through the barbed wire fence and walk diagonally left and up the hill through the field until you get to the fourth big pile of rocks. That’s where.

Love from Mata-G,

Humidity, Humility, Absurdity

¡Saludos desde Matagalpa! This first week was a whirlwind tour of Nicaragua, doing the tourist thing before AMIGOS officially begins. But before I talk about the adventures, a quick history lesson:

See, the USA has this bad habit of invading Nicaragua. Tennessean William Walker declared himself President of Nicaragua in the mid-1800s in an attempt to turn the country into a slave-holding Southern state. There was a much bigger invasion in the 20s and 30s, until ragtag rebels led by a scrawny man with one really nice hat (named Augusto Sandino) pushed the USA out. Then, the Somoza family took over and ruled rather conservatively and oppressively as a dynastic dictatorship until the 70s. By then, the socialist Sandinista rebels—inspired by Marx, Fidel, and Augusto himself—finally won a devastating civil war and began ruling. Daniel Ortega was (and is!) the head of the Frente Sandinista Liberación Nacional, the socialist “FSLN” party that took over in 1979. Not to be undone, the USA-supported rebel Contras fought unsuccessfully to overthrow the Sandinistas (Google “Oliver North” for more details). Ortega was voted out, and three Presidents served afterwards. Now, though, Ortega is back as President once more, more ideologically moderate but still drawing on the Sandinista lore.

Sorry to go into textbook mode there, but I think that background knowledge of the country I just left and the one I just got to will make this blog more fun. Enjoy the highlights so far!

HUMIDITY: walking out of the tiny Managua airport is kind of like jumping into a pot of boiling water. Caitlin, Doug, and I were dripping with sweat by the time we piled into an overpriced taxi to our cute little “Backpackers Inn” hostel. As it turns out, there’s very little to do in the capital of Nicaragua, which was leveled in a 1972 earthquake, and—in the midst of a civil war between Sandinista rebels and an oppressive Somoza dictatorship—never really seems to have recovered. So, most of the first night was spent finding an ATM and (what I thought was a very fun) dimly lit comedor with decorative chicken cages and Christmas lights for a little bit of comida típica. We passed the next morning talking to ex-Peace Corps volunteers, gringas who came to visit Nicaragua and never left, and a few other hostel-dwellers who were preparing for a night of revelry sponsored by the famous Flor de Caña rum. Then, it was on to legendary Granada.

HUMILITY: the gorgeous colonial town of Granada is defined by its enormous Catholic cathedrals whose elaborate architecture defies the humility that their priests preach…and this city is impossible not to love. Brightly colored walls line narrow streets with raised tiled sidewalks, blocking off lush inner patios in almost every single house, hostel, and restaurant. Instead of Starbucks, there are cathedrals on just about every block: most of them have small signs out front explaining that William Walker burnt them down in his short-lived antebellum “filibustering” conquest, but that the citizens of Granada proudly restored them about a decade later. We had fun making our own chocolate from bean to bar, and we took a boat tour of the isletas (“little islands”) of Lake Nicaragua. Hundreds of these isletas are scattered around the lake off the coast of Granada, just about evenly divided between local fishing communities and elaborate private mansions of the ricos. Fish jumped out of the water along shallow shores in search of bugs, colorful birds scattered at every island we passed, and waves lapped gently at meticulously layered stone walls that dipped down into the water, lining the edges of the islands.

One good-bye to the cute girls who had helped our confused tour group find our way at the Granada hostel and one short 90 mph bus ride later, we picked up our last fellow traveler (Emily) in Managua. (Megan is the last remaining P-Sup—we miss you Megan!) From there, it was on to León, a similar but smaller colonial town farther to the North of Nicaragua. During the bus ride there, we entered into much more fervently Sandinista territory: the red and black of the FSLN flag was etched onto almost every Jersey barrier, signpost, and billboard we passed. Once here, we saw the FSLN flag flying proudly alongside the Nicaraguan one in the central plaza.

And finally, ABSURDITY: the much-await excursion in León was…volcano boarding! For $23, we hopped into the back of a giant neon orange truck that took us to the Cerro Negro volcano for an hour-long hike up pitch black volcanic rock to the summit, where we cruised down a ridiculously steep slope of volcanic sand on polished 2-by-4s. I hit 59 kilometers per hour, far away from the record of 87. But, it was still a blast, and I managed to not scrape deep gashes into my forehead like one of our fellow volcanists did when she bailed out off of her board. I did, however, sustain a bee sting at the top of the volcano, which has now swollen to the size of a small tennis ball on my right arm.

The rest of our time in León was just as exciting, but maybe not as much fun: three of my fellow travelers came down with some nasty food poisoning that grounded them for a day. I was, however, lucky enough to still be able to see the house where the national hero Ruben Darío grew up, along with some fantastic art (including half a dozen Picassos!) at the local gallery. Mostly, though, we picked up Gatorade and Ritz crackers at the Supermercado down the street and nursed everybody back to health. From there, we were able to hike around the Selva Negra nature preserve (which is where this post is coming from) and see some howler monkeys and gorgeous enormous Matapalo trees! Tomorrow, we report for official AMIGOS duty; P-Sup activities and photos are coming soon.

This week was an amazing way to get a lot closer with the P-Sups who will be my family this summer, see more of the country I’ll be living in for the next two months, and have some relaxing time to adjust to Nicaragua before AMIGOS starts for real. But now, on to what we’ve actually been dying to do since we got off the plane: AMIGOSing. Hasta luego,

Quedan dos días, un día...y ya

Queridos Amigos:

Welcome to the blog! I hope you all enjoy the wonderful "Travel" template that Blooger has provided. This post is a test-run...I'm leaving on a 7 a.m. flight to Managua this Thursday, June 9th--can't wait.

Stay tuned,