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,