Monday, May 21, 2007

Mango season and the rains begin

I'm just now holed up in an internet cafe waiting out a sudden rainstorm (and hence two power cuts that made me lose part of this entry) - the winter rainy season is finally beginning. But it's also mango season (you can buy a dozen small, ripe mangos for just around 10 pence) so I'm not complaining too much. Although it's so easy to eat a lot of mango (you can get a bag of peeled mango slices, about two mangos' worth, for 6 pence on every street corner) and apparently they have antibacterial properties, which are great until you eat way too many and they kill off the good bacteria in your stomach... Fingers crossed that doesn't happen to me.

At the moment I'm on a short trip out of Granada in the east of Nicaragua - travelling through the cattle highlands on my way to the Atlantic coast for a crazy music and dance festival called Palo de Mayo. I've learnt one or two moves for this dance, but it's so fast and mad that even my salsa-ing hips just can't keep up. So far I've visited small market cow towns and tiny tranquil pueblos, passing through stunning mountain scenery on the buses in between. Round here there aren't any volcanoes, although the land is still seismically active and the rocks are volcanic in origin, so the skyline is completely different to the dry, flat Pacific region studded with huge volcano cones. And it's relatively green too, although there have been such water shortages here, with the drought on (rainy season is way too late and still not as much as normal), that I've stayed in hotels without any water whatsoever. You learn to wash as and when you can... and not mind the sweat.

I had to pop in on the pretty village of Santa Lucia (my street in Granada's namesake) where I was befriended by a lovely family who took me in for the day, fed me, and the three young cousins aged 12 and 13 took me around all afternoon to visit their favourite spots. I met their friend Luca, who owns a piece of land up on the hillside and who showed me all his current crops (including the eponymous mangos). We then sat in his pristine front room for 45 minutes, trying to make conversation - i.e. I talked non-stop to fill the gaps because he wasn't the most conversationally-able (probably not getting that many visitors, especially from overseas). It was later that day that I headed over to the cow town of Camoapa, where I ended up in a restaurant/discoteca dancing ranchero, bachata and raggaeton with the local cowboys (everyone had either a seriously curved baseball cap on, or a stetson!)

Anyway, here I am now in Juigalpa: doing washing, catching up on internet correspondence and checking out the local museum, as well as eating fantastic beef and dairy products (yes, I'm still in stetson-wearing country). And tomorrow morning I head off on the bus to the river town of El Rama...

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Latest La Esperanza news

So you keep getting the idea of what everyday volunteer life is like, and what we do at La Esperanza, here's the latest weekly newsletter from Pauline.

Dear All,

The first of the primary school excursions was held on Friday with grade 2 from La Prusia and La Epifania visiting Posintepe for a picnic. It was a great success and the children really enjoyed it, and the teachers are following through with questions about their trip to help make it a learning experience too. For the monthly news we would like to continue with what we did this month, putting a link to an album of photos. So anyone with some good photos of the children's excursions please bring them into the office and put them on the computer (mainframe one), and this will be the photo link for next months news.

Planning to do it each month, we will do one in the coming months of each school, health, womens working groups etc. and probably it would be fun to do one of some of the photos from a volunteer party.

Elba Zamora now has a basketball hoop and backboard which Nick put up. We want to do the same for La Prusia - they have asked for a full scale basketball court though and the quote Agosto got was $8000 so we don't think it is on our priority list.

Next week excursions are on Monday, Grade 2, then Wednesday and Thursday, Grade 4 - so it will be a busy week.

Big party last night to farewell Annabel who is travelling on to Cuba. Just one new volunteer arriving this week, Charlie Rann from Australia.

We had a visit from a former volunteer who worked at Las Camelias, Lauren Bloch - she arranged with Laura to go and visit the childrenat the school while she was here which was fun for both her and the children. Friends of former volunteers Shane and Andrew also visited Granada, Daniel Colins and Sarah Jane Caldwell. They went on the tour to La Prusia, and then gave us $100 donation. Shane and Andrew had taught English in the schools.

We had a cash donation too from Andy Pinker, friend of Julia Penny, who gave us $20. We received paypal donations this week too, $100 from Phil Smy, brother of Iain who brought us the vitamin tablets, and $150 from Robert Keddy, another Canadian. Robert is processing Nicaraguan coffee in Canada, Casa Silas Coffee, and has offered to give us $1 from each kilo sold.

Another cleanup session was held at the Community Center on Saturday - and we are going to start painting soon. Would like photo's please of the clean up and of the painting, plus putting the new cupboard in for the library as all of this work to the community center is being funded by a village in UK called Adstock, they want to form a sister village relationship with La Prusia. Any ideas on how we can help make this work for the people of La Prusia would be appreciated.

Mark is back in town once again. He brought with him some photos we had ordered prints of and these will be made into blank greeting cards to sell in the office - to help pay for some of the office costs. If anyone has a couple of hours to spare next weekend we could do with your help in the office to put these together, make the envelopes etc.

Good to see Colin back this weekend.
Hope to see lots of you at the Isletas this afternoon,
Regards, Pauline.