Buidling the huerto modelo
Working in the fields
And in the house laying cement
Teaching english
View of one of the areas of my morning run.Saturday, February 23, 2008
Some recent pics
Buidling the huerto modelo Working in the fields And in the house laying cementTeaching english View of one of the areas of my morning run.
23 de Febrero, 2008
Another week´s gone by and it seems like the time´s flying now. I gave my first nutrition charla to pregnant and lactating women to be followed by two more next week. The local nurse and I also visited the primary school where we recruited youth to join our adolescent club we´ll be starting in a few weeks.
Now that school has started I am being transformed by the lack of education they have here. The classrooms are basic, with zinc roofs and open spaces that allow air (and sometimes rain) into the classroom. Textbooks are rare, if even existent, and the students only have a notebook to study from at night. Receiving help with homework from parents is difficult, as many can´t read, and the ones that can often just do the homework for the kids instead of explaining it.
And then you have one teacher and one classroom for 2 grades of kids ranging from 11 to 16 years of age. The teacher teaches half the class while the other half waits until she´s done to learn their lesson. And to top it off, in the last week, they´ve missed 2 days of school due to one day of teacher meetings and another to clean the school that lacks janitors.
Although I don´t want to teach, I see a need there. Hopefully the help with homework I give to the family kids and the youth group can enrich these kids lives.
Our first meeting to work in family gardens started last week with a good turnout of both women and men, although women definately took the majority. A family garden may not sound like much, but providing nutrient-rich tomatoes, bell peppers, and radishes makes a huge difference in a diet of mainly rice, beans, and tortillas.
Also, building the idea of organization and regular meetings is important to strengthen the community and existing resources. After riding my bike around with my community counterpart for 3 hours last week to invite people to the meeting, I insisted that we set a date for the next meeting at the existing meeting. Mountain biking through dirt roads with beautiful views of pine forests and mountains is great, but 3 hours of it every month is a little unecessary.
I´m still amazed here by the beauty and how lucky I am to have my morning commute be a walk through a corn field, a jump over a creek, to climb up a banana tree forest, and arrive in someones yard with an "adios" and a chat. And to wake up everyday after a decent 8 hours or more of sleep (if I can sleep through the roosters crowing at midnight and dogs barking) without more of a routine than I dictate, is wonderful.
I try to remind myself of these things when the hard times come, like the constant cat calls from the men here or the day you show up for a scheduled meeting or event and the person casually says the dates been changed to tomorrow.
But life here is starting to normalize and I´m full of ideas for future projects and activities that are only waiting for my level of communication to improve to actualize.
Till next time.
Now that school has started I am being transformed by the lack of education they have here. The classrooms are basic, with zinc roofs and open spaces that allow air (and sometimes rain) into the classroom. Textbooks are rare, if even existent, and the students only have a notebook to study from at night. Receiving help with homework from parents is difficult, as many can´t read, and the ones that can often just do the homework for the kids instead of explaining it.
And then you have one teacher and one classroom for 2 grades of kids ranging from 11 to 16 years of age. The teacher teaches half the class while the other half waits until she´s done to learn their lesson. And to top it off, in the last week, they´ve missed 2 days of school due to one day of teacher meetings and another to clean the school that lacks janitors.
Although I don´t want to teach, I see a need there. Hopefully the help with homework I give to the family kids and the youth group can enrich these kids lives.
Our first meeting to work in family gardens started last week with a good turnout of both women and men, although women definately took the majority. A family garden may not sound like much, but providing nutrient-rich tomatoes, bell peppers, and radishes makes a huge difference in a diet of mainly rice, beans, and tortillas.
Also, building the idea of organization and regular meetings is important to strengthen the community and existing resources. After riding my bike around with my community counterpart for 3 hours last week to invite people to the meeting, I insisted that we set a date for the next meeting at the existing meeting. Mountain biking through dirt roads with beautiful views of pine forests and mountains is great, but 3 hours of it every month is a little unecessary.
I´m still amazed here by the beauty and how lucky I am to have my morning commute be a walk through a corn field, a jump over a creek, to climb up a banana tree forest, and arrive in someones yard with an "adios" and a chat. And to wake up everyday after a decent 8 hours or more of sleep (if I can sleep through the roosters crowing at midnight and dogs barking) without more of a routine than I dictate, is wonderful.
I try to remind myself of these things when the hard times come, like the constant cat calls from the men here or the day you show up for a scheduled meeting or event and the person casually says the dates been changed to tomorrow.
But life here is starting to normalize and I´m full of ideas for future projects and activities that are only waiting for my level of communication to improve to actualize.
Till next time.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
12 de Febrero, 2008
Its been a busy week or so and I'm very thankful for having something to do.
Superbowl with some friends was fun, but as always, I think I enjoyed being able to eat different food like hambugers and ice cream sundaes, more than anything else. And of course it was great to see some friends that I haven't seen from training.
Superbowl was followed by a few days in a friends community helping build an improved stove for a family. These stoves are made of the traditional mud mix that they seem to use to build everything here. But our design uses bricks and a few pieces of bent iron rebar for support. And the key difference is the chimney to funnel smoke out of the lungs of the women that stand over the stove all day and up into the sky and the special ramp built inside to use less firewood that is quickly being depleted in this country without much reforestation.
The stove building was a great learning experience for me. See pictures below of Maritza making a chicken for examples of how the stove looks.
As soon as I was back from these activities I got busy planning meetings with my counterparts to start our gardens with the womens groups and attending "controls" with the local nurse. This is a monthly event where she weighs children under 2 (using donated balance-like scales where children are hung in a sack) to track their growth and gives vaccinations and vitamins to pregnant and lactating women. I'm tagging along to meet the women in the groups (which helps me meet more of the community) and prepare to give nutrition presentations next month.
While attending one of these events, I got word of another house that is vacant. After looking at the cute, recently built house, complete with powerful electricity, glass windows, water, and a ceiling, I fell in love and hope to be moving into this place by March.
So along with work picking up, I'm busy getting organized for my move. Which requires logistics like bargaining for furniture so that I don't get too screwed on the gringo price and getting mattresses loaded onto an old school bus and trucked 2 hours to my house.
Also I have succeeded in finding a used bike and am now mobile, which is a wonderful feeling, to be able to whiz to town whenever I want.
My stomach problems have left and my perforated ear membrane has healed and been cleared by the doctor. So I'm on my way back from Managua today and heading back to dig into some "real" work.
And after a 2 week hiatus from running because of my illnesses, I'm back training again for the half-marathon in March. Amazingly I reached another goal this week and ran for a complete hour, so I am building faith that I'll make it to my mark by March 15th.
All for now, take care folks.
Superbowl with some friends was fun, but as always, I think I enjoyed being able to eat different food like hambugers and ice cream sundaes, more than anything else. And of course it was great to see some friends that I haven't seen from training.
Superbowl was followed by a few days in a friends community helping build an improved stove for a family. These stoves are made of the traditional mud mix that they seem to use to build everything here. But our design uses bricks and a few pieces of bent iron rebar for support. And the key difference is the chimney to funnel smoke out of the lungs of the women that stand over the stove all day and up into the sky and the special ramp built inside to use less firewood that is quickly being depleted in this country without much reforestation.
The stove building was a great learning experience for me. See pictures below of Maritza making a chicken for examples of how the stove looks.
As soon as I was back from these activities I got busy planning meetings with my counterparts to start our gardens with the womens groups and attending "controls" with the local nurse. This is a monthly event where she weighs children under 2 (using donated balance-like scales where children are hung in a sack) to track their growth and gives vaccinations and vitamins to pregnant and lactating women. I'm tagging along to meet the women in the groups (which helps me meet more of the community) and prepare to give nutrition presentations next month.
While attending one of these events, I got word of another house that is vacant. After looking at the cute, recently built house, complete with powerful electricity, glass windows, water, and a ceiling, I fell in love and hope to be moving into this place by March.
So along with work picking up, I'm busy getting organized for my move. Which requires logistics like bargaining for furniture so that I don't get too screwed on the gringo price and getting mattresses loaded onto an old school bus and trucked 2 hours to my house.
Also I have succeeded in finding a used bike and am now mobile, which is a wonderful feeling, to be able to whiz to town whenever I want.
My stomach problems have left and my perforated ear membrane has healed and been cleared by the doctor. So I'm on my way back from Managua today and heading back to dig into some "real" work.
And after a 2 week hiatus from running because of my illnesses, I'm back training again for the half-marathon in March. Amazingly I reached another goal this week and ran for a complete hour, so I am building faith that I'll make it to my mark by March 15th.
All for now, take care folks.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
02 de Febrero, 2008
Another month has gone by and I can´t believe its been over 2 months in my site. I´m assimilating and speaking the language better, but still have a long ways to go. At least now I am able to sit and have conversations with friends and neighbors. Although the majority of my time is still spent just hanging out with people and talking, I am working with my community counterpart and an aid organization to start ¨huertos familiares¨with a group of women in the community. I´ve already started gardens with a smaller group of women, but will be working in a more organized manner with more women in a larger group. Although I am the one that is supposed to be ¨teaching¨, I feel like I´m learning more from my counterparts and the group than they are learning from me! And for some reason my own personal garden is just going down the tubes, being attacked by all kinds of new bugs and diseases.
I´m also set up to work with the community nurse on maternal and child nutrition and health, giving ¨charlas¨and meeting all the women this month. And since school is starting this week, we will be trying to organize a youth group to teach life skills, agriculture, community banks, and relationship skills.
I´ve also started an informal english class with some neighborhood kids, that sometimes has 15 kids in attendance and other times only 1. And always be assured that they will show up 1/2 hour late.
An aerobics class is in the works, all I have to do now is remember enough moves to fill an hour!
And lastly I´ve been busy helping lay brick and perfecting my machete skills with the construction of the animal health lab that is being built at my community counterparts house. The director of the organization that is funding the lab came to our community last week to meet with the women in the group and I got a better chance to learn about the 5 year plan of this sustainable, organic agricultural organization that I am looking forward to working with over the next 2 years. They start with small garden projects for family self-consumption, then work up to chicken coups and goat production on a scale large enough to produce enough to sell.
And between all this ¨work¨I´ve been constantly sick. A terrible ear infection that perforated the membrane in my ear sent me to Managua last week and then was followed up by another round of stomach problems this week. All these enfermedades have put be in bed, kept me from running, and prevented me from socializing with the community more than I´d like.
I´ve also finally received approval for my little casita that I´ll be moving into the first of march. It still needs some work on my part, but not as much as I anticipated. Already, though, the word of me moving to a house alone and being separated a bit from the part of town I live in now has spread to everyone and they´re all talking. No one wants me to live out of their watch and can´t understand why Im not scared to live there. Hopefully with time we will all learn something different about our cultures and how living alone is normal for Americans and there is nothing to be afraid of.
I will be thinking about everyone at home as I´m watching the Superbowl from a Nica bar tomorrow. Who´s playing again?
I´m also set up to work with the community nurse on maternal and child nutrition and health, giving ¨charlas¨and meeting all the women this month. And since school is starting this week, we will be trying to organize a youth group to teach life skills, agriculture, community banks, and relationship skills.
I´ve also started an informal english class with some neighborhood kids, that sometimes has 15 kids in attendance and other times only 1. And always be assured that they will show up 1/2 hour late.
An aerobics class is in the works, all I have to do now is remember enough moves to fill an hour!
And lastly I´ve been busy helping lay brick and perfecting my machete skills with the construction of the animal health lab that is being built at my community counterparts house. The director of the organization that is funding the lab came to our community last week to meet with the women in the group and I got a better chance to learn about the 5 year plan of this sustainable, organic agricultural organization that I am looking forward to working with over the next 2 years. They start with small garden projects for family self-consumption, then work up to chicken coups and goat production on a scale large enough to produce enough to sell.
And between all this ¨work¨I´ve been constantly sick. A terrible ear infection that perforated the membrane in my ear sent me to Managua last week and then was followed up by another round of stomach problems this week. All these enfermedades have put be in bed, kept me from running, and prevented me from socializing with the community more than I´d like.
I´ve also finally received approval for my little casita that I´ll be moving into the first of march. It still needs some work on my part, but not as much as I anticipated. Already, though, the word of me moving to a house alone and being separated a bit from the part of town I live in now has spread to everyone and they´re all talking. No one wants me to live out of their watch and can´t understand why Im not scared to live there. Hopefully with time we will all learn something different about our cultures and how living alone is normal for Americans and there is nothing to be afraid of.
I will be thinking about everyone at home as I´m watching the Superbowl from a Nica bar tomorrow. Who´s playing again?
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