In the Land of Lakes and Volcanoes: Waiting for Winter

Everyone in my community told me that Semana Santa, the last week in March, was the hottest week of summer. They forgot to mention those 4 weeks in April and 4 weeks in May that were just as sweltering with many days reaching 99 degrees. If I could sum up the past few months of my life I would say they have consisted of irrepressible sweating, 6 liters of water a day and bottles and bottles of sunscreen.

My daily attempt to hide from the sun

Sitting in my tinned roof house at 1 pm reminds me of those days back home when I would climb into my car after it had been sitting in the sun all day and for a moment that nice warm suffocating heat felt really good... and then I would blast the a/c and go about my day. Well just subtract the a/c part and you get the gist of what it feels like in my bedroom when I'm trying to get jeans to go up over my sweaty legs.

My host mom put a kiddy pool in the backyard for a few weeks, which I told her I would spend the next two months in if I could.

We all struggled through the height of the heat. Everyone spent as much time as possible outside in the shade, or with their shirts up over their bellies in pure Nicaraguan fashion. My happy spot was a shady bench with a bag of fresh cut mangoes from my favorite mango vendor who sells the biggest mangoes I have ever seen.

On May 21^st it rained. My whole family was home when we heard it start to downpour on the tin roof. We excitedly ran out onto the front porch and stood there silently for awhile just watching it fall. After a period of silence my uncle asks “what day is it today? I responded “May 21^st” then my mom says “May 21^st, the first day of winter”. That night, I didn't sweat while sleeping. It was magical. At 94 degrees Winter had come to Nagarote, Nicaragua.

This semester I attended my first Nicaraguan wedding and quinceañera, a girl’s 15^th birthday party, the equivalent to our sweet sixteen. Things that I learned: it is acceptable to only show up to the wedding reception, it’s appropriate to ask the mother of the bride/birthday girl how much every item of the event cost and it's of the utmost importance to take home a centerpiece.

The wedding was for some cousin I had never met. We skipped the church ceremony and just went to the reception, which felt so strange. We sat at a huge table with all my aunts and uncles. They served about 4 different courses of food on plastic plates over the course of the afternoon, all typical Nica dishes. After our bellies were full, it was time to break it down on the dance floor. My aunts were all very passionate about the need to teach me, their adopted gringa niece, how to dance properly. Being the lone gringa at this event I was bound to stick out regardless of my stellar dance moves or lack thereof. But, I still felt obliged to try to convince my aunts that some white girls can dance, or at least try.

For the quinceañera I went with my immediate family and my ‘host cousin’ Chelsea, who is also my Peace Corps site mate. This event was f-a-n-c-y. They went all out for this 15 year old, red carpet and all. At one point the power went out and everyone just kept dancing. That’s when I remembered that yes, we are still in Nicaragua.

I went to see ‘how the other half live’ by visiting an agriculture volunteer for the first time. My group, Nica 59 consists of small business and agriculture volunteers. The ‘aggies’ live very different lives than us 'bizneros'. We live in communities of about 4,000 – 100,000 people whereas they live in communities of about 300 families. We biz kids have internet cafes and convenient stores in our sites. Sometimes we even have banks, grocery stores and ice cream shops. Most aggies probably have one small convenient store in site. We bizneros usually have houses with cement floors, running water, consistent electricity and maybe even wi-fi. Aggies usually have dirt floors, no running water and maybe electricity. My friend needed some help with an oven project and it was a great excuse to finally get out to an agriculture site. After a handful of bus transfers and an hour walk into endless sugercane fields we finally arrived at Colby's site.

The road to Colby's house

The family we were building the oven for had a meal waiting for us when we arrived. They even had ice for the beverages, which Colby said they had to walk very far to purchase and did so especially for us. We helped build the base for an improved oven using horse poop and a glue made from dragon fruit.

Using dragon fruit as glue

Drawing water from the well

mixing the 'cement'

The first step, the 'table' base is finished!

On Saturday June 15th we got hit with a 6.5 earthquake. I wasn't home when it hit but it was one of the strongest earthquakes my community has felt for a very long time. My host mom told me she thought the whole house was going to collapse. Everyone ran out into the streets screaming and the power got knocked out for the day. It also triggered a tsunami alert for the entire Pacific coast of the country and all volunteers whose sites are in coastal communities were evacuated. No one was reportedly hurt just really freaked out. We continued to feel 4 - 5 magnitude aftershocks for the next few days until things settled.