Happy Spring, Semana Santa/Easter and Birthday

As always things continue to cruise right along in my site and elsewhere. It is surprising that it has already been a year since I was swore in for the first time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia. Not quite the halfway mark of my service (because of transferring to Nicaragua) it is still a milestone in my book.

Corn drying

 Some of you might be wondering what I did on my birthday and Easter this year. Of course my birthday happened to land on the day before Easter which is a very important time for most Latinos mainly because of a huge percent of the population being Catholics. In Nicaragua it is very common to go to the beach or just swimming in general. Since there is a lake in my site, we spent a majority of our time there relaxing, swimming and playing soccer. People came from the nearby pueblo and one day there were about 200 people which is a huge increase considering I am the only one there most of the time when I go swimming.

Where I spent Easter and Semana Santa

Of course on Semana Santa they don’t eat meat (fish and other seafood not included) and work takes a backseat for a while. Not eating meat is not really a big deal considering it is a rarity when I get it in my site anyways but it lead to some interesting experiences. Since it is a special week they tend to eat special food, during Christmas it was killing and eating a cow… for Semana Santa it was sardines and snails. Sardines are common here and I was expecting to eat them but snails?!?! This one caught me off guard a bit. I saw a bucket full of snails, quite large too. The shells were about the size of a quarter or bigger. I have heard of other cultures eating snails but it never would have dawned on me that Nicaraguans do. Can you guess how my host mom prepared the snails? I bet you did not guess in scrambled eggs. Yep, just good old fashions scrambled eggs and snails. I ate it but definitely don’t think I will ever have to indulge a craving for snails. So, my birthday finally rolled around (happy 24th) and I must say that it started out much better then my birthday in Bolivia which consisted of me lying in bed with dengue fever feeling like crap and not wanting to do much of anything. We did not get to kill a chicken on my birthday (custom with my host family) because of the no meat religious rule so maybe next year. The sardine substitute had to do instead. We decided to go the lake and join the hordes of people. I decided to play soccer for a bit the only downside was that I only had sandals so I ended up playing barefoot. Usually this is not a problem; I have done in numerous times before and nothing has happened. This time though the sun and was so strong and the ground so hot that I got a huge blisters on the bottom of my foot (strangely only of my left foot) the largest being about the size of a silver dollar. The only problem was that I did not realize that I was getting blisters and the big one broke and then it got filled with dirt and dead grass. Needless to say I quit playing soccer and limped home. The most interesting part about the whole thing is what happened next was when I got home. My host mom asked what happened so I told and then she said she had something that would help. She immediately comes back with an old coca-cola bottle filled with a yellow color liquid. I am thinking that it is some soothing ointment or what not. So she pours it on and it turns out that it is not a magical ointment but rather gasoline. I don’t know if pouring gasoline is doctor recommended but my foot has yet to fall off. I am not really sure what purpose it served but the next night my host mom put a ball of cow fat on it and smashed it down. The campo recipe to heal an open wound… gasoline and cow fat. The cow fat worked wonders and in the morning my foot felt a lot better and it was free of all dirt and dried grass. I figure next year I am just going to lock myself in a room so nothing bad can happened to me on my birthday. I guess we will have to wait until next year. While you guys were enjoying March Madness in the States there was a little basketball action down here too. The pueblo that I live close too held their first ever basketball league. A friend of my asked me to play and of course I accepted. There were only four teams (basketball is not that popular down here) but the competition was decent. There were several people who played at the university level in Nicaragua. I would compare that level of play to that of a medium sized high school in the states so definitely not the best but fun none the less. Nicaraguans take their recreational sports seriously down here. They buy uniforms of professional teams and then put their own names and numbers on the back. We are the Miami Heat so now our team is equipped with knock off Heat jerseys. Not only do they buy knock off jerseys but they have a finals like the pros. In our case it was only a five games series but still in a season that was only nine games some would say that it is a little overboard. My team actually ended up winning the championship and of course a trophy which is about two and a half feet tall. Each player also won a medal which is a nice memento from Nicaragua. I also play on a soccer team which plays every Sunday. My team consists almost entirely of people from my community but we never practice so there is very little team unity but we still manage to win every now and again. I don’t think a championship is in our near future but it helps pass the time.

My soccer team

As always, Brandon

Round 2 Nicaragua

 

Milkin' it Son

 

 

Well here goes another round of life in Nicaragua by Brandon… try not to fall asleep in the middle of it this time. Well I keep plugging away at might my site and really enjoying myself. I continue to plug away at work trying to get a good sustainable project going, but in the mean time I just finished up painting a world map *picture soon to come*  1.4 meters by 2.8 meters a the local school. It is definitely something that will help the community with their geography. When I was about 90 percent I had several people young and old ask me what kind of map of was doing… the continents of Africa, Asia and South America did not seem to get their attention so instead they ventured guesses ranging from a community map to a map of Nicaragua. Some of you maybe thinking… wow Brandon must have done a terrible job if the don’t know what kind of map he is doing. Well let us hope that is not the case. In reality it is that some people have not been exposed to things as simple as a world map. I am definitely looking at getting some more things started here in the future and will try and keep you posted on those.

           

 

That is my house in the background full of smoke… not it is not burning my host mom is just cooking. They use open fire wood cook stoves made of dirt.

 

To keep you guys from skimming this and not actually reading it I will now talk about something that relates to a lot of you and that most probably know nothing about except the fact that it gives you that nice pick me up in the morning…coffee. The coffee harvest is coming to an end at my site so I thought it would be a good time to tell you all about it.  If you look at the coffee picture below from the other post it shows immature coffee “berries” when the are ripe they turn a beautiful red color and actually have a sweet flavor to them not the bitter flavor that most people associate with cup of regular black coffee (not the caramel macchiato at Starbuck’s). Each of these berries has to be hand picked in a series of three pickings. This insures that they only harvest the mature berries and hand picking is essential because if not harvested properly and the stem breaks off from the plant itself and remains on the berry it will never produce another berry in the lifetime of the plant which can last several decades. Harvesting coffee would not exactly be desirable work for most Americans. They head out in the cafetal early in the morning and starting picking the berries with can range from a foot off the ground to around 10 feet depending of the age of the plant. Not to mention that they are usually placed on steep hillsides that makes the job even worse. My first day I managed to pick about ¾ of a lata which actually means tin in Spanish but in this context a four gallon container. A good picker with do about 4,5,6 latas in a day ( I have a host brother who can do 8 or 9 which is exceptional). For my hard days work or ¾ lata of coffee I would have earned a whopping .75 cents instead I just used mine to top of others who were short of a full lata (I am sure they wished I had picked more). Of course with practice I improved and I was not working full steam ahead mostly because I was busy talking or thinking about how much this work sucks. If people had to pick all of their own coffee they drink, tea would be in great demand. So after the day if over and you have sticky hands from the sugary juices that leaked out of the skin of the berry you have to dehusk them. This is an easy process where a machine does basically all the work. After the skin has been peeled off this is what everyone would recognize as a coffee bean, except its color. The bean has the fairly slimly sugary substance covering it in which it ferments overnight. In the morning they wash off all the substance and begin to dry and sort the coffee. This is pretty much the process before the send it to the people who export and toast the coffee. An interesting side note, most of the cafetaleros for personal consumption leave the husk on the coffee (which holds in all the flavorful sugars) for several days and the take off the husk by crushing it which results in a coffee that is much more flavorful and delicious. Hope everyone is doing well. 

 

 

The lake that I go swimming and fishing in almost daily.

 

Regala Mariah un peso!

Well my service continues but now I have ran into another problem… having people to come visit. A lot of people would like to ¨live the campo life¨ for a bit  but it usually comes down to a money problem. The same thing has happened with my sister Mariah.  She has heard the stories and now she wants to find out first hand. She told me that she was going to post an add on Craigslist for people to donate some money so she could come visit.  She sent me the links of several adds that she has posted but by the time I get into town they have already been flagged so I don´t even know exactly what they say! I told her that I would write and entry on my blog so people will not think that it is a scam.  So here it is Mariah… my entry. I am not asking for money (Mariah is). I am just asking that people stop flagging her post so atleast I can read it and know that there is a glimmer of hope that she will be able to visit.

Some of you may be wondering why she is asking for money to go to Nicaragua and this blog has Bolivia written all over it. Previous entries tell the story but I know most of you will not read them so to make a long story short the Peace Corps program is Bolivia was suspended due to political problems.  I chose to continue my service in Nicaragua.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Well here is my last update for the year. I have been in my site for about a month now and doing just fine. You are all probably wondering what I did for Christmas… well most of the people in my community are Catholic and so everyday at a different house in December they have a prayer/singing/ chanting to the Virgen Mary. For the last 15 years my family has hosted it on the 24th, Christmas eve the most important day. My dad said that if the virgin protected his house and family during the war he would throw and big bash every year in honor of the Virgin Mary. The celebration is well know around my community and well as surrounding communities as well. Every year they have about 500 people show up and in Nicaragua that means feeding them all.  So early in that morning my host brothers killed a bull for the celebration. As I was walking to the laterine that morning my oldest host brother was wacking away at something with an axe when I passed by he held up a bloody chunk of meat and bone and then told me with a smile that it was the head. I was just excited to get some meat in my diet for a change but was not expecting to get any interesting sections on my plate. Well how wrong was I. At lunch I was served and soup with various vegtables and a  big chunk of meat… alright! Then I took a closer look at the meat it was a big chunk of the head and brain. So I ate the vegtables and attempted to eat the meat chunk that was served to me. I took about three bites and then just looked at it for about a half an hour. I just could not eat it. It did not taste bad but it had a wierd texture and I just could not get over the fact that I just ate a brain chunk. All I know is that I did not get any smarter from eating it. Well so people started showing up at my house around 6 in the evening and they did not leave until around 7 the next morning… I was a long night to say the least. People stayed up all night just singing and chanting things the the Virgin Mary. It is pretty funny though a lot of the church type songs that they sing have the rythme of a type of music called ranchera. That is the polka type music that you might have heard while crusing downtown Yakima or while eating at your favortie mexican joint.  We had a generator brought in so we could have an electric keyboard which is pretty high class for the campo. The only problem was that you could hear the interference of the generator through the speakers so it was a bit annoying but the people loved it.  Most of my family members did not go to sleep until the next night While most of you will be freezing this New Year’s eve I will be enjoying a nice couple days on the beach in the hot hot sun.

Beans, Corn and Tortillas

Nicaragua! I arrived here on the 10^th on October and it has been pretty awesome from the start. We were placed in with the current agriculture training group that was already in progress. We started a sort of independent training program because our Spanish levels were acceptable and a lot of the training is similar to what we did in Bolivia. At times it is a bit redundant but over all it is a great experience. Even now and again we have to met with a language facilitator and go over some of the differences in the culture and language but this is usually and very entertaining time. The differences in the language are not that great but you have to get used to the words that they use here and sometimes it can be a bit difficult changing. For example, something as simple as saying goodbye is different. In Bolivia the word adios is sparsely or never used. Here they use it not only when saying goodbye but also as something you would say to a passerby. Some how in English if you just say bye and nothing else it just does not fit.

Ride your bike get water!

During training I am living with a really nice family. They are a be traditional Latin family in that they have their grandparents and other extended family members living with them too. My host-mom is a great cook and I just had the best carne asada ever. The potato to Bolivians is the bean to Nicaraguans. In Bolivia there is usually always a potato at every meal. Here you get beans three meals a day. On the bright side my host-dad is a farmer with lots of fruits trees so I get fresh juice all the time.

El Tigre... kind of looks like the windows desktop

Coffee beans...

I just come back from the place I will be living for the next two years. It is a little place called El Tigre in the department of Jinotega. There is only about 45 families and 500 people in the whole community but it is spread out. My host family there is really cool. They don’t have a lot of money but they are always smiling, singing and laughing. My host dad is missing one of his front teeth so when he smiles it is even funnier. One day on my site visit we were coming back from the fields and we stopped at an orange tree along the way. I had to climb up and try to get some. We I was up there he was telling me were all the big ones were and so on. Then he keeps telling me something that I didn’t understand. I look at him with a black look on my face and try and guess what he wants. He keeps repeating himself and I keeping looking at him with a, “what are you saying” look hoping he will use a different word. Nope he keeps on going finally I figure out that he just wants me to shake the whole branch. So I start shaking the branch and a few fall the ground and he bends down to pick them up, needless to say I keep shaking the branch and then about two or three oranges hit him right in the back of the head. It was like something out of a cartoon. He just looked up, smiled his one tooth smile and started laughing. It was a pretty funny moment. I am looking forward to living with them for six weeks after that I can rent my own house. There are a couple houses open so I am already looking forward to that. El Tigre is absolutely beautiful. It is in the mountainous region which means that there is a lot of coffee production. The three main things that they grow in the region are coffee, beans and corn. Those three things made up about 80% of my diet the last week. The rest was made up of rice and quajada a type of chesse that is made in a day. A sample of my culinary diet for a day consists of fried beans, quajada, corn tortilla and a cup of coffee. Lunch consists of bean soup which is beans and salted water, quajada, corn tortilla and a cup of coffee. Dinner consists much of the same. Meals don’t vary much, sometimes it will be accompanied by rice or fried bananas. The dish that Nicaragua is famous for is Gallo Pinto with is basically rice and beans mixed together and cooked in oil… it is delicious. Of course not all Nicaraguans eat like this but they live a hugely subsistence lifestyle in the campo. During my six days at my site I did not eat one piece of meat and went to bed before eight every night. Not because I really wanted to but because there is neither electricity nor running water. This also has to do with the fact that people get up way too early here. Every morning I woke up at 4:30 to the smell of smoke and a thumping sound… this is when they make their tortillas. Did I mention that the family I will be living with has ten kids? That is a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of tortillas to be made in the morning. The smoke comes from the open fire stoves that they use to cook everything. I am involuntarily becoming a vegetarian, don’t have electricity or running water and take cold bucket showers. It could be a lot worse I could have everything… and be unhappy.

Papaya trees

My host dad and his ride...

Life after the storm

So I guess this is my first full update in quite a while. So I guess I will start where I left off… After a somewhat hectic time in Lima, Peru filling out paperwork and trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life I decided to spend even more time in Peru and go on vacation for a bit with my girlfriend. Lima, Peru is not a very nice city… it is full of pollution and it is never sunny so we took the next flight out of there… literally. An interesting side note, the population of Lima is around nine million people and the entire population of Bolivia is around eight million people. Our first stop was Cusco which is the major stop for Machu Pichu on of the new Seven Wonders of the World. M.P. is in a very remote part of Peru way in the mountains but of course with the wonders on tourism they have made it easily assessable. In my opinion, maybe it is a little too easy. There is a little town at the base of the mountain where once you get off the train (there is a four day hike from Cusco to here if you feel up to it) you can walk a little way and board a bus that ships you to the top of the mountain (you can also hike up that too). Since we were short on time we had to opt for the faster methods… reluctantly. When I boarded the bus my first thought was, is this bus going to Machu Pichu? You would think they had just finished up an AARP conference and were all headed to Super Senior Day at the local diner. All jokes aside we were outside our “demographic” as my friend Garrett likes to say. So we finally made it up to the top and literally had to empty our wallets to get in. After paying for an overpriced train and bus ride we did not think they charged to get in… we were wrong. On the bright side, now that each of us were forty dollars lighter it was a lot easier to hike around the ruins. So we spent the day there and since we had no money to pay for water or the bus ride back down the mountain we had to hike down the mountain. We spent some time relaxing at the river below and lost track of time and ended up sprinting to catch our train but oh well we came, we saw, we conquered. Our next stop was Lake Titicaca and the floating islands of Uros. The islands are made out of reeds and they just add more and more while the others in the water are decomposing, it is a really interesting way of living. We tried to avoid the gringo tourists and decided to travel like the local tourists… they use boats that are not a posh and sometimes downright crappy. We happened to get on of the crappy ones. They steer with a rudder stick and there is not a variable spend transmission, there are two modes… go and stop so they have to get a safe distance from the dock and other boats before starting up the motor. So after we get out in open water the captain attempts to start the motor… after ten minutes of him tinkering with the motor and siphoning the fuel we are on our way. It was definitely not running very smoothly and back firing constantly but I was happy that we were on our way, well halfway through our trip the engine overheats and we are stranded in the middle of this lake for about 45 minutes as all the tourist boats passed by… I just smiled and waved. We finally made it out to the islands and toured several of the islands and then we had a trout lunch at one of the islands that had a restaurant. Sadly the trip back was uneventful. A couple bus rides and flights later I was back in the homeland enjoying micro- brews, good pizza, clam chowder and even scallops.

I UPDATED MY ADDRESS TOO LOOK UNDER THE B IN NICARAGUA TAB

Short and sweet!

I am coming home for a bit… free. Is that short and sweet enough?

Ummmmm?

Well I am sure most of you have heard by now that they chose to suspend the Peace Corps Bolivia program for awhile… needless to say Bolivia lost some cool points.  Sometimes Peace Corps is like coaching the worst team in the league… on a very bad day but as they always say, there is no where to go but up. For the record I am still safe, healthy and happy.  All the volunteers where evacuated out of Bolivia on a couple of military flights on C-130s to Lima, Peru. No, there was not attractive women serving coffee, warm meals and mini bottles of booze to everyone. Instead, there were cargo net seats, earplugs, men in their Bolivian flight suits and a sack lunch provided by Peace Corps. Lima is an awesome city, with an ocean and that of course means seafood. Usually I get my seafood craving out of the way when I am in Alaska during the summers but this year I missed out. So of course, I had to try the cerviche that Peru is famous for. We went to a hole in the wall for our cerviche and it was amazing. Cerviche is basically fish that is in a sense cooked in the acidity of lime juice mixed with an assortment of other produce but that all depends.  That was for starters then for the segundo I had a plate of rice mixed with seasoning and all kinds of other seafood including squid, octopus and an assortment of other fish. The seafood sent my taste buds spinning after the some what bland food of Bolivia. I am looking to direct transfer to another country as soon a possible. With this option I will not be able to go home but I will not have to go through a lot of the paperwork that I had to do in the first place to get here. I was just starting to get things rolling on my project and I saw way too many people in need to give up now. I will let you all know what happens when I can… um and pictures too when I get around to it.

Bolivia is cool… carajo!

You might be wondering… Why is Bolivia cool? Well, just read the recent news on the country and that is one of the many reasons. There are many many more but that should keep you all occupied for at least the next week where my blog might be blessed with another entry. For anyone who is curious, here is the US embassy website link http://bolivia.usembassy.gov/ . Needless to say I am still safe, healthy and above all happy… so don’t worry about the hairy situation in Bolivia… it’s not worth it. Something a lot more important is that I finally cut off my goatee, tears were shed and stories told then WHAM! after seven months of growth my manly mug was as smooth as a babies butt with fine grain sandpaper stuck to it. Keep living the dream.

Update Carajo!

Yes, I am still alive. I gave myself un espaldarazo or pat on the back for the first update in two months. Yes I am sane, healthy and having a good ole´ time down here. Well I guess I should tell you a little about whom I have been living for the past three months. I live with a fairly modern Bolivian family Don Agapito, Dona Teresa, Christin 22, Ximena 15, Serigo 12.  Both of my host parents work in the health- care industry and have good stable jobs. Agapito is also a locally elected health-care official so every now he makes an appearance on the local news. Serigo and I always give him are hard time about this cause he gets so excited when he is on camera. He is hilarious, outgoing and very friendly that definitely helps with learning more Spanish. He recently just got his drivers license and treated it just like a teenager in the States. He would get up at five in the morning and practice his parallel parking until he had to go to work, then when he got back from work… more practice. Lately he has been washing or wiping down his car (Toyota Corrolla) about twice daily. I find this very very funny. Teresa is a little shy but also very fun but she definitely works a lot. Christin only comes home on the weekends because she is studying medicine in Santa Cruz. Ximena is fun and pretty much a typical teenage girl. Serigo is quite the hell razor and times but he is fun to play around with whether it is soccer or video games. Remember that both of my host parents work in health-care but they still do some interesting things. They will use the same bucket for mopping the floor and marinating meat in for a churrasco. It is well cooked meat but I think sanitation could be a bit of a problem… all else aside the meat is still incredible. I have access to their kitchen but I like to eat with the family for language skills and integration. We have chicken almost every night for dinner that they go out and get every night which is basically fast food but I don’t think they see the correlation. Once in every two weeks we will have chorizo (sausage) or pacamuto (beef on a stick). This is always accompanied by three carbohydrates… rice, noodles and either fried yucca or French fries, never any vegetables (I take vitamins and snack of fruits and veggies during the day). You would think that you would get sick of the same thing everyday but after three months I still crave dinner.  Most of the time we will eat the same class of chicken aka fried, baked, roasted, Japanese, lemon for about a week and then change it up… I don’t complain I love it! Lunch is a different story. Everyday at 12:30 a motorcycle pulls up with our food which is always different. They lady that prepares it is from Cochabamba and really diversifies the food. My favorite is peanut soup which is amazing. It is not by any meanings like eating peanut butter but it has a slight peanut flavor that is mind blowing. Everyday we get soup, rice, and a main dish. When people cooked for their host families in Coch and it did not have potatoes in it they would feel cheated or it would not qualify as a meal. I am starting to become like them! One time the lady substituted our rice for something else and I was a little let down… and thought that lunch just did not cut it. It was actually pretty funny when I realized it. My family also has a maid who is a nice lady and works half day only weekdays. She only does basic cleaning such as sweeping, dishes and laundry but still a maid.  Probably my first and last my still and joy… even in Bolivia. Even with all this they still have cold showers. I am actually getting accustomed to these showers, at first it takes the breath out of you but after that is quite refreshing, but that is definitely not one thing I am going to continue to do in the States. My work is going along fine at Muyurina and in a couple weeks I will be going into Santa Cruz with my counterpart to give a presentation to Peace Corps and other volunteers on the work I will be doing. Now most of my days are spent integrating with the students at Muyurina. Here are some integration tools that I have been utilizing. One…playing baseball with vegetables that the students grow in their gardens and a bamboo bat. Basically they just toss a small squash or a tomato at me and smash it to little pieces… sometimes in to a small group of students (very fun I recommend it to everyone).  Two… sometimes I have to drive the tractor around and I “accidentally” run over big rocks and hit branches that “came out of nowhere”.  Three… less interesting is just plain talking to them about whatever interests them… music, cars, girls, America, and everything else in between.  Even with all of those amazing integration skills I have a lot of time to relax. I bought a super nice hammock that will be well used after two years. Sometimes I like to go to the plaza and just chill with my PIL fruit (a juice drink that costs the equivalent of about 6.5 cents). I finally saw my first sloth a couple weeks ago. It fell out of the tree and was on the ground for a little while. Then they worker who was cleaning the plaza picks it up and then starts putting it back in the tree but first she let a little girl pet it first. I was have tempted to jump get on my knees and waddle over there just so I could pet it. The Spanish word for sloth is perozoso which literally means lazy. You can definitely see why when you see them in action, they move slow incredibly slow! Well that is about it for now. I will try uploading some more photos soon but if not just bug me and that will motivate me… they same goes with my blog. It seems to be put to the back burner a lot of times but I guess I could change that. The blog does not even start to explain my live down here so I hope you have all been saving up money for a visit!