Happily Ever After and Holidays-Nica-Style!

…At the end of movies, it usually gives the “happily ever after” vibe. One assumes that the couple gets married, has beautiful and perfect children, and lives in their house with their white picket fences while staying madly in love the rest of their lives.

            Well, that happily ever after does not exist. That couple may gets in fights, perhaps one of their children develops a drinking problem, and maybe their house gets foreclosed on. How have I discovered this harsh reality? Well, after successfully taking down two rats in a week, I thought the war was over. However, the next night, I woke up to hear another chewing on something of mine, and this morning I saw it scurrying across my floor, taunting me. This losing mouse-war that I am in is representative of the bigger picture; there is never a happily ever-after, where everything is perfect from there on out. Life will always throw us curve balls, or rodents. Yet I don’t mind this, how stale would life be if there never existed some challenge. Sometimes we get caught up in the current problems of our lives, obsessed with the idea that “when we fix this, everything will be ok forever.” It won’t. I guess the take-home lesson is that one way or another, there are solutions to our problems, but there is no solution to ALL of our problems for the rest of our lives, nor will we ever stop having problems. No matter how big or small, we have to be able to cope with them. As far my problem of a few mice in my room, I’ll deal with it. As long as I avoid getting cholera or leptospirosis.

            I used to say San Fernando only had room for only one gringo, but these last three months have taught me otherwise. Although it is a little town, there are still undiscovered nooks and untapped social circles. San Fernando is a very religious town (like the majority of towns in Nicaragua), and has an orphanage run by a catholic convent of nuns.  I didn’t even really know about the orphanage until one of the nuns became my pupil in the community English class that I started up in April, and was always accompanied by three young girls from the orphanage. I saw them always come out of a building, and I guessed that the younger girls with them weren’t quite nuns yet. Sor Daisy called me the other day and told me they would be having someone from the states staying with them, and would love if I would orient her, since she was still learning the Spanish language. It has been quite the treat having a padawon in my town, Her name is Anna, she is a 19 year-old from a small town in upstate New York. She had done volunteer work the organization Mission of Hope in Nicaragua twice before while in high school, and volunteered for three months in Africa after graduating high school. After doing one semester and realizing that her heart wasn’t in it, she wanted to explore other options. Mission of Hope suggested for her to volunteer at a small orphanage run by nuns in a small town in northern Nicaragua for a semester to figure things out, and here she is.  What a random, small world we live in. I’ve gotten her and the nuns in the habit of walking with me every morning in their tennis shoes and nun-attire, thus inspiring the phrase- “nuns in action!” and I’ve gotten to see what wonderful work these two women do for the fifteen children living in the home. It is eye-opening to see how delicate children are, but how resilient they can be. I am so thankful for people like Sor Delia and Sor Deisy, who have dedicated their lives to giving a family and safe home to children that would otherwise not have either of these things. Many people would not choose to be a nun caring for children at an orphanage in rural Nicaragua, but they did. It’s pretty cool that each one of us have our own special niche in this world; otherwise we’d all be astronauts or firefighters.

            We always hear our elders telling us to enjoy our youth, because then you blink and the next thing you know you are 35 years old with a mortgage, and then you blink again and you are 76 years old and you are waving your cane at the neighbors’ kids, yelling at them to get off your lawn. It’s true!!! Time flies. Before entering Peace Corps, I was mortified at the thought of a 27-month commitment, at least 1/20th of my life. The first three months of training stretched as if they were an eternity, and my first year definitely had some “No way am I do xx more months of this.” However, I found a groove, made a second home, and before I knew it, the end was near. My group, Nica 58, just had our Close of Service (COS) Conference, and we all become very aware of our PC mortality. COS Conference is for the PCV that are about to end their service, and its focus is to prepare volunteers on how to wrap up their projects, so that when the time of departure comes, they are ready to “re-enter” life in the States, and not start every sentence with “This one time, I was in Peace Corps…” It was very surreal to be sitting in a conference room with my group, discussing the end of our service, when it feels like yesterday was January 2012, and we were in Washington D.C., nervous about our departure. El tiempo vuela (Time flies).

            I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!! Going home for Christmas last year was an extremely important part of my service last year, as it was my only first and only time visiting America, and being with my family that Christmas meant the world to me. However, due to a Turkish wedding (of my big brother Dean!! Congrats Dean!!), the complicated flights of Nicaragua-Turkey, lack of vacation days on my part, and my desire to have a holiday in Nicaraguan, this year Christmas was spent in-country, Nica-style! I was excited to see how Christmas is done in a tropical country where Santa cannot afford extravagancies. Vacations started for all government workers (meaning my co-workers at the health center, trash pick-up workers, mayor’s offices, etc) on Friday December 20, and will last until January 6, which is “Dia de Los Reyes.” I hope not too many people get sick at the same time over this time period, because we’ve got only 1 doctor and 1 nurse on call in my town of 10,000 people. Regardless, the town was becoming festive. The church put on plays in the park, re-enacting biblical scenes, carolers could be heard singing, and some townspeople decorated their houses with lights and nativity scenes. The main day of celebration here is not the 25^th, but the 24^th. We awoke this Christmas Eve day with the roaring of the pick-up truck and 12-year old Jeison prodding me with a machete, telling me it was time to get the Christmas tree. The elder son, Oswaldo, drove the pick-up truck through the rough and unpaved road to their mountain property while 6-6-year old Drixana tried to impress me with her truck-riding skills but not holding on the handles in the back. Impress me, no- She succeeded in terrifying me. I could picture the headlines… “Peace Corps Volunteer lets host-sister fly out of truck Christmas Eve. Machete Involved..”

            We made to our very Nicaraguan version of a Christmas tree farm, called the forest, and picked out trees for the family. We brought them home, and decorated them with whatever few ornaments we had, balloons, and scattered sawdust around the bottom. With extra branches, my family decorated outside pillars with the extra branches, and created their own nativity scene, with a baby Jesus that was to be unveiled at midnight the 24^th going into the 25^th. Gifts can be given on this day, but in many families they are not expected. In the case of my family of four children, the only gifts they received were a “monopolio” board from me, and a few dolls from an aunt. It was a very different feel from when I was a child, and my siblings and I fought over which child had more presents under the tree, but it was Christmas none-the-less. Instead of presents-galore, the mantra of a Nicaraguan Christmas is “Nacatamales until you burst!” A nacatamale is like a homemade hot pocket, with pork stuffed into crust of corn meal and lard infused with spices and wrapped in a banana leaf. These nacatamales require quite a bit of preparation, and the women are frantically working all day the 24^th to whip out the required production. There are also the traditional foods of “gallina rellena” (chicken stuffed with pork and minced veggies) and “lomo relleno” (pork back-strap stuff with minced chicken and veggies); I was a big fan of these traditional foods and the irony of stuffing one dead animal with the meat of another dead animal. They both were delicious! The night of the 24^th, there was an 8o’clock church service, followed by religious activities in the park, and then everyone goes to house parties to wait for the birth of Jesus! This felt more like New Year’s Eve to me than Christmas Eve, because at 12o’clock sharp, we began cheering and fireworks went off to celebrate! Since everyone stays up celebrating the 24^th, the 25^th is the lower-key day of the two, and many use this day to nurse their hangovers by eating leftover nacatamales. Thanks to a surprise present of pancake batter (one has to go to the city capital for some Mrs. Butters) from another PCV, I was able to preserve my US family’s tradition of pancakes on Christmas morning, and we made banana pancakes for the entire family, extended family, and even a few neighbors. Even without presents and snow (and my beloved US family near, who I was able to talk to J), my very Nica Christmas was an amazing experience, one that I will never forget. I can’t wait to see what New Year’s is like- rumor has it that explosive rag-dolls are involved…

Letter to a future volunteer...

My boss recently asked if we would be willing to write letters for recent Peace Corps Nicaragua invitees.. This is a letter for individuals who have gotten an invitation to serve as a PC volunteer in Nicaragua in the health sector, and have accepted. This is for all of you considering Peace Corps, regardless of sector or country, or for those curious of a senior Peace Corps volunteer's reflective thoughts on her service and her advice potential newbies...

Dear future PC Volunteer,

            The fact that you are reading this little booklet tells me a few things about you. First, you are ready for the adventure of a lifetime- why else would you have signed up to leave behind the conventional comforts of the developed world to dedicate 27 months of service in Nicaragua, a raw tropical beauty, yet possibly quite unfamiliar to you. Second, you are determined- the application process, with its interviews, medical reviews, and stacks-upon-stacks of paperwork, is not for the weak-hearted, and you have successfully stuck it out. Third, you are a qualified individual- you have been selected to join the Peace Corps family because of your determination and positive attributes that you have displayed throughout the application process, and since no one has the exact credentials that you have, no one is ever going to be a Peace Corps volunteer just like you; the possibilities of your service in Nicaragua are endless.

            So, what are the next steps from here? When I accepted my invitation and got a ton of information, I began to feel overwhelmed thinking about my 27-month commitment. Try not to in terms of your entire Peace Corps Service, but instead take it month-by-month, or week-by-week. Depending of your departure date, you will have months or weeks between now and your staging event- this time is best used enjoying the luxuries of America and focusing on the relationships that you have there, versus obsessing over the unknown. Nicaragua has an amazingly rich history that you will learn and appreciate all the more once you have lived here, no amount of research on Nicaragua’s past will replace what this country will teach you through conversations with those who have lived it. Therefore, for now, do a little reading, make sure you can find Nicaragua on a map, but focus on preparing yourself to leave your home and the relationships and rituals that are with it. Spend quality time with friends and family, for you may not see them for the next couple years. Find time to do those little things that you have always wanted to do, such as take that four hour drive to visit a loved one, visit that new café on your street, or try out that new yoga class. In my case, I started guitar lessons my last three months in America, and now, I can bless Nicaraguan ears strumming my four cord repertoire. Once again, this time should be focused on you and fortifying the relationships important to you, so that when you leave, you won’t be leaving loved ones behind, but bringing them with you on this adventure through emails, letters, phone calls, or smoke-signals.

            When your staging date finally arrives, you will meet an amazing group of people who are distinct from you in background and credentials, but similar to you in their motivation to help others and thirst for adventure. Even though you do not know each other well (yet!), these people will be one of your strongest support networks from the moment you board that Managua-bound plane and beyond. Those first three months of training will be focused on teaching you Spanish (don’t fret, you’ll learn it!), preparing you to be a health educator and adapting you culturally to Nicaragua. I remember being nervous before coming, thinking that my background did not sufficiently qualify me to teach Nicaraguans about HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases, the risks of adolescent pregnancy, or other health topics. However, once you get here, you will meet our qualified health program leaders (our bosses!), other PCVS, and Nicaraguan professionals that will teach you about the health sector, all of the health topics, and dynamic ways to teach each one. By the end of training, you will feel qualified and ready to become a community health promoter and educator, wherever your site may be!

            Once you become an official volunteer, your service is completely shaped by you. Some activities I do as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Health Sector are: I co-teach classes with Nicaraguan teachers to students about sexual and reproductive health, I host soccer tournaments that have an educational component to promote healthy lifestyle choices for youth, or I give training sessions volunteer community health workers on health topics such as proper hand-washing, dental hygiene, dengue prevention, or how to have a healthy pregnancy. Another project I have enjoyed is surveying migrant coffee pickers in regards to their HIV knowledge and condom use. I go to huge coffee farms (some as big as 500 acres!), where thousands of coffee workers migrate from all over the country, and I one-on-one assess their sexual health knowledge, and afterwards give sexual health education and condom demonstrations to groups of workers. One of the beauties of Peace Corps is that no one will ever have a service like yours. Whatever your interests and abilities are, you can capitalize on them to enjoy your service to the fullest and fulfill your potential!

            Your 27 months will also consist of getting completely immersing yourself in another culture and will be an invaluable experience that is unparalleled and irreplaceable. You will learn Spanish, make new friends, and create a home for yourself. In the meantime, I suggest you try not to make too many expectations. Like I said, your experience will be totally unique to you, and in Peace Corps, expectations function to close your mind to the numerous opportunities that await you.

            You are going to become part the Peace Corps Nicaragua family, and we couldn’t be happier to have you! Each one of us has our own special story and we are so excited to meet you and watch you create yours.

Sincerely,

Helen Schafer

Nica 58 (2012-2014)

The Bane of my Hygienic Existence

       I make attempts at living a hygienic lifestyle. I tuck my hanging mosquito net under my mattress every day to keep out dengue-plagued mosquitos, I sweep my floor each morning to clear out the night’s worth of dead cockroaches, and I scrape the mold that keeps growing on my shoes during rainy season. I try to keep up with my clothes washing as well, yet whenever I look down at my “professional” wear, it’s a bit embarrassing to notice all the stains I didn’t scrub out, or had somehow managed to scrub in. .I’ve found myself questioning, “are socks supposed to bend?” more than once in this country. Needless to say, I’ve been doing an impeccable job at being a clean, highly functioning adult, am I right?

       ….until recently. A few weeks ago, my home was invaded by a rat. It began chewing through my oatmeal bags and leaving its droppings over my kitchen utensils. Being a health volunteer in Nicaragua, I’ve learned there are a large number of diseases that are spread through the consumption of rat scat, so I was beginning to get concerned. At night, while trying to peacefully drift off to sleep between the dogfights and the crowing roosters, I could hear it scurrying, looking for its next meal and toilet amongst my things. It was making a mockery of me, and I was not going to take it any longer! I armed myself with a deadly arsenal: bananas, rice, tortillas, and rat venom. I strategically put piles near its favorite hangouts, such in between my clothes, or the little hole it was digging out of the side of my wall. Then I waited. At first, I was discouraged, for when I checked my stockpiles of venom-riddled tortillas the next day it seemed that the rat was on to me, and wasn’t going to take the bait. It wasn’t until a few days later, that I began to notice that my room was starting to get a funny smell. Was it the tortilla/cheese/rice trap going bad? Or was that the decaying smell of a rat’s defeat? Once again, I checked my booby-traps, nothing. …Perhaps under the bed? I grabbed my emergency flashlight that I keep for power-outages, did a quick scan under the bed and alas! There it was! A rat dead in mid-stride! When I pulled out the bed (along with my posse of neighborhood children) to expose the rat, and the rotting smell of victory punched us in the face. I had never felt so accomplished yet disgusted at the same time. I felt like a responsible dog-owner as I got some newspaper to clean up the “little present” under my bed, and I quickly dumped the body in the woods. The smell still lingered, as I think that it had been decomposing for a couple days now, judging by the body fluids that had been left on the floor. However, no me importaba (I didn’t care), nothing a little bit of Chlorox couldn’t fix. Alas, victory! No more droppings beside my food. No more scratching in the night. No more bites out of the bananas I leave on my table. Helen: 1! El Raton: 0!!

       It's the little things in life that get us through. 

At this point, I'm either a super-human or I'm dying young.

            I’ve had an ongoing joke during my time in Nicaragua to myself and anyone who is around to listen that when we come back from our PC service, we will either be super humans with immune systems and stomachs of iron, or we will have taken about 10 years off of our lives. I like to believe it’s the former but in reality it’s probably the latter. I’ve had a skin fungus due to the humidity (fungus loves the humidity), which actually wasn’t thhhaaat bad, it looked like splotchy tanlines, there are bugs here that pee on you and cause blisters (how degrading), and others than lay their larvae eggs underneath your skin.  What most recently made me question my health status occurred when I entered my room the other day to find it covered in ash. It is the end of the dry and hot season, known as verano (which translates to summer in English), and to prepare their lands for the rainy season, farmers mercilessly burn the plants that are left in their fields to clear their land for planting before the rainy season. Therefore, the San Fernando hills have been hosting several wildfires for the past few weeks, and since my walls do not quite reach my roof in our house, my room has been a constant swirl of crisped corn husks other unidentified charred objects (see: UCO).  So, I’ve got this coupled with all the smoke from the wood-burning stoves that fill the kitchens, studies show staying in a room with a wood burning stove is estimated to be as lung-damaging as smoking two packs of cigarettes. At least I’m still able to run half-marathons, for now.  

            Thanks to a wonderful North Carolinian teacher by the name of Mrs. Campbell, I was able to have a pen-pal program between her classroom of elementary students in the United States and a third grade class I worked with in Nicaragua. Mrs. Campbell taught her class about Nicaragua and we exchanged emails with questions and pictures. Every year, Mrs. Campbell’s class does a humanitarian project and this year, she had asked me if she could correspond their project with my classes in Nicaragua and what would be an area in which they could help. Tooth decay was my response. In Nicaragua, especially in the more rural areas, is it common to see metal caps covering people’s teeth, it took me awhile that it wasn’t in honor of Lil’ Wayne. A lot of times, it is not the child’s decision not to brush their teeth, rather it is a limitation of their parent’s financial situation or education in dental hygiene. Dental hygiene  is not a priority of their parents’ of limited resources regular tooth-brushing is also not strictly taught and enforced by parents. One of the most common child-hood “illnesses” is, you named it,  tooth decay. The only reason why I brushed my teeth as a child was because my mom and dad told me to, therefore, if they didn’t tell me to, I would have never learned the behavior and would probably have a metal-capped tooth or two as well. Therefore, I told Mrs. Campbell that a dental hygiene project could be done, and that it would be amazing if they could do a toothbrush and toothpaste drive to give to the children in limited resources.  Mrs. Campbell’s class was able to raise about 200 toothbrushes and 200 toothpastes to give to Nicaraguan students. I was able to visit Mrs. Campbell and her class when I was in North Carolina for Christmas 2012. They asked me questions like “how far it is to Nicaragua on a boat?” and “How do you say my William in Spanish?” I brought them letters from Nicaraguan students in my town and helped them translate, and showed them pictures of kids like them in an elementary school in Nicaragua. It was heartwarming to see how excited this class was about learning about Nicaraguan culture. Getting the toothbrushes back was a different story. With airlines now, luggage can be as expensive as an airline ticket. (At least for Spirit Airlines it is, I asked them how I could get my guitar from Nicaragua, to the U.S. and they said, “Oh, you can just buy a seat for it.” Umm, thanks for the great offer, but no.) In case you are wondering, a suitcase of 200 plus toothbrushes and pastes weights about 500 pounds, a little above my Spirit airlines meager allowance of 40 lbs. (PS Spirit is super cheap, but only fly it if you don’t need to bring much luggage and if you would like to discover the try meaning of “red-eye.” My flight left at 2am to get into Fort Lauderdale at 5:30 am, ready to start a day well-rested!) Therefore, I had no way of getting all of these great brushes and pastes down without paying more than the cost of just buying 200 pastes and brushes in country, which would defeat the purpose. However, a few weeks later, a colleague of my father was able to bring the suitcase while on his way to San Juan del Sur (great vacation spot!), and I was able to start my “Dia del Diente” project, teaching proper teethbrushing habits to families in the rural communities of San Fernando. Saving the world, one tooth at a time.

            I recently hosted my second visitor to Nicaragua. The brave Marshall Abrams, one of my best friends since high school, made it down for a Nicaraguan adventure, and I could not have asked for a better cohort. It’s not just anyone from Rutherford County that could handle two five-hour bus rides in two days before and after getting up at 3:30 am to run a half marathon on the back country roads in the mountains of Nicaragua, along with volcano hiking and getting extremely sunburned on the beach. After successfully getting Marshall to the airport alive and in good spirits, I was able to relax on yet another 5-hour bus ride home and appreciate just how cool my friends are, and how amazing this country is.

            One think that my PC service has demonstrated to me is that people can adapt to some pretty drastic situations. For example, now, for me, it’s nothing to see a cockroach fly into the water I was using to brush my teeth or go for a jog on a road riddled with piles of dog poop while scratching my skin fungus, bug-bitten arm. I’ve seen that people also adapt to ways of life, city fast get fast paced while people in the country sit on their front stoop enjoying their cup of coffee while life flies by. People get accustomed to their lives and tend to get scared of change, even if they weren’t initially happy. Therefore, my goal is to catch myself if I am just accepting the status quo, or if I am truly actually fulfilling my potential. I think that principle should apply to humans in all walks of life. Take a step back and evaluate your life. Are you truly happy with your current situation, whether it’s your relationship, job, economic status, emotional status, etc, or are you just accepting where life has put you, you are comfortable where you are, and although you aren’t as happy as your could be, to change it would require extra energy and some risk, and quite frankly, that scares us. Change is scary. Initally. But the cool thing about change is, we’ll also get used to that new situation and it may just be better than how things were before. If it’s not, we can also just change again. You only get one life, so don’t settle. Easier said than done, right? Says the girl who’s been eating oatmeal with bananas for breakfast almost every morning for about the past ten months