Greetings from the land of lakes of volcanoes! Life updates
are as follows:
-On February 16, I ran my first 25 k/15 mile race (half-marathon=
13.1 miles). The race was called Agua y Fuego (Water and Fire), because it’s
located on the island Ometepe, an island in Lake Nicaragua that is made of two
volcanoes are joined together. One volcano, is still active (hence the word
“fuego”) while the other volcano is inactive and has a huge lake in a crater on
the top (therefore the word “agua”). About 15 PC volunteers ran, most doing the
25k, a few troopers doing the 50k and no one partaking in the 100k nor he 70k
“survival run” (which only two people finished). The 25 k course involved scaling 1,200 of Conception,
the active volcano, and had about 150 runners signed up. I had been training
for a few months leading up the event, but San Fernando lacks active volcanoes
to practice on. Therefore, survival was my goal. It was a great course, which
involved some tranquil sections of running around the volcano but also had me
bear-crawling on certain parts of Conception. I believe my motto was “No
Dignity.” After a little over 3 hours and miles of incline, it was a great
feeling to finish and shower my sore and bleeding body. On top of all that, at
the awards ceremony on Sunday, I found out that I actually was the 3rd
woman to finish the race! I’m not sure what was cooler, finding out last minute
that I placed in my first ever race or the awesome chicken mask that I won.
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| Said chicken mask (it's a traditional Nicaraguan mask, straight from the artesian department of Masaya!) |
-It’s HOT HOT HOT! The sun is currently its closest distance
from the equator, which for us in Nicaragua means it is in prime cooking position.
April is generally one of the hottest months, but I feel like this “verano”
(hot/dry season) has been hotter and drier than last year’s. My current heat
predicament has me questioning my “mosquitero” or mosquito-net. On one hand is
highly recommendable to sleep under a mosquito net. It keeps mosquitos out as well as act as
shields sleepers from any other sort of creeper crawlers than may decide to
leap down from the ceilings or walls. My friend recently told me that one
morning at 4am, she was trying to sleep through the normal dog howlings and
rooster calls, and was bombarded by a giant rat that fell on her as it lost its
balance scurrying along the rafters. Terrifying. My mosquito net is so much
more than just a malaria/dengue preventer, it serves as a second roof for when
it rains over my leaky roof and as a force field for the cockroaches or other
beings that attempt kamikaze attacks in the wee hours of the morning. Yet on
the other hand, this mosquito net is hot, which makes me question on a few
scalding nights the probably of UFO attacks in my sleep. However, my fear of
rat bombs is more than my heat discomfort level, so my mosquito net is
currently still hanging dutifully. I just hope the rains start soon to cool
things off.
-I talked to “Crazy Marta.” To give some background on that,
there is a mentally handicapped woman that lives in San Fernando whose story I
have been trying to put together for a while now. Her name is Marta, or “Marta
Loca” as she is referred to by the local. From what I’ve been able to find out,
she has no known family in the area, and I’m not sure how she got here. All
day, she walks around barefoot carrying a huge sack full of dirty clothes,
bottles, and random other things she’s picked up from the street. As she
wanders, she will sit on random people’s door steps and yell things like “Deme
tortilla!” or “Tiene café?!” (“give me tortilla!” or “do you have coffee?!).
People either ignore her, or send out a bit of coffee, tortilla, or other
edible offering. One Sunday afternoon as I was cleaning my room, Marta comes
and sits on my front door. I had never previously talked to Marta, so I was a
little put-off and uncomfortable with the situation. She had not yelled anything yet, so I
initiated conversation
“Le gustaria tener un vaso de agua?” I asked her, and she
looked into my eyes and said, “Si.”
I went to my water filter and filled a plastic cup and
brought it over to her. Marta accepted the cup and finished the water in only a
few seconds.
“Mas?” I asked her, and she nodded. After I handed her the
second cup I sat down on the stoop beside her. She finished the water and looks
at me with what seemed like a half smile and I start a conversation.
“Hola, como se llama?”
“Marta… Marta Rivera.”
“Pues, mi nombre es Helen. Mucho gusto. Y de donde es
Usted?”
“De Osignona.” (a place I have never heard of, nor had my
Nicaraguan family members)
We sat in silence together on my doorstep. A few passersby seemed
startled at the site of Marta and I sitting together, as they were probably
thinking “What in the world is that gringa doing with the crazy lady?!”, and
stared as they walked by, but Marta and I just watched on. At times, I felt as
if she were looking at me, while at other times it seemed as if she were
looking through me. Juan, the father of the family I live with, came and sat on
the stoop with me. I observed that her salt and pepper hair had been recently
trimmed to a cute about the ears and that her nails had been painted a dark
green (although were mostly chipped at this point). Also, she did not smell as
if she had not bathed, so it seemed that someone was taking responsibility for
her hygiene or well-being. I have tried to find out about where she sleeps or
if anyone cares for her and have gotten mixed answers. She has no known family,
and I heard that she sleeps in the streets, while others tell me but have also
heard that she sleeps on the porch of a woman’s house. After sitting in silence and making these
observations, I was ready to finishing fighting the dust clusters that had been
accumulating in my room, so I touched Marta’s shoulder and said,
“Ahora, me voy en dentro a terminar limpiando mi cuarto,
pero fue un placer conocerle.” (Now, I’m going inside to finish cleaning my
room, but it was a pleasure to meet you.)
She looks at me with that half smile, then her eyes shift
beyond me, then she turns her head back to face the street. She sits in silence
while I sweep and organize all of my PC folders, health books, and papers that
I’ve accumulated, but after about fifteen minutes she asks,
“Tiene zapatos?” I didn’t quite understand her question, did
she want some of my shoes? I don’t immediately respond so she raises her voice
and yells,
“Tiene zapatos?!? I answered,
“Marta, mis zapatos no le quedan” (My shoes don’t fit you).
She was silent for a bit, and then began asking if I had
shirts, clothes, or tortillas. It made me a little sad that our quiet bonding
moments on the stoop didn’t seem to separate me from the other houses that she
begs at, and after a few minutes of her yelling more requests, I finished
cleaning my room and told Marta,
“Ya me voy de la casa, un placer conocerle y nos vemos.” and
closed the door before leaving the house. I am not sure what form of mental
illness Marta has, whether its schizophrenia or some form of phychosis but she
has been living in the streets of San Fernando for the past four years. There
have been many pleas from the town to authorities of the health center, police,
and mayor’s office to get Marta off the streets, yet nothing has been done. It’s
sad that situations like this exist, whether it’s due to lack of resources or
lack of caring on the part of the government or families of the individual
afflicted. In Nicaragua there are many people with severe disabilities (both
mental and physical) whose only option is to live and beg in the streets. I am
not sure what level of consciousness Marta had as she was at my front door, but
I am glad I spent those few minutes sitting with her, even if it didn’t affect
her at all it affected me.
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| Marta |
-On a lighter note, never before coming to Nicaragua would I
have thought that I’d ever prefer an outhouse to a flushing toilet. The water
has been going out in the morning for the past few weeks, and the great thing
about an outhouse is that it doesn’t get clogged when the water goes out! Plus,
it’s kind of nice doing your morning routine out in the backyard outside,
there’s no little kids trying to brush their teeth nor anyone trying to walk
through the bathroom; it’s just you and a few minutes out in mother nature.
What a great way to start the day. J
-Hosted a camp April 12, 13 and 14 for 40 lucky San Fernando-ans teens (well,
ages 16-25) this past weekend with a fellow PCV, Michelle Hart, (she and her
husband are volunteers in Santa Clara, a community of San Fernando 10 km away) and
help from a nurse at the San Fernando health center, Milexi. It was a youth
leadership camp with a focus on sexual health education and life opportunities.
The campers, ages 16- 25, learned about various health themes and then in
groups of 5-6, taught their peers and us about certain health themes (in order
to encourage them to be health promoters in their communities). We also had a
career fair Saturday during the day, and different universities and technical
schools arrived to present their options to the campers. Of course, we also
gave these kids the chance to have the real “camp” experience, Friday night we did
a bonfire with s’mores (which they had never heard of), Saturday night was a
dance, and on Sunday the Red Cross from Jalapa came and set up a zipline
activity for the kids to do. It was really great bringing kids from all over
the community together for a real camp experience, and hopefully they learned
something in the process that they can use to better their or someone else’s
life, whether it’s how to prevent an STD or unwanted pregnancy, what kind of
career they want to do, or perhaps they made a new friend that will help them
out down the road. Who knows, but it was fun and I had not gotten to make s’more in a long time before
that. Camps are the best.
- For Semana Santa (or Holy Week, which falls the week
before Easter and is one of the most important holidays in the Catholic Church
in many Hispanic countries), PC Nicaragua got a week off of work; so many PC volunteers took
advantage of the time off to plan excursions exploring the country. This
excursion was a beautiful concoction of my friend Natalie, a fellow PCV and NC
native, who lives in San Carlos, a tropical city located in Rio San Juan, a
department on the southern end of the country that borders Costa Rica. A trusty
group of eleven volunteers took a trip to San Carlos, to then kayak the 64 km
from San Carlos to El Castillo, which is a tiny river town located down the Rio
San Juan. El Castillo has no cars, because there are no roads that go to it.
The only way to get to this isolated and beautiful town is to take a riverboat,
or kayak like we did. In riverboat, the trip takes about 3 hours, and in your
own kayak, it takes about 2 days. I don’t think any of us knew what we were
getting into (except for Natalie, who had made it 2/3 of the way before) until
about hour 6 on the first day. It was a really amazing experience being on the
San Juan river (which is HUGE by the way), the people in our kayaking group
were the only humans we would see for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers).
It was just us and the birds, monkeys and turtles. El Castillo is one of the
quaintest places I’d ever been, it felt like the most tucked-away corners of
the world (comparable to Little Corn Island), a place that only the
best-researched travellers have discovered. It’s named El Castillo because of
the large stone fortress that sits on the hill overlooking the town, which was
used to defend the river from pirates and English invaders. It’s a tiny town
and doesn’t take long to see the castle and other sites or try some delicious
chocolate that is produced there, so after a day we headed back up to river (in
a riverboat, not in kayak, thank goodness) to San Carlos where I then started the
10-hour bus cross-country journey to San Fernando. It was a great holy week.
This country is amazing. Come visit me! All you need is a plane ticket into Managua, (MGA), go-with-the-flow attitude (you may be riding on a bus where chickens fall on your head) and to get visitor's status approved with a Peace Corps volunteer closest to you.
