Rama-rific

Rama isn’t the quite the Wild West that I was expecting, but I still managed to have a heck of an experience out there while visiting my main man Ricardo. Ricardo was an awesome host that did a tremendous job showing me the in’s and out’s of El Rama. I owe him a couple of free nights at my future site. This is Ricardo:

Our first full day brought the two of us out to Wapi, a small village two hours north of El Rama, to teach in a local school there. If I was picturing the Wild West, Wapi literally was it. To get there we packed into the back of a covered truck for two hours, going up and down, through the hills, fields, and jungles of RAAS. Really picturesque and beautiful, and if the rattling of the truck wasn’t so uncomfortable, or if the truck didn’t break down at one point, I think I would look forward to the trip every week. As it is though, once was enough for me. The pueblo is so far removed that the primary mode of transportation for the 2000 townsfolk is horse. Car’s exist out there, but horses are far more prevalent. There were legit hitching posts outside of most stores on their calle principal, with multiple horses tied up at each. As we walked along the streets, I expected to hear the low whistle of a challenge, a tumbleweed to roll by, and two men about to duel.

Our "Bus" to Wapi

The Bus Broke down

Center of Town

The Jungle surrounding El Rama

In my eyes, the best way to describe El Rama is a frontier town, although set in the jungle, rather than the plains we as Americans associate 'frontier' with. There are no other cities in sight from the top of La Loma, the hill/small mountain which looms above the city. See the view, and your boy for yourself. You may notice that I’ve cut away my not so golden, or curly locks, and for the first time ever, my beard is longer than my hair.



The view from La Loma



The View of La Loma from El Rama



The city also sits at the crossroads of two big rivers, Rio Rama and Rio Siquia, to form el Rio Escondido, which travels all the way east to Bluefields and the Caribbean Sea. Because of its location El Rama serves as the trade capital of the area, offering a port for farmers and cattle herders of the campo a place to sell their goods to merchants, who in turn bring the good to the coast and/or Venezuela. Cattle are sent to Venezuela to be processed, and then sold back to Nica’s at 3X the cost. It’s a sad reality, and it would just make to much sense to cut out the middle man and process the mean internally. The city of Rama itself has a population of around 50,000, which is quite large in Nicaragua. But it is still much undeveloped. No running water to any house, no more than ½ of the streets are paved (and that’s generous), and the first things locals asked me regarded the sanitation. The streets were very visibly dirty and full of trash; the people just didn’t care about what they did with their trash. Don’t get me wrong though, the city had its positives as well, that superseded the negatives.  According to Ricardo, it’s super safe, and as I noticed in my short term stay, has a very friendly feel to it. Everyone I met was cheerful, and very excited at the prospect of another volunteer being in town. And as a volunteer, the city has many opportunities to teach and work with small business.

As a result, it was tough sometimes to remind myself that this was volunteer site visit, and not just a vacation. I was there for a reason: to learn about a day in the life of a business volunteer. And I did learn a lot about what it means to be a volunteer. The first is time management. I’ll going to face a lot time where I’ll have nothing to do. Thank goodness I’m a business volunteer, and my day is somewhat structured. I talked with a  Health Volunteer in El Rama, and she seems like she is hard pressed to find even a small activity to do on a daily basis. I’ll need to develop new hobbies, continue to exercise, and hopefully read a bunch more, along with other things to stay busy. I can also constantly put myself out there and be open engaging, which is the second thing I learned. By just keeping your ear to the ground and talking with anyone who will listen to you, you can forge great relationships that could lead to both personal and/or professional opportunities. In his first couple of weeks, Ricardo was all over town talking everyone up, and it shows now, as he has multiple side projects to teaching and multiple friendships that started from nothing. Aprendizaje numero tres is to be flexible. Every day is full of small victories and failures, and you need to learn from both, and now dwell on failure. Staying positive and always learn from the past is the only way to stay sane and progress as a teacher and as an individual.

So my time in El Rama taught me some valuable lessons about the day in the life of a volunteer, as well as what I want from a future site. I’m thankful for getting sent to El Rama on my volunteer visit, but I can say it is not the part of the country for me. I thought I would maybe want a site like that – off the grid and far away from all white man contact. But now I’m not so sure. Saturday is our site fair, and I’m excited to see the possibilities where I could end up.