Life as a Vago

Well, what a week it has been, and as my host mother was happy to tell me, “Nunca esta aqui, esta vago. Vago, translates to vagabond more or less, and it’s not the best thing for your reputation in a small Nica town. People talk, and usually it leads to them thinking you leave so often because you don’t like being there. They have a good point I guess, but it’s untrue in my case. My schedule was just chock full this past week, and I was all over the country, for a mixture of work and play, and hit up four of the bigger cities of Nicaragua: Managua, Granada, Masaya, and Chinendega.

            I can’t remember if I mentioned it in my last post, but last weekend was the Annual Emprendedurismo Cocktail party, a big fundraiser for our national emprendedurismo course at the end of the year. Between bringing in teams from all over the country and hosting the nationals at a big time venue, it takes quite a bit of money to host the event. So what better way to raise money that throw a party for all volunteers, and anyone interested in supporting the competition. The best way to describe it is like Ring Dance, but a little less classy as most of us didn’t bring tuxedos down to Nicaragua with us. So more than being a way to raise money, this party is a chance for us PCV’s to all gather under the same roof, dress up in our Sunday finest, and actually pretend like we’re back in the states. We enjoy all the excellent amenities that Managua and the Holiday Inn have to offer, such as warm water showers, room service, and excellent rooms and facilities. The Holiday Inn is actually a bid deal down here, and is one of the nicest, and tallest building in Managua. So the actual even was an absolute blast, full of music, dancing, and your best friends down here. Throw in rum, a pool, and easy access to the roof, and we had quite the bacanal. It took me more than a couple days to recover from all the fun we were having. Some would say “Too Much Fun”, but that just doesn’t exist.

Suprisingly we can clean up a bit. Unfortunately this is the only photo I managed to take of the weekend

            The only bummer of the cocktail party was that I didn’t have any time to recover, as its still competition week, as I like to call it. My municipal competition may be over, but we still had plenty of regional competitions to plan and host over these past couple of days. Usually, you have the luxury of planning a regional competition in a site where a Volunteer is, but we lacked that this year, as the volunteer in Granada unfortunately fell sick (enough to be medevaced to Panama) right before the competition. So Leslie from Rivas, Chalin from Diriamba, Jordan from San Marcos, and me from La Villa, have spent the past two weeks or so at our new “site”, Granada, making contacts, meeting with all of the local schools, and doing all the legwork to make sure things went off without a hitch. And Granada is not close by the way, easily at least a two and a half hour ride via public transportation, which makes for interesting commutes. But despite being a bunch more work, it really has been a great experience, and a lot of fun, and as a result I’ve really got to know the other volunteers in my area. And speaking of the competition, which did do off without a hitch at the beautiful Convento San Francisco, my team SoyaMix, from Farabundo Marti, rocked it, taking home First Place no problem. The kids were absolute pros, put up a bomb presentation, and swept the judges off their feet during the question portion of their presentation. It’s pretty exciting stuff, and it means we continue on to the National Competition at the end of the month to represent Villa el Carmen, as well our region of Managua, Carazo, Granada, and Rivas. It’s a pretty big deal, as a lot of volunteers accomplishing this feat, so as you could guess, I’m pumped about it.

            To celebrate Halloween, the start of a steadfast, and a friends birthday, I headed up to Hot and Sunny Chinendega for the first time. According to the volunteers up there, it’s a fiery hell that is significantly hotter than the rest of the country. For any of those volunteers reading this, quit complaining. It’s not any cooler anywhere else, and I don’t want to hear your whining anymore, or worse, you all bragging about your heat. I mean, c’mon. Unlike Masaya, Granada, or Leon, Chinendega is known as a true Nica city, without any of the tourist attractions and bells and whistles of the previous mentioned towns. So what that means, as my host so bluntly put it, it’s ugly. But despite its ugliness we still managed to have some fun, dress up like idiots for Halloween and attract strange looks from Nica’s. We even managed to play flip cup and shot gun beers, two things that haven’t happened since leaving the states almost six months ago. Just a little taste of home, in the form of college party games. And I swear that beer tastes better shotgunned, and encourage you all to go out and try it one more time if you haven’t lately.

            So now, life as a Vago ends, and things will turn back to normal, kind of. The elections are coming up in two weeks, and depending on how they turn out, things could get pretty wild down here. Especially if the current ruling dictatorship, the Sandanistas, manage to lose somehow. And then, all hell will break loose, something I would love to witness first hand. With the Arab Spring going on in other parts of the world, maybe I could find myself in the middle of another revolution. But so as a result of this potential madness, the Peace Corps has established a steadfast, meaning volunteers are prohibited to travel from their sites for the next three weeks, starting today at noon. So I’ll be kicking it here, trying to teach the last couple of themes of the school year (which ends the first week of December), playing a lot of soccer, and hopefully a fair bit of surfing if I can swing it. Life will get routine, and a little boring once again, but I couldn’t be more excited for it.

And I apologize if this entry was a little dry, I’m still absolutely feeling the effects of a long week of work, and a heavy night of drinking.

Cloudy with a Chance of Entrepreneurship

I know, it’s a terrible title right? I had the book “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” on my mind, and I figured I could borrow the general theme of the title. But it does have some relevance for what is to come. So after being pushed back a week, and a well needed week of preparation at that, the big Feria de Emprendedurismo (Entrepreneurship Fair) was today, the dia de hoy. This is the culmination of a years worth of work within the Nica school system, and reflects largely on the work that Casey, Nicole, and I have done with our respective counterparts and kids. So understandably, I could barely sleep last night, just thinking about all the possible things that could go wrong. And believe you-me, a lot of things could go wrong in any sort of Nica get together.

To provide a little more background for those who forget, I have been working the high schools of my municipality teaching an entrepreneurship class to the senior class. These students formed groups and chose a product at the beginning of the school year, and since then have been slowly developing their business plans, in preparation for today, the big competition. That is the theory at least. Every class is a new part of the business plan (a very basic business plan), and the teams are encouraged to save their work over the course of the year, so that come competition time, their business plans only require a little bit of revision. But c’mon, who’s going to expect any high school senior to do that? So of course these past couples of weeks have involved me running around the entire municipality, helping to revise business plans, and in some instances starting from scratch. It’s important to note too, that I took over the classes of the previous volunteers, the above mentioned Casey and Nicole, who I give the majority of the credit for the success of so many of the teams here. They were the ones who really got the ball rolling, and I jumped in at the end to teach the no-fun technical stuff, and help organize.

Now to even get to the municipal competition, teams had to win smaller, local competitions within their schools. Due to the sheer number of schools, and therefore teams, you had to qualify for the Big One. Which meant that the best of the best from each school was present today, at our municipal competition, which took place right across the street from my house, in the heart of Villa El Carmen.

Now back to the title of this post, and while its relevant. For the first time in probably two weeks, it just stopped raining. It was still cloudy, hence the title, but no rain despite rain all last night. And no rain meant a 100% chance of entrepreneurship on the radar screen. Alright, I’ll stop with the bad weather jokes. But the weather was just one of my many worries. Will dirt roads be dry enough to drive on? Will all the judges show up? Will anybody show up? Do I have an audio system confirmed? Are the kids as excited as I am? Do horse shoes have horse socks? Is anybody listening to me? These were just a few of the worries flying through my head, and it turns out some were justified. One judge called in sick, and my original audio system never showed. But expecting such problems, there were backups for both of those problems. We activated Plan B, and continued on without a hitch.

Each group set up a stand to sell and present their product, and the judges and the general public had an opportunity to walk around and take a look at each group. A fair of sorts. After the fair, each group walked up to the stage, and gave a 10 minute presentation about their product to four judges, explaining themes such as the results of their Market Study, margin of earning and break-even point, and SWOT analysis. The groups were graded on Creativity, Business Plan, Presentation, Marketing, and Finances. An important distinction of this competition, and the class as a whole, is that the emphasis is on learning and creativity, not on the “success” of the business. On paper your business could be losing money, but what is important is that the group knows why they are losing money, and know how to use the tools to tell them if they’re earning or losing money. It’s no secret that one of the biggest problems here in Nicaragua is poverty, despite the rich resources of this nation. It’s not that the people aren’t creative, it’s that its not really encouraged to, let’s say, go against the grain. The end goal of this class is to foster that creativity in the kids, and to give them a skill set for life after high school since a small percentage continue their education. Because the job market is so small right now, it’s more important that these kids create their own employment, and in turn generate more employment for their community by creating their own small business.

 Every presentation went better that I could have expected, and I couldn’t have been happier with every group. I had this image in my head of how I wanted the day to go, and incredibly that’s how it turned out. But in true Nica fashion, an hour and a half late. But so is life down here. Below I included every picture of each team, how they finished in the competition, and a description of their product. I hope you enjoy the photos!

First Place - SoyaMix (Soy Powder)

Second Place - Condimento De Vegetales

Third Place - Sweet Carrot (Carrot Fudge)

Best Presentation - ACREC (Statues of Paper)

Most Creative - Cuculmilk (Refreshing Beverage, made from the root of Cuculneca)

Artes En Papel Y Mas (Figures of Paper)

EL Poder de La Espinaca - Spinach Medicine

LinaGel Hair Gel

Your Boy takng pictures with his favorite group. Really got to me that they didn't win.

Mo Rain, Mo Problems

So during training the topic of canceled classes came up one day as a frustration of current volunteers. And classes do get cancelled a lot for usually ridiculous reasons and holidays. And the speakers during training were right: it is super frustrating to show up to a school to find out that classes have been canceled because of “La Feria de las Raizes” (Fair of Indigenous People of Nicaragua, or more literally the Fair of Roots) However, of all the reasons that were listed on that initial list, one struck me as particularly odd: Rain. My first reaction was this isn’t some sort of athletic contest; you can’t actually close school because of rain. And if I can side track real quick, athletic contests don’t get stopped for rain, or lightening for that matter. It was a little unsettling to continuing playing football last week amidst a lightening storm. But c’mon, you can never be the first person to walk off the field or you’re the wuss that was “scared of a little rain”. But anyway, now I can understand why la lluvia has such a profound impact on the cancellation of classes. Aside from being slightly obnoxious, it can be really dangerous here, and the students in the isolated villages (comarcas) often can’t get to class because of swollen/flooded rivers, downed trees/power lines, or landslides. A young girl died here yesterday because the wind knocked over a power line, and in nearby Managua city, the paper reported that 1,622 were negatively affected by storm, 233 houses destroyed, and 100’s of people evacuated from the capital. The capital city! That’s not including the more rural areas. There was a span of more or less 18 hours where it just straight up did not stop raining. As an example check out the picture of the local river, where the level rose over the bridge:



If you look closely in the backround, you'll see people are standing chest deep in what was previously a road



As a result, I’ve spent a lot time over the past few days trying to scramble my competition together. But day after day of rain has caused me to move my municipal competition back a week, to next Thursday the 20^th. So at least temporarily I can now breath a little easier, have been able to read my new purchase on the Kindle (That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman, thank you dad), and hang out with one of my new best friends: my 4 year old neighbor Evalito:

This stick is his cuchillo to attack caballos y torros, which were all over my room that day

That’s the update for this week. I’ve now been in country for officially 5 months now as of this past Tuesday. Oh and I bought another surfboard, I couldn’t help myself. So now there’s no excuse for any of my so-called friends to come visit down here. I got an extra hammock and extra surfboard, access to cheap, high quality rum, and a very favorable exchange rate. What more could you want?

Two other fun facts:

-In a study done by The Economist Intelligence Unit, political stability in NIcaragua is one of the lowest in the world, tied with Egypt.

- Read a great book and feel the need to share it with someone, or in particular, me? If you ever feels that urge, you can buy the kindle version of the book following this link: http://amzn.com/w/1SF4V4PAAK63N

The Rainy Season Is Upon Me

So, since I’ve arrived here, its essentially been the rainy season. But as I found out this past week or so, it doesn’t really starting raining until about now, when it rains at least once a day. And Hard. Flooding of the streets is an almost daily occurrences, check out the photo’s below.

At one point yesterday, both of these were cobblestone streets!

What’s crazy is that it can be beautiful out only minutes before, and next thing you know you’re soaked through. You always got to be prepared. For me that means always having a rain jacket on hand, a plastic bag to cover my school materials, and waterproof shoes. Unfortunately, the waterproof shoes aren’t very waterproof anymore. So I have to invest in some cheap rubber boots at the local market. Here’s a weird coincidence. All my shoes have torn through in the last couple of weeks. First the waterproof guys, which now are temporarily sewn up, second my sandals, third my cleats, and fourth a cheap pair of flats I bought at a market to play football sala in. My feet are just getting abused left and right, something I need to fix.

So these past couples of weeks have been a pretty good mixture of business and pleasure. As a result of missing almost a month’s worth of classes in some schools due to the Fiesta Patrias, my classes have fallen behind. And it couldn’t happen at a worse time, as the local and municipal competitions are right around the corner. So first off you may find yourself asking, “So what does Sam wear on his feet?” which is then immediately followed by, “What is Sam talking about, what competitions?” This is a concept I think I may have neglected to mention. So within each of my 11 or 12 sections of classes, the class is split up into groups of 3-6 kids. At the beginning of the school year, based on local resources, knowledge, and skills, each group decides on a product to create over the course of the year, and essentially form a “small business” based on the product. Every class that I teach is a small section of the business plan, which they have to create to pass the class, and to compete in the competition at the end of the year. In theory, they should save their work after every class, so come years end all they have to do is organize everything. But that doesn’t happen, because well, they’re high school kids and other things take precedent (like band practice, which drives me bonkers). So each class I’m teaching themes such as SWOT analysis, Market Studies, Costs and Prices, Accounting, and Marketing to name a few, which they will need to elaborate their business plan. Right now, I’m knee deep in planning these competitions, which includes organizing times, locations, and raising money for all the costs and prizes, while trying to prepare every group. So life is a little hectic now, and it’s tough keeping up with seven schools, so if I didn’t write everything down, I’d be in trouble. I’ll be sure to keep you all posted as I get further into competition season.

            But I’ve been managing to keep things fun as well. Outside of my weekly dose of futball and surfing, me and 14 other small biz volunteers from my class met in Leon for our first real vacation together, to celebrate our buddy Ben’s birthday. The whole thing was just what we all needed, and a great “escape” from teaching and the Spanish language. For me it, all too much resembled nights from spring break or beach week, which in the moment is fun, but takes a toll on your body in the coming week. To keep it short and appropriate, we had a seriously fun time dancing in Leon at night and enjoying the beaches by day. The highlight being that Chalin had a Pinata specially made to mimic the pose of another volunteer, Mateo, from day one. He didn’t have a clue about it, check it out:

Mateo and his temporary twin

Chalin, the creator, and Ben the birthday Boy

 

The Majority of Small Biz 56. Notice the awesome Star Wars Tall  Tee  on Noelle on the far left

And one more thing. If you ask any volunteer the toughest part about your job, they majority of volunteers will respond the amount of free time. Well, this is how some of us in small biz 56 kill some of that time: whereinthewood.blogspot.com

You may notice that the pose in all those photos is what inspired the piñata. Hasta la Proxima!