Second Hand TShirt of the Week

The First actual second hand t shirt caught on camera. More to come!

The Security Guard at one of my Schools

Everday I visit a small part of America

Safety First

Feria de Oportunidades

As a business volunteer, my top priorities are teaching the entrepreneurship class and advising any small business that requests my services, as y’all well know. And that may sound all time consuming, but in reality I’m left with a lot of free time to do what I please. In that free time, I’m encouraged to take advantage of any opportunity I can to help improve my community, or undertake any side project. Two months ago, I decided to take advantage of my free time and started my first big side project: una Feria de Oportunidades, or as it’s known in English, a University Fair.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time now, after hearing about it from other, older volunteers. Unlike other parts of Nicaragua that are isolated from universities, Villa el Carmen is only a hour way from Managua. While Leon may be considered the “university town” of Nicaragua, Managua far out numbers Leon in the number of universities available, quality of education, and range of possible degrees. Despite the proximity to Managua, and the interest in continuing their interest, most students have no idea about their options and possibilities after graduating. The students my want to college, but just don’t know where to start. So it seemed logical, at least to me, to hold a university fair to show just exactly what is possible for these tikes.

Not counting the organization of spring breaks, beach weeks, and ultimate tournaments with my college companions, I have no “formal” background in event planning so to speak. Let alone in Spanish and in a developing country. More than providing opportunities for my students, this was a formal challenge for me, to see what I was capable of. And well, I can tell you with certainty that I succeeded. This past Friday the 15^th, the Fair went off without any major flaws. The fair looked eerily similar to some university/career fairs that participated back at home. I hesitate to say this, but the whole spectacle looked very American. I was expecting some brochures, posters and banners, but each university spared to expense, and rolled in with computers, flat screens, mini stages, t-shirt giveaways, and the works. Take a look below at some of the photos:

The whole ordeal involved about two months of planning, wheeling and dealing up until the last minute. Initially, I invited 18 or so universities to participate ia email, and sent reminder emails once a week until I got a response. Despite listing “valid” email addresses on their websites, I only received a handful of responses back. So after three weeks of “technical errors” or being ignored, I turned to old calling. For three weeks in a row, every Friday I would go to Managua, to make phone alls to all of these universities (because the peace corps office has free phone alls). For those of you who know me, I’m not the confrontational type, and don’t like being a burden on anyone. So my stomach would wiggle and squirm every time I picked up the phone to make another call. It’s just not something I enjoy doing. But when the receptionist finally answered was when the real mayhem would begin. As it turns out, some universities down here don’t have formal offices of admission, or if they do they use other, more obscure names. I got accustomed to being passed back and forth, put on hold, and hung up on. And when that didn’t work, the only left to do was show up to the campus and do a little investigating. By the time the dust settled, two months later, eight universities agreed to come, and of the eight seven showed up. (The eight couldn’t come due to other obligations as they told me later.) And coordinating the mass transportation of 7 different institutes and over 200 students proved to be no easy feat either, and it felt like everyday I was running to and from the office of the Ministry of Education for approvals, and running around town looking for money to pay for gas. And in the end, I had to dig into my pockets a bit, but well worth it.

The only downside in this project was the lack of community participation and co-planning. Ideally all of my work here should be sustainable, and an on-going, annual university fair is only possible with a community member or committee that can take over the planning process when I’m gone. It seemed that everyone around me liked the idea of the project…but only just enough to give it the ok, and approve of all of my requests. But if you’re gonna tell me that this was a failure as a result of that you’re dead wrong. You can’t tell me that this didn’t benefit a mountain of students to help plan their futures, and hopefully it inspired a counterpart of mine to take a more active role in next years fair.

Replacements

That’s what I think of when I hear about the new, green volunteers that arrived here a few weeks ago, to take over for the class that is on their way out the door, or in some cases, already left.

It must be rough for a community to get a replacement volunteer (13 of the 15 new sites being replacement sites). Look at it like this: leaving them is someone who (ideally, although not always realistically) speaks fluent Spanish, has done a number of projects that benefited the community, are integrated within their community, and know the ins-and-outs of the culture and how things are run. In exchange, you tend to get the complete opposite: a young twenty something who is still struggling to speak the language, barely has a grasp on the culture around them, and has no (initial) friends or allies in the community. If you’re reading in between the lines, you’ll notice I’m essentially describing myself when I first got to the Villa.

The aspirantes (trainees) got here a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t until last week when I first got to meet the new group, SBD 59. I expected the new group to essentially be a carbon copy of SBD 56 (my group): shirts buttoned up, tucked in, and essentially a unified group. And I’d be lying if I wasn’t hoping for some babes in the group too. But what we got was a group that seemed to be a lot more relaxed and laid back than we were upon arriving to the country, and that’s not a bad thing, giving the laid back nature of this country. Just different that’s all.

I got to know one of the aspirantes in particular, after he visited my site to observe the daily life of a volunteer, and in my opinion to escape the monotony of training. Just as a home stay is a potentially awkward experience, so is a volunteer visit. Who knows if you’re going to get along with your visitor/host, and a few days can seem like an eternity if you don’t vibe. Unlike some of my friends, I didn’t have that problem, and the aspirante, a David Wolfsin, who had the privilege of coming here, was an awesome guy, remarkably similar to me in a lot of ways. I took him through a day in the life so to speak, starting the week off with a trip to the beach to surf, and then becoming slightly more professional and attending my schools on the remaining days. So aside from the amount of English conversation I was having, and the spare Tonas, it was actually a fairly normal week. What struck with me was how David reacted to my life here in la villa. Very few times in life do you have the opportunity to see a real-life, past version of yourself, but that is essentially one thing I saw in David: myself a year ago. Stumbling Spanish, naivety, and wide eyes. (Dave, if you are reading this, please don’t take offense, you’ll understand what I mean in a year.) Learning a language and accustoming yourself to new surroundings are slow processes and take time. So slow in fact, you often don’t even notice the process or how much you’ve in fact changed, until you’re able to see a past bench mark of yourself. Well folks, I’ve only now realized just how vastly my Spanish has improved, how much I integrated into the culture down here, and for better or worse, the change in myself. And that change shows. He pointed some things out to me that I hadn’t realized I started to do, but were essentially part of my daily life. A prime example is my “symbiotic relationship” with my apartment mates, the critters in my house. If food falls on the ground, I know that it will be gone in an hour or so from some type of critter, so why clean? And as long as the critters stay away from my food, I leave them be. Funny what  year in a third world country can do to you, huh?

The Champs Are Here!

I had mentioned earlier on in the year that the lack of competitive sports has been one of the things that I’ve missed most down since coming down to Nicaragua. There has been a fair amount of pickup futbol and basketball, but one the game ends, so does the rivalry of the day. So when the opportunity came to help establish a men’s futbol league, I jumped at the opportunity, looking to make up for that void in my life. Those first initial meetings were in January, and now four or five months later, I already find myself at the end of our first season of LIMFUT VC (Liga Municipal de Futbol Villa el Carmen). Might I add, a highly successful first season. I say highly for a few reasons. One, coordinating games every week between different communities is no easy task, so the fact that there were few forfeits over the course of past four months is a minor miracle. Two, word got out about the league, and we’re expanding 100%. We had five teams in inaugural season, and upon seeing its success, five more teams from various communities have pledged to join in the next season (which will start in a few short weeks). The more teams the merrier, am I right? Third, competition remained relatively high for Nicaraguan futbol. Now don’t confuse high competition for high level of play. The two are not synonymous. What I mean by that is every weekend the games were relatively intense and hardly fought. People would go into tackles hard, and really take the game seriously. There is always a danger that people will just go through the motions, and when that happens, the game play just really deteriorates. So seeing teams come out week after week and play with true grit was encouraging. Fourth, the league is always better when you’re the champs! That’s right folks, you’re in the presence of a local celebrity, or at least that’s what it felt like immediately after the game. To begin with, there were a few hundred people from the community at the final game, to watch the cross town rivalry that would take place. Our opponent, the Rojos (sporting red Liverpool jerseys), were also from the villa, and as it happens the guys we play pickup with every day. But that friendship we have during pickup, banished the second the whistle blew for the first time, and the battle begun. It was hard fought on both sides, and no one was spared from bumps, bruises, and minor injury. As the dust settled, and the game ended, my team the Blancos (sporting white Real Madrid jerseys) came out on top, 2 – 1. Even had we not won, the joyful reaction of my team mates (or that of the other team) would’ve been worth the play of the entire season. You got to take into account that organized sports, youth or adult, do no exist down here. The leagues that we take for granted in our youth, in particular high school sports, are almost non-existent. As a result, the majority never have won a trophy in their life, let alone the pile that we seem to gibe out in the states for essentially doing nothing or being average (but that’s a different topic all together). It stands to reason then, that upon being presented the trophy by the mayor (how legit is that) in front of a few hundred fans, lifting the trophy into the air and shouting with joy was not an uncommon gesture that afternoon. If for only the afternoon, my teammates and I were the champs of the town, and had a reason to hold our heads up high, and smile from ear to ear. Although not everyone went to the game, by the time I walked home after the celebration and photos, I couldn’t walk half a block with out being congratulated by some one or another. Not only did I feel like I legitimately was a local celebrity for the day, I had the feeling that I had successfully integrated into my community. Check out the photo’s below of my team and the celebration:

Torches, Cards, and the ‘ship

So it’s been awhile since the last update, and I’ve managed to keep busy these past few weeks with Peace Corps projects, as well as small personal goals and personal fun. I’ll get to both of those in due time.

What was the big news this past weekend, was the despedida of the business group before mine, SBD 53. Despedida means farewell, and practically every single member of SBD 53, as well as their Aggie counterparts, made it from their sites scattered across the country to reunite one final time, before parting ways. Maybe for ever. Amongst taking advantage of our final days together and enjoying the occasional Tona, those of us from 56 who attended starting talking about what their departure meant. We came to the conclusion that this departure more than anything, that marks the end of an era, and the start of a new phase in our, in my peace corps experience. When I first got here a year ago, these were the guys that we all kind of looked up to in awe. There Spanish sounded flawless, they had adjusted to the culture (seemingly), and had a huge knowledge of the in’s and out’s of Nicaragua. They were experienced volunteers, and people to look up to as young, naive volunteers, and rightfully so. But now, those folks are about to suddenly and quickly leave us on our own, to fend for ourselves after going to them for the past year for help and advice. So at the end of the weekend, those final good byes and handshakes were more than just good byes and handshakes, they were a passing of the torch. No longer are we the young guns, unsure of our role here, with heads full of naive thoughts.  Unknowingly, we have transformed into the “wise”, older volunteers for better or for worse. Being on the other side of a year in country, it’s now us who are expected to give advice instead of take it, and be examples for the new group. Does the new group, who arrived three weeks ago think that? Are we ready for that sort of responsibility? Am I ready for that? I think so, but only time will tell.

We also got to talking about the impact we have had on our community in the past nine months of being in site. Remember that our first three months were spent in training towns in a different part of the country. It was interesting to hear that a lot of us independently arrived at the same conclusion, which is something I would never have guessed myself saying upon landing in Nicaragua. At the beginning of your service, everyone thinks they are about to change the world in varying degrees. I distinctly remember a conversation about this point exactly that I had with two of my male volunteer friends on night one in Paebanic. But it just isn’t that simple, changing the world and all. The reality is that you probably won’t see the full extent of the impact you make on your community, mainly because we’re not here long enough. It’s hard to tell and judge what you have done in one, or even two years time. There is something more important than time, however. The willingness of the community to change, and the willingness to want to work for that change is what are truly important. You may be the best, brightest and most outgoing volunteer in the world, but if you’re community doesn’t want change, or isn’t willing to work for it, it’s all for naught. You can push and push and push, but if those around don’t believe it, what chance do your initiatives have of sticking once you’re no longer there to push? If the community or individuals are not there to help you out, than ultimately our work is not sustainable, and will collapse. So when working within our community’s we’ve all sort of noticed the same thing: The name of the game is quality of the interactions, more so than the quantity and sheer numbers. Not everyone wants change or believes that there is a need for change, and although we may think otherwise, that’s not for us to decide. They need to decide on our own. So after a year, I’ve realized how much more important it is to focus on those who want to work for that change, to improve the situation of not just themselves, but also those around them. I still need to, and will continue to, make an effort to all those around me, but with a greater emphasis on those who want to work with me. You can only play the cards your dealt.

On a lighter note, two things of note have happened in the past week.

1. My futbol club has made it to the finals of the league which I helped to create down here. We play next week against our cross time rivals, in what should most definitely be an exciting game. And what’s more word has gotten out about the league, and there is supposedly interest from 5 more teams. If that’s true, next season, which would start in July, the number of teams would double in size. That’s 100% growth!
2. I decided to get my hands dirty, act like an Aggie, and sow a garden (huerto) in my backyard. I spent a few afternoons last week digging up a new garden bed, adding better soil from my own compost pile, and sowing seeds. I have no idea what I’m doing, so it’s essentially just one big experiment. I started off round one with tomato, asparagus, cilantro, basil, spinach, and watermelon. Although I’m starting to think I started a little too late in the rainy season. I walked out back today after a day full of rain, to find my little huerto practically underwater. At least I won’t have to water tomorrow.