Toña, Nicaraguan for Beer

Today, I’m going to teach y’all how to speak Nicaraguan. I know what you’re asking yourself right now: “But Sam, don’t they speak Spanish in Nicaragua?” And the answer is yes, Spanish is the official language of Nicaragua, but there is a lot more to communicating here than only knowing Spanish. In fact, a large part of the communication down here is non-verbal and not knowing all the hand gestures and whistles leads to confusion and miscommunications.

But before I get into the non-verbal communication, it’s worth mentioning that there are also some words that are 100% Nicaraguense. If you don’t want to seem like a tourist while traveling around the country, there are actually key words you can drop, that immediately transform you from just another smelly backpacker to someone who has been around the block more than a few times. Now een if you don’t speak Spanish, everyone knows the Spanish word for party: fiesta. But down here, the word used most often is bacanal. So if you’re talking with a Nikaraguan on the street and ask them if they’re going to the fiesta tonight, they’ll look at you strange. But say, “vas a la bacanal esta noche?” and you may get a response along the lines of, “so you learned you’re Spanish in Nicaragua?” That by the way is an actual response I’ve gotten. Or another good one is Nica equivalent of “awesome” or “rad”, which is tuani. So if someone is wearing a fresh pair of kicks, an appropriate response would be, “Que tauni son esos zapatos!” (Those shoes are rad!) Or here is a strange example of a Nicaraguan expression: Adios. True, it does mean goodbye, but it can also be used as a salutation as well. You know those awkward situations when you’re passing someone you know in the street or in the hall, and you want to acknowledge them, but don’t want to be rude and not stop and talk? Well not a problem here. Simply say “Adios!” and you’re in the clear. I like to think of it as a Spanish version of the Hawaiian aloha. It can mean hello and goodbye.

What would you all some thing that’s not verbal, and that’s not non-verbal? I would call it whistling, based on the assumption that verbal means communicating with words. Similar to using “adios”, whistling is another good way of acknowledging someone quickly, while simultaneously not being rude and going about your business. While its considered rude and impolite in the States, its just part of life here. In fact, different melodies of whistling mean different things, from getting the bus driver to stop the bus, to “complementing” and ladies passing by.

So now to the non-verbal stuff. Not being the most articulate person, I’m going to use pictures instead and show you the different hand gestures, and underneath are the explanations.

 This is an animals height

 The fist, starting at your hip and shaken down to the ground, and back to your hip, means you have diarrhea. For the volunteers with weak stomachs, this one is a must know. 

 This gesture means that you’re hungry or are eating. To properly be understood, you have to move your fingers back and forth, as if you’re shoveling food into your mouth.

 This means that a person is very fachenta (another Nica word) which means expensive, or a person who spends shells out the cash. No one has ever gestured this towards me.

 This means full, as in the bus is too full of people to stop and pick you up. Or, as in I can’t believe I ate that entire Nacatamal, I’m so full. Also, if you open and close your hand in this form, it means scared shitless. Use your imaginations to guess why.

 Come Here!

 This Refers to human height

 Pursing your lips together, and indicating to a certain direction means it’s over there. As I’ve discovered, over there can mean across the room, or across the town.

 This is a great one. When a Nicaraguan is confused, or doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, rather than tell you, Nica’s will scrunch their nose really quickly, two or three times. Here’s me mid scrunch.

 I bet its easy to guess this one. The index finger waved back and forth means, “uh, uh, not in my house”. It’s a very emphatic No.

 This is pinche, also a Nica word, which means that a person doesn’t spend a lot of money, or is a cheapskate. This one I’ve gotten more than a handful of times, from Nicaraguans and Americans alike.

This one is pretty universal.

This one is pretty is pretty hysterical, and doesn´t mean what it looks like. This is riding a horse.

Walking

  Hasta la proxima!

Freedom on Ometepe

Hey there sports fans, this week I’m reporting from the island of Ometepe. For those of you who don’t know la Isla de Ometepe, to start to paint the picture, it has recently been nominated for one of the new 7 natural wonders of the world. Why may you ask? I’ll tell you. First of all the island is not off the Pacific or Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, but its located smack dab in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater lake in all of central America. And in this freshwater lake, despite heavy over-fishing, there still exists a small population of freshwater tiburones, one of the only in the world. Oh, and tiburon means sharks. Fresh water sharks, a little terrifying right. But what really makes this island unique, are the two large volcanoes that constitute the majority of the landmass, Vulcan Concepcion y Vulcan Madera. The peaks reach a height of 1600 km and 1300km respectively and can be seen from miles away. And Concepcion is still active, which makes the island seem that much more mysterious and alluring. So this past weekend, I decided to head to the island, to try my luck at hiking to one of its peaks.

One of my best friends here in the Peace Corps had the good fortune to be placed on Ometepe, so I got the local perspective of what the island was really like. He took me around to the spots that often go unnoticed by the casual backpacker and visitor, which in my mind, is much more entertaining the usual tourist spots. Instead of going to a popular natural spring, we went to a more peaceful, off the beaten track beach. We were able to explore acres and acres of untouched farmland and wilderness kilometers away from what most of you back home would describe as any resemblance to civilization, because despite being such a popular tourist destination, the island is self is super undeveloped and the majority of the people live under the poverty line, like the rest of the country.

But the crown jewel of the trip was our early Sunday morning hike to the mirador (Lookout) of Vulcan Concepcion. It would’ve been a perfect day to make the trek to the summit, but unfortunately I had a fantasy football draft only hours later, which stopped us 75% of the way up. The hike was no easy feet, and while there is a defined path for the majority of the time, it is small and oer grown, and a lot of the path was overgrown and narrow. Through one stretch, we had to wiggle through about a 50 foot long, 1 foot wide rock crevice. Not to mention that it was steep. To provide some context, much of the trek was a steeper than the stairs at the Robins center at the University of Richmond. So an hour and a half later, muddied and drenched in sweat, we arrived to the end the tree line, which in a lot of ways felt like emerging through the trap door of an attic. You pass this imaginary line and all the sudden instead of seeing a jungle canopy above, the sun starts to appear brighter, and there you are with nothing but the clear blue sky overhead. We had great luck that day. It was so clear that we could we see the Pacific Ocean from where we stood, breathing heavily and observing with big eyes just how high up we truly were. Words won’t do it justice, which is why I brought my camera. See the below photos. I’ve done a fair share of exploring and hiking in my time here and back in the states, but I this may have been one of the most breathtaking views I’ve ever had the good fortune of coming across. If you’re in shape, and happen to be Nicaragua, this is the sort of thing you should be doing. I guess you don’t een hae to be in shape upon thinking more about it. On our way down, we saw a 70 year old grandmother making the hike up with her family!

Just taking a little rest after a tough hike

 Believe it or not, the day got better from there. After descending, washing off, and drafting my fantasy football team, we headed towards the ferry dock for the sunset, with the sky as clear as it was when we were at the mirador. After growing up around pools, lakes, and the ocean, I almost think it’s sacrilegious to not go swimming when the opportunity presents itself. After thinking about it a second, I asked Zac to hold my Tona, and if I could jump off the dock. His response was one of shock. Not shok about jumping in, but as if that was even a question. It’s not like the states where there are issues of liability and insurance every step of the way through life, so he jokingly responded, “You could jump off the car ferry if you wanted to.” I sat on that thought for a second, and realized here that was a legit possibility, so without another word, I walked over to the ferry operator and asked if that was ok. It was no surprise to hear him say it wasn’t a problem, and that in fact it would be entertaining. So what do you think I did? Well the pictures can tell you better than I can. And it just goes to show, anything is possible down here, you just need to ask the right questions.

Feria de Cientifica

I hadn’t written recently, because to be bluntly honest, things have been relatively low key here in la villa. I have mostly been just dealing with transitioning back to life in a third world country.  Physically its been super easy re-adapting to the slow rhythm of life and the “intricacies” of Nica culture. (Read daily frustrations). And what frightened me the most, speaking Spanish, came easy enough as well after almost three weeks of ignoring it. After a day or two, I felt like I was right in the swing of things with my language, or at least at the point where I was before leaving, instead of weeks behind. The image that comes to my mind is the transformation of Kevin Spacey’s character at the end of the Usual Suspects: (spoiler alert) the camera pans to his legs walking, and initially its with a gimp. But slowly that gimp becomes less and less noticeable, until its totally gone. I was a little handicapped at first, but after a little bit of walking, it disappeared. I hope that metaphor didn’t offend anyone. 

What proved more difficult was the mental transition that comes with being surrounded by all your family and best friends for three weeks, and then by no one: the feeling of being completely alone. The combination of semi food poisoning and a relatively tough workout pushed me into delirium one night, and there I was in my back porch, panting for breath, surrounded by darkness (the lights had gone out). For the first time since arriving in Nicaragua, a single ominous thought popped into my head: I have never been more isolated and alone in my life. I’m sure it’s a little troubling for you all to hear that, and trust me, it was troubling to think. But after pushing myself farther into my work and a new outside project I’m working on, I soon overcame that ominous feeling, and now find myself back on track.

In fact, today there was a little excitement in my life, a change of pace so to say. Today was the Municipal Science Fair, and yours truly was a judge. I’d be lying to you if I said I had high expectations for my students, but as always seems to be the case, they pull things (minor miracles) together in the last minute, and all of them put on decent presentations. There were five categories: Tourism, AgroIndustry, Industry, Environmental Education, and Transformation of Energy, and each of the 7 high schools in the area could enter up to three teams of each.  Lucky for me and the rest of the other judges, only two of the 7 institutes entered more than one team, otherwise we would’ve been there for 12 hours. As it was, I spent 8 hours at this competition where only 11 teams competed. The problems lies in a little thing called time. I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but Nicaraguans work on their own time tables (what is convenient for them), and often don’t arrive to meetings until 30 – 60 minutes after the appointed times. The fair was scheduled to start at 8:30, so naturally I showed up at 8:00 with a newspaper and too prepare myself. I hadn’t received any sort of grading rubric, and wanted to be familiar with it before making any evaluations. Well, the last team didn’t arrive until 9:45, so we started promptly at 10:00 am. That folks, is what we call “Nica time”. Good thing I brought that paper, right? And although the presentations weren’t supposed to last more than 20 minutes, many went well over half an hour. Go figure. And that accounts for why I spent 8 hours judging science projects. But truthfully I’m not upset, because I found the whole event super interesting, and surprised by the insight of some of my students.

Asides from seemingly doing some legit research, what caught my eye was how the students, from all groups, no matter the topic, consistently made comments about protecting and cleaning the environment, and using products that are cien por ciento natural. In the states, that’s a no brainer; we ought to be taking care of the world around us. But down here, the streets are littered with trash, and people are burning plastic in front of their house, and drink soda/use fatty oil to kook every day. In fact, from a young age, kids are taught to throw their plastic snack bags or “juice boxes” out of the bus window. Picture a toddler, standing on his mothers lap on the bus, on his tip toes, trying to throw a Doritos’s bag onto the side of the bus. It makes me cringe. So its encouraging to hear the youth actively taking a stand in their surrounding environment. But at the same time I’m skeptical, because I’ve seen these same kids on the stage shouting for a greener world throwing their snack bags on the ground just days prior. I’m hopeful that this is the beginning of a generational change, and a more conscience Nikaragua generation. But I guess like all change, it takes time more than anything. One plastic bag at a time, right?

More than being an interesting day of presentations, this also probed to be a very good test of my domination of the Spanish language. I guess domination is the wrong word in English, but the Spanish word “dominar” means to master, or strongly know a skill or ability, and I instantly think of dominate instead of master. I guess the proper word for it is a false cognate. So after 8 hours of no English, I was delighted to learn that I understood practically everything stated, and was able to ask some more complicated questions (and be understood). It’s refreshing to know and reflect on the idea that I’m no longer a lost little duckling, wandering around trying to get by on broken Spanish. So at the end of the day, I also got that going for me, which is nice.

And to end on a funny night, almost every Nicaraguan I’ve met cannot pronounce my last name. Despite spelling out my name repeatedly for the Ministry of Education, who hosted the event, I got to my judges seat to find my name spelled out in the following way:

Samuel Chapers, Cuerpo de Paz

Got a good chuckle out of that one. Enjoy the photos!

Recreation Center run by Solar Panels - Los Cedros

The Preservation of a local River, and establishing it as a national park - Los Cedros 2

Cobblestoning the Entrance to their community to Make it more accessible - La Ceiba

Biogestors (Using cattle poop as a form of natural gas Energy) - Farbundo Marti
These guys won!

 

DayCare - Monte Fresco




Modern Waste Management Center - Che Guevara



Local Tourist Site with Petroglyphs - Santa Rita
2nd Place