Wandering Shepard: Whats up In May

So Sports Fans, I apologize that my posts are growing fewer and farther in between. The truth is that I’ve been super busy, a mix of work and pleasure. Many members of my community have mentioned to me, “Estaba perdido, Samuel” (which literally translates to “you were lost”, but means more along the lines of “you haven’t been around”), which only half true. The true part is that I have been out of the community affair amount for X-Rays, despedidas, and pleasure trips (read: not sex trips). The other half of the time I’be been running around my municipality working, or trapped in my house trying to type up one of the many reports I need to hand in before I’m allowed to officially leave Nicaragua, which is now only a month and a half away!

A month and a half away…throughout my entire service it never seemed like I would get to this point. And now that I’m here, I’m reminded of any age old Shepard Family Motto: Finish Strong. Now is not the time to get lazy, and coast through my work, in fact in means the opposite. There are still so many things that I want to do and accomplish, on a personal level and a work related level. And what’s more, now after two years, I really have a handle for how things work, what to expect, and how to get things done. Projects just keep presenting themselves in front of me, and end of service reports aside; I’m busier than I’ve ever been. And to top it off, I need to try and see all my friends as often as I can before we part ways for who knows how long (a sadder thought among many good ones).

So what have I been up to that past few weeks…work stuff first. I headed out to the eco-lodge in my municipality, Los Cardones, to work with the employees on financial education (AFE). AFE is a new PC Nicaragua initiative that deals with, you guessed it, further educating adults on how to manage their finances. So I spent two hour sessions with the employees discussing the importance of saving, the different type of family expenses, saving plans, the advantages of saving vs. buying on credit, and then individually tracking their own monthly incomes and expenses. While I’m sure the seminars were beneficial to them, I was equally impressed with what I learned and witnessed. First, it was interesting to plan out monthly expenses and salaries. Although the majority had guessed how much they actually make and spend, it was the first time they actually saw their yearly salary. Before the charla, the owner and I put together a spreadsheet of the actual monthly (and in effect yearly) salaries of the employees. Most eyes were popping out of their heads.

Now going into the charla, my only real expectation was that most Nicaraguans didn’t know why they should save, y por consiguiente, don’t save. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first activity we did was (anonymously) write on sticky notes why its important to save, and I was flooded with great answers: for my children’s education, to improve the quality of life, repair my house, for retirement, and for unforeseen health problems among others. So re-checked my premises, and deviated from my original plan, doing the same sticky note dinamica, but with a different question: Why is it hard to save? Without getting into too much detail, because I could go into length about it, the two main problems that the average Nicaraguan faces are unforeseen costs/problems and no institution to help them save. The first problem is easy enough to understand: a family member gets sick or moves back into the home, kids need materials for school, cost of living goes up, etc. Or worst case scenario, the patriarch is a drunk, and spends a large portion of the monthly salary on booze, tobacco, and women… a sad reality of life down here that most families see in one way or another. But what’s more problematic is that there are no institutions available to the average rural Nicaraguan, neither physically or literally. Physically in the sense that, banks are (largely) only in the department capitals, which require up to a full day of travel to get there. Literally in the sense that, there is a literal mountain of paperwork that is required to open a bank account, and if you manage to fill all of that out correctly, you need a relatively large amount of money to open an account, and then transaction cost are too high to make it worth it in many cases. The truth is that large institutional banks don’t typically want small accounts, because it’s just as costly to maintain small accounts as large accounts. The drawbacks can outweigh the benefits, which helps to explain all the paperwork and barriers to open an account. Although is more thoroughly explained in the book “Poor Economics”, a read I highly recommend.

On other work related notes, I’ve been busy organizing the second Opportunity Fair of Villa el Carmen, which means weekly emails and phone calls to different Universities and Vocational Schools in and around Managua. College isn’t for every student, an idea I think is just as applicable to students in the states as students in Nicaragua, so this year I put a bigger effort in finding Vocational schools that would be willing to attend. And since come the end of the semester, the emprendedurismo teachers can no longer count on my support, I’ve arranged a three session charla, where all the professors and I will meet up to discuss the more complex topics of the second semester, build a network of trust between themselves, and discuss the best practices for each topic. Believe it or not, it was only the third or fourth time where we were all united under the same roof at the same time. Due to the isolation of each school from the others, and the lack of public transportation to some of the communities, its never easy to reunite everyone.

Now for the fun stuff. Spent a night up in Esteli to party with the business group that came a year after my arrival to see the city one more time and say some early farewells to friends from that group. In the process, I got to take a look at my first Nicaraguan pro sports game, which was a blast. It reminded me a lot of a college soccer game, and made me think that if I only could maintain better shape, I could probably compete! The next day I had my own soccer game, and scored for the first time in awhile. So surprised, adn excited, I jumped up, fist pumped, and yelled booyah. Embarrassing, I know, but I was excited. The following weekend I spent some time surfing with a close friend, who is leaving early to attend grad school. That goodbye really got to me for some reason; I sort of realized that this really is the end, and that there is a solid possibility that I’ll never see some of these folks again.

But the big daddy of trips was this past weekend, where myself and 5 friends traveled east, out to Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast for Palo de Mayo, the annual celebration of the newly arrived rain. Although, since it rains there almost 9 months of the year, I wouldn’t think this would be anything to celebrate. Also, to go back a step or two, the Atlantic side of Nicaragua is like a different world. If we take a trip back in time, sports fans, while the Pacific side and central region of the country was still under Spanish control, the Atlantic Coast remained an English colony for years. As was the custom back then to keep costs low and control global trade, the English brought slaves with them from Africa. This accounts for the large African-American population on the East coast, that speak both Spanish and English Creole, and have their own very unique culture. On top of that, that indigenous population that still exists, the Miskitos, also lives out on the coast too, adding to the cultural phenomenon that is Bluefields. Routinely, while I was walking down the street, I would turn hearing what I thought was English, only to realize it was English Creole (which is almost like a different language), only for the person being addressed to respond in Spanish. The volunteers out there typically walk away from there service speaking alright Spanish, and great Creole. In fact, because it’s so different out there, the coastal region is an autonomous region of

Nicaragua

that governs itself in certain ways.

Best Bus Ride Eve4!

No Roofs, Just a plastic tarp to hold on to as we're cruising down river

We thought what better time to experience the culture of the coast than attend Palo de Mayo. I could try to explain it in words, but I don’t think it would do it justice. So instead I leave you with some photos of the main celebration, which revolves around dancing…and man those girls can move!