HOLA from Nica!!!
After living in a small pueblo in the mountains for a week, I am back to internet and running water! I was living in a community of Sandinista campesinos called Lagartillo. Lagartillo is in between Esteli and Achuapa in the mountains. They grow corn and beans and this year they are trying to grow coffee as well. All my meals were variations of corn tortillas, beans, rice, and Cuajada (farmer's cheese). There is no variety to ingredients, but I was surprised by the creativity of my host mom to prepare different meals! Every morning I woke up at 530 to the screams of chickens and children and really loud Spanish radio. Every day in Lagartillo starts with grinding corn, which is really hard work. The women there are so strong! After a couple days, I got pretty good at it and would also help grind the ingredients to make fresh Horchata to sell to kids.
The community is definitely living in poverty, but no one is starving. They live minimally in a quite tranquil way. The houses are made of brick, with a tin roof and dirt floors, and showers consisted of using water from a tin trashcan. Everyone in the community is family, and no family lives out of sight. My host mom was the grandmother of 14 grandchildren in the community and she cooked for all of them so during the day there were so kids from ages 2-25 coming in and out of the house to get fed! They have no possessions besides their house and their land. Everyone in the community has bikes or horses, and there is one communal truck for emergencies. ano one is starving, as they are able to sustain themselves on a diet of mostly corn and beans. Within the community, there is a small association called ¨Hijos del Maize¨ that runs a spanish school. No one in the community spoke English, not even the teachers. It was really hard at first, but after a few days, I began getting into the swing of things. I talked to everyone I could and heard some crazy strories about what happened to these revolutionaries during the war. (For those of you who need a quick brush up on Nicaraguan History, Sandinistas=socialists who started the revolution in late 78, FLSN, Che Guevera lovers. Contras= counter revolutionaries backed by US govt. and Reagan machine to topple the revolution, a success in the end. For years they fought a gnarly guerilla war in the mountains and elsewhere.) In 1984, Lagartillo was attacked by the Contras. My host Mom lost her brother and her 15 year old son. She showed me pictures of him as a young kid dressed in full on Sandinista gear with the FSLN headband and all. After the war, the Swiss helped rebuild their community and they returned after a year in exhile.
My favorite night of course was when I got a chance to hang out with the village musicians. I learned the music terminology in Spanish and we played the couple songs that i knew in spanish together. Otherwise we took turns leading , accompanying, and learning each other´s music. It was awesome! The kids in Lagartillo are really talented and on my last night, a of traditional campesino folk music was organized and held in my house.
After a long journey from the mountains back down to the south, stopping for one night in Leon (awesome city with the Nica´s prestigious UNA university), I am now in Masaya. My week long internship orientation started yesterday and already it is really intense! Today I had two workshops, a Nicaraguan history workshop in the morning and my public health workshop with a doctor/professor who works in Managua in the afternoon. I can´t beleive I am going to be here for so long, but I already love Masaya so much! It is bike nation here, like everywhere in nicaragua, and a people with instruments on their back are never out of sight. There is a lovely boardwalk overlooking the lake, street fruit stands for dayyys, and the weather is fantastic! Right now it is 5 pm and still 95 degrees. The nicas are a wonderfully welcoming people and i love telling them about home California and all my loves who reside there! I must go take my third shower today, before dinner. Hasta Luego...
Raquel
