Masaya

Saturday we decided to make a one-night trip to Granada, stopping at Masaya on the way. Masaya is known for it’s markets, with artists and vendors of all kinds. We wanted to do a quick stop over on the way to Granada, so we asked at the bus station for a bus that was headed for Granada, but would stop at Masaya along the way.

Well, lots of jostling and bustling finally got us onto a bus still empty enough for us to sit down on chairs! We bought an apple juice through the bus window from a guy carrying a bag at least as big as he was, filled with juices, water, and tons of ice. The apple juice was good. Ahh… I’d forgotten that flavor.

We sat on the bus for a while as it crossed through the city of Managua and pushed past the endless pick-ups loaded with random supplies bound somewhere, with piles of workers loaded on top, surfing their way down the streets. Eventually we ended up on a long, straight road that connects the capital city to Granada, and waited for our queue to get off.

Well, apparently we missed our stop. At one point several people in the bus started acting all anxious and motioning towards us. A quick conversation later, we find ourselves jumping off the bus (it only barely stopped) and leaving it to disappear down the road behind us. A light rain started to fall. We looked around.

“Where the hell are we?”
“Um… on a road.”
“Where’s Masaya? And the Market?”
“Um… that way, I think.”

And so we started walking. Some guys on bicycles passed us and asked us what the hell we were doing, walking along the side of the road, in the rain, obviously slightly lost, and completely aimless. Well, we figured this was all part of the adventure, so we just kept walking. People had told us that the Market was so big you couldn’t miss it. We just had to wander until we found it.

We walked until we came upon the only intersection for miles.

“Meh. Let’s turn down this one.”
“Right or left?”
“Um… well, there’s more people going left. Let’s go left”
“Aight”

And so we walked some more. Donkeys passed hauling wood. Some more bicyclists zoomed by, stopping long enough to whistle appreciative greetings to Maya and I. Oh, the joys of being young, female, and white in a country that appreciates all three of those traits so blindly. Despite being soaking wet and covered in mud that had kicked up from the street, we still managed to attract attention.

After walking for over an hour, we decided that we were definitely lost and started keeping an eye out for busses that said Masaya on them. We flagged one down only to find out we’d walked way past Masaya and her markets.

We turned back and wandered some more.

Suddenly the soft rain decided to be mean, and picked up to the level of torrential downpour. It is rainy season, after all. With about 2 seconds to save ourselves, we ran into the first place with a roof. Que suerte! A restaurant.

We ate yummy food and drank beer. For the first time in our Nicaraguan experience, we were not accosted by three different drunk men trying to sit at our table and marry us. Who knows… maybe it was the rain.

Waiting out the rain, we drank beer and more beer. Never mind that it was before noon on a Saturday. At one lucky moment, we happened to look down a narrow alley way and saw the “unmissable” market at the other end. Whoo hoo! And so when the rain settled back into it’s soft drizzle, we wandered through the thousands of stalls selling anything from onions to hand-carved African figurines to beaded jewelry made from local seeds to high fashion dresses left over from the 80s.

Rafael

Rafael lives in the bE house in Managua. His job is to stay in the house whenever no one else is there to ensure that robbers don’t come. It’s especially difficult to watch Rafael go about his day because he’s 19 years old, and there is absolutely NO stimulation for him at the house. The television has one channel, the internet doesn’t work 99% of the time, the phone costs so much to use he can’t even call his friends, and leaving the house for the 5 minutes it would take to rent a movie is prohibited. Maya and I gave him a present of some drawing paper, pens, and a how-to book on sketching since he’d expressed some interest in drawing, and we wanted to encourage him to try doing something productive with his endless days of boredom.

We also made a point of spending some time with him in the evenings. We figured he couldn’t possibly mind the company, and later discovered that he too, had plans to marry one of us. Well… actually his plan was to have one of us “older women” teach him how to kiss, but when that plan fell to pieces, he changed his tactics and made public his desire to marry one of us. Oh the joys of Nicaraguan men. Heh.

Anyway, one of our nights of hanging out and chatting resulted in us having an interesting conversation about religion, our beliefs, God, and that which we hold sacred. Rafael was spellbound by the fact that not one, but BOTH of us didn’t believe in God. We were absolutely astonished by the fact that evolution was such a ridiculous theory to him. We engaged in a heated conversation about what it is to believe in something, and the differences between our experiences in the States versus the exposure people in Nicaragua apparently get. Maya and I realized how little variation there is between religions here. They range anywhere from Evangelist to Advantist to Baptist to Catholic, but all are somehow related to Christianity and Jesus Christ. Rafael had to disagree with us vehemently, mentioning the differences between praying to God, the Virgin Mary, or to Jesus Christ, and pointed out how ridiculous the beliefs of some Nicaraguans were. Somehow this didn’t convince either one of us, as we pointed out our exposure to all the world religions as varied as Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, and Buddhism. In a way it feels like there just less exposure to be had here, and as a result the people are not encouraged to think as critically about what it is they hear and read.

There was another volunteer here before I arrived that was deeply Evangelist and went to church every week in Bluefields. What she noticed was how literally the stories of the bible were interpreted here. She pointed out that despite her rooted beliefs in her religion, she had the perspective to understand that the stories of the Bible were simply ways to explain the world; metaphors to act as a navigating compass. And yet, the people here, never having been taught to think critically or articulate what a metaphor is, are left truly believing Adam and Eve were the first human beings, and Moses split the Red Sea.

Anyway, the conversations we had with Rafael were interesting. And, PS, we did it all in Spanish.

Managua: Two Objectives

In Managua, we had two purposes: Go to the US Embassy for a meeting with all the NGOs in Nicaragua that have American affiliations of some sort, and buy stuff in Managua that we can’t get in Bluefields.

The first objective was easy, and relatively painless. We went, we sat through lots of hours of people talking at us, ate really bad “refreshments” and schmoozed with a bunch of oldies that work for NGOs on the pacific side of the country. No one had any idea what it was like to work in Bluefields, and they all thought Maya and I were crazy for even trying. It felt like the reputation of Bluefields, at least on the Pacific Coast, was that it’s full of savages beyond the point of even trying to save (whatever they meant by “save” I’ll have no idea). We were surprised by this mentality… but then again, while in Bluefields, we’d heard more than once how dangerous and evil the people of Managua were. Apprently there isn’t much exchange between the two sides of the country.

The second objective, however, didn’t turn out to be as easy as I had thought. In Bluefields, whenever something isn’t available, or is out of stock, the immediate thought is that it’s available in Managua. “Go to Managua.” people say. “You have to get it there.”

The problem is that once you’re in Managua, there isn’t another place you can go later. It’s either you find it in Managua, or it doesn’t exist in the country. Since part of our mantra is to provide our services with local talent and local materials, we either have to find our materials in Managua or use different ones.

Now imagine a shopping list something like the following, and you might get an idea of what we were looking for: architect’s scaling ruler, laminating plastic sheets, ceiling fans, 3/8” plastic tubing, ceramic tiles, volcanic sand, egg incubator, etc. Obviously we’d have to go to a bunch of different stores, but let me give you an idea of what it is like just to find, oh, I dunno… ceiling fans.

We walk into the hardware store we have a friendship with and ask for the ceiling fans. First we’re met with a surprised stare as they check out two young white females with a quiet older Nica servant/chauffer in tow. Then another surprised stare as we ask for ceiling fans (of all things). Then we’re questioned about or marital status, our non-existent children, and our age, and asked how long we’ll be in town, and if we’re available for dinner with some guy and his friend. Finally we get around to the topic of ceiling fans again, and we’re told that yes yes, they have them, but today they don’t. Ok then… where can we get them? Our chauffer knows.

And so we drive across town for 25 minutes staring at the same statues we passed on the way out to the first place and park in front of a giant hardware store chain… three of which we also passed on the way to this particular one. We go through the routine of our marital status, age, and availability this evening again only to discover that this place too has them, but not today. When will the next order come in? No one knows, but maybe this Friday. What about the other stores with the same name and brand and everything as the one we’re in now? Can we call them and ask if they have them? No, no one knows the number. Is there a phone book? Yes, but it’s back at the house.

So we go back to the house to look at what is apparently the only phone book in the entire city of Managua. We call the other stores. Yup yup, they say. They have them in stock right now today. And so back in the car we go, across town again, to store #3 that happens to be another version of store #2. Unfortunately this giant hardware store chain closes for lunch from noon until 2, so we have to wait an hour in order to even get inside the doors. We repeat, once again, the marital-status-and-are-you-available-this-evening charade only to discover that whoever thought ceiling fans were in stock today lied, because no hay.

Yes. Shopping in Managua is like that. We had something like 8 items on our list, and it took us almost three full days of running around town with our personal chauffer just to get half of them. The rest we couldn’t find. In the case of the ceiling fans, we did finally find a few that were miraculously in our price range. We bought them, took them to Bluefields, installed them, and THEN realized that the only reason the store had them at all, let alone for the price we got them, was because they ran on 220 voltage instead of 110, so no one except the super fancy special people can even use them anyway.

El Rama

El Rama is the name of the "port city" that has both a river-way that leads to Bluefields, and a roadway that leads to Managua.  When traveling between Bluefields and Managua with the Bus/Panga combination, one stops in El Rama to grab a bite to eat and switch modes of transportation.

Now, the use of the words "port city" to describe the place is nothing short of ridiculously generous.  The "port" is a wooden pier that juts out into the river a bit.  It can house about three or 4 pangas at a time if the boats are smushed right up against each other.  Immediately past the "port" is a hill lined with stairs (probably 30 or so) that leads to the main road and bus depot.  Really, it feels more like a random town corner with a quasi-exciting existing in all four locations.  The bus depot is a roof and a bunch of benches under it.  There's a counter at one side that sometimes has someone sitting there.  Tickets are bought from random vendors on the street that wave things around in your face until you either push them out of your way, or you buy something.  Buses leave from the street corner once every two hours or so - all of them headed for the great city of Managua.

Kitty-corner to the bus depot is a "hotel" with a few rooms, and ooh la la, a BATHROOM! Since they have a monopoly on the bathroom industry for this particularly busy corner or travelers, they charge 2 cordobas in exchange for a pre-cut slice of toilet paper to accompany you on your adventure of the special room (never mind the poor souls with liquid poo... it's not like 4/5 the population is suffering from this condition at any given moment or anything).

On a third side of this corner lives a little woman and her daughter.  They have taken advantage of the unreal amount of traffic that miraculously finds themselves stuck on this corner for several ungodly and rainy hours by opening up a little restaurant.  They sell Gallo Pinto (rice and beans), corn tortillas, ensalada verde (which is really shredded cabbage with tomatoes and lime juice) with whatever form of chicken they feel like serving that day.  Granted, their only competition is a bunch of women walking around selling tortillas with goo and cream in them, and so they kind of have a captive market, but there's something to be said about real home-cooked Nica food that just warms the stomach. That the walls of the restaurant are painted a combination of bright pink and sunshine orange, and a cage-full of squawking parakeets adds percussion to the latino rock music blaring out of overtaxed loudspeakers only adds true Nica-style ambience to the place.

Maya and I arrived in El Rama after a particularly interesting Panga ride and collapsed into our chairs on the bus that wasn't due to leave for another 4 hours.  After peeling off our oversized rain suits covered in rain, brushing out the massive bird's nests that had manifested themselves in our hair, and indulging in a few chocolate chips that had the effect of brighting up the cloudy day, we ventured into the little restaurant for a hearty dinner of the best grilled chicken we'd ever had.  45 minutes later we were stuffed, and clueless as to what to do with ourselves for another 3 hours.

And then Maya stumbled upon a new gem.  A pool hall.  The fourth corner of this little intersection has a three-table pool hall with some more of that overly loud music playing, and a bunch of dudes standing around or shooting pool.  We asked about the price.  Only 3 cords a game?  Nice.  Although we'd been to a pool hall or two in Bluefields with some of the boys from the workshop, this was the first time the two of us ventured into a hall without any male accompaniment.  Since the requirements women have as part of their daily routine, the sight of two women - obviously not related and old enough to have at least a few children already - out and about disfrutando (having fun) is definitely a foreign one.  I have never felt so stared-at as we played our little games of pool, American-style.  (The rules here are way different from those in the States).  Although they didn't bother us, it was obvious all the clientele at the hall were quite intrigued by our presence.  Every shot was scrutinized and every movement we made duly noted.  Only one dude had the balls to give us some pointers as he passed by on his way to another table.  I felt a little like I was back at Gualpatara standing on the cliff in my bathing suit watching the locals snap camera-phone photos of me to show to their friends later.

Anyway, three hours passed quickly.  Both of us were decently pleased with our skills on the table, and returned back to the bus in time to eat a bit more trail mix before finally pulling out of the "town".

The Ultimate Panga Ride

Maya and I – the only American volunteers here in Bluefields right now – were sent to the US Embassy in Managua for a meeting with all the NGOs that have connections with the US. The meeting is on Thursday, but we decided to go into MGA today because we have to run a bunch of errands and whatnot before hand.

Seeing as you can either take an airplane for $130 round trip from Bluefields to Managua, or you can take a bus/panga combination for $10, we opted for the latter. The panga ride from Bluefields to El Rama is about 2 hours long, and boy oh boy, was it an experience.

Now… imagine it’s a nice hot summer day. You’ve decided to go to the beach. You have on a nice little bikini top with a pair of cute little shorts, and you’re driving along in a shiny convertible with spacious leather seats and hot wind blowing your hair back. You’re listening to your favorite tunes, and singing along once in a while. The road is straight and smooth, and you feel like you could go on for miles and miles endlessly, enjoying the simple fact of being alive. Ahhhh… how wonderful.

Now…

Replace the shiny convertible and wide leather seats with a boat crammed full of people on hard wooden benches with no backrest. Lower the temperature of the air around you about 20 degrees. Add rain. Add more rain. Change the straight, flat road with a tempestuous river that bends and dips, climbing up over the side of the boat with every blast of wind. Your bikini top and cute shorts are replaced with giant rubber pants and an oversized raincoat completely impermeable to both water and ventilation. In an attempt to escape the biting rain, you and your comrades-in-suffering pull a giant plastic sheet over the group, and as you huddle down underneath it, holding the side down against the edge of the boat, you contemplate the overwhelming scent of rat piss that has suddenly overpowered the original odor of dead fish. As you’re sitting in the front row of the boat, you have the distinct privilege of allowing your face to be pressed up against the plastic that is pushing back at you with the 45-mph winds that whip you about. Your hair is no longer blowing backwards, but forwards into your mouth and eyes. You try to tie it back, but you only have the use of one of your hands, as the other is vainly trying to hold the plastic sheet in place. Despite the wind and rain, you’re sweating inside your rain gear. You search for ways of inhaling clean air, but never succeed. Your back aches from the constant thrashing of the boat against the river and the effort required to compensate for the giant plastic sheet endlessly pushing you backwards.

Your 2-hour journey feels like a lifetime, but you arrive at your destination – which is not a beach, but a nondescript wooden plank that juts out into the river at what appears to be a completely random location – and convince your cranky back and knees to carry you onto land. Since you’re the only white person besides your friend, you’re accosted on all sides by vendors selling bus tickets to Managua. You pick the earliest bus – you only have to wait 5 hours for that one – grab your soaking wet stuff, and try to clean yourself off. Luckily you packed trail mix with chocolate chips in it. Ahhhh… how wonderful.

Climbing the Turbine Tower

Maya calls herself a quasi-obsessive climber. She entered climbing competitions in college, and every time an opportunity to climb presents itself, you find Maya mousing around checking out various possible hand-holds.

Anyway… since our week and a half of crazy construction-ing resulted in our being absolutely DEAD, we sorta took a chill day for ourselves. Having been inspired by some turbine-maintenance the workers had done on one of the turbines on campus, Maya decided we were going to climb the tower. Yay!

And so we did. Ronald and Eliot in the workshop were a little concerned that GIRLS wanted to climb it… I had to endure several repeated lessons from Ronald on how to climb and quadruple-check the harness, but eventually we got to go up.

We took some pics once we got up there.

AAAAAAhhhhh. EEk!

One of the objectives in the office reconstruction was to replace the ceiling panels that had gone to shit. It’s always a little interesting to pull back the outer layer of construction on something that hasn’t really been renovated in a while, and pulling out the ceiling panels was no exception. Maya gave me the wonderful job, and I started in the back corner with some of the worst panels.

Well, let’s just say that my grit as a woman was tested to its core. The first panel I pushed up seemed oddly heavier than expected (they’re made of Styrofoam and are actually quite light) and started wobbling because its weight wasn’t evenly distributed. Then a shower of dust and dirt started raining down on me… only it wasn’t dust and dirt. It was termites. Termites galore. I had seen their work on some of the other projects I had worked on, but never actually run into any of them. Here was a COLONY! I had little crawly termites run down my shirt and get stuck in my bra. My hair gave termite larvae a nice little bed, and my underwear caught a few more little critters. GROSS!

The not-so-wonderful part of the whole experience was that I got to enjoy the termites for the rest of the day as they scurried around indefinitely. Since the rainy season we thought had started was actually just joking with us, I got to come home to a VERY limited bucket shower of brown well-water “purified” with Clorox… NOT what I was wanted. Ugh. Even though (most) of the termites were eventually washed away, I still walked away smelling like the combination of an indoor swimming pool and pond water. Yummy, yummy day.

Anyway, we didn't get a picture of me covered in the termite masses - we seem to have made a pattern of missing all the crucial moments - but this one here was taken after I had managed to shake off most of the creepy crawlies.  You can see the heap to termites in the bottom corner of the room there, behind the desk.  It totally doesn't look at gross and creepy as it was in reality - but if you imagine that mass is actually in constant movement, then you get an idea.

Strong People

One of the most striking features of the people here in Bluefields and in the communities that we serve is the brute physical strength they all have. Logically thinking, it makes sense that people that live by producing things with their hands turn out to be really strong, but logically thinking about it, and actually experiencing it are totally different things.

The other interesting bit is that the men here, although ridiculously strong, don’t look it the way big gym-buffs from the States do. Their muscles are flat, but 1000 times more functional than all my big body-builder guy friends put together.

During the construction of the office, there were a few times when desks or ladders to stand on were in high demand – but this never stopped anyone. At one point, Ronald, the boss man of the bE workers at the workshop, wanted to check out what was going on above the ceiling, so he does a little jump, grabs one of the ceiling beams, proceeds to do a pull up until he head is well above the “bar” and then looks around for what felt like eternity, yelling instructions to people, using one hand to point at random things, and just kind of chilling. Another time he climbed up the side of the wall outside to check on the status of the security grates. We managed to get a picture of that one before it was over.

Oficina Nueva

Maya went to Managua with G in order to buy stuff not available in Bluefields, and meet with a bunch of people before returning to Bluefields with the instructions to gut and renovate one of the INATEC classrooms into a new office for blueEnergy’s base of operations.  Since bE has developed a plan to build CERCA (Centro Ecologico Regional de Capacitacion Ambiental) on INATEC’s campus, we’ve been working on both convincing INATEC that it’s the right move, and developing a design for the building and what it will represent. Maya’s main business here in Bluefields is to create CERCA in all its glory. Step 0.01 was to build the office on the campus so that it can be used as a conference room, offices, library, and whatever else it will need to be while CERCA is being built over the next couple years.

Anyway, so there was Maya, back in Bluefields, with explicit instructions to have everything done within two weeks. Getting the key to the soon-to-be-office only took four days, so suddenly she was down for 10 days of crunch time. G instructed me to put my water project efforts on hold, drop everything, and run to Maya’s aid.  Here's a pic of the room when we got it.  Those are typewriters on each desk, which apparently are super-high technology and needed to be guarded with our lives as we simultaneously ripped out everything else in that room.

Working in construction has always been especially fun for me. That’s why I gravitated towards Habitat for Humanity in college. Besides, who doesn’t love using power tools? And demolition? Don't even get me started.  The situation becomes infinitely more interesting, however, when you and your counterpart are a) the only women involved in the entire operation, b) the only two that barely speak Spanish, c) the only ones with a clear picture of everything that needs to be done, as well as a ridiculously high standard as to how it should be done, and d) the only ones with 1/10 the construction experience the rest of the crew has. We very quickly learned how to use the imperative form and how to yell things like “stop!” and “good job!”, but cultural issues ran much, much deeper. Since Maya was the designer of the project, she was essentially the boss, but being a woman with limited Spanish abilities made her job exceptionally difficult. She and I spent hours at the end of each day discussing how we’d best schedule the workers the following day, organize the timelines for each person, figure out where they’d work best, what tasks they were capable of, how quickly they’d get it done, how to best approach each worker, what to say, how to say it… the list was endless.

Another issue we dealt with daily was the need for more raw materials. We’d make lists of things we needed for the next day, but since we don’t have the authority to use bE money to buy stuff, we had to send it through Ismael, the INATEC liason, who would run around town buying stuff all morning. The difficulties were that that half the stuff on the daily lists weren’t available in Bluefields that day (who knows…) or were simply forgotten or ignored, so getting ahold of every necessary piece of equipment was a challenge. Simultaneously, we had Felix working on all the furniture (since he’s the resident wood expert) but since the wood that comes into Bluefields is wet (due to the unrelenting rain and impossible panga rides), we couldn’t use any of the stuff we bought. Maya eventually designed an entire furniture design out of plywood since that was the only dry wood available, and Felix pulled off a monster feat of actually accomplishing everything within the allotted time.

Anyway, what must have been 14-hour days ran together. As Maya and I sprinted past each other issuing orders, following up on each of the workers (we had a team of 17 for most of the week – each of which was working on something different), making sure they hadn’t hit a snafu, and checking on quality, we simultaneously threw in efforts to paint walls, hang doors, re-panel ceilings, etc. Phew! Sunday night at 1am, we pulled up the last drip of paint off the floor and secured the new door with the recently installed lock. Meetings for CERCA and the soon-to-be newly-installed curriculum of Environmental Studies at INATEC could now begin.