Saludos a Todos!
Before I say anything, I'd like to mention that you may want to read this post in a few sittings as there is a ton. It has now been a month since I have been in my community of Las Salinas. It's definitely been a good time so far but I must say, my patience will have reached the level of impenetrable by the time I leave Nicaragua. I have decided that I can't go on the Internet more than once a week or I get seriously overwhelmed. Life in this community is just too slow-paced for me to keep up with anything online and so I'm going to keep it that way. While the slow speed of everything in this community makes me happy a lot of the time it also is where my patience is growing dramatically. So basically the mission of the Foundation for Sustainable Development is to create projects and initiatives that the community members can sustain on their own after the interns leave. Hopefully these projects will improve the environment, generate income, or build capacity. However, while this is definitely the right approach to take, it is also the one that the community members want to take least, because it requires them to actually do something rather than have something done for them, which is what most volunteer organizations do. For example, when my work started the week after I arrived in the community, I started with computer classes, which I finally decided to quit because they were wasting my time in the community and not accomplishing anything. The kids figured out how to use the computers after a few days and then just went to play games. However, I was still giving these classes three days a week for the entire day. So I talked to my supervisor and said that I know I am an intern at the library but just because I am an intern at the library doesn't mean that I need to spend all my time at the library when there isn't very much to do there. They agreed to let me stop the computer classes and focus all of my efforts on other projects in the community. As I had predicted, these projects are different than the ones I tried to start before.
First and foremost, I started work on creating a miscellaneous store with a women's collective in the community of mothers whose children come to the library. None of the women work and so they would like to be able to have something during the day to generate some income. So I held a meeting and told them that I have the ability to write a grant for up to 800 dollars for a sustainable project in the community. Their idea is to create a miscellaneous store where they can sell cheap basic products, bread and other bakery items, and art made by local artisans. With the help of this women's collective, over the next few weeks, I am going to write a grant to the Foundation for Sustainable Development for the funding of this micro-business. FSD's grant-writing process is extremely complex including more than ten pages of justification for the project, a business plan, a budget outline, and resumes of all the members involved. Also they don't approve any projects that don't include any capacity-building so it will be my job to figure out a way for there to be something educational in this business. Hopefully there will be a new business when I leave the community. My second project is based on cleaning up the community and getting the community members to take advantage of the truck that comes every monday to pick up trash in the community so the community members won't have to throw all their trash on the ground or burn it. This project is going to go in conjunction with the daily environmental hour I am starting at the school, where I am going to teach about the importance of protecting the environment. The idea of this project as a whole is to hopefully leave the community with a functioning recycling and compost system to sustain. However, I have a long way to go before that happens. My third project is the photography project I talked about before that will document the history of the community through photography as well as interviews with the owners of the salt mines and the oldest members of the community. There is also talk about two more projects: starting a community garden and selling the produce at the miscellaneous store as well as holding consistent movie nights to raise funds for the store or simply to give people a chance to sell homemade items.
I finally figured out that if I don't make myself a "NEEDS to get done list" every week, I will get lost in the slow-paced life of this community as well as in the Foundation for Sustainable Development's essentially structureless internship program. Looking back at all of this and the fact that that I was able to set up all these projects on my own, I almost feel happy that I was sad last semester because it prompted me to do something new from which I am learning a ton of skills that will be extremely valuable for the rest of my life. Also, this program really seems like the best gap between Amigos and the Peace Corps, which is eventually where it looks like I'm headed. Plus, I've secured my credit for this internship with an independent directed study I'm doing next semester.
Anyways, on to the fascinating stuff, where should I start? So every weekend I've been in the community, I've gone to a discoteca on Saturday night that residents from around the area go to. The dances here are really interesting. Basically, you can't go on the dance floor without a partner and you always keep kissing until you're off the dance floor. Although you guys are going to think I'm crazy for saying this, I think this a lot better than what we have in the states. There isn't any awkwardness and people like me who never get any action don't have to dance by myself and watch miserably while other people hook up on the dance floor. Also, it's nice that beers and the entrance fee are both only a dollar. In fact, the only people who dance by themselves at discotecas here are the other gringos. A bunch of gringos live on the beach nearby, surf every day, and come to the discotecas on the weekends. It makes me laugh because apparently they buy local girls motorcycles or cars so they can get with them. This may be an urban legend, but it is still hilarious. While I have met a few cool foreigners who are working on the organic farm down the road in my community, a lot of the gringos here piss me off majorly. Especially after going to a dinner at the exclusive, gated, beachfront mansion community of Rancho Santana and San Juan del Sur, which is basically a city made up of gringos and enormous houses that I'll mention later, my opinion of gringos here has dropped even lower than it was before. I mean who the fuck do gringos think they are to exploit poverty and build enormous mansions in a country where 50% of the population lives on less than two dollars a day without making even the slightest attempt to give anything decent back to the population? I mean I guess they provide jobs, but still it seems fucked up to build mansions walking distance from dirt roads with chickens, pigs, cattle carts, and beggars. Also, these expatriate communities of Rancho Santana and San Juan del Sur are basically made up of people who barely even make an attempt to integrate into the local culture. They hang out with other expatriates and speak English all the time. I wish I wasn't so judgmental of this, but I just don't understand the point of going to a foreign country if you don't want to integrate into the culture at all. Anyways, I need to stop ranting.
This past weekend I left the community for the first time since I've been here to go to San Juan del Sur, which as I said before, is basically a gringo backpacker harbor town about two hours down the coast. I originally left just with my host brother Franklin but ended up running into the foreigners that work on the organic farm in the community who we tagged along with for the rest of the trip. After getting a room at a guest house in San Juan del Sur, we went down to the beach where we had some Toña, which is the most popular beer in Nicaragua. Afterwards, our group expanded to include some friends of the foreigners I knew. Everybody was going to a huge music festival that was going on that night so they said it was alright for us to just tag along. This brought us to a mansion on the hill overlooking the harbor, where a few of the people in our group were staying with a friend. I later found out that thier friend is the niece of the wife of the last president of Nicaragua who apparently owns the mansion. I could tell the whole time that Franklin was just in awe of everything at the house. Afterwards we went to the music festival in the town and drank a bunch of cheap beer. It was a blast even though the Nicaraguan rock n roll was awful. It was so weird that almost everybody at the concert was a foreigner and everything was in both English and Spanish. Franklin told me that he felt like a total minority there, even though it was in his own country. The next day we walked all the way down the beach and up to the huge statue of Jesus that overlooks the San Juan del Sur harbor. It was absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately I still haven't found the time to upload my pictures because I have over a thousand now and it's gonna take a long time to upload. I forgot to say that I've been working on various photo projects on my own, but I'll get into that on some other post. The next day I did the one thing that really made me so happy to be in Nicaragua, which was riding on the roof of the bus back to Las Salinas. The ride from the provincial town of Rivas to Las Salinas is about an hour and a half down a dirt road so the bus goes pretty slow. The roof is marked on all side by bars to carry fuel, tires, packages of food, chickens, and whatnot. However, due to the fact that there are no police who actually give a shit, people can ride on them as well, which gives the guys a better way to hiss at the girls walking by. Haha. Taking in the wind, the sun, the beautiful scenery, and the branches I had to dodge every once in a while, I felt so unbelievably great to be here in Nicaragua!
Paz a todos,
Zack
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