En el Campo de Nicaragua

Saludos!

To whoever is reading this blog, I hope you are doing well and enjoying your life. I wonder if it is even worth it to continue writing these blog posts because it seems like my parents are the only ones that read them consistently. Whatever, I'm going to continue them anyways and I don't even know who reads them. Finally things seem to be going really well in this community of Las Salinas. I finally seem to feel happy everyday and not stressed about trying to make myself busy in such a slow placed rural community, which it never fails to prove to me. For example, one day last week I was riding a bike I had borrowed from a community member to go to the health center to do some interviews for the project I am doing in the community, and I was stopped by a herd of cattle going down the road. You guys are probably all wondering how I could actually be stopped by a herd of cattle so I'll tell you exactly. The herd of cattle was probably made up of more than 500 cows that covered every part of the road and it took them ten minutes to pass completely. Also, pigs and chickens roam freely throughout the dirt roads of the community and have to run away from the cars that pass nearby. You would only find these things in somewhere rural in the developing world. However, I must say that I love all of this. Whenever I don't finish all of my food I can easily give the leftovers to the chickens in my host family's house. Speaking of which, I gave up on the vegetarian idea a few days after I got here. There is basically no variety with food here so I would be seriously limiting myself in the amount of food I eat if I didn't eat meat. Have no doubt, I will absolutely return to vegetarianism when I come back to the states, because I really don't like having to eat meat. Anyways, the animals here are awesome. It's so funny that people in the States would cringe at seeing some of the things I have seen animals do here, but here people just laugh. I'm not going to go into it, because this could get pretty crude.

So back to my projects in the community, so much seems to be happening that I have decided to extend my internship another three weeks. The FSD intern grant is due eight weeks before the end of the internship, which if I were to stay until May 14th, would only be about two weeks from now. However, I definitely need about two or three additional weeks to finish writing my grant as there are still a ton of things I need to figure out. What was originally going to be a mini-pulperia has now been changed to a bakery because I convinced the mothers collective that a convenience store that sells cheap products would not bring in very much income to the community and would create competition with other convenience stores that are only minutes away. Meanwhile, the closest bakery is about an hour and a half bus ride from the community and all of the people I have interviewed so far say that they really want to have a bakery in the community. Basically, I need to receive a yes from about fifty people in the community to prove to FSD that the community has a genuine need for a bakery, and right now I have only interviewed fifteen people. Luckily, everyone so far has said yes. After that, I need to figure out a business plan for the bakery, which is going to be difficult because the members of the mothers' group want to have three of the mothers from the collective work in the bakery each month and switch off to three other mothers at the end of the month. In order to do that, we have to create an administrative system to maintain this. On top of this, I have to organize the training workshops that a governmental organization is giving to the mothers so that they can learn how to make bakery goods. I'm not going to even to continue with describing all of the other things I have to do because I just realized that it would take up a whole blog post. Basically, the point is that I need more time to do all of this. Anyways, besides this I'm working on two other projects. One project is a environmental club made up of students from the high school in the community. We've just been picking up trash so far, but soon we are going to start having contests over who can pick up the most trash, as well as forming compost piles throughout the community and designing a sustainable recycling system. The other project is consistently organizing movie nights to raise funds for the library in the community as well as the bakery we're creating.

Besides all of this, I have been having a great time simply traveling around Nicaragua on the weekends. I have stayed in Las Salinas this weekend just because I have some work to do, but last weekend I went to the island of Ometepe, which has got to be one of the most beautiful islands I have ever been to. Ometepe is an island that has two volcanoes and a small isthmus connecting the two, which is in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Apparently, it is the largest volcanic island in the middle of a freshwater lake in the world. We climbed about half way up Concepción, which is the larger of the two volcanoes and the one that is still active. The view was absolutely magnificent with the other volcano and the isthmus as well Lake Nicaragua in the background. The whole time I was on the island I had so much trouble believing I was in the middle of just one lake, but what do you know, it is one enormous lake. I couldn't even see the other side of the lake from half way up the volcano. On the way down we passed by monkeys and gorgeous birds. Afterwards, we swam in Lake Nicaragua, which is both warm, clean and just overall beautiful. I forgot to say that I was with Ramiro, the program director, and Steve, the other intern on this trip to Ometepe. People kept on asking me if Steve was my father because he's 55, but I had to keep telling them no we actually are both interns on the same program. It was actually pretty fun to talk to him throughout the trip. Since he has had about 30 years of experience in community work, he definitely has a lot to suggest.

Although this doesn't really have anything to do with anything I've said, I want to share an interesting story I found about one of the Americans who lives nearby the community. From the moment I got here and saw all of the foreigners who have almost invaded this area, I knew that there must be trouble with some of them, and surely my assumption was right. This one American who is a Vietnam War veteran has been living on the edge of the indigenous community of Las Salinas de Nagualapa for about ten years. A little while after he arrived here he bought some 50 plus acres of land right along the ocean and for about eight years he has been trying to steal land from the community of Las Salinas. Apparently, the community has been putting up fences to mark the boundaries of the community and this American has hired people to chop down the fences so he can take the land. This battle has resulted in a court case that has been going for years and years. When I was interviewing one of the women in the community about the bakery, she randomly brought him up and asked me if I could extradite him to the United States because I am an American too. I said, sorry I don't even know the guy and there is no way I would have that ability even if I did know him. Apparently I found out later from one of my host brothers that I did meet him at a fiesta I went to last weekend. All he had to tell me was that he was the one smoking a huge cigar and I immediately remembered him.

Miss you all,
Zack