Orientation Part 2

So this is Orientation part 2. Time to share a couple more stories.
Last weekend, all of the fellows plus Kip, our field officer, went to the Nicaraguan beach – in this case the Eastern Coast /Pacific Ocean beach. We rented a mini-bus (very easy to do here, just talk to the driver) and headed out to a place called “La Boquita”, literally, ‘little mouth’. Unfortunately, I don’t know why it is called that. The place is a collection of restaurants that all border the sand – so we just went into one, took over a few tables and ran into the water. The waves were huge! They were good for surfing. Not that I surf, but I enjoyed them lots. The water was pretty warm and the other fellows and I had a good time trying to body surf. I brought my Frisbee (surprise surprise) and some of us threw that around for a while. Horses kept passing through the area, either with riders or pulling carts, and some people were playing soccer. We had lunch at the restaurant and I had a soup that had crayfish in it. Quite tasty. I also took care of all my napping needs in one of the restaurant’s comfy hammocks. On the way back to Jinotepe (probably about an hour and a half drive) the bus suddenly overheated and stalled. Smoke was coming out of it, and we all raced out. It was just about time for a refreshing beautiful sunset, and none of us were too bothered by waiting an hour for the bus to cool down. We found ourselves in a rural area surrounded by some fields and some cows and lots of green. We had fun amusing ourselves with more Frisbee, taking crazy pictures of each other jumping in the air and holding an impromptu dance party next to the road. A few cars passed by but none of them stopped. Eventually we all pushed the car until the driver could start the motor up again but we didn’t trust that car to carry us all the way back. We boarded a second bus for a cramped drive home characterized by lots of singing.

My final story should be titled ‘not blending in can be no fun’ and I write with much sympathy towards my fellow fellows, who I’m sure will all mention this same topic in their blogs. Also worthy of mention is the group demographic: 11 people – 1 of whom is male and 1 of whom is non-caucasian (me). As our group has unfortunately learned, due to the existence of Nicaraguan machismo culture, it is very commonplace for men to harass perceived attractive women in the street. Machismo culture dictates that men can’t be held responsible for their carnal desires, thus there is nothing wrong with whistles, dirty comments/noises, grabbing etc of aforementioned attractive women. Foreign (white) women are stereotyped to be both attractive and easy, and frustratingly, all of my fellow gringas have been subject to such harassment, which is an uncomfortable and often scary experience. For once I find myself in a majority, my skin being the perfect personal camouflauge, slightly destroyed only at the moment I open my mouth to say something in Spanish. I weave in and out of being a foreigner – I don’t ever attract any attention when alone, but I therefore really notice the difference when I’m walking with the others. I’ve gotten into the habit of making sure I mention being born in Guatemala when Nicaraguans ask me where I’m from, because they react very warmly whenever I do so. However, any mention of Namibia, Africa results in either blank stares or strange questions. “There’s a lot of black people there?” I sometimes wonder how I would be treated if my skin were black yet I had the exact same life story as I do now. I get the impression that in Central America there exists quite a bit of racism against black people.

Fellowship Orientation: Nicaragua

And here begins my fellowship adventure. The way the fellowship works is basically that American Jewish World Service pays all of my living expenses so that I can volunteer for an NGO in Central America for nine months. As mentioned earlier, I am not allowed to specifically mention the name of the NGO that I will be working for, but I can tell you all that I will be living in San Salvador, El Salvador and the social justice field within which I will be working is that of sustainable agriculture. I don’t know anything about that yet, but I’m looking forward to this amazing cross-cultural opportunity. For the past 3.5 weeks I have been preparing for my upcoming job by participating in fellowship orientation, held in Jinotepe, Nicaragua along with 10 other fellows. The major components of this orientation, are homestay, Spanish classes and orientation sessions.

Jinotepe is a small town about an hour and a half south-east of Managua. It has a small park across from a huge church, a bustling Mercado (market) where you can get anything from cheap vegetables to cheap sneakers, and a long Avenida Central (central avenue) which sports various shops, internet cafes, banks, a post office, a play ground and a taco restaurant. Jinotepe, like many central american towns I have so far visited, does not have a single road sign, so landmarks are vital.
My homestay family is very hospitable and they are also very good cooks. The typical Nicaraguan food is rice and beans, something I was able to learn firsthand: breakfast = ‘gallo pinto’, a traditional dish of rice mixed together with beans, lunch = rice next to beans, dinner = beans. Jokes aside though, I am lucky to have a variety of side dishes along with those meals including eggs, meat (chicken, beef and fish on Fridays due to lent), salads and often freshly squeezed orange juice. Yay! I also lucked out in the bathroom department – I got a private bathroom, hot water and running water 24 hours a day. Many of my fellow fellows had cold bucket showers and dodgy water supply. The house location being on the geographically lower altitude area of town ensures both stable running water and flood risk. You win some, you lose some. Also, I recall my first few homestay observations. The first time I entered my room, I observed the only decoration - a huge wooden cross right over my bed. It reminds me how homogenously Christian it is here, to the point that even after explaining my Judaism, my homestay mother asked me what kind of a Christian this meant I was. Secondly, I observed that they have a cute pet parrot that does an excellent impression of a child (giggles, laughter, tantrums). Being the ecology nerd that I am, I identified it as a Yellow-naped Parrot, an endangered species in the area, presumably due to its selection as a pet due to its ‘talking’ ability. Sadness. Lastly, I quickly noticed that my homestay family (like many American families) watches TV all evening. This was initially disappointing because I wanted to engage my family in conversation, however I soon realized that this was an excellent way to improve my Spanish, so I got hooked on a Mexican telenovela.

The orientation period has overall been jam-packed with activities. My normal day begins around 8:00 for Spanish class which lasts until 11:30. Then I make my way home via the internet café. I eat a lunch (the biggest meal of the day) and race back to orientation sessions at 1, finish at 6pm. I head home to eat dinner and watch “la viuda de blanco”. It is awesome. Often I have an evening activity anywhere between 7:30 and 10. I go to sleep. Repeat. Orientation sessions have been a variety of group discussions, lectures, socio-dramas, presentations etc. General topics include the things that will hopefully prepare us for the upcoming months – cross-cultural skills, social/economic/political history of El Salvador and Nicaragua, inner workings of AJWS, international development, social justice, health safety and security, and so forth. I feel as if I have learnt a lot, which is a good thing. The best part of orientation though, is getting to know the other fellows – all of whom have turned out to be knowledgable, interesting and fun. Many of them also share my fascination with Frisbees, so I really can’t complain at all. Yay for having friends.

Scenes from Guatemala

So I realize that I haven’t made much use of the posting photos function that this blog allows me. In fact I hadn’t realized it was that easy. So props to Blogspot for letting me do this: enjoy these pics. You can probably figure out which picture corresponds to which description.
(1) Lake Atitlan – and yes it really is that gorgeous, and sorry I didn’t talk that much about it in my recent entry. There just wasn’t enough space for everything. My favorite moments were bumpy boat rides surrounded by beautiful blue waters to and from the cities along its coast. (alliteration!!!)
(2) Volcano Pacaya – got pretty close!
(3) Antigua colonial architecture. The lighting worked out well if I do say so myself. ;)
(4) Graffiti for all those global citizens like myself….

The Beginning: Guatemala Adventures

So here comes the first entry of many concerning my travels in Central America. A fitting beginning, I start my journey with 3 weeks travel in Guatemala. As many of you know, this means back to my country of origin, a place I had visited once since adoption at age 6 months. I’ve been working on an appropriate blog response ever since I left but the words haven’t been working for me. My brain has been very busy adapting to Central America in general, so simply recognizing the process has been important and often difficult. As you can imagine, throughout my Guatemalan journey all of the ‘what if’ questions and the ‘who am I’ questions were crowding my brain quite a lot. Sitting in a bus heading out of Guatemala City, it suddenly occurred to me that any given person I saw might possibly be a relative.

I really wanted this first entry to be a well-written piece of art, but I haven’t sorted out all of my questions from the answers yet so I’m not at the right place to write anything nearly that well-composed at the moment. My sincere apologies for not sending this out sooner. I do have some great stories though, so I hope you enjoy some favorites….

My trip was both epic and unplanned. I arrived with reservations for one night at a hostel in Guatemala city and 3 largely unscheduled goals: visit friends, take Spanish classes and travel. My favorite immediate observations were (1) that I was no longer short in height and on the contrary pretty average height for a woman. It was a happy shock, and despite my non-traditional clothing and touristy backpack I blended in extremely well. (2) The beautiful buses – known as chicken buses, part of an elaborate and cheap public transport system that converted old American yellow school buses by repainting and decorating them completely so that they are now brilliantly colored and generally sport a lot of Christian paraphernalia. (3) Phone technology. As in much of the rest of the world, cellphones have become more and more popular in Guatemala. This might not seem so strange except that even in the most remote areas that I visited where residents still don’t have piped water, I witnessed people talking on cellphones. A technological jump!

A small world story: Two American friends of mine, with whom I studied abroad in Ecuador in 2006 (see much earlier blog posts for details), are both now living in Guatemala as Peace Corps volunteers. Sarah and Lupe are both involved in the broad Peace Corps theme of “food security”, and it was my great fortune that both invited me to visit them at their sites and stay with their homestay families, a chance that also allowed me to get off the beaten gringo trail. To visit Lupe I traveled out into what felt like the middle of nowhere in the Guatemalan region of Jalapa. I found myself in a mountainous area of “el campo” - the rural areas. I shadowed Lupe in her everyday work – helping local women farmers “campesinas” to build compost heaps in their backyards, taking long walks along gravel roads to get to their farms, experimenting with collection of amaranth seeds for possible consumption and learning more about worm-agriculture eg using worms to make fertilizer from cow dung. I also enjoyed tortilla meals with her homestay family and showing the children pictures of Namibia from a tourist magazine I had brought with me. The African animal pictures were a big hit. The thing I was least prepared for was the cold at night, and this gave me the realization that the lack of central heating makes all the difference. Also, lack of running water 24 hours a day plus bucket showers only.

Sarah’s homestay family lives a short busride from Sololå, a bustling market town north of Lake Atitlan. In this area, live many indigenous Guatemalans – descendents of the Mayan Indians, that still wear beautiful hand-woven traditional clothing and speak 1 of 23 different indigenous languages. A fun fact: Guatemala has an indigenous population of about 60%, much higher than any other Central American country. Sarah is in the process of learning Cakchikel, a rather guttural language that I attempted (pitifully) to learn some words of during my visit. The night I stayed with her, Sarah and I made and cooked pizza and salad from scratch for her homestay family using their simple wood-burning stove, which turned out very tasty. Sarah’s homestay mother insisted on making tortillas to go along with it. It was a cultural experience, and also truly wonderful to be taken in so hospitably by both Sarah and Lupe’s families.

I spent a week in Antigua, a beautiful old colonial town in central Guatemala flanked by volcanoes, where I took Spanish classes in the afternoons while in the mornings, I volunteered for a coffee cooperative that produces fair-trade coffee. During my time there, I took a day trip to volcano Pacaya. It had erupted the night before I hiked to it (with guide and group), thereby stopping us from being able to climb all the way to the top, but on the bright side, we got to see a lot of lava. The stuff literally glows red-hot and it gives off a lot of heat, what luck! I do have to say a word or two about coffee production as well which fascinated me during my short volunteer time – making coffee is not as easy as it might seem. It is quite a detailed process involving harvesting the coffee fruit, separating the bean from outer fruit flesh and later an outer shell, fermenting and drying as well as the actual roasting which has to be timed perfectly. Don’t take Starbucks for granted!!!!!

My last paragraph is dedicated to two wonderful families that are part of my personal Guatemalan history. The first is that of Gladys – Sergio’s foster family mother prior to his adoption – with whom I was able to visit for a weekend in Guatemala City. I thank Galdys and her her daughter Fabiola for their generous hospitality and the royal food treatment – huge lunches! I also thank Ena and Ramon and family for a very special dinner together. They were the lawyers responsible for allowing me to be able to be adopted legally, and what a gift to still be in touch with them and meet their son and daughters. It is heartwarming to know that when I visit Guatemala again I’ll have family there.

So in the interest of not writing too too much, I’ll cut off this entry here. Feel free to write me an email anytime with any questions or comments, or just to say “hello there!” :)