Rótulos Milton

Well, enough about us. Let's talk about, ... well it's just us. Us, us and more us. For this, I make no appologies. The fact is, if you didn't care about us as much as you like to pretend you don't, you wouldn't be reading this. I know, I know. The title of the blog may be a little bit exagerated, since not all of our adventures are amazing, but you are, in fact, reading it. I also make no appologies for this since you, the reader, will likely have had a hot shower either sometime before reading this or will have one shortly after. By shortly I mean within five months of course.

I made an airbrush yesterday. You can't put me in a third world country, take away all my toys and tell me not to play. I built this little bruiser out of an old ink jar, a radio antanae, a bit of bamboo and a piece of tubing from a broken iron. What you can't see in the photo is that the other end of the tube is connected to my mouth, making my lungs the air compressor. The advantage of this is that I can control the air pressure with my mind instead of buttons and levers. The disadvantage is that my air compressor is encased in a broken rib (the tragic result of playing soccer in a muddy field against fast little kids who have eaten, breathed and slept soccer for their lifetimes, in a pair of plastic-soled street-purchased sandals). Every breath is agony. I am now working on some various tips to refine the spray. I am making them from tapered metal writing pen heads.

Rótulos Milton

Here is a story for you. A friend of ours, María (name changed to protect the people who have never used the internet or a computer and will never see this anyway), sells tacos. Actually, she makes tacos and her sons sell them. Lately the taco market has dropped through the dirt floor and they can barely eat. Her eighteen-year-old son is a bit of an eighteen-year-old. By this I mean that work is for other people who don't have important social lives. He was a member of our Art Club we started when we first arrived here. He has also been participating in a drawing class I have been giving and an English class. The kid has talent. He just needed some direction. Well, I helped him to start his own business. I helped him with the capital and I am overseeing the financial part and guiding him on the creative and p.r. parts. The business is that of making signs. Sounds simple enough, but this is a resource strapped country and sign making generally consists of the person in the house who knows how to write misspelling two or three words on a piece of paper with a pen, which is then glued to the front of the house. The thing is, there are so many home businesses that are unmarked because of this system. We started with a sign for his mother, which was free, to have a sample to show when looking for clients. She repairs clothes, in addition to making tacos. We decided to advertise for her.

We made the sign using used clothes (some of them may even be yours!) because it is cheaper than buying fabric. We can buy used clothing for ten to twenty-five cents U.S.$ per article. "María" now has over 2,000 córdobas of work to do (about $100, also known as enough to live on for a month or two).

With photos of this sign we moved on to other clients. More used clothes.

We have a Mill sign to make this week and a background to paint for a local photo joint. Milton is learning how to balance the expenses and the income and calculate his profit, fifty percent of which automatically goes to his mother as rent, food, etc. I am really proud of him and his work. After a couple more jobs I will step aside and let him run things.

One night while working, he brought a picture of his head and a catalog for clothes that he had cut up. he said that the body on the picture had been damaged and that he just needed a new body to save the photo. This was the only body in the catalog that was the right proportion to his head size. His intention was to have me photograph it and he would have it printed at the photo store to replace the old (skinny) one. Notice the giant sports bra behind him! He wishes! Hilarious. Enjoy this taste of Nicaragua!

Matt and Brooke

Well our friends Matt and Brooke came and went in a torrent of great fun.When they got here we brought them immediately to our site and we made it just in time for them to be the final exam for korys english class. We made beans and rice and homemade lemonade. Kory did show and tell with all his awsome inventions but in fast forward, knowing we were going to leave again early in the morning. Some of the boys from our church came over to pick out a tie that they brought (thanks to all who donated by the way).

Anyway, they came officially to film our training that we did for youth. We (9 volunteers from our region) were given money to do a training for 4 kids each from our communities.Please note the awsome mural kory made in the background, that later served as a backdrop for the photobooth.We spent 2 days in Estelí talking about all kinds of things related to aids. Thanks to some awsome and creative volunteers (also known as Matt and Jess) we stayed up ALLLL night the first night (I want to note that I had to get up and leave on a bus at 5 am and then I stayed awake until 3 am. Suckk!) but it was actually really cool. We called it a lock in because they all had to stay and participate. We had a mini casino in which we showed them the odds of aquiring an STD if they didnt take protective measures, we did a condom water toss, a mural, olympics, a fashion show, a photo booth... TONS! it was exausting and well executed. Matt and Brooke filmed the whole thing and did interviews with lots of people and hopefully will be able to edit us a nice few films.

After all the work was done we brought our kids back to our site, leaving just enough time to allow M & B the pleaser of chopping down a banana tree with ripe bananas, and the next day got on yet another bus to Leon. Leon is a pretty Tuanis (cool) city here in Nicaragua and we walked around for the night. It is also one of the hottest places on earth.. or so it feels. I think the matt and brooke almost died. Us desert dwellers, we cant live well in the humidity. Kory went on a shopping spree of used clothes and the next day we were off to the ocean. Brooke said.. ¨now this is vacation¨ and boy was she right. We had worked our tails off and spent about 18 hours on buses during the week. So we sprung for a couple of $20 bungalows that on high tide were about 20 feet from the water and relaxed. We were going to go and do turtle patrol all night, we even bought flashlights, but then it started to rain and we couldnt do it. All in all it was a great vacation. For more info on the matter you should check out matt and brookes blog and matt and jess´s blog. (see right hand column.)

I just want to add a special thanks to all the people who helped donate stuff to send for us. We have been having a ball with it. Eating gummy eyeballs, chocolate, and other delicious unmentionables. With the spices mom sent I whipped up a VERY convincing and delicious vegetarian sausage for my cookbook and some banana bread as well. The ties and clothes have been extremly valuable and the books as well. THANKS SO MUCH! It should be known that no peace corps volunteer is complete without the support of friends and family. Knowing that I sound like a complete idiot... you are the wind beneath our wings. hehe. Thanks agian. We love you all!PS, this is the traditional nica photo we took in front of two backdrops, please note the dirty door. LOVE IT! (sorry I couldnt turn it on this program... but it adds the nicaraguanness of it.)

The great DONA

Well, we have found the Casa Materna to be in a financial pinch lately, suffering because the economic depression has trickled down to the NGOs and other funders here in the small town. It is also in between harvests. We just had the corn harvest and the coffee harvest.. the big daddy is about a month away. So there is little money to be spent on pulling out that old rotton moler that has been bothering you for so long, or buy some things at the store. (Which are by the way two of the things the casa materna has done to help make money.) Anyway, Kory and I decided to paint this mural to help call attention to services that they offer. While kory was painting on the finishing touches, I heard the sweat screaming sounds of a 3 year old having his rotton, sick, black teeth being pulled out. Ahh the sounds of progress.

Well after a super hard week with a sucky neighbor making lots of trouble for us here in our site, I was gifted with a house full of loving friends, who had come to help make donuts (or dona as they call them here) for a wedding. While we cooked, Kory entertained all the kids with tricks. It was 3 hours of fun and fat, we made 84 little donas and dipped them in chocolate. I felt very blessed this day to see that I still had friends and that they were willing to give service for someone else (the couple getting married). It was fulfilling in a deep way.

How to Get a Job

This past week we did a training that focused on helping people recognize their career goals, figure out what kind of job they wanted, how to find that job, that job, then how to interview for that job. It was one of the most important and pivatol things we have done here for more reasons than one. We are really proud of all the people who hung in there, who made great sacrifices to participate.

Wheels of progress...

Well, we havnt updated the blog in a few weeks. This is very sad I know, but its because we are busy, which is happy. I dislike being idle. I will make a small account of what we have been doing. We went to Jinotega a few weeks ago to review our big Charlas Listas project with the bosses and they loved! This is good, but we only got half way through. So we need to go back and review the rest. Then we have to have them translated into a language called Misquito. This will take a lot of work. We are also compiling activities you can do to teach each topic. But the bus ride to Jinotega is one of the most beautiful in the country and we stopped on top of the mountain to buy vegetables and get some bids on plants for the garden in the casa materna.I (Heather)also finally learned how to make a few things with corn. Each year when they harvest corn, they make all kinds of different things with it. Things made with fresh corn smell and taste very sweet and delicious. I had been waiting through 2 harvests for someone to teach me how to make these things and had not had the opportunity until the other day. This is called Atol, and it is a pudding made with the fresh corn. Basically you cut the kernals off of the cob, and then have them ground into a paste. For atol, you add a little water to the paste and mix it good, then you strain it through a cloth. What you get is some delicious corny flavored liquid and REAL cornstarch! Its crazy! Then you just cook it until it thickens with a little cinnamon, then add milk and sugar. It is steller. The next thing we made was Guiríllas, which are sort of like tortillas but they taste sweet. These are one of my favorite things to eat in all of nicaragua. And when the guirílla ladies get on the buses and the whole stinky bus starts to smell like sweet corn.. mmmmm!!!!! They are served with cuajada, which is a simple crumbly salty cheese. Anyway, to make them, you just take the ground, raw corn and spread it into a griddle full of melted butter and then turn it over after it cooks on one side. I was hoping that someone from Utah could try this with your corn there and tell me if it works. I know the corn we have there is A LOT sweeter and may be too different to make these, but they are sooooo delicious, SOMEONE should try this. I will for sure when I get home. This is our reading group. It was a smash hit the first week, but the second week it started raining and only one person came. Ahh nicaragua. Today we will try again. I really hope this works, we are going to try and tempt them into good attendance by rewarding them with a party and some cool t-shirts. They can at least all identify letters and such, but they cannot read well. They are all women from our church, and it is hard to teach them in church when they cannot read. Anyway, as literacy is part of the womens organization of our church, AND nicaragua has an outstanding history of literacy programs, we decided to jump in. During the somoza period, the sandonistas held literacy classes in hidden places at night to try to help elevate the people. Then when the sandonistas came into power, they made a program where they sent all the young people in high school out to the country to teach people to read. Today, the highschool students all teach people in their community. Its pretty cool. The only funny thing is that each year after they complete the literacy course they declare their territory ¨Free of illiteracy¨ which is a complete joke, otherwise they would not have to continue year after year. Hehe. Here is one of the signs-Kory has been working very hard in our back yard this week. After giving a charla about mosquito control in a rurual comunity, he learned that MINSA will fine you for having too much growth in your yard because it harbors mosquito larva and snakes. We have been fighting the nicaraguans about our yard grouth for a long time. They think it is a barbaridad, but we LOVE it. BUT, now since we could be fined, and seeing as how we dont want to be causing mosquito problems, kory sharpened the macheti and went to work. He battled against this big.,. no, huge beehive that was in our lime tree. He had all kinds of schemes to try and smoke them out including homemade darts, levers, smoke rings, torches etc. Finally he got them out, only being stung 4 times which is miraculous, and cut the branch down. The next day we went to harvest our limes before our neighbors did, and found the bees busily rebuilding. Horrible little creatures. Why cant they be cool bees, that give honey? Anyway, we got the limes and found that we had lots of bananas growing too. The next day kory build the COOLEST rake you have ever seen out of bamboo. I love that kid. When my sister came, she said it was like swiss family robinson, and its totally true.
Yesterday was the 14th of September which is Independence day here. They always do this big old presentation in the stadium. The highschool kids practice their drums for about 2 months before, tossing aside less important topics in school like math and reading, and pound the SAME rythms every second of every day. Every little child, aspiring to someday play the drums, gets a stick and water bottle or peice of metal and pounds endlessly the rythms. It really makes you want to die. Being as how whatever happens outside, happens inside, we had to tell our little neighbor boy Yader, last night, from our bed to be quiet. He was on the other side of the wall and had been pounding for about 2 hours on a plastic bottle. Anyway, the actual presentation is pretty impressive, and makes you real proud to see all your students, and littel friends out there dressed all nice and in all kinds of silly uniforms and dancing, throwing batons and playing drums. There were tons of people.

In other news, my grandfather passed away a few days ago. This is very sad for my grandma.. I think. I have been trying to call her for two days and have found her phone line very busy, true to her cute gossipy self. Anyway, he had lived in a nursing home for many many many years and i hope he is free and happy where he is. As for us, we will continue working on. Thanking God every day for our health and energy and being able to be in this wonderful difficult place, learning and learning and learning about oursel