On Scene blog

El Sauce updates

2009-06-11T10:00:00.002-06:00

As the new Scene is prepared to be delivered to SUNY Geneseo's alumni, friends and supporters, we have more good news from the service-learning program and El Sauce economic-development initiatives to share with our 52,000 readers.

Stay tuned to the blog to read more about El Sauce and how Geneseo efforts are having an impact.

• The School of Business, in concert with The Friends Project, a grassroots group based in Rochester, N.Y., arranged for an expert basket-maker to spend a month living with the women in Cerro Colorado. Right now, she is teaching them how to craft more uniform baskets, helping them hone their skills and helping them create more intricate thread patterns and basket designs with the pine needles that fall near their mountain homes.

It will help the women sell their art for a higher price and compete in U.S. and larger markets.

• School of Business students will explore U.S. markets and importing the Cerro Colorado baskets this fall. The women are busy filling a $1,000 order from Geneseo to get started.

• The restaurant and welcome shelter at the base of the mirador, or "lookout," in Ocotal is nearly complete.

By summer's end, visitors to El Sauce will enjoy home cooking by Ocotal farmers and their families and have a central gathering place for tours.

El Sauce service-learning volunteer Yacarely Mareina-Dávila won a $10,000 grant for the tourism business proposal to buy supplies such as lumber. Nearly $2,000 in private donations were also raised, by friends and family who support the project.

•Allison Kornblatt '10 landed in El Sauce last weekend, June 7, to launch her award-winning dental hygiene program with children in El Sauce — with help from the Nicaraguan division of Colgate.

She has significantly expanded the project's scope with the company's teamwork.

Allison and Geneseo volunteers are visiting schools with Colgate reps, who will share proper brushing technique and a hygiene regimen with teachers. Colgate will also supply toothpaste and toothbrushes, so the kids can brush at school in morning and afternoon. Teachers will continue the education-prevention program.

Allison was able to use her $1,000 grant from New York Campus Compact to buy inexpensive ceramic water filters. This way, students have access to potable water so they can brush.

Originally, Allison was going to provide brushes and paste but families would need to brush at home — oftentimes they don't have access to filtered water.

2009-06-11T10:00:00.000-06:00

Next steps

2009-01-25T18:08:00.003-06:00

The programs we have started in El Sauce are working now — full-time English classes, the tourism initiative and training residents to share the highlights of El Sauce with the larger community and lure in backpacking visitors.

Why?

Because Kellan and Yacarely are working with the community and its leaders — old and new mayors — to develop what the residents want and need.

Some nonprofits come to work in El Sauce, says former mayor Ervertz Delgadillo, and their help is appreciated, but they come to carryout a mission set forth before they ever stepped foot in El Sauce. What is needed, he says, is to develop programs based on the needs of people.

Geneseo is doing that, he says, and it's working.

He opened the doors to the mayor's office for the first classes, and has worked closely with Kellan since day one.

A few years down the road, programs are starting to pay off.

It's at a threshold now, says Ervertz; everything has been accomplished with little or no resources. Funding to promote changes in cattle and bean production, to market the tourism, etc. are vital.

And Kellan hopes to welcome more students through the doors of the New York School of English. Geneseo students from all disciplines, who can lend their expertise.

A club at campus to work on projects when someone isn't in Nicaragua — marketing the Cerro Colorado baskets, or alumni who appreciate the handiwork and think they can sell it in their stores. Students venture to El Sauce a few times a year, for set periods of time. In between, Kellan and Yacarely hold down the fort.

A long-term volunteer — maybe a graduating student or Geneseo alum — would be very important. Like a Peace Corps assignment without the 2.5 year commitment. Maybe 6 months. Maybe a year. But someone who will be there to implement programs that they now only can run when Geneseo students come — computer classes, personal finance, small business development.

The El Sauce program was started with a community spirit — among professors, the mayor of El Sauce, Geneseo students and residents from Geneseo and El Sauce. To make it all it can be, for lack of a better term, is going to take more of that.

So I guess the call is out dear alums and students ... want to share in our adventure?

Where does this take us?

2009-01-25T17:48:00.004-06:00

It's been a week nearly to the hour since Adam, Meredith and I returned from El Sauce.

The students are back in class, a few months shy of graduation. I am back in the office, showing off samples of El Sauceno coffee and the pine-needle baskets made by the able hands of the Cerro Colorado women.

Bracing myself in the back of a 1960s pick-up and staring up at the sky and into the crags of the mountain road seem very far off but close in my mind.

A few hours after going to bed the night I returned, I woke up, bleary eyed. Before I adjusted to the light and got coherent, I saw the wooden planks of the poorest homes before me instead of my closet, rays of light penetrating the holes and gaps.

"Oh, I'm in one those houses," I thought, just before my feet hit the carpet and I knew I was home.

The next night, I woke up disoriented in the bed; I had to think and reason out that yes, we had been at the Atlanta airport and oh yeah, I'm in Rochester.

Traveling plays funny games with your mind. You don't realize that a place has so entirely crept into you and become a part of your daily life until you're suddenly jarred out of it. Suddenly you become very aware of the things you grew accustomed to.

Bucket showers in the day, chickens serenading in the morning hours. The 6-block commute from Xiomara's to the Geneseo office past the church.

Walking off the plane and into the Atlanta international destinations wing, we had some culture shock. Before us was a huge food court — options of 20 restaurants — with a bar and a piano player and a duty free store and newsstands, jewelers, anything I could look for. Before we left Managua, Yacarely suggested we take a spin through the super market and get whatever snacks or necessities we might want for the week; you can't find much in El Sauce. You never know what can be bought.

The kung pao chicken, chicken wraps, fudgy brownies ... it was all overload and it was so .... so plenty. I felt a little gluttonous; the choices and immense differences were staring me in the face behind a deli case.

I am often reminded of what Kellan said about running the El Sauce program: it's the step between college and graduation. Like the world after you toss your cap in the air, and in real-life Nicaragua, you need to figure out things yourself. He guides the students and gets their projects ready, then lets them figure it out. He walked us all to the projects the first day or so to make sure we knew where we going, but then on, it was Meredith who met Yuritza each morning, took the bus and spent the days alone with her in the communities. No professor or director standing over her, showing her how it's done. She became a member of the society and she liked it that way. "What I like about this," she said to me one morning as we rode the bus to the stop, "is that it forces you to be independent. I would never be doing the things I'm doing here otherwise."

How else would we sit in a family's small house with its dirt floor, talking about families and helping grind corn, in a community that's an hour off the road and down a path, over streams? Meredith could have asked for help and Kellan would have been there. Adam too. But they didn't.

I'm not sure how the El SAuce experience will settle into my psyche over the next few days, months, years. I am still learning lessons 20 years after I, as a college student, jumped off a bus in the middle of rural Brazil and asked a remote community of protesting farmers if I could live with them for a project. Will I be 60 and remember these moments from the last 17 days, each time with new insight?

Surely so.

It's the beauty of travel. Of immersing yourself in a new culture. Not just as a tourist, walking past the landmarks, but becoming a member of the community. You soak it up like a sponge. You get to be full of the memories and slowly see what shakes out.

Surely we won't remember all the details but what is most important will stick, and shape us in ways we can't yet imagine.

On posting

2009-01-25T17:40:00.003-06:00

Even though I was in a place where some families in the city center did not have plumbing and indoor toilets (including our own office and the house next door), and often times no phone, it was incredibly easy to do post live from El Sauce.

The Geneseo office has WiFi. Once Yacarely gave me the password, I just had to choose our Geneseo network, give the letters and numbers and get typing. Often times I would be there after English class, alongside Kellan and Yacarely, til 11 p.m. posting away. Other times they were at dinner and I'd stay put, posting.

Sometimes those times were a bit surreal. It's always hot, so everyone leaves their front doors open for a little breeze. I could hear the banter outside of passing families, of bike taxis, look out and see the family across the street gathered around the day-glo lights of a TV in rocking chairs, me alone. Next door, the nice family that lets me wash my hands in their basin during the day would be sitting in the backyard, or maybe cooking on the open fire of their outdoor kitchen.

There's no real addresses in El Sauce, and I only once spotted an actual street name. There's no postal delivery; why locate it. I wondered. Marisol, the school teacher, had never seen a computer before taking Kellan's introduction class. I thought of the famers in Ocotal, who were asleep now in their small mountain homes and would wake up at dawn with the sunlight to hand harvest coffee and shed bean skins with a machine that looked like it was made in the era of the cotton gin and ride their horses with sacks of beans to town down a mountain path.

And here I was, hunched over a keyboard, sending photos of the Ocotal farmers into "space" with the zap of button and seeing it broadcast to whomever in the world happened to sign in a second later.

Fare thee well, until we meet again

2009-01-25T17:22:00.004-06:00

During our last English class, we were joined by Ron and Christa, volunteers from the 4 Walls Project. It seems every night we had visitors who wanted to see what it was about and sometimes came back.

I'd come too.

I haven't exactly put my finger on it, but Kellan and Yacarely are doing something very right.

It's not just learning. It's FUN. It sounds like a commercial but whatever. The students — between age 17 and late sixties — come, read presentations to us for stamps of approval for that lesson, learn some conjugation and tenses and then for the next hour or so it's all interaction all the time.

There's no hiding under the desks like when I took Spanish in high school. We play "hot seat," where a teammate sits in front of the white board and has to guess the person or place written behind them with clues. Trinidad jumps up to be a hot seater and Henry is already half out of his chair. He's got to wait two more rounds before he makes it to the front of the class to get his turn.

Everyone wants to go.

They want to sing even if their voice stinks; they want to participate and soon the class is not a class it's a little mini competition and party.

If ever Geneseo gets a strange new mandate and orders me off campus and into the English classroom, I'd have a grand old time.

Our last class, I wanted to show the students my images I took for the possible cover slot of the Scene. Ten hours later, I forget my computer at my host mom's house. Kellan bikes off to get it and while we think they are all waiting for his return, they are actually doing a stealth hit job on us: organizing a farewell party.

Kellan arrives with the computer at the same time Ileana and Yeremileth arrive with a bag of Eskimo Neopolitan, bowls and spoons.

"Thank you to all of you from Geneseo," she said, who have come to help us.

Grouped in a circle in the small office, Adam says it's been very very fun to teach and he loves El Sauce, and Meredith says it's been a life-changing experience.

Standing in the middle of Nicaragua with members of the community thanking us and sharing a celebration, I think all of us have been changed in ways that will reveal themselves over the next days, weeks, years.

We'd like to return and Trinidad, Wilfredo say they will be waiting for us.

They hug us and we trade e-mails with Manuel, Henry and those who have electronic e-mail, and just sort of stare out into the darkness of El Sauce's main street as we hug them and they turn to wave and walk off in the night.

The seats are silent with cheers and protestations over missed pronunciations.

Class is over and no one wanted to see it end.

The last thing Ileana says to me: "Next time you come, Kristina, you stay at my house."

A way up

2009-01-23T21:13:00.005-06:00

Right now, 17-year-old Manuel de Jesus Munguia ferries people to and from their destinations in El Sauce on a borrowed bike taxi Monday to Friday. He doesn't have time to go to school when everyone else does, when he's helping his mom pay for home expenses. He attends class on Saturdays and thinks about the day he might hop off his "caponera" for a full-time job. Maybe in construction.
Better, in an office.
Best, working for the town in the mayor's office. Or as a translator, meeting people from other cultures.
"If he told his friends that, they'd probably laugh at him," says Yacarely, "because to be in an office here is like 'wow."
It would be a much longer way off if Manuel didn't spend three nights of his little spare time learning to conjugate present-tense verbs and master the who, what, when, where and why of conversations in the New York School of English.
"He's our best student," says Yacarely. Manuel isn't the best English speaker, but he's there every evening and so willing to practice his classmates tease him that he hogs the discussions.

In reality, says Kellan, this is Manuel's way out.

With unemployment hovering around 40 percent and the El Sauce mayor, Ervertz Delgadillo reaching out to Geneseo and others for help, there's few jobs to be had in El Sauce. Manuel said he looked for many there wasn't any, so he drives the bike taxi.
Renting one costs 40 cordobas a day — $2. Manuel can use his brother's until February, when he comes back to town. Most days, Manuel earns 50 cords a day — 10 more than the cost to rent it.
"Sometimes I make money, sometimes I don't," he says. It depends on the luck of the draw for customers. This day we talk, he has made nothing. The day before, 100 cordobas in fares. It all evens out to about a dollar a day take home.
"I give all I make to my mom for expenses in the house," says Manuel. His two older brothers are in Costa Rica for work and send money home; it isn't enough so Manuel pitches in to care for him, his mom and younger brother.
Without any other skills, options are pretty limited for what Manuel can do in El Sauce, says Kellan.
Knowing English automatically boosts his marketability.
When he's good at it, Kellan says, Manuel can be a tour guide in El Sauce, Léon or another town. He can interpret. He can work in a business that wants to do business with the United States. He can work with nonprofits like World Vision, where communicating overseas is key.
Not all that many people speak English in Nicaragua; Manuel will become a commodity if he keeps it up.
He could even earn a spot in the mayor's office.

When you talk to Manuel he's polite, smiley and entirely shy. He fidgets with his backpack strings, shifts in his seat. Clearly, it's a struggle to overcome his shyness each night in English and sing about seeking words of wisdom with the U.K's Fab Four.
Volunteers in English sing a song in English every night and even though he looks like he's going to high-tail it out the front door before he opens his mouth, Manuel always raises his hand.
"Let it Be" is a favorite and the class is his only chance to practice his skills.
"That's what moves me to get up and stand up and use what I'm learning," says Manuel, "because there's no other way of using it here."

"It was unbelievable," says Manuel, "how lost I was. Sometimes when I used to talk to Kellan I had no idea what he was saying. Now I feel like I can understand."
He loves it so much that oftentimes on his bike taxi, he'll pedal by a street vendor or a doorway opened, and hear the families inside relaxing to music.
"If I hear the music I'll stop and try to figure out if I can understand what they are saying, if I know the lyrics," he says.

Manuel remembers the very day he signed up for English claass — June 3, 2008. He was riding his taxi, saw the sign posted on the plain blue door. It was an easy decision.
"I would be able to speak another language and I could talk to people from other cultures," remembers Manuel. "Maybe someday I will have the opportunity to travel and I would know English too."

Getting by, with a little help from friends

2009-01-23T12:43:00.002-06:00

Just like the song.

"Although you Rochestarians didn't all meet him, I want to also recognize Adam Davis who came from SUNY Geneseo to work on his own project with 4 Walls. He helped a young man named Pepe replace a huge, crumbling adobe wall and then donated new beams and rafters to replace some rotten ones over Pepe and his mother´s kitchen. Adam raised all the money himself and made a great contribution to 4 Walls. Thank you!!"

This came today via e-mail from Meghan Haslam, the Peace Corps volunteer in El Sauce who started the 4 Walls Project. Volunteers from Rochester and Arizona worked with her a few days while we were there and this is from an e-mail she sent them.

Adam indeed raised money for 2 walls — about $500 — through family, friends and his brothers of the Crows fraternity. Like all of the 4 Walls Projects, it was purely funded by people who banded together with a little to make a big difference.

I took this photo of Noel, Adam and Pepe Blanco a few hours before they finished the brick wall. I was pulling double duty with cameras — one for videos and one for pictures — so I could snap one of them looking at digital images of their work.

More needed training for Cerro Colorado

2009-01-22T14:11:00.003-06:00

The basket makers of Cerro Colorado will soon receive more training to hone their craft and production sizes, efficiency and other skills.
Geneseo's program is also teaching women in the Las Minitas community of Ocotal down the mountain — where Alfonso and the other farmers are launching tourism — to make baskets as well.
This is Angela, showing off her finished set of set-inside baskets.

An important initiative that's working

2009-01-22T13:50:00.006-06:00

Yadira Castillo holds the pinky-thick bundle of pine needles against the body of the basket she has already finished, wraps deep red thread around it and pulls tight. Wrap, pull tight. Wrap, pull tight.
Seven layers in, she has several hours of work left to finish her latest masterpiece, made of needles shed by the tall pines that grow on the mountain and nylon that Kellan brings from Léon and Managua every few months.
She has lived in Cerro Colorado for eight years and before that, another remote community. There is no public transportation to the top of the peak. When the women of deliver their finished baskets to Kellan in El Sauce, they walk down a path three to four hours or fill a recycled sack and ride down on horseback.
From the main church you can see the area of Cerro Colorado — somewhere in the woods in the highest point of the peak — but most people, even in El Sauce, have never been here.
Castillo and the other women and their families raise beans, corn and other small crops for subsistence and sell some of the extra. Kellan figures they make about $500 in the dry season and make it last through the wet.
Kellan helped arrange the women to be trained in basket making by artisans in Manuel Lopez, as a way to be more independent and earn their own incomes and supplement for their families.
Some women are just learning and the baskets are a little lopsided; others are large as basins with patterns of green, red, yellow and close-fitting tops. The more experienced women are helping to teach the newbies.
The Wizard of Clay in Honeoye, N.Y. buys some of the baskets to sell and Kellan has found another buyer in Texas. A friend of a family member saw them, he said, and loved them so much she wants to stock some.
Yacarely and Kellan have also begun to create marketing brochures for the baskets and identify markets in Managua and Léon. Geneseo senior Chad Salitan spent several weeks last year trekking up to Cerro Colorado to take pictures and devise the initial marketing plan.
"We want to find markets in the United States, where the women can sell the baskets at a higher price," says Kellan.
In the Managua tourist market, we spot a purse made by Yadira and her friends selling for about 300 cordobas — $15. I also see El Sauceno coffee in a fancy bag — another new market Kellan and Yacarely have made.
It's all very small scale; the hope is to expand the markets and the price the women receive for the sales.
It's a good investment. Pine trees grow naturally in Cerro, so it's a renewable and free resource. And, they don't have to harm the tree. They collect the needles that have fallen. The only cost is the thread. Kellan shops around for the best prices in the city and then sells the thread to the artists at cost.
Any money made from the sale of the baskets goes back into the kitty. The hope is to make this a sustainable project so the women see it's profit worthy and that they will decide, in time, to carry on on their own once they've established larger and more lucrative markets.
Maybe alumni who own shops or business students can help with identifying importers or markets, Kellan says.
So far the basket program has offered much hope to the women of Cerro Colorado.
"With the income we're going to have, we're going to be better because we can use that money to buy medicine," says Feliciana. Often, their families don't have any extra money after eating to buy medicine or visit a doctor. Beningna says her husband does not make enough money selling crops from their farm.
"There's a lot of opportunity," says Angela, an older woman who is hosting the meeting outside her home. Kellan and Yacarely are talking about the upcoming Cristo Negro and tourism fair and the baskets they are making to sell at the booth. "We can have material and we can use it, no problem."
It's a real opportunity, says Catalina, for women like her, who have no husband. "The money I get from this is helping me care for my family," she says.
Traditionally, the men are breadwinners and women care for the home and family. Typically, the women don't have money of their own. Yacarely also sees the basket initiative as a way for them to become more independent and have their own source of income. It's vital for women like Catalina.

The simple life

2009-01-21T14:20:00.006-06:00

On Meredith's final day with Yuritza, the remote community outreach nurse, we rode the bus a half or so outside El Sauce and then walked about an hour down a dirt path to a cluster of homes. We found Burnia at home, a young mother with a son and daughter. It took an hour for word to spread that we were in town and soon her family room was full of new mothers and their babies and some older children who needed a check-up, who had infections and needed antibiotics, had hernias from lugging wood ...

We all gathered in Burnia's room. As they waited for their turn, I contemplated how much "stuff" I have cluttering my apartment and how they made use of so little.

The contents of Burnia's home:

2 hammocks strung across the family room with rope
3 plastic buckets
1 bed
1 cracked mirror

5 stickers over the bedroom door, peeling off
4 plastic chairs you may have on your patio
40 planks of wood stacked and doubling as a chair
1 handmade wooden bench
1 table
2 election posters
1 plastic pitcher that has seen better days
1 pot, charred black
4 plastic cups
1 car battery that looks like it powers a TV
1 teddy bear table cloth
5 pairs of shoes
3 shirts, all with tiny holes
1 yellowed baby blanket, the design worn off
2 barrettes
1 jar of nail polish
1 stick deodarant, which tiny Marco is using as a drum on the dirt floor

Sonia, Meredith's host mother

2009-01-21T13:42:00.006-06:00

Sonia Rocha has welcomed 11 Geneseo students through her home's front doors, cooking and cleaning for them, offering them a room of their own and company while they are in El Sauce.

The company and being able to know about their lives are the best parts, she says.

"It's not just the American culture but other cultures, too, because they have all been different places," she says.

Meredith spent last spring studying in Spain. El Sauce is much different; the people are more welcoming and laid back. She says she doesn't need to worry about saying the wrong thing or making a social faux pas.

Like the other host families Kellan and Yacarely arrange for students, Sonia is paid about $12 a day. It includes three meals per day. Kellan has a small pool of families to work with, honed from his own experience coming down two times before taking over full time and others' experiences. He says they choose the families who like to spend time with the students and really want them there. They are not necessarily the "best homes" in town, but the best matches.

"They come to help the poorest people of El Sauce," says Sonia about her affection for the program.

Sonia has lived her entire life in El Sauce and knows the needs. Most work is needed in the country she says, like the communities Meredith is visiting with the healthcare worker. There's a lack of health care, she says, and safe water. Most people drink from community wells or collect water in pails from rivers and streams. Many of the patients at the El Sauce health center have stomach problems from bacteria in the water. Living without plumbing and in rough conditions are the toughest on young kids and the elderly, says Sonia; there's no real system to help older people.

A retired librarian, her husband, Alberto, works in the mayor's office, with a master's degree in cattle production. She usually doesn't eat with Meredith but always sits down to talk about the day and exchange ideas.

"They come and they look at things differently," says Sonia. For example, one student made the simple observation that five or six people live in two or one room in homes; the homes aren't big enough for the size of the family.

"I've lived here my whole life. That's how I grew up. I never looked at it that way, but after they said that, I thought, well, I guess they are right."

She says she tries to share typical Nicaraguan culture with Meredith, especially the diet. She likes to make "indio viejo," or "old indian," with hand-ground corn and pulled beef and other things they always eat.

Kellan also stayed with her, years ago. Now they are close friends. He's actually moving in to their house next door so he can have a friendly neighbor and more time to visit. Sonia knows the Geneseo program well.

"It is very good because all of the programs you have are not lucrative for you, but good for the people," she says. There are several nonprofits working in El Sauce but some seem to have an agenda or work for what's good for them instead of designing programs based on what El Saucians say they need.

On top of the "mirador" in Ocotal

2009-01-19T18:33:00.002-06:00

Alfonso lent me his hat at the lookout, or "mirador," in Ocotal, on the highest ridge, with pine trees, a narrow and rocky horse and walking path and a view of hundreds of miles. To the east, it was endless plains and mountains.
Everyone should be able to have a picture like this, I think.

Ileana, one of the first English students

2009-01-19T18:17:00.003-06:00

When the six Geneseo students came to her restaurant door, Ileana Rivera wanted to help them but didn’t know how.
They stood outside; she wondered why they didn’t come in. When they finally entered they waited in the middle of the room, whispering and talking to each other. She knew they didn't speak Spanish. She didn’t know a lick of English.
“They were just standing in the middle and I thought, ‘What am I going to tell them?’” Ileana remembers. “Then I approached them and made a lot of hand gestures.”
She managed to figure out that they were waiting for her to tell them Cafetin River’s was open and for her to push tables together so they didn’t have to split up. In El Sauce, people just stroll in and take a seat. Since most businesses are in people’s private homes — sometimes with the living room attached — the Geneseo entourage weren’t sure how it worked. Ileana realized she was in a cultural divide but couldn’t communicate to alleviate their stress. It was, as they say, an “a-ha moment.”
“I knew that at least I needed to start on the basics to communicate,” says Ileana. “I have my business and I need to have a good service. I felt really embarrassed because they said later that they were not well attended. That’s when I started to think I need to learn English.”
Another time, two Geneseo students came for lunch. She couldn’t understand what they were ordering, “so I just made them what I think is best. Everyone likes chicken,” she says. That turned out better. They loved it.
Ileana was one of the first residents to come to Kellan’s English classes in El Sauce in 2006. There was no Geneseo office on the main street then. The mayor, Ervertz Delgadillo, offered the meeting room in the government office for nighttime classes.
English classes were offered off and on, according to availability, until last May. Now they are full time, and Ileana is in her chair three times a week practicing her present tenses and making presentations about her life, Nicaragua and sometimes, singing songs to perfect pronunciation.
She laughs, along with her daughter, Melba, who is leaning on the cash counter as we talk in the rocking chairs, and says: “My family tells me an old parakeet can never learn to speak.”
It’s really hard to put the words and sentences together in conversation, says Ileana, but she’s come a long way. If we were to walk into Cafetin River’s now, she can talk with basic words “and give you what you need.”
“She didn’t know anything when she first came,” says Kellan. “I think she knew ‘Hello.’”
With more Geneseo students coming to El Sauce and more volunteers for the 4 Walls Project, Ileana sees it as a vital business investment, too. If visitors are looking for a place to eat and hang out, and the other owners can’t communicate and she can, they will come to Cafetin River’s.
She’s learned several times that you need an advantage to make it in El Sauce, where unemployment hovers at least at 40 percent. Ileana and her husband, Zidar, were married when she was 16. Her first daughter, Jahoska saw first light, as the El Sauce people say, when she was just 17. They were butchers, killing the cows and selling their meat on the same day in a small “carneceria,” or meat shop. At first they were one of only a few meat shops. When more moved in, business slowed. They sold cream and cheese instead. The same thing happened.
“We would have a lot of loss, with cheese that didn’t sell going bad,” she says.
Ileana experimented with her oven and found a new talent. Baking.
“When I learned that it was good and the bread was delicious, I took the bread to a family member’s store and sold it and bought a bigger oven,” she says. She sold more and took a lot of custom orders. “No one has taught me how to do it. I did it on my own. I can learn it myself.”
When the cheese went belly up, she opened Cafetin Rivers. That was eight years ago. The Riveras make it work, supplementing the income with her cake and bread orders. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can order dinner too. Ileana is famous for her “muy rico” food. Very rich.
Always laughing and having a good time, Ileana asked me to please visit her sometime when the interview was over. On Thursday, she spent the morning cooking a special lunch for us. Instead of eating in the restaurant room, she set a table in her own home with a big dish of cannelonis Nicaraguan style — with a sweet tomato-cream sauce stuffed with chicken, pepper and salt. We ate two helpings before dipping into a pudding dessert.
Ileana has been with Kellan since day one and promises to stay with it.
“I don’t want to get tired of going to class because I really think I’m going to learn,” she says.

Nicaragua continues.

2009-01-19T12:22:00.003-06:00

We are back and not necessarily happy about it. Adam, Meredith and myself felt at home in El Sauce and didn't want it to end.

With that said, I was able to only put in about half of the revelations, events and interesting people we met during the blog because we were so busy and absolutely everything was a new experience, worthy of note.

Therefore, I will continue the El Sauce blog for the next week, dedicating the time to share with you, dear readers, profiles on the inspiring people we met during our time in El Sauce, and more of the moments that have shaped our future insights.

Please stay tuned. Some of the best is yet to come.

Bright lights, big city.

2009-01-18T03:00:00.000-06:00

Tonight, we had dinner at a typical Nicaraguan restaurant, then walked down to a little amusement park in a dirt field, between the La Union supermarket and a bank alongside the busy highway, where it seems the old carnival rides from the United States go to die.

Here they are maintained and running and open every Saturday night for families.

We bought some tickets, a buck a pop, and went for the purple swinging machine — it goes up and over, like riding the hands of a clock.

The bar came down and "Imagine," started to play, the same song the English students sang to us, Moises and Enrique on the piano and guitar.

We were swinging and at the top, when you pause before the momentum pulls you around, I looked out at the lights of miles of Managua. A little girl was hollering up to us from the dirt below, shimmying in her sandals and pink shirt and we were hollering at the top of our lungs and waving our hands and I thought: is life really this good?

Bond.

2009-01-18T01:02:00.002-06:00

Adam in the van, leaving El Sauce:
"I remember driving in here, I was so worried. I didn't know what to expect. Now it's home number three."
Two being Geneseo.

Lake Niacragua

2009-01-18T01:00:00.000-06:00

Granada is one of the most popular tourism spots in Nicaragua. There's a beautiful colonial yellow church on the main square and a long street of hotels, restaurants and tour offices in red, yellow, green and pink. There's actually tourists there, which we all found weird to see after being in El Sauce, where we were "it." We also felt like the street seemed a little ... fake. Signs were posted in English and O'Shea's was offering mashed potatoes and Irish beer. That was nice, but not Nicaragua. These people were missing something; we found it.
We also took a boat ride of some of the 365 tiny islands in Lake Nicaragua, formed by one of the times the Masaya Volcano blew. Rich homes with giant roofs poking out of the trees were on islands beside small, wooden homes owned by families who have had them for decades or centuries, and one of them? Is Monkey Island. A vet helped out some monkeys who were being let go from a zoo, and he gave them a mini sanctuary. We pulled right up to them for a look as they scampered out on the branches, looking for a handout.
We convinced the driver to stop so we could leap into the lake for a quick dip — how many times can you swim in Lake Nicaragua?!!

Masaya Volcano

2009-01-18T00:46:00.004-06:00

Volcano Masaya's crater once stretched more than 3 miles, a piece of geological history you can see standing on top and gazing out over the hardened lava field. Over time, other eruptions began to fill it in. Now, you can hike over a ridge and see another crater, where trees have bloomed and blossomed. The main crater is a massive cauldron of sulphur, dancing up into the sky and sometimes coating your lungs when the breeze is right.
It is massive.
One hundred and seventy five steps gets you a view of the entire crater and the landscape beyond, and a look up at a very large cross. It commemorates the Spanish, who came here and believed the crater was a gateway to hell when they bore witness to it.
There is a chain of volcanoes in Nicaragua, all visible to us most of the time.

Welcome pilgrims

2009-01-18T00:30:00.004-06:00

Welcome pilgrims, who have come for days on your carts.
So were the opening words by the El Sauce town leaders, as we crowded in front of the mayor's office for the official "ox and cart" procession.
The town has prepared for a week for the religious festival, one of the most important in Nicaragua, to celebrate the Cristo Negro — or black Christ.
Catholics from all over the country and Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador flood into the town for a week of processions, Mass and possible miracles.
Some people from the countryside come in with ox and carts, traveling days and bringing their chickens with them for food or knocking on doors and asking gifts of food and water. Everyone comes to the mayor's office, in front of the church, to welcome their sacrifice for coming.
In front of us was a small cart, stuffed with hay for padding, a chicken resting inside and a small boy sitting in a plastic chair, roped to the side of the cart. An extra seat.
Behind them, two giant oxen tethered to a family of four.
A mariachi band played, after having entertained the pilgrims all night at the edge of town. Girls in white flowing dresses and bright flowers in their hair danced with baskets, welcoming the travelers.
"I'm so glad we got to see that," said Meredith.

6 a.m.

2009-01-17T01:00:00.000-06:00

Little Marcello, how I found him when I walked out of my room early in the morning.

Oh yes. We were dirty.

2009-01-16T22:00:00.000-06:00

Adam, fresh off of the volcano after we sledded down in it. We have a debate going — is he more Johnny Depp in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," or a very filthy extra in the TV show "CHiPS?"

Buenas suerte, com todos.

2009-01-16T15:00:00.002-06:00

Last evening was our final English class in El Sauce before we go to Managua.
It wrapped up with a rowdy game of "hot seat" — Team Left and Team Right had a member sit, back to the white board, facing their teammates. One person chose a piece of paper with a word or famous person or place on it from Adam and Meredith and wrote it on the board.
The "hot seater" had to guess what it was from the clues. I don't remember who won but the room was full of hints, hollers and yelps of joy when someone got it right.
"They make movies here," said Enrique when it was my turn.
"Hollywood!" I said, as Team Left threw their hands for claiming such a fast victory.
Michael Jordan was guessed with one word — basketball — and Mike Tyson was a sure bet with a tug of the ear and a chomping gesture.
I had taken photos of the class in front of the small chapel during the day. It was lunch hour but more than a dozen students walked from work to the town center, rode their bikes or took a bike taxi to be included. I forgot my computer to show them the results, so Kellan ran to my house to get it.
While he was gone, I thought they were waiting. Instead, the class all pitched in money to buy ice cream and throw us a thank-you celebration.
"To all the visitors from Geneseo, we have bought this ice cream with a lot of appreciation for you. Thank you for being with us and teaching us," said Yeremelitha before the group to applause.
We all said a little something.
"Thank you all it's been a great two weeks. It's been a life-changing experience," said Meredith.
We exchanged e-mail addresses with all the students who have access to computers. For most, we exchanged phone numbers with the hopes we can stay in touch and be there when they are fluent!
Ileana hugged me and invited me to stay at her house next time I come to El Sauce; "we hope to see you another year," many said to us as they shook our hands, hugged us and blew the traditional kiss beside our faces in farewell.

Ocotal

2009-01-16T12:00:00.001-06:00

We opted to be the second group of guinea pigs for the Ocotal tourism initiative. I don't think they really need any more work.
The other group loved it and so did we.
Even the ride up — standing braced in the back of an old pick-up truck with roll bars — was an amusement park stunt ride, crossing streams and picking up farmers along the way.
Alfonso, the leader of the cooperative, showed us around his mountain farm, coffee plants growing between the trees and beside the footpaths on the side of the peak. They pick the beans, hand shuck them in a hand-cranked machine that looks like it was invented with the cotton gin, then leave them to ferment for about 24 hours to dry.
They dry them laid out on plastic, then shed the final skin. We took turns trying out the mortar and pestle — "it's the artisan, old way," Alfonso told us as Adam hammered away at the beans in the stone.
His wife had a wood fire going in the cooking shelter and we helped turn the beans over the open flame with a giant wooden spoon until the smell of coffee filled the farm.
We hand ground the beans the relished the aroma before toasting Alfonso with a freshly brewed cup of coffee we helped make.
Man, it never tasted so good.

Hey, did my lungs just pop?!

2009-01-16T12:00:00.000-06:00

Climbing the Cerro Negro volcano was so heart-pounding (literally) and awe inspiring we must share more photos.
This is of our group after having finally made it to the top ridge. Meredith is the final silhouette and Adam is to her right.
I'm in the back taking the photo and because I thought my lungs would burst through my chest. It's very steep and in some sections the rocks are loose; you slide in the ash, one step forward, two steps back.
Atop the ridge, to our left was a view of green, green, green in the east. In front of us, somewhere Managua, and to our right, a simmering cauldron just below the hot rock surface, white and yellowy grey formations breathing out sulphuric acid. Lean down and touch the volcano rock and it's warm, like just-baked brownies.
The wind nearly ripped the boards we were hauling out of our hands and we bent to keep our momentum.
The other photo is the victory photo on top, of course. In our group we joined by Israelis, Australians, a Columbia doctorate student, Dutch and many others from countries all over the world.

A welcome surprise - and more interest

2009-01-16T11:00:00.000-06:00

Interviewing Kellan over breakfast at the Lazybones hostel in Léon, a woman walked up, saying she overheard us talking about Geneseo's work in El Sauce. She is Australian and riding her bike from Mexico through Central and South America, collecting stories about people who are trying to help communities and create bonds among cultures. Kellan told her about his full-time presence in El Sauce for two and a half years, and the economic development and tourism programs he's developed with the community. No one has "graduated" in traditional terms from the English classes, he said, but we have students have come three times a week for years and are using it to improve their career and their employment skills, like Manuel, who pedals a bike taxi for, at times, 10 cordobas (about 50 cents) a day and has to go to school only on Saturdays so he can work. He can't pay for glasses and gives all his money to his mother to care for the house and his brothers. Without a lot of skills, English can be his ticket to a job as a guide or working in the mayor's office or with a nonprofit organization. Claire asked the way to El Sauce, in case she can stop by. She's writing books on her trip and wants to put the Geneseo story on her Web site.
Check her out at Cycling for Cohesion

The fair starts - and our first tours!

2009-01-16T10:00:00.001-06:00

The Cristo Negro fair starts today, which means the first El Sauce tours are in full swing. This morning Adam, Meredith and I are helping Kellan, Yacarely and Irene set up the Geneseo and tourism cooperative booth at the mayor's office — the hub for 30,000 religious pilgrims and festival goers for the next several days. Irene will be selling handmade baskets from Cerro Colorado, whom Geneseo supports, as well as coffee from Alfonso and the farmers in Ocotal. Tours to Ocotal, including that long drive up the mountain and a tour of the farm and hiking are 80 Cordobas — $4. Yesterday, a man stopped Yacarely and I outside the mayor's office on our way to an interview: He wanted to come and buy a ticket to Ocotal. I think we will do very well. Our last run through of the local tours was yesterday. Visitors can take the bike, walking or church tour all weekend. People have arrived from all over Central America. Yesterday, the mariachi band i met was being driven to a plot of land outside of town by the mayor's office so they could serenade the "peregrinos," or pilgrims as they are called, overnight. Many families have a tradition of driving ox and cart for days to reach here. Today the whole town will go to the street Adam's family lives on to welcome the families with the carts to town. We were supposed to leave for Managua earlier, but we've asked to stay later so we can see the giant welcome. What's in Managua? All the good stuff is here. No one wants to leave.

No more sleep.

2009-01-16T09:41:00.000-06:00

The families who travel days by ox and cart from all over the countryside have arrived in El Sauce, serenaded by a mariachi band and hundreds of townspeople cheering in the street.
Finally, all of the families who have been setting up shop in makeshift booths along the street for a week are settled, sleeping on cardboard and under sheets in their stalls at night.
The bells for Mass rang at 5 a.m. again today, with the religious pilgrims making their way to the sanctuary from the street along the cobblestone path on their knees in reverence to the miracles they believed have occurred here, and their faith.
Tomorrow, the priest will lead a procession of thousands from the small chapel where our English class posed today, followed by lines of people hours long to view the beloved Cristo Negro.
Sandal-clad kids hawk cotton candy in hand-tied bags, a woman starts selling her hot dogs from the Virgin of Guadalupe cart at 7 a.m. sharp and passerby can find used dishes, jeans, hand-picked herbs, dried sugar candies shaped like birds and ladies in big poofy dresses.
The roosters yell at the dogs who bark, who sing along to the music in the streets.
The fair has come.
There is no more sleep in El Sauce.

Us, after the boarding

2009-01-16T09:24:00.003-06:00

Of course there is more photos of volcano boarding. When will we ever ever get to sled down a volcano again? We'd never even heard of such a thing. "I've done more here in two weeks than I've ever done in my life," Meredith told me as we walked down the lookout on top of the mountain peak at Ocotal the other day. "Me neither," said Adam. "I've done things here I would never do," she said. "I'm much more of a daredevil." Yes. And it's all good.

Cuaguigicil

2009-01-16T09:00:00.004-06:00

In this tiny community an hour's walk from the nearest bus stop on the one road to Léon, Yuritza visits every two months to check the overall health of the youngest babies, toddlers and kids, and to provide medicine she can.
It's the only access to health care the families have, unless they walk an hour to the road and take the bus into town to the health center.
We walk with her and Diana, the community contact, jumping rocks in streams and boiling in the morning heat in a green valley until we see the first homes. No one is there, so we try a few more until we find Burnia.
Crossing the barbed wire fence to keep the cows in, we pass a small flock of very big turkeys and are cackled a little lullaby by red, gold and black roosters and their hens, passing sleeping speckled piglets and their mothers to get to her house — two rooms and an open kitchen with an earthen oven.
We wait for news to spread that we are here.
It's a long hour in the heat and then they arrive — the houses are very far apart. There's no phones, no running water or cars and somehow everyone knows Yuritza has come.
Meredith sits at the table with her, drops, bottles of medicine and tablets spread out before them. Their first patient is a young boy who may have a hernia from lifting. Maybe hauling and cutting wood or carting wet clothes in buckets up from the river down the hill.
Yuritza suggests the family go into El Sauce for another look. Others get vitamins and drops and no one wants the vaccinations. Polio and deadly forms of malaria are teeny drops into their mouths — the malaria is even sweet "They like it," says Yuritza — but the "five in one" is a sharp jab with the a needle.
Three boys wait in the corner, scared to be the first to sit in the hot seat.
After a while they go and are followed by a little girl. Meredith holds the cotton on her leg after the shot as she cries, but soon forgets all about it as she and Marco waddle around, unsteady on their feet, playing with a deodorant stick, wood and a plastic cup.
I've noticed barely any kids have toys here. Or none. I wonder what they do, as I don't see any books either; then I look outside and the older ones are chasing each other around, making their own fun.
Our arrival is also diversion. Every time a person walks by or we drive into the mountains, kids are standing at the road to watch the new spectacle.
Meredith and Yuritza care for about 10 children throughout the morning and early afternoon. Burnia welcomes them all into the room and they visit, waving their health charts to find a breeze. Burnia also offers me a trial run of her hammock. Two are strung up in the room for some family members to sleep. Three more likely sleep in the bed I saw in the back room.

Mariachis

2009-01-16T08:56:00.004-06:00

The "peregrinos," or pilgrims, have started arriving. Last night, Nicaraguans from all over the remote countryside began setting up camp outside of the town limits. Today, they will enter the city in a procession of ox-drawn carts, carrying their homes in there for weeks. Some travel several days to get here.
The mayor's office arranged for the local mariachi band to play through the night for and with them.
I caught them as they waited for their ride, outside the famous Cristo Negro church.

Imagine.

2009-01-16T08:40:00.000-06:00

Our English students give presentations in class to practice. Every day, someone sings. Tonight, Moises surprised us by bringing in instruments. He played the piano and Enrique played the guitar for "Imagine." Everyone joined in.
I admit it. I got choked up.

English class

2009-01-15T15:52:00.004-06:00

Meredith, Kellan, Adam and Yacarely with some of our English class. Ileana, in orange and in front, owns a cafetín, or bar and restaurant in town and was motivated to learn English because there have been times when Geneseo students have come in and she couldn't communicate. Manuel, in the back on the right in the orange shirt, is a teenager who rides a bike taxi for work during the week, so he goes to school on Saturday. He hopes to go to America to work. Moses is a musician who wows the class with his versions of songs, Trinidad is a lawyer and engineer. Other students are hair stylists, construction workers, directors of nonprofit organizations that work with cattle, agriculture, nutrition and other improvements and veterinarians.

Time. You need a lot of it here.

2009-01-15T13:00:00.001-06:00

I am beginning to appreciate the concept of time here. We are so used to things happening immediately and at convenience.
The one thing I knew I wanted to do was interview the women in Cerro Coloardo, way on top of the mountain we can see from the streets of El Sauce, who make the handmade pine-needle baskets.
When we discussed this at Geneseo, I think we all imagined that I would get into a car and just drive up the road to the town and get out.
Pronto.
Here's how it really works:
Kellan had to arrange a truck from the mayor's office to take us up there and had to find a driver and negotiate a price. Most people don't have cars. We rode standing up in the back of a 1960s pick-up truck, outfitted with metal roll bars on the sides so we could grip for dear life and not get tossed out over the edge and tumble down the mountain as the driver navigated dirt roads with big rocks, twist and turns. We crossed three rivers in the truck and slammed against the back with every pitch. We were a mountain bus. We picked up farmers holding rice sacks, little girls in flip flops and their Sunday best holding their mothers hands and anyone else on the side of the road who wanted relief from the day's walk up to Las Minitas and Cerro Colorado.
There's no public transporation so they either ride a horse or hike, three hours each way.
The driver — who we dubbed "Stunt Driver" — wasn't sure the road to Cerro Colorado was actually passable. Sometimes it is not and it's been six months since anyone drove there. A bit from the cluster of homes, it was not passable.
We get out and walk a half mile down the path on rocks the size of footballs and loose stones.
At Angela's house, we waited a half hour for the other basket makers to arrive on foot or horse. We then walked back up the half mile, rode a half hour in the pick-up truck to Las Minitas, where we visited Alfonso's coffee farm, took a horseback ride and saw all of Nicaragua from the very tip top of the peak.
It was an hour and a half down again, gripping the bars and surfing with squats to brace ourselves.
That meeting took a week of prep, five hours of standing up in a pick-up truck and remembering to purchase thread for their artisan works last week in Léon, because you can't get it here.

Volcano boarding - for those who want to cut to the sledding

2009-01-15T10:29:00.004-06:00

Léon sights

2009-01-15T10:00:00.009-06:00

We were in Léon on a cultural field trip (and to climb up then sled down a volcano!) over the weekend. The oldest cathedral in Central America is there. It took 113 years to build it. It's amazing, especially the roof.
Across the street is a museum of the Sandistan rebellion, which overtook the dictator Somoza. It is in an old building that had minor damage during the war. A man who may have fought himself in the 1970s guided us, providing history and personal stories about the war, how the university students and everyday residents took up arms for their beliefs.
It was really interesting to hear the Nicaraguan history from a local, and not filtered through a media line or politician. Everyone has their own bent but this way we have the local one too.
People are very proud here that they freed themselves from the Samoza rule. He was elected but then wouldn't leave. His family kept power until the people took it back. It wasn't what they imagined for their democracy.
There were elections, said Yacarely, but only for requirements. They weren't legitimate. She said her grandmother explained it to her this way:
"You would go vote, but people would know if you voted for Somoza because they would put a brown ink on your finger. If you voted for someone else they would put blue ink on your finger. Then you'd be in trouble."
The view from on top of the museum of the cathedral was one of the best I've seen.
At night, families, teenagers, everyone hangs out in the streets. There is not a lot to do and it's cultural. Even at the Eskimo ice-cream store, it's a sea of humanity. Families out for a snack, sitting on benches, a Muslim family smoking a hookah on the sidewalk — a parade of Nicaraguan life.
Here are some photos of Léon.

More in ENCompass

2009-01-15T09:45:00.003-06:00

I've also been writing stories for the College's ENCompass online newsletter. The first is about Adam building the wall with Pepe (his first day) and the second is about the meeting on the Ocotal mountain with the coffee and tourism cooperative. Have a look!

Breaking news!

2009-01-13T20:43:00.004-06:00

Kellan, Yacarely and Irene had a meeting with El Sauce's tourism commission today. I was there when they walked out, elated. The Millennium Challenge Corporation surprised them with an announcement — the corporation is going to pay to send 20 people from El Sauce to a community that has a successful tourism program so they can learn the ins and outs of what to do.
Kellan, Yacarely, Irene, four reps from the mayor's office and 13 people from the Ocotal community will go to San Ramon for 2 days. The corporation will pay for everything.
"It's a surprise. I didn't expect it," said Kellan, adding that he was happy, smiling and giggling when they announced the news. "It's going to give them even more motivation. We've known that people believed in the program, but this is the first time we've really been giving anything."
Until now, Geneseo and the farmers have been doing all initiatives with no investments.
When we tell Mauricio tomorrow he will be very happy. That's him in the photo and we are all going up there to witness the tour ourselves. Mauricio says it was his dream to bring tourism to Ocotal. He donated part of his farm so the community can build a rustic handicraft, coffee and tourist center and cabins. This is when he arrived at the cooperative meeting.

These are the people in my neighborhood

2009-01-12T23:00:00.001-06:00

Meredith, Adam, Kellan and Yacarely are at Hotel Blanco having some fried beef and chicken for dinner with Tim McMahon and two volunteers from Rochester. I walked back to the office to write the ENCompass online story.

As I wished a good "Adios" to the woman on the corner selling oranges for the fourth time today and an English student who pedaled past stopped to holler "Hello Kristine, See you tomorrow!" ... I had this thought:

If a student wants to experience a new culture really unlike their own while trying to make a difference and do something totally unique than what they'd ever do on their own, this is the way to do it.

In big cities, you can get lost. Each face that walks past may never be seen again. It's like being an extra in a film.

El Sauce is small enough that the strangers have become neighbors, the students we teach English to stop to talk to us in the street and it feels like I've been here much longer. I ran into Wilfredo walking to dinner. He's another English student, a veterinarian technician, and he showed me how he was fixing his motorbike. Last night, Ileana invited me into her "cafetin" and I sucked down a very tasty and sugary orange Fanta as we practiced her English and she said she'd make lunch this week.

No one has much money so there's not a lot to do. Therefore everyone hangs out in the church lot or in the street. Entire families, playing checkers or sitting in rocking chairs, seeing who goes past.

We work with them, we get to know them — like the guy behind the counter at the corner deli, little by little.

El Sauce is a hot, dusty struggle sometimes; they live a tough life. But it is full of life and really warm people, who always go out of their way to smile at me, to work with me on my broken Spanish to communicate and who want to make it better.

Yeah. This is the way to go.

First tour

2009-01-12T18:47:00.003-06:00

The mountain community of Ocotal recently started a tourism initiative to offer horseback riding, hiking to a lookout on top of the peak and tours of their organic coffee farms. Yacarely and Kellan and Irene, a Peace Corps worker, are helping them organize and start a cooperative that encompasses the coffee growers and those interested in tourism.
Today, we had a meeting on the mountain, in Las Minitas, with the farmers to talk about the progress and their first tour. Last Friday, the volunteers from Rochester's Ciudad Hermana were the first tourists in Ocotal.
"I think they (the farmers) liked it more than the tourists and they loved it," said Irene.
About 30 people came to Alfonso Martinez's farm to meet, some riding their horses one hour to come. Thirteen new residents joined the cooperative today based on the success of the first tour.
"The first tour was a historic day in Las Minitas," says Alfonso, the leader. "For me and the community, it was really a special day. There was a lot of joy."
The photo is of a member of the new tourism/coffee cooperative.
On Wednesday, they will show me around their plantations and homes for the flavor, including, I hope, some homemade, roasted coffee.

Well behaved

2009-01-12T18:34:00.002-06:00

Alida Aroztigui, Adam's host mother, says she opens her house to Geneseo students "because they are respectful, polite and well-educated. If they were rude, I would not be a part of it. That's really important."
Alida rents another room to a Nicaraguan male student and runs a women's clothing store next door. They are all small stores here and people watch them from their front room in case someone comes in.
Alida recently broke her hip and is recuperating. She used to live in the states and traveled all over Central America but she doesn't get out of the house that much now. Her six sisters and brothers, who all live nearby or next door, visit often. She likes the visitors.
"It feels good to have someone in the house I can take care of and they're good company too," she says.
She says Adam is very "tranquilo," or laid back. He doesn't complain about anything and likes all the food she cooks. "He's always saying he's hungry," she says. He's also stocking up on reggaeton music, buying DVDs.
Laughing, she says she has also advised him to wait until he's 30 to get married. It's ok to date, but he's still young.

Wellness

2009-01-11T22:07:00.005-06:00

I went with Meredith on her first day of being an apprentice to Yuritza, who is training to become a nurse. She works with the health center in El Sauce as a civic requirement to earn her license. Several days a week Yuritza travels to remote communities on the outskirts of El Sauce — including one that can only be reached with a two-hour walk — and meets women with young children. She weighs newborns through kids aged 2 once a month, making sure they are not overweight or underweight. If they are, she provides medicine if needed and nutrition tips for wellness. The program is free.
In Huge Arevalo, mothers have registered 16 babies for the program
Getting off the bus, we walked a quarter mile into the bush on a path, worn from many feet walking over rocks in the stream and through the brush to the one road to El Sauce.
At Yermina's house, we greeted her and her family. It's a small home made of adobe and wood, with an open central room. There are sacks of rice in a corner and a sheet separates the bedroom beyond.
We waited here for the mothers to arrive. From this view, it looked like we were on a solitary plot of land with just the cows, pigs and chickens trotting or clucking by. The houses are spread out; I could only see one or two roofs in the distance.
Yurtiza said the women are busy in the morning doing chores, so we waited for them to wash clothes in the stream, sweep and begin to cook for the day.
Ana Francis was grinding corn, so I helped. We got to know the family as well, and I wandered out into the field to talk with Yermina's husband, Juan Luis, and Daniel, Ronald and Jose as they pushed over big triangle piles of dried wheat, cut it with machetes and sifted the crop with homemade wooden platforms.
It was nice to have time to get to know the family, and more about the program.
Yuritza sees each child until they are 2 years old, filling out a wellness card each time the mother visits.
Our first visitor was Leder Ernesto, who is none too happy to see the blue cloth sling Yuritza's community organizer, Maria Jose Reyes, wanted to put him in. His mom undressed him to his undies and they slipped him inside the sling to be weighed, him wailing.
The scale is a lightweight model from Unicef, which we hung from a tree. We simply put the baby in the sling, waited for them to settle down, and checked the number.
He was 10.6 pounds, which is about what he should be. Good news.
Yurtiza taught Meredith how to fill out the cards and how she keeps track of each child. They get a blue mark if they OK, red if they are under. Leder received a fat blue point.
The program, said our next mother, Marta Quiros, "helps a lot. It's helped me." It's hard to get to a doctor for check-ups and she was able to receive medicine when her daughter, Esterling, needed it.
As the other moms filtered in, we talked with Yermina's family about school, if we have family and kids. We also got to hold a little baby chick and be surprised that a dove lets them hold and pet it.
A while later, Juan Luis and the men and boys came in from the field.
It's was a front-row view of rural Nicaragua and an invitation into country life.
The family doesn't have much and will eat most of all they produce.
"The quality of life is high," said Meredith, despite poverty. Yermina and her family are welcoming and seem happy.

First time on a public bus

2009-01-11T22:05:00.002-06:00

This is from when Meredith and I went on the bus with Yuritza, a health-care worker, to a remote community outpost. It was our first experience on the bus.

We board the school bus and take a seat in front of Yuritza, who is training to become a nurse. She works with the El Sauce health center, working with remote communities in family planning and baby wellness. We're going to Huge Arevalo with her, a community with 200 families who rely on mostly subsistence farming of corn, beans, wheat and other crops. Paint is peeling off the overhead storage shelves and a crack stretches top to bottom on the windshield. A sign above the driver says "this bus has one master — Jesus Christ. Our mission is to serve him."
The plaque on the entryway reminds us its our bus, so take care of it.
I flashback to kindergarten, when I stood outside my house waiting for my first ubs ride, my bus number pinned to my shirt so I couldn't forget it.
One of these yellow giants could be very bus that took me to school in Honeoye Falls.
All the transport buses here are old U.S. school buses. The Blue Bird made in Georgia plaque and "Your child's safety is our business" signs are still on the dash.
It's our first bus ride in El Sauce.
Beside me is a young man I recognize from Kellan's basketball team. A grey-haired woman in flip flops is tapping her foot in the aisle as the mom in front of me pats the forehead of her baby daughter. Pulling out of the station, we're on our way and I feel like I'm in a neighbor's car. Or in the '80s. Eighties music is popular here. Air Supply plays big concerts and now I'm hearing Journey sing about being "forever yours, faithfully," as the driver and his assistant yell and wave friends we pass in the street. At times we stop so they can holler a better hello.
A few minutes later, the driver's assistant leans out, shakes a man's hand and hops off out of sight. A minute later he strides by carrying a tire iron and we feel him change the tire. Everyone waits patiently. After about five minutes the driver and his assistant hop back on and we're off.
No one says a word about it and no one seems to get upset. It's part of the process and we're going with the flow too.

Victory!

2009-01-11T21:30:00.002-06:00

Adam, Pepe and Noel finished the tall brick wall in Pepe's living room on Friday, before we left for Léon.
In the video, Adam talks about the accomplishment. It's his first wall and Pepe's ... well, no one knows how many Pepe's made. As a mason, he's built everything in houses and can't remember how many walls he's created.
Over the week, says Adam, they've learned to communicate well with each other and if they're not talking about cement and bricks, they joke or even ask political questions. Adam has also taken up buying tons of reggaeton CDs he hears on the job.
Adam also translates phrases in English. Pepe already knows a few: "How are you?" he asks, laughing.
On day five, the relationship is much different than the first time they picked up the crow bars to tear down the adobe.
"I have more confidence since we got to meet each other and know each other," says Pepe.
Communicating was not always easy, says Adam, but "Pepe is good at understanding my fragments now," says Adam.
When all else fails, they gesture.
Next week, the trio starts to replace the rotten wood on Pepe's kitchen ceiling.
"He's good help," Pepe says.

My family

2009-01-11T20:59:00.003-06:00

This is my host family in El Sauce. Xiomara volunteers in the main Catholic church every day and is now getting religious articles ready for sale for the giant festival of the Negro Cristo next week. She said she will take me on a tour before I leave.
Alejandro is 6 and little Marcello is 3, and they like to play with coconuts.

Nearly done. How it's done.

2009-01-10T12:00:00.001-06:00

Another brick in the wall

2009-01-09T10:59:00.003-06:00

Adam, Noel and Pepe finished the brick wall this morning after four and a half days of work. It was difficult to communicate at times, he says, but got easier over the week. "I don't speak correctly," says Adam, "but they understand me. I speak in fragments. And there's some phrases he knows in English that I translate." When we aren't talking about bricks and cement, says Adam, we talk about fun stuff — sports, music, making jokes. "Sometimes I translate lyrics to songs for him," says Adam. They also had a conversation about independence, when Pepe asked Adam what he thinks makes a free country. "We did that in Spanish," says Adam. "I couldn't believe I did that." We are now going to Léon for the weekend, to climb the Cerro Negro volcano and SLED DOWN IT. On Monday, Adam will help Pepe and Noel rebuild Pepe's kitchen ceiling. Meredith will again head to the remote health posts and I will go with her.
I took this photo of Adam and Noel yesterday, when they were nearing the finish line.

Hello to the English class!

2009-01-08T21:07:00.002-06:00

Adam, Meredith and Yacarely have the English students say hello to all of you in the states!

The video doesn't work? Link here

2009-01-08T10:46:00.004-06:00

Tim McMahon just gave Kellan another laptop, on loan from Geneseo for use in the office and for computer classes. As soon as he got it, he held it over his head in victory.
There's a handful of laptops here in the office, donated by Geneseo's CIT (technology) office. They are coveted items.

A visitor

2009-01-08T10:41:00.003-06:00

Tim McMahon just walked in with a laptop to give the office that has been donated. Yacarely came swaggering out with the presentation check for $10,000 for the tourism initiative in Ocotal. Victory!

Revealing the past

2009-01-08T09:56:00.002-06:00

Karen asked me if I wanted to see the cemetery for the town on the end of our bike tour. Sure, I said, why not? The cemeteries are much more ornate here, with homemade flower arrangements, hand-painted signs and bright colors that personalize the tombstones. Very affluent families have tombs in the shape of a house. Others are crosses made of pipe or wood with simple, hand-painted name signs and the date of their loved one's passing. We stop at her uncle's grave and she shows me the stone. He was a Sandinista and died fighting in the war in El Sauce. The city, she says, is still recovering from the war. There used to be a lot of commerce here. As a tourist you can embed yourself in the remotest of communities but you are so often an observer. Karen and the tour guides share their community with us.

El Sauce bike tour

2009-01-07T21:40:00.001-06:00

Karen, my bike tour guide, is a bit shy as we pedal through the morning streets past the municipal baseball stadium. Women in worn flip flops are outside sweeping away the night's dirt and tossing buckets of water to clear the area outside their doors of the street. Kellan gave Karen specific directions: Talk simply, use gestures and try whatever she needs to to communicate. Tours are geared toward tourists who speak some Spanish but not a lot, so I'm the perfect mock tour candidate. We're already thinking outside the box. Outside the old train station, Karen tells me about the line that used to run here. I don't know the word for train, but I get the gist. "Toot toot?" I ask her, pulling an imaginary horn. "Si! Toot toot" A shirtless man outside a horse and bridle shop hangs leather straps of orange and yellow outside the wooden front and dogs lope around sniffing the pavement. Outside of town we get on a trail that was once a train line, bringing cargo of chickens, cows, vegetables and many other things here. When the train stopped running, people took the tracks for use or to sale. Now it's a dirt path that runs north to south, lined on either side by banana trees and humble homes. The government provided land to homeless and very poor people and we are passing them now. The homes are extremely humble, made of adobe (mud, water and dung then dried), scraps of wood and sheets of plastic or sometimes all three. They have latrines with walls of plastic, outdoor adobe ovens and very few belongings. Everyone we pass smiles and says, "Adios." At a communal well, Kellan and Yacarely wash their faces and I spot frehshly-formed adobe drying in the sun. I ask the man to take his picture with his handiwork. I have never seen adobe before. On a bridge, a man is fishing with a net for dinner and often we stop to let other cyclists, women with bags and two young boys hauling a stack of firewood three feet high by. A boy on an ox-drawn cart rattles by, the oxen protesting in the heat. On the way back, we stop at the adobe man's house so I can see his homemade oven.

Taking things for granted

2009-01-07T19:00:00.001-06:00

It's easy to do when you live in a place where you can trudge through a foot of snow to your car and listen to the radio while the defroster works its magic on a 10-degree day, or take a hot shower any time you want. Little things make me or take notice of the conveniences small, large and seemingly huge now every day. Today, there was a funeral for an elderly man who died in the church. My host mother went to the service. A procession of loved ones carried the coffin through the streets and into the sanctuary.
Later, Yacarely told us that if someone dies Ocotal, the mountain community, the people must carry the coffin down the mountain road to El Sauce. Everyone gets buried here, in the cemetery on the edge of town.
Since there's no public transportation and most people in Ocotal walk here or come on horseback, it's the only way to do it. It takes hours.
I am also reminded daily in small ways that I am in "Nicaragua."
It is not often that a woman who has just turned the corner with a bag of purchased items on her head smiles and greets me while holding her dinner by its feet, the rooster looking at me.
In the office today, I looked up and an ox-drawn cart and driver creaked by. Twice.

2009-01-07T18:45:00.000-06:00

There is one item we all have on us at all times. Bottles of water.
I have never drunk so much water. I drink a liter of water and the second looks just as inviting as the first. My host mother squeezes fresh papaya, orange and passionfruit juice for me every morning, afternoon and evening. I drink it all. I'm drinking water now, as a matter of fact.

Adaptation

2009-01-07T18:30:00.000-06:00

It's day six and we are all adapting to our new surroundings.
Kellan was picking us each up at our houses in the morning, making sure we know our way around, even though we all live within four blocks of each other, including Kellan and the two Peace Corps workers who are here, Irene and Meghan. Now we find our own way around and are saying hello to the people we greet each morning. El Sauce is a pretty small town.
We are settling into a routine.
• Shower at night — the water gets turned off by the municipality around 6 a.m. each morning to conserve it. Some families have water longer, but you never know exactly when it will turn off.
Families stockpile a bucket of water for use during the day, to wash hands and other necessities. I have a jug shaped like a gasoline container full of water in my bathroom so I can wash my hands during break.
• Say goodbye when you pass someone, not hello — since you're not stopping to talk, it's a more polite greeting.
• Get used to the staring — People usually stare because we are the only "gringos" (foreigners) around, but it's not a bad stare. We're just unusual, though they see quite a bit of Geneseo volunteers come through. I see the same people each day and we nod hello and say "adios."
• We wake up around 6 a.m. and leave our respective host family houses to make it to the work sites by 7 a.m. Adam has lunch about noon and break for an hour, then it's back to work until 4 p.m.

Meredith was out today with a doctor and nurse at a remote health station, so she took the bus back into town around 2 p.m.
• If we have time, we have dinner with our families before English class at the New York School of English, the Geneseo busines and English school run by Kellan and Yacarely.
Adam and Meredith prepare for each day's class during the one or two hours of free time between jobs. The English class is very participatory — the students learn by speaking and interacting instead of reading boring grammar books, so it's a lot of fun.
Last night, the winning team that could thread the most sentences together in the shortest amount of time won bright blue Geneseo key chains. They are all working on pronunciation. They must be saying Geneseo twenty times a night now that we are here and they are asking us questions about ourselves, but the "G" here is a soft one. Like an "H." Everyone says it out loud and to themselves trying it out, and laughing as they take on different accents.
"Yeneseo?" says Ileana.
"Heneseo," says Luz, mumbling under her breath.
From the back is Henry. "Jenesee-o." I give him a thumbs up and he grins back.

Ocotal

2009-01-07T09:08:00.000-06:00

In addition to the English classes and business development initiatives Geneseo is working on in El Sauce, the College is working with the mayor, residents, organic farmers, craftspeople and others in the region to develop tourism.
Other remote communities have been successful and so can El Sauce, says Kellan and Yacarely.
People from those communities say El Sauce has more to offer in fact — the Los Peroles river we swam in last Sunday, a train line that is now a trail running north to south on the edge of town and the mountain communities of Ocotal.
Kellan and Yacarely are spearheading the campaign and have the support of all the leaders and community members.
Yacarely recently won a Millennium Challenge Corporation grant for $10,000 in supplies for Geneseo's business development plan. It is all happening in collaboration with the leaders in Ocotal; the entire community really.
Kellan and Yacarely are helping organize the first tours of Ocotal. The first tour is Friday, for a group of about six people from the Ciudad Hermana organization in Rochester, N.Y. including Tim McMahon. We just ran into them in a cafe. They are in the city one hour now.
Tim is one of the Geneseo residents who helped start the El Sauce relationship with Geneseo.
On Friday the Rochester group will go to Ocotal and tour an organic coffee plantation, ride horseback through the mountains and have lunch with a family.
I will go there Monday with Kellan and Yacarely and Irene, of the Peace Corps, and a brigade of leaders from El Sauce, including the mayor. They will meet with the coffee cooperative and decide who to add to the tourism initiative. On Wednesday, we will climb the 1,900 meters again to meet with the women who make pine-needle baskets and spend the day interviewing Ocotal residents.
In the future, they will build small bungalows for tourists to stay in and a tourism center where baskets and other handmade goods will be sold to help sustain the economy there — all on land generously donated by a resident.
It's a very poor area and people don't have much. In the beginning, tourists will stay with host families, much like we are in El Sauce. That way they also get to experience a typical Nicaraguan day with, I am told, amazing sunsets and a view from on high on top of the mountain.

First English class

2009-01-06T19:57:00.003-06:00

"My name is Adam. My birthday is March 13 and I am 21 years old. I am from New York City. I go to college in a small town. My favorite color is green. I like to swim and read books."

"My name is Meredith. I am from New York. I am 21 years old. My favorite color is also green and my favorite TV show is 'House.'" After Adam and Meredith introduce themselves, the English class asks them questions: What is your name? How many countries have you visited?
"Only two," says Adam. "The United States and Nicaragua."
Are they married? Do they have a favorite sport? How do they feel of Nicaragua?
"It's hot," says Adam, tugging his shirt away from his chest as the class laughs.
It's a full house for the first English language class, including some new students.
The youngest are teenagers, like Manuel, and others are older, fathers and mothers with families at home. They are here three times a week from 6 to 8 p.m. practicing English for fun and mostly to better their chances at obtaining better-paying and more steady jobs.

Henry volunteers to translate as they intdroduce me and that I am here to write about Genseo's English school here and our service-learning program. Henry tells them my favorite color is black, I like soccer and have been writing for about four months for the college.

Then, it is games, a reading lesson and now Yacarely is practicing the days of the month and seasons with the new people — a circle of at least six people who have decided to join. Adam is laughing with Wilfredo, a veterinarian, and Mayra, a stylist, as they poke over vocabulary in the reading lesson.

He comes in.
"It's easier than I thought it would be," he says to Kellan. "And I was practicing my Spanish with Pepe today and I was teaching him some English. I can't believe I was doing that."

Outside, the class is breaking up for the night and I ask Kellan how many students there are. 19.
There is no more room, or chairs.
"I think we're done taking people in for now," says Kellan.
It's a good full to be.

Kellan says that they had a Christmas party before break. No one knew what to do because they had to speak in English.
"I needed to do something to break the ice," says Kellan, remembering. He had them play a round of musical chairs. Those who got out had to dance in the center with someone.
"It was getting rowdy here. People were laughing and pulling chairs out from the others ... It was great."

Zip line video - not for the faint of heart!

2009-01-06T17:10:00.004-06:00

Here's a video of our zip line adventure in Managua.

El Sauce baseball

2009-01-06T16:38:00.004-06:00

Kellan and Yacarely took us to the municipal baseball stadium for the El Sauce vs. León game. It costs 50 cents to sit in the stands in the shade, so many people ring the fence and watch, selling drinks and watching the action under handmade tarps of wood and plastic. Women sell rice and beans and grilled meats. The El Sauce team let me go into the dugout and take photos of them while their teammates were at bat.
I took a team photo too, so Kellan can give it to them later. I liked this one, in black and white.

Grinding corn

2009-01-06T16:27:00.003-06:00

This morning Meredith and I went with a health-care worker, Yuritza, to the small rural community of Hugo Arevalo.
She is part of a state program that reaches out to women who otherwise have little health-care access.
We camped out at Yermina's house with her children and waited for the mothers and their babies to come. Like many things in Nicaragua time is laidback and not always punctual. We were there all morning and moms could wander over when they wanted.
This gave us a lot of time to visit with Yermina's family, who were hand grinding corn they had grown in the fields around their house. Ana Francis, the cute girl in this photo, let me try too. If it looks like I'm really hot and sweaty, it's because I am.
Then, they gave me a tortilla made from the corn I ground and Meredith a corn drink.
"It tasted like corn, only sweeter. Sort of like a milkshake," said Meredith.

Down and out

2009-01-06T11:00:00.000-06:00

Pepe's wall was tall — about 15 feet high — but it came down with "just a few smacks," says Adam.
The adobe just crumbled away as we poked at it with crow bars and a hammer, pushing the old adobe out into the driveway.
Pepe told Adam how to climb the ladder and first take the wooden beams out, pulling each nail and prying the wood away.
I hauled them to the back yard, navigating around the giant rooster and his chickens. Pepe speaks no English so there were a few times when Adam couldn't remember the Spanish name for something. We got along: "Como se dice esta en Espanol," he asked, pointing to the homemade ladder.
"Una escalara."
"Ladder." Pepe would repeat it back.
In a while, they chat about playing basketball, Adam's volleyball and the community basketball league. Kellan and Pepe play on the teams and we've gone to two games, played on a court in front of the town's Catholic church.
When his niece came along, we helped pick out which music to play on their little radio and laughed about who found the weirdest thing in the old adobe. I think I won, with the rat skeleton, although a half of a scorpion skin came a close second.
By afternoon, we'd taken down the wall, shoveled all of the dirt into wheelbarrows and dumped them in the background navigating around the giant rooster, and begun to make the iron bars that will support the brick wall, Adam laughing as they taught him to bend metal into squares.
Simple exhanges that bond us. It's what being in El Sauce is all about.

Out with the old

2009-01-05T23:00:00.000-06:00

Today was the first work day for the students.
Kellan knocked on my door bright and early — 7 a.m. — with Adam, to begin building a new wall for Pepe and his mother, Miriam.
Their house is a simple one where the pavement meets the dusty dirt road on the outskirts of El Sauce center. Five people live in the small home, with a tiled empty room, two bedrooms and a kitchen. There is a latrine out back and buckets and barrels to collect water. A very big rooster and some chickens clucked around in the yard while we worked.

Pepe's home is typical of many of the poorer homes in El Sauce. More stable homes and buildings are made of concrete or brick. Traditional adobe homes are made of bricks formed from mud and dung. A mason told me today that most adobe walls will last about four to five years. Heavy downpours and flooding in the rainy season every June to November erode the walls. There's a black line a foot above the base of Pepe's steps where the water is. Rain pours down the dirt streets sometimes a few feet deep, sometimes every day. The adobe just can't stand up to it for long.

Pepe's wall lasted about 15 years because it was old-style adobe, made with mud and fermented dung. It is stronger, but not that strong. It's coming down and he and his family have no way on their own to fix it. That's where 4 Walls and Adam come in.

Here's how it started: In 2007, El Sauce Peace Corps worker Meghan Haslam, of Exeter, New Hampshire, was inspired to start 4 Walls after an experience with a dear friend, Juan Pablo. He didn't want her to see his home. She finally convinced him to invite her over. It turned out he was ashamed of his house. One adobe wall had fallen in and they could only cover it in plastic. Their situation, and his embarrassment gave her an idea of how to help. She collected money from her family and friends and hired a mason to help Juan Pablo and his friends build a new wall of brick and cement.
The cement binds the bricks together and in combination they last a very long time and can stand up to the torrential rains.
The program has grown and has helped many families in El Sauce who are hardworking but cannot save for home improvements, like Pepe. Most Nicaraguans make $2 to $4 a day. Most money is spent on food and a bit on utility bills, if they have electricity.
People donate and Meghan and Juan Pablo identify those in most need and who are responsible. They and volunteers from Rochester, N.Y. as well as community members have built 14 walls, several roofs and also home frames.

The latest is Pepe's home. He is also a mason who volunteered his time to build two house frames. Now, Adam and 4 Walls is helping him.

In one week Adam, Pepe, his friend Noel, Meghan and I will build a new wall that will last.

It is possible that Kellan and the Geneseo program will take over the 4 Walls program when Meghan's Peace Corps assignment ends this spring. More students will surely come to volunteer.

Lost in Translation

2009-01-05T21:06:00.000-06:00

At dinner, Erika, the "muchacha" who helps my host mother, Xiomara, with housework, asked me if I have an "hijo."
Yes, I said, in short sentences (my Spanish is not good). He's 40 years old and lives in Colorado. It's a great place to go hiking. Very beautiful. Snow with skiing. I like to go there. I visited and we hiked, and looked around the mountains.
She looked at me very strangely.
After a second it dawned on me.
"Wait!" I said. "I don't have a 40-year-old child! I have a brother."
Hermano. Hijo. Similar with a big difference.

We laughed a little while, reminding me that learning and being able to poke fun at yourself and your mistakes, is half the fun of learning a new language and being in a new culture.

And hey, it was better than when I told the Brazilian military commander who was conducting a routine search of our research boat in the Amazon that I was "a little embarrassed." Or rather, that I was "a little pregnant." Small difference in words, big difference in meaning!

Adios my friend

2009-01-04T22:11:00.000-06:00

It's only been two days but already we are discovering the cultural ways of El Sauce. When you walk by someone, you say goodbye instead of hello.
"Adios," a small girl hollered and waved as she glided by from the front seat of a bicycle taxi. The woman selling fruit on the sidewalk smiled and said, "Adios."
We say "hola" only if we plan on stopping or staying a minute. if you're passing in the street, you say farewell.
"Its like stopping the conversation before it starts," says Kellan.

It is these little things that make you feel a part of the community.

Tourism in the mountains

2009-01-04T22:00:00.000-06:00

Walking around El Sauce, we met a man on horseback with his son. They live in the mountain community of Ocotal, where Kellan and Yacarely are developing tourism. He is the leader of the tourism initiative.
Yacarely, in fact, just won $10,000 in materials from the Millennium Challenge for a business plan for tourism there. There will be little cabins and a tourism center on donated land from a community member. Immediately, they are working with families who will offer home stays to tourists, tours of organic coffee farms and tours of the surrounding countryside on horseback.
There is no public transportation to Ocotal, so the man and his son come on horseback once a week for supplies. Maybe they play a little music too. The boy had a big guitar on his back.

Another Geneseo connection

2009-01-04T20:35:00.003-06:00

We walked to the preschool that Geneseo pediatrician Dr. Arnold Matlin and his family have established and run. It's a tidy green concrete building in a poor part of town, designed to help needy kids learn, have better nutrition and health and give them a good head start. Parents are also part of the program. Kids who are part of the program are malnourished; the parents have to commit to being part of their child's care at the school.
There is no school now because of Christmas and New Year's but the gate was open so we went inside. A teacher, Francisca Castillon, told us 15 new children would start here next week. She was there cleaning and preparing the office and classrooms for the children. On the wall were photos of kids at desks and a giant poster they had made: "Bienvenidos Familia Matlin." The Matlins visited El Sauce in December and their proud faces smiled back at us from the wall.
Fran told us that the Matlins like people to visit the school, to see what they are doing and to be a part of it and spread the word.
I will surely do so.

Tour of El Sauce

2009-01-04T15:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday afternoon.

Today, Kellan and Yacarely picked us up from our host houses and took us on a walking tour of El Sauce.
It's a city but more of a small town by U.S. standards. There are 10,000 people here but many seem to be scattered on the outskirts, on farms or small houses down dirt roads. The city center is a few square paved blocks with small privately-owned stores and a few commercial stores, like Eskimo ice cream and the phone company. People often have stores in their homes; selling towels or juices or small toys out of their living rooms, some bars and a pass-through hole separating family from customers.
There is a huge festival Jan. 16-18 and already vendors are moving onto the main street, setting up makeshift tents and shelters to sell crafts, juices, food and whatever else to the 30,000 people from all over Nicaragua who will come to celebrate the Cristo Negro, or "black Christ."
Long ago, when the Spanish conquered this region, they converted the native Americans who were here. Those native Americans in Guatemala asked the Catholic church for a representation of Jesus that they could relate to. The church provided a dark-skinned Jesus on the cross to replace the traditional symbol.
Yacarely told us it was sent to many places and when it came to El Sauce, the man in charge of it happened to die. The church sent someone to retrieve it and they too died. They took it as a sign and here the Jesus should stay. Every year, Christians congregate from all over to celebrate and make pilgrimage in the central church, inside it's yellow ornate walls.
In two weeks there will be 30,000 or more people and Christian pilgrims in El Sauce for three days of fiesta and religious service.

Sweet dreams

2009-01-04T08:30:00.000-06:00

Sunday morning, 8:30 a.m.
I slept amazingly well. The chickens quieted down and waited patiently until well after first light.

Night Music

2009-01-04T00:47:00.000-06:00

Sunday morning, 12:47 a.m. It is pitch black, Orion's belt is shining bright in the night sky and already the roosters are crowing, yelling at me to wake up. I have not yet gone to bed. Kellan, Yacarely, the students and I went to a restaurant to talk with Meghan, who runs the 4 Walls Project in the Peace Corps and Irene, who is nearly done with her two-year assignment in this small town.
We got to learn some of the locals who we will encounter over the next two weeks and joke with Kellan about the big loss.
His basketball team, Pedernal, had a game in the center court beside the town's church. When Adam and I walked up they were ahead 9 points. Ten minutes later, the guys in blue were pitching nothing but baskets.
It's cool. Saturday night, 7 p.m. and more than a hundred people of all ages were out, ringing the court and sitting on the concrete bleachers. Everyone knows everyone and the teams represent their section of town. If I were on a team, I'd be Central. Xiomara , my host mom, lives a block away from the action and I can hear it now, as a matter of fact, from my room, beside my mosquito net, along with the chickens.
I thought those feathery "gallinas" would wait until at least first light.

First meetings

2009-01-03T18:30:00.000-06:00

We made it to El Sauce around 5 p.m. and Kellan dropped us off at our host families. Adam is staying with Alida Arostegui, a sweet older woman who recently had hip surgery so her sister is staying with her to help out.
Meredith is staying with Sonia and Alberto. Kellan stayed with them as well and liked them so well he's actually moving in next door, so he can go over and chat with them more often.
I am living with Xiomara and her 3-year-old grandson, Marcelo, in a corner house with a central garden and large, empty rooms with tile floors.
She is very nice. I don't speak Spanish well, so I will need to carry my dictionary around for assistance. I can understand and be understood, but don't know all the vocabulary.
Here's a picture of Adam meeting Alida for the first time.

Stunt Drivers

2009-01-03T15:00:00.000-06:00

The trick to driving in Nicaragua: Goes as fast as you can, pass anyone who is impeding your progress and when there's a curve? Just keep passing.
The trick to being a passenger in Nicaragua: Enjoy the view and adventure and never look out the front window to see what's coming.

The road to El Sauce

2009-01-03T14:00:00.000-06:00

It used to be extremely poor, with giant holes.
"The size of small swimming pools," Yacarely told us as we barreled off the main paved road and suddenly slowed to a snail's pace. It's only 52 miles from Léon to El Sauce central, but the car ride will take you an hour and a half.
The gravel kicks up dust, which turns into paved but potholed road that is no longer large enough to do the backstroke in but a man could lay down in it if he really wanted. Swiss cheese, super sized. Some parts are freshly paved; a smooth ride for a few minutes of 50 mph. A few sections were very closed for construction, marked off with giant orange "Desvio" signs. The workers had also laid football-sized rocks in the road every few feet for the stunt driver who didn't feel like obeying.
Every once in a while the trucks would zip by on the gravel sections and bury us in road fog.
We stopped a few times to let the cows cross the road and gasped with relief when the school bus kept right on going. It never slowed and the cows made a run for it.
This bus had bright flames painted on the nose. I like them. We will take a local transport bus Friday, to Léon.
The school buses come from U.S. school districts, who say they are too old or broken. The Nicaraguans fix them up and now the country's residents run on a fleet of old school buses.
Some have the names of the district blacked out. Other's don't. Kellan spotted a town in New York once. I'm waiting for Geneseo to drive on by.

About Geneseo's El Sauce service-learning program

2009-01-03T11:50:00.000-06:00

I am here in Nicaragua with Geneseo students Meredith Cannella (Class of 2009) and Adam Davis (Class of 2009), Spanish majors who want an international experience and to help the rural community of El Sauce.

Geneseo has had a relationship with El Sauce before 2006. The mayor, who I will meet with Friday, came to Rochester and met with representatives from the School of Business about what economic development opportunities there could be.

What has transpired is a collaboration between Geneseo residents, the College, students, alumni and residents of El Sauce, a small community of 10,000 people north of Managua in the remote countryside.
They all work together to make it a success.

Since 2006 about 25 students have come to El Sauce to help implement improvements to better quality of life. They develop their own projects under the guidance of alumnus Kellan Morgan (Class of 2006), who volunteered here twice before turning down an assignment with the Peace Corps to work in El Sauce for Geneseo full time.

Projects focus on sustainable business development, teaching English and personal finance and computer skills, as well as health education, recreation programs and now, building homes for the most needy residents.

Adam is the first to volunteer for a Peace Corps project called 4 Walls. He will work with a mason to tear down and then build a cement and brick wall with the family. Meredith will assist health-care workers who tend to families in the remote farm area and at night they will teach English to El Sauce residents. Unemployment and permanent employment are big struggles; knowing English makes the residents 90 percent more marketable to employers, says Kellan.

The other big initiative is attracting tourists to El Sauce. Other communities have done it, so it can work in El Sauce. Kellan and his partner, Yacarely, are developing tourism in a mountain community and training teen-aged tour guides to provide tours in El Sauce.

They are expanding what other students have started, like Chad Salitan (Class of 2009), who began to develop marketing ideas for artisans who make pine-needle baskets in a mountain community. They have nowhere to sell their wares to make a living.

I can't wait to see what El Sauce is like and learn more about the programs. There are so many.

Managua from on high

2009-01-03T11:42:00.002-06:00

We arrived in Managua safe, nearly on time, with luggage and started the first morning in Nicaragua right — sliding down a zip line over Mirador de Tipasca, a crater lake in the city.

At the last zip, the guides held onto us so we could fly like Superman, arms outstretched, over the lake at about 20 mph.