Next steps

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Oh yes. We were dirty.

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.

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

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?!

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Léon sights

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.