Volunteering and life in general

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  Granada, Nicaragua
Friday, June 15, 2007

Perhaps this would be more appropriately titled ' The Mother of all Entries ', as we'll attempt to cover the day-to-day happenings and observations from the last 6 weeks to give you lot an idea of what we've been up to and have experienced. Should have done this as regularly as we did in Guatemala, but alas, Sam's been too busy watching cable T.V.

Well here goes - sorry for the list!

Sam's volunteering
Should start off by quickly mentioning all the advice and help offered by people on how
to deal with the little terrors has been gratefully received, even if (as usual) Sam in his slackness hasn't thanked you in person or even acknowledged it - sorry

01. Fiesta por 'Dia del nino' en la prussia

.

Well, theres a few more stories of Sam being punched, kicked and having his hair pulled really, really hard - some kids really seem to enjoy inflicting physical hurts on him - but by and large things have calmed down somewhat. This is in part because the kids have got used to us being authority figures and partly because the naughtiest little boy has been put up in the first grade class, where, despite the poor little chap not knowing anything, he is better behaved - probably because his sister slaps him around a bit if he doesn't.
Classes are still just as unimaginative, but Sam has learnt to ignore the crazy kids as best he can, and concentrate on helping the quieter ones. Have made miniscule gains in the kids ability to recognise numbers and letters, although the psychologist who visits once a week manages in half an hour what we can't achieve in weeks, so pretty discouraging on that front.

Play time is hard, as there is little to do release some of that youthful exuberance except play on the swings, as, especially now the rains have started, the playground is too small and muddy to try any other games.

Have had a couple of interesting days at school with Mothers Day and Childrens day

02. Gorgeous children

. On Mothers day the children all performed items for their mums and they all had a big feed afterwards, although the number of days taken off for one afternoon were incredible and were as follows:
Monday - school finishes at 9.30am so the teachers can go and shop for supplies
Tuesday - no school in anticipation of the afternoons festivities which are only 2 hours long
Wednesday - no school
Thursday - few students as they had the previous day off
Friday - previous nights rain mean few come to school
The items performed were very sweet, although the personal touch was missing, as the head teacher got students from another school to dance for the Mums, and the volunteers had to colour in the invitations as the kids would make a mess of them - unusual.
Sam was asked out on a date by the Mum of the naughty boy (!), who then told us proudly told us he was learning karate from his older brother. Sam only resisted the urge to start shouting 'can you tell him Karate is only for self defense!!' while beating her with a large blunt object, because it took him too long to think how he might say this in Spanish before the moment was lost.....

Childrens day was more fun, with the kids all tearing around doing fun activities like lime and spoon races and tug of war, but the mums who decided to come along interfered an awful lot. On the tug of war with the preschoolers, Sam and another volunteer held onto the rope to try and even up the contest and to make sure there were no sudden jerks that would send them all sprawling, but the Mums decided they wanted their kids to win and so all jumped on one end of the rope and pulled their kids to victory, immediately saying 'look our kids won, give them their prizes' - charming women, really

03. Housemate Lily and Sam

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At the prize room, we had tried to devise a system where all the kids would get a prize by giving them each a sticker they would use to redeem for a prize, but most of them didn't listen and threw them away or they fell off. Confronted by bossy mums and teachers we handed out more, only to find that the mums were double clicking the ticket and saying their kids didn't have a sticker more than once. This got a bit ridiculous when one Mum interrupted Sam in the middle of a game after all the prizes had been given out, to demand another sticker for her kid, despite her arms being full of prizes already.....have to wonder where the kids get their endearing traits from?

Painting has become a real chore, rather than the nice escape it was, because the Aussie volunteer Sam was working with has left after doing only a little of it himself, and Sam and another volunteer (to a far lesser extent) have had to do all the hard-to-reach and annoying bits. This has taken weeks. Thankfully, due to many afternoons donkey work, it is all but finished. Annoyingly, the last thing to do is to paint over some parts the other volunteer painted blue, despite specifically being asked not to paint anything in the Nicaraguan government colours. This wouldn't have been the end of the world had he finished what he started, but he only spray-painted about 30% of the area he should have and then left

04. Francie gets a cuddle

. Grrr.

Francie's volunteering
More visits to the dentist and optometrist for Frances and the kids, however, shes oft frustrated.

At the dentist, the kids often get there and then run off, or refuse to go in. Sometimes the power is off all morning, meaning the kids all have to be taken back to school without any work being done.
Presently, the clinic is being renovated on Tuesday and Thursday, so the kids were to have gone to another clinic in town, this has been nipped in the bud as the operations officer thinks that if the dentist thinks we are willing to take kids the extra distance, they will close down the clinic closer to the school and exclusively use the one in town. So, for the millionth time:

WHAT??!!!

What kind of person renovates a clinic they indeed to close? Seriously, if this is the level of thought that goes into the other decisions here, God help all the volunteers that are to follow us.

At the optometrist, lots of kids have been fitted with glasses, but Frances found the other day that the last volunteer had paid the deposit for 18 pairs of glasses to be made, but she hadn't returned to pay the balance, or thought to tell anyone that they should. Who knows how many months they would have been sitting there if she hadn't found out?

On the bright side, she has managed to find lots of little games to play with the kids so she is getting alot more positive interaction with them when she is there

05. Teachers act - with volunteer Christie

.

With the little boy with Cerebal Palsy, team Duncan had a couple of successes this week, with Sam helping Francie with therapy on one day (basically acting dumb while Francie manipulated his limbs), and with us taking him and his Mum to Managua to get his wheelchair fitted. That day took us 4 hours, for a 1 minute appointment - we had to carry him 20 minutes to the nearest road (which was incredibly difficult as he had no control over his limbs of head, so you have to support him and carry him simultaneously), and catch 2 buses and 2 taxis, and then the whole thing in reverse. When we arrived, we were a little bemused to find that 'fitting it' meant sitting him in the wheelchair and saying - 'yes, it fits, bye'.
The wheelchair will be practically impossible to use at his house or village, but hopefully it will improve his posture and help him try to support his head by himself. Perhaps the $300 US it is costing to build the wheelchair would be better used on other functional equipment.

Frustratingly, the area where Francie would have really shone - the pool therapy - she hasn't been able to do. Every day she has tried, he and his Mum have either been late, sick or it has rained too hard to make the walk to the road possible

06. Piñata!!

. Damnation.

The rain
I think we mentioned in our Leon entry that you don't know the meaning of 'torrential' until you've been in the tropics. Most days it starts flashing lightning at about 5 in the afternoon for every 5 seconds or so for a couple of hours. Usually this just means it's raining somewhere else, but about twice a week the sky unleashes the dragon, and the rain gets thrown down, wave upon wave, for hours. One wonders whether the term 'Blitzkreig' was actully coined for speed to the attack or by a Nazi officer on holiday in the tropics in the rainy season, because the flash and boom of the lightning and thunder, accompanied by the drilling of the rain on the roof sounds like you're enduring a violent and sustained bombing attack whilst being strafed by billions of tiny bullets.

At least we only have to endure the cacophony on land - have looked into the sky more than once and seen planes bound for Managua pass right through the flashing clouds - fasten your seat belts everyone!

Fireworks
Speaking of deafening booms and blinding flashes, the fireworks here are intense

07. Sams preschool class

. The other morning on the way to school, a couple of guys ran into the middle of the road with what looked suspiciously like a home-made mortar cannon and launched an enormous firework skyward.
The accompanying blast when it took off was huge - smoke filled the streets, and we all involuntarily flinched.

Street vendors
No imaginative sales pitches here people - no 'Step right up and get your delicious, nutricious, antioxidant-filled super-banana'. Vendors here, whether they be wandering up your street or yelling in the market think that shouting the name of their products loudly every 3 seconds for hours on end is the most persuasive way to sell a product.
We have got used to the various items now:
Bread (Pan)          = el pan-El Pan-EL PAN!!
Icecream (Helado) = elalaladolado elado!
Frescos          ; ;        = FRESCO........FRESCO..........FRESCO!!!
Vegetables            = Cebolla, Tomate, Aguacate!!

08. A typical days mess

And so on....

This also applies to bus cobradors or ayudantes (chargers) who just yell out the name of their destination - masayaMasayaMASAYA!!!!! Often they chant this like a mantra at the bus station, where there are only 3 destinations south anyway, and they are written in huge letters on the front of the buses - even if you couldn't read you would quickly get too know which bus was yours, or you could ask.

Prepare yourselves - Sam will be doing bad impersonations of these for years to come.

Frescos
So you're thirsty? Well nothing refreshes quite like a garishly coloured, incredibly sugary Fresco! Sold in small plastic bags (like everything here), our personal favourites are Zanahoria (carrot) or Pataia (a purple fruit) - have a look at the photos!

Comedor food
We eat this far too often. Served in a banana leaf, this delicious combo usually consists of Charcoal grilled chicken, a lemony coleslaw-type salad, grilled or fried bananas and Gallo Pinto - a combo of rice, beans and a bit of onion. With a bit of bread, $4 can feed the both of us, so its pretty unbeatable value.

Going out
Others do, we generally don't. While drinks are unbelievably cheap (like $0.75NZ for a bottle of beer in a bar), there is really only about 3 or 4 bars to choose from here, although one bar, Cafe Nuit, is the favourite

09. Fun and Games

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While its a nice spot, with great live music, going there every 2nd night like many of the volunteers here is a bit lame - very much a case of same place, same people, same music, different day.....
We get hassled a bit for being such grannies, but stuff them-  its far more fun to go out once in a while and have heaps of fun than be the loser that goes every night to make sure they don't miss out on anything.

All men are pigs
Well of course not, but an alarmingly number of men here act in a very piggish manner toward the Gringa population. The childish compliments that would you normally associate with the stereotypical construction site worker flow thick and fast from males aged between 10 and 90 - whistles, 'hey beautiful' and kissing sounds are fine - its when they lick their lips and yell out what they would like to do to you that offensive can rightfully be taken.
Frances once sat in the Parque Central for about an hour, and got hundreds of leering looks and gestures. Some well dressed men with their wives and families also think nothing of acting out some of the more shameless gestures......pigs.

So, as we near the end of our time here, we are literally counting the days - bring on Costa Rica and family time in the British Isles!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

10. Sams preschools mothers day party	11. A friend of Sam	12. Sams preschool	13. Take a bow Sam!
14. Fran and Nigel with flourescent refresco	15. Typical meal	16. La prussia school	17. Our route to the school

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