Thanks again, Alexander Flemming

I get sick a lot in Peace Corps. Really, people who don't get sick a lot in Peace Corps are the exception. For a lot of my service, at least the first year, I maintained the (extremely false) belief that I hardly ever got sick. I didn't really question this until I mentioned my lack of illness to a friend once, and he was like "What about that kidney infection? And the time you couldn't breathe very well?" I took mental inventory and then realized that indeed, I was sick quite a lot. I swear there's a sort of amnesia involved with illnesses here. One day you can be dying with food poisoning, and then a few days later, no big deal, you're eating slightly sketchy but delicious foods on the bus again. No fret man. 

This time, an intestinal infection knocked me out. I went to the Peace Corps doctor because I hadn't been feeling great, and they ran some tests. I almost didn't go because I'd been feeling slightly better, but I'm so glad I did because they found some sort of slightly obscure parasite. How hipster of me. There's no way to be sure of its provenance, but a good guess is probably water or cabbage salads from my rural schools. I've gotten careless with these things as time has gone on, feeling invicible due to the above mentioned amnesia factor. 

Ironically, after I went to the doctor and taking antibiotics, I started feeling worse. Somehow, I managed to give a co-facilitate a workshop to a group of English teachers in San Carlos yesterday (mind over matter), and then promptly proceeded to have intense stomach pains during the 2 hour bus ride home, which took extra long because we stopped to load rice onto the bus. Como no. Today I'm feeling better, but I've dedicated the day to lying as flat as possible and trying to eat little bits of food like gatorade and soda crackers. 

It's humbling to realize that if antibiotics hadn't been invented, I could be potentially be very very sick or even dead  in this moment. It's also amazing to think that in much of the industrial world, we've improved our water supply to the point that getting a parasite seems like an insane thing to have happen to you. Embracing one's fragility in the midst of the arrogance of one's twenties is perhaps not the worst thing. 

At the same time, it's frustrating, feeling knocked out any time I want to focus on side projects or even just my main job. I need to write syllabi and a grant right now, but I can't focus on numbers, already a huge weakness of mine, to save my life and I'm feeling terribly uncreative. And I'm missing the Patron Saint Festival, which is actually fine, because I won't lose my hearing and see all my students drunk. Still it makes me a little sad because I was supposed to hang out with friends I haven't seen in a while. 

But such is life. It's good to have to be more flexible and roll with the (literal) punches (to the gut).

Rage Anatomy

Peace Corps can make you a worse person. Maybe that's counterintuitive, but too much of a different culture can make you a reactive, overly angry, cynical bad person. I am seriously starting to worry that I will need anger management soon, because I'm starting to fly off the cuff at everyone. Well, pretty much only the men. Because several of them seem to be aspiring to jerk-faceness.

Here is a brief list of all the different kinds of rages that can result:

Body rage- The anger felt when you have a million things to do and then your body succumbs to a parasite, or you eat some slightly bad cream and nothing gets done for the next several days even though you had them off.

Chichero rage- The anger felt when a chichero band wakes you up at 4 or 5 am in honor of the patron saint, every day of the week. I'm pretty sure Jesus would have been anti-bands and fireworks at 5 am. Doesn't that go against the whole "Don't be a jerk to your neighbor" deal? Now I get why my students wanted to add "The Right to Sleep" to our list of human rights last year.

Misinformation rage- When a taxi driver tells you that a bus is going to pass soon and then you wait at the empalme for over an hour. Or  conversely when the bus decides to abandon any pretense of a schedule and leave early and you are stuck stuck stuck.

Parrot rage-I know my host mom loves it, but I hate our catcalling/cackling/shrieking/whistling/yelling parrot. He is the worst pet. This leads me to greater appreciation of our rabbit. He is a great pet. He is extremely silent and hops in an extremely cute fashion.

Piropo rage- Nature hath no fury like a woman who's been street harrassed too many times. Especially if it is by a man in uniform, ie police, army or naval officer. In theory, I have many smart sounding retorts to the ever common catcall, but if you catch me on the wrong day, it sounds more like this incoherent babble.

To a soldier who made the mistake of doing the annoying hiss- hiss- hiss thing at me: "NO!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE A MAN IN UNIFORM!!! BAD!!! BAD!!! UNACCEPTABLE!!!GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

To a random vago dude who called me mamacita while I was on my way to do aerobics : "WHAT IS THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU MEN??? YOU ARE SO UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. ENOUGH. ENOUGH. NO MORE. " (At this point all of the kitchen staff of the local hotel come out to watch, talk about embarrassing.)

So clearly I need to work on not getting so bent out of shape and try to have some real conversations.

Rooster rage- The furiousness still experienced upon being woken up too early by the fighting cocks. When I was telling my boss that I thought a bunch of them had died because it had gotten quieter of late, he said "You seem really gleeful about that." Probably true. I was never a vegetarian because I liked animals I guess.

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Luckily, I got out of site recently, for work purposes, but it was good to have a break. Now, I am a little less crazy. I really need to start doing yoga again. Maybe next week when it is less loud. Fiestas Patronales are not the best for quiet moments of self reflection.

Some thoughts on priviledge and ideology

To celebrate the one year anniversary of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's death, a man from the mayor's office came to give a speech to the students in Las Palomas. The gist of the speech was that Chavez had helped forge an alternative to Yanqui Imperialism, Capitalism, Materialism, and that the students needed to be solidary with each other to help this legacy to continue. It was a pretty good speech, albeit overtly political. However, I couldn't help but smirk, HERE I AM!! You found me! Blatant green eyed white person from Estados Unidos, at your service. Imperialismo en carne viva!  I need to work at controlling my face.

By the way, I hate I/C/M, in their pure form. Shopping sucks. My country spending money bombing shit instead of bothering to educate or make sure people aren't ill is the worst. And capitalism yeah, not always awesome, in the results or the process.

I think my students may have noticed my expression. So then the man said, "Except for the American people, who we love deeply" This was somehow worse. I can't stand quite a lot of the American people if we're been brutally honest, and I wouldn't expect Nicas to like us. I felt uncomfortably pandered to. I also kept coughing during all of this, which was kind of funny because it made me extra obvious. I was actually choking practically on all the dust from the probably-horse-poop-filled-dust everywhere on my kilometer walk to the school. But I think the conclusion everyone else took is that obviously my lungs hate socialism.

Chavez is a difficult figure to process. Construct a counterweight to US hegemony, build new economic alliances, help the poor? All nice in theory. Repress massively in the process? Give benefits only to supporters? Out of control violence and inflation? Completely not diversified economy. Not.

Yet the children get speeches. They don't brainstorm ways to practice solidarity, or write an essay about Chavez's life, or find Venezuela on a map, or debate his legacy. They merely listen passively as they are told one version of the truth.

Peace Corps makes you realize the most obvious things about yourself. I will always be from where I am from, will always be white, cis gender, straight woman from the most powerful country in the world. But despite the realization, I've gotten crazy defensive about it lately. I'm either constantly apologizing or trying to make people understand que "no es asi" (it's not like that), precisamente. It's not as easy to live in the US as you think it is, even though "ganamos bien" (we earn well). We don't all through out perfectly good clothes to buy new ones. We don't have chips in our heads. We don't all eat meat every day. We don't all have tons of money to travel when we retire. Ad naseum defensiveness party. 

I want people to rail at me about underdevelopment, the technology gap, global warming, the golden straightjacket that is our world order. I want people to rail against that, confront me about it, engage with the present, rather than just pontificating about the grievances of imperialism in the mode of the past, gunboat diplomacy and banana republicans and you-funded-the-contras. It pains me to think that the best that my English speaking students who go on to study can realistically hope at best to get a job at a call center, a low paying difficult job as a teacher, maybe a tour guide, if the canal doesn't throw everything to hell.  Is that better than nothing? I think so, but can't there be "algo mas (something more)?" I so was sure in college that there was a most just world that we could imagine into being. I'm not sure if there is any more.

The time I saved a bunny rabbit

Bunny tries coconut

My host family got a bunny. It is very cute, although he is also overly curious about everything, sort of like a little puppy. He also randomly starts running whimsically across our patio when these strange moods catch him. He eats everything from gallo pinto to hibiscus flowers and also apparently coconut. He seems to get along well with all the chickens, which is interesting.

In my only moment of Peace Corps heroism, I saved said bunny, who is very creatively called "Little Bunny" from certain death in the jaws of a boxer who is interestingly named Bambi. I happened to be talking on the phone in my room, when I saw that Bambi had gotten in through the gate and was making a beeline for Conejito. Luckily, all I had to do was yell at the top of my lungs, and he stopped his hot pursuit of the poor little creature, who was running as fast as his legs would carry him, and shaking from fear.

He didn't eat for 2 days, but due to his diet of rice/beans and other improbable things, he is getting bigger fast. Hopefully, he'll be better equipped to deal with predators in the future.

Camp!

So the week before school started, my sitemate and I collaborated with other Rio San Juan PCVs to put on an afternoon day camp for kids in San Miguelito, with the aim of helping them prepare for school and think about their futures. Over the course of a week, we were able to give 25 8-12 year olds classes and talks about a lot of topics, including English, basic financial education, health, life goals, self esteem, nutrition, oral health, protecting the environment, and crafts!

The kids had tons of energy and we were completely worn out at the end of each day, but overall it was a really great experience, from meeting new people in town, to seeing the kids get so excited about different topics to watching my PCV friends shine at what we all do best.

A big thanks is due to my Aunt Annette who donated a ton of school supplies that we used for the camp for various activities. Un abrazo gigante!

 Playing "Run to the board" to practice colors in English

 

"No es una caja" "It's not a box," an activity to practice creativity

 Having fun in a warm up activity 

 Christina talks about saving for necessary expenses 

 Natalie does a warm up in the self esteem charla

 Leah looks on as the kids brainstorm colorful foods in a nutrition charla

 Recycled plastic bottle piggy banks

 Chanchitos! Saving cordobas

 Jessica shows the consequences of poor oral hygiene

Making masks to practice "How are you?"

 Field games

The full group on the last day

Luddite

I am not doing well with the beginning of school. I knew it would be chaotic and disorganized, but the fact that I don´t have a schedule yet is making me very stressed. Even though I knew this would happen.

To help ease my desire to do something, I´ve been hanging out at school in San Miguel this week. I was trying to teach everyone how to use scheduling software so they wouldn´t have to make the schedule by hand. Because obviously technology is better, right?

WRONG. Today, I finally got enough data to make a schedule, and lo and behold, it did not work. No matter how I sliced or diced it, there are still 30 classes that can´t be placed.

Guess we should have just used a blackboard and chalk.

#Farmlife

On Tuesday, I was hanging out back in San Miguelito when my friend Jesser invited the mural crew to go visit his family's farm. While I was hanging out in America, growing fat on cookies (although not too fat, thanks to the parasites I apparently picked up before Christmas), my sitemate and 3 friends were hard at work painting a Nicaraguan map mural on the primary school. 

To celebrate the end of the project and Jesser's heading off to college in Managua soon, we went to hang out and eat repochetas (fried tortilla topped with beans, cheese and cabbage/tomato salad) at the farm, just outside the town of San Miguelito, and right along the coastline.

Repochetas! Repochetas!

 

 

 Jesser acted as our "tour guide," showing us all the different plants and animals at the farm and picking bags of sweet and sour oranges off the trees. 

For the Clayton family plant enthusiasts, this is what they get dragonfruit from. 

Jesser's grandfather picking oranges

 

The other day, one of my mom's friends had asked me if people in San Miguelito used money for financial transactions. I told her that of course people did, but also that people use gifting of mostly agricultural items to establish bonds and share with each other. However, on this particular day, we got to take advantage of some local youths' ambivalent feelings about capitalism to take a little paseo along the coastline. 

 

We were sitting on the coast having a grand old time eating freshly picked oranges when we saw some kids come by in a boat. Someone decided that it would be a good idea to go for a boat ride, so we sent Kleydy to talk with them and see if they would give it to us. They were into it and said they wouldn't charge us if we could row. We didn't go far, just to see the start of the wetlands along a nearby river,  but we had a beautiful and fun hour or so in the boat, despite minor brushes with plants and some wobbliness.

 

 

More snacks!!

What are we doing in this boat??????

 

 We eventually returned the boat to the kids in time to watch a gorgeous sunset from the shore, and gave them a bunch of oranges and American chocolates for their troubles before making a short walk back into town. 

Have I mentioned lately how beautiful this place is??

 

 

 

Bandido Artistry

Word of the Day:
Bandido/a= I guess this adjective literally translates to bandit, but people use it in a playful way to say "awww, what a trickster."

My little neighbor loves to come over and use my crayons. He's recently found a new hobby: trying to borrow my camera to take pictures of everyone and everything. He also enjoys taking selfies.

In an early morning camera borrowing session back in December, he took a lot of very "artsy" photos, likely due to his interesting use of camera angles from his vantage point barely 3 feet off the ground. Enjoy.

Guys!! I read over 100 books in Peace Corps!! *

*And no-one is surprised.

"You call me wetback because I crossed a river, so what can I call you? You crossed an ocean."
Carlos Loya, a Latino resident of Colorado, as quoted in The Slums of Aspen


Reached my Peace Corps goal of reading 100 books, a little bit prematurely. I guess I need a new hobby for next year. Or not. In honor my trip back to the homeland and the fast paced North American lifestyle, I'm keeping these to 140 characters or less, Twitter style. Bam.

88. Kitchen Confidential- Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain is a total tool, but oddly loveable. Totally accurate depiction of kitchen culture.

89. A Sea in Flames- Carl Safina
Trenchant commentary on the BP disaster. An extremely necessary moral voice.

90. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001-Steven Coll
Good primer on Afghanistan from POV of US agencies. A bit Bin Laden centric though.

91. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity- Katherine Boo
Not sure if her methods were ethical, but a hell of a book.

92. The Forever War- Dexter Filkins
Iraq War reporting that is simultaneously funny, depressing and honest.

93. Wonder- R.J. Palacio
Beautiful story of a child with a deformity who finds belonging at school. I cried at the end cuz I doubt it would happen in real life.

92. El Ruido de las Cosas al Caer (The Sound of Things Falling)- Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Never has a book made Peace Corps look so bad. The real mysteries never get solved in this book: unsatisfying.

93. I, Rigoberto Menchu- Rigobertu Menchu and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray
Wowza.

94. De Amor y De  Sombra (Of Love and Shadows)- Isabel Allende
Never has political persecution sounded so sexy. Chilean revolutionary lover with horseback escape? Yes please.

95. In Patagonia- Bruce Chatwin
Weird book with great storytelling but conspicuous absence of the Mapuche.

96. La Conjura contra America (The Plot Against America)- Philip Roth
A real thinker of a book.

97. The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins
Stop haunting my dreams with your terrifying creation Suzanne Collins!!

98. Cosmapa- Jose Roman (en espanol)
Banana farm owner knocks up his own daughter but then she's not actually his daughter? Also World War 2 happened? WHAT DERANGEMENT

99. Cronica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold)- Gabriel Garcia Marquez (RR, but in a new language this time)
Don't obsess about virginity or people die! Fantastically masterful book.

100. Sloppy Firsts- Meghan MacCafferty (RR)
Protagonist Jess Darling is basically me in High School with slightly more drama.

101. Second Helpings- Meghan MacCafferty (RR)
Jess Darling continues to be like me from high school until she gets romanced.

102. Catching Fire- Suzanne Collins
Saw Hunger Games 2 but I think the book was better. Basically the same actually.

103. The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America's Eden- Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow
Spot on about need to study inequality from the top down. Gets a little preachy and then doesn't propose much, because its a sociology study.