Weekend in the SG

On Friday last, Jim and I caught a bus up to Sabana Grande to visit Dan, Nathan, Erin, Maria, and Maria. The first four are also volunteers from UD, and the second Maria is from Greece. Well, she was born in the US, and has lived there for quite some time, but she speaks Greek, and has an accent when she speaks English, so we call her Greek Maria anyway. Sabana Grande is a little village up in the mountains, in which the women have started a group called “Mujeres Solares” or Solar Women. Over the past few years (with the assistance of Grupo Fenix), they have established a pretty impressive body of work. Down on the main road, outside of the village they have a nice piece of land, on which stands the Centro Solar (solar center). Here, they build solar box ovens and solar dryers, which they sell to anyone interested in buying, as well as use those ovens and dryers to cook snacks, and dry fruit and other foodstuffs which they sell at a roadside stand. For the past few years, groups of UD students have been working at the Centro Solar, developing and testing a solar autoclave for applications in medical instrument sterilization. In the future, the Mujeres Solares hope to expand the Solar Center to include a Solar Restaurant, and Solar Hotel. Their future plans are very exciting, and while I was listening to Dan explain the types of projects that they are working on, all that I wanted to do was dive in and get my hands on a part of it. Maybe sometime in the future.

We relaxed Friday night, and played some Uno, and then on Saturday, we went to Somoto Canyon. At its deepest, the canyon measures 200 meters, with all kinds of plant life, and even trees clinging to its vertical rock walls. At its widest, the canyon is maybe 10 meters wide, and through this narrow channel courses a powerful river. The only way to access these narrow parts of the canyon are to swim against the current, and climb up the canyon walls to circumvent rapids. So we did. For about a dollar per person, a local man guided us on a little adventure that was a mixture of rock climbing, cliff diving, and white water rafting (without a raft). Our first obstacle was a section of waist-deep rapids that we had to cross on foot, because at this point we all still had our dry clothes, and other items that wouldn’t survive a swim. It took us about 20 minutes to cross, because the bottom of the river was composed of perfectly smooth fist-sized stones, whose constant shifting, and concentrated pressure points, coupled with the swiftly flowing water made going very slow. Everyone else wore flip-flops, or other waterproof shoes, and I, being a genius had decided to wear my hiking boots. Since these were the only shoes that I brought to Sabana Grande, I couldn’t exactly get them soaked, so I crossed barefoot, with my boots hanging around my neck by their laces. After a bit of a hike on the other side of the river, we got to the narrow part of the canyon, deposited our dry things, and set off up the gorge. For about the next half-hour we climbed and swam our way up the ravine, and for the first time in the real world, I put all of those hours at the UD rock wall to good use. After a bit, our guide explained that we could go no further, because the current would become too strong. Nothing to do now, but kick out into the middle of the stream, and let the current carry us back to our starting point. Back at the gathering point, there was a ledge about three stories high, that our guide told us was perfectly safe for diving. Dan and I were the only ones willing to try, and had just enough time to get two jumps in each before we had to head back in order to meet our transportation at the allotted time.

Exhausted, and yet energized by what we had just done, we returned to Sabana Grande and napped. Later that evening, after a wonderful dinner from Dona Carmen we all boarded a bus to Ocotal for a night on the town. We went to a bar first, to meet David, the volunteer coordinator in Sabana Grande, and then went to a discoteca (dance club) for the rest of the night. At this point, Jim was not feeling too great, and had a slight fever, so we asked him what he wanted to do, and he said that he’d be ok if we found him a room at an hospedaje (little hotel). I felt kind of bad leaving him there, but he insisted that he was fine. The rest of the night was incredible, and to make a long story short, Nicaraguan girls really know how to dance!

On Sunday, we just relaxed, and then on Monday morning, Jim and I boarded our bus back to Managua.

Don Juan and Family

The other day, an American lady who works with Grupo Fenix was staying at the Suni building overnight, so Jim and I talked to her for a while about different things, one of those being Don Juan. Apparently she stayed with Don Juan some time in the past, and had plenty to say. Apparently, Don Juan is an actual "Don Juan". He has been married several times to several different women, and has had an incredible number of children (he may or may not have sired a good portion of the inhabitants of our street?). I believe that the younger woman who lives in our house (she must be between 20 and 30) is his current wife, and the the baby girl is their daughter. Apparently, Don Juan was once married to a woman, and her daughter... at the same time. I wish I spoke enough spanish to congratulate him on his epic performance.

This really is all I know about the family we live with. As I said before, we are treated more as tenants than part of the family, although we try to talk to them as much as possible. We are also gone a good portion of the time for work, and then in the evenings to avoid going to bed at 7.

On another note, I just rescued a bat from the refrigerator, here in the Suni kitchen. Jim was opening the door to get some water, when into the room flies a little bat, who lands in the fridge, and huddles against a bottle to hide from him. Unwilling to touch the little bugger due to his fear of rabies, Jim served the function of cameraman as I grabbed a piece of cloth, and scooped the little guy out of the door tray. Interestingly enough, he didnt seem to mind being picked up (it was probably a tad chilly in the fridge) and scampered off when i set it down outside. Five minutes later, he swept back into the kitchen, ran around on the floor for a minute, and then flew off into the tree.

Bats are cool! Ants are not.

Weekend Update

Movie night was interesting but odd.  Douglass, Jim, and I went to "Price Smart" (Sam's club) to get snacks, and then went to Charles' house to watch an hour-long artsy film.  It had 3 settings, 2 actors, and was completely in Miskito (a Peruvian native tongue) with Spanish subtitles.  The two actors, an old man and an old woman, either sat in a hammock, or in separate chairs for the entire movie, and talked about their son, who was going off to fight in a war.  He died. This is all I was able to gather at the speed that the subtitles were flashing on the screen.  Actually, the actors didnt speak at all physically.  They simply sat there, while their voiceovers had a conversation.  I guess it would have been meaningful if I had understood more than 10% of what they were saying.

Anyway, we spent yesterday cutting metal again, and I think that's what's on the docket for today, tomorrow and the rest of the week as well.  Once we're done cutting we'll start building the frames that will eventually have concrete poured around them.  Instead of simply talking about cutting metal though, I think I'll start writing up some of the interesting cultural observations that I've made.  Later though, now it's time to work.

A good weekend (so far)

So, following the idle week from hell, Jim and I have luckily had a pretty interesting weekend.  On Saturday, we decided to take a walk to one of the other large malls in Managua, the Plaza Inter.  We looked it up on the map, and headed out, only to get to our supposed destination and find nothing.  Long story short we ended up randomly walking through Managua for about two hours, but it wasn't a complete failure, because we got to see a good bit of the city.  After this, we stopped by the Metrocentro for lunch (Jim needs his McPollo and fries).  I went to the Nicaraguan food booth and got a random pile of delicious, mixed with rice and beans.  

We came back to Suni for a while, and I started finally working on some of the Taekwon-do testing material that I had promised myself that I would practice all summer.

Around 6:00 p.m. we finally resigned ourselves to head back to Don Juan's for the nightly ritual of eating dinner, and going to bed by 7:30.  Don Juan and his family rarely stay up past this time, and Don Juan doesn't seem to like it when we have the light on in our room and he's trying to sleep.  So, Jim and I bought booklights at Radio Shack and spend our evenings reading in our beds, until around nine.  Luckily, Douglass intercepted us on the way out and asked if we had any plans for the evening.  None, we responded, and he asked us if we wanted to go to the mall with him, because he had to go pick up a few things.  Having earlier failed in our attempt to walk to the mall, we eagerly agreed.  We ended up going to "La Galeria", which we found out is in fact the nicest one in Managua.  It's easily two or three times the size of the dayton mall, and much less boring.  Like all the buildings down here, it's integrated with the outdoors.  After Douglass picked up his goggles and swim trunks (he's starting swim lessons today) we headed back out into the mall.  We stopped in the movie theatre to see what was playing, and nearly went to see UP, when instead Douglass pulled out his cell phone.  Instead of seeing the movie, we went over to the sushi restauraunt, "Sushi Itto" where we were met by another Suni employee (from France), Charles, and his girlfriend.  A minute or two later another two guys (and their significant others) arrived, and at first I was excited to see that they looked like Gringos, but they ended up being from Finland.  We had sushi, and hung out there for a while, and truthfully if I hadn't been speaking Spanish, I could have easily confused the whole situation for anywhere in the United States.  After the Sushi place, we hit a few bars (thank God for the permeation of American music into all cultures of the world) and ended up back at Don Juan's around midnight (way past our bedtime!).  The whole evening was a lot of fun, and it was much needed after coming off this past week.  

Douglass informed us that we were invited to go to a movie night at Charles' house this evening, so we're looking forward to that.  I can only hope that the movie is in English with Spanish subtitles!  Or heck, I'd take English subtitles.  As long as I'm not in bed at 7:30 reading by flashlight, it's fine with me.

Week in Managua

When we got back from the last trip, we were told that instead of going out again so soon, Jim and I would be spending the week in Managua, working on preparing materials for another project that Suni is working on in conjunction with the EU.  The project involves installing 42 large solar systems composed of seven panels each for use, I believe by local clinics out towards the Atlantic coast.  This is a rather large undertaking, because according to EU specifications, the arrays have to be mounted on 5 meter tall towers for the sake of security etc...  Jim and I were supposed to be working on the construction of the bases of the towers, i.e. pouring concrete around a rebar framework.  The only problem was that the money had not yet arrived from the EU, so materials could not be purchased, and work could not yet start.  From Monday to Thursday, we sat here in the Suni building, waiting to see whether or not the money would arrive, and thus whether or not there would be anything for us to do.  There wasn't.  A number of factors combined to make this the longest, and arguably most unpleasant week of my life.  Finally, on friday there was work to do, and we spent the entire day cutting hundreds of pieces of re-bar with highly inadequate hacksaws.  At least it made the day go by.

So far on this trip the following has disappeared:

my digital camera

Jim's 2 gb xd camera memory card

my ludicrously expensive sunglasses that it was insisted i have for this trip.

By disappeared, I mean that I suspect they were stolen.  I have no proof of this, and truthfully can't think of how.  Both times, I had visual confirmation of where my items were, by both myself and Jim, but when a day or so later I went to retrieve said items, they were no longer where they had been placed.   I understand that I am a person who is very vulnerable to misplacing things, but I never actually lose them, and after Jim and I thoroughly searched through all of our belongings at least four times, and nothing turned up, I gave up on blaming myself.  I truthfully don't think that Don Juan has anything to do with this, but there are other young men living in the house, whom I have never met, and one who purposefully seems to avoid Jim and I whenever possible (Suspicious?).  We keep our room locked with a padlock (to which I believe only Don Juan, and ourselves have a key), and both times, the items in question have disappeared from closed bags or suitcases, which means they couldn't have just fallen out somewhere, and someone would have had to purposefully go looking for them.  This has me more than a bit angry and confused, but there's not really much I can do about it.

So right now, Jim and I are trying to figure out something interesting to do in Managua for the day, because we're both going to go crazy if we have to sit here all day again.

Frizbee!

Never leave home without it!

Jim and I decided the other night to go outside and throw a frizbee in the street.  At first, the 15 people who were all hanging out outside watched, laughing and clapping whenever we completed a tricky looking catch or throw (I guess they haven’t seen much frizbee?).  During the first few minutes of throwing I noticed about 7 boys all who looked like they were just dying to give it a try.  Truthfully, this was my goal from the beginning, so we invited them out.  I’ve never in all my frizbee throwing days seen a group of kids more instantly proficient at tossing disc.  There were a few bad throws at first, as expected, but within 5 minutes they were all throwing straight, with no wobbles, and with a surprising amount of power.  One of the smallest, I believe his name is Elias, watched me throw a forehand, picked up the disc, and without any hesitation threw a perfect forehand with power, directly to my hands!  American kids must be delaying the development of their motor skills through videogames and laziness and stuff, because these kids were amazing. (Jim also asked them if they had ever seen a frizbee before, and they said no)  Another interesting point is that without being prompted, they instantly established a fair system of sharing the frizbee.  They made sure that everyone got a turn, in order, and that no one was left out.  If one of them would catch the frizbee, and it wasn’t their turn to throw it back, they would hand it to the boy whose turn it was.  No one had to tell them to share, and the one time that one of the more boisterous boys, Dennis, tried to get more than his fair share of turns, he was instantly verbally berated, kicked a few times, and shunned by the others.  He walked off and sulked for a minute or two, but then returned, apologized, and was instantly accepted back into the order.  If we continue to play frizbee every once in a while, which I hope that we will, I’ll try to teach them Ultimate, and then Jim and I both brought extra frizbees, which we can leave with them.  After a little frizbee, they wanted to play football (soccer), so we did that for about a half hour.  They then wanted to play a different game, which ended up being a strange mix of dodgeball and pickle.  Jim and I stood on opposite ends of a partition of the street, and were given a ball.  The kids grouped up in front of me, and then took off running toward Jim, I was instructed to try to peg them with the ball, and that they each had three lives before they were out of the round.  They contintued to run back and forth between us, while we did our best to knock them out.  There didn't seem to be any "bases" or safe zones for them to reach, only to see who lasted the longest running back and forth.  I want to try and explain the game "Pickle" to them, but I'm going to have to look up a few words first.  Hopefully this will give me enough of a game-oriented vocabulary to explain Ultimate.  If so, it will be my greatest accomplishment.

the disc unites

1st Installation Continued

So We Built a Road:

Going from the first village to the second, we continued to take the gully upward.  At one point, the entire right side of the trail was gone, washed down the side of the mountain.  There was no way for us to pass, and I thought we were just going to have to back down the mountain (which would have been a feat in and of itself).  Instead, an old man who had hitched a ride hopped off the truck, said something to Isaac, and then started picking up large stones and placing them in the trench, which was all that remained of the road.  I looked at Isaac, who shrugged, and then we all started chucking in rocks to fill the void.  The old man had a pickaxe, which he used to pull dirt down on top of the rocks to help fill in the gaps, and in only 20 minutes or so we had reconstructed the road enough that the truck could pass.  We eventually got to the next work site, but there was not enough daylight left to do the installation, and we left.  We ended up in Quilali, a town not far from the Honduran border, and ate dinner from a group of street vendors in the town square.  They were actually a group of families, each with a table and a grill.  The meal consisted of gallo pinto, half a grilled chicken, a salad of shredded cabbage with vinegar and onions, and a heaping pile of platanos fritos—plantain chips.

2nd Installation:

At the second church, Isaac let me install the panel completely solo, which I did a bit beyond his standards.  Apparently I didn’t have to measure and mark things so perfectly before drilling the holes.  He explained that it takes too much time to make things perfect, and that the solar panel doesn’t care whether it’s off an inch or two in any direction.  Battery systems are really very simple.  The panel, the battery, and the lights are all connected to a charge controller.  The panel charges the battery during the day, and then at night, when the lights are in use, the controller regulates the battery release to optimize usable lighting time.  I heard from Douglass that in-grid systems are even easier, because they require no batteries, and if they’re already in-grid, people just use the existing lights.  Sadly, there is a regulation in Nicaragua that makes in-grid systems illegal, bt he says that they’re working on that too.  Interestingly enough, there is no real organized electrical utility.  Here in Managua, I think that the government operates some kind of gas turbine or oil fired power plant that provides pretty reliable power to the city.  Outside the city, the vast majority of the country does not have power, and the other towns that do, usually get it from private providers, who set up small power plants outside the town, and provide power as long as they’re getting paid.

So we installed the system in the church, and left via a different road, which was much easier.  We went back to Esteli for the night.  It was early still and Isaac asked us if we wanted to go grab a beer.  Not one to turn down a cold liquid that is safer to drink than the water I assented.  We stopped at a cantina, and had a few beers (don’t worry, Jim had a Coke Lite).  The beer was “Cervesa Tona (with a ~ over the n), as Isaac said, the most popular beer in Nicaragua.  It was a light lager, similar in taste to Yuengling, but a tad lighter in color and flavor.  Most importantly, it was cold, and after two days in the Nicaraguan sun, drinking warm water, cold was heavenly.  Isaac also ordered himself a bowl of soup.  Smiling rather mischievously he asked if we wanted to try it.  When I asked what exactly it was, he responded with, “huevo de toro” (egg of bull).  Now, I looked at him quizzically, and began to explain that bulls do not in fact lay eggs.  Isaac cut me short, laughing and said, “No no no…HUEVOS”, making a cupping gesture with his hands.  This time I got it: bull testicle soup.  So I tried it, and I’m not going to lie, it was pretty darn tasty.  Needless to say, Jim did not.  More interesting than the beer and the bull testes was the conversation.  After the past five days, Jim and I had gotten pretty good at understanding Isaac, and Isaac has picked up a lot of English as well.  We talked about how Jim and I felt about Nicaragua, and about differences in culture that we had noticed.  We all agreed that in Nicaragua, the culture is one that is much more relaxed and open than in the US.  The people are friendly here, and not afraid of constant social interaction.  Isaac asked what we thought about Barack Obama and the war in Iraq.  He was rather surprised when Jim said that he had not voted for Obama, because he’s a conservative.  Isaac explained that everyone in Nicaragua had been rooting for Obama.  No matter what they think of our politics, the young people here still see the U.S. as a place of opportunity, where anything is possible.  The previous administration was not a very good example of this, and for them, Barack Obama’s election brought that back.  The political divisions in Nicaragua are a bit deeper, due to certain amounts of violence perpetrated by each side against the other.  This seems to cause a number of the older Nicaraguans to be slightly wary of Gringos like us, but in general, the young people see the need for cooperation between the two sides.  Another interesting observation that Jim, Isaac, Emilio, and myself all made was that after a beer or three, my Spanish, and Isaac’s English skills easily doubled.  This even seemed to carry into the next day, and I’m sure that we both came out of it much more proficient in the other’s language.  It was a good night.  *Note* The drinking age in Nicaragua is technically 18, but as people like to say, “Money is the drinking age” if you have money, no one asks questions.

After all of this, we came back to Managua, relaxed at Juan’s for a day, and went to Suni in the morning.

1st installation

I'm incredibly behind with this whole blog posting thing, so I'm going to do my best over the course of this week in Managua to catch up.  Also, I realize that my posts have been way too long.  I think that the first few days I was rather overcome with all the things that were going on, and felt like writing them all down in great detail.  From now on, no more epic narrative!

So anyhoo... the first installation:

Woke up at 4:30 a.m. and drove out to the first village.  At a crossroads we met up with a man on a motorbike, who led us to the first village.  The road to the village was less of a road than a dirt path crossed with a gully.  The gully was set into the side of the mountain at an angle that caused all of our gear to slide backward in the truck bed, effectively pinning my feet against the tailgate, until I was able to pull them free, and then assume a position on top of the batteries.   At the village, I found out that this whole time, Isaac had been capable of speaking a little English, as he explained, “You working with me!”  Our job was to install the panel on the roof, which was actually quite simple.  Connect the positive and negative cables to their respective terminals on the panel, attach the prefabricated aluminum supports, and run the ground cable to a copper rod driven into the ground.  Working on a corrugated tin roof is interesting.  If you step in the wrong places, your weight can bend (or in corroded places crack) the tin, so you can only step on places where you see nails, screws, or other fasteners that were used to mount the tin to the crossbeams of the roof.  I drilled a hole through the tin for each support, slid in a bolt, and then from inside, Isaac held another wrench so that I could tighten it down.  After this, we ran the cable inside through another hole, and got off the roof.  At this point, Isaac let me loose to go set up the panels on the church while he, Jim, and Emilio finished the internal wiring.  The whole installation here consists of one panel on a house, and two on the roof of the church, taking about 4-6 hours.  Let me tell you, there is no hotter place on earth than the top of a tin roof in the Nicaraguan countryside.  When I finally came down off the church roof after installing the two panels, Jim was looking at me very strangely.  I asked what the problem was and he told me that my face was quite literally beet red.  No surprise, because it was at least  150 degrees on that roof.  I couldn’t let my skin come in contact with the tin, because it would burn, and at one point when I set the wrench down for 5 minutes, I had to wrap my hand in my shirt before I picked it up, because it had become so hot.  Luckily, a liter of water and a 20 minute lunch break later I cooled down.

This week

As far as I know, Jim and I will be spending this upcoming week in Managua.  Apparently Suni is working on a project with the European Union that involves installing 42 7-panel systems in some pretty far-out places.  Each of these 7 panel arrays has to be mounted on a concrete and steel tower which Suni is also in charge of constructing.  Douglass told us that next week, Jim and I are going to be helping construct the rebar framework, and pour concrete for foundation blocks.  It sounds like a very interesting project, and I'm perfectly fine with a week's break from the truckbed.

I have a lot of interesting stuff to post, but I have been consistently leaving my journal at Don Juan's, hopefully I'll do something about that today.

Oh yeah; mango from street vendors is awesome!

Day 2: Our first adventure

3:00 A.M.  I wake up to the sound of something or someone screaming horribly.  Only after it happens again do I realized that it is the sound of a rooster crowing.  This is the first time I’ve ever actually woken up at first light, with a rooster as an alarm clock.  The neighborhood is full of roosters and chickens that people keep for eggs and meat.  So far, I have been woken up by a rooster every single morning, because no matter where you go… people have them (I hereby declare formal war against all roosters… do you hear me roosters?! I’m going to eat you all!).  Luckily this time I fall back asleep until I wake up again to the sound of a car alarm.  Jim is also awake and tells me that it is 4:30 A.M.  Not wanting to stay in our sweltering little room any longer than necessary, we decide to get up.  At 4:30 it’s already fully daylight, and we can hear Juan in the kitchen.  I decide to take a shower.  Interestingly, the shower wall is a piece of a billboard that Juan has attached to two of the steel supports with pieces of barbed wire.  (As a sidenot, barbed wire seems to be the material of choice in this country, for any use ranging from actually making a barbed wire fence, to holding your house together, to hanging your clothes to dry.)  A lare smiling hispanic man watches me shower, and on the reverse side, diligently monitors the toilet room.  Juan serves us a breakfast of tortillas and eggs.  Every thing is delicious: the tortillas are handmade, and the eggs are cooked with tomato, garlic and onion.  After this, we head out, and arrive at Suni Solar at 7:00 a.m.  There, we send a few more emails to inform people that we won’t be back for a five days, put our laptops in Douglas’ office, and start loading the truck.  The two technicians that we will be accompanying are Isaac and Emilio, niether of whom speak English.  We tie down all of the gear with ropes, and Isaac pulls the truck around to the front of the building.  Only now do I realize that only two people can fit in the cab of the pickup.  Before anything can be said, Jim climbs in the cab with Isaac, so Emilio and I climb up into the bed of the pickup.  This is a standard form of transportation in Nicaragua.  Pickup trucks regularly are overflowing with people, some even riding on the rear bumpers, or clinging to the sides. 

            It is a sunny day, probably in the mid 90’s.  Humidity here is constant, and oppressive.  We first go to the mall so that Jim can buy a cell phone.  It costs only 20 dollars, and I enjoy standing in the air conditioning if even for a moment.  Nicaragua apparently is one of the best places in central America to get electronics, because prices are so cheap.  Later on this trip we realized that nearly everyone in the country, even the poorest farmers out in the most remote parts of the countryside have cell phones.  We get on the road and start heading out of the city, and I ask Emilio how far we are going.  He says that the trip wil lbe about six hours.  Six hours! At the time I couldn’t even imagine sitting in the back of a truck for that long with nothing to keep me occupied.  I’m used to bringing a book in the car for anything more than a ten minute drive!  And even then, I’m in the car with the air conditioner on, not in the back of a pickup truck bed with the tropical sun doing its best to set me on fire!  With nothing else to do, I liberally apply sunscreen, and hope for the best.  At this point, I am sitting in the back of the bed, while Emilio stands, bracing himself on the rack that holds the ladders and a bundle of conduit pipes.  It takes at least an hour to leave Managua, and the ride is rather unpleasant.  As I watch the city pass by, I cant help but wonder whether or not I’m going to be burnt to a crisp both inside and out.  Luckily we stopped at the last gas station to buy water, and I grabbed two more 1.5 liter bottles than Isaac suggested.  At this point I really wasn’t feeling too great about this trip.  It’s hot, dirty, and in the city you might as well be sucking on the tailpipe of a car.  But, just as I had resigned myself to the sad conclusion that this whole thing was a disappointment, and that I would be counting the days until that beautiful Boeing swept me up and out of this place, we reached the end of the city.  What came next completely changed my mind, and was the first time that I really started having fun.

            It was actually quite startling when the city ended, because it had taken us so long to drive, I figured that it would just go on and on forever.  When we crossed that line, where the last block ended, the dusty, crowded world of Managua gave way to the most stunning landscape that I have ever seen.  In the lowlands surrounding the city, small cattle farms and rice paddies dot the land, and in the distance you can see the mountains: our destination.  You can literally see for miles and miles in every direction, because the land slopes gently upward to meet the mountains.  It is as if the land is opening up and trying to make itself as visible as possible from the road.  In addition to being able to see for miles across the land, you can see the same amount of sky.  As I said, this is the rainy season in Nicaragua, which means that on any given day, some form of rain is almost inevitable.  Isaac stops the truck for a pee break and Emilio, seeing a few dark clouds lined up perfectly above the road in the distance, squeezes into the cab next to Jim.  Looks like I’m going to get wet. 

            We drive for another half an hour, and it rains on and off.  When it rains in Nicaragua, it pours, and although it is pretty much the definition of a torrential downpour, I stay relatively dry.  The natural vortex that occurrs in the bed of a pickup truck at 60 mph directed a good majority of the rainwater up and over me as I made myself as low to the bed as I could.  I am still getting wet, but at this point it is heavenly, after sitting in the sun at 95 degrees.  We stop for lunch at a roadside cafe, and I’m already dry, because of the special moisture wicking pants that my mom bought (thanks mom!).  Lunch consists of rice, beans, and an anomalous vegetable whose name I did not catch.  It is green, and is about the size and shape of an avocado, but its taste and consistency is much more like that of a pepper.  It is stuffed with something, I do not know what.  All I know is that it’s delicious.

Day 2 Part 2: Albert:After lunch, I hop back in the truckbed, and the other three squeeze back into the cab.  As we’re pulling out of the parking lot, a boy, probably around 14 years old scrambles up into the truck, and plops down next to me.  I don’t ask any questions; I don’t really care, or know enough Spanish to question his right to hitch a ride (I later found out that he asked Isaac).  After a few minutes on the road, he taps me on the shoulder, and pointing to a hammock that he has tied around himself like a bandolier tells me that it is beautiful, handmade, and strong…and I can have it for only seven dollars!  I tell him no, thank you, I do not need, nor have a place to put a hammock right now.  He looks accepting of the fact, and we sit in silence for another mile or two.  Now, aon either side of the road, the mountains are growing closer and closer, and the view is absolutely breathtaking.  I’m sitting with my back against the gear, facing out the back of the truck, so I have a completley unobstructed 180 degree view.  He notices the amazed look on my face, and asks if I’ve ever seen mountains like this before.  I say no, not really, the place that I come from has no mountains.  I say that they are very beautiful, and he tells me that they are dangerous, full of scorpions, snakes, and other creatures that he explains only by baring his teeth, growling, and making claws out of his hands.  Awesome… this is where I’m headed, I think.  In fact it was truly amazing to me to see how unimportant language actually can be in communication.  After another minute he tells me that the price of the hammock is now five American dollars.  Once again I graciously decline, and he lowers the price to four.  He explains that it is his last one, and he just has to sell it.  Truthfully, for four dollars, I would have bought the hammock simply to give the kid a break, but sadly I only have a $20 bill and I don’t expect him to have change.  I tell him that I have no money, otherwise I would buy it.  I don’t think he believes me, but it gets us off the topic for a while.  A few minutes later he taps my shoulder again.  Pointing at the cracked and torn leather of his own, he asks me if I have an extra pair of shoes.  I don’t , and wen I explain this to him, he says that he understands, it’s just that those shoes had been his fathers as well and they are very old and uncomfortable.  Note: after seeing the state that this kid’s shoes were in, I am never again throwing out a pair of old shoes until they literally fall off my feet.  The two pair of old shoes that I threw out just before leaving on this trip could have lasted that kid three more years, and compared to his were brand new.  He now asks me if I have any water, which thankfully I do, so I crack open a bottle, and we spend the next half hour passing it back and forth, enjoying the mountains, which are becoming more and more numerous.  I ask him where he’s going, and he says that he’s headed to Matagalpa.  I tell him that I have no idea where that is, so I can’t tell him whether or not he’ll get there in our truck.  A few more miles go by, and it rains again, this time more heavily than before, and the two of us laugh, while huddling down against the black tarp that covers the gear.  Since we left Managua, the temperature has dropped at least 10 degrees, and the rain makes it even more pleasant.  It eventually stops raining, and I realized that the boy is looking intently at my feet.  When I catch his glance, he calls my bluff.  Pointing out my brand new Columbia waterproof, all-terrain hiking boots he asks, “If you have no money, why do you have new shoes?”  I have no real explanation for this, and I know that I look very embarrassed.  Slowly he takes the hammock from around his shoulder, folds it up into a bundle, and takes out the backpack that he has been sitting on this whole time.  He opens it to reveal that it is full of identical, folded hammocks, most still with the factory label attached.  He puts the hammock in with the others, and looks up at me with a mischevious grin.  “Handmade, huh?” I say, and we both laugh, caught in our own lies.  It looks like we’re entering the vicinity of a small town, and he taps on the side of the truck.  Isaac pulls over, and as the boy is hopping out, I ask him his name. “Albert” he responds, and then asks mine.  I tell him, and we shake hands.  As his feet hit the ground, he wishes me “Buen Viaje”—good travels, and I respond in turn.  As we pull away, he tightens up his backpack, throws me a salute and starts marching up the road.  Laughing I return the salute, and then wave.  Buen Viaje Albert, I hope you get to Matagalpa with an empty backpack, and a full pocket.

            I settle back into the truck as we begin to slowly climb into the mountains.  The temperature is dropping steadily, and I’m now very comfortable.  All in all, it wasn’t a bad start for a road trip!

Back from trip 2

We just got back to Managua after our second trip to the countryside.  On this one, we repaired a few systems (meaning that the actual technicians repaired a few systems and that Jim and I watched and felt useless).  We'll probably be in Managua for the weekend. 

Ok, so I realize that i have been here for 10 days, and that i have only since posted information on Day 1.  I'm going to throw the rest of it up now, to get myself up to date.

Day 1 Continued

Right inside the door is space enough to fit two rocking chairs, and a small CRT television is mounted inside a recessed part of the wall.  Behind the rocking chairs is a curtain, which is the entrance to the room that Juan and his family share.  Through another small doorway is the kitchen/dining room.  There is a small propane stove and a table sized appropriately for four.  To the right is the entrance ot our room.  There is a latch on the door for a padlock so we can lock it when we leave.  We put our luggage inside (there is no place to unpack, we will live out of the suitcases) and Douglas warns us to shake out our beds and shoes before using them.  It is the rainy season in Nicaragua, and scorpions (sadly not the 80’s metal band) like to find dark, dry places to hide.  I need no further warning and decide that everything I have is staying packed in the giant vacuum bags that my mom packed my clothes in.  Douglas leaves, and Juan shows us the facilities.  For peeing there is an open drain in the back of the yard/house with a piece of waist high corrugated tin for privacy.  There are also a shower (cold water only) and a fully functional and plumbed toilet, specifically for when you aren’t using the drain.  The interesting thing about the house is that after the front wall/door there is no real rear wall.  When you walk through the house, coming from the front door, the roof ends at the back of the kitchen.  I guess you could call this a courtyard, but since it’s not separated from the roofed area, it’s really just an open part of the house.  In this area there is an enclosure that contains a pit for an open wood fire, and a metal stand on which to place a pot.  Also in the courtyard are two trees, laden with fruit, that I later find out are mango and lemon.

            Juan goes to bed, leaving Jim and I in our room.  It may have been the rapidity in which everything had just ocurred, or maybe we were just a little surprised at the conditions in which we were expected to live, but Jim and I were not very happy.  After killing two rather large cockroaches (about 3-4 inches each) and scouring the room for more (there were none, and no scorpions either), I pulled out my sheet and my mosquito net, and told Jim that everything would look better in the morning.  After a brief shower in “Deepwoods Off” DEET insect repellant, I wrapped myself in the mosquito net and layed down on my bed (a hard wooden platform with an equally hard pad on top).  For then next two hours I lay awake staring at the ceiling, a mix of factors keeping me from sleep.  Something four legged was skittering around on the roof, probably just a cat, but in my current mental state, it might as well have been La Chupacabra!  My mind was racing.  How was I going to survive here?  Can I go home now?  My God, it’s hot as hell!  After a while, I just slapped myself, told my brain to shut up, and fell asleep probably somewhere around 11:00 p.m.

 

I should note that after the trip, we returned and were not nearly as unhappy about our living situation.  Juan’s house is by far completely standard, and a perfectly good place to stay, in fact I’m beginning to feel very comfortable there.  We’ll talk more about that later.

Leaving

We're leaving Suni, and going back to Juan's for the day.  Tomorrow morning we are going on another trip, probably for only about 3 days this time.

I've been typing everything into a word document all day today, and i already have 7 pages single spaced.  As you can see below I already posted the beginning of Day 1... I'll put some more up now, so that while i'm gone those who are so desperately following what i'm doing (hi mom) can have something to read.

Day 1

Before I begin explaining the trip itself, I should first explain how we came to be in Managua.  After going through customs in the Managua Airport, we were picked up by Douglas, the operations manager of Suni Solar, and two other employees, whose names I didn't catch.  Douglas speaks English pretty well, and is easy to understand in Spanish, because he enunciates and slows down when talking to "the Gringos".

On the drive to the Suni Solar building he explains to us that we'll mainly be working on installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels out in the countryside, but we also will be doing some work with a solar thermal system on a hotel in Managua.  It's a balmy 80 degrees at night with at least 80-90% humidity, you feel like if you tried hard enough, you could drink the air.  The ride to the hotel lasts about 20 minutes, and we get to see a lot of the city.  I'm not exactly sure how to describe Managua.  The city itself is basically an enormous neigborhood, sprawling for miles and miles in all directions.  I'm not exactly sure where the city center is, because the tallest buiding that i have seen is about 4 stories in height, and there's only one.  The rest are all single and two story houses and shops.  At night, it is peaceful, but during the day people, cars, busses, bicycles, and motorbikes fill the streets to capacity.  There are stoplights... but they seem more optional than anything else.  By American standards, one would categorize the quality of dwellings as slums, more of shacks or shelters than houses.  I'll explain more about this in a bit, but for now, back to the story.

Eventually we arrive at Suni Solar, a two story building that is painted light yellow, and sports a large light-up sign with the company name and logo.  Jim and I go inside, and Douglas tells us that the building has wi-fi, so we can use the internet whenever we want (gods be praised!).  After sending a few emails to let people know that we have arrived and are safe, we pack up the laptops, and hop back in the truck to go to our host house.  On the way, Douglas tells us that we're going to be leaving in the morning to go install some panels in the country with two of the Suni technicians.  We ask how long he expects us to be gone and when he says four or five days, we're both rather taken aback.  Things seem to be happening so quickly that my head is spinning, and this is only accented when the ride to our house is literally 50 feet down the street, and around the corner.  

I should note that during this entire time, it is dark outside, because the sun is fully set here by 7 o'clock in the evening.  This only adds to the confusion, because everything is clearer in the light of day.

Douglas stops the truck in front of what seems to me to be just another one of the standard shacks that i've seen along the entire drive.  We hop out, and are greeted at the door by an older man, whose name I later learn is Juan.  He speaks rapidly, in heavily accented spanish, so i can barely understand a word here and there.  Jim is doing a little better, but most of the time we can only get the general idea of what he's saying by his hand gestures.  Our room is a partition of the house, that contains three beds, and is about the size of a Founders room (only it is square, and it seems smaller).  The house itself is built of a steel framework, seemingly assembled at random, with a roof of corrugated tin sheets, and a concrete block floor.  The exterior walls are concrete block, with a heavy front door attached facing the road. 

Note: the internet at Suni Solar is flaky, so I will be posting as much as I can at a time.  The internet recently went out for a few hours, and in that time I wrote 15 pages in my notebook... this will take time to type!

A lot to say

Allright, we just got back from our first trip to the mountains!  We installed 3 solar systems, two on churches, and one on a house/shop.  I've decided that the easiest way to convey exactly what went on is to just start at the beginning, and write everything in the sequence that it occurred.

So, the next few posts are going to be all about the trip, in a blog segment that I'm going to call, "Nicaragua: The Truckbed Adventures"