Here is the email blast I just sent out.  Plus pictures at the bottom.

Saludos de Granada, 

late 2015 completed house. Teresa, 5th grader at Nueva Esp who couldnt come to summer school this year because she has to stay home and take care of disabled sister while parents work 3-4 days/week. Mother cares for elderly woman, father “glues ceramics in the market”.

Teresa’s “street”, just a few rows from school. On a tour yesterday with former ayudante, now LEG employee, Luis, and volunteer, Peter.

2015 LEG rebuilt home after

Under construction in 2015 while the family continues to live on site.  Roof first?

typical latrine pit

Structural columns are usually steel reinforced concrete. But if funds are limited they’ll do this or use 4×4 wood.

finished before paint. I dont quite understand the wood planks yet. clearly cooler than the zink.  Very few and small windows too.

finished front.

Office construction at the school. This highly skilled contractor would likely do the house.

Cristian and Wilmer today at recess. 4th graders whose families would likely apply to be in the house lottery.

Water line construction in the neighborhood today.

Realizing I hadnt said much about my volunteer work in a while and that I am heavily debating my ability and impact of a potential fundraising plea to build a house during our last 2 weeks, here are a few loosely connected thoughts on the expat life to tie it all together.  All 4 of us have ben thinking about our next 4 weeks here as our last and how easy it would be for us to extend this trip.  Olivia asked today if we can stay a year. On second thought, she said how about for her 7th grade, in a year. Quentin is doing much better socially, although he still wont speak much spanish. They both understand spanish pretty well now. We’ve gotten to know several US families that are living here either for 1+ year or indefinitely.  Some appear quite gainfully employed in real estate, restaurants, hotels, and maybe consulting back home, but others keep a pretty relaxed pace, volunteering, parenting, etc. As you see the jobs created by tourism and the housing cost rise,  I wish I could be more sure of our impact on the vast majority of Nicaraguans raising families on very inconsistent income of probably $1000-2000 per YEAR.

The pubic education system is by all accounts quite abysmal.  I have not met any teachers in the public system, so I can’t say much about their training. But the kids in my 4th grade summer school are mostly unaccustomed to any class structure.  We have 3 or 4 that follow our instructions consistently out of respect for us and because they have some advanced understanding on math and spanish.  The rest of the 20 or so that show up during the week would be suspended from any California school within a week.  Despite this constant behavior management challenge in the class, I have had many opportunities to teach some math skills.  Kids have advanced in both math and spanish, had some fun, and hopefully have absorbed a bit of the frustration we teachers have shown toward their poor behavior.  OUr lead teacher is a university student with no intention of becoming teacher.  These ayudantes are sponsored by a donor to La Esperanza.  The sponsor pays their $1700 university tuition and in exchange the student has to volunteer in the La Esperanza program. Its a great system that attracts high achievers.  There are about 15 right now.  Those in the first year, like mine, are not quite fully motivated yet to learn how to be a better teacher.  Ofelia is adjusting to being a teacher, gets frustrated easily, but is otherwise a very capable 18 year old.  More later…..

Our 4th grade class has been averaging about 15 students per day since after the new year. about 10 come every day, and 5 come from about the other 20.  Summer school will go to the 28th and the regular school year starts Feb 6th. A bunch of new La Esperanza volunteers started during the past week. A large group is here building a small office addition at our school. Theyre from Westfield State Univ in Mass.  This is the 7th year a student group has come to build something for the 2 schools in the neighborhood.  Lots of volunteers in the class means that we get to do a lot of one on one tutoring, which is much more enjoyable usually.

Today I toured a few streets deeper into the neighborhood around our school. I met a volunteer from London who has overseen a lot of house building over the years.  He showed me what $3500 can get you built in the neighborhood. Its not much. Its a 20X15 concrete block structure with half walls and tin roof, maybe a new latrine and pit and small kitchen area. The entire neighborhood seems to have potable water and electricity already.    The shovel ready project is to select a family through a lottery of applicants that meet a basic standard: at least 1 kid in Nueva Esperanza school, live in a wood/tin shack with no floor, have some form of title to their small plot of land.  The house then is built in place of their current shack.   I’m thinking if I can get 30 people to donate $100, we can help get a family in a more sanitary, respectable house during our last 2 weeks.

On the other hand, La Esperanza is trying to fundraise to hire a director of their new private learning center that opened up last week.  In this center they are completely free of the Ministry of Education oversight and can greatly raise the standards for the kids.  Its the first of 3 centers planned.  The 2nd is funded and will start construction soon. But they need a full time director to oversee them and they want to raise 3-4 years salary  ($12k) before hiring one of the ayudantes.

The potential impact of these learning centers is very long term but enormous.  A new better house can also benefit more than jus the family.  The neighborhood, while from some views is a a typical shantytown, is improving quickly. In addition to water and electricity, pavement and drainage is coming along slowly.  The 20,000 residents aren’t going to be able to move down into the city. The neighborhood will continue to improve and a new house can continue that momentum and inspire families to make their own improvements.

As a houser/community development focused group of people, I cant pass up the opportunity to extend the offer to everyone to help build a house.  But I will up the ante by offering to match 50% of what is raised toward a house to go to the learning center director position over 3 years. More details to come.

We finally got to Managua last weekend. It was just for 24 hours and hardly compares to the depth we’ve gotten to know Granada, but what a different world.  We saw a few glimpses of tin roofed wood planked shack neighborhoods, but even those had a certain order and tidiness that we havent seen here in Granada. We got off the bus at a huge European-like traffic circle on the highway and went straight into a sparkling white mall full of Nica shoppers. We spent the next 4 hours seeing the main sites in the city center, including 2 amazing parks that offer more for families than I can think of any where back home. The actual tourist, govt and historic sites were mostly disappointing. The Laguna Tiscapa was an impressive site and had a good presentation of the 20th century history leading up to the ’75-’79 revolution.  The giant black shadow figures of Sandino in Managua are also very impressive.  Sandino was the revolutionary in the late 20’s/30’s tha fought the US Marine occupation. He was assassinated after agreeing to sign a peace treaty. That then lead to the 40+ year reign of the Somoza family who served at the pleasure of US companies with big land/banana interests here. The hundreds, maybe thousands, of bright enormous (maybe 25′) metal trees are quite curious.  If there were just some on one main street it might make sense. But they are everywhere and just raises the question about cost of so many of them.  We’re not sure, but some things may have been closed to prepare for the presidential inauguration, which happened tonight.  The biggest difference between the experience of the 2 cities:  deep cultural texture, noise and trash.  Granada has these everywhere; Managua none.  Its not such a fair comparison.  Managua was hugely impacted by the Dec 1972 earthquake that killed 10,000 and leveled much fo the city center. Growth since was outward, creating an LA like sprawl where 2 million of the country’s 6.5 million live. Enjoy the pics and the video from our stoop back in Granada the night we got back from Managua. More later this week on holidays at Ometepe and beach. Also, I’m getting close to asking for donations to build a house and hire a teacher.

Getting to the beach has taken more work than expected, so we decided to splurge a bit on accomodations and a beach with mostly sandy bottom and safe waves.  Playa Colorado is one of 3 or 4 spots that claim to be one of the best, worlds famous, etc. This one did actully host a junior worlds competition recently.  Its also a completely private beach, but loosely enforced. the surrounding beach resorts and tour operators send boats from around the points for surf trips here.  But this is the low season and the waves were mostly dissapointing for us learners.  The reef break did get very big at high tide.  While way overhead, the big sets at our sandy bottom right in front of our condo were surpisingly gentle and good for a big drop and momentary barrel on a boogie board.

The beach frontage is owned by Hacienda Iguana, a golf and beach front development with huge mansions and maybe a 100 or so condos and a few services.  We rented a car in Granada and had an easy drive both ways.  We didnt need the car when here, but since we had it we made 2 stops on the way home, Playa Gigante and Aqua resort, both just south of Playa Colorado.  Both were worth staying, but we had to get going so that we werent driving after dark.  While at Iguana, we asked our AirBNB host manager what xmas week was like. He searched and found 2 availabilities, one giant house and one small condo.   Both were double rates for the holiday week.  We decided to search other beaches and finally found an affordable private cabin at a hostel 10 minutes walking inland from Playa Maderas.  Maderas is one of the other world famous surf breaks and is down closer to the San Juan Del Sur hub.  We’ll take a shuttle to SJDS then take a hostal shuttle to Maderas.  We’ll be there Monday to Monday.

The kids school is on break Dec 16 – Jan 5th.  I worked this week and brought Q with me Tuesday and Olivia today.  They had a great time, as the students were mostly infatuated with them right away.  They were each “claimed” right away by a new best friend, even beforehand in Olivia’s case.  Haney (Annie) has often asked about Olivia over the past 3 weeks and gave me the idea to bring them.  I thought they might be bored, but my lead teacher, ayudante Ofelia, was very accomodating and kept the clase light for them.  Down below are videos of the very first attempt (Qs video) of the class to sing one of the most common xmas carols here, Campanas de Belen (Bells of Bethlehem).  The 2nd vid is today and their first success at getting to the end of the song.  Friday is a big party at the school where each class does a song or dance.  I’ll miss it as we are headed to Ometepe Island tomorrow.   The kids had a great time and the good-byes at the end of the class both days were very sad for some.  So we decided to committ to come back.  They have 2 days in early January before their school starts that hopefully will work for them to come. Olivia wouldnt want to miss any of her regular school, but I think Quentin now has more friends at Nueva Esperanza than at his regular school.

Q got up for a short ride on the sort board.

Mostly nice soft sand for many quick falls.

Like his dad, Q witches out for the boogie board pretty quick.

Olivia gets up on the long board

Olivia let me push her on only the smallest inside rollers.

Perritos Point at the northern most tip of Playa Colorado

Looking south from from our condo at Panga Drop, world famous reef break. Mostly small during low tide. THis is offseason, but there high tide had consistent overhead outside sets.

Panga Drop is even ridable during low tide if you want to risk the reef.

Heading home from the beach thru the town of Tola, stopped by a parade.

Quentin surrounded by his new  friends, including one who asked first to be his mejor amigo, Silvio Cesar. This was walking back from the open field where we played futbol and kickball.

On their way to me hoping I’ll translate a few things, completely ignoring the intense 4v4 futbol match they just waked thru.

Olivia chatting with Haney, Angie and Marimar doing their best spanglish

Olivia got to spend her 11th birthday here and made the most of it. She had 3 of her new best friends over for pizza, gelato, and a pinata. The next morning we went zip-lining on the Volcan Mombacho, which was amazing after we pretty quickly got over our varying degrees of fear.

Thinking the noise might simmer down after the end of the Purisima was a huge mistake. The next 3 nights were actually the loudest yet, and pretty amazing again being in the middle of the feast of Guadelupe. Note to future travellers: if staying next to a church, research dates for feast days with the name of your church.  We felt pretty silly for not knowing this one, but it caught us off guard and delivered 3 or 4 nights of horrible sleep.  The processions and fireworks, when we were able to enjoy, were amazing, but all day and night long Fri, Sat, Sun and Monday.

Volunteer teaching is going pretty good for me since last Friday, when we had a dia de deportes.  We played a great game of kickball for the last hour.  I’ve also had a good chance to teach some English and math, although my 4th grade common core division skills are not appreciated at all. Most of these kids are well versed in traditional division and multiplication and many are at an equal level wth Olivia’s 5th grade skills.  The biggest problem in the class is the horrible behavior/disprespect of about 5-7 boys out of the 25 or so who show up each day.  We’re stepping up our discipline, but its gut wrenching for us volunteers and the Nica teachers to think about kicking one of them out permanently.  We may have to though.  This is sumer school, and most of these 5-7 boys need some catching up.  Kicking them out would feel like sentencing them to the dead end that so many suffer: dropping out forever after 6th grade.      Here’s a quick video of intense recess futbol in the small school courtyard.  It gets very heated, heavy contact, and bystanders are not paying attention at their own risk.

kickball at relatively flat and harzard free field near Nueva Esparanza.  Our Ayudante, lead teacher Ofilia, 18 years old just started in May.  And Moritz, 18 year old German volunteer just out of high school; has mastered spanish in 4 months. 

What do we eat?  Mostly pasta, beans and rice.  Lots of fresh fruit and veggies too.  But we finally decided to ask one of the guys walking around with coolers yelling out what he has for sale. He was right out side our front door, so he explained his daily catch was from San Juan del Sur.  I think he called these pargo.  They were deliciously flakey, not fishy at all.  Kids barely touhed it, of course.

3 caballos strolling up our street keeping the weeds down. They must have come from the lake about 1/2 mile away where you always see a handful of free roaming sickly horses.

The 24 hours for us 4 beaten-down Granadinos between end of school yesterday and this evening I think meet the definition of the Nica phrase Diacachimba. Google is a bit split on its meaning, but its used on hats/t-shirts in a way that makes it all positive and a very good rival to Costa Rica’s catch phrase pura vida.  We picked the kids up again on foot after a short rest from our exhausting mornings of volunteer teaching.  Walking bribes for the kids needed to be upped today from the usual ice cream novelty stop to smoothies.  But in exchange for the smoothies, if found then near the school,we’d have to finally do the Igelsia de Merced tower climb.  The deal was struck, smoothies downed, then the tower climbed, after someones occasional extreme fear of heights almost spoiled it. Fears overcome, the reward was spectacular veiws that rival the top of the volcano and the Mirador Catarina.  The kids were so energized, Q insisted we go to every other church in town to see if they had towers we could climb. We knew the cathedral did, so headed there for even more rickety stairway up 50 feet or so.

No school on the 8th, today, for anyone for the Purisima, but we didnt know what else might be shut down. Turns out everything was in full operation as far as we could tell from a morning market run. So we decided it was far past time for our first bus trip to another town.  Masaya is the easiest, half way to Managua, and has 2 well known sights, a craft market in an old fort and a park on a cliff overlooking the Laguna de Masaya and Volcan de Masaya in the distance.

Found a bus right way, but it wasnt going to Masaya centro, just to the highway.  But its no problem, says the bus station worker. We got the last 4 seats then as the temp quickly jumped 10 degrees, about 15 more people got on the bus. Slight panic of heat stroke, but then we got rolling and all was well.   The 30 minute bus ride was a geat experience to see people get on and off at the various non stops along the highway.  This was an odd shapped medium sized bus, the kind you see everywhere around the central park in Granada and on the highway to Managua. These are city connector buses, but people use them to get to the outskirts as local buses.  We got dropped off on the highway and walked 20 minutes to the city center main market and were reminded how incredibly piicturesque Granada is compared to anything else here.  But then after reaching the artesenal market, the character really improved, but thankfully no pushy vendors or tour operators. At the central park there is an amazing church, but no climbable tower. We saw several parks with decent play equipment for kids.  Then we taxied to the cliff overlook park and Roberto Clemente basebal stadium.  The kids had a blast on the playgrounds and the views were spectacular. Best of all it was heavily overcast and we didnt have to zig zag for shade, like we do on most walks.

Not knowing exactly how we’d catch a bus back to Granada, we got in a taxi with an hour to spare before dark and asked him to drop us off on the highway where the Managua-Granada busses stop.  All was understood and moments after getting dropped off, up rolls a school bus type blazoned wth Managua-Granada on the front. Out jumps the ride corraller/fair collector and assures us this is the right bus to Granada.  I knew these buses had a different/unkown station in Granada, but we took the chance anyway, since the timing was too perfect. We jumped up thru the very back door and 4 seats were made for us.  This ride, despite the drunk thowing up inches from Gretchen, was another great upclose experience you just dont get any otherway.  Just getting the friendly expressions aknowledging that were all stuck in this crappy bus together reminded me of one  of the true values of public transportation.  Living the car dependent life in the US deprives so much of this.  All day we felt like the only foreign tourists around and greated with smile we just dont get very often in Granada. In Granada we are 4 of what seems like hundreds, if not thousands on some days, of extranjeros.  Today there were also lots of Nica tourists about because of the holiday, which was really nice to see for a change.

The 24 hours of Diacachimba was in hand when we figured out that our chicken bus (no actual chickens, ever) dropped us at the top of our street, but on the complete opposite side of town.  Which is where we had heard the final night of the Purisima parade might be. A few blocks later, there we were right in the middle of the festivities again.  We hung out a few minutes then headed for the long walk home downhill. At home, Iglesia Guadelupe was in full glow of an amazing sunset, a very loud cheeful Griteria mass, and fireworks blasting away.   And we had picked up our first meal from the fritanga, the famous roadside bbq served in banana leaves. perfection.   Photos below not in order yet, as this software and/or our wifi is too clunky/spotty to edit.

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Masaya Malecon -park overlooking Laguna de Masaya

Iglesia de la Concepcion – Masaya central park

Last Monday, November 28th, the biggest festival of the year started.  It’s unique to Granada in that the big national holiday celebrating the Virgin Mary on December 8th is preceded by these 9 days of what seems like about 18 hours per day of celebrating La Maria withe fireworks and very loud brass/drum bands following the statue of the Virgin Mary around certain neighborhoods.  Our street was this past Saturday night, but Friday night was just two blocks away, and the last 2 nights also felt like only a block or 2 away.  The day starts with a 5 am band and fireworks parade with the statue on a small cart.  It then makes its way slowly around the neighborhood making stops at designated and requested houses for inside band performances and blessings.  The action picks up at a stage set up at one end of the neighborhoods main street about 6 pm, with bands, priests, nuns and others cheering on the crowd and praising La Maria, La Purisima. It’s a very big social scene with vendors stretched out over a mile or more of the nighttime parade route.  After 2 hours of action at the stage, the statue is loaded on to a special cart that each neighborhood has, big fireworks go off very close to everyone,  and the official parade slowly heads down the crowded street. Here are two videos on Saturday nights big moments.  The Gritaria, or call/response you can her in the video is”who causes such happiness/quien causa tanta alegria…La Maria, la concepcion Inmaculada de Maria”.

In the papers today, online, it was announced that the official holiday of the 8th is being extended for to the 7th and 9th.  This news hit about noon and we are yet to get any email notice about this affecting the kid’s school or my volunteer work.  We’ve read that holidays do get suddenly announced like this, but we’re not sure how extensively they are observed.  Also, we don’t yet know what actually happens on the 8th, the end of the Purisima festival.  I’ve heard that we can expect to see random acts of gift giving.   We’ll see.

Here are some other photos of the festival.

Here are a few images of Pantanal, the largest concentration of the worst living conditions in the Granada region.  There are a few main paved roads, actual the same block/cobble type found throughout Granada, not much city water, and a lot of dirt floor houses.  The first image below is a small school run by Education Plus, a small NGO doing a lot for a bunch of kids.  A friend whose daughter works here took us on a tour, Gretchen on the friend’s scooter and me following on my rickety $2/week rented mountain bike.  This is very near the school that I started teaching at today.  More about that later, including my taxi driver getting lost on my way this morning.  While I’ve now walked extensively throughout Pantanal on my way back to Granada, I still don’t have any good shots of the typical scrap wood/metal houses in the heart of the residential section.

Every house built recently seems to have this concrete post and beam design.  I’ve heard that the posts/beams are reinforced with rebar, but the block infill sections are not.  In speaking with a Canadian architect who built his own house here a few years ago and another builder, this seems perfectly safe despite being surrounded by active volcanoes.   Another shot below shows some very old adobe type construction, and some rare anti-Ortega graffiti.  Everything in the outskirts is on septic.  Two things are still very unclear to me: Granada proper seems to be all septic pits too, although there are sanitary sewer manholes, evidence of trenching and reports of the City connecting a bunch of neighborhoods to sewer lines.  Meanwhile, “water” flows out of every building directly into the gutter constantly.  From our house, I’m pretty sure its just coming from our lavandera (our clothes washing station) to the gutter out front.  Our friends house up the street is only septic and just had to be pumped out.  Apparently the first person they talked to offered to come late and night and use buckets to empty the tank into the gutter. They chose to wait for the pump truck to do it legit, thankfully since we live downhill from them.

I dont want to draw too many conclusions yet, but voluntering has been a bit dissappointing.  I’m hopeful it will get a lot better next week when La Esperanza takes over a couple of public schools entirely for summer school.  Meanwhile it looks like I have the rest of this week off because the school year just ended.  I attended 2 last day of schools at 2 schools in Pantanal Monday and today.  Today I actually got to work with some first graders with some spelling before the despedida (farewell) activities began.  Yesterday was all despedida for the 2 hours I was there. Pantanal is the biggest barrio with the fewest paved roads and most crime.  I walked home alone yesterday, about 45 minutes, somehow didnt get lost, greated everyone who made eye contact with my fake grunted “buenos” to act as if I belong here, and never felt a moment of fear. Although I decided not to stop to take any pictures on the walk.  I was also wearing my La Esperanza t-shirt, which is well recognized and appears to be well respected.  Most locals say its safe to go anywhere during the day, but definitely avoid Pantanal at night.

Although I still want to pursue some sort of house building project, I’m not too hopeful. The effort to start some project myself, including fundraising, seems like a risk.  Meanwhile I’m thinking La Esperanza offers the good chance to inspire some 1st – 5th graders to stick with their education. That seems like a bird in the hand compared to a bueracratic path toward a lot of hard manual labor.

Below are pictures of the school from yesterday, Nueva Esperanza.  The 3rd one is of the newly constructed computer lab I went to last week in the same neighborhood. Its 4 block walls, a gate and a carport like roof structure on posts. So its not rain proof at all and Hurricane Otto meant no computer class last Thursday and Friday. I was there Tues/Wed and we brought 20 notebooks and 20 tablets and had 2 1-hr after school sessions with some very rowdy 6-9 yeal old kids. After threats of getting kicked out, most were very into the simple “how to use a mouse” exercises, some were very skilled and bored and a few really struggled.  I helped a few bored kids skip ahead to to math exercises before my 20 year old local university student supervisor scolded the kids. More about these “ayudantes” later.

Once a week an official looking guy comes around to all the houses and nicely insists that we let in this guy blowing this deisel smoke around. It fills the house and stays around for hours.  This is a relatively recent practice apparently in response to zika and dengue.

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