From June 23 through July 02, members and leaders of the Wisconsin 4-H program were introduced to the work of W/NP through an exchange called Hands Across Borders. This program offered nine youths and three adults an opportunity to learn about the culture and lives of Nicaraguans as they shared information about 4-H projects and clubs. During their stay, tour leader Jean Berger sent out regular travel updates.
06/24/05: We Are Here!
We are here! Everyone is safe and sound. The plane rides went great, but the connection in Houston was short, so we walked off one plane and onto another.
We met Mirna, Lucia, Moises, and Leonor from the Nicaragua Partners at the airport. They helped us get settled into our hotel and we are up and ready for breakfast.
The tour company is taking us to Granada today. We will stay overnight there; back to Managua tomorrow.
06/26/05: Sunday Morning
The Wisconsin 4-H members are doing great. We had a good trip to Granada. Our tour guide, Juan Carlos, knows so many things about the people and history of this area. We have visited many of the important buildings in Granada; the highlight was a monestary that has been restored into a museum. We stayed on Friday night at El Club, which is located behind a popular bar; it was noisy on Friday, so I think it would be better on a weeknight. The kids were all really good about staying where they need to and observing their curfews. I am very pleased with their behavior and willingness to accommodate others!
Yesterday was a big highlight. We did the canopy tour. Just the long ride up the mountain was an adventure. The roads are very bad and the 4WD vehicles are really needed to get around. The canopy tour was very well done. It was very safe with helmets and always having you attached securely. It took a lot of courage to make the first zip to the next platform, but after the first time, it felt like great fun! We saw so many plants and a few animals. It was a real team building experience.
After the canopy tour, we drove up the other side of the Mombacho volcano to take a walk around the crater. There were beautiful views and lots to learn about the nature there. The volcano has a cloud forest, which is different than a rain forest, because most of the time you are fogged in a cloud. Luckily, the cloud was gone the entire time that we were there, and we could see everything clearly.
We are back at Las Mercedes in Managua, where we are enjoying the pool and the good restaurant at night. Today, we will visit the city and go to the Masaya volcano. Tonight, we will prepare for our week in Los Cedros.
We are so fortunate to have Mirna from the Partners office with us. She is a wonderful person and so very helpful.
06/27/05: No Subject
The Nicaraguan travelers had a good day yesterday. We toured Managua and saw the presidential palace, the museum of culture, and other sites.
We went to a reserve for lunch, a hike through different plant and animal areas, and the most beautiful overlook of the area and the volcanoes.
We went on to the Masaya volcano to look into the crater! This is an active volcano so it still spews sulphuric gases. It was very impressive. The boys hiked up a huge slope to look into the next area - another volcano. I hear it was amazing, but I was too pooped to make the climb!
We then went on to the city of Masaya and the markets. The girls enjoyed this the most. Juan Carlos, our guide, had some young boys waiting there who were our guides through the markets - showing us where to buy the items we were looking for and carrying our packages. I was with four girls and we had a lot of stuff, so we needed two boys! They work for tips to take home to their families to add to their income. They are learning English and work hard.
After arriving back at the hotel, we ate and worked to be ready for today's presentation. We are off to Los Cedros; the bus leaves soon. We will update you later.
The kids are doing great. I am so fortunate to have such a great group.
06/27/05: Monday
We have completed our first day in Los Cedros! What a wonderful group of people in the village! They were so welcoming. Kids and adults were all giving us wonderful welcomes with singing and dancing in costume. It was great! Then, we did some spontaneous dancing with everyone involved. They had such a good time! We toured the areas where we will be teaching and had a great lunch - a Nicaraguan taco!
The 4-H kids taught games, and everyone is now an expert in Buddy Tag! They taught the Wisconsin Milk Song, too. The Nicaraguan kids did a fun version of "The Chair Game" - latino musical chairs. It really was fun.
We took the bus to the beach, and Kayla saw the ocean for the first time. It was a relaxing, but very hot, evening at the beach. We just got back now.
The kids will be up early tomorrow and headed for the bus by 8:00 a.m. to go to Los Cedros. We will learn from the Nicaraguan kids in the morning and have lunch in homes in the village. Then, we will teach English while they teach Spanish.
06/28/05: Tuesday
We were back in Los Cedros again today. We started with the LC kids teaching us to make macramé plant hangers. Everyone was doing it. Even my husband, Scott, finished one, and he is always telling me that he is "craft impaired!" We left them at the center so that the LC kids can "judge" them at our mini-fair on Friday.
Then, we all had lunch in three of the homes. The Los Cedros folks are very warm hosts! The food was great. The kids put out tablecloths and flowers in vases at the home that I ate at. We shared pictures of family and talked about what we like to do in our free time. It's not surprising that they all like music and dancing. It seems to be the entertainment of the village.
The high school kids are working on a marching band type of presentation for a competition that takes place in Managua on Independencia Dia in Septiembre! They have several excellent drummers, at least one trumpet, and a few other instruments. The rest of the kids are all practicing dancing to the music in lines - a fancy type of march. We loved it! Shane and I tried to capture it on my camera. He wants to show it to his band teacher and suggest Latin Rock for this year's marching program at DC Everest high school! It was fun!
After lunch, we taught an English class. We started out naming body parts and then sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" followed with the Hokey Pokey! It went pretty well. We also practiced introducing ourselves. "Hello. What is your name? My name is ---. Pleased to meet you!"
The LC kids taught us some words en Español! We practiced our colors and sentences to help us ask about colors.
They played games and then we went back to Managua. We stopped at the supermarket to pick up some supplies for lunches and learned to shop in Nicaragua! It was sort of like a smaller, local grocery store that was the size of our IGA in Schofield. It was very modern with nice carts and a computerized checkout, too!
After the computerized checkout, we drove past people living in a type of tent city made of pieces of black plastic held up by poles. There are acres of it and people everywhere. While there are pockets of affluence and middle class, there are also so many people living in poverty. One of our students, Laura, said yesterday, "After seeing this, how could you ever go home and forget it?" She is right. We all have too much stuff and rely on too many things!
We visited the Partners Office yesterday and looked at the items in the warehouse. There are many things in my own house and garage that could and should be sent to the Partners Office in Stevens Point so that they can be shipped here.
06/29/05: Wednesday
The 4-H kids had a full day today. They did three rotations of teaching to the Nicaraguan kids. One group was learning the principles of drawing and sketching, using Mangos as their initial subjects. They talked about "perspective," "shading," and other ideas that were then transferred to sketching additional still life subjects. Some of the sketches will be entered in our mini-fair on Friday.
Meanwhile, two other groups were busy learning also. One learned to make a Nicaraguan bandana and a U.S. flag out of beads and pins. They proudly wore their pins the rest of the day along with other beaded jewelry that they created.
The third group did stencilling, first on gift bags and later on a "gorro" (baseball hat, for you Gringos!) or a bandana. They also made friendship bracelets using some of the same knots that we learned when the Los Cedros group taught us to macramé!
Two of the rotations were completed before almuerzo (lunch) and one in the afternoon. The 4-H kids also led the chicken dance, Macarena, and the Hokey Pokey after lunch. The day ended with the Nicaraguan kids braiding the hair of many of our 4-H members while others played football.
We had our lunch in the homes of many of the youth that we are working with. The Nicaraguan students invited us into their homes and worked to be very fine hosts.
The teens worked very hard teaching and practicing their Español! It isn't easy to teach in your second language! They are doing so very well! I'm very proud of them as I'm sure you are too.
Meanwhile, while much of this teaching was going on, I was very flattered to meet three women, Olga, Alis, and Jeanette, who traveled a great distance (over two hours by my calculation) on three buses from another village where there is a Learning Center. They had heard that I would be teaching knitting with two needles. They worked many hours to complete knitted washcloths. They took their needles and more yarn home to make another one so that they could remember how to make them and promised to return on Friday to show me how much they had learned.
Several other youth and a couple of adults from Los Cedros learned the knitting pattern this afternoon and are going to keep working on the cloths tonight so that I can show them how to decrease to make the 2nd half of the cloth tomorrow.
It is always nice to teach when people are so anxious to learn! Tomorrow, we are anxious to learn to make tortillas and bread in Doña Angelica's stone hearth oven!
07/01/05: Thursday
Yesterday was a great day. We learned so much. We made cornmeal tortillas.
When we arrived, there was really hard corn that had been boiled with lime (really, lime, not the fruit). It is done so that the hard shells on the corn will soften up. We rinsed, sorted, and cleaned these bowls of corn for at least 45 minutes. Then, we took them across the road to Doña Angelica's grinder and turned it into a very thick corn mash, which we kneaded and made into tortillas. We cooked them on a hot pan over a fire and had them for lunch.
We then made bread in a huge bowl with five pounds of flour, butter, eggs, etc. We measured yeast and sugar in a little 35 mm film canister. The bread was shaped into postres, rolls with cheese, sugar, and cinnamon in the middle. We baked them in the big stone oven and had them at the end of the day! They were great.
In the afternoon, we taught square dancing and making cards with stamps and fancy scissors that were donated by so many of you! They loved them but were a little frustrated with all of the movements of the dance. That was okay, because now our kids will understand their frustration when they learn Nicaraguan dance today!
We are off to our last day. It will be sad to leave; we have made so many new friends!
07/02/05: Friday - Our Last Day Here In Nicaragua
It has been a great week in Los Cedros! Our group started out the day collecting our developed film to take up to the village. Wow, what an expense! It is certainly not economical to have a camera here! We used the photos to leave scrapbooks behind for the villagers.
We split into three groups in the village to teach scrapbooking, juggling, and ultimate frisbee. The jugglers had a lot of fun learning to master the three balls. Some of the older boys were already great jugglers, so they helped Shane teach the little ones. The scrapbookers were working very diligently. They have some beautiful pages started and many photos to mount. We left all of our supplies with them to finish their memory book. Ultimate Frisbee was lots of fun, too. The kids became better throwers as the time went on and really enjoyed the game.
When we started the morning, we told them about 4-H being an organization where we learn new things and teach each other. Each group learned only one of the programs, and they will share what they have learned with others in the upcoming days.
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It was Wisconsin's turn to host for lunch. The kids had a typical "teen party" menu. We made French bread pizzas in Doña Angelica's stove. The meal was accompanied by chips and Doritos and followed by smores - nothing very healthy here! But in spite of it's poor nutritional value, the meal was a big hit. For the finale, we had a surpise birthday celebration for John who turned eighteen on Friday. He was very surpised, and all of the people in the village were so proud of themselves for keeping the secret! The cake was made by Arly, one of the Los Cedros dancers. She worked for two days on it, and it was beautiful! There was a raised football on the top to symbolize his favorite sport (football Americano), and the cake was piped all around with frosting. I remember seeing the cake decorating classes being taught earlier in the year; Arly is certainly one of the star students! One of the little girls in the village was also celebrating her birthday too, so we heard a second round of Feliz Cumpleaños.
The afternoon followed with a mini-fair. The Los Cedros macramé teachers judged our plant hangers, and we enjoyed getting our blue, red, and white ribbons. Then we judged their sketches. It was a good learning experience for all!
The day ended with many dances by the Los Cedros people in their costumes. It was beautiful. We had several speeches and shared our gratitude for a wonderful experience. We donated some supplies to the Learning Center, including a new hose, extension cord, and supplies to continue the projects that we have shared with them.
They gave us many gifts to take home and remember them by, but they have already made a home in our hearts forever. We hugged, cried, and waved goodbye. We all hope to see one another again very soon!
The night continued with excitement. After we went to Wembes Market, we returned to the hotel for a leisurely dinner, another birthday cake for John, and a late curfew of 11:30! The kids have been so good about their early 10:00 p.m. curfews that it was time for a treat! At about 9:00 p.m., we experienced an earthquake! There was an earthquake off of the coast of Nicaragua and we felt some of the shaking here! Well, some of us did; half of us knew it was going on while the other half missed it (including me!). Later, there was another, but smaller, one that we felt - sort of like when you live near a railroad track and the ground trembles a little! It was exciting!
The week was great. Now all that is left to do is pack and board the planes for home.
