The Abuelas

I know I’ve been posting lots of vacation-y pictures, but I’m also working on a project for my internship at FIMRC. Amanda and I are organizing a series of exercise and cooking classes for the diabetics in the community. Most of the diabetics in the community are older women who have Type II diabetes, and the regulars who come to our classes have taken on the role of our Nicaraguan grandmothers.

For the exercise classes, we plan routines of geriatric and easily-modifiable exercises, most of which can be done in a chair. We also do lots of stretches, and we always end with a zumba routine. They love using light weights and ab exercises. Last week we had a yoga instructor come to do a class with them, and they were game to try everything.

The cooking classes involve a lunch cooked by one of the other FIMRC host moms. She makes healthy food with minimal salt and oil, and then we talk about the techniques she used to cook and how they can implement them in their homes. Because of their lack of resources here, its difficult to change the food they use to cook (rice and beans for days), so we try to teach sustainable healthy techniques. The idea with both these classes is that even though they will end after we leave, hopefully what we teach will be sustainable and the women will continue to use the exercises and techniques we taught. Again because of the lack of resources, they don’t have regular access to insulin or other medication, so they have to use other methods to control their blood sugar.

Doña Francisca: she’s a rock star.

But the best part of the project is the women (and one man) who we’ve met through their participation. One lady in particular, Doña Francisca, has come to every single exercise class. She always brings us presents: homemade bread and candy, honey, rosquillos (kind of like Nicaraguan cheese-its), fruit, and once for me, a bar of soap. The women always give us lots of hugs, and they keep coming back, so hopefully they’re enjoying it. It will be hard to say goodbye after our last class this week.

Mi Familia Nica

One of the most crucial elements of my stay here thus far has been my host family. FIMRC has a group of families in the community that they work with, and I might be biased, but I think I hit the jackpot with mine.

Alma is my host mom. She’s actually only 8 years older than me, so she’s half big sister, too. She’s really fun and always jokes with me, which I understand about 50% of the time. She also teaches me how to cook and do laundry, among other things. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m completely clueless about real life, and I always want to tell her, “No, I promise I do my own laundry at home!” She also tries to get me to dress up when I leave the house and kills bugs in my room if they’re just too big to handle (she claims she can smell cockroaches.) Like I said, half mom, half big sister.

Gerald is my host dad. He works really hard as a surf instructor at one of the hotels nearby. He speaks decent English, and we have a great thing going where we basically quiz each other constantly about words, phrases, and our countries in general. He really stumps me sometimes too. (The negative past tense of “to buy,” for instance, or what is the oldest city in the U.S. Any ideas?) Right now I’m working on when to use “yo” and when to use “mi” for myself, and he’s working on the “th” sound, which I’m not sure he believes exists.

My host sister Tatiana is thirteen. She is actually the best. She’s the president of her class, and she’s been practicing really hard for an English competition at school this week where she’s going to sing “See You Again” by Whiz Khalifa. I’ve been trying to help with pronunciation, and again, the “th” thing is a real sticking point. She’s very responsible and quiet, but she’s also very thirteen in that she loves One Direction, Taylor Swift, Dance Moms, Disney Channel, and karaoke. By the way, it is definitely true that America’s biggest export is culture.

And then there’s Camilla, who is two and a half. She is stinking cute but every now and again she gets this impish look on her face that we all know means trouble. Her favorite activities include dumping water on the floor, dumping water on the cat, pulling the cat’s tail, rifling through my suitcase, playing tag, and watching cartoons.

We also have a cat, Figaro, who is shared with the neighbors, and for a very short time we had a pig, who we ate for dinner last week. The neighborhood dogs come to visit most days too. As I write this I am listening to the rain on the tin roof; the geckos are taking shelter under the eaves outside, and a local toad is taking shelter inside. As Tatiana says, they’ll leave when the rain stops.

La Vida Diaria

Daily life in rural Nicaragua has some pretty drastic differences from what I’m used to in the U.S. For one, like I mentioned earlier, everyone wakes up around 6 or earlier and goes to bed around 9:30. They have to use as much daylight as they can. There’s also the matter of the roosters, who start crowing around 4:30am. I’ve gotten to the point where they don’t always wake me up that early, but I can always count on hearing one as soon I wake up. Another reason they wake up early, at least in my community of La Virgen, is that there is only running water from 5-11am. Every other night there is also water from 6-8pm, which is really nice. There is no hot water; sinks and showers only have one setting. If the power goes out, the water goes out with it, which happened my first morning here, so I learned how to take a bucket bath pretty quickly.

That’s one thing I’ve been surprised by; I’ve had to relearn how to do extremely basic tasks, like washing my hands, making my bed, and doing laundry. When the water isn’t running, people have a supply of water in the sinks outside there houses they use for washing. You can’t put your dirty hands in the water, because it’s the only clean source of water until the next morning, so it becomes a more complicated process. I also have a mosquito net over my bed, which has to be properly tucked in every night and raised every morning to keep bugs out. The houses aren’t closed; not all the windows have glass in them, and there’s a several inch gap between the roof and walls, so this is a pretty important precaution. There are no washing machines, so we wash our clothes pioneer style, by hand in the outdoor sink.

Most the roofs here are tin, and anything that hits the roof, from rain to tree branches to animals, echoes through the whole house. I’ve also gotten better at sleeping through those noises, but a strong gust of wind that knocks the tree branches over my room against the roof can still wake me up. They’re just entering the rainy season here, which they call winter. Its only rained a couple times, and other than the noise, its great when it does rain; it really cools down the air, and it settles the dust, which is otherwise constant.

I ride my bike to work on gravel roads. Hardly anyone has cars here, but most families have a small motorcycle. There are also a few public buses (they look like school buses in the U.S.) on the roads. You have to watch out for pigs, dogs, cows, chickens, and horses too. The pigs especially have no fear and will not get out of your way. Accidents don’t seem that common, but I’ve already fallen off my bike on the way to work. I have some nice road rash and a bruise to show for it, too. Amanda’s host family thinks its because I fell because I’m so tall, and its true that I tower over most the natives here.

There’s so much else I could say about daily life here; they watch the TV a lot, which has a lot of programs.My host dad loves to watch baseball, which is at least as popular if not more so than soccer here (he loves the Red Sox and hates the Yankees.) My host sisters like Disney channel and Nickelodeon Jr. We have dinner, which is usually rice, beans, plantains, and something else, in front of the TV most nights. The doors are always open, and friends, relatives, and neighbors stop in without knocking frequently. The community is small and tight knit, and I already feel welcomed into it. It’s been a huge adjustment, but I’m starting to get the hang of life here and enjoy myself.

Nicaragua: First Impressions

We flew into Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, last Friday May 15. A FIMRC driver picked us up at the airport and took us to Granada, a historic city on the shores of Lake Nicaragua (the big one you can see on a world map; it’s the 8^th largest lake in the world.) We spent two nights at a little hotel there as they transitioned our host families to be ready for us (I’m working with another Notre Dame student, Amanda). We explored the city a little bit, but we were both so exhausted from the heat (around 90 and extremely humid) that we didn’t get to see everything, although I’m sure we’ll go back there at some point while we’re here.

It reminded me of Mexico in lots of ways. There is a central square where the cathedral is located, and lots of older churches. All the buildings are painted bright yellows, reds, greens, and pinks. There is also a main pedestrian street lined with restaurants and bars that comes alive at night. Because we’re so close to the equator here, there are almost exactly 12 hours of daylight all year long. Everyone gets up with the sun around 6am, and then once it cools down after the sun sets at 6pm, people visit each other and go out.

The cathedral was a beautiful but pretty simple as far as Spanish architecture goes. Inside, we found a replica of the Grotto at Lourdes with Mary and Bernadette. It was pretty cool to find something that reminded us of the Grotto at Notre Dame so quickly. We also visited a church that one of the locals told us was the oldest in Nicaragua (he may have also said in the Americas, but I think that needs a fact check.) It turned out to also be a Franciscan convent. The church was built in the 1520s, but had been burned down by pirates (!!!) in the 1850s and then rebuilt.

We also took a boat tour of the isletas in Lake Nicaragua. These tiny islands are close to the shore of Granada. Many of them had houses or even hotels on them. There was also a ton of wildlife: lots of birds, fields of lily pads, fruit trees, and even one island with a colony of monkeys. The city and lake are shadowed by the Mombache Volcano.

We had our first few Nicaraguan meals as well. I had my first gallopinto, which is rice and beans mixed together and (probably) fried. I’ve had it probably once a day since then. I also tried tostones, which are fried plantain chips that are delicious. Mango season is ending, and avocado season is beginning, so those are both in plentiful supply. There’s also papaya, guanabana (my host family has a tree in their year), guayaba, and cantaloupe, which they call melon. Rice and plantains are staples here.

Sunday we came to La Virgen Morena, the town where we’re living for the next eight weeks, and got settled with our host families. More about that next time!

The Mayan Riviera

For our last week in Mexico, most of our group headed to the Mayan Riviera on the Yucatan peninsula with coast along the Caribbean.  This area is most famous for Cancun and its resort towns, and while we took full advantage of the beach and the sunshine, we also got to see some incredible Mayan ruins.

We stayed at a resort in Playa del Carmen, a resort town south of Cancun. We took full advantage of the resorts all-inclusive food and drinks, but we went into the town one night as well.  It’s pretty tourist-y, with lots of shopping and souvenirs, but it also borders a beautiful beach. Mexico got more than its fair share of beauty between its beaches and mountains.

One day we went to Tulum, a small set of Mayan ruins. While the ruins were interesting, it was the setting that was truly spectacular. Perched on the edge of cliffs running down to white sand and the bluest water I’ve ever seen, the whole place was surrounded by palm trees.  After exploring the ruins, we went down to the beach and were able to take a boat out to the coral reefs a few hundred feet from shore for snorkeling.  The coral was only a little more than a foot below the surface in places, and full of sea urchins, sea anemones, and bright tropical fish.  Really, the Mayans would do well in real estate today; it’s all about location, location, location.

On our last day we drove a couple of hours inland to Chichén Itzá, one of the New Wonders of the World.  This is the Mayan’s crowning achievement.  Its home to a massive pyramid, a structure with thousands of intricately carved columns, and a modern-day stadium-scale ball court.  There was also of course a place dedicated to displaying the skulls of their enemies and sacrificial victims where even the stones were carved with skulls, just to make sure you got the message.

One of the other interesting things we saw were pilgrims headed to Mexico City for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is celebrated December 12 and is one of the most important holy days in Mexico.  We were constantly passing groups of people running, on bikes, or in trucks, all decorated with images of the Virgin and many carrying a lit torch.  Mexicans have a truly touching affection for their patroness, and they show it by making their way to her shrine once a year.

Finally, it was strange to hear so much English in Cancun.  The resort and town were full of American, Canadian, and European tourists, and we had some funny incidents where the hotel staff didn’t realize we spoke Spanish.  It was a slow introduction back to the US.

I’m writing this post from the Dallas Airport. It feels good to be back on US soil, but I know I’m going to miss Mexico.  This has been one of the most educational experiences of my life, and I know that I will be coming back to Latin America in the not-too-distant future. Once I’ve had more time to process everything, look for a post about what this semester has been for me as a whole. But for now, I’m excited to see my family and enjoy simple luxuries like flushing toilet paper and drinking water from the tap.

Chikicole: Learning Spanish from 4 Year Olds

This semester I had the chance to volunteer at a local kindergarten/pre-school, Chikicole, where I got to play with darling Mexican children and teach a little English.  This helped fill the hole that the kids at La Casa de Amistad (a Hispanic community center in South Bend) left in my heart this semester, and was a good chance to practice Spanish with people who had absolutely no reservations about correcting me or telling me they had no idea what I was saying: namely, 4-year-olds.

My most embarrassing language-barrier story from the semester comes from Chikicole, as well.  In my defense, it was early in the semester, and the first time we went to the pre-school.  I was playing and chatting with one of the little girls at recess when she pointed at a Nigerian girl from my group and asked blatantly, “Why is her skin black?” At first I was a little put off, but as Mexico is significantly less diverse than the US, I tried to turn it into a teaching moment.  “Well, she’s from the US,” I explained, “and people have all different skin colors there: black, white, and brown.” (Many Mexicans refer to themselves as morenita, or brown.) And this was where I went wrong; the word for brown is moreno, but what I said was morado, which means purple.

Her eyes got wide. “Are there blue people, too?” she asked. Confused, and not yet realizing my mistake, I replied that of course there weren’t blue people, just people like her, me, and my African friend.  But she was clearly entranced by the idea of people of all (and I mean all) colors in the magical land of the United States.  When I explained my confusion to someone else in my group, they caught my mistake immediately, and I experienced true mortification at the hands of a 4-year-old. I can only hope that someone set her straight before she got too attached to the notion of blue Americans.

I hope I helped teach a little English to the kids at Chikicole, but I know that they taught me just as much, not least of all that the colors unit in Spanish 1 might come in more handy than you think.  We have almost exactly one week left in Mexico, and we head to the Yucatan peninsula tomorrow to log some beach time and visit some Mayan ruins before coming back to the snowy Midwest.

Traditional Healing

Last month we went to Cuetzalan, a small town in the state of Puebla, for four days through Notre Dame.  The first two days we learned about traditional healing from native curanderas, many of whom were part of a multi-generational traditional of healers.  Cuetzalan has done an excellent job of integrating modern and traditional medicine, a combination we got to observe during our time there.

The hospital in Cuetzalan has two parts: a wing for Western medicine, and a wing devoted to the curanderas (healers), parteras (midwives), and jueseras (bone-setters.)  Many of the healers we met were older and dressed in traditional indigenous garb.  When we went to their smaller communities on the outskirts of Cuetzalan, it was clear they were well known and respected.  The hospital has been very successful in integrating traditional medicine because they too respect the position and knowledge of these healers.  By putting their trust in them, they have also gained the trust of the people who have traditionally relied on this form of medicine, and so brought them into the hospital where they can receive better care.  One of the most successful examples of this practice is the drastic drop in infant and maternal mortality that has occurred in the twenty years since parteras were invited to bring their patients to the hospital, where they can receive extra support if there are complications with the pregnancy or birth.

One of the practices we saw most regularly, and that a few of the group experienced first-hand, was a cleansing ritual using herbs and sometimes an egg, which are rubbed over the body to remove bad spirits and ill will.  This was practiced in the hospital and in the homes of the healers we visited.  While these herbs were not medicinal in the sense that we understand it in the US, the healers knowledge of other herbs, many of which grew wild in the incredibly rich surrounding rain forest, was impressive.

While accepting traditional healing methods, the hospital maintained a modern attitude toward medical records and patient care.  Many of the patients were on national health insurance, so paperwork was a huge part of this hospital, just like those in Puebla. While I’m not sure about the effectiveness of traditional medicine, it is clear that respecting the culture and traditions of a people is a huge part of caring for them in an effective manner.

Dia de los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a unique Mexican tradition with religious and indigenous roots that takes place on November 1 and 2 (yes, I know this was more than two weeks ago. Sorry this post is so late!)  As a staple of every Spanish class’s culture unit, I was excited to experience the event first-hand.  We went to the small town of Huaquechula, still in the state of Puebla, which is known for their celebrations of Dia de los Muertos.

Celebrated on All Saints and All Souls days, Dia de los Muertos is based on the idea that one night of each year, the spirits of the dead can come back to earth to visit their loved ones. This is not in the sense of hauntings or scary ghosts, but rather part of the idea that our loved ones still exist in the spirit world and that we can still have some sort of relationship with them, even when they are no longer with us physically.  It’s a really beautiful idea, and has a strong influence on the Mexican attitude toward death, which is somewhat more accepting and in some ways more nonchalant than ours in the US.

Since the dead can only come back once a year, families prepare for the coming by building ofrendas, or altars, that are beautifully decorated and ornamented with flowers, pictures of saints, pictures of the deceased, food, candy, and alcohol. The decor is often based on favorites of the person to whom the altar is dedicated, but there are some traditional staples, such as pan de muerto (bread of death) that are seen on nearly every altar.  People also leave paths of marigold petals leading to their door to help guide the spirits to the altar.

In Huaquechula, these flowered paths serve a dual purpose; they guide the living, as well as the dead, into the homes of residents who have built magnificent ofrendas and prepared vast quantities of food to share with whoever might wander in. I probably ate four meals that afternoon. I was astounded at each house, many of which were very humble, and their generosity in inviting not only their whole town, but large groups of foreign tourists to share in their memories and their meals.  There were also groups of young children roaming the streets in the Mexican equivalent of trick-or-treating, where they asked for money or candy for their baskets.

Here in Puebla, I got a chance to participate in an ofrenda-building contest at UPAEP with my drawing class.  We made an altar for Jose Guadalupe Posada, an artist whose work influenced many of the images of skulls and skeletons seen during Day of the Dead today.  Although I was in and out, my group put in a huge effort and made a really beautiful altar.  The entire courtyard at school was full of incredible ofrendas; it drove home how special this day is in Mexican culture.

The semester is drawing to a close; there’s so much more I want to see and do and share before I leave, so I will try to up the frequency of posts in this last month.  My family gets here a week from today (yay!), bringing a new phone with them, so hopefully pictures will be part of the blog again soon!

Boots on the Ground: Community Health

This week we went to a more rural part of the state of Puebla to experience community health and traditional healing methods.  While each day was full of something new, Tuesday was the highlight of my week, and one of the highlights of the semester so far. We got split up into groups, and my group went with a young doctor and nurse to a clinic even further out in the country from the small town where we were staying, Xalacapa. It was in what I think qualifies as a town, although it was so small it’s hard to be sure.  We had to take a taxi down dirt roads to get there. 

We saw patients all morning. The first week of the month is chronic patients, so mostly people with diabetes and high blood pressure.  I sat in on consults for a while, and then took vital signs for patients before they went in to see the doctor.  They were almost all women, middle aged or elderly.  A lot of them couldn’t read or write well, and could barely sign their names.  The clinic was a lobby, a room for the nurse, a consult room for the doctor, and a bathroom.  They all had concrete floors.  The woman next-door was a patient and also had a restaurant, so we had lunch with her (tamales and gorditas.)  She also brought us bread and coffee for a mid-morning break.  The third person who works at the clinic does home visits, and the rest of my group got to go with her on a couple.  There were dogs, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and goats everywhere.

In the afternoon we went to a different clinic with the same doctor in another one street town.  She mostly had to do paperwork, since nearly everyone she serves is on public health insurance (why isn’t this a thing, America?!?), but she sent one of the nurses and another lady up to give a vaccine to a baby on the outskirts of town.  We went with her.  It was a half-hour hike through the mud, up dirt paths to a house on top of a hill. (Did I mention I was wearing my all-white uniform?)  They had cows and dogs and a pig, and they were extremely hospitable and brought us all chairs and offered us drinks. We went back and caught a bus to the main town where we are staying.

It was an amazing day and really inspired me to keep thinking about what I want to do, because that was some seriously important work.  Stay tuned for more about the rest of my week!

Language Barriers

I’ve come to realize in Mexico that a pretty good measure of how fluent you are in a language is how well you get the jokes. It’s happened several times that we’ve been in a tour group with Mexicans where the guide will make a joke, or so I assume, because everyone but the Americans will laugh. I usually end up laughing too, because the site of 20 Americans looking at each other trying to figure out what happened is almost as funny as whatever it was the guide said.

In my art class a couple weeks ago I realized that the language barrier, like most things, is two-sided. I’m the only American in the class, and my classmates were asking me if I understood their slang and swear words. I explained that I was getting better, but a lot was still over my head. They told me that they watch mainly American movies, so they have a pretty good grasp on American slang. They then proceeded to demonstrate.

“F***,” said the girl next to me. “That’s a really bad one, right?”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s a pretty bad word,” I said. Then the rest of the class joined in, going through a list of every curse word they knew. Before I knew it, the professor had joined in too. At this point I was cracking up, and at first they thought they were saying them wrong.

“No,” I explained, “it’s just not that common to hear in class.” They realized how ridiculous the situation was then and we all had a good laugh.

Another time something is lost in translation is during movies. We went to see Gone Girl here, which was in English with Spanish subtitles. We noticed that the rest of the audience was laughing at different parts than we were (not that there was that much laughter; NOT a funny movie), and it was obvious that some of the references just did not translate well.

Stories like this have been some of my most educational moments in Puebla. It’s incredibly eye-opening to live in another culture, especially one with a different language, and I’m hopeful that one day I will get the jokes. 🙂