I just got back from Nicaragua this afternoon. We spent the week traveling around learning about different activist groups and projects.
We left on Sunday at 6:30 am and drove to Managua in a private bus piloted by Franklin, the funniest and and most well connected bus driver ever.
Unfortunately we had bad directions to our hotel and ended up driving for 3 hours back and forth on the same strip of road just looking for the hotel.
Monday morning we toured Managua, which is kind of a disturbing city. Since the US has been so involved in supporting the corrupt leaders of Nicaragua's past, the new half of the city is very western and reminiscent of a suburb in the US. on the other hand, the old half of the city, which is mostly in ruins from an earthquake in the 70s, is really run down and full of poverty. We headed to Matagulpa in the afternoon and met host families that we would have for the next three days.
My host family was in San Ramon
, a small town outside of Matagulpa that is really quaint. My host mom was a widow living with the three of her six children and her grandchildren. (the ones who were married with kids lived on their own, but the three that still lived at home didn't seem to have spouses). She owned a Comedor that served lunch and was the political representative for her municipality. She was a really interesting woman and on my free morning she brought me to a conference of women in San Ramon, held by the government to ask women what issues were important to them(obviously i thought this was REALLY cool)Over the next two days we visited a coffee growing cooperative and a Nicaraguan Activist group started during the Sandanista Revolution in the 80s.
On Thursday we left San Ramon and Matagulpa for Chaguitillo to visit an archaeological museum and hike to see petroglyphs in the area. The museum in Chaguitillo is doing really exciting stuff with alternative education in the city and surrounding areas. I was talking with Nestor, the head of the museum, about the projects and I really hope that I can work in Chaguitillo coordinating between the museum and the public schools. I think I would also be traveling around to surrounding communities for educational activities. Nestor told me that the only down side is that there is only one motor cycle for the two of us to travel around---I'm think of this more as an up side of the project! Motorcycling around Nicaragua just seems like one of those things you have to do if the opportunity arises...right? (sorry mom)
Anyway, we visited the Masaya Volcano in the afternoon which was also a lot of fun (it was my first volcano experience). We drove to our hotel in Granada and spent the night in luxury with air conditioning(Nicaragua is SOOO HOT).The next day we visited a squatter community in Granada on the banks of Lake Nicaragua that La Casa de La Mujer has been working to raise and build since the shacks made of plastic and cardboard were always flooding from the rain water run off leaving Granada.
Granada was another upsetting city to experience. Granada has a beautiful downtown with brightly colored colonial buildings lining the streets. It is full of tourists and its hard to escape the American culture that the tourist bring. All of the restaurants have English names and there is almost no Nicaraguan food served in the center of the city. And all of that is right next to really poor barrios and squatter communities like the one we visited.
We spent the afternoon at the Masaya Market trying to bargain as Gringos in a market just waiting to rip us off("rip us off" might be a strong statement since the prices they would offer to gringos are still under half of what you might pay for similar products in the US).
Later we talked to representatives from two different Nicaraguan political parties, which was a lot less exciting than I was expecting it to be. Afterwards some of us spiced up the night and went out to a bar to salsa dance to live music until 2am. It was a lot of fun. We had breakfast at 6:30 this morning and headed back to Costa Rica.
It was a really good trip and definitely convinced me to do my internship in Nicaragua.
Las Montañas de Costa Rica