This week was the swearing of Daniel Ortega for his second consecutive term. From the streets of San Dionisio, it appeared to be a quite festive event. Although I stayed home, I could hear from my house the party going on down the street in front of the mayor’s. My host dad and brother went to enjoy the festivities for awhile, and left me to watch on TV from home. The inauguration took place in the Revulotionary Plaza, where there was a church decorated with lights and memorabilia, a statue of Sandino and Ruben Dario, the national poet of Nicaragua, and another building looking very stately. I recognized a few famous world leaders on the stage with the president and his wife, who is head of public relations for the Sandanistas. There was Mahmud Aminindjimagad, Hugo Chavez (looking quite chubby, with a half inch of hair and suffering from cancer) and the president of Costa Rica, whose name I do not remember.
During the inaugural speech, Ortega hit his principal points made by the FSLN often, talking about how to develop all of the country leaving no one behind, and how Christianity is a focal point of the way forward for Nicaragua. All the time, the state run radio and TV stations played the party theme songs, sometimes cutting off the speech as the songs faded in and out during pauses in talking. The most vivid song the Sandinos have is an upbeat version of “Stand by me” which calls for 1 more election for Ortega to move the country forward.
Also this week, I have been trying to get all the final details of camp in order. I have been having trouble getting young Nicaraguans interested in helping me as counselors; I have tried to schedule several meetings but they have never showed up. I am not very confident that the next week they will be willing to show up and be there for 4 hours a day if they can’t even make a half hour meeting to plan. The issue of sustainability comes up often as a PCV, and in this case, I am a little pensive on how anyone would be willing to do this on their own in a year or two if they no one knows the drill for these weeks. However the kids seem to be enthusiastic and eager to start, so that is a relief.
Today I am getting ready to head to Esquipulas to enjoy their Fiestas Paternales, where the Catholics celebrate the town’s patron saint for a couple of weeks…
And I’m back from my trip to Esquipulas! The patron saint of the town is called black Jesus, and, according to a friend has its traditional roots back in Guatemala. Apparently, in a town named Esquipulas, the citizens started worshipping a Jesus that more accurately reflected themselves as dark native people. The idea spread and today the festival is vibrant in several cities around the area. For my part, I arrived on Friday after spending the day trying to plan camp a little better. When I got there, the streets were active, but not yet vibrant. 30,000 people were supposed to be there the next day, but the town did not look any different. The next day, we took a bus back to my site, where a pilgrimage walk was to begin back to Esquipulas. The walk started at around 12, and was pretty fun, although the final few miles were tough because I was ready to eat and thirsty and tired. But, I suppose a pilgrimage involves a little sacrifice. By the time everybody got to town, it was truly a big mess of people everywhere. Most everybody were scattered on the street, and found bits of shelter under parked trucks, or extended roofs, or did without. My group slept outside on a balcony of a house and we were pretty comfortable. It rained a bit, and I felt bad for all the thousands left in the cold and wet.
The next day we stayed around the house, only venturing out to go on an hour hike and to buy provisions for meals. The hike was pretty spectacular; there is a small hill just outside of town that has a great view of the town and the surroundings. The hills are really pretty around here, and the colors from different fields are slightly different shades of green depending on the crop. Most of the hills have trees left on the drainage areas and the top, presumably to prevent erosion and preserve the soils. The soils on the hills are poor, and most of the space is just grassland for cattle. By mid day, most people had cleared out and all that was left was massive amounts of plastic bottles and Styrofoam plates covering the streets. That night, we went to a rodeo and watched people bull ride for awhile, although we were all tired and a bit uncomfortable standing along the fence of the ring.
I got back from the trip on Monday morning and had to focus on my camp. My site mate and I made signs, got the activities ready, and the kids started trickling in. All in all, 23 showed up the first day, and we had 21 the second. Also, I have had some Nica helpers, although they weren’t the ones I was trying to meet with last week. The first day we did introductions and nametags, and then had the kids draw a map of their communities. After a few ice breakers and name games, we went to the school and I taught them the rules of capture the flag. They seemed to get a kick out of the game, and played for about an hour.
The next day was supposed to be swimming lessons, which my site mate had taught back in the states. However, she has been sick, and was not able to come yesterday and won’t come today either. So, instead, we did a sort of treasure hunt I had planned for another day, with different tasks or things to find around town. I included picking up 3 sacks of trash as one of the objectives, and it was amazing to see how excited they were to collect as much as they could find. I have been scrambling a little to schedule other events because we had almost split the4 hours of planning almost evenly. It is a free activity, so I am not too concerned about not going the full time, but it would be better to occupy all the hours.
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