Jogging the Fetid Canals of Recife

A ritual in my new life here in Recife is an evening jog along the canal path just two blocks from my apartment building. This particular canal is one of a complex system of dozens of canals, rivers, and estuaries that cut through what was once a large mangrove forest and is now a paved urban ecosystem housing nearly two million people. This sprawling city full of islands, bridges, and waterways could theoretically be dubbed the Venice of Brazil. And Recife, which means reef, has the potential to be a beautiful gem of a city. All of the rivers flow into the Atlantic Ocean, whose white sand beaches and clear turquoise waters are stunning. Too bad the construction of a large port sealed off two significant estuaries, driving the local population of bull sharks to feed on surfers and swimmers at Recife’s beaches. After this alteration to the food chain, Recife’s beautiful- albeit somewhat crowded and garbage strewn- beaches must be enjoyed from the shore or by merely wading into the sea. With surfing and swimming prohibited, only the occasional drunk swims out beyond the reef after too many cervejas on a Sunday afternoon, tempting fate and the appetite of the bull sharks. The folks back on the beach must all be wondering, “Will he be the 48^th victim?”

Luckily, while all of the smaller rivers and canals that I have seen here are nearly unmoving, algae-covered, and well, fetid, they are home to no dangerous predators that I know of. Whew! Don’t get me wrong though. This canal path jog is no walk in the woods. The obstacles I encounter on my thirty minute run are enough to keep me on my toes, running at a good clip, and constantly observing my surroundings. On the cracked and hole-filled sidewalk looping around the canal I often have to dodge the scrawny horses tied up to trees, always taking care to run beyond a horse leg’s distance away in order to avoid the kick that might result from startling the beast. The land mines the horses leave beyond are just as dangerous and require careful attention to evade. And then there are the stray dogs. Scraggly mutts of all sorts wander through the streets, expertly dodging traffic and finding their way to the canal where they might mark some trees or chase after a bitch in heat. So far I have seen none foaming at the mouth, but these dogs are not animals that I would want to stop and pet, or even brush up against accidentally.

The most dangerous of the beasts that I encounter on my canal jog is, of course, the Brazilian driver. There is no escaping traffic in this crowded crush of a city. Cars, motorcycles, and bicycles all swarm the roads and appear to have some set of rules all their own, impossible for a foreigner to decipher. Most pertinent to a pedestrian is the fact that a red light does not necessarily mean stop and wait for green. It usually serves more as a stop sign. Drivers slow down, hurriedly glance both ways for traffic, and if they decide there is enough of a break to make it through the intersection they speed across while giving the horn a honk-honk-honkity-honk. If they intend to make a turn there is no signal, just a honk that may be coded but to me sounds like every other honk from every other vehicle honking out a Morse code message of its intended path through the streets. Just imagine what this traffic is like for an urban jogger from a foreign land. When I come to either of the two intersections along my canal path I take the opportunity to intensify my work-out by breaking out into a full-out sprint to the other side once I see a slight break in traffic and work up the courage. Mine is a similar approach to that of the drivers at red lights.

Despite the stench of the canal and the above mentioned obstacles to be found in the one mile or so loop of the canal path, I am joined by dozens of other joggers and walkers every evening, looping around and around until it is so dark that that cracks in the unlit sidewalk pose a much more serious danger. From my experience in three Brazilian cities, urbanites love their exercise. Salvador, Maceió, and Recife all have numerous “urban gyms” or areas with a jogging path, bike path, exercise bars, and the like. Brazilians, mostly appearing to be a of a certain social class and age, love to take to these urban gyms with their friends and spend the few slightly cooler hours of the day getting fit. On my canal path, just before sunset (5:30), I am accompanied on my jog by just enough other walkers and runners to not feel either isolated or overcrowded.

The path is also used as a pedestrian thoroughfare through the neighborhood, meaning that every evening there might also be mothers with several children hanging onto her skirt, and grocery bags in her arms. Older folks from the neighborhood set up plastic chairs in the grass between the canal and sidewalk to enjoy the cool evening breeze. Barefooted and bare-chested boys race and ride their bikes along the bike path. All sorts of people seem to come out of the word-work during my evening jogs, showing me just what an interesting and diverse neighborhood I live in. It appears to be somewhat of a transitional neighborhood. The new eight-story apartment building that I live in is one of the only tall and recently built buildings in the area. It is mostly surrounded by smallish houses, stores, and warehouses. The street I live on, Shrimp Avenue (it probably got this name because it was once a mangrove forest with a shrimp farm), is paved in the section closest to the main road, but covered in sand in the section closest to the canal. I enjoy living in this interesting neighborhood, even if I haven’t quite figured it out yet. Is this an example of Brazilian gentrification? I would ask my host family about it, but they tend to give me short answers to such questions, either assuming that I wouldn’t understand, or that as a privileged foreigner I don’t really want to know (or can’t handle?) the truth.

The mysteries of my neighborhood, my neighbors, and the sand-covered road all make my jog that much more enjoyable. As I run my mind flows between meditation and reflection on everything that I’m seeing, learning, and experiencing here; the harsh realities; the beauty and inspiration; the day’s new Portuguese vocabulary; and wondering what this canal was like when it was not a fetid canal but part of a healthy mangrove ecosystem. Thirty years ago? Fifty? One hundred? Who knows.

 Big bad Recife

 

Recife and its bridges

Disclaimer: Photos poached from Wikipedia

Two Days with the Women of the Landless Movement

November 2 -3, Rural Women's Movement (MMC) meeting for women in the settlements Nova Canaã and Chico Mendes

Renata and I made the trek (four buses plus a mile or so on foot) from Recife to Nova Canaã this morning, arriving at the Encontro de Mulheres just after lunch. We were both tired from the trip into the heart of the sugarcane covered Northern Forest Region of Pernambuco, but excited to participate in this event with the women in these settlements who had won the right to this land for their families after a six year struggle. After lunch in the community kitchen which women use to bake sweets to take to market or meals for events such as this, we joined in the meeting in the Association building next door. Renata and I were asked to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there. I was asked to give a special introduction, explaining my research project, my impressions so far of women in the settlements, and the women’s movement in the US. Whew!

After an introduction, I discussed my research project and how I hoped to speak with some of the women there about their lives as sugarcane cutters or with husbands, fathers, mothers, and siblings that were or are sugarcane cutters, in addition to their impressions of the sugarcane industry in their region in general. I said that I’d been impressed so far by all of the women I’d met in this and other settlements. Impressed by the fact that they’d lived through all those years of lona preta, that they’d struggled and fought for their cause, and that they now worked hard raising their families and working on their farms. It’s true. I find their stories impressive and inspiring. I cannot imagine how I would hold up under such hardship. Are these women so strong because they have no better option than to live in camps and face violence, threats, hunger, and possible eviction, torture, and arrest? Did they join the landless movement because they thought it a better option than living in squalor in the favela and selling their labor in the city? Or are they simply committed to the cause? I know it would take several years of research to really understand their motivations, but I hope to at least better understand them before I leave.

I went on to talk about the situation of women in the US. I assured them that many of the issues facing women in rural Brazil are not so different from those facing women in my country and around the world. I should have thought to prepare something before going to this meeting, but on the spot I discussed what came to my head. I said that I thought two of the biggest issues that the US women’s movement is confronting are violence against women and salary disparity. I explained these issues, and hopefully did them justice in Portuguese. I was somewhat embarrassed about discussing salary disparity in front of these women, realizing that it is a very urban and middle to upper class issue, mostly relating to white collar workers. Maybe that’s not entirely true though. I don’t really know enough about it. At this point in the meeting I was feeling ashamed for not knowing more about, much less not even being involved in, the women’s movement in my own country. Sure, it’s something that I have always supported, talked about, read about, and sent generic emails to my senators and representatives about. But I cannot say that I have ever sat in on a meeting for a women’s movement or marched with one. Sitting here with these women who face violence and discrimination every day, who are potentially putting themselves at risk of being resented, insulted, or physically hurt by their husbands simply for being there, I felt ashamed.

Some of the women, but mostly the meeting organizer, asked questions about the organization of the US women’s movement. I admitted to not knowing much. I said that I thought that the women’s movement had historically been more urban than rural, which I believe to be true, and which I believe to be the case for most countries. When they described police repression against protests by women’s groups, I said that I thought similar things, albeit less extreme, happened in my country. I tried to explain the Patriot Act and the turning political tide after 9/11, which had put radical groups and social movements, including some radical women’s groups, onto terrorist lists. Of course I found this quite difficult to explain in Portuguese, considering I don’t even fully understand it or know how to explain it well in English, but I think they got the idea. I at least succeeded in having them realize that while repression of the movement in Brazil is excessive and unjust, women around the world- yes, even in the United States, which they believe to be a just country simply because it is wealthy and powerful- face varying levels of institutional violence that perpetuates the structural violence holding us in an inferior position to the other half of the human race.


Other questions for me included inquiries about the options facing an American woman who is beaten by her husband, and if laws regarding violence against women in my country are effectively enforced. I answered these as best I could, and all of the women present listened attentively. I think many were surprised and maybe comforted (not sure if that’s the right word here…) to find out that women in my country also face violence, discrimination, and repression. That discussion established something of a bond between us, and even though my experience as a woman is so different from theirs, they at least knew that I had some inkling of an understanding of what they face in their daily lives.

Following this long introduction, the meeting continued on and we broke out into small groups to discuss different types of violence against women. In my group of about seven women we were assigned to discuss sexual violence and financial/economic violence (such as men stealing or demanding that their wives turn over any money they make to them, fathers not paying child support, etc.). It took a solid five minutes at least for anyone to start talking about examples of these types of violence in theirs of other rural communities. Once the ball got rolling, however, the stories flowed. Most of the women talked in terms of situations that their friends or distant family members had been in. Without going into detail, I will let it be known that marital rape and incest appear to be rather common, as well as all types of economic and financial abuse, particularly in the form of absent fathers failing to support their children. Back in the large group we all shared some of the stories and experiences related to the various types of violence. The idea behind this exercise was not just to have everyone talk about the difficult reality of women, but to show them that the abuses that they face are actually forms of violence, be it psychological, institutional, sexual, economic, or physical.

The meeting ended with dancing and singing while we held hands in a circle. Women and teenagers with their small children and babies together sang regional songs about the harvest, in addition to more militant songs of the landless movement praising the struggle and its martyrs. Hot and sticky from hours spent in wooden chairs in a small stuffy building, Renata and I joined three other girls on a walk to a spring. There we bathed under a flow of water that had been directed into a pipe so that it spilled down from about 10 feet up on a rock face. We bathed, laughed, played. The local girls found it hilarious that I, the internacional, had known what a bica (tap or spring) was while my urban Brazilian counterpart, Renata, had had no idea. That evening, under the light of a full moon, happy to have exchanged the aggravating racket of Recife’s streets for the chirps of crickets, I chatted with the girls about other local phenomenon such as tapioca, bola de rolo, and Pitú, in addition to a number of intimate female topics. Finding myself able to really contribute to the conversation, and even inspire laughter not just because of my lack of understanding or mispronunciation, I began to feel more comfortable in Portuguese than I had so far in my nearly five weeks in Brazil. Part of being comfortable in a language is being comfortable enough in the situation and with the people you are opening up to, so that the words flow without self-consciousness holding them back. Of course, beer can make this happen too.

Day two of the Encontro de Mulheres opened with skits representing the various forms of violence that we had discussed the day before. A skit involving a drunk father hitting and insulting his wife and daughter was so well acted out and dramatized that I found myself laughing out loud with the rest of the group while simultaneously fighting to hold back tears. The words the father used, the facial expressions, the body language, the submission, were all obviously very familiar to the actors and audience. I couldn’t help but think that they were just too good at that scene.

The skits were followed by a review of the Maria da Penha law, which criminalized violence against women and classified it as a human rights abuse in Brazil in 2002. We learned together the types of punishment that men theoretically receive for committing violence against women, and ways in which to report violence and navigate the legal system. Spreading this knowledge is of course a necessary component of educating and empowering women, but the stories they told later of women who had been repeatedly abused and had reported these abuses to police and lawyers with no repercussions, made the effort seem somewhat futile. Currently, this law exists on paper, but women die at the hands of their husbands every day in this country, like most places (every place?) in the world. Brazil’s fluffy discourse of human rights and social inclusion effectively excludes these women who, by fighting for the de-concentration of land under the Agrarian Reform, are seemingly doing more to work towards the democratization of their country than most others.

This final day ended with a long and lively discussion of recourses for women facing violence in isolated communities, and ways in which we as individual women, as an organized group of women, and as a society, can confront violence against women. We talked about things like the need to educate and concentizar men about women’s rights, and of course to continue educating women and girls. We discussed the need to connect with other women’s groups regionally, nationally, and even internationally to share resources and build strength. After a final round of singing while holding hands, we all went to lunch where we feasted on locally grown cassava and fruits in addition to rice, beans, and vegetables. I was stuffed before lunch was even served though, considering we had already had two snacks for the day and I had alone eaten the equivalent of half a pineapple, half a papaya, and at least three bananas. We feasted together, we hugged, and I was so happy to have been a part of this experience. Of course I was an outsider throughout the entire two days, but as a foreign woman amongst that group of women who were farmers, mothers, and warriors, I felt I could be more accepted and treated as one of them than among a group of men from the same community.

Two families invited me to return and spend a few days or more with them on the next visit. I plan to go back to Nova Canaã on Saturday and stay four to five days to continue getting to know that community, their twelve year struggle to win the right to their land and then build what they have there now, and to speak with them about their experiences cutting sugarcane, trying to make a living off of sugarcane, being kicked off of their land previously by the plantation owners, and struggling against the industry and its proponents to win the right to land upon which to grow food and live in the middle of that vast sugarcane desert.

Websites of interest (in Portuguese):

The Landless Worker's Movement (MST): http://www.mst.org.br/

The Rural Women's Movment (MMC): http://www.mmcbrasil.com.br/

The Lost Land of Sugarcane

Today I am preparing to head into my third week in Pernambuco, or what I have dubbed the lost land of sugarcane in Northeast Brazil. Ask most biofuels experts (or even Brazil experts in general for that matter) where Brazil's sugarcane ethanol comes from, and most will say São Paulo, the large agricultural state in the south. However, much of the sugar and ethanol produced in Brazil also comes from the small state of Pernambuco, where large wealthy landowners have been converting the Atlantic Forest to sugarcane plantations for 500 years. In the hot and humid Forest Region of Pernambuco, there is less forest and fewer small farmers and fishermen every year due to the expansion of sugarcane plantations.

Over the past two weeks I have taken a number of trips out to the sugarcane producing region to witness how sugarcane is being produced. Below I have included some pictures from those trips with captions describing the reality of the production of sugarcane that is turned into sugar and ethanol for consumption within Brazil and for export to the world which has deemed Brazil's ethanol industry as "sustainable", carbon neutral, and good for the local economy. During these two weeks I have seen and heard enough already to fill several more pages of this blog with a strong argument against anyone who would make such claims about Brazil's ethanol production. I'll keep it simple for now and let these pictures and brief captions do the talking.

Stillage, a toxic liquid waste produced when sugarcane is 

turned into sugar or ethanol, being dumped into a ditch in 

the middle of a plantation. Some of this stillage will be dilluted 

with water and then sprayed onto the fields as fertilizer (as 

seen in the picture below), and some of it will end up in 

local waterways. How stillage is disposed of has huge consequences 

for local ecosystems and the people who depend on them for 

water and food. In some local rivers and estuaries fish 

are found poisoned and floating dead on the surface every day.

 

A sugarcane field after being burnt and harvested. In the 

background, a field being sprayed with stillage as fertilizer, 

and a mangrove forest. What you can't see in the picture is 

that there is a man made ditch between the mangrove and 

the sugarcane field, interrupting the flow of water into the 

mangrove, drying it out, and preparing it to be cut down 

and converted to a sugarcane field. This is part of a process of 

converting forests to agricultural land that has been going

on here for centuries.

 

  

Sugarcane cutters in the field. These men and women work 

long hours cutting cane and are paid by the ton of cane they cut

rather than an hourly wage. In Pernambuco's Forest Region 

cutting sugarcane is the principal economic activity for most

rural families. The concentration of land in the hands of 

the sugarcane plantation owners has left little land for small 

farmers to work in non-sugar agriculture or any other industry. Fishing 

communities are also suffering as mangroves are destroyed and rivers

and estuaries are polluted.

 

 Children and women bathing and washing clothes in a small river

on the edge of a sugarcane plantation. The fields are covered with

dilluted stillage and less than 500 feet from this spot there was an

overflowing tank of pure stillage. You can only imagine what the water

quality here must be like. For the people living on the edge of the

plantation- they were most likely driven there at some point in the past-

this is an important source of water. Hopefully it's just for bathing

and washing and not for drinking.

 

A man selling  fruit on market day in Sirinhaém. He is

someone who has been lucky enough to be able to hold onto

his land and family farm despite pressure from the constantly

expanding sugarcane plantations in the region. Families with small

farms that produce food for their own consumption and to take

to market tend to have a much higher quality of life than those who

rely solely on income from cutting sugarcane.

First Four Weeks in Brazil

A trip to Brazil as a Boren Fellow had been in the works for over a year and half, and after a summer spent collecting data in urban forests, camping, climbing, canyoneering, visiting family and friends, and all around enjoying life with those I love in places that I love, I rushed to get a visa (first unsuccessfully and then successfully- long story), said my goodbyes, and then found myself hot and sticky in the airport in Salvador, Brazil three and a half weeks ago today. I chose Salvador as my first stop in this enormous and almost overwhelmingly diverse country in part because it has a couple of seemingly decent language schools, but mainly because I wanted to spend time just hanging out in this Afro-Brazilian coastal city, the site of Brazil´s original capital.

Salvador
Salvador is the home of capoeira and many of Brazil´s now most famous music and dance styles, all the result of an African population brought into the region against their will over the course of three centuries. They brought with them their rich culture and arts, which flourished in spite of oppression, as in every part of the world which has been touched by the African diaspora. Today, Salvador is a dynamic multicultural and multiracial city of more than four million inhabitants. The traffic and the crowds on the beaches and at concerts are often anxiety-inducing, but with the natural beauty of the location of the city on the Bay of All Saints, the 16th century forts and 18th century Pelourinho (a UNESCO World Heritage site), the divine cuisine, the live forró (a regional music played with accordions, drums, and triangles), and best of all the vivacious and gregarious people, it was hard for me to find Salvador anything less than exciting, stimulating, and just plain fun.

Cidade Baixa & Cidade Alta, Salvador da Bahia

Enjoying the tunes of my favorite forró band in the plaza in Rio Vermelho, Salvador on the night of my despedida

During my 3 weeks in Salvador I attended Portuguese classes for four hours each morning at IDIOMA Language School. I must admit that I spent nearly as many hours every afternoon on the beach. What a life, huh? At least all that time on the beach often allowed my to practice my Portuguese by turning down smoked cheese, shrimp, and necklace vendors, or on occassion accepting a cold beer or coconut. In the evening I would walk up hill from the beach to my host family´s house, where I would spend time chatting with them over coffee and cake, and cracking up over the jokes of my hilarious host father. Tânia and Nivaldo made for wonderful host parents.

 My Brazilian host family and me

Itsy Bitsy Brazilian Bikinis
After two weeks on the beach in my American bikini, which I had never previously considered to be particularly modest, I grew tired of feeling that all eyes were on me and my fabric covered bottom obviously belonging to a foreigner whenever I walked to the water. There is a myth in my country that all Brazilian women have gorgeous bodies, and that that explains why they wear scandalously skimpy bikinis. Well I am here to say that Brazilian women have bodies just like the rest of us. They come in all shapes and sizes, and all are barely covered by a few strings and strips of fabric when they hit the beach. So I decided to go native and purchase a somewhat less modest bikini, not quite as teeny tiny as most Brazilians use, but something less American looking. I chose a Barbie pink model, something I never would have worn at home, which made it feel right. I immediately began to feel less conspicuous on the beaches of Salvador, especially after I got some sun on body parts that had never before seen the light of day, and had the even tan of a brasileira. Sure, it might sound silly and vain, yet this was part of my adjustment to Brazlian culture. And, to be perfectly honest, I considered my 3 weeks in Salvador to be a time to soak up language, culture, and sun, without doing much of anything else.

Jumping for joy at Praia do Farol in my big old American bikini

Recife
It worked. I arrived in Recife, my field site and the city in which I´ll be located until April, with a nice tan, an advanced level of Portuguese, and a feeling of relative comfort with Brazilian culture. Of course here in Recife I´ll spend most of my time in front of a computer or out in the sugar cane fields for my research, and much of the culture and language differs from what I became familiar with in Salvador. I´m already beginning to adapt my accent to that of this far northeastern region. In some ways is easier because the sounds are closer to Spanish. I will miss the soft d and the ch sound of t that I learned in Salvador, but in Recife I am far too busy straining to understand the local accent and vocabulary to have any saudade for those sounds.

Here in Recife, a city famous for its crime and shark attacks, I am staying with the family of Renata, who works as a journalist for the NGO I´ll be working with/collaborating with on my research. Renata lives with her parents and two sisters in a beautiful apartment on the 8th floor of a tall modern building, located on Shrimp Avenue, in the Lamb neighborhood. Yum. Renata and her sisters are all in their 20s and extremely friendly and open. After just three days there I´m already feeling like another sister. Their parents are also as sweet as can be, and have invited me into their home with truly open arms, converting their office into my bedroom, making sure I´m comfortable at all times, and working to fatten me up by feeding me delicious home cooked vegetarian meals. I can´t believe my luck to have ended up with two wonderful host families. From what I know of Brazilians so far, most are open, friendly, and generous, but I can´t help but feel that these two families are exceptional.

Jumping into my Research
On day two in Recife I woke up at 5 am to go with Renata to the forest region of Pernambuco (Pernambuco is that state that Recife is located in, and the forest region is the area near the coast that was once covered by Atlantic forest but has been cleared since the 16th century to plant sugarcane for sugar and now for ethanol production ) to visit a settlement of squatters from the MST, Brazil´s famed landless movement. I have started a separate blog in which I am going to discuss my experiences and reflections on the visit to this settlement and others. That blog will be used as a forum for explaining the experiences of rural workers in Pernambuco´s forest region. As a brief explanation of the reality here, today rural people in this region have three options: 1) Work cutting cane, which is extremely strenous labor for which they are at best paid enough to not starve to death. 2) Abandon the rural life and move to the favelas in Recife, which are miserable overcrowded shantytowns built on hillsides or alongside the numerous rivers that run through the city. 3) Join the MST in the hope of eventually being granted the right to a piece of land upon which to make a decent and respectable living. This is the reality that I will be studying during the next 6 months, as this is the reality of a region dominated by the sugarcane industry and fueled by the global "green" fuels movement. If you are interested in reading more about the lives of the people here, and about the Brazilian ethanol industry from the perspective of the rural workers whom I will be visiting with and learning from, than please follow my other blog: http://ethanolproductioninnortheastbrazil.blogspot.com/

My first day in the field in Pernambuco, at a small river within an MST settlement. Looks like I need some sunglasses.

This blog will be dedicated to telling the lighter side of my life in Recife, less related to my research. I hope to do weekly posts on both blogs, so please follow and make comments. Pictures will also be coming soon!

Abraços!

La Carpio

While I currently am on somewhat of a vacation, as I have no class until November 5 when Conservation and Development begins, I have been keeping plenty busy with D.C. job and internship searches for the spring, and more than anything with advancing on the projects that I am coordinating in La Carpio with my UPEACE classmates.

I've been involved in La Carpio (a poor marginalized community outside San Jose, at the site of the national dump) since visiting it the first time with my Food Security class in January. A group of us from the class decided that we should follow up with the community after conducting interviews with a number of families who left quite an impression on us, due to their determination, spirit, and willingness to share their sometimes heart-breaking and often inspiring stories, and also for the extremely challenging conditions in which many of them lived, dealing with extreme poverty, lack of services, issues with migrant status, and the environmental hazards of being surrounded by two flood-prone rivers and a dump that receives over 700 tons of garbage a day. Since March we have been holding meetings with CODECA, La Carpio's community development council, with the goal of collaboratively developing a number of initiatives aimed at addressing some of the community's key issues, such as environment and health, stigmatization by the national media, and food security.

As the only student from that group remaining at UPEACE this semester, I have been working on getting together a group of motivated new students who want to commit to working in La Carpio throughout the academic year, and to advancing with the food and environmental security initiatives which are the projects that I am heading up. Having recently contacted an environmental consulting company that is very interesting in lending their services to our projects, and having finished writing a proposal for a grant that would fund much of our work over the next year, things are really starting to move along. Yet there is much work ahead...

In addition, I recently published an article on La Carpio as a paradigmatic case of the structural and cultural violence that exists in Costa Rica in UPEACE's Peace and Conflit Monitor.

Please check it out:

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=547

Anniversary in Granada, Nicaragua

When David and I left Bluefields we headed immediately to the gorgeous colonial city of Granada to spend our one year anniversary together. I'd heard so much about Granada- one of Nicaragua's hottest tourist destinations due to the well-maintained colonial architecture and relative prosperity of the city, in addition to the nearby lakes and volcanoes- and desperately wanted to visit it before leaving the country because it is so different in just about every way from Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, and I was admittedly ready for a change. Costa Rica has no comparable cities either, so Granada was a must-see.

When we arrived in Granada ready for a relaxing couple of days of wandering around the area before heading south to Costa Rica, we found ourselves in the midst of a wild and crazy party (I believe it was the city's Fiestas Patronales) that included a parade with lots of horses, floats, blaring music, and scantily clad bleach bottle blond Nica women, in addition to thousands of people decked out in cowboy gear with Cerveza Tona in hand. We spent one rather overwhelming day watching the parade and drinking beers in the central park, but decided to take off the next day for an adventure outside of town and away from the chaos and crowds. We rented a pair of bikes and made our way down a rough dirt road to Laguna de Apoyo, which is a crystal clear lake in the crater of a volcano, surrounded by jungle. It was amazing! The water was so warm, so clear, and the sounds and colors of the jungle so vibrant and beautiful. Having gone on bikes rather than taxi, we ended up on a side of the lake that we had completely to ourselves. We spent hours soaking in the lake and did some hiking around in search of monkeys, toucans and the like, which I heard but never spotted. However, on our bike ride back into town, we did see a group of at least two dozen large green parrots fly over us squawking their heads off.
When we arrived back at our hotel in Granada we both had sore butts and sunburns, but felt great- exhilarated and happy. Being our anniversary and all, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner out on the town. We were sure we'd picked out one of the nicest restaurants in Granda, but were pretty disappointed (thanks a lot Moon Handbooks!). The whole experience was at least entertaining. We had typical Nicaraguan food masquerading as Spanish cuisine, while serenaded by a band that included one extremely out of tune guitar and a lead singer with a penchant for cheesy renditions of Latin pop songs. After a bottle of wine we could do nothing but laugh at the situation. Ahhh...Nicaragua. Such a special place. You really never know what to expect.

Final Days in Monkey Point (back in August)

David with the 2nd-6th graders up at the wind turbine for a class on renewable energy.


Teaching a class on renewable energy to the first graders.



Teaching with bE's model wind turbine.



Some of the girls and me after a great class on sustainable development.


David showing off the lovely stone path that he made to our house (those damn cows and the rain made the walk home quite interesting)

So I thought I'd go back and start filling in this blog, which unfortunately hasn't been updated in over two months. David and I kept pretty busy during our final days in Nicaragua with blueEnergy, what with writing reports, discussing strategy for getting batteries into Monkey Point, defining future community relations strategy, and saying our goodbyes. On August 16 we took off for a few days in Granada and then home to Costa Rica. Since then we've been in classes and have been keeping busy. But now that we are approaching October, I decided it was time to update this thing! So here goes...

Our final days in Monkey Point were pretty awesome, despite the usual turmoil in the community, a few rare sicknesses, jealous monkeys, a dead guy washing up down the beach, a drug chase nearby, a couple of drunken community members, big wig politics coming in to talk about the construction of a mega-port, highway, oil pipeline, and dry canal in Monkey Point, the theft of cookies, oatmeal, and a hammock from our house....and well, why go on? Monkey Point is a crazy place, yes. Daily life and work there was often extremely challenging, sometimes depressing, sometimes scary, often inspiring. Above all, great people, great food, great beaches, and such an amazing yearning for education and progress amongst most community members. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, in so many ways. I miss it!
Despite spending the last couple of weeks there with painful oozing skin ulcers and a few days with strep throat, while trying to keep up with our work, I was so sad to leave. During those final weeks we continued with all of our classes (literacy, English, environmental and energy education) and work with the Energy Commission. Our classes with the kids on renewable energy were particularly fun. It was frustrating to have to leave knowing that with maybe 2 more months in the community the efforts toward literacy and increasing the community's understanding (and sense of ownership) of the renewable energy project could have been so much more effective. Our time there was too short. However, I do think we had an impact.
David and I spent our last week with blueEnergy in Bluefields writing reports and guidelines for future energy volunteers, trying to strengthen bE's community relations in general and ensure that our work in Monkey Point would set a precedent. No other volunteer had ever spent such an extended amount of time in a community or done such significant work (most volunteers going to communities do mainly technical work, often the community relations work has lacked in organization), and we wanted to encourage bE to build on our experience with volunteers working on the social aspects of their projects in the future. We also wanted to ensure that all of our work (and the work of the Energy Commission) on getting batteries into homes in Monkey Point wasn't in vain. We're still in touch with bE on this subject, and it sounds like the battery project is coming along. 10 households will be eligible for a micro-credit loan from ADEPHCA for a subsidized home battery package that will enable them to light their homes and run a black and white TV, as long as they make a small monthly payment each month in order to charge the battery with the community's wind and solar power at the charging station. David and I are both helping bE with this project remotely from Costa Rica. As happy as I am to be back in classes and at our beautiful home in El Rodeo, a part of me wishes that I were able to spend more time in Bluefields and Monkey Point in order to see this project through.