MapaMundi is almost complete!

16/August/2010

This past weekend was one of my most memorable here in Nicaragua. An old high school friend of mine, Ron, just happened to be passing through Nicaragua on a trip with some high school and college students along with the head Pastor at his church, Dave. They visited an orphanage, came to LPC to help me make the World Map at my school, went to their sister city (of Bend, Oregon) Condega, Esteli, and to the Managua dump where 2000 people live in shanty towns.

Ron and Dave’s group are such impressive young people. It seems everyone I talked to was involved in working for non profits, environmental change, had traveled to other countries, played an instrument, played sports, and was involved in some other clubs at school. They were pretty much the most well rounded group of young people I’ve ever met. So if anyone is losing hope at home for America, good news, we may not be screwed after all with these kids being our future leaders.

My friend Jocelyn was going to be in Managua this week, so I told her to come up to my town to help out with the map (and since she’s never seen my site). The morning the group was to arrive in LPC, Joc and I were scrambling to get everything set up so we could get to work. Turns out my idea of a projector and the school’s idea of a projector isn’t the same. All the teachers told me to just use the projector in the library like it was the most normal thing in the world. My counterpart even gave me transparencies to print the world map on (to project the image on the wall and trace it). Well, when Joc and I brought the transparencies to the library to get the projector, the librarian looked at us like she had no idea what a projector even was, Then she dug up some dusty little machine that I think you need a reel to use, Drat. The only other option was to go to the German organization and borrow their projector and hook it up to my computer and project the map with that, We rushed over there and came back to the school to try and connect it, but I didn’t have any of the cords to hook it up to my Mac. Shucks. So, it was official, we had to use the much dreaded grid method of drawing 26 x 58 squares and follow the trace-by-grid design I had. Meanwhile, the time came that the group was about to arrive. We met them in the park, and they were not hard to spot. We boarded their bus and were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of light skin, light eyes, and light hair. Life here is normally bizarre, so it didn’t feel so strange that a friend from 10 years ago would pass through the 3rd world country I was living in with a bunch of amazing young people ready to go to work. I gave Pedro (the driver) directions to my house so he could park the bus there. We then made our way to the school to hang out with the kids and begin the map. The kids were sort of shy at first as usual, but quickly warmed up to everyone even though they had very limited Spanish skills. I left everyone at school to begin the grid and mingle so I could get on the internet and print the PDF of the grid for the map. After some technical difficulties again, I was luckily able to do it. Whew! If that hadn’t work, we wouldn’t have been able to work on it. When I got back to school, the grid was almost completely finished and the kids were teaching the group how to dance and play different Nica games. And of course, the school band was having practice. It was quite a happening place. The group had also brought art supplies for the kids to make pictures. Thanks to our devoted group, the map was drawn in a couple hours and it looks awesome! Everyone had a blast all afternoon. It was such a positive, fun experience to involve many of my students in the process (it’s their map after all) and I think they really had a great time (and most of them fell in love big time with the white kids). Even the group of students that always disrespect and harass me at school stayed around to help make pictures and hang out. Jocelyn gave them quite the talking to. It didn’t really resonate with them, but I’m glad she did it. Then one of them challenged me to an arm wrestling contest. I thought maybe if I won they’d be so embarrassed and leave me alone. And if I lost, well, I’m a chick, so it’s ok. I dominated him. But the harassment still continued, but at least now when he’s standing outside my classroom staring and making comments at me while I’m teaching I can tell my students he got beat by a girl at arm wrestling. We wrapped up the day with a discussion with the group about Peace Corps and living in a different country. They had great questions and a lot of them are interested in applying when the time comes.


The kids hard at work drawing pictures for the Americans to bring home.


Showing off the goods.



The next day Joc and I met the group in Leon to celebrate the “gritería chiquita”. It’s for the ascension of Mary. It’s kind of like trick-or-treating where you go house to house and the person yells something to the effect of “ who causes you so much happiness?” and your responEse in “the ascension of Mary!”. Then you get candy. In the town center there was quite the party. There were bombas and fireworks and sirens and dancing. The problem with lighting these things off here is that they’re sort of like tiki-torches that you light off and they spring high in the air and explode with a noise, but then the flaming hot tiki-torch hurtles back down. All in all, a couple hundred of these flew back into the crowd. It’s really quite terrifying. Another spectacle that makes the crowd run in fear are the flaming bulls. There’s a cardboard box constructed to look like a bull (legs, tail, dead, etc) that a guy wears on hid shoulders. He runs around as if it’s a bull. But here comes the flaming part. The thing is shooting out fireworks and flames as the guy runs into the crowd. Everyone goes running, and a few brave people chase the bull. They lit a couple dozen of these! It just kept going and going. It was really fun, but took a few years off all of our lives. Later that night we met up with some other PCV’s and all danced our faces off at a club in Leon. We had such a fun night. The next morning we went to the beach, then I made it home as they went on their way to their sister city of Condega, Estelí. As with all visitors I’ve had, when it came time to say goodbye, I had that ‘Don’t leave me here!’ feeling. As always, the feeling passes once I get back to work. But it was so great to hang out with super fun Americans. I just love the culture. Thanks guys for such a great time, and all the help with the map, the kids and I loved having you here!

Of course I failed to take a picture of the actual map we drew on the wall. I'll make sure to get on that this week to show it off to you after it's been painted!