Well, this is my first update from
Nicaragua and it is my birthday! YAY ME!
Anyways, Nicaragua has been great. I am
meeting a lot of great people and organizations. Within my first few
days of being here I got to see my first coffee farm. It was pretty
awesome. The person we met, Marvin, was very knowledgeable and his
farm and open to share his knowledge. The name of the farm was La
Hermandad (The Brotherhood) and they do a lot of amazing things. They
have no electricity but they have a school to for the local kids
which is a positive. It was a kind of low altitude farm (between 900
and 1100 meters) so not all the coffee was specialty grade but they
do have some specialty plots. They also have some certifications
which they were proud of but weren't sure if it really paid off in
the end. They have one direct trade account which they love and want
more because they get better prices for their coffee but they usually
end up selling their coffee to a middle man because it is easier and
more of a guaranteed sale. I will send some pictures when I can. But
it was right after picking so there aren't a lot of cherries on the
trees and this year was a pretty bad year for leaf rust disease. The
next farm I talked to had lost 70 to 80 percent of their crop to leaf
rust.
The next “farm” we visited was
Finca Esperanza Verde and it
is an ecolodge located about a 3 or 4 hour hike away from San
Ramon. They have done a lot of work creating a beautiful nature
reserve full of hiking trails, coffee fields, and vegetable gardens.
It was started by former Peace Corps volunteers in 1999 and was a
non-profit for a long time. A year ago it was bought by a lovely
couple and they are making it for profit but using it to enrich the
lives of the locals by only hiring locals and mostly females to work.
They only hire women to pick their coffee because they tend to be
more deliberate than the men in their picking. Their words, not mine.
They also had won a Cup of Excellence long long ago (2007) and are
trying to regrow the coffee side. A lot of the trees were old and
needed replacing, they lost a lot to the leaf rust, and they wanted
to try different varietals. They came in knowing nothing about coffee
and are getting a crash course in the producing side. It was great to
sit and talk with them about their experience.
Email 8:
Hello y'all! Well, I guess I should
tell you about the last couple of weeks.
First off, thanks for the birthday
greetings. My birthday was awesome! We spent the evening in Matagalpa
and hung out and drank (quite a bit, I might add) and had pizza. It
was a karaoke night so the crowd at the bar was very into the
evening. We had an entire section to ourselves as we were the loud,
drunk foreigners. We drank a lot of really nice, local rum called
Flora de Caña which
tastes much better than the national beers here. That was really all
that happened.
The next day embarked on a
long mission to get to Honduras. Yes, I went to Honduras...and I
DIDN'T get shot. We spent the next week in Danli hanging out with
Kevin's family. They are wonderful and very open I understand much
better than I had before. I am very grateful that he was willing to
introduce Whitney and I to such an intimate part of his life. We were
supposed to go to the Mayan ruins in Copan but we ended up changing
our plans because the cost was extremely high. A round trip bus from
the capital was $76 USD then it would have been another $15 USD to
get into the ruins. Plus, we would have had to get a hotel for 2
nights because it would be 1 day of travel from Danli to Copan. That
is $91 USD just for transportation to Copan and the entrance fee not
including the cost of a hotel. To put it in perspective, over the
course of 8 days I spent less than $150 USD for all my food, buses,
taxis, and plus allergy meds. So, going to Copan was a bit
outrageous. As such, we went on several day hikes around Danli and
just relaxed. It was great. But it feels good to be back in San Ramon
(mainly because that is where my computer was).
Now that we are back work
has actually started. Right now, because of our (mostly my) lack of
language skills we are teaching English to kids and adults. We hold
about 3 classes between San Ramon and Matagalpa. On Mondays and
Fridays we have 2 classes and Wednesday we have 1 class. Wednesday
nights we are going to start helping out a Peace Corps volunteer with
her English classes too. Despite not being very busy with teaching we
have been helping out their Bookmobile with some activities. Also, a
group of high schoolers have been here for the past week and we have
been hanging out with them too. So, we are keeping busy, when the
high school group leaves I am sure we will help out the Bookmobile
more.
Speaking of the high
school group, San Ramon is very saturated with volunteer groups and
NGOs. No, seriously. It is almost ridiculous with the amount of
people who are here volunteering. Besides Planting hope and their 4
volunteers living in San Ramon, there is a group of Spanish students
doing some sort of educational project, there is an Irish volunteer
working here doing HIV/AIDS outreach with a local NGO, an
organization for soon-to-be/new mothers, an NGO called Sister
Communities of San Ramon, and finally Peace Corps volunteers—well,
there were 2 until last week when one COSed (finished her service)
and a couple others that I probably missed/don't know of. All of
these organization serve a city of about 2,800 people. But, there is
approximately 30,000 people in the municipality, in regards to the
municipality that isn't much, it just feels like a lot when the urban
population is only 2,800 people.
I think that brings us up
to speed. Thanks for reading! When I get pictures of my students I
will email them. Until then, enjoy these lovely pictures of Honduras
and Nicaragua. Take care!
Holy crap! We are all caught up! The next post will be a real, honest update and not me pasting in old emails. Weird, what am I going to do? What will I say? I might have to take some time to go over some topics to discuss.
Anyways, thanks for sticking it through the hard times of reading old emails. Hopefully the next post will be a bit more engaging.
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