Everybody Loves Reymundo Video

Yes, Everybody Loves Reymundo

Taking care of fields of beans and corn and always plenty of time for posing! Maudiel patiently waits, knowing this could take awhile.

And Reymundo LOVES the camera. He will stand posing for a picture for absolutely as long as it he needs to get you to take it. Hand it over to him and you’ll end up with a hundred photos, plenty of them self portraits!

Total cliché, I know, but it’s true! Everybody loves Reymundo! He’s the charismatic one in the group, often the center of attention, happy to do what’s needed to make everyone laugh. But he’s also always one of the first ones to come for a hug when I see them, always asks how I’m doing and really listens when I answer (which isn’t always easy given my level of Spanish).

He arrived at NPH when he was eight years old, having lived with an aunt whose children were grown. When I asked about his mother and father, he just says that he doesn’t have a mother or father. I’m not sure if that means one or both died, or just left, but the result for him is the same either way.

I asked if he liked NPH when he first arrived, but the only phrase he comes up with is ‘It was normal’. Which I’m guessing means, it’s not bad, but not always paradise either.

Reymundo has a lot of energy and always wants to be a part of what is going on, so when you’re on a sleepy island you make your own action. It landed him at NPH’s farm, San Marcos for four years, working and going to school.

During 2007, he is doing his year of service before finishing secundaria. I met him when I first arrived and he was living here at the offices with me. Right now, he is currently back at San Marcos working in the bean fields. At the end of this year, he’ll move to Managua to finish secundaria at a school that has given him a soccer scholarship.

Eventually he wants to study medicine in University and play soccer. But really, he mostly just wants to play soccer. And at 17, who can blame him!

They'll make do with whatever is around, even the burro

Big Bugs

I woke up this morning, and walked over to the light switch on the other side of the room in stocking feet. I was really lucky.

A little further to the right and I’d have stepped directly on an upside-down cockroach more than two inches long with his legs flailing in the air. Instead, I opened my door to the outside world and swept him out with my broom. I then followed suit with this little guy who was closer to my bathroom door and also futilely doing the backstroke.

The night before, I went to grab a bag of sugar from the outside storage room. After unlocking the padlock on the creaky metal door, I swung it open and switched on the light. I didn’t see this guy (or girl, I really can’t tell) trying to squeeze himself unseen into the corner until I was on my way back out and switching the light off.

Yep, they’re big. At least that seem that way to me when they’re right in front of me!

Banana and Pineapple, Use 'em While They're Local!

After my last experience making dessert, I decided that the heat of an oven just wasn’t worth it in a Nicaraguan summer. Why fight it when you have the traditional alternative of frying?

So I gathered up my ingredients (easier now that I had a little pantry going in my freezer, the only place I was sure there would be no bugs). Flour? Check. Pineapple and bananas from this guy in the local Mercado? Check.

Five gallon bucket of oil? Check. Loosely followed recipe from Epicurious (forgot the ginger, used a lot more flour)? Check. Chopped overly juicy pineapple, sugar measured with coffee cup, all mixed with a soup spoon, dropped into hot oil? Check.

Removed and tossed in sugar? Check. Used to scoop cool, creamy, melty ice cream into your mouth? Mmmmm….check. Edwin is 12 and joined us from the Atlantic Coast several months ago, he helps in the kitchen and is just about always in a good mood as he puts everything in order there. He reminds me of the nephew in Ugly Betty whenever he sashays from the counter to the stove.

Sola

Some days are easier than others.

In the interest of this being an accurate blog, I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s lonely here. Ok, that’s really not much of a secret. Just about any one who has transplanted themselves from one place to another knows this. But sometimes it’s tougher than others.

Last Sunday morning Marlon sent one of the 12 year old boys to wake me up and tell me they everyone was leaving for Managua for the day in 20 minutes, would I like come?

Well, I’ve gotten better at not planning too far ahead, but this one was still a little late notice for me. Granted, I was grateful to get 20 minutes notice, generally I get less and other times I’ve simply been left behind altogether.

It’s been a difficult transition. One the one hand, it’s hard for me to feel like part of the family when in US culture giving someone just a few minutes notice (especially when you live right next to them) is almost the same as not inviting them. On the other hand, I’m very aware from their point of view, apart from his wife, Marlon doesn’t give the other people living here (the boys) any notice ahead of time either.

The boys here do what he tells them the minute he wants them to because that is how Latin American families are run. So if I really wanted to be part of the ‘family’ I would simply have to be even more flexible. The problem for me is that this starts to infringe on me doing my job. But remembering Nicaraguan priorities, the job is further down the list than being with the family. I’m pretty sure that I am internally unable to fully make this adjustment and sacrifice the very reason I’m here (getting the new orphanage built any time soon).

This is unfortunately the only family I have the option of being in. All other volunteer positions work with the kids and therefore are on the island, so I don’t come into contact with any of the volunteers, huge majority of the kids or other island staff on a regular basis.

The people working at the office itself are very nice, but I have yet to actually be invited by any of them to do anything (they always seem a little hesitant because they’re never quite sure if I’ll be able to understand them and so am I!). So my best friends continue to be the teenage boys who are here the most frequently. I suppose somehow I’m hoping to still find a way to compromise. But after more than three months of continually expecting it to get better, I’m just less hopeful than I used to be.

View out from my room to the rest of the property. Marlon's house is more or less straight ahead, the offices are the white and blue building on the right, the entrance gate and supply house is to the left of the picture.

Note ** I totally want to recognize that I have really great support from family and friends. I’m really lucky to have access to technology that allows us to stay in touch so easily. I can cheaply call people in the States and it’s free for most people to call me. So as compared to years past, or more remotely located international volunteers today, I do have it easy in that regard.

I don’t really like writing about this part of life, but it is undeniably part of the experience for virtually everyone I’ve talked to that has done something similar.

Tapia Construction

We’re currently building a security wall around the offices here in San Jorge. We previously had chain link fence. We’re in a neighborhood (on a dirt road) and our neighbors have everything from glass shard topped concrete walls to wooden rail fences.

I’m not sure what led us to need this change. Although it will keep the neighbors' chickens out, I’m pretty sure this was not the tipping point for the decision.

In most Central American towns and cities the view from the road is not pretty. They're usually quite dirty and lined with these security walls. But when you walk by in the evening and the doors are open, often you can see through a room where everyone has congregated after work and school to socialize, back to a courtyard where nature is still a part of their everyday lives.

We're lucky to have enough clay in the soil, we don't need formwork for the footings.

Mixing concrete by hand

Carrying concrete by hand (Miguel wanted me to take this picture, I'm not sure why they ask me, but then so frequently they look like it's the last place in the world they want to be when it's taken).

Building scaffolding

Esteban is our most experienced lead

Culture Lesson II

For the introduction to this conversation (so that it makes sense) click here.

Continued from yesterday...

So instead of waiting until the conversation, pause, conversation was over, I asked Yader if he could buy the sodas now (and then we’d get one for Maudiel when he was finished), but Yader looked at me horrified. ‘I can’t go alone!’ Thinking this was a teenage group mentality issue, I asked why not. Yader said there are just things you don’t do alone.

So I asked for examples. He replied – eat. You don’t eat alone. I flashed back to times here in Nicaragua where I’d be so hungry after work (and have other things to do after eating so I wouldn’t feel like sitting outside for hours waiting around for other people to show up) that I’d go ahead and eat alone.

A couple times a kid would wander through and ask me if I liked eating alone. It always seemed like a strange question to me since I would prefer eating with others, but it wasn’t until this conversation that I realized eating alone was so strange to them that the only reason they could think of that I would do it was because I preferred it, not because work would ever be more important.

So I asked Yader what he would do if someday he had a family and his wife was gone working and his kids were at school for the day, how would he eat. And he said that he would call a friend.

And I realized how incredibly right he was. They don’t eat without each other. That’s one of the reasons it is so important to live in the same town as your family and friends, because otherwise you aren’t able to fulfill the basic functions of life.

I eat because I’m hungry. I eat around the schedule of other things I have to do (like work). But neither one of those are the priorities here. There is a lot of waiting (which I knew before, but I don’t think I realized that it was because they wanted to, not just because they had no other choice) because you can never be quite sure when things will come together. But waiting for your friends and family to eat is what you do. It is as ingrained in them as waiting for your dinner guests to arrive before starting to eat is for you.

It looks like there is about to be more waiting in my future!

Leaving through the main gate at the offices for our walk