Now we know what it feels like to be celebrities!!!

As Christine’s parents we traveled for 10 days in Nicaragua, we brought to her lots of hugs and kisses, and a little bit of home. We had a wonderful experience!! We were graciously welcomed by both of Christine’s host families and embraced by her fellow Peace Corp co-workers. We speak un poquito Spanish so Christine worked overtime as everyone’s translator.

We experienced the beautiful views of volcanoes and their crater lakes; we kayaked through the islands on Lake Nicaragua and saw exotic vegetation and animal life; we met other Peace Corps members and enjoyed sharing all of their experiences – so diverse and yet still very similar in many respects. We experienced the insanity of driving in the capital city of Managua during a Sandinista rally and then being shaken down by the police. We traveled on roads that were filled with rocks / boulders and potholes along with bicycles, cattle, push carts, horses, motorcycles, stray dog, vendors, and people (the road belongs to everyone except those in cars!). We spent the day at a cousin’s finca (farm). On another day we went to the oceanfront and body surfed in the warm water and played on the black volcanic sandy beach.


We spent a week in Christine’s small community, in the Department of Chinandega. We lived in her cinder block home with her new puppy Moco Loco (loosely translated Booger Crazy). Each day we would lose electricity or water (or both) for hours at a time; the Nicas take this in stride. It rained heavily each day but dried up quickly. Christine and her neighbors swept the yard (hard volcanic-based soil) daily to keep it clean and orderly. But the burning sugar cane ash, road dust, leaves / fruit droppings make it a constant clean up effort. We showered and washed the dishes at her outdoor water station (no water at all on the last day so the neighbors supplied us with buckets of water pumped from their well).

The Nicaraguans (and Christine) struggle each day to accomplish simple tasks that we take for granted. They get by with very little yet they shared generously with us; the host family included us in their daily meals and all their family activities. Matagalpa cafe con leche, quesillo (tortilla with cream, onion, cheese, and hot sauce), gallo pinto (fried beans and rice), olive and cheese empanadas, were just some of our new found culinary delights.

Christine works with four different schools (we visited them all) and we were treated as honored guests. They had presentations that overwhelmed us – the whole school assembly which included native dressed dancers, hand made gifts, class songs (they made us sing as well), demonstrations about the compost heaps, interviewing us for a class project, presenting us with bushels of locally grown fruit, and serving us a lunch of torta de yuca (kind of like a potato pancake) with ensalada (similar to cole slaw) that a family had prepared for us at 5 in the morning.

It was hard for us to not focus on the unimaginable poverty. Few of the students get books (sometimes the teachers don’t either), the lights - some schools don't have any - are kept off (they turned them on when we were there), the smaller students sometimes need to share desks, one class room is partially constructed (ran out of money) and the kids are basically sitting outside (with only a roof, concrete floor, metal desks and nothing else), a pair of teachers shared one dry erase marker for their two classrooms. These shortcomings don't keep the teachers and students from focusing on their educational goals.



And then buckets of tears were shed as we said our goodbyes at the airport. Eight months of Christine’s service has been completed – only 19 more to go---- But who is counting?