El Bueno, El Mal, y El Feo

The Good:

• We picked Emily and Eric up from the airport.
• We love Emily and Eric (in general and having them here).
• San Juan del Sur is beautiful; we took a bus there after we picked E&E up from the airport.
• The reason for our visit to SJDS was to visit the first lending library in the whole country. It produced a lot of useful information. This is why we just caught a bus to Granada. We got a tip about an NGO here that sells books cheap to other NGO's and libraries - Libros Para Ninos.
• We spent the night at an amazing bungalow at Playa El Coco (almost to Costa Rica) which had AMAZING air conditioning in our room (an extreme luxury).
• Dinner at a Canadian's restaurant at Playa El Coco was delicious, the ambiance, incredible (second floor, open air cabana on the beach topped with an enormous Napeleon Mastiff (redundant?)) and our spiritual conversations with the owner were very interesting. He saw us pray over our meal (which included alcoholic beverages) and was intrigued that people who pray (especially Christians) also drink...

The Bad:

• Long waits for buses.
• People who lie to you about where buses go so they can charge you a bunch for their buddy who owns a taxi.

The Ugly:

• We thought we found an amazing hotel with air conditioning on the beach for our first night in SJDS at an amazing price ($15/night unheard of for the location and AC). Only to find out that the Discotec (club) next door rattles the hotel from 9:00PM to 4:30AM with their mad dance tunes. In addition, the air conditioner would trip the breaker every 15 minutes. I spent from 12:00AM to 2:30AM getting up every 15 minutes to flip the breaker back. At 2:30AM I gave up and went outside where the breeze was nice and cool to listen to a podcast from The Moth.

MORE TO COME...

Pre-Library Pictures

The temporary location for the library (as I think I stated below) is in a building on ETCA's property called, Rancho Fifo. As of yesterday, this was used as material storage for Julie's pending expansion. I spent about four hot, very sweaty hours with two neighbors, Julio, 16, and Cairo, 14, cleaning it out. Here are the before / after:








































































The chairs are for the library.














The hand-drawn plans I gave to the carpenter today. We are adding a temporary wall and closing in a window - all with used materials.




























The exterior. We're getting tables and plants to encourage kids to come here to do homework and read here.

Lots more to update, but it'll have to wait.

The Mayor

The meeting with the mayor was - okay. I got a bad impression of him - very machismo. He kept cutting off Julie and Claudia the whole meeting. So frustrating. I know that its cultural, but it was cultural in the US until the 70's / 80's. Hopefully with more time, more education, more women demanding respect, this will change in Nicaragua.

He is also someone who likes to just show up for grand openings and take some credit for things he has had little involvement with. For example, NICA built a baseball stadium here. He didn't help at all, but guess who was there at the grand opening wanting to speak?

So, after this negative introduction to the mayor (alcalde), here is what went down. He asked that we put the permanent library in the park. It's a place that is central, lots of youth congregate there, it's right by the stadium, and it's already public land. We thought that was a good idea. He promised to pay for half the building, he promised to help exempt the building from taxes, and if we make the building a "formal" donation to the Ministry of Education, the water, electricity, and internet will be free. For now, he promised to help Julie pay for those things since the temporary library will be in a building on her land.

Anyway, we'll see if that happens. That's a long term vision. He kept insisting that the library have 15 computers with fast internet so that the kids can take online courses. Great idea, but who's paying? I told him, when projects get too large, they don't happen. That this needs to be a building with books. So Claudia, with NICA (who is a tremendous help), said that we could plan a two phase library. Books first, then computers. And no free internet. With free internet no one reads books.

While we were in Nagarote, we ate Quesillos from a restaurant that has a farm out back. They make all their cheese and cream themselves. I must say that I will be eating more quesillos.

With my afternoon, I hired two neighbors, Julio and Cairo to help me clean Rancho Fifo (the temporary library location). We had to move about 60 bags of concrete mix and many other concrete related tools. I was a sweaty mess by the end, but with 20 cordoba's each ($1.00 USD = big money) in their pockets and the Rancho clean, we were satisfied.

It's wonderful to be here. When you drive you see volcanoes in the distance nearly everywhere you go. It's either an ominous existence, or a pleasurable one - not sure yet.

That's it for now. Tommorrow I meet with the teachers from the schools, carpenters who will modify some shelves that NICA donated, and with a local construction manager who will help me modify Julie's building slightly so it is more usable. Lots to do!

Local Politics

So progress on the library so far has been encouraging. We have a for sure temporary location - a building called Rancho Fifo - at the El Transito Centro de los Artes. We have one NGO NICA (www.nicafund.org) promising to pay for a permanent building and one staff member. We have ETCA promising land and laptops for an internet component to the library. And today we travel 45 minutes to Nagarote to meet with the mayor to provide money for electricity, internet, and possibly contribute to the staffer's salary. This being an election year, we're hoping that saying he helped create a library will be good for his campaign.

The Mayor's name is Juan Gabrielle. He was first elected to office when he was 21. He is an engineer who lost after his first two terms in office, but when the Sandinista government rose back to power, so did he.

He's promised things before that he has gone back on (most importantly to us, a building for our library).

On a brighter note, Nagarote is the birthplace of the Quesillo (see the Nicaraguan part of the article - obviously). A delicious Nicaraguan response to the burrito. I'm hoping to have one today even if the mayor tells us to bugger off.

sleep deprivation

I vividly remember the night before the first day of school growing up. I remember it because it was a night that I never got any sleep.

I guess the night before you leave for a self-guided humanitarian trip to another country for two months is like the night before the first day of school.

Fiesta My HEB

Grocery Store Math:

2 grocery stores + 1 intersection / (.40 snoody&wealthy crowd + .40 tragically hipster crowd + .20 ethnic fusion crowd) = Montrose Grocery Store Showdown

Here are the contenders:

Fiesta Mart

Description: Comely, run-down, dirt-cheap, wide ethnic selection (whole cow-tongue anyone?)
Crowd: Students, poor, elderly, the edgy, pretentious world travelers (like me)















H-E-B

Description: Grocery-store-hip, clean, decent prices, standard food selection nicely in pretty package
Crowd: Students (Rice that is), ricos, moms, Texas patriots





















So Hannah and I were walking to our favorite park near the Menil Collection last spring when we spotted some friends we hadn't seen in a while walking amidst a crowd. We joined them and walked with them. We quickly realized this crowd was organized to which we raised the question, "what is this." "Oh, we're protesting the new HEB they're planning to build across the street from Fiesta." "They're building an HEB here? That's so great!"

Clearly, I was not the ideal protester for the cause. But here we are, over a year later, the new HEB is under construction, and I've been doing some thinking.

New HEB's are like crack for Texans - we love 'em. They're clean. Their prices are way better than Crappy Kroger. They make us feel superior somehow while shopping for our food in their clean, spacious food sanctuaries. They make us feel proud to be Texans thanks to their effective marketing schemes.

Now that Hannah and I have moved south of 59, our closest grocery store is the Fiesta that will be directly across the street from the new HEB. Common sense tells us that this new competition will leave Fiesta on the Scottish side of this Braveheart showdown (I'm not alone in this thought). After frequenting the Fiesta in the past few months, I have had a change of heart. I have fallen in love with its food selection, its straight-forward grocery-store-ness, the old grandma-like asian manager (who can gladly tell you exactly where to find the tahini), and the incredible diversity of the place.

Last night at 9:30 while standing in line buying Hannah two boxes of cream cheese (for the amazing cupcakes she made). I was in line with a Mexican day laborer, a Brazilian student, and was checked out by a Caribbean cashier. I daily made avocado and turkey sandwiches on Fiesta's Mexican-style Pan de Tortas with one of their many selections of queso fresco.

I have gone from jeering the anti-HEB crowd, to having a sad spot in my heart/stomach for poor, vulnerable Fiesta knowing that my Texas grocery queen will be edging out my newfound hole-in-the-wall.

At the end of the day, at least it's not WalMart - right?