San Juan de Limay

Yami and I went on a trip! This was... surprising since I didn't have any idea we were going. First, we took a bus for three hours from Managua to Esteli. There is nothing remarkable about Esteli in my opinion. Then, we jumped to another bus on our way to San Juan del Limay (also another three hours).

San Juan de Limay was, however, very neat. The distance between San Juan de Limay and Esteli really isn't that far, what takes so long is that the bus (which was the exact same bus I took to school from age 5-17 except it was covered in dramatic symbols of Jesus) has to transverse all these winding mountain roads.

There was a dramatic downpour as soon as we arrived in the city. Yami asked if I wanted to wait until the next day to travel out to visit the artisans in the area or go right then, so I said screw it and lets go.

After walking the the selva for 20 minutes we reached a group of artisans who took us around the village; many of these women lived without electricity and made necklaces and small beads to sell. Later we visited a cooperative house that had originally started with 20 women but now only had four.

Besides the horrible bus it was all and all a good trip.

Behind On Writing For A Good Reason

Ugh, it has been a pain to try to write everyday, especially since I am trying to quickly complete a project for the organization that I am volunteering for. The group is thinking about jumping into a micro lending program, or at least a pilot program, since they have recently made two loans to two different people and have had a 100% repayment rate. What I've been mainly working on here is figuring out a way to formalize this and use it to augment what the organization already does -- which is to connect artisans to fair trade markets here in Nicaragua and the United States. Many of the models and literature on the subject tend to focus on the Grameen model -- essentially lending money to groups without collateral and using the social pressure of repaying loans instead of the threat of having whatever physical capital taken away. For example, the organization made one loan to help a women rebuild an oven that she used to fire her pottery. That may not work here in Nicaragua since many of the people we work with are not in cooperatives or any formal group per se.



So, the question is how to establish a program to enable the artisans we work with to increase their capacity for producing goods, on an individual basis, when they have no collateral nor any of the "social capital" that the Grameen model employs. God I love doing this stuff!

Don't Get Sick in Nicaragua

I thought that people in the States would get a kick out of this. I was a little under the weather went I arrived in Nicaragua but later I began to feel okay. Over the past few days, however, my vitamin C tablets weren't doing much and even went to consuming entire containers of juice for lunch (FYI - I dont' really eat anymore).

More extreme measures were necessary...

Yami said I should go to the doctor but that sounded scary to me. So, I went to the pharmacy and thought they might be able to give me some pills (antibiotics or something) but instead I got the totally not intimidatingly named Viro-Grip kit. I cracked open the vial and gave myself 5mls of whatever-the-hell-this-is. I don't know if it is working yet or not. Sadly, I had Yami record a video on my camera of me giving myself the shot but, big shocker, it wasn't recording. Fortunately, I have to do this for the next two days so I will try to post a shot up soon. They cost about 50 cordobas each or about $2.50; a good deal if it works.

The Summer of Travel

No point in apologizing for the lack of blogging since no one, save the authors, have bothered to read this thing.

I am in Nicaragua and I am working with an organization whose name I will not say. I am in graduate school and I am studying international development. I thought it may be beneficial to actually visit a developing country at some point (since other locals I've visited are in Europe). I hope while here I can learn about how development works, in a real sense. I have read much on the subject from many different disciplines and perspectives but I want to see it and I want to feel it.

This country is really damn poor. I mean, excessively lacking basic materials and goods; this is my opinion. I know that coming from the United States and from a moderately well-to-do family that my initial impressions are largely skewed, that is, having a car older than 10 years or living in an older part of town would be "poverty" for me (subsequently, I'm sure you can substitute better examples of this poverty-relativity thing that I am trying to convey).

Now, all of this is hindsight as the issue since I arrived less than a week ago was how this affects me. Before coming down I had prearranged a room to live in with someone in the organization and, apparently, I did not ask the right questions and the person I spoke with did not provide the right details -- I was overwelmed in seeing how poor the the neighborhood was and how seemingly ramshackle and dirty the house was. I had romantic images of me roughing it encompassed by the the phrase "getting dirty" coined by D.L. Blanchard and I. The idea was the travel to a place that involved, essentially, a test of limits for ourselves -- especially of the norms of comfort and continuing to push away from tourism and reach the other side of what it is to travel. This is a big portion of that trip for me. I have a bit of sadness but I know this is normal and regardless of what happens this will pass.

A Trip Home

Over the past month I’ve been in conversations explaining aspects of English grammar and American culture to foreign friends. I hit this again over the holiday when a friend in Turkey asked me about my weekend plans. I touched briefly on the 4th of July being about cooking out and fireworks and fired her over a Wikipedia link about Independence Day.

My plans this year were a bit abnormal; No formal cookouts with family and only one muddled social thing. So, I ventured out to see my father, in a different town, who unfortunately was working the entire day. It was the town I grew up in. This place is only an hour away, but despite my closeness I never feel the compulsion to go – save a trip I can rationalize by seeing Dad. Traveling there always makes me feel nostalgic, but it’s too close and accessible to feel as if I am ever really returning to anything. However, it’s inaccurate to say that I don’t pay attention to things more. It’s easy to take in all the details of a place when it’s somewhere you aren’t used to being. Meeting with Dad was a good thing, and I enjoyed it.

After seeing him I took a different route home. Sans GPS, the sensation was heightened. This is a mystic land in my mind. It’s rural and hot and sticky. Abandoned tobacco houses still stand and, more significantly, nothing has been put in their place. This place is not undeveloped, but rather was developed once and has not regained any new glory. It is a pool for all things good and bad about life outside of the city. I became surprised when I passed the new version of my old elementary school. Apparently, we are “Mustangs” and no longer “Bulls.” This was quite perturbing as my travels in Spain had merely affirmed the belief of my spiritual connection to toros. The school was beautiful, modern and clean, and could not have been more than a few years old.

I kept driving home. I drove past small hills and valleys and very much farmland. I couldn’t tell what they were growing, nor did I really know about farming. Kudzu as far as the eye could see. When I was kid, I was always told that the Spanish had brought kudzu to the New World hoping that cows would eat it. They did not, and thus it grew. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I like the idea of it.

Still driving home, I passed my original elementary school and it immediately took me back to my childhood. No, that’s not really true. The foundation of long and expensive education began here, at this place. But, it was exciting and significant to think that this was where learning started for me.

Initially, I had planned to just pass my old school, but at nearly the last second I whizzed right at the intersection and directly into its parking lot. I parked at the left corner of the building; there weren’t any markings left for parking spaces anymore, just hard grass-cracked asphalt. This side of the building ended abruptly with the gymnasium-stage room, with the opposite end of the building being a similarly sized square that housed the cafeteria and a small office. The building, as a whole, was shaped like a dumbbell – two squares at each end, connected via a long corridor. Classrooms were uniformly connected to both sides of this corridor.

The building had been neglected. The front yard and shrubs were out of sort. Wire-embedded glass windows were either broken or cracked and random building materials were scattered at the front door. But, the building looked solid. It looked like a rock that had been there for a hundred years. And I continued to walk.

The thrill junkie I am kept saying “go in,” and I even scanned around for a low enough window or a door that wasn’t pad locked. However, it being the 4th, I decided it wasn’t civic to break in.

I continued walking down to the other end of the school, I went past the field were I used to play T-Ball and a random playground that I could not remember. The back of the school was bizarre, because if the grass would have been cut, the school could have looked like it was still in use. I walked past a row of temporary trailers that, I assume, became permanent as the school needed to accommodate more students. Other than the trailers behind the school, the back had one real building that housed three classrooms. Each classroom door had a cartoon figure painted on the front. This classroom, Mr. Pooh, evoked a powerful thing: I remembered this was my first grade classroom.

My mind seamlessly jumped to another memory about first grade and this classroom. I remember a day when we were reading a story about a gingerbread man, the one that ran away after he was baked. At the same time we were reading this story, we also were literally baking gingerbread men – people, whatever. The entire class was to eat the gingerbread men after lunch, but when we returned they had “ran away.” Away, they ran. I was a smart little kid and so I was skeptical, however I wholeheartedly believed this ruse. More importantly, I still to this day can feel that sharp little pain in my heart when I really believed that my baked gingerbread man had ran away. And, I’ve been angry ever since.

At the backside of the gymnasium, where I had started this trek, I found a door completely open and I walked inside. It was clean. The inside had a natural amount of dust but there were no signs of squatters or debris anywhere. The floor still had the basketball lines on it and the hardwood floor was thick and solid. It was covered with varnish like a car glazed over with winter ice. Walking in that door put me directly on the stage looking out towards the rest of the gymnasium. I had forgotten there was a stage. I couldn’t remember anything about this room, and I felt nothing.

It didn’t take long to discover nothing in the gym, so I immediately went to the classic oversized gym door that led to the main artery of the school. I had a slight reservation, not out of any genuine fear, but because others in my position would not think it a good idea to continue further inside. But since I didn’t believe in anything paranormal and I didn’t believe anyone else was there and I felt morally vindicated of trespassing because I had once attended this school and it was mine, I decided to go.

I wanted to see anything there was to see. I systematically went through each classroom; I started on the left side of the hallway and then jumped to the room or classroom directly across on the right. In a way, it was classic and I was happy that the desks were still in the classrooms; that you could identify that this was once a school. I had been worried that the place was going to be cleaned out. Seeing some resemblance of this once being a school was the meat and potatoes of the thing. Again, I think for many people some of these sights may have been scary, but I had existed here before and never once had a bad feeling. It was a rare thing to find something exciting and not threatening. I continued on but my memories did not. I could not remember anything new or specific like I thought I would. I found my second grade classroom, which was the last class I took there.

I continued my trip down the barren and lifeless hall. It was getting darker. Waiting to find my way out in the dark was a bad idea, so I moved faster. I went through the cafeteria where I suddenly remembered I had once purposely tripped a fellow classmate by sticking my leg out in a slapstick kind of way. We would receive a little paper apple each day as a reward for not doing anything bad. That day I lost half an apple.

In the back of the cafeteria kitchen I saw the freezer. For a second I thought about going in, but I decided that was stupid.

After I left the cafeteria I went back through the entire school out the same door I entered in at the gym, and visited the outside trailers that were completely unlocked or unpadlocked, which meant I should go inside. I really don’t have any memory of these and I am not sure if they were there when I was a kid or not. I felt contented after seeing the trailers; that I had explored everything to my satisfaction.

I left my old abandoned school and started driving back home. I don’t know if there is any true significance, emotional or otherwise, of going back to that town and visiting that building. But, I was happy I had seen it and I started to write something nice about visiting my first elementary school, especially because I am set to begin graduate school this fall, something I consider a big step for my life. Others would probably say that it was about visiting your roots, or that you cannot know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from. To me it was just a building that I spent some time in when I was a child. I learned things there and I enjoyed it. I went there again to say “Hello.”

The Musty Room

This blog is about adventure. Not necessarily you're African safari-secret agent-colombian druglord adventure, but more of the everyday kind. We’re a couple of guys from typical lives who want to experience everything the world has to offer. We understand how easy, yet boring, it can be to do the same things over and over again. We also understand that it can be frightening to step into unknown situations. Our purpose is to challenge our fear of change.

We actually believe there are more people like us who get excited about new possibilities, but may not be comfortable taking the first step. We simply wish to encourage people, including ourselves, to step out of the comfort zone and try something, anything. We strive to keep open minds, and to see value in every new and sometimes challenging situation.

The title of this blog is simple. Sometimes our lives get old and musty. We intend to share at least one personal story each week about adventure in our everyday lives, and also hope that others may comment or send us their own experiences. We will tell of adventures of all types, from international travel and learning new languages, to trying a new hobby or taking a new way to work. We hope readers will enjoy our posts while relating to our quest for personal growth. Welcome to Gertrude’s musty room.

Development Notes

I am working on this blogging thing. I am not quite happpy with the way the template is set up right now. Hopefully, I will be working out the tweaks over the next week. Anyone with any advice should contact me! Thanks.