Disgust and Mystery during the Rainy Season

The rain has definitely picked up over the last few weeks and it seems that hardly a day goes by where there isn’t a quick downpour. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Jacksonville, Florida during the summer months. However, when it rains here, almost all activity stops as daily life is practiced outdoors. Even inside you are not safe from the rain as most structures have leaks and the rain can also make it absolutely deafening as it pounds on the tin roofs.

The deafening rain and swirling wind hurling rain through the open windows can also provide a challenge to teachers. Imagine teaching a class where the kids cannot hear you and everyone is huddle in the middle of the classroom away from the walls so they will not get wet. Well, this is a very frequent scenario here and happened to me just the other day. Whereas most teachers would just give up and wait for the rain to settle down, my class surged forward. How do you think deaf and mute people learn? I just started writing everything on the board, expressions such as open your notebooks, copy what I am writing, and word problems where the students had to figure out the break even point for the given business. My students thought it was so funny as I continued with the class, but hey, no excuses, right?

Which transitions me quite well to my next point (funny how that works). In Nicaragua, there is infinity of excuses for canceling class. I thought I had seen it all during the past year. Rain, student appreciation day, teacher appreciation day, the students were tired, parties during school hours, band practices during school hours, not enough kids showed up, not enough teachers showed up (there are no substitutes here), teachers’ meeting, parents’ meeting, students sent out to receive health lectures, do census surveys, and find illiterate people, etc, etc, etc. And on “normal” class days, the students would come for an hour or two and then go back home. Mondays and Fridays are generally taken as half days here. And through all of this I more or less kept my mouth shut and just complained privately to my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. But no more can I keep silent.

On Monday, July 27, by local government mandate, all the schools were cancelled in Granada in order to honor Granada’s baseball team who had just won the Nicaraguan championship the previous day. I actually went to the game and it was a ton of fun (people dancing on the seats, brass bands playing, fights among opposing fans, water and beer being thrown around after every run scored). Most people celebrated after the game and surely some into Sunday night but the only celebration that took place on Monday (the celebration day) started at 7 at night meaning that there was absolutely no reason to cancel classes. Not to mention, tons of students showed up at school on that Monday not hearing the news that school was canceled, only to be turned away by school administration (I also showed up). It seems to me that celebrating a baseball victory is just another excuse to let the teachers, students, and public officials to have the day off.

On Tuesday, July 28, I proceeded to write an opinion piece about my disgust with the decision and tried to get it published in the national newspapers to no avail. Still, the point remains that Nicaragua needs to take a closer look at the value that place on education and the message that they send to all of the students when they allow class to be canceled for every irrelevant festival and trivial cause.

Moving to a lighter note, this past week I was able to visit my Nicaraguan family who hosted me during training. I consider them the closest thing I have to family here in Nicaragua and try to visit them about once a month. Yet, two months had I passed since I had last seen them so as soon as I got a chance I hopped on a bus. I always have a great time when I visit them, just talking with my host sisters (ages 7 and 15) and my host mother and generally nothing happens worthy of writing.

However, this time I actually gave a zero-interest loan to my 15 year old sister so that she could start selling prepaid cell phone minutes to the public. This is a very common business here and you make about $1.25 for every $10.00 of minutes sold. My sister’s only roadblock in opening her business was a lack of capital so I being the big brother happily provided it. It was not much money (even on a Peace Corps salary) and she has two months to pay me back. Worst case scenario, I cut off her arm after the two month period has expired (at least this is what I told her).

Continuing with the lighter/happy updates, I was able to finish two Spanish novels in the past two weeks (my second and third Spanish books ever), “Five Weeks in a Hot-Air Balloon” by Julio Verne, and “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. Fairly good books and I can observe the Spanish side of my brain growing by the hour.

In really exciting news, my real little brother and sister are coming to visit me tomorrow, Saturday, August 8. They have already been here to visit me along with my parents this past December, but this time we are parent free, which means hitchhiking, rooster fighting, bull running, volcano climbing, good times.

And on a final more mysterious note, over the past week or two when I wake up in the morning I have noticed an area of my house that is bombarded with little, tiny pieces of poop. I am talking an area of two square feet with about 20 tiny pieces of poop on the floor every morning. The other day I tried to clean the ceiling of all the spider webs but yet again this morning the poop was there. I am thinking that it could be bats but have never seen a bat in my house. Any ideas? This truly is a mystery for the ages.