Good Times

Hi everyone,
As usual I seem to be falling behind in my writing on the blog. I'll try to catch you all up as well as possible. Last week, on the 7th of December my friends and I traveled to Leon, which is a city about an hour and a half north of Managua. The bus trips to these places always seem to be a journey and trip unto themselves. We picked the bus up on the side of the main highway, and because we didn't get it at the terminal it was already overfull, with people sitting in the aisles. Most of the buses in Nicaragua are old converted school buses from the states or Canada. The people who run the buses pack as many people in as possible, as to maximize their profits. So even if you do get a seat, you usually are sitting with two other people in a seat meant for two children. My friends stood in the aisle for the whole trip, while I got to sit next to the driver, with my back against the front window of the bus, facing the whole rest of the bus of people. It felt quite dangerous, as do most of the bus rides here in Nicaragua.

We arrived in Leon around mid-day, made our way to the hostel and checked in. We were going to Leon for a festival called Purisima, which is a Nicaraguan holiday where they celebrate the conception of the Virgin Mary. This holiday is huge is Nicaragua, and I found out yesterday that Nicaragua is the only country in the world that recognizes this day with celebration. We went to Leon because it was supposed to be one of the best places for Purisima. The festivities started around 6pm in the main square outside of the largest cathedral in all of Nicaragua. The cathedral doors opened to reveal a HUGE altar/statue of mary, complete with lights and a beautifully crafted image of Mary. Out in the main square people started setting off fireworks and there was a band that was playing traditional music with these large puppets dancing in the street. Soon afterward a very strange object made of wood, which we figured out was meant to be a bull, came out mounted on a man's back. The crowd began moving back to give this structure room, and before we knew it the bull had been lit on fire because the wood was full of fireworks. The man with the wooden bull on his back began to dance around the square, while fireworks were shooting out into the crowd. It was exciting and very dangerous. At one point we were afraid the shooting fireworks were going to hit us. The fireworks would shoot out and bounce against the cathedral and then fall into the crowd of screaming people. It was quite unlike anything I had experienced before.

The tradition on Purisima is that people go to their houses and open their doors to reveal home made statues and altars to Mary. Other people then come around to each house yelling and singing "Quien causa tanta alegria?" Which in English means, "Who causes so much hapiness?" The people inside the house respond with, "La concepcion de Maria!" Which means, "The conception of Mary!" The people in the houses then give out presents. When we went around to the houses we got very strange things, ranging from candy, to homemade treats, to combs, to pens, to bowls.....It seems like you can give out whatever you want. It was a great experience, very Nicaraguan in nature.

We returned to Managua the next day and spent the weekend relaxing. Last week I began working on a bit of a different project here at the foundation. One of the biggest cooperatives that they help support here is a women's sewing cooperative. I think I have written about them before, and when I came down it was one of the places which I was most interested in working with. The woman who normally works with them a lot is currently on maternity leave, (and she actually just had her baby last weekend, which means we have a one week old baby here!) So I am helping to fill her shoes. I am excited about this change in roles, it means I do a lot of going back and forth between our office and the cooperative, which is next door. I am sending emails to clients and trying to help the women organize and run the business. None of them currently speak English, so many of the staff here run the business end of things as many of the clients are English speaking. I am still doing construction now and again, but I am happy to have more responsibility and work on this project that I find really amazing.

As for news from Nicaragua in general....There has been a huge doctors strike which has been going on for over a month now. I haven't been reading the newspapers, but last I knew most of the doctors in the country were on strike because of a dispute with the government. The doctor's want more money and the government was refusing to budge. Doctors in Nicaragua make very little money, unlike most doctors in the US and in other Latin American countries. We are also having trouble with water where I live. When I first moved into my host family's house we had water at all hours of the day. I think the Managuan government is trying to save water because we no longer have water in the mornings. It's a bit frustrating, but many things in Nicaragua are.

Next week I am going to Guatemala for about 10 days with two friends. We are going to take advantage of not being needed here, and go travel. I probably won't write on my blog before then, but I will make sure to write when I get back. I hope that everyone has wonderful holiday celebrations. I will write again next year!

More info

Below is an article relating to the men who have been kidnapped in Iraq. The deadline for the execution is currently set for Saturday the 10th of December. If you don't know what I'm referring too, please read the previous post.

Kidnapped Briton 'deadline extended'
PA
Published: 08 December 2005
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw today made clear to the kidnappers of Briton Norman Kember that officials in Iraq and the Middle East were ready to hear from them.
Mr Straw repeated his appeal for the 74-year-old peace campaigner's release and renewed a call for his captors to get in touch.
He said: "We have people in Iraq itself and in the region and they are ready to hear from the kidnappers."
The call came as the group holding Mr Kember and three other men were reported to have extended the deadline for his execution by two days, to Saturday.
It was a hopeful sign for UK officials as the message appeared to be a direct response to Mr Straw's previous statements.
They are thought to be taking the extension of the deadline at "face value" and pressing on with their strategy of encouraging the kidnappers to make contact.
Today Mr Straw said it was "hard to imagine the terrible distress" being suffered by Mr Kember's wife Pat, adding: "Our thoughts and prayers are with them.
"As I have said before, if the kidnappers want to get in touch with us we want to hear what they have to say."
Mr Kember, from Pinner, north-west London, was seized in Baghdad on November 26with James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both Canadians, and anAmerican, Tom Fox, 54.
He had travelled to Iraq as a gesture of solidarity with the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), a Canadian-based international peace group.
The Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which is holding them, had threatened to kill the men if Iraqi prisoners were not freed from US and Iraqi jails by today.
Yesterday a poor quality video broadcast on Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera showed four people dressed in orange boiler suits, although their faces could not be seen, accompanied by a message saying that the deadline had been extended.
The apparently confused and rambling message said: "We have heard the statement of the British foreign minister and to prove to the world that he was not serious in what he said... and to forego any attempt by any liar to cheat the world we are hereby extending the deadline for two more days to distinguish between one who tells the truth and the liar."
The message is being seen as hopeful because it gives the kidnappers more time to contact British officials.
Mr Straw yesterday said that the meaning of the latest statement was " not clear".
But it does seem apparent that the kidnappers have singled out what he has said in public and that they are now at least willing to trade statements.
Officials will now be hoping that the next stage will be encouraging them to get in touch on the ground.
The Muslim Association of Britain, which has dispatched leading member AnasAltikriti to the Middle East to try to secure the release of the hostages,welcomed the extension of the deadline.
Mr Altikriti, who has already won the backing of Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim organisations and appeared on Arabic TV, travelled to Amman, Jordan last night as part of his efforts.
In a statement today, the MAB said: "The Muslim Association of Britain welcomes the announcement by the group holding the four western hostages including Briton Norman Kember, in Iraq, of a 48-hour extension to the previously set deadline.
"The envoy of the British Anti War Movement to Iraq, Anas Altikriti, had actually made an appeal for the extension of the deadline in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) earlier yesterday afternoon and a similar plea on a local Iraqi station shortly after.
"Having arrived in Jordan to talk to parties and individuals who may have some influence upon or knowledge of the abductors, Mr Altikriti has stated that he is prepared to return to Iraq should that be in the best interest of the effort to secure of Mr Kember and his fellow hostages."
Yesterday Abu Qatada, one of Britain's most high-profile terror suspects, made a televised appeal for the release of Mr Kember.
Qatada, who has been described as Osama bin Laden's spiritual ambassador in Europe, was allowed to record the appeal inside Full Sutton maximum security jail, near York.
Today Maureen Jack, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team who has spent time in Iraq, said it was hard to know whether to be hopeful about all the latest developments.
She said: "Obviously what would be more hopeful would be if there were signs of one or more of the hostages being returned to their families.
"It is difficult to know what to make of the extension of the deadline." She added: "I think the one thing that has been striking is the number of messages of support from people across the world including Muslim leaders, not just in Iraq but also in Palestine.
"That can only be helpful in securing the safe return home of the people who are missing."
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw today made clear to the kidnappers of Briton Norman Kember that officials in Iraq and the Middle East were ready to hear from them.
Mr Straw repeated his appeal for the 74-year-old peace campaigner's release and renewed a call for his captors to get in touch.
He said: "We have people in Iraq itself and in the region and they are ready to hear from the kidnappers."
The call came as the group holding Mr Kember and three other men were reported to have extended the deadline for his execution by two days, to Saturday.
It was a hopeful sign for UK officials as the message appeared to be a direct response to Mr Straw's previous statements.
They are thought to be taking the extension of the deadline at "face value" and pressing on with their strategy of encouraging the kidnappers to make contact.
Today Mr Straw said it was "hard to imagine the terrible distress" being suffered by Mr Kember's wife Pat, adding: "Our thoughts and prayers are with them.
"As I have said before, if the kidnappers want to get in touch with us we want to hear what they have to say."
Mr Kember, from Pinner, north-west London, was seized in Baghdad on November 26with James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both Canadians, and anAmerican, Tom Fox, 54.
He had travelled to Iraq as a gesture of solidarity with the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), a Canadian-based international peace group.
The Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which is holding them, had threatened to kill the men if Iraqi prisoners were not freed from US and Iraqi jails by today.
Yesterday a poor quality video broadcast on Arabic TV channel Al-Jazeera showed four people dressed in orange boiler suits, although their faces could not be seen, accompanied by a message saying that the deadline had been extended.
The apparently confused and rambling message said: "We have heard the statement of the British foreign minister and to prove to the world that he was not serious in what he said... and to forego any attempt by any liar to cheat the world we are hereby extending the deadline for two more days to distinguish between one who tells the truth and the liar."
The message is being seen as hopeful because it gives the kidnappers more time to contact British officials.
Mr Straw yesterday said that the meaning of the latest statement was " not clear".
But it does seem apparent that the kidnappers have singled out what he has said in public and that they are now at least willing to trade statements.
Officials will now be hoping that the next stage will be encouraging them to get in touch on the ground.
The Muslim Association of Britain, which has dispatched leading member AnasAltikriti to the Middle East to try to secure the release of the hostages,welcomed the extension of the deadline.
Mr Altikriti, who has already won the backing of Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim organisations and appeared on Arabic TV, travelled to Amman, Jordan last night as part of his efforts.
In a statement today, the MAB said: "The Muslim Association of Britain welcomes the announcement by the group holding the four western hostages including Briton Norman Kember, in Iraq, of a 48-hour extension to the previously set deadline.
"The envoy of the British Anti War Movement to Iraq, Anas Altikriti, had actually made an appeal for the extension of the deadline in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) earlier yesterday afternoon and a similar plea on a local Iraqi station shortly after.
"Having arrived in Jordan to talk to parties and individuals who may have some influence upon or knowledge of the abductors, Mr Altikriti has stated that he is prepared to return to Iraq should that be in the best interest of the effort to secure of Mr Kember and his fellow hostages."
Yesterday Abu Qatada, one of Britain's most high-profile terror suspects, made a televised appeal for the release of Mr Kember.
Qatada, who has been described as Osama bin Laden's spiritual ambassador in Europe, was allowed to record the appeal inside Full Sutton maximum security jail, near York.
Today Maureen Jack, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team who has spent time in Iraq, said it was hard to know whether to be hopeful about all the latest developments.
She said: "Obviously what would be more hopeful would be if there were signs of one or more of the hostages being returned to their families.
"It is difficult to know what to make of the extension of the deadline." She added: "I think the one thing that has been striking is the number of messages of support from people across the world including Muslim leaders, not just in Iraq but also in Palestine.
"That can only be helpful in securing the safe return home of the people who are missing."

Some news from far away....

Hi all, generally I write about my own experience, and I do have some things to tell about here in Nicaragua, but I wanted to get the word out about another group of folks who are in danger right now.

Christian Peacemaker Teams are dedicated to going into war torn countries and areas and witnessing and even standing in the way of violence there. When I went to school at Earlham we heard a couple of folks who came to speak about what CPT does and I even considered doing this work myself. I just got an email that the CPT in Iraq has been kidnapped and the kidnappers are threatening to kill them. I find this disturbing and increadibly scary. One of the members of this team has a blog online that folks can access if they are interested. I just read a bit of it, and it is very powerful. The link is: www.waitinginthelight.blogspot.com I would encourage people to read a bit about what this man was doing. As I said, he is currently being held hostage in Iraq. I am going to continue to search out the whole of this story, and will try to keep people updated as I know anything more.

So sorry....

Hi all, sorry it's been a while since I have written. Things have been busy, but I guess that's true for everyone. I'm trying to remember where to start explaining what's new here. The first place to start would be the fact that I was ill for a while. I started feeling tired two weekends ago, which then progressed into a fever and a headache. After I went to the clinic they said I had parasites, and gave me medicine to get rid of them. Having parasites in Nicaragua is fairly common, but the medication they give you to counter them is almost worse than the parasites themselves. While I was ill from the medication for the parasites I got a rash that covered most of my body, at which point we realized I had Dengue fever in addition to the parasites. Dengue lasts about 8 days, and depending on the person and the strain that you get can make you want to feel like you want to die, or can make you feel fairly ill. Unfortunately, with Dengue there is not much of a middle ground. Fortunately, once you get a rash from Dengue you are through the worst of it, so that meant that I had only a few more days to go. The upside of all of this is that now I am perfectly well, and have gone back to work, although for about a week things were feeling pretty hairy.

So now that I am better I am back to work. One of the things that I started doing recently was creating a database for one of the cooperatives here with all their contacts. I think I finished that yesterday, although every time I think I am done someone finds more contacts that need to be entered. We also have been working on construction, we have been making a small guard hut for the security guards at the women's sewing cooperative. They use a lot of cement to construct walls and buildings here, which at times can be a bit frustrating. We have learned a technique known here as repeo, where you take cement and throw it at a wall and then after it has dried a little you smooth it out to make a pretty wall. My first day working with repeo was a trememdous disaster. There is a certain way to throw the cement so it stays on the wall and doesn't all clump together in one place. I was not skilled at this. Luckily the next time we needed to do it I finally began to understand, and now I can work almost as well as the Nica's here. The guard hut we are working on required an inital coat of cement, and then today we began putting on another coat of finer cement to make it look a bit nicer. That's basically been our work of late.

The only other exciting thing that I can think to tell about is the fact that two of my friends and I went away for the weekend. Early Saturday morning we went to one of the central marketplaces here and caught a bus for Pochomil, which is a small coastal town two hours south-west of Managua. The drive was beautiful, complete with views of forests and valleys and mountains. We got there and were immediately bombarded by people who were trying to sell crafts and trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. This continued throughout our two-day trip, and was the most frustrating part of our journey. The coastal tourist towns are not busy right now, so any tourists, and especially gringos, are prime targets for every person who depends on tourist money for a living. We eventually learned how to simply tell people we weren't interested, but in the beginning we were a bit too nice, and people took our attempts to dismiss them as us being interested, which was not the case. Anyway, we found a fantastic hotel for $6 a night for each of us which was on a hill overlooking the vast and beautiful expanse of ocean and beach that is Pochomil. The three of us shared a room, which was comfortable and clean, although our bathroom was without a door. This wasn't a problem, although everytime one of us had to use it we had to say, "Okay, either everyone out or get to the other side of the room!" Mostly this was a funny part of our journey. Pochomil was so beautiful. The beach runs for miles and miles and we laid out and soaked up the sun, spent time in the warm water, and even spent the evening looking up at the stars with the sound of the ocean in the background. It was a great trip, and I think we all enjoyed the opportunity to escape from our familiar surroundings.

On the way back we took one bus from Pochomil to Managua, and then had to take another bus to the foundation. The bus to the foundation was an adventure as always, considering it was already over-full when we entered. Eventually some people got off and we were able to breathe, but at the next stop an entire baseball team boarded the bus and we were again squished together with all of our stuff from our weekend trip. I think when we exited we more were expunged from the bus, it was almost as if we shot out of it, because the bus couldn't take the load of people.

Today I am going to a graduation of one of the girls who lives accross the street from me. She is only 6, and I'm not sure if she's graduating from 1st grade or not. I'm excited to see this transition in her life, graduations are very important here in Nicaragua. Tommorow my friends and I are going to Leon to celebrate Purisima. This is the celebration of the Virgin Mary's birth, and apparently it is a huge day in the calender year. From what I can understand, people go out into the street and there are large parades and people give out candy and presents. Leon is supposed to have a huge celebration, so we are going to take in the culture there. I'm looking forward to it.

There are more pictures on the web for folks to check out. My same friend Eric has posted his pictures from our weekend trip on the web, I would encourage everyone to go look at them. They are really great. The website is: www.flickr.com/photos/egruen If you go to the top album, it says 12/4/05 on it, you'll be able to see them. You'll even see me in a few.