Granada. . . hot, colorful and endearing.

It was close to 100 degrees today but we liked Granada so much the first go around that we are back for several days.

The colors are addictive. Every block leads to color schemes you couldn't have imagined a moment before.

Everyone has their favorites.

Seeing the straw sticking out of crumbling adobe that has held for more than 100 years is something.

 

Many people say, "you have to visit Nicaragua to get that it's different." It's true, the people have a remarkable quality of playfulness, and endearing confidence and openness that calls you to have a seat and get to know them. 

It's true that it is the second poorest country in the hemisphere- after Haiti, but it's not the poverty that calls attention.

Even though it is visually with you, always.

The streets are teeming with 'busy-ness' that is almost medieval. Pushcarts, horse and buggies, baskets on heads, no chain stores. Oddly, there isn't a freneticism to it all, impossible with the heat.

On the contrary.

It reminds me a bit of Morocco in the best way. 

 There is no doubt, a trip's success is absolutely dependent on where you hang your hat. Period. If sleep ain't had at night, ain't nobody happy! Struck gold we did with our VRBO houses. First, with Casa Camila, a house from 1945 but filled with 100 year old relics and enough patina to sink a ship.

Everywhere you turn is another pinch-able view.

The house is so beautiful that it feels like you are in a dreamscape. It's something out of a Hollywood set.

 The rooms and furniture oozed history.

The place just had a quality of fun

 that is hard to put your finger on but you know it when you have found it.

I know I am gushing but we were all smitten.

The fact that it was across the street from these beans didn't hurt.

Like much of Granada, unassuming facade is the name of the game.

The pot. I am dreaming of it. It is as big as a coffee table. If you strain, you might see the gigantic cloves of garlic swimming on the surface. The smell was out of this world.

On our 'phase-two' of our Granada stay we have landed in Casa Camila's sister house, Casa Paloma. Suffice it to say, she is just as beautiful but in a different way. She is a grand dame of a house but what we have loved most are the peddlers that call right through the door and windows as they sell fruits and breads and more.

There is something fantastic about fresh-baked bread being handed through old wrought-iron.

We all enjoy it.

From our quick visit to Laguna de Apoyo

To chocolate-making. . . Granada and the Laguna have left lasting-impressions.

Grinding cacao.

Even the sunrise from Casa Paloma this morning left me replete with the promise that lie ahead.

 Fundamentally, Nicaragua has a tapestry that is unexpected and colorful; it is charged with history and never far from making one think. . . about the past, present and future.

SPOILER ALERT:
I’m going to ask you to help us buy a team of oxen to donate at the end!


One of the highlights of staying at La Mariposa with kids is the amount of learning and growing that is constantly occurring.

 In addition to the 1:1 Spanish classes, issues of ecology, botany, biology, poverty, and cooking come alive. For this parent, it’s more than I’d hoped for. By the kids’ laughing, joy and absence of ‘I’m bored’ I believe it is for them too.
_______________________________________________

UPDATE
If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know the subject of trash was on my mind.
At 8:00 sharp classes begin. Just before the ‘bell’ was sounded, Paulette announced she’d be leading a discussion on the ‘Story of Stuff’ and that the younger set would probably like it. All of the kids volunteered to attend. The reviews?

“Amazing”
“Really cool”
“I loved it”

I’m going to ask all the kids who are willing (Raffi and Sophia have arrived from Venice Beach) to post about it.
________________________________________________

Paulette also announced that we had a chance to go and visit the community of Panama, the poorest in the municipality. Panama lies on a ridge just downwind from the Masaya Volcano. Whereas every other square inch of soil we've seen is covered with vegetation, this land was eerily empty.

 Because of the gases that blow through the community and the poison of the acid rain that falls, only pineapple and one other fruit can grow in the Panama community.

We’ll post more about what it was like to visit the school and tell the follies of aid agencies erecting flush toilets WHEN THERE IS NO WATER FOR 6 MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR.

You're right if you think these might have been used once on inauguration day. . .

 It was incredibly eye opening and I think in the end pretty disconcerting for the kids. You can’t hide hunger.You can’t hide thirst. You can’t hide what it looks like to scrape out a living.

More than once I had to look away from the dogs of the community, for it was in their skeletal image that the concept of poverty jumped from an abstraction to an all too vivid reality.

CALL FOR HELP OR SHOW OF HANDS
Would you help buy a pair of oxen?
The goal? Access to water.
I am wondering if anyone would be interested in donating towards a pair of oxen for this community.  It would mean some kids could be in school instead of walking the long walk (downhill, yep uphill with water sounds hellish) to get water for their family. It's about 7 kilometers and the process takes about 2 hours, it's a job that is executed by women and children. It would mean the community could provide a consistent lunch for the kids- they have a donated kitchen at the school site but no water for 6 months out of the year means; they are currently dependent on La Mariposa for water in order to make school lunches. It would mean maybe they could coax more agriculture out of the soil.

Here’s J sitting on sacks of donated rice that lies stacked in the back of one of the classrooms:

The pair of oxen cost $800 and they’d need an oxen-whisperer to manage them. Please email me or drop a line in the comments if you’d be willing to donate large or small. Just let me know how much you can contribute. Spread the word to anyone who might want to know about being able to help buy oxen for the Panama community. Maybe it’s something we can get done before we leave?

ONE WEEK for kids and a solo Mom at La Mariposa Nicaragua

Trash. Energy. Water. Meat.

It’s impossible to stay at La Mariposa and leave unchanged unless you are completely indifferent or unwilling to see your own role as a consumer.  This shift began before we left our house from a one line sentence Paulette penned in the FAQ section of the website.

“And please don’t encourage too many aluminum-wrapped snacks- the rubbish is non-biodegradable!”

We go through a lot of snacks like a lot of other people do who have young children and as much as we’ve bought organic or have sworn off plastic for our kids I’d never given thought to the idea that I’ve been piling up eternal trash at breakneck speed with the aluminum-lined snack packages.  I plan on spending the next weeks giving hard thought and research to alternatives. Any ideas?


Like for so many around the world who have infrastructure challenges, waste disposal is not a sure thing for Nicaraguans. The impact? People tend to use their surroundings as a trashcan. It’s painful to see, I’ve seen it before and it never gets easier to see swollen diapers in a waterway, snack packages shadowing out grass patches on the town turf or barbed wire fences cradling so much trash you can’t make out where the ground begins. 

The upside? Our normal relationship to trash is a relationship of near invisibility other than for the family members charged with wheeling it to the curb. 

What’s next? First off, I’m going to ask Paulette to give a kids-tour of the operation- what will they see?

-solar array 

-water tanks (to say water is scarce is beyond an understatement- it makes flush toilets seem the Anti-Christ- in fact, latrines are the norm. . .we’re still working on that one!)

-worm bins

-ecological outdoor stove (La Mariposa tries to burn as much as possible)

-rice husks used for the chicken coop

-2 organic farms to supply the vegetables and fruits prepared for the guests
-leaving and planting as many trees as possible on the property including leaving the fruit for the birds and insects. We saw this honeycomb today in the trunk of a tree which has been left standing:

-ox poo bought from the poorest man I’ve met


Don Pablo lives right around the corner. I met him because Baby-O wanted to see his oxen being strapped on to the cart, they were going to pick up firewood. He noticed and gestured for her to sit on his colt’s back. Bambi, a beautiful black colt was painfully skinny, I could count every rib and practically make out her internal organs to boot. As I negotiated the multiple different types of animal poo I waved at the women lining the house that was 5 feet away.

Don Pablo has to be around my Dad’s age, with 1:4 Nicaraguan men working either in the U.S. or Costa Rica it has no doubt left a heavy burden on the older generation.  With a flick of the hand he and his million dollar smile along with the rickety wooden cart were off.

The subject of trash just won’t go away. When I was a little girl I remember traveling to Mexico and seeing kids crawling through mountains of trash. I’ve never forgotten it. It looks like this:

Photo by Venetia joubert sarah oosterveld

I’m checking into a Granada dump project to see if there is a way for us to help. Kids as young as 3 spend hours every day picking through trash, often with bare feet. They do this to support their families with scraps of food and if they’re lucky, a bit of recyclable material that can be cleaned and sold. At the big dump in Managua more than 1600 people a day work the dump, it’s been estimated as many as 500 of those people are children. Another 500 work as cleaners cleaning materials like copper, aluminum, iron, bronze, plastic and paper which can be sold. Here’s a quote from a Mom who works the dump:

“We used to eat at least twice a day. Now we are hard-pressed just to make soup, so the children can be fooled into feeling full,” said Santos, who works with her partner and their 3 children under the age of 13 scavenging among rotten food scraps, dead animals, cans, glass, dust and dirt.”

Speaking of eating, other than our outing to the Laguna when J consumed two bowls of chicken soup, we haven’t had any meat served to us. With so many chickens waddling around us each day and seeing just a handful of cows grazing on the town turf  it’s easy not to miss meat. Paulette’s two chicken coops would be decimated in a week if we were to have chicken served to all of us guests. 




Our food order at the laguna took about an hour to prepare. I realize now a chicken was likely being butchered in that time. 

Paulette’s work is an example of how each of us can make a difference if we want to. 


Her mission to employ as many locals as possible is an obvious gain. But, her work to reforest her land with native plants, trees and systems is no less powerful.  For example, her choices to use a traditional security system with these thorny plants instead of barbed wire. 




The latter provides no habitat for lizards and countless other critters. Most locals have ripped out this traditional 'fencing'.  I cracked up when she told us that she shows her staff how she, a 60 year old woman, can easily make it over a barbed wire fence, it must be a sight to see. One leaf at a time, animals find a sanctuary and the planet gets a break. From the shade-grown coffee 







to the frog pond, 


everything around La Mariposa has a purpose to restore a balance while taking less and giving more.







My hope is that we, by staying here will leave changed in that way: take less, give more.

Out my window at La Mariposa Nicaragua and a soccer match

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.  ~Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey

Each night certain flowers of La Mariposa release the most fragrant of aromas. Nicaragua is the land of lakes and volcanoes, between the volcanic soil and frequent rains many trees and bushes can flourish by just putting a branch into the ground. 

All of these flowers exist just outside our window. We took these pictures yesterday morning before we left for a trip to swim in a crater lake. 

We'll post about the kids' trip to the active volcano and what it was like to swim in a crater lake of a volcano that is in 'repose'. Repose you say? Your feet were quick to register that the lake bottom was warm to the touch. As J pointed out, digging your toes into the sandy bottom you reached even warmer places. The water temperature was like a perfect bath, so perfect it was that we stayed in the water literally all day. We'll post more on this outing soon.

J played in the semi-finals this morning on a 12 year old boy's team that needed a 6th man. Unfortunately they didn't come out on top, they'll play for 3rd place next Sunday. As a die-hard Barcelona fan it was hilarious to see J don a Real Madrid (their archenemy) jersey to play in the game. Lucky for J, the gracious intern Chrissy loaned him her sneakers.

In Nicaragua they play sala futbol- yep on a basketball court!

Gigi passed the time with Baby-O buying potato chips (Lays) and playing with Luis Jr., La Mariposa's driver's son. J's team were the only ones with jerseys, most played in t-shirts. One fellow had two different shoes on and more than a handful wore Chinese slippers but boy could they move the ball. 

The rest of the day looked like this: