A morning at La Mariposa is worth a lifetime of living including how to use a machete

Update:
Thank you thank you thank you!! In less than 48 hours I think we've raised enough money to buy a pair of oxen. If you still want to email me or post a comment and ask questions about contributing PLEASE do. The need is infinite:

-the daycare hasn't received rice and beans from the government in a month. $40 would provide enough money to buy a sack of rice that could last 3 months

-the teachers in more than one reading corner haven't received their pay in months, they keep showing up to help the kids

- many of the kids of Panama neither have shoes nor a set of extra clothes

- La Mariposa itself is so generous with the projects (they provide employment for 50 people and so much more) that they are barely making it

These are just a handful of examples, if you wish to help, please do!

Here's a day in the life of a morning for children at La Mariposa:

Our new friend Maia from Miami and Baby-O pick chiles and bananas to take to the monkeys

Baby-O teaches Maia that the monkeys use the chiles as mosquito repellent.

The monkeys knead the chiles.

Friends go up into the tower room to sing with teacher Alba.

The kids are never far from the hammocks that are all over the La Mariposa.

Singing "Los Pollitos Cantan. . ."

Jeremy with the beloved Alba

There are magical little pathways all over the property. Baby-O loves to choose how we move through the jungle-like setting. This is her favorite passage.

After the morning classes just before the juice break, Armando takes the kids to check for eggs.

"A Melba! A Melba!" Melba, the incredibly kind and hardworking 'knower and doer of all" is where the kids know the eggs are headed.

Delivering the fresh eggs.

At 10:00 sharp a homemade juice is served. The kids spend every second of the half hour diving into cards or other games.

Gigi with Zoe, aka Claire from Philly

For the younger set, Juan serves milk.

Can you find the gringa?

 Kate, from Ann Arbor has spent a month here with her brother and sister. They've worked hard every day with nothing but good cheer. They spend their evenings with their home stay. They are great kids and I see why their parents knew they'd be fine coming solo. They are great friends with all of the staff whom they help in all capacities from kitchen duty to garden duty to farm work.

At the break the teachers gather to rest and delight the younger set. 

The older kids are deep into an Othello while Berman Jr. and Baby-O converse about the lollipop. . .

Berman Sr. is the Director of the language program and keeper of the 'bell'! He has the constitution of a surgeon and the patience of a saint. He organizes the teachers and herds the students! He is also guide, driver and all-around facilitator.

For J, his second hour of class is 'Machete 101'

Off to lunch. . .

Laguna de Apoyo and other volcanos in Nicaragua as well as loincloth man

Another great thing about family sabbaticals anywhere is a chance for the kiddos to man the camera. Gigi took these beautiful shots yesterday when she visited two artisan villages.  

The crater lake, Laguna de Apoyo- you'll see it in action below.

We have dubbed this one, 'Loincloth Man!'

Our friend Betsy from Philadelphia (another great benefit of international travel with or without kids is hooking up with really interesting people from all over) took these shots of us when we spent the day swimming in a crater lake of a volcano that is 'in repose'.  Laguna de Apoyo is officially one of my favorite places on any continent- the water is sublime at a lovely bathwater temperature.

Baby-O loves kayaking.

Here's J and Gigi overlooking an active volcano- can you see the smoke? Unfortunately, the extreme levels of sulfur dioxide that are released from the crater is what ravages the communities that lie in the path of the gas plume and results in health problems as well as the inability to grow crops. 

Thanks for reading.

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.
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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.
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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.