Time sure flies

We have almost been here 5 months, hard to believe. We are doing well. Sarah's parents are here visiting for 13 days. We have already visited a lake, a volcano, and the oldest colonial city in Central America (Granada). We will be heading to Bromadero, the village we live in, tomorrow. We are excited to be able to share this with our family and we look forward sharing it with other family members in the future.

We will be heading to Costa Rica the second of April to visit Seth's dad, Mike. He will be there with a short term medical mission team. Unfortunately, we will not be able to be there the entire time they are in Costa Rica, but at least we will be able to go visit for 4 days. We will probably be helping out in the clinics and hanging out with Mike. Once we return to Nicaragua we will be starting some projects in our community.

Bubbles and Cheese

Well Seth and I are back in Managua for a quick respite after being in the campo for 2 weeks. We had a great first couple weeks out there, but found it hard to have time for ourselves. We constantly have kids at our house or are visiting families in the community. People in Bromadero are very friendly and nice. We are welcomed eagerly when we visit people’s house and are always given a tortilla with cuajada (a dry, salty cheese) and a cafecito (coffee). People are very generous, even when they do not have much to give. We have been invited to several houses for lunch and dinner, so we have only made 5 meals for ourselves in the last two weeks.

The kids are a lot of fun to play with, making the time pass. We introduced bubbles to them and they loved it. Every time they come to our house they ask to play with them. One thing in the last two weeks we have noticed with the kids is that many of them don’t wear shoes while running around, though most of them have shoes/sandals of some sort. It seems that parents don’t make them wear them. Seth and I have made a rule, if kids want to play at our house they have to wear there shoes/sandals. Also, we are talking to the kids about the importance of wearing shoes. There are cows, pigs and chickens everywhere, therefore their feces all over, so this is a public health issue we need to work on, but we figured we needed to start somewhere.

Another thing we trying is to always have fruits and veggies in our house to give to kids as snacks so they will get used to eating them. We will do workshops with families about nutrition and and growing vegetables in home gardens. Right now the area is very dry and people don’t grow things during this time, so we will have to try in our own yard to see how things work.

We have been attending the Mennonite church in the village 20 minutes from where we live. The Sunday church service lasts 3 hours, which is something we are still trying to adjust to. We are trying to be open to see how God is working in the church and not focus on the things that are different from what we are used to. We are constantly reminded that the reason we are here is most of all to show Christ’s love to others and not to complete projects, so we are really trying to focus on relationship building in the communities. Right now our focus is on the community we live in, Bromadero.

Off to the Campo

We are heading off to the campo, countryside, Saturday. We will be living there the majority of time this year as we build relationships and start projects. We will have another house, but are still looking to find one to rent. Will update the blog as we can since we will not have as easy access to internet as we have had. Check out the new pictures on our photo link.

Machismo

Before coming down to Nicaragua I was aware that the men here can be very machista. This word means that they treat woman as objects, not as equals. For example, it is a regular occurrence to walk down the street and get whistled at and then be called somebody's amor (love), even while walking with my husband. I did not realize how much this would bother me. I see the inequality between men and women everywhere I go. I have ridden many buses and taxis and I have never seen a woman driving. At first I did not think much of it, but the more I observe the more stuff creeps up that screams inequality. In the city one can see women and men both working, but in the country one will only see the men working in the fields with other men. Don't get me wrong the women work, probably harder than the men, but they are cooking, cleaning, watching the kids, carrying water, gathering fire wood, and other things I am sure I have not mentioned.
I saw this first hand a week ago while I was working on a small micro-hydroelectric plant in the country. Seth and I showed up to help the community to build a sand trap, but when we arrived I noticed I was the only female and remained the only female working the entire time. At first I was a bit intimidated, feeling inadequate about how I could really help, then I realized this is a rare occasion to show them that men and woman can work together on projects. For the two days of work not one of them talked with me, except for Seth and my boss. I worked as hard as I could trying to prove a point and at the end of it all I felt pleased. At the very end one man asked me my name and it felt like a small victory.
Nicaraguan women are starting to rise up, but not in the best manner. There is a group of women called the feministas that think women should be over men. I consider myself a free liberated woman, but I don't agree with this mentality. God created men and women as equals, not for one to be over the other. Look at Christ's example about how he treated women and not just the righteous ones, ones that were outcasts. If God wanted women to be treated less than human then would Christ have interacted with so many women in the bible? Both women and men were created in God's image, so equal in God's eyes. Men and women were given different attributes of God, so we can better know God.
I know this is something I will not be able to change in my three year term here, but I feel that God can use me and my husband to show that we are equal in our marriage.

We have come along way...3 months already?

We finished Spanish training on Friday, so we are now fluent...not really. We have learned all the grammar, but far from being able to speak correctly. It seems like the more we have learned the less comfortable we feel speaking because there are so many mistakes that we make...but people are very patient and gracious with us. Seth is more willing to speak, whereas I have become more timid in my speaking...which has switched since when we first got here. I just need to try and not get nervous about making mistakes. Our goal by this time next year is to be able to speak Spanish sufficiently. One thing that will help our progress with speaking Spanish is we are getting ready to start our jobs, so we will be forced to speak Spanish a lot more than we are now.

This week we will be helping with repairs on a small hydroelectric generator in a small community called Malacatoya. Obviously those of you who know us know that this is not our area of expertise. Our partner, Aso-Fenix, has expertise in renewable energy, so we are learning from them. We will be working there for this next week, and then we will be heading to Esteli for a wedding of a former MCC volunteer and then we have our team meeting in Matagalpa.

After that we will be moving close to the communities we will be working in. We had previously thought we would be living in Teustepe, but plans have changed. We will have a house in a town called San Jose de los Remates and we also have access to a house owned by the Mennonite church in a village called Bromadero, so we will be living in two places. The reason for the change is because we will be working in two different regions, Teustepe and San Jose de los Remates. One of the houses only has water and an hour of electricity for 1-2 hours a day from a solar panel, so there is no electricity in the village. The other house will have water and electricity. We are excited to get started building relationships with the communities and begin the work God has laid out for us.