A little something to Honor Hermana Maura Clarke

Hermana Maura Clarke was the founder of the organization I work for here in Nicaragua called Centro Educativo y Capaitacion Integral de La Hermana Maura Clarke.
Here is an except from Wikipedia.org



"Maura Clarke (January 13, 1931 – December 2, 1980) was an American Roman Catholic Maryknoll nun and missionary to Nicaragua and El Salvador. She worked with the poor and the refugees in Central America from 1959 until her death in 1980. She was beaten, raped, and murdered, along with fellow missionaries Ita Ford, Jean Donovan and Dorothy Kazel in El Salvador, by members of a military death squad.

Maura Clarke was born in Queens, New York on January 13, 1931. She graduated from Stella Maris High School in Rockaway Park, New York in 1949. She joined the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic in 1950 at the age of nineteen. Soon thereafter, she became a teacher and taught first grade at St. Anthony of Padua school in Bronx, New York. In 1959, she relocated to Siuna, Nicaragua, a gold mining town. Here, Clarke worked to help the poverty-stricken mining families. She then worked with the poor elsewhere in Nicaragua, and aided those who were devastated by the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake. She stayed in Nicaragua for seventeen years.[1]

In 1980, Clarke responded to the request made by Archbishop Oscar Romero for help in El Salvador. She worked in Chalatenango, El Salvador with fellow Maryknoll sister Ita Ford, at the parish of the Church of San Juan Bautista, providing food, transportation and other assistance to war refugees of the Salvadoran Civil War.

Currently, there is a junior high school in the Rockaway peninsula name Maura Clarke Junior High School, in her honor. Also, Maura Clarke High School and its founding organisation CECIM (Centro Educative Hermana Maura Clarke) in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua are named in her commemoration."

She was apparently an remarkable woman who served the poor. My host mother took my to work my first day at CECIM and when we approached the statue of Hermana Maura she began to cry. My host mom, Doña Maura Otero worked with the late sister here in Ciudad Sandino building upa dn restoring the community after the earthquake in 1972 thta destroyed so much. It was touching, and to know my host mom is a part of Nicaragua´s history is amazing.

My Weekend in Granada

So I know I still need to write about the last two weeks of my job and life in Nicaragua but I am in Granada right now and wanted to share my experience here with you first. So my friends from the program, Katie (who has been here for about six months working as an intern( and Jolie, Wade and Emily and I made a weekend trip to Granada which is just about an hour south of Managua.

It is known for beign a cute little colonial town by the Lago Nicaragua. We arrived yesterday, Saturday, for lunch. We stayed at this hotel for international travels called Libertad. There are hammocks everywhere and it is a nice open place. Anyways, we went to an international restaurant called Tercer Ojo and had yummy pasta with spinache and mushrooms. Eating out is so nice because the waiters are on nicaraguan time, so it is always a couple hour adventure. Getting the check will take from between ten to thirty minutes...the pace is nice and slow here, it is great. Then we visited a cathedral de San Francisco with a little outdoor museum.

The buildings here are beautiful colors, bright blues and light hues. Then we walked around the parque central and looked at all the stands of jewlery handmade and had ice cream we bought from the little carts men push with bells on them. There is a huge beautiful yellow cathedral on the parque central or sometimes called parque colon that is enourmous and ominous. I will have to put up pictures later, it is just I don't have anyway of downloading them onto computers here. Then we walked around and sat at a few outdoor cafes and had Tona and Victoria they local beers. After a light dinner of quesadillas we ended up doing dancing to an interesting Nicaraguan club. That is the sum of Saturday. Then today, Sunday, we woke up around ten and went to Kathy's Waffle House. After having Gallo Pinto for everymeal since I have gotten to Nicaragua, which is beans and rice mixed together, I craved pancakes and frenchtoast. There were definitely a lot of gringos there. Then we walked past the parque central to La iglesia de la Mercaed, another beautiful church adn walked to the top of the bell tower and say such an amazing view of Granada with a great breeze.

It is pretty hot here. Then we wanted to see the lake so we walked along the water for a little bit and decided to take a boat ride in a private ten passenger boat aroudn the islands in the area. There are 365, we only saw maybe a dozen but they were very pretty and some populated with monkeys. Prices are great here, I maybe spent 40 dollars this weekend. It was definitely a great break from Ciudad Sandino. Hasta luego...Saludos

On To The Good Stuff...

So...my Nicaragua Family.

May 29th, we all arrived at our families´ houses. I was the last one to be dropped off, which was nice because I got to see everyone else´s houses and families waiting their arrival. I was greeted by Don Lorenzo sitting in his old iron rocker, who is 80 years old and now know that he permanently lives on the patio so that greeting wasn´t anything special. He is so funny, I barely understand half of what he says, but the other half I actually hear is about my boyfriend. Don´t worry, no new news, I don´t have one but he contantly teases me about it...very funny. Actually one of the first things he said to me what ¨when you came to Nicaragua how many men cred for you?¨ He stays on his toes for an 80 year old.

Then there is Doña Maura who greeted me next and pretty much interrogated me about everything I like right off the bat. First thing I thought, she is another Conchi (my host mom from Spain). And that she is. She asked me what foods I like, since I am still a vegetarian and about my family and myself. Then she gives me a tour of the house. She says ¨we have a poor house, a very poor house, but it is clean.¨ This is very true. So there is the patio that is enclosed with iron rods that I guess are for decoration, then there´s a tv room where four or five abuelitos (wooden ricking chairs) sit at any given time around the tv. The floors are tiled and are pretty nice. Then that front room leads to a very small hallway where the dinner table is, set up against the wall. On the other side of the wall from the table is Maura, Lorenzo and Osmar´s room. The that leads to a very small kitchen with a low ceiling, even I have to duck a little when I pass through. Then just outside the kitchen is the back yard which is dirt and a fire pit. Though one of the sons lives in the house with us, Carlos, and his room is small with a swinging wooden door and then there is the bathroom. It is open but in a stall pretty much with the toilet there and then a half wall and a curtain for the shower. The toilet is just a bowl that flushes pretty much so I have definitely strengthened my legs squatting. My room is not attached to the house. It is in the back and is actually pretty big considering. Luckily I have an armoir, a bed stand and a double bed and some funny religious decorations along with a nice big fan, which is much needed.

So Carlos, he is maybe forty and lives with his mom, although he has a girlfriend and a daughter in teh same town. I try not to pry or ask questions when things seem a litte off, but I asked Doña Maura when he doesn´t live with them and she said, well duh, he just is used to living with his mama. She does take car of him, and all families no matter how large live in the same house it seems. He is very helpful aroudn the house though and since Doña Maura or Don Lorenzo never leave the house really, he is the errand boy. It´s funny, they have a cat named Minino who loves Carlos and is like a dog. It comes running when he calls adn sits on his lap and purrs. Carlos does not really talk to me, but I think I am growing on him. We watch soccer together a lot, since the Europe cup is happening now. And I made him laugh the other day, when I came back from the docter´s and said ¨Well, I am going to live.¨ That was progress.

Then there is Osmar. The four year old. We have a great relationship. Like, last night we played soccer together on the enclosed porch for like an hour and he is so cute. He does things to make me laugh over and over and thinks he impresses me all the time. He wants to be just like the men in his life, Carlos, Oscar and Jonni (who I will talk about later). He helps out as much as he can, but he is also annoying a lot og the time. He always wants to be in my room touching things and punching numbers on my phone. On sleep mode, my Nicaraguan cell has fish floating around and he always wants to see them. Maura tries to keep him away to give me my space

It is amazing how much respect there is within the house. The men and boys are so polite, at least around me. Saying, con permiso, with permission, when they leave the table and picking up things the women drop. They always do things for Doña Maura, eithe rout of respect, fear, or debt for something she did for them in the past. She is definitely the driving force behind the whole family, close and extended.

On to the Second Week

After our stay in Managua for two days of our orientation we went to tour Ciudad Sandino, where I currently am with Emily and Jolie, and Masaya. We walked around ciudad sandino in the extremem heat and I was like ahhh. There are no pretty buildings, everything is someone run down but here I feel like you get to really experience the heart and culture of Nicaragua. Huge families of seven or so live in little three room houses. The power comes and goes here too. During storms and when when people don´t pay for the electricity they cut it.
But this really nice woman named Katie, from the midwest, who works at the hospital here and is part of the FSD program but arrived here like six months ago, gave us a tour of the city and told us how much she liked it. It is a little dangerous though, like I would not go walking about at night here.
Then we drove in our rented micro for the week, a little van, to Masaya about 30 minutes away, where Wade lives, to go the market there. In pairs we did an activity where we all had two dollars a day adn we had to spend that for our family´s given the situation we had. I was with one of the workers from FSD who is Nicaraguan adn lives in Ciudad Sandino named Anabelsy, so we had a family of five kids and they all went to school. So one was in the University of needed money for the bus, which is about 50 cents here and the other four ended up sharing two notebook and two pencils between all of them. Then for food for the day we bought a pound and a half of rice adn half a pound of beans for everyone. That was all two dollars a day could buy us at the market in masaya. Thank gosh none of our kids had medical problems because we would not have been able to afford that. If they did though it would have come down to food or medical treatments. Amazingly enough about 46 of the population in Nicaragua lives on the poverty line which is two dollars a day. Incredible. I definitely feel guilty for buy a pair of 50 dollar shoes back at home when people only have one pair of shoes here and don´t make that much money in three months. Life is hard here.
After touring we went to a place near Masaya called La Laguna de Apoyo. We stayed for three nights at this outdoorsy cabin place near the lake. It was so beautiful. We were surrounded by green mountains and were pretty much in tropical forests, meaning lots of bugs and rain. It is a nice place though. They cooked pretty Western meals there, which put us at ease since our foreign stomaches cannot handle the food here too well. We are not supposed to drink the water here, so anything that is washed by water too, like fruits or veggies is no good, basically our stomaches are sensitive to everything and it is not fun when you have to go the bathroom when your stomache is upset, on top of having your period and haveing to remember to put the gross toilet paper in the smelly trash instead of down the toilet (cus the pipes cant´s take it). But I am not speaking from personal experience, so don´t worry (wink wink). During the three days we were at the lake in the boones, by the way you have to drive down a windy road for like ten minutes to get to the dirt road that will then eventually take you to the main wooden building. It was a nice escape. Its actually a biological research place. They research plants and rare fish in the lake, I don´t know what else they do. But they pay for th research by hosting foreigners and giving them spanish lessons. Its a nice little community there and everyone is super nice. They have a domestic boar on their land, I was very surprised to see him roaming around the first day and then opening his mouth and grabbing Simba, the boxer dog, by the neck and playing, he probably thinks he is a dog. We also saw owls and beautiful birds in the trees.
The first day we were told we were going on a hike. Cool, I thought, maybe around the lake or something. But, no...we hiked up the tallest mountain near us basically in the rainforest. It was amazing, but i was exhausted after it. I was thinking oh this is easy...when were were on the semi paved road that led to the path, i didn´t know about. Then we get to this steep path where we kinda have to climb up rocks and I was like man. So about half way up we started to see beautiful views of the mountains and lakes. Our guide, Pedro, was an expert in plants and birds and shows us a lot of both on the way up. He could do bird whistles which were cool. I heard some screetching and mentioned to him that that was an awefully wird noise for a dog and he says, no, those are monkeys. Haha, yup there were monkeys climbing the trees. The higher up we got the more stops we took. Two thirds the way up, a dog that was coming down with some other tourists starting following up. He was a great guide until we got to the top. The top was amazing, and there was a little town called Catarina with great plants and artisans in the stores there. Walkign through the town the dog was with us and was barked and growled at constantly by dog after dog. There were really defending their territory. It was scary to have these dogs come up to us an bark repeatedly, since the dog took refuge between our legs the vivious dogs were very close. I was thinking about how you can die from rabies the whole time. Anyways, after sitting for a while at the top admiring the view and drying ourselves we got into a micro, the little van, to head back since we had been gone for about three hours and it was time for lunch back at the lake. Because the dog would be attacked and an outcast if we left him, we had to take him with us in the car. Dogs are not worthy to go in cars here. Everyone sees them as dirty, ugly, stupid and another mouth to feed, though they are good protectors from intruders. So he came home with us in the car and since he liveed near by we dropped him off at home, though he loved emily and had a hard time saying goodbye. It was cute.
Then, the last day we were there, it wouldn´t stop pouring. That us when Hurricane Alma hit. We got out okay but were defnitely drenched with all out suitcases. That´s when we made out way to our host families.

My First Week in Nica

Well, right now I have been here for about a week and a half but I am going to recount all that has happened, which will take a few posts...

So we were in Managua for two nights and went out our first night to this ridiculous club called Hipa Hipa which is pretty ritzy with a dance floor and airconditioning. They have rum here called flor de cana that is very famous and sweet. So it was my whole group, Wade, Angie, Emily, Jolie, our program direction and myself. It was not a wild night by any means but the next day my legs were hurting. We had a history lecture that took longer than we thought it would, like three hours. It was outside on the patio at our hotel and poor Fancisco, our teacher who is a local and brilliant, had to put up with some sleepy eyes and jerking heads during the lecture. Nicaragua history is so interesting though and the huge movement in the 70´s lead by Sandinista made a huge impact on the country and today a Sandinista supporter names Daniel Ortega is the president. He has created a lot of controversy.

So here is a little bio on the people I am here with.
Wade: is from Boston and is studing biology (molecular, crazyness) and is a Junior at USF. He is funny and nice...
Jolie: is a horrible story teller and is from New Orleans, we tease here about that all the time because she tells a lot of stories about her home town. She is Cajun Creole or something and has explained it to me a couple times but i still dont really understand what it is. She is a junior too adn is 19, the baby of us all.
Emily: is from DC, we have shared great DC stories, and is awesome, she studies international relations, like me, but with a focus in ecology and the environment with a regional focus in Latin America.
Angie: is from San Diego and is so unintentionally funny. She is a latin american studies major and has had a lot of experience in Mexico.
Emily and ANgie and I are the only ones with family experience so this transition was a little easier for us i think.

That said i live close to Emily and Jolie in Ciudad Sandino. The city was created after the the earthquake in 72 and was a makeshift town. It kept growing and eventually got electricity and some infrastructure and is what it is today...poor in resources and money. The majority of the people who live here work in Managua which is a 40 minute commute.

Back to our first couple days in Managua. After the history lesson we took a tour of the city and saw one of the lakes that is on one side of the city. We went to El Palacio Nacional and saw where the President has his meetings, and we saw a lookoutpoint where you could see the top of the city and there was a museum of Sandino, the famous politician, who still has many many supporters today. We also saw a famous grave yard, with a lot of German graves, they had a big presence in Nicaragua in the last century. Nicaragua survives off of foreign aid, it is incredible, mostly from Europe and the US.

Will write more another day...

My First Days in Nicaragua

So I arrived on Saturday in the morning and Mariana, the program coordinator,and Maria, the program director, were amongst the long line of people waiting outside the glass dorrs for all the peopet o come off the flight from Houstin. Right when I got off the plane, I felt the steamy humid air and had to smile, because I knew the weather was going to make it interesting while I am here. After the twelve hour journey of arriving dirty with all our bags and going through customs, waiting in line it was great to meet these two great women. Mariana is so great, she is 23 and is from Puerto Rica and went to Bard College in New York and speaks english and spanish perfectly. Though it is funny listening to her speak and not pronounce any S in her works. That is very common here. Maria has her PHD, does not speak any enlgish, has three kids and is amazing. SO we got into our Mirco bus with all our luggage and drove through Managua to our very luxurious hotel, meaing not many bugs, being served food and towels provided with actual running water that is nice and cold and a big supply of purified water. CasaSan Pedro was nice. We were there for two nights. I will write more later because I am being kicked off by Jolie, someone in my gorup who wants to use the computer. More later...

So much since then...

Wow, when is it that time doe snot fly by? Well, I took my last final May 1st, went to Kansas to visit the fam and ran back and forth from SF to Atherton to be with fam and friends and celebrate May bdays and go to Narnia with my brother and attend predeparture class for my internship in Nicaragua and help a friend move in the city. Busy Busy Busy. So I leave for Nicaragua tonight and will be there until August 2nd. I am working at a community development organization that is a non profit and will tell you more details later when I am in the country. I won't have a huge amount to access to phones or internet but I do get free text messages so...I would love to hear from you! But in the mean time...my good friend Matt graduated USF and here is a picture of us!

May 4th

So in leaving DC and deciding that a trip to Europe as originally planned would not work out especially since John and Devon's 10 day trip to Germany and the Ukraine turned into Devon's solo week trip to Germany, I thought I better wait until I graduate for a longer trip to Europe and maybe Asia. So on my way home I though I would stop in Kansas where my Mother's family is and say hello to the great granny and cousin, Sammy. However flights from Chicago, which is where I was stuck on Sunday were all full to everywhere I could think of flying. So I took the last flight of the day out to San Jose and if I did not make it, I would have had to sleep in the airport that night...no I would have gone to a hotel, but thankfully a nice United employee gav eme the last seat on the plane. Literally, the last...I was in the very back of the plane in the far left corner (at least I got on a flight and was not on the aisle where you have to turn your head away because the bathroom smells). So oddly enough John was flying from LA back to Salt Lake City but couldn't get on any flights either so he ended up flying to Oakland. Funny how things turn out and that we bnoth came home on the same night. So he got in and took the train to Atherton, luckily I get VIP private car service and someone in my family always picks me up...no public transportation when I am home! John came and got me in San Jose and then I drove him out today to SFO to fly back to Salt Lake city. That is the trick I have figured out not to be homesick...come home for visits (short enough not to get into any trouble!) Then I am flying out to Kansas tomorrow and will come home in time for our annual mothers day celebration on Sunday in Atherton with the Grandparents, Aunt Kit and Uncle Tom, MJ's mother, Mary Ellen who is in town for Callan's First Communion. Fun Fun!! will post soon...