well, here we go into the final stretch of the program, less than a week to go! everyone is pretty burned out by this point, and really just want to relax and not think about the spanish final and the program final that we have to do this week. but! here goes nothin´ the last haul before a relaxing two and half weeks of travelling!
we got back from nicaragua yesterday. the eight hour bus ride that is actually only about six hours of sitting on the bus and two hours of getting everyone through customs at the border. made me think a lot about how spoiled we get with customs at international airports that they take care of a majority of the paperwork through computers and the flight plan. i had to remind myself that the impatience of the others in the group with this lethargic process by bus had a lot to do with the fact that it was their first experience with it. jeez that was an awkward sentence. anyway, the whole group was kind of on edge, getting tired of one another going into the trip, so i´m not sure a straight week of unadulterated "us" time was what we needed... the week was really good though, and no one ended up killing each other (although we did get in a bit of trouble for partying a little too hardy in the hotel, cuz the hotel was small enough that our group took up every room, so we figured we´d be alright... oops). we visited a Precario (literally "precarious") kind of a shanty town, with houses made out of metal sheets and whatever plywood they could find, that was originally a squator community. in costa rica, the same situation of a neighborhood eventually got the help of the government to install electricity, water services and waste disposal, but in nicaragua the people had to depend entirely on nonprofit organizations for the little help that they got. everyone worked, even the children, and these were the people who had decided to stay in nicaragua, and not take their entire family across the border illegally to work in the banana and pineapple plantations in costa rica that we got to visit the week before (they wouldnt let us take any cameras in)(all US owned and operated companies). in the rainy season, lake nicaragua would flood the surrounding area and the Precario that we were in, forcing everyone to live in two feet of water. an NGO that we visited was helping them build housing that was above the floodline for 250 american dollars, and providing some of the labor. for comparison´s sake: working on a banana plantation, the average man works 12-16 hours a day and is paid on a piece rate system in teams of three, who must split about 17 colones per bunch of bananas. they earn approximately 6000 colones per day which is about 12 american dollars, in the humid hot hot heat perfect for growing bananas. most of the work is tough manual labor because it is cheaper for these companies to NOT mechanize the process because when profits drop they can simply fire people. against costa rican law, these people have no benefits whatsoever. this is considered a good wage compared to many of the jobs in nicaragua. and yeah things are cheaper here, but not even close to the difference in wages. i was talking to some of the others on our program about coming back to nicaragua next summer to volunteer and help build houses (by the by, each house has five rooms, including a bathroom, kitchen, living room and two bedrooms. many times for a family of six or seven since more children means more people working for the benefit of the family.
walking around the Precario i was hit by an epiphanal moment: nearly all of the uneasy energy between our group of americans walking around in our flipflops and digital cameras, and the people who´s neighborhood we were overtaking, all of this awkwardness could be dispelled simply by saying hello, by approaching them as one human being to another. it really drove home for me the power of presentation. people were more than willing to talk with us and show us all the hard work that they had done on these houses, once it was initiated. something as simple as "buenos dias." recognizing the dignity in another.
we spent saturday on the shore of a beautiful lake just to the north of Granada (where we were staying, kind of a preserved, colonial, tourist town), at an amazing hostel (only 20 bucks a night). i´m not sure if they think that because we go to an expensive private school that we need to be babied and will accept nothing less than the lap of luxury, but we keep staying in these places that cost a whole bunch on trips. i´m not saying i dont appreciate it, but i would be fine staying in the hostel in Granada for 7 dollars a night where there are a whole bunch of other international travelling our age living out of backpacks, as opposed to taking over an entire hotel for 50 dollars a night. we all keep saying that we wish we could see a breakdown of where the thousands of dollars we spent to go on this trip is actually going. sorry for that rant: the lake was gorgeous and we just lounged around all day. there was another group there, or maybe seven people, from israel. the place owned two kayaks, and out in one, i got burned... again. don´t worry though this time its not second degree. i was out for over an hour trying to find Soni, who had been gone for like two hours by that time in the other kayak. (how do you lose someone on a lake? i guess it was big enough, though it didnt look it, it was 6 km across). burning and hungry, i came back to find that she had come back from the other side that i wasnt looking on so much.
AH! i can´t wait until this week is done and over. i feel like its the end of last semester all over again...
i hope that you´re all doing fabulously, and that i get to hear from you soon, i love getting email, it makes me happy and feel like someone is actually reading these extra-ordinarily long emails. toodles
smiles
Ben