poetry and snow cones

Maddie and I often say that we need a nap and a cocktail after MPI’s biweekly Creative Arts class. Thirty children are a handfull for sure – but when given handbells, drama props, or the deadly combination of glitter and glue, all semblances of order and quiet disappear. So perhaps we were insane to think it would be a good idea to take these students on a field trip, but Granada (a neighboring colonial town) was hosting a poetry festival. Why not expose them to a cultural world outside their neighborhood?

After permission slips were signed and attendance requirements stated, we were left with 14 poetry participants. On Thursday after Feeding Program, Maddie and I loaded the kids in the van and kidnapped Amira and Tressa to help us supervise. The ride to Granada involved many small heads and arms flapping out the windows, some tooting recorders (which they found under the seat, who knew?!), and one stop at a gas station for a poor “I’m going to vomit” niño. But we arrived to the festival with children intact. After dividing into groups, we wandered the main city square and meandered among the booths of poetry books. Despite the aura of refinement and literature, I’m convinced that the kids’ favorite part of the trip was eating raspados (gooey Nica snow cones) before we headed for the van to hit the highway.

Although it seems fairly insignificant to take a child to a festival and give her a snow cone, I have been recently realizing just how small is the bubble of a world in which these children live. They go to school and they come home. They play soccer in the dirt streets in their barrio and occasionally board a bus with their mothers to buy rice and beans at the market. And that’s all. No family vacations or school field trips or outings to the movies. No exposure to museums or libraries. But part of MPI’s mission is to empower these children – to encourage them in their abilities and to offer them opportunities beyond their limited world. With this mindset, an afternoon trip to a cultural festival in a new city is not only significant, it’s vital. It can open eyes and expand minds to see that a world of prospects lies beyond what they know as day-to-day life.

With a newfound love for poetry and snow cones,
Emily

maddie reports

In The Manna House-

Two new Program Directors arrived: Kyle and Josh (another Josh! Who would have thought). They're absolutely splendid and have fit into our Manna family perfectly. Both are intelligent, enthusiastic, patient, kind, and most of all…they're boys! Let me tell you, evening out the gender ratio in this house has definitely made everyone happier. Too many girls can get a little catty sometimes.

I kid you not, MILLIONS of fire ants attacked our house twice about a week and a half ago. We think the boys might have disturbed a colony while creating their "man cave" in our unused garage (don't ask, I have no idea), and as a result the ant army retaliated. If anyone is interested, you can kill them with the following: boiling water, water + bleach, or fire. I don't recommend the last option.

As I've mentioned, we have two rottweilers, mother and son. The son may or may not have gotten mumsy pregnant when she last went into heat. Another word of advice: it is pointless to try to keep rottweilers in heat apart, because they will inevitably find a way to be together. We're still waiting to find out if she's pregnant… if not, we're getting her spayed asap.


In Programs-

Microfinance: after reviewing our applications and conducting interviews, Mary Rose and I have decided to hand out five $150 loans and one $100 loan. They'll be making payments twice a month, and each date that a payment is due we will have a meeting with all the participants to discuss how their businesses are doing, offer encouragement, strengthen relationships and friendships, etc. I'm very excited about this program and hope everything will go well!

Creative Arts: Emily and I have decided to make the next 3-4 months "country" themed, and this time we are sticking to our themes! February is Nicaragua month, March is Costa Rica, and April is Ecuador (the location of our sister MPI site). Ecuador might leak into early May, but our summer volunteers are arriving May 12 and will be entrusted with planning from then on out. We're pretty excited about this date. Also, we've realized that the children behave better when doing arts and crafts as opposed to "rehearsing" skits.

Intermediate English: Kyle has come on board with me, which has been a great help. We now tend to divide the class into two groups and thus get more work done/offer more individual attention. My students are getting a little rowdy, and I might have to soon give them the "I do all this for you please respect me or don't come to class" speech… though I'll probably use nicer words. In any case, they're progressing well and have already learned 3 new vocabulary lists.

Child Sponsorship: I've decided to step down from this position, as I wasn't contributing much to the program and wanted more time to plan my other classes/catch up on other work. However, I still manage to make it to La Chureca once a week/every two weeks and maintain my relationships there. We also went to a presentation at Casa Ben Linder today, wherein several Churecan children talked about their new organization (they do radio bites) and passed around photos of their barrio. Needless to say, we MPI people new at least 70% of the people that appeared in the photos. Guess we're doing our job pretty well!

Community survey: Mary Rose and I are about to conduct a community survey on Manna and how community members view us as an organization. This is the first time that Manna has internally conducted a survey like this and we're very excited about conducting it and compiling the results.

Maddie

elena

If you know our cook Elena, you know that she is perhaps the spunkiest of Nicaraguan women. She is sassy enough to keep the dogs in check , patient enough to put up with our 10-people-who-just-got-out-of-college messiness, and just crazy enough for spontaneous fully-clothed swims. Last week, we gave “Mamita” a day off from our home and made a visit to hers.

The ten of us piled into the micro at 9am Friday morning, excited to make the journey up the carretera to kilometer 34.5. The ride was bumpy, to say the least, but we arrived at her humble home soon enough, our stomachs grumbling. (She’d promised us a delicious brunch!) Elena ran out and greeted us warmly, showing us her kitchen and introducing us to her children and nephews and nephews’ children and children’s nephews…

As Elena began to cook eggs over the fire, her daughter Ana taught us how to make corn tortillas from scratch, rolling the white dough in a circle and then slowly flattening it out. We helped stir pancake batter and squeezed oranges for juice, laughing at the fact that we felt like we’d entered Colonial Williamsburg. The kitchen was set apart from the house, a small room with a dirt floor and holey walls. Plates and knives and various unidentified metal tools hung from the cracks in the wooden planks. Yet Elena was in her element, playfully smacking her daughter with a spoon and laughing at our gringo naivete.

So we ate a fresh breakfast and held some fluffy chicks, walked the land and heard about growing up in rural Nicaragua. Again and again, I’m blindsided by the joy of this place and the gracious nature of its people. Elena and her family live hand to mouth. They cook over an open flame. They sleep four to a room and bathe with a bucket and claim plastic lawn chairs as their only furniture. Yet Elena enters our spacious house three days a week, prepared to cook our expensive food and clean our rooms that are cluttered with excessive clothing and superfluous technology. When we stumble into the kitchen at 10am, headed straight for the coffee, she has been up since 4:oo – serving first her own family and then making the trek here to serve our messy family of gringos. With no judgment, no resentment, no bitterness. Elena’s service to us here is a lesson in grace and humility.

Until next week,
Emily

finding joy in beaches and basura (trash!)

As a reward for studying hard and acing their end-of-semester tests in December, Maddie and I organized a trip to the beach for our respective intermediate and advanced English classes. This morning we filled up two large micro-vans with gringos and Nicas and started the hour-long trek down pothole ridden highways and bumpy dirt roads. The weather couldn't have been more perfect or the water more refreshing. Norman and Gabriel jammed out on the guitar. Dayana and Fabiola collected nearly a hundred sand dollars. The boys played sand soccer and the girls tossed the Frisbee around in the ocean. Emilio was buried in the sand and had his body shaped into a beautiful sirena (mermaid). Adriana, Gelme, Elena and Olga had a sand and water splashing fight. I learned that Mercedes' favorite song is "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and more about Olga's life as an aspiring attorney. All in all the day was wonderful and injury free, phew! Getting to know our neighboring Nica community via our English program has been a HUGE blessing thus far and I'm excited to deepen these friendships in the upcoming months.

Last week our Child Sponsorship team had a long overdue meeting with the La Chureca clinic staff and Ministry of Health officials to sort out some long standing questions and concerns. We thankfully made some headway and plans but continue to be frustrated by miscommunication that seems to plague our program. But wait, good news… we're graduating a number of children who have reached and maintained healthy weight, woohoo! Thus, we'll have ample room to enter more needy children in the upcoming months. I'm saddened to see a number of my favorite children and mothers go – familiar faces will be exchanged for new families and stories once again – but overjoyed that some of the children have grown and have some semblance of 'healthy bodies' amidst such a toxic environment.

Working in La Chureca has been by far the most challenging and shocking, yet joyful and rewarding, experience that I have had thus far in Nicaragua. It's one of those "you can't understand 'til you see it" kind of places, and even then you may not believe it exists. I feel compelled to overcome these insufficiencies and somehow share this incredible place with you. Here is a trailer for a short film being made about Día de Luz, a day long concert and celebration sponsored by 'Love, Light and Melody' in La Chureca. The film documents last year's event, which is when I was first exposed to La Chureca while on a spring break trip with the Nicaraguan Orphan Fund. Please check out the video and other pictures on this website to get a fuller picture of this place I have grown to know and love.

http://www.lovelightandmelody.org/index.php

Peace, Christina

back where we belong

Manna PDs returned to Nicaragua earlier this week, eager to begin another six months of sudor and amor. We’ve been well-fed, well-cleaned (with hot water!), and well-Christmas-ed up – totally ready for Nica life to begin once again…

And it’s now going in full force! We’ve been joined by two new PDs, Kyle and Jed-Josh (see pic below) and the ten of us have been busy preparing for programs, cleaning the house, taking rides on our newly-fixed motorcycle (thank you, Kyle!), and trying to keep our psycho male dog from impregnanting his mother. (We think a litter of incest puppies is on the way…)

Two days after our own arrival, we received a group of occupational therapists from Worcester State University, two professors and four students. After a restful weekend at beautiful Laguna de Apoyo (a gorgeous crater lake just outside Managua), these visitors began work at a school for children with disabilities and a special needs orphanage. While these women spent the week pouring their hearts into therapy for numerous children with both physical and emotional delays, Manna PDs had the privilege of serving them through transportation and interpretation.

And it truly was a privilege. In driving around Managua and attempting to translate between gringo and Nica, my eyes were opened to a population that is often overlooked and mistreated. Because special needs children require such specialized attention and expensive care, many developing nations simply do not have the resources or knowledge necessary for proper growth.

Yet both the school and the orphanage handle these children with amazing love. Sitting in a cement “playpen” with five deaf, autistic, or downs toddlers, tears streaming down my cheeks, I couldn’t help thinking about how different their situations would be had they been born into the prosperity of the United States. It’s a sad truth indeed. But more importantly, I was blown away by the daily enthusiasm of these babies’ caregivers and the way that these Nicaraguan women exude such a deep gentleness and grace. While money and training are undeniably essential, a mother’s love (and the orphans do call these women “mamá”) is powerful.

Who knows what the next six months will hold?! But we’re thrilled to be back home where we belong.

Emily

all in the family

Whether in the States or south of the border, December brings invitations of all kinds. Over the past week, Manna PDs have been invited to numerous end-of-the-year festivities taking place in the community, from parties to school ceremonies to hilarious singing holidays! Participation in these events usually means a) we are the only gringos and b) we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into…

First was Enrique’s promoción ceremony from sixth grade to primero año at Niño Jesús de Praga, the local Catholic school. Next was Norma and Lester’s First Communion on Sunday morning. In both occasions we sat in our seats amongst a sea of Nicaraguans, a very close knit community that welcomes us warmly but stares with such curiosity, thinking, “Who the heck are these gringos and why are they here?”Yet among the stares and long ceremonies and “gringa, gringa!” yells, we find it such a privilege to be invited to these events. In rural Nicaragua, they are the milestones of life that mark a sweet coming of age and will be remembered with a special fondness. Graduations, communions, holidays- these are events to be celebrated with family, and although we’ve been in Managua for only five months, I have grown to love these people as just that. Yesterday as we thanked Yamileth, the joyful mother of Enrique, Norma, and Lester, for inviting us to participate so richly in her family’s life, she simply said, “You all are also my family.”

As relationships here strengthen and we are invited more and more to be part of significant life moments, differences that once seemed so evident fade. Meandering through the Catholic church with a Nica child holding each hand, I forget that I am very tall, very blue-eyed, and very much not hispanic. Situations that once seemed awkward or foreign are now just life. We’ve been embraced by a community here in deep friendship, and I am so often caught off guard by how natural it is to call these people family. Before heading home next Tuesday, there remain a Purisima celebration, a birthday party, and a graduation to attend… What a blessing that in leaving one family behind in the States, we find another in Nicaragua!

Emily

conquering the bug

This week crackers and ginger ale have been in high demand. Sickness hit the Manna house with full force! With Nikki away in the States for med school interviews, there were only seven of us here to hold down the fort. And the stomach bug dominated us seven for seven. Lovely vomiting passed from Mose to Emily to Christina to Michael to Josh to Maddie… and the cycle was complete when Tressa threw up two days ago. Sick people taking care of sick people leads to general lack of hygiene and some pretty foul smells. But thanks to lots of Gatorade and Immodium, we’ve conquered the bug and are now back on our feet! (Although I’m not sure Tressa has left her bed or eaten anything today.)

On a happier – and healthier! – note, Josh (our go-to construction man and veteran PD) has been working hard on a series of wooden structures to be used at Tesoros de Dios (Treasures of God), a local school for children with disabilities. He was contracted by Jackie, a professor at Worchester State who has served at the school, to build equipment to aid the school’s physical therapy program. He has dreamed up, designed, and constructed a large round rocking “pig” that encourages kids to maintain their balance… and a sturdy square walker to assist children in learning to stand on their own... and there are more inventions to come!

Josh’s creativity in construction shines through in these projects, demonstrating the way that Manna allows each PD to pursue his or her passions. Additionally, the construction serves to foster a cool bridge between MPI and this unique young school, with both organizations combining their resources and strengths to love on Nicaragua. Just an example of how MPI overcomes the throw-ups!

Now let’s hope that our current visitors from Vanderbilt don’t get sick – I mean, how do you disinfect an entire house!?

Emily