Taking it Rural

My readers I’m sure have picked up by now that the city of Chinandega where I live is a large city.  It doesn’t mean that it is on par with even a small city in the U.S. by any means, but it has grown a ton since I arrive almost 2 years ago.  We now have a mall with a food court, movie theatre, casino and restaurants.  Two Nicaraguan “5 star” hotels have been built for businessmen and tourists to stay in luxury.  We now have a few cafes and nice restaurants with air conditioning, one of them being a sushi joint.  This may not sound like a big deal to you, but it is for Nica!

Chinandega’s growth is exciting, but it has also voluntarily pushed me to take my work more rural.  I was already traveling frequently to rural beaches to work with the women of Artesenia del Mar and Waves of Hope, but I’ve stepped up my traveling in the new year.  I have been working with Pro Mujer Micro Finance Institution to take my trainings up north to train rural women entrepreneurs in business management skills.  In addition I am also working with the NGO CSMMO, which is basically Chinandega Services for the Movement of Women in Business(translated).  I blogged about them back in the beginning of the year when we elected several women’s cooperatives to receive foreign funds based on their goals to reinvest in their coop. 

Now I am traveling with a Nicaraguan counterpart Candelaria to visit these cooperatives in different parts of rural Chinandega and Leon to offer 2-day workshops.  The women self-organize in their community to host the training and offer lunch to the 20 women invited.  We performed our first training in Jicaral, Leon inviting women from two small communities focusing on self-esteem, the meaning of being a women in society, goal-setting, client service, marketing, accounting, budgeting and saving over the span of two days.  As many of you know, this was my passion before ever coming to Nica, to empower women to take control of their lives and create a future for themselves and their children.  I have become even more passionate about this type of aid after arriving in country and witnessing just how negative the effect of machismo can have on Nicaraguan women.

I loved getting to know these women over the two days, personally getting to know them, their lives, their goals, and being serenaded by an 80 year with a heck of a voice.   At one point we played a version of musical chairs to keep the women from falling asleep in the heat.  Picture women ranging from age 18 to 80 running around to grab the last seat and at one point breaking a plastic chair because they jumped in to it with such force.  It was one of those moments down here where everything almost freezes and I take a step back to look around at my setting of lively Nica women, the wilderness around us, the smell of baho cooking for lunch and the sound of bachata playing in the background.  My mind flicks back in time to what I thought Peace Corps would be before accepting this position and I smile, knowing that the decisions I have made have helped me to create this reality.

I won’t know how many of the women will actually implement what I taught them or if their financial situations will improve, but that’s the nature of the work.  I think after two years I’ve finally become OK with that and realized it’s the experience for not only myself, but for them that matters most.  I know that I loved sitting around over lunch and talking and listening to music.  I know that at the very least they walked away with a better idea of how to track their expenses, a design they created for branding their business, and a goal to work towards.  I had to travel 2 hours each way on a sweaty school bus to get to them each day, but it was so worth it.  The cooking was awesome and I am always well taken care of when around Nica women.  At the end of the training the woman who hosted sent us out in to her yard with a long stick to knock fresh cohote fruit out of her trees to take home.  It reminded me of when a piñata finally breaks and candy goes spewing everywhere as we scrambled to not let the fruit linger on the ground for too long. Cohote is a small green fruit that can be sweat/sour depending on its ripeness, but always better when rolled in salt.

Before I knew it I was back in Chinandega in time to make dinner and then head to the city of Leon in a microbus for salsa dancing with the Chinandega Salsa group.  It was almost culture shock to go from a rural community to turn around and be at a salsa dance club in the city of Leon just hours later surrounded by foreigners and Nicaraguan University students.  That has been the nature of my service here.  I have been lucky to have opportunities and experiences to appreciate everything this country has to offer.  I am really going to miss working with the women, natural beauty, waves, salsa, traveling, friends I've made, food and so much more.  It finally set in that I have created my reality here.  I have created a new life that will be hard to uproot once again.