Stifling

Indian summer, or “la canicula” is 15 days without rain smack dab in the middle of rainy season, and we're a week in. It is now 1:40pm and I have never in my life experienced heat like this. I just walked home from school and passed a neighbor of mine who looked dead sleeping in the shade on the floor of his front porch, and now I know why. The inside of my house is literally an oven thanks to the low zinc roof, so here I am sitting out on my porch noticing that not a single leaf on any tree is even quivering. My cat has retreated to the shower floor that's still a little damp from my shower this morning, and if it weren't for this last bit of sanity that I'm holding onto, I'd be laying in there with him. The corner of my porch is being hit with the high sun, and I swear I can feel the heat from that little portion even here in my shady section.

The power's out, which not only means no fan, but also no cold drinks in any of the corner stores in my town, and no ice to buy from my neighbor who has a freezer. The water's out too so showering is out of the question and all I have to drink is an emergency three liter bottle of water that's been heating up for the past two weeks or so. I just dumped some of it onto a bandana, which I'm currently waving around in the air hoping to cool it off enough to lay around my neck, but I realize I'm just accelerating it's evaporation.

The people passing by my house are walking slower than usual, literally weighed down by the heat. Women with umbrellas carry their shade with them, while the kids walking home from school turn their uniform shirts into fans or hats or sweat rags. The street dogs that usually ferociously guard their territory have all given up on even lifting their heads when someone passes by. My neighbors kids who go straight from class to playing baseball in the street everyday, are nowhere to be found – surely collapsed in hammocks outback.

It's 1:55 and my bandana is completely dry again; I'm not sure it's a good idea to waste the little water I have just to wet it again. Five minutes until I have to co-plan. I hope we can do it outside in the shade. Then it's off to teach my afternoon classes and English at 6. It's only one block to the school, but there's not an inch of shade the whole way. Here we go.  

Tortillas de Elote

So as I was leaving Professora Francis's house on Friday night, she asked me jokingly at what time she should be expecting me the following morning to help her make Tortilla de Elote (cornbread from scratch). I excitedly responded that I'd love to help and asked what time she wanted me. So on Saturday morning, I woke up at the same time I do for school everyday, and I was at her house showered and ready to work at 6:30.

First things first...luckily for me she offered me a huge plate of gallo pinto, cuajada, and tortilla as soon as I walked in (Nica rice and beans, awesome homemade Nica cheese, and hot homemade tortilla that she bought from her neighbor who sells them every morning.) Oh, and coffee, of course.

After breakfast, the work began. I tried to control my reaction when she showed me the two giant sacos (think potato sack races) full of corn on the cob that we were going to “desgranar” - remove each grain of corn from each and every cob. We each took chairs into her second room and she shucked the first ear and threw it in a bucket. As I went to shuck some ears of my own, she said it would be a better idea if I just started to desgranar. She handed me a knife with a blade the size of my forearm and then realized she'd have to show me exactly how to go about manipulating the weapon against my poor little piece of corn. I watched closely as she wedged the blade between two rows of kernels and popped out the first section of one row using the knife as a lever. (Hello "small machines" science lessons!) She continued down the row and then moved fluidly between the second and third rows, then between the third and fourth, etc. All I could think was that it seemed like a painfully slow process – especially considering each ear of corn has about 16 rows of kernels. Luckily, just as a grabbed my knife to get started, two neighbors came over to help us as well, so we threw on some music and really got down to it. I was given a huge bowl/pot thingy to put on my lap to collect my kernels, and just under two hours later, the four of us had turned two sacos of corn on the cob into a 5 gallon bucket full of corn kernels. (I dis-grained about 40 or 50 ears of corn all by myself - therefore filling my cauldron with corn kernels with only one cut on my middle finger and a few calluses on the hand that was constantly manipulating the blade.)

So what do you do with over 40 pounds of corn kernels? Well you separate them into two portions...one to make “simple,” or sugarless batches, and the other to make the good stuff. To the simple batch, we added a little salt and crumbled up cheese, and to the other, salt, cheese, broken up cinnamon sticks, and cut up ginger. Then we walked the two buckets of mixed ingredients – one held on my hip like a toddler, and the other on the head of Dona Coco, Francis's mom – down to the “molino,” aka house where a guy has a machine that grinds up the corn into masa, which I guess is cornmeal?

Aside: While we were at the molino, Francis stayed home to heat up the wood burning brick oven, which was therefore nice and hot by the time we got everything set up to go in.

We walked the buckets back to the house and to the flavorful batch we added tons of sugar, vanilla, the watery part of separated milk (I don't know how you say that in English), sour cream (which is in liquid form here), and butter. Then, to both batches we added baking soda.

We then lined the deep baking trays with banana leaves and filled them with the masa. These, after baking for a few minutes in the infernal oven, came out like what we call cornbread back in the States. Dona Coco also used a small bucket's worth of masa to make Bollos Asados, which uses the same exact masa, but gets baked into little loaves. To do this, she filled a cut up banana leaf with a cup full of masa and magically folded the leaf around it into a little envelope before the liquidy dough had time to escape. These little pockets of heaven were then put onto trays and baked, and came out as much drier bready loaves that turn a simple cup of coffee into pure pleasure.

So it was a long day, but thanks to the company, the music, and the constant supply of good food and frescos, it was awesome!! (Although, I am assured every single day here that I'm not cut out to be a housewife. There will never be a day when I wake up with the “ganas,” or desire, to spend the entire day baking/cooking/cleaning/washing clothes/babysitting etc. Regardless of what I'm willing to do here as a learner and an appreciative visitor, I'm still as lazy as always in my own house and I look for shortcuts whenever possible.  Whoever I end up with better be ready for 50/50 housework distribution!)

You said keep you posted!

So it's been a while since I've updated anyone on what my daily life is like down here in Nicaragua.   It's just that I've become so completely engulfed in and accustomed to my life here that I forget when things might be interesting to share with everyone back home. Everything here just seems so normal now. I guess I could try to do one of those “day in the life” blogs? Well not really...because I have a different schedule every day of the week here. I'll go ahead and start with Monday and we'll see where we go from there...

Monday:

5am Wake up and shower

5:20 Rush out of the house to meet up with Gisselle the multi-grade teacher I work with.

5:30 Walk 5km together to my small mountain school – a walk which consists of climbing two mini-mountains, crossing a river, and almost always listening to howler monkeys as we approach the school.

7:15 Eat breakfast with Gisselle's awesome family who lives close to the school in the mountain (gallo pinto, cheese, tortilla, oatmeal fresco).

7:30 Work in the school garden/give science class to 1^st through 5^th graders all in the same classroom.

10am Hitch a ride back to town on either horseback, ox-cart, two-wheeled form of transport I'm not allowed to mention, or plantain truck.

11:30 Sweat through my second shower of the day wishing the water temperature didn't always match that of the air (cold in the morning, warm in the afternoon).

12:15 Cook some form of fast easy lunch (aka heat up rice and beans from the day before and maybe throw in some plantains or an avocado)

1pm Give science class to my 6^th graders in the big school on my block.

3pm Work in the school garden with 4^th -6^th graders weeding, making organic pesticides, fixing the barbed wire that the horses keep damaging, HARVESTING VEGGIES!

5:30 Walk a block home and finally shower for the last time, this time actually trying to get the dirt out from under my nails.

6:00 Hang out with the door open while I attempt to plan, but almost always get happily interrupted by friends or students who come in every time they see that I'm home.

7:30 Realize that I'm starving and too lazy to wash the dishes that would allow me to cook for myself; therefore opt for walking around the block to buy tajadas (crispy fried plantain strips with grilled pork and ensalada all served in a plastic baggie) for 20 cords, basically a dollar.

7:45 Share my tajadas on someone's front porch – accompanied by whatever awesome fresco they want to give me, or if I'm lucky with gallo pinto that they have left over from dinner!

8:30 Head home and maybe straighten up (maybe not), then plan for the following day's science lessons.

10pm Tuck into my mosquito net for the night!

Ok, so I've decided giving a daily schedule for everyday would definitely deter all of you from ever reading my blog again, so I'll hold back. Basically all my days are just as full as Mondays, but they include other things like English classes, projects with my Environmental Brigade Youth Group, leading/participating in teacher trainings, hand washing my clothes, playing cards/dominoes with my friends, and visiting all my neighbors that get very insulted if I go too many days without some quality porch sitting time.

Anyways...I guess I'll just throw in a few quick updates and let you all on your way =)

* Two of my four gardens are finally producing tons of veggies - one of which is amazing. In my biggest school, we have 10 tomato plants, 9 cucumber plants, 10 pepper plants, 6 squash plants, 6 spinach plants, 6 squash/pumpkin type plants, and two rows of yucca. It's my pride and joy. We even fenced it all in with barbed wire to protect it from the horses and cows that like to get in and eat our cucumbers. Now if I could only control all those gusanos (ugly caterpillars) that keep eating my cucumber leaves!

* I just had my second official Peace Corps site visit (aka supervision) and it went pretty well. First of all, my program director used the word PERFECT to describe my Spanish! I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I can finally say that I feel like 95% of the time I can say exactly what I want to say without searching for elementary ways to say it! This is all thanks to my friends in site who constantly correct and help me – one in particular. Without them, I would still be stuttering through every conversation I have. My supervisor was also really impressed by my level of comfort with my students and fellow teachers. She told me it was a relief to finally observe a class where the volunteer wasn't super nervous to teach in front of her. Haha, what can I say, I'm a natural. (Luckily she didn't observe me when I was still completely unable to think in Spanish and was therefore stumbling through every class I gave.) She wrote on my report that I seem to be extremely well-integrated into my community, which made me really happy because I can remember my first few weeks here when I was sure I would never feel at home. Aside from all of Peace Corps' official goals, mine has always been to really become a part of my community and to form meaningful relationships with the people I live near/work with/teach. I feel like without such connections, my work here is meaningless. Now that I'm feeling more settled, I'm going to begin looking for community projects outside of my schools. I'll keep you posted on that as things unfold.

* I guess my last update shall be that the heat and humidity here has reached an all new level of suffocating this month - I'd call it unbelievable if it weren't for the beads of sweat literally running down my face, chest, arms and legs right now. Now that it rains at least once a day, we basically live in a stifling world of steam during the hours following the downpour. When the sun comes out, it's stronger than ever and heats the thick wet air to a point that makes it uncomfortable to sit, let alone walk, bike, teach, or work outside in gardens all day. There is no breeze and sitting directly in front of a fan brings no relief because the weight of the air sticks to everything and seems to slow even the rotation of blades. Thank God it's finally cooling down at night now. The nighttime rain echoing on all the zinc roofs drowns out the barking dogs and crowing chickens and makes for a beautiful night's sleep.