El Blog: At Home in Nicaragua

We have settled into a pretty good routine here in rural Nicaragua. We wake up at 4 am when the roosters start calling out to the other roosters in the neighborhood (roosters here are over-achievers and get going well before the sun rises). Then we fall back asleep until 6:30. We are lucky to have an outdoor shower with running water; other families have to haul water from a well down the road and pour buckets over their body to bathe. But the water is colder in the mornings so we usually just dunk our heads and wait til the evening to shower after the black water tank has heated up a little in the sun. Our host mom serves us a heaping bowl of fresh fruit and a cup of sweet coffee. If she is in a good mood we also get a dry, scone-like bread or cookies for dunking in the coffee. Then we walk about 20 minutes down a dirt road to the Solar Center.

We work on our volunteer projects or help with other tasks, and we sit around and chat with other volunteers or the women who work at the center. We listen in on weekly meetings and occasional training sessions. Each week all the volunteers have lunch together at a different family’s house in the community. After lunch, we go back to the Solar Center or sometimes we take a bus to the nearest town to check email or we go for a hike in the surrounding hills. Although this sounds like a pretty relaxed schedule, the other volunteers seem to be impressed by the amount of work we’ve been able to complete in our short time here. I guess we just haven’t been here long enough to slow down to Nicaraguan pace.

We leave “work” around 4:30 to play soccer with the neighborhood kids or to lay in the hammock or do yoga in our room before it gets dark at 6:00. Then we have dinner and watch soap operas with the family (our household is a bit more fancy than most and has grid power and a TV). By 8:30 or 9:00 it’s lights out and time for bed.