Rocky Point

Chonky's house from here

I've been trying to find information about Rocky Point, and the page I found most from was this: BlueEnergy, who have sent people to install solar panels in Rocky Point. They've actually been working with our main cooperating organisation here on the east coast, FADCANIC. I'm not sure how big the community is, or whether I will meet these people and see this house. I just know that it is a Creole community, where the houses lie far apart and everyone tends to their own little farmlands. There is a community council and there is a group who works with arranging a Farmer's Market in Pearl Lagoon twice a month.

Oh, and I'll need a machete.

When you read this, I'll have been there four days, together with Johanne. Any posts from now on until March 21st will be preplanned and prewritten, but I'll try to post about some other interesting things, and you'll hear more about Rocky Point by the end of March!

A short story about autonomy

 URACCAN Campus, Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense

 People in the street, hello

More people in the park

I've written a far too long text in Norwegian about this, I'll try to keep it short. First about the name of Bluefields: There was a lot of piracy here, often sanctioned by the British Crown, since they looted Spanish ships. One of them was a Dutchman called Blauveldt, which turned into Bluefields, as the city was named after him. 

Spain colonised the western coast of Nicaragua, and England took the east coast, the Caribbean coast, where I am now, as a British protectorate. The indigenous miskitoes of the north collaborated with the British, receiving weapons and goods as a thank you for keeping the Spanish away. There has been a lot of back and forth between the British and the Spanish, and in the end the British signed a treaty saying that they would leave the Nicaraguan coast to Nicaragua, and go up to Belize. So they left, leaving behind plantations with suddenly-free slaves, in addition to the Creole and Garifuna (afro-descendants), and the indigenous peoples of Rama, Mayagna, Ulwa, and Miskito. None of them with a good relationship with the rest of the country, and never having been a united country before.

Almost as from any textbook on how to suppress the indigenous tribes of a country, the government went on to forbid indigenous languages in schools, and impose Spanish language, traditions and property owners on the east coast. The different ethnic groups on this coast were all seen as inferior. There is still a lot of prejudice from people living in the west and north of the country. Even I was told to be careful of people in Bluefields, because they are apparently a lot more likely than anyone else to steal all my things. 

Finally, after the revolution and civil war, there was a lot of will to change in the country. A lot of leaders from the Caribbean worked hard to create a new autonomy law, and they managed to finish it in 1987. The autonomy law is quite progressive, even today. It states that there are two autonomous regions in Nicaragua, the northern and the southern autonomous regions: RAAN and RAAS. They cover about half the country. The forwardness of the law exists in it saying that all ethnic groups are equal, and they are all autonomous, whether they are of Spanish or African descent, or indigenous people. This is pretty strong in a region with so much history about race and origin.

The autonomy law also speaks about the demarcacion (is this a word in English?) of land. The land that was once given to rich friends of those in charge, is supposed to be shared out as communal land between the different communities. No personal ownership. There are a lot of rules and regulations though, a lot of different traditions to consider, and even places where this is impossible to go through with, like Bluefields, which is a city where people have owned their land maybe hundreds of years. Others have their deed scrawled on paper, without witnesses or proper signatures. 

We are going to learn a lot about this (I have learned some already, as you can see from my actually quite short summary). I am already comparing it, and finding that others have compared it before, with the indigenous people of the Nordic countries: the Saami. More about this to come! 

Bluefields intro

 The view from the balcony at the end of the hall in our hotel

 A little courtyard leading down to the restaurant

 One Line sitting in the park, eating a 'water-apple' - we encounter new fruits every day

 Adorable school-children

Mathilde before she fell ill, writing notes and more notes.

We've been here a week now, and leave tomorrow to our respective communities (more to come about this). I've really enjoyed this stay in Bluefields. I thought it might just be projection, but the people here are really more relaxed and chilled than in the cities to the west. They have a lot of history, which they all seem to be quite knowledgeable about. We've met interesting people, some what you might call good and some what you might perhaps call less-good people, as well as people who seem to be different to what they want to project themselves as. We've met a lot of organisations, and finally we have learnt a lot about the theme for our journey and our future work in Norway: Autonomy and Identity.

We have lived in relative luxury, with air-condition, internet, semi-warm showers, running water and a lot of food, in a part of the country where only very small percentages have these goods. We will go into communities with a lot fewer luxuries, and I wonder how it will affect us. You will probably get different blog posts at the end of March.

I'll be able to receive messages until tonight Norwegian time (and English time, for that matter). I shall be back online around the 21st of March.

Managua

 Sofia Montenegro and our coordinator Ingrid

 Carlos Fernando Chamorro and Sofia Montenegro

Chamorro being a grumpy cat

Carlos Fernando Chamorro is from this family: the son of former president of Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro, and journalist Pedro Chamorro. He is a journalist, who used to be on the side of Daniel Ortega, but is now in opposition to him, and have started a new media station with his friend Sofia Montenegro, after being fired from other jobs for being too critical. There's a lot of history behind him, his views, and his family - and even though he seems radical in opposing the government, he's not exactly working class.

We were very lucky to get a chance to meet these people, and I have to keep reminding myself to be sceptical to everyone we meet. I'm the opposite, I want to believe everyone, but it becomes difficult when we meet people with very different viewpoints on the same events. Also when some people seem to be contradicting the truth that we can see here, every day. And I'm not talking about Chamorro now, who seems like a fairly well adjusted person, but about other meetings we've had in the different cities, where you feel like someone is trying to sell you something. Not the best feeling. Most people are just trying to convince us that their side is the best though, so it's nothing sinister, but still.

And then we left (well, a week ago)

 Mathilde and a greeting from our organisation in Matagalpa (Movimiento Comunal)

 Line was dressed up and taught how to dance by her family

And we ate all the Nicaraguan food

We had a wonderful goodbye party with all our families, where all our host mothers had made different Nicaraguan food, and Mathilde and Elise had made pancakes to represent Norway, which made everyone laugh, since it's not very Norwegian. Of course there was a pinata, and dancing, and we sang two Norwegian songs and everyone was happy. My host sister and I went off to watch Miss Matagalpa in one of the parks, and for the first time since I arrived in Nicaragua, I went to bed as late as 11 pm.

Family in Matagalpa

 Gioconda, me, Angelina, Yodesca (with her face hidden) and Tatiana

Orlando, Yodesca, Angelina, Gioconda and Tatiana

And here they are, the family I was staying with in Matagalpa, I only left them one week ago (pretty much at this time on Thursday morning), and it feels so far away. They were so proud of being only ladies in the house (Orlando is Yodesca's boyfriend, but he lives at home), it made quite an impact. Angelina's dad visits every day to see his girl, but he and Gioconda are not together anymore. I didn't get the details, but they all seem very happy about it. This is the different reality I've come to; where having men in the house seems annoying, or tiring, or even scary. I quote: "There are no men here. It means we can walk around the house in a towel and not even think about it, it's wonderful". And this is a very well-functioning family, where I don't think anything like that every happened. There are a lot of other, less lucky families around.

Bluefields, Bluefields

The amount of photos I've taken with my camera

We came to Bluefields on Saturday, and I still haven't finished telling you all about Matagalpa. I am very happy here, as you can tell. Today has been a rainy day, and the firt day I've been able to wear my hair down and still feel comfortable. I'm also wearing my new shirt, a goodbye gift from my host sisters in Matagalpa. And look at my amazing tan. Hah.

Bluefields suits me very well. It's near the sea, and though the water is brackish, the air is salty and very humid, and I feel less suffocatingly warm than in the midlands/north. The people here seem more relaxed, our program here is more relaxed, and after ten days in a host family, it is very nice to live with the girls I'm travelling with, and have a fairly well functioning internet service, and at least semi-warm water to shower in. At the moment, most things are pretty brilliant. I told Julie that I was only waiting for something bad to happen, and she said she was happy I'm so good at living in the moment - because even though I'm sure things can't stay wonderful all the time, I'm fairly good at enjoying happiness when I have it. We were on the boat when I said this - can I just mention that we went here in a boat, two hours down the river from El Rama? This makes for happy Sunniva.

And I'll placate you by saying that we have had a cockroach in the bathroom, we managed to lock ourselves out of our own bathroom today, I managed to lock myself into a restaurant bathroom last week, I've almost fallen asleep in at least one meeting, I'm slightly scared of all the stray dogs running around, and we can't really be walking about much after dark (7pm), and all the mosquitoes love me. 

Las Hormiguitas

 People working at Las Hormiguitas, including Alex (to the left) who used to be a student

 Supportive/solidary countries (we are there, among many others)

 Books! Books! Mathilde and I wanted to take them all out and read them, even the ones we don't understand

 Spanish/English lesson for you all

One of their two computers

Last week, the final organisation we met in Matagalpa was Las Hormiguitas (the ants). It's not as much an organisation as a daycare/after school-centre, specifically for children who work. They offer a place to stay at different times of day, and aim to get the children through school in addition to the actual work they do to support their families. They do not try to get the children to stop working, because they know it might be crucial for their families, they only encourage the families to let the children work less, while enhancing the children's education with this day centre.

There are about 100 children enrolled at the moment, mostly from the neighbourhood around the school. You can tell that their work is important, but they are completely dependent on financial support to manage. They have also worked with children who are sniffing glue, an increasing problem in Matagalpa at least, but this is only a side project, and is mostly worked on when specific foreign volunteers come back to visit and/or stay for a while.

The ladies at this centre made it pretty clear for us: Don't give money to starving children in the streets. Buy them food, by all means. Don't buy anything from them, because they'll use the money for glue, or they'll be controlled by someone older or stronger than them who will control the money as well.

It's odd being here and hearing about all these things. We're not really seeing them quite yet, only traces of sad fates when we hear about the work that different organisations do. It hasn't quite struck me yet, that everything I hear is very true and very close. At the moment it feels a bit like listening to or reading the news back home - it's all very sad, but it doesn't really hit home. I probably have a lot of practice from working with the Red Cross, even in Norway.

Of course I can't take it all in, or I would stop functioning, but I wonder whether this will change any time soon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SISTER

Gratulerer masse med dagen Anna <3 font="">

Beklager at jeg ikke har et bedre bilde, men alle bildene mine ligger hjemme i Sandvika, ikke i Nicaragua.

Savner deg, glad i deg.

House

 Backyard

 Parrot

Street

We all lived in different houses in Matagalpa, with different families, but all were fairly middle class. And I don't mean English middle class, or Norwegian middle class, but Nicaraguan middle class, which are all very different things. We sometimes had to remind each other. You quickly get used to a different standard though, as I realised when I visited Mathilde in her house last week, and had to convince her that her house was flashy and wealthy with their proper doors and inside bathroom.

Cerro El Calvario y mis hermanas

 Of course there are FSLN signs, graffitis and flags everywhere

 Here is Matagalpa city centre, with the blindingly white cathedral

 I loved being up here in the wind and the fresh air

 While the others thought it was a bit too fresh, here's my host sister Yodesca 

 Yodesca, me looking very fresh, and my sisters' friend (Kenya?)

Same friend, Yodesca, and my other host sister Tatiana

When my host family asked me whether I wanted to go up a hill last Sunday, I said yes, because I imagined going up a hill meant walking up a hill. But no, it was too dangerous to walk, and so we took a taxi both ways. It was wonderful to be up there though, and being in the strong wind and feeling slightly more fresh than the rest of the weeks I've been here.

Guadalupe Abajo

 Just hanging outside the supermarket in Matagalpa

 Climbing in and out of the car, here by Ingrid

 Sightseeing on our way

To go and listen to the villagers of Guadalupe Abajo

We were only there a short while, but learnt a lot about how these villagers live and work, and how it can be difficult when you have to rent your land - as I wrote about the other day.

You'll be getting a few more posts about Matagalpa this coming week, because I'll want to postpone the Bluefields stories until I'm away from the internet. We're going to Bluefields today, and I'm very excited, and no doubt you'll hear far too much about that area in the months to come, so just enjoy the north and the east now.

I have yet to photograph anything in Managua, let's see if I can manage before we go.

Managua and masculinity

Yesterday morning I left this view from my window (yes, that is the cemetery at bottom right) in Matagalpa, I left my temporary family and went to take a bus to Managua.

Managua is so far very unimpressive, it's a weird city of just highways and some shops and a massive shopping centre, and I can't get my head around it. It has no proper city centre.

Yesterday we met Douglas from Puntos de Encuentro, an organisation that works with women's rights, but also with men's perceptions of themselves, of family and of women and of their own masculinity. Douglas was especially interested in this, and showed us several films, including this one:

Puntos de Encuentro have also made several tv-series (or soaps, really) that bring up important subjects for youth and for girls, and that promote equal rights. They've even made a tv-series about sexual exploitation in Granada, one of Nicaragua's big colonial cities. I think this is a very good way to educate young people, who'll watch what's on telly, and remember it a long time afterwards (speaking from own experience here). All the actors are volunteers, and the producers contact different organisations working with the issue they're covering before writing each episode.

El Cementerio

 Hello Mathilde, and hello massive family mausoleums

 I love the colours of these cemeteries

Look!

The further up on the hill, the poorer you get

The colours from the wedding of a Norwegian princess

Beloved wife, only 20 years of age

Someone who died in 1984 - under the civil war - get to have guns on their grave

People always look oddly at me when I tell them I love cemeteries (so I don't tell many people). Part of our Spanish lesson on Wednesday a week ago was learning the story behind the Matagalpa Cemeteries, then going there. They have a "Foreigners" cemetery as well as a "Locals" cemetery, which in reality was "Catholic" and "Non-Catholic (the Foreigners)", and it's really interesting to see the differences between the two. Carlota, for example, was a foreigner or a foreigner's wife, and her tomb stone is very classic, white, and sobre. As you can see, a lot on the Local cemetery were not. Cemeteries also tell a lot about who were rich and poor, and about a country's history (see the gun tombstone). If you've followed this blog before, you've seen me ranting about cemeteries before, so I'll leave you here.

I've written this post beforehand, since I don't have internet all the time, but if all goes well, I shall be in Managua - the capital - when this gets posted. We're staying there two days, Thursday to Saturday, when we move on to Bluefields: one step closer to where we're going to live. We'll be having a week's long intro course in Bluefields as well, which probably means internet, but between February 24th and March 24th, I'll be staying with a family or on a center far away from the city, so don't expect much in that period - and send me any important messages before the 24th of February!

List of organisations we've met so far

• Movimiento Comunal Nicaragüense - A lot of goals and areas where they work, a lot of women's rights and farmer's rights and a lot of different things
  
• Grupo Venancia - Feminist Educacion and Communication: Women's rights
  
• Las Golondrinas - (The Swallows) A group of ex-sexual workers, working for the government to acknowledge what they do as an occupation, with as much rights as other occupations. Incredibly interesting, a lot of discussion here.
  
• Guadalupe Abajo - Not an organisation, rather a village where previous brigades have gone and worked and helped them. They make their own bricks to sell for people who are building houses, but they have a lot of problems with farmers who have to rent land to be able to produce a living, which then goes to paying the rent and leaves them with very little to live on.
  
  There will be more information about all this in our information work, and we'll be meeting a lot more, just as interesting, organisations, the coming weeks and months.

Other

 Planning in the cafe, Gro Malene and Nadia

 This has become our local, even though it's far from many of our houses

 A cake and international birthday songs last Tuesday for Diana (one of the teachers) on her birthday

Diana with her umbrella to guard her from the sunshine, very common here. Also Julie and Johanne to the left

Learning Spanish

 My door and my window = a curtain and plywood

 I've taken over the room of one of my host sisters, and this is my/her dressing table

 Answer these questions, and the language school can tell your Spanish level

 Line and I are the only two in the intermediate group, here chillaxing in one of the school hammocks

And this is part of the classroom. Seriously.

Last Sunday we were split up and went to our separate host families. I will get more photos from my house and of my family soon! I'm staying with the same family as my friend Hanne did when she went on this program in 2006. She stayed with this family the entire five-month-period, while I'm only staying with them ten days. They are lovely people, as said, but of course there is a language barrier. There is the mother, a sick grandmother who stays in her room, two grown daughters (I think about 19 and 21) and one little girl who's exactly the same age as my niece (both will be three years old in March), and very similar in many aspects, except that she has Down's Syndrome. She's amazing, and we're very good friends, and she copies me in everything I do (good when it means she finishes her meals, bad when it means she puts both the tortilla and all other food on the table).

My elder host sisters have said that my Spanish has gotten better throughout the week, since I'm talking more now than when I came. I'm still fairly bad though, and I still feel bad that I can't express everything I think and feel. I have managed to convince them to teach me to wash clothes their way, without a washing machine, and without letting them do the job for me.

The school is very amazing, which I think I said something about before, with only women working, and everyone seems to be working a bit with teaching and the reception and the arts shop and the tourist guide agency they've got. This week the Danes arrived, we've talked a bit with them, they're doing a similar project in other parts of the country, and we run into them on different social activities in this tiny town (well, the size of Tromsø, but you know).