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).

First days

 We stayed in a hostel a few days, this is the level of tidiness we had (and Julie working hard)

 And this is us getting used to a different culture, a different country, and different ways of doing things

 We had one day off, where we went to a waterfall, here is Line eating some fruit or other

 And Julie being mysterious down by the water

And someone hiding behind Cascada Blanca (the White Waterfall)

I've got so many photos. I decided to start with first things first, so you'll always be a bit behind me, but hopefully never that far behind. I'm behind you all in time anyway, at the moment of writing we are nearing 0530 pm in Matagalpa, while my parents have gone to bed in Norway at 0030 am.

This second day, we went early in the morning to get a bus to the waterfall, which was our (or mine, at least) first proper experience with a Latin American bus. It was stuffed with people and food and a chicken in a box, all the clichés. The only thing that surprised me (but probably shouldn't have) was how noone got up for women and children and old people. After ten days in this country, I've seen someone get up for someone else once, and that was a man getting up for a pregnant woman to sit. 

We have two coordinators that have lived many years in Mexico, but also spent time in different countries in Latin America before - even though they've never lived in Nicaragua proper, they're very good to have for experience. Our two translators, Ingrid and Elise, have also lived in Guatemala and Bolivia respectively.

Soon to come more about our first week in Matagalpa!

Proof

I'm here, I'm here, I'm here

It's hot

I'm in the Spanish School

I haven't got much time

But we're learning a lot, meeting a lot of organisations and I have barely time to be with my host family, who are lovely, lovely people. Photos to come at some point or another.

In Matagalpa

Photo by Line Bellingmo Johnsrud

It's quite sunny, a little bit cloudy, a lot more hot and humid than what we northerners are used to. Still, we're at quite a high altitude (700m), and we're going to a far hotter and more humid place in a few weeks.

Before then we have a full program of language lessons in the morning and political meetings in the evenings, where we meet with different organisations. There are also film screenings and different afternoon activities. Even our Spanish Language School is politically minded, with only women working there, and a very clear anti-discrimination policy. They also own a local handicraft shop and a local eco-tourism tour company. I will ask whether I can photograph there one day.

We will be meeting a lot of interesting organisations, working with different things, I mainly remember those concerning women's rights, but there are several others as well. 

On Sunday we leave our (lovely, internet-filled) hostel, to go into separate host families. 

Every day is more exciting than the last one! 

NICARAGUA

We're here! Yes! And we have some internet! Good stuff!

I present to you

Ingrid, Johanne, Julie, me, Mathilde in a tree, Gro Malene, Line, and Elise + Nadia in a tree

Here's hoping that my blog will go back to normal, although there will be a lot more sporadic posting once I get to the land of N. These are the girls I'm going with, aren't they wonderful? In ten days we will be wearing a lot less clothes, but hopefully similar smiles!

Old news

But in case someone reading this blog doesn't know me personally or have me on Facebook,

I'm going to Nicaragua, february-june 2013.

All the excite. I'm volunteering for an organization called LAG, and I'm going with eight other, wonderful girls. At the moment I'm at a two-week preparation course in Hamar near Oslo. All our days are filled with a mix of Spanish lessons and different presentations about political and historical issues of Nicaragua. I'm going to be in charge of photography - we all have different roles and tasks in our group.


There's been a lot to do and think and learn. I'm still working on it. I'm looking forward to an exciting and ridiculously challenging five months.

Sleep now.

Travel

Let's hope Tromsø looks like this in a month, when the sun is back.

I'm near Oslo on a course, and I have some very exciting plane tickets (finally) in my inbox, to share. I just need more than five minutes at a computer to tell you the story.