Living

 Where we live now (since 2005)

 Where my dad grew up (in the early 60s)

 house built by my granddad, here with my dad last Wednesday

Insulation? Pah. We're only in the Arctic, after all.

I've been talking with a lot of people about the differences between Norway and Nicaragua. 

When I talk about handwashing of clothes, earning most of your living through farming and fishing , depending on the crop being good, but also making popsicles out of squash in plastic bags, most people in or around their 50s here in Tromsø say: "But that's like when I was little! I remember that!" My grandmother, who's 86, remembers every detail of a life that she lived fifty years ago, and I lived part of it only two or three months ago.

And I realise how much life in Norway has changed the past fifty to sixty years. How much wealth has changed where we live, how we live and what we live off.

I also see it every day in the charity shop I've been volunteering in, what ridiculous amounts of stuff we buy and throw away before it's hardly been used. The shop has recently expanded, but hasn't got enough room for everything people bring. And we're not seeing what goes to the other charity shops or what people throw away. What goes out - what people are willing to buy second hand - is a lot less than what comes in - what they're willing to get rid of. Completely new and unused clothes with the tag on. This bothered me three years ago as well, when I worked for another charity shop, but now I can see the difference. It's not just Norway fifty years ago and Norway now, it's Norway now and Nicaragua being now what Norway was fifty years ago.

A weekend holiday

 sleeping on a rock by the sea just beneath our house

at the veranda, reading political books all day

Man, you learn to care for the weather when you live in the North. In Nicaragua, noone has a thermometer, as everyone knows it will be sunny and about 30 degrees every day. In Tromsø, you can get a weather report by talking to anyone on the street. This weekend has been glorious, which means about 16-20 degrees, sunny and only slightly windy. If you hide on rocks and behind the wall of a house, you get all the sun, none of the wind, and a surprising tan. Photos (unedited) from my phone camera, because I've (again) been far too busy being outside to edit photos. 

My only excuse is that I have been reading political books from the 60s and 70s concerning industry and indigenous rights in the North, which happens to be useful for my follow-up work on Nicaragua here in Norway.

You know you're Norwegian when

(near Kvaløyvågen, Tuesday 23rd July)

you can't stay inside if the sun comes out. Even after Nicaragua, getting plenty of sun, I'm a very Norwegian Norwegian.

On Tuesday, seeing how warm it was outside after work, I cancelled my swimming and went to Kvaløyvågen with my dad instead and had a tiny barbecue. On Wednesday, we went to Skarsfjord on Ringvassøya, where my dad grew up. On Thursday, my gran came over for dinner and tea on the patio. Friday, we also had dinner outside and stayed out long afterwards. Today, I was supposed to clean and tidy my room for the first time since I left in January (and I didn't do it very thoroughly back then). 

But there was sunshine! So instead, I sat outside reading, I went to the beach, I had a swim (medal for swimming in Arctic Sea, please), Christine came over and we went out driving in her dad's convertible and took lots of photos and now it's late and sleepytimes and the sun is still up.

Photos will come, unless there happens to be lots of sunny weather the following days...

Svalbard III

 On Friday we went on a five hour return boat trip to the Bore glacier

 The black bit to the left is also part of the glacier - old, old ice and snow

 Look a glacier, let's hope it doesn't calve

 Seriously close, this isn't a zoom lens, it's 50mm

 LOOK, icebergs... wait... sheets? Flakes? Bits of ice! In the sea!

Proof that there were people with me, that is, my mum

As you may have noticed, about 90 % of my photos were taken on Friday, and about 85 % of my photos were taken on Friday on the boat trip. I've photographed both my mum and my brother, but neither of them liked the result, so you don't get to see that.

We went on this one boat trip. The rest of the time, we got up late, listened to music, drank tea, did some Svalbard-shopping, ate lots of good food, lunched with my brother, and went out with him in the evenings, testing Svalbard night-life (yes, our mum as well) and enjoying the brilliantly bright nights at 78 degrees north. Tromsø is, after all, located at only 69 degrees north. Falmouth is about 50, as far as I can tell.

Anyway. There should also be photos of tea and food and people and good times, but laziness and not bringing cameras and unwilling subjects leads to lots of glacier exposure.

Idag

føles som en vanlig dag. Av og til kommer jeg på at det ikke er det. Men så fortsetter vanligheten. Kanskje det burde være sånn. Jeg vet ikke. Alt er jo egentlig trist idag. Det vet jeg.

Svalbard II

 As we flew in over Svalbard, I tried to resist taking one million photos, only partially succeeding

 And when we went on a boat trip, even less success

Because everything is stunning, one way or another

There are no trees. The little vegetation there is, exists in ditches and marshes. The wind is cold, the rain even colder, and a "bloody hot day" (quote: Tore Johansen, my brother) equals ten degrees and sunshine. Svalbard (although I only went to Longyearbyen) makes Tromsø look like the Caribbean.

It's still stunning, fascinating, and spellbinding. I could live there maybe six months or a year. I think. But now I'm back in mild, warm, verdant Tromsø (I'd like you to know we have thirteen degrees today, and no wind), I understand that in reality, I'm not living in the cold, either dark or everlight north. My brother is.

Svalbard

Glacier seen from afar, fjord and mountains and all around it

I did mention I was going there? Just came back today, far too many photos of glaciers, mountains and fjords to be edited, will write more tomorrow. Have more important things to do now, i.e. watching North & South with my mum.

Family visit

 Andreas, with a pacifier that says "the best Volvo in the world"

 Dina, dancing in circles

 She's too camera conscious to get any other photos than motion ones

 Or bathing ones

Andreas on the other hand, is always ready. Or just completely unaware.

I love my family. That's all.

Then Julie arrived

 Julie became a tourist after she didn't reach Riddu (that's Tromsø in the background)

 So we took the cable car up the mountain (because we were lazy and tired) and down again

 Then had dinner with the media girls, here Ida and Cathrine

 Here, me with slightly tired and bloodshot eyes

And Julie is happy about the midnight sun again (this is about 00:15)

We also went to a midnight concert in the Arctic Cathedral (which is not a cathedral but oh well), Julie came to visit me at work and bought books and a hat in the second hand shop, she claims to have visited several museums while I was working, and we had some good meals with my family as well. We went out to Verdensteatret and Blårock, saw the midnight sun and the midnight clouds (when the sun was missing), and I believe a good time was had by all.

Here, people, visit me. Look, it's pretty, and we have nature and stuff.

Riddu Riđđu

 Dance by the Marewrew group and Oki Dub Ainu Band, all Ainu people of Japan

 Dad keeping the stand/stall for me

 A band (not exactly sure) rapping in saami (I think), photo: John Harald Johansen

People, children, lots of warm and rainproof clothes

So, last week, in between working 6 hours daily at the second hand shop (still volunteering), I was trying to prepare a stand for the organization I went to Nicaragua with, LAG, at the Riddu Riđđu-festival in Kåfjord.  This included getting a tent to cover us from the North Norwegian summer, a video projector, a laptop, getting a shop to sponsor us with fruit and collecting as many photos as possible and making three Powerpoint-presentations with the correct facts about Nicaragua's indigenous people. 

Everything was ready, I'd finished two of my three planned presentations. My friend Julie (who was also in Nicaragua) was coming up from Haugesund to help out with the stand, she would arrive Friday at 11:55 pm, we would drive at 7:00 am the next day to get to the festival at 9:00. 

Instead, she called me Friday night, supposed to be in Oslo, but stuck in Haugesund because of fog. After a lot of searching on airline websites (thank you mum), we realised she wouldn't be here until 2:30 pm the next day, and there was no way she would get to the festival in time. Then my dad came and saved the day, just as I was falling slowly to pieces after too little sleep and too much work getting everything ready for the festival. He drove with me, two hours each way, helped me set up everything, went and bought a knife when I had watermelons and pineapples and nothing else, and stayed there all day as moral and physical support while I talked to people and tried to convince them that I wasn't selling fruit.

Meanwhile, my mum went on the bus to town and picked up Julie and took her home on the same bus, fed her and gave her wine, so when we returned after fourteen hours, they were matey and happy, and they fed us as well, and we all went to bed fairly tired.

OH,

and Riddu Riđđu is a really amazing indigenous peoples festival, only two hours away from Tromsø. I wish I'd gotten to talk to more of the visiting artists, from Guatemala and Japan and New Zealand and lots more. Read more here and on their website (in English).

Time

Julie, very happy about seeing the midnight sun, the last day of her visit

I've been editing photos today, so there will shortly be an update on what I've actually been doing. I've been keeping fairly busy the past week(s). This week I also had a visit from the Haugesund area (south), Julie, who left yesterday. Now I'm visiting my sister and my niece and my new nephew, getting even more photos to edit. Friday I'm going to Svalbard to visit my brother. Family time!

Movika

 View of Tromsø, looking south. The city is on the island to the right

 Kvaløya, looking west(ish)

Yesterday, Saturday, I went up one mountain with Christine. Today was Sunday though, and as all Norwegians know, if it's a Sunday, and the weather isn't too bad, you need to go on a Sunday Hike/Trip, preferably with your family.

So my parents and I drove to Movika, about half an hour from our house, walked forty-five minutes to the top of a hill, absorbed the marvellous view, and walked down again.

Pretty, eh?

One week in Norway

Hillesøy, Monday 1st July

Eating all the Norwegian food

Meeting all the people, family and otherwise

Going camping on Hillesøy

Drinking tea

Making chocolate fondants

Drinking tea

Going to a midnight concert in the church

Drinking tea

Having my first working day as a volunteer at a second hand shop in Tromsø

Drinking tea

Cleaning my room

Drinking tea

Sleeping and waking at weird hours

Drinking tea

Being an adult who pays her bills

Drinking more tea

Pretty much sums it up

Andreas again

Sunniva and Andreas, photo: Anna Victoria Johansen

This is from our first meeting on Thursday. We get along well. He's a chubby, quiet little person, who fell asleep to Usher while I was rocking him in an armchair.

I do have plans now that I am home. I also have more photos and stories from my last days in Nicaragua, and my first days here. It will come. At the moment I am enjoying seeing people, and also enjoying the midnight sun while being confused by it, especially combined with jetlag and very transparent curtains. 

NORWAY

I'm home,
I've met my new nephew Andreas (bottom) and danced with my niece Dina. I've met pretty much the entire family on my dad's side, and gone to town and met my friends. I'm a little behind on everything that has to do with computers and communications that way, but it's coming along.

Travel

Waves in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, Christmas 2012

(could also be El Bluff, Bluefields or San Juan del Sur or Port Limón, Costa Rica (every place but San Juan is the Atlantic))

According to plan, I should now be somewhere in the air over this same sea. All fingers crossed for no delayed flights out of the four I'll be taking: 

• Managua-Panama
• Panama-Amsterdam
• Amsterdam-Oslo
• Oslo-Tromsø
  
  

Om nom

Just about to leave this

but I'm going home to a much healthier food culture in general, and a healthier style of living, with less deep-fried everything, less starchy starch foods and fewer oh-but-you-must-finish-your-plate meals.

I wish I could go and stay at the same time, why can't I? 

All my clothes

My grand amount of clothes in San Juan del Sur, June 3rd

is now greatly diminished

as I've left pieces here and there

Costa Rica

 Look, I'm in England!

 OH WAIT I just went to the Caribbean

Where I had a smoothie, that's all

After San Juan del Sur, I took the bus to San José in Costa Rica. There, I stayed with Gaby and her family, people I'd never met before, but who took very good care of me. It was almost English/Norwegian temperatures there, I got lulled into the safe family setting, and did almost nothing the first six days I was there. Oh, I had cake and tea and met family members and had ice cream and played Rummikub and tried to learn Gin Rummy and failed, but it wasn't quite what I'd imagined when I went to Costa Rica.

I also did manage to get a cold due the climate change, and am now dreading to go home to Tromsø. Last Sunday I'd decided it was enough, and I took a bus down to Port Limón on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and languished there three days, sleeping twelve hours a night, drinking six liters of water altogether and waking in the night from my cough. I also had at least one smoothie daily, looked at beaches, had coconut water, coconut bread, and talked to random people I met.

After the Caribbean had cured my cold (well, almost. Kind of) I went back to my new family in San José, spent too much time inside, editing photos and watching Spanish-dubbed films, went to a brilliant museum and watched a play of Pinocchio with Gaby, before I ran back to Nicaragua, and am now in Granada. 

Bosawas/Musawas

And then, more about this place I mentioned weeks ago.

One Sunday in May, after the longest bus ride in history, one night of sleeping in a parking lot, one night of sleeping three in one bed, and plenty of long meetings, we walked three hours into the woods and up the mountains in this beautiful natural reserve of Bosawás, to the village of Musawas, where the indigenous Mayangna live. We were supposed to have a meeting with the village, or with one board, or with another, and we spent two hours listening to them discussing in Mayangna about whether we were allowed to have a meeting, and with whom, and why we were even there.

They said they are now sceptical of people coming from outside to "help", because they have several experiences with those who come, appropriate their culture, and run back home to earn money off what they've learnt.

We ended up taking the meeting outside, because apparently our previous agreement wasn't official enough to have a village meeting in the village hall. We split into two groups: one sat around members from the Territorial government, the other around those from the local council (unless I am confusing all these councils again). I was with the territorial government.

Both groups could tell us that yes, they had problems. Mestizoes from the west and south were moving into the reserve, cutting down far too much wood, working for profit rather than survival, and not respecting that it was a reserve, that the indigenous people had the right to use the forest as they had traditionally, but noone else should come and ruin nature. The territorial government people were quick to point out though, that they had done something to prevent it. That the state was completely on their side, all they needed was a little time and these migrants would be kicked out. No problems here. - "But we heard there was an assassination of the past president for the territorial government?" - "NO. Accident. Accident, it was."

Certainly. The people in the other group said clearly that the former president had been killed. Two very different versions. They were also clear about the fact that they do actually have problems, people are still cutting down rain forest, and it's not going to go away just like that. I'm sadly going to believe the most pessimistic view of this last group, which some of the girls got to hear while the rest of us were sat discussing problems with people who claimed not to have any.

Taking the bus from Port Limón to San José

upstairs in a double-decker bus

I saw a sign, and thought "what? I'm in a national park? We're driving through a national park? That's cool. I like being surrounded by trees, they're nice things to be surrounded by" and then thought "we're driving through a national park". For miles and miles, with heavy transport ahead and behind us.

Costa Rica is seen as a very environmentally forward country. At least 25 % of its area is protected land. The greenest country in the world.

And I realised I had to update my knowledge about the term national park. Even so, this definition seems to suggest that you shouldn't make one of the main roads between the coast and the capital straight through a national park:

"In 1969 the IUCN declared a national park to be a relatively large area the following defining characteristics:

One or several ecosystems not materially altered by human exploitation and occupation, where plant and animal species, geomorphological sites and habitats are of special scientific, educative, and recreative interest or which contain a natural landscape of great beauty;

Highest competent authority of the country has taken steps to prevent or eliminate exploitation or occupation as soon as possible in the whole area and to effectively enforce the respect of ecological, geomorphological, or aesthetic features which have led to its establishment;

and Visitors are allowed to enter, under special conditions, for inspirational, educative, cultural, and recreative purposes."  Wikipedia (my friend)

But then again, there are so many different guidelines and terms and different levels of protection and what not, so I'm not sure. I'm still learning a lot about reserves and the like - such as how a preservation act can harm the lives of the people living there, more often than not indigenous groups who just want to chop their firewood and build their houses in the areas.

This is what I look like when I pretend like I don't have a cold

for those who wondered

and I haven't taken the bother to edit photos for you - Costa Rica is nice and green, but I am lazy and sick, so, well. Sorry. Will come after a while though!

In one week I will hopefully be on my way, at least I will be at the airport right about now.

Let's see if this works

I've been a bit ill the past week, it appears the "cold" and "dry" weather of Costa Rica (or at least San José) has defeated me - it is after all only 24-25 degrees here, and the air is a lot drier than at the Caribbean coast. I haven't been able to do all I wanted to do, and I miss home more and more every day, as I'm making plans to have coffee and cakes with my family, meet my new nephew Andreas, and eat all the Norwegian food I can manage.

So here's a video I took with my rubbish phone camera in January, where I'm trying to convince Dina to show me how tall she is.

Costa Rica

*this might be from the Spanish School in Matagalpa, but at least it's green

I'm here, I'm here. I'm in another country. I'm staying in San José, the capital, as of now, with Gaby, a friend of my friend Juan, who studied with her here, and now studies in Tromsø. I'd never met Gaby before yesterday. She is lovely, her family is lovely, and when they all speak Costa Rican Spanish rapidly with each other, I can't understand a thing. All my plans are slightly vague, but I'm certain that I will Do Stuff and Meet People and See Things. More to come!

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

is where I've been staying the past week,
staying with a family in a homestay,
taking three hours of Spanish five of these days,
reading the nine hundred pages of Shantaram,
going to at least one beach daily,
swimming several days,
going out with my new, maybe temporary, friends, three nights,
taking one photo each day,

and hardly looking at a computer, not having wifi, and only borrowing the school computer or paying 20 cordobas per hour at an internet cafe to write messages to my family and friends.

Tomorrow, Monday, I have a bus ticket for San José, Costa Rica, and then we will see.

All the parties

 Started last Saturday, 24th May, with a parade in Bluefields

 With old misses

 young misses

 young gentlemen

and old ladies, all dancing through the streets

We took breaks from working (and we worked hard) with the information work we'll be doing, writing articles and publishing stories from our experiences, by going out in the streets to watch parades and meet people. We met friends of friends, were invited to concerts, saw Miss Bluefields in the park, made rondon (local dish) and had another concert with our new friends, had a goodbye dinner and went out to see another parade and went to another concert and went out dancing again, then went home to sleep two or three hours before catching the morning panga on Saturday. We left Bluefields. We left Rama. We left RAAS, the region. We arrived in Managua, and left that too. Now we've been one day in Granada, seeing things and jumping off boats, and tomorrow I'm going to San Juan del Sur, all on my own, leaving the other girls completely behind for the first time since January 2013.

Adventure. And stuff.