Ok here goes . . .
After almost a week of swanning round San Francisco eating, eating and er eating and doing a lot of walking, I have made it to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. The rainy season has just about ended though there is talk of a hurricane on the way which is currently battering about in the Carribbean. The Atlantic Coast absorbs most of the wind and we just get the torrential rain. But for now, the skies are blue and it is starting to get hot! There are basically 6 months of rains and six months of dry and we are at the start of the dry. Everything for now is very lush and green - a stark contrast to when I came here in April 2006 when the ground and vegetation was burnt and dry.
I am staying in one of the poorest areas of the city in Barrio Primavera down by the now poluted Lake Managua. At best, the houses are made of brick with a tin roof, but many are simply bit of iron / wood / cardboard slung together. Despite the poor housing, all the women and children are immacualtely turned out - the Nicaraguans pride themselves on being scrupulously clean.
I am staying with Paul and his extended family in a kind of little compound in the Barrio. It is a collection of fairly rickety buildings arranged around a dirt yard, with a few trees and plants. There are many chickens scratching around, a pig shed complete with 3 sows (?), a parrot, a duck, a rabbit and a couple of dogs who only get let off their leashes at night when they spend their time er um making babies. All the cooking, washing and cleaning is done outside in the yard where there is a constant flow of various cousins, aunties, grannies, children - still trying to work out how they all link up. I tried making a family tree yesterday until the branches got so entangled I couldnt read it!
My room is what used to be 'the office' and has been cleared out for me to sleep in and have some private space. It has brick walls to halfway and then is topped off with boards and a tin roof. Despite sleeping with a mosquito net and buttering up each evening with repellent, my feet, legs and ankles are already pickled with bites that drive me mad with scratching. I am trying to not look too closely into the dusty and cobwebbed recesses but I did have my first encounter with a spider last night.
Meals usually consist of some variation of beans, rice, potato, egg - yesterday I was treated to some fish! I am longing for something green to eat and have negotiated this morning that I will just have fruit for breakfast rather then the carb and protein heavy meal three times a day.
It has taken me this long to get to an internet Cafe as everything has been pretty much closed since I got here because of the elections for the Mayor. There were two parties putting forward candidates The Liberals (Conservative) and the FSLN (Socialists). The Socialist won and now the Liberals are rioting, there is a lot of violence in the streets and some people have been shot. But dont worry - this is in very concentrated areas and confined to the poltical activists. I feel quite safe as I am not involved, although I am sleeping with ear plugs in as all night people fire guns into the air and set off homemade mortars/fireworks. What with that and the bloody cockrel that thinks its morning all night!!???
Due to the global financial climate (i am told), there is no Ponies and Small Persons project in place as yet. I have been also advised to leave the money we raised in a British bank (how safe!) until the pound strengthens against the dollar. So it doesnt look like I'll be doing much direct, hands on stuff this time around but what we are doing is setting up meetings with various people to talk about viability and logistics. We talked to an American lady who lives here and has several horses who we will visit in due course. She gave us some contacts and some further understanding of Nicaraguan attitudes towards animals. She advised that the best approach in terms of trying to get horse owners to look after their animals was to think of them like a car - the more you maintain and look after it, the longer it will last. Yesterday we had a meeting with a guy who has a link with the street kids and tommorrow we are going to visit some possible land outside the city that we can keep the horses on. So things are getting off the ground but like everything in this continent, slowly.
On the theatre side of things . . .
There is a community theatre group in the next Barrio who have recently produced a piece on Sexual Abuse and young children, unfortunately I missed the performance in our yard just before I arrived, but I hope to meet up with them. I have spent most of the afternoons so far doing gymnastics, acrobatics and drama games with the kids that hang about the yard. Tonight we are billed to do a grand acrobatic presentation! Its diificult but interesting trying to communicate the rules of a game in very broken spanish and a lot of gesticulating, but they are getting the idea and they absolutely love it! Most of the kids get very little attention from their parents so an adult who is prepared to grub about in the dirt with them is a total delight. They hang about my door exclaiiming 'ejercicios! ejercicios!'. My hope is that I can get these kids up to speed on some games etc and then we'll hold a larger drama workshop for the rest of the kids in the Barrio. A couple of the older ones will definately make good assistant leaders! I am also going to a school tommorrow to talk about doing workshops there - possibly with an environmental theme.
I think that's all for now, I'll try and keep this up to date whenever I can get to a computer. Will also attempt to post up some photos. Would love to hear what's going on with y'all.
Love Eleanor x
