I READ therefore, I am.

First group of trainees.

Mary is the principal of the VERBO schools in Puerto Cabezas and has agreed to partner with me to launch and manage the adult literacy and life skills classes. Mary will ultimately take full responsibility for the management of these classes once our time in Nicaragua is complete. I had the opportunity to meet with Mary this past Monday to get to know her and to plan out the next steps.

Mary shared with me that she has a Masters in Education and that she spent 10 years in Guatemala as a school teacher but did not like it in the beginning. As time passed she became more comfortable with teaching and developed a love for the profession. Last year Mary became the principal of the VERBO schools in Port. When Mary described her passion for teaching and how excited she was to be a part of this program, her eyes would well up with tears.  I am so excited to be working with Mary as she shares the vision of the program and is determined to do her best to make it a success.

Last Tuesday, Dustin and I held a short meeting with Mary and a handful of the literacy facilitators that participated in the training this time last year. Some time has passed since the training and we wanted to remind them of the vision and to motivate and encourage them as well as letting them know what to expect over the next few months. There are four new people who want to become facilitators and Mary would like to find a few more. We are going to hold another training session at the end of October. We will also be holding a refresher meeting for the currently trained facilitators to review how to teach the curriculum and to discuss the next step of gathering students from the community.

Mary and I met again today so I could get her up to speed on the training materials and how to use the curriculum. The next step is to see if we can get a few more people interested in facilitating classes and to get ready for our 4-day training session in October!

Below are a few pictures from the previous training.

Let's get this party started!

Dustin and I have been in Port for a few days now and trying to get settled in. Dustin, Austin, Johnny, and I drove roughly 250 miles from Managua to Puerto Cabezas with one overnight stop in Rosita. Most of the road was unpaved and either a mixture of dirt and rocks, gravel, or dirt riddled with holes of various sizes. This was my first time traveling to Port by car and I new it would be a rough road but was hopeful that maybe it was recently grated. That wasn’t the case. The constant bouncing around from side to side wasn’t a match for the Dramamine but my neck was a different story. I did enjoy the beautiful landscape throughout the trip. Since it’s the rainy season, everything was lush and green. 

Now that we are here, we are trying to get as much accomplished before we return to the US in October for week. Earl is back in Port and we are ready to get things rocking again! Mary is the principal of the VERBO school and will the be person responsible for overseeing the literacy classes once they are up and running. She is very passionate about the program and is extremely eager to start. We’ll be getting together with the teachers in the coming week and setting up our plans to get the ball rolling. I’m looking forward to working with her and getting to know her more.  

Dustin recently visited the farm in Batania that is being managed by college student Austin Fricker. Here is a link to video clip from his visit to the farm and a link to Austin’s blog. we drove past Betania on our way to Port and it’s exciting to see the visual changes in the community since the first time I was there several years ago and after Hurricane Felix in 2007. All the new houses that were built after the Hurricane by CFC and other partners, are painted and looking good. 

It’s been a year since I’ve been here because I did not go on the usual Spring Break trip. One of the first kids from the orphanage that I saw was Chanoi. Chanoi and his sister Seraina are some of the first children who quickly found a secure spot in my heart. I’ve watched them grow over the last five years. As I was walking over to the guest house, I spotted Chanoi in the distance but had to take my glasses off because I wasn’t sure if it was really him. He’s taller, his face has matured and he greeted me very politely. Long gone are the days of him hanging from my neck and drawing me multiple pictures. But it made me happy to see him and know that he’s been a part of my life for this long and that I don’t plan on that changing any time soon.

Chanoi and me in 2009

House near river bank in Wawa Boom

Austin and Dustin waiting to board the river barge.

Here we go!

View from our place in Granada after a storm.

Dustin and I will be driving to Puerto Cabezas this Thursday once Pastor Earl and Austin Fricker return from their long drive from Virginia. (They are driving back two vehicles that were donated to Pastor Earl.) The drive from coast to coast is about 14 hours across with some rough terrain. It’ll be my first time making the drive but I’m glad I’ll probably only have to do it once. I am looking forward to getting to Puerto Cabezas so I can get to work on starting up the Literacy and Life Skills program with the school principal, Mary. The classes will be held in Port and the nearby village of Betania. I also can’t wait to see the kids in the orphanage. Since I did not go on the spring break trip this year, it has been over a year since I’ve seen them. 

The plans for starting the Literacy program in Nueva Vida (as an ONET initiative)  is underway. I met with Pastor Berman to discuss specifics about the people interested in being the teachers as well as planning the future training sessions.  So far, we have a small handful of people interested but I was told that eight other churches are definitely interested in starting this program so the potential is high. Training is targeted for late November/early December with classes to start in January. 

Another ONET initiative that I’ve been tasked with is to meet with the volunteer teachers in Nueva Vida who teach English to the teens in the youth groups. I will be coaching them on teaching strategies and practices but will mostly focus on creating benchmarks and assessments to accurately track the progress of the students so they will be ready to take the English proficiency test at the university which will open up opportunities for future employment.

After six weeks of language school, my mind is a soupy mix of spanish words that need to get themselves in order. I have not had a huge amount of practice since school let out except for small talk and placing food orders. I have also been practicing listening to other natives speak. If everyone spoke as clear as my teacher, then I’d be set. But, they don’t so I need to practice listening as well as speaking.

I really enjoyed our time in Granada while we were in school. We took advantage of our surroundings on the weekends since Granada is a tourist town. My friend Jen came to visit over a long weekend and we had a lot of fun roaming around Granada and seeing what else it had to offer. One outing was driving up Mombacho Volcano which has a cloud forest at the top. The drive up was an adventure in of itself. We had to drive up a very steep one way road with sharp switchbacks but the road was surrounded by beautiful foliage. At the top we took a walking tour to one of the two craters and we were fortunate enough to arrive when the clouds broke so we could see the town and the islands in the lake below. Just the day before, we took a small boat around the islands in the lake which were formed when the volcano blew it’s top many years ago. There are 365 islands in lake that vary in size and are occupied by mostly personal homes (and one small island with just a few monkeys).

One of the monkeys we saw on Monkey Island.

We took a short vacation to San Juan del Sur before heading to Managua. We relaxed at several different beaches and Dustin took surfing lessons. Dustin was bit by the surfing bug so I’m sure there will be some future weekend trips when we are working on the west coast. 

Sunset in San Juan del Sur