random happenings

So I´ve been trying to learn more about my host mom´s history. This is what I´ve got so far.

Eduviges (Edu for short) grew up in Managua. When she was 12, she went to a pueblo near Matagalpa to teach as part of the Literacy Crusade. I´m fairly certain she was the only one of her family to go. This was a voluntary program started by the Sandinistas shortly after the revolution against the Somoza dictatorship. The Crusade was so successful it won an award of some sort from the UN. And my mom was one of those teachers. When she was 12.

After that, her family began hosting American students when she was 16. At first her dad didn´t want students, as they represented imperialism, even though her mom was for the idea. At the last minute, one student had no place to stay, so after Edu said she was fine with the idea, the student moved in. Her dad didn´t talk to him for three days. Finally, he started making a bit of small talk, and learned the student was a farmer, just like he had been before living in Managua. It was magical after that.

And I have a vague idea of what she did afterwards. She lived somewhere not in Managua, working in a feminist organization to help women support themselves. This involved things like microcredit and sexual health, I belive.

After her parents died, she decided to come back to Managua--she had missed it. She opened her little convenience store and has been here for at least 4 years, in the same house her parents lived in. I think.

I´m beginning to see just how little I´m remembering what people tell me. I always understand my mother, I´m just not taking it in. This is rather frustrating.

This past weekend, I almost went to Omatepe, which is the island in the Nicaragua Lake. It was formed by two volcanoes and looks a bit like an hourglass. I was up at 4:30 in the morning, waiting for the rest of us who wanted to go, and as the minutes went by, it felt more and more like a bad idea. The group was fairly big, about 7 people, which usually makes for a frustrating time when it comes to decision making or hotel-room-renting. I had no idea what the plan was , and to make things worse, Ally´s host mom, who had decided to accompany us to the waiting place for some reason, said there weren´t taxis this early. So we had no way to get us to the bus stop. And we didn´t really know when the bus left anyway. So, I got the heebie jeebies and went back home.

I still don´t know what to think about that. Lately, whenever I go ahead and do something because I´m afraid I´ll regret it, I end up regretting that very decision. So on the one hand, I wish I had gone. On the other, I´m also sure I would not have enjoyed myself while there. Is that a self fulfilling prophecy? In this case I doubt it. There were too many factors that had been freaking me out. Still, it was a tough decision. But we have a three day weekend coming up, and I´m sure I can plan something out for that.

I´ve been thinking over my independent study project however, and I would like to work with coffee farmers. I know there´s a female cooperative somewhere, and I´d enjoy living there and researching the dynamics of the organization. But I´ll need to talk to Aynn, the academic director, for additional direction.

In other news, my spanish still sucks. Writing in english right now probably isn´t helping. But I´ll be at the UCA (the university) an hour early for additional time with my teacher, and I´ve got another wonderfully long week of spanish ahead of me. Wish me luck.