Livin la vida en español-a

One of the main reasons Aaron wanted to move to Nicaragua for his yearlong sabbatical was to get his Spanish to a higher level. After taking Spanish classes from Kindergarten through college, Aaron has a solid intermediate level of Spanish that requires immersion to get better. Having been in a similar situation before going to Guatemala with Peace Corps, and noticing how my Spanish has been atrophying from lack of use these past few years, I was also all for going to a Spanish speaking country for a year of immersion. We were going to Nicaragua to get fluent with Spanish!

A month and a half in, neither of us has noticed much of a difference. Which is interesting: why aren't we getting better at Spanish? Besides regular transactional exchanges at the market or the store, our need for expressing higher-level thoughts in Spanish is actually pretty limited. Almost daily, I indulge my obsession with the election by reading multiple news sites in English, I job search in English, I talk to Aaron in English, and I listen to podcasts in English. Aaron reads and writes for his research in English, talks to me in English, and recreationally reads in English. Sure, we go to the market or talk to the people who take care of the property we live on, and I go to a local library and read children's books in Spanish and talk to the librarians, but the percentage of time spent thinking in Spanish is relatively low.

Socially, most people we meet who have time and interest in socializing are English speaking ex pat Americans (and one Israeli couple!), many of whom speak next to no Spanish, and who at the very least prefer to speak English. While we are not interested in only hanging out with Americans and are not attending their weekly happy hours, we have made friends with a few and the social interaction and insider tips for where to find things like lettuce are much appreciated. Integrating into a community takes time, as I learned in Peace Corps, but Aaron and I only have eight months left, so what to do?

Slowly, we've been making adjustments. I convinced Aaron to start watching a telenovela with me (for immersion's sake only!) and we have started watching Spanish language movies with Spanish subtitles so we are both reading and hearing Spanish. We both are using Duolingo to practice our Spanish skills and I have read a few books in Spanish and Aaron just started his first. This week Aaron also began working with a Spanish tutor (recommended by an ex pat!) a few times a week. As good as these little changes make us feel, we know that to get really fluent these small changes are just not enough. We'd like to be bilingual and raise bilingual children in the future, and staying comfortable in a predominantly English mindset does not serve that purpose.

And so, a few days ago, Aaron and I decided that we would only speak Spanish to each other. The exception to this rule is if we hang out with people who prefer to speak English and if/when I stab myself with a knife (I did this with a coconut, my hand is fine, Aaron stuck to Spanish, I did not). So far, we haven't spoken in three days...just kidding. It has been surprisingly frustrating to want to express more complicated thoughts or emotions and to feel limited in my ability to say them, and I am the more fluent of the two of us. This frustration reminds me of my first days in Peace Corps, when I felt isolated by my inability to fully express myself, but it also gives me some hope that my overwhelming love of talking will take over, as it did in Guatemala, and that I will get back to the relative fluidity I got to in speaking while there. As artificial as this rule seems, which is probably part of the frustration (it would be so much easier to just speak in English!), it is meant to help us achieve a larger goal and so, I am committing to it with hope and compassion for how hard language acquisition can be. And now, to watch my telenovela...

Eating in Granada

In the month and change that we've been in Nicaragua, Aaron and I have fallen into a routine of mostly eating at home, experimenting with some new fruits and vegetables, and running fermentation projects in our kitchen. While not as interesting as starting a business or traveling, food is something we think about multiple times a day and have plenty of time to dedicate to, so I figure our consumption merits a blog post.

Aaron and I do most of our shopping at the market in Granada. This market is a permanent fixture that outgrew an old building and extends across several city blocks with corrugated tin roofing and narrow alleys with food vendors on both sides. The market is ugly and dirty, and gets fumigated weekly when all the food is out. That said, it has all sorts of produce, and for prices that cannot be beat. Salespeople are personable, asking que le doy, amor? (what can I give you, love?), and we have been buying a bit of everything. All sorts of tropical fruit grow in Nicaragua and are thus super-affordable and delicious. Dragon fruit, passion fruit, papaya, coconut, pineapple, mango, all sorts of bananas, and bread fruit - its all here. We've been taking advantage of the fruit abundance to make smoothies daily and Aaron has started making homemade coconut milk with mature coconuts, a hammer, a strainer, and a blender.

 Aaron with some Breadfruit

Additionally, we've taken advantage of the heat to make a bunch of fermented foods. After finding expensive Kombucha in a cafe, I decided now was a good time to start making my own. It has been pretty seamless, and thanks to the heat we get a new batch of fermented kombucha every six days - keeping us with a weekly supply. Aaron's fermentation itch is being scratched with three different batches of fermenting cabbage, and he's already making a second batch of pineapple vinegar.

 Fermenting cabbage, pineapple vineager, kombucha

The one fermentation mishap we have had so far involved yeast - our challah dough exploded after we left it unattended a little too long - and the bread barely fit in the oven, but it still tasted good.

 

Dough-pocalypse

  

One of two oversized challahs

To change things up this past week and get a break from cabbage, Aaron and I took our first trip to Las Isletas with an ex pat Oakland couple we met to have a fancy Nicaraguan dinner. The island we went to, El Espino, is a private eco-lodge resort owned by a brother and sister from the Bay Area. It has the best hostess/manager I've ever met at any hotel, ridiculous views of Mombacho, and an extremely talented chef.  Our Oakland friends, a retired caterer and his wife, had eaten dinner at El Espino before and called ahead to put in dinner requests, and off we went. 

After a short drive to a port, we took a 10 minute boat ride to El Espino, passing many little islands. Some islands have ridiculous mansions, others have shacks where island-people (that is what they are called, they are regular Nicaraguans who happen to live on small islands) live. When we arrived on the island, we were greeted with ginger-rosa-de-jamaica iced tea, and beautiful views of the neighboring islands and Mombacho.

 Just arrived in El Espino, with another two small islands in the background. Apparently, you can purchase an island for cheap these days - a mother and daughter purchased a neighboring island with forty people on it for half-off! The people had outgrown the island and used the money to move to the mainland.

The island is an oasis of calm and a bit cooler than Granada thanks to the breeze off of the lake. We walked around the island and enjoyed the sunset before dinner with the hotel guests.

 Sunset on El Espino

I had ordered a traditional meal and was given chicken cornmeal dumpling soup (tasty...and heavy), Aaron ate ribs, and most of our companions for dinner ate fish that was caught and killed right before we sat down. Sadly, I inhaled dinner without any thought to documenting it, so no food envy photos to post, but it was definitely one of the better meals we have had since arriving in Nicaragua with all local ingredients and a tasty home-made raw chocolate dessert.

 Getting ready for dinner, Saskia our hostess at the head of the table

I left El Espino with inspiration for new dishes to try at home (squash and soup for the fall!), and a newfound appreciation for the flavors of traditional Nicaraguan cooking. Next on my agenda: get Aaron an internship with El Espino's chef:-D

Agroforestry in Carazo

Carazo is a small, centrally located department in Nicaragua, most famous for being the first place where coffee was cultivated in the country in the 1800s. Due to climate and economic changes over the years, Carazo's coffee farmers are no longer able to make a living from the coffee harvest. Rainfall in Carazo has dropped sharply, increasing the incidence of pests and diseases like coffee rust, and thus leading to reduced harvests. Free trade zones in and near Carazo have also created many factory jobs, and immigration to the United States and Costa Rica has reduced the population with some of its most entrepreneurial citizens going elsewhere to make their fortunes. Farmers unable to make ends meet with their coffee plantations have few choices: struggle through hard years and hope for a better future, switch to grow subsistence crops of maize and beans, or cut down trees for cattle grazing to get immediate income. The risk of deforestation and environmental damage is very high, and figuring out a way to keep agroforestry financially viable is necessary.

Over years of coming down to Nicaragua with groups of students, Aaron has made friends with an American living here for over 20 years, Jefferson, who owns a medium-sized coffee farm in Carazo. His farm, Bosques de Gaia (Gaia Estate in English), is as affected as the rest of the farmers in the region with reduced crop yield and economic incentive to do something else with his land. An entrepreneur and environmentalist, Jefferson is committed to making farming viable in Carazo, and over the past year he and Aaron have been brainstorming and working on a plan to address the environmental and economic challenges the farm and Carazo at large are facing.

Jefferson's Farm, Bosques de Gaia

The solution that they've come up with is a social enterprise to diversify the crops that are grown on coffee farms, growing additional crops that need the shade to flourish, ensuring that wholesale cutting of trees does not take place and that farmers make better income off of their land. Along with improving our Spanish and eating tropical fruits daily, a big reason why Aaron and I came to Nicaragua for this yearlong sabbatical is to help launch the business. 

For the past few years, Jefferson has started diversifying his farm - growing turmeric and vanilla - along with coffee, making his farm a testing ground for additional viable crops.

Turmeric Fields forever 

After much discussion and research, we decided that vanilla is the crop we'll focus on for our social enterprise since it is a high value commodity, has very limited production worldwide, grows well in the climate found in Nicaragua, needs two levels of shade cover to thrive, and a supply chain in Nicaragua does not yet exist. Using Bosques de Gaia as a model farm, the social enterprise will support farmers with supply and technical assistance to get vanilla growing on their farms, purchase green vanilla beans once they are harvested, and process them for export. Establishing a vanilla supply chain in Nicaragua has challenges: the vines do not produce vanilla pods until the third year, they are very work-intensive, and require a lot of upfront expenditures and technical assistance. With that said, climate change has already exacted a toll on the environment and economic income of farmers, and vanilla poses a great opportunity to address both those issues, staying the course is just not a viable alternative. 

Chico, the Bosques de Gaia Farm Manager, with a vanilla vine

Over the past few weeks, we have been working through the logistics of getting the business established and off the ground, and we will continue to do so over the year while we are here. One part of getting the business established is finding partners to work with, and we have been very fortunate to get in touch with a group of organizations working together on a project called Carazo Sostenible (Sustainable Carazo). The group includes leaders of the Farmers and Cattlemen's Union, an international organization called Fundacion Avina, and a local nonprofit in Carazo called FundeNatura, started by a man named Sergio who you'll learn more about shortly. This group of leaders is working on a comprehensive plan to make Carazo a more sustainable department - working with political leaders at the local, state, and national level; national and international businesses, and farmers - to improve the social, economic, and environmental opportunities and outcomes in the department. Our plan, to create a new supply chain of a highly valuable crop that protects the environment in Carazo, aligns with their interests, so we have been talking with them about becoming a partner in their program.

Jefferson and Aaron with leaders of Carazo Sostenible, other entrepreneurs, and dogs

I think the most interesting person involved in this project, is a 65 year old named Sergio Baltodano whose family owned huge coffee plantations in and around Carazo - the landed gentry of Nicaragua, if you will. After spending a few weeks getting familiar with Nicaraguan history, meeting someone who’s life story is closely tied to the history of the country, has really blown my mind. In 1979, when the Sandinista Revolution succeeded in Nicaragua, Sergio and his eleven siblings all left Nicaragua for New Orleans. While his family remains in the USA, Sergio came back to Nicaragua in 1990 (probably after the elections that brought Violeta Chamorro, a US backed opposition candidate to power after 11 years of Sandinista rule).  In the eleven years that he had been gone, all of his family's property had been confiscated by the state under rules of "absenteeism" and redistributed to others. One piece of property that was a mixed forest was leveled and made into the headquarters of an ill-advised project the Sandinistas implemented called CONARCA, in which all shade grown coffee trees were cut down to get rid of coffee rust. In 1990, Sergio came back avowedly apolitical and set about repurchasing his family’s land that was lost to begin reestablishing the coffee plantations that had been decimated. This attempt to re-establish a family farm would be an OK story, but Sergio has a bigger vision – re-establishing Carazo as a cultural and economic powerhouse as it once was in Nicaragua. He is an almanac with data about how climate change and poor land stewardship have led to Carazo's environmental degradation and consequent economic decline. Sergio is committed to improving his community and has huge plans to get all students into environmental education classes, replant land that has lain fallow for years, and get people to go back to the land – a vision he is tireless in promoting. Sergio's dedication to Carazo and the environment, his soliloquies about the history of Carazo (kind of like the dad from my Big Fat Greek Wedding, all good things in Nicaragua are originally from Carazo), and his big ideas to address the many problems facing the community make him my favorite Carazian and someone I hope we can work with on the vanilla project.

With Sergio (R) and his farm manager (C)

In future posts, I hope to keep you all updated about how our business plans develop and how Sergio and his big dreams are progressing.

March of the Tortugas

This past weekend, Aaron and I were invited to join a birthday weekend celebration on the Pacific Coast in a place called Playa El Coco. After checking our weekly planners...just kidding, we jumped at the chance to go to the Pacific Coast during turtle hatching season!

Playa El Coco is a little less than 20 miles south from the famous surfing mecca of San Juan del Sur. Tourism has made San Juan, once small town, into a bustling place with a lot of tourists, a fancy doughnut shop, multiple surfing schools and crowded beaches. After a quick pit stop for lunch, we headed south onto a paved road that turned into dirt and arrived at a beach that is apparently used in a lot of advertisements to visit the Pacific Coast, but which is much less visited (thankfully).

The coastline was beautiful, with cliffs going to the sea and forest coming up close to the ocean with a mix of trees and cacti shooting up tall. Looking southward, we could see additional beaches and coves nearby, and Costa Rica in the distance.

Looking south to Costa Rica

The beach itself was also really cool, with crazy patterns in the sand, marks from crab excavations, live sand dollars, and even a sea snake.

Weird lines from rocks?

As the sun went down, a bunch of people waited around to see the release of a bunch of newly hatched two-month-old sea turtles on the beach. Along with being a good place for vistas and surfing, beaches near San Juan del Sur are also homes for sea turtle eggs. Sea turtles, who travel far and wide, come back to the beaches where they were born, climb out of the water to lay their eggs in nests, and then return to the ocean. Nicaragua has five species of sea turtles that lay their eggs on coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific.

  

Watching a turtle high-tail it into the water

Sea turtles eggs have low odds of survival - there are land predators, human poachers, and birds that all prey on turtle eggs and baby turtles - so some beaches have been made into reserves and other beaches have programs to gather eggs and hold them in nurseries until the eggs hatch, including El Coco. Once the baby turtles are born, they are released in the evening (protecting them from birds), and the little turtles instinctively run to the ocean.

Some turtles needed a little time to get oriented to the water

While I did not get a video of sea turtles rushing to the water, this video from Mexico gives an approximation of what the turtles look like motoring out to the water.

We did more on our first trip to the beach - there was a birthday party, boogie boarding, a trip out on a teeny boat to see adult sea turtles, and quite a bit of quality time under fans - but without a doubt the march of the tortugas took the cake.