Ahh the rain…

It has been raining constantly for the last three weeks. Beside the fact that nothing dries do to the moist air, the strong rains have been flooding the low areas in Nicaragua and really hurting the bean harvest-to the point that if the rain keeps up for two more weeks, there will be no beans left for the farmers to harvest and could cause a major food shortage in the coming year.
On a brighter note, I have only four more weeks left of training and I actually start my volunteering experience in my own site. This past week I stayed with another volunteer in their site. We built a biogas digester and improved cooking stove. Real quick-a biogas digester is basically a tank in the ground that you add cow manure into daily. The manure degrades and turns into methane gas which can be used as a clean odorless gas for cooking. The excess manure turns into fertilizer for your garden. The only costs for this project include the initial capital for the tank(about $150)-everything else is free as long as you or a neighbor have at least two cattle. We were able to talk with the people in the village and learn what they were interested changing and potentially adding to their village. Then just yesterday, I visited a very active community who are involved with smart and sustainable ag. business products. Within the village they have big fruit tree producer. He uses all sorts of neat technologies to water and fertilizer his crops. Then his neighbor uses worms to make fertilizer which the tree farmer uses for his fields. The community also has a cooperative started to utilize a truck to transport their products to market in a bigger city.
One of the goals of the Peace Corps is to live like the people of Nicaragua, which includes receiving the same amount of income. I am finally understanding how far $1 will really go. My friend and I refuse to take the bus into town for only 6 Cordobas, we walk the 15 or so blocks one way. The exchange rate is $1 = 20Cordobas, so 6 Cordobas is about $0.12, but adds up to $0.50 in two trips! I have to quit calculating what the cost is in US dollars, because everything here is really cheap for American standards-even when ice cream costs $0.10 for the flavor of the week!
Another great opportunity I was able to be apart of was actually making my coffee-from start to finish. My family has a coffee plant in our yard which they use for coffee, but since coffee harvesting season isn’t till November, they bough some coffee in a neighboring district where the harvest is going on now. I put the coffee beans in a big pot on the hot wood fire to toast to perfection. I have to constantly stir the beans to give an even toast to every single bean. To check the desired toasting level, I just had to smell the beans as it was on the fire. I decided to go for a medium to medium-dark roast (plus or minus a whole range as I really had no clue what it was supposed to be like) which took close to 40 mins on the fire. After toasting the beans, I had to grind the beans in a Mollena. This is a hand crank device which they use for just about all types of food-including corn and even chicken. I set the grind to be fairly fine so when they brew the coffee, the grounds sink to the bottom of the pot and I don’t have to choke them down. They don’t use filters, just a dash of cold water on top of the grinds to help them sink to the bottom of the pot (kinda like cowboy coffee when your are camping!) After a solid hour of grinding, I had close to a 2 - ½ gallon bucket full of grounds. Sounds like a lot, but this will probably only last my family a month. It is very common for Nicaraguan’s to drink a lot of coffee throughout the day. We always have at least one cup for breakfast. A half pot of coffee is kept on the hot coals just in case they have a visitor and need to share a cup. They then drink a cup for lunch. And finally after a good hard days work, they will enjoy a cup for dinner. After all the work that I now know goes into one cup of coffee-the coffee tastes all the better!!

I wish all of you the best-and hope you enjoy that cup of coffee!!


~Wes~

The pig snuck unto my room again….

Yes you heard me right, my family has a couple of pigs that they let run around the house and the little squirt snuck unto my room once I opened the door to my room. I am finally adjusting to life here. There is definitely a difference in the time schedule here-‘Nica Time’ as we would like to refer to it as. Things are very chill and relaxing. A meeting at 1:00 pm usually means 1:30. The weather right now is absolutely gorgeous. I go to bed with about 70-80 deg F temps and it is usually around 80-90 deg F during the day. It has been raining a lot which really makes for a mess as my whole yard is dirt and mud. My house has dirt floors so I can’t really take off my shoes when it rains, so I just add to the dirt on the floor with new wet dirt!
I am now really enjoying the cold water bucket showers in the morning! Every morning I wake up, go to the kitchen well and crank up a bucket of water, then go outside to my bano and shower. There is a opening in the trees by the bano, so I get a really neat view of the facing mountain while I shower!
I am currently on my fourth of eleven weeks of training. We have been learning some very important sustainable practices for agriculture and also how to add value to simple products. We have learned how to can fruits and vegetables, make jam out of the million different fruits, make yogurt, make soy milk from soybeans, then take the meat left over and make soy burgers, use some of the plants for medicinal uses, and make candy out of fruit. On more of the ag side-we learned how to make a good compost pile using only what we have around us, how to ferment horse/cow manure, sugar, and tree leaves to make a really great natural fertilizer and herbicide. We have been planting our own garden with radishes, cucumbers, and a couple of other medicinal plants which help raise the protein level is peoples diet. We just started a small tree nursery (vivero) with 50 seeds that will grow into small saplings which we can then transplant to help the deforestation issue that is so prevalent. All of these projects we are doing with our families and the local community so they can learn also and implement the practices themselves once we leave-which is our whole goal-to be sustainable!!
I love hearing from you all. I will you all the best and I appreciate all of the prayers!
-Wes-

Life in Rural Nicaragua!

I am currently located just south of Esteli in a rural villaje living with a host family. A typical includes waking up around 3:30a thanks to the rooster at 5:00a for the dogs and then around 5:30ª to get ready for the day. Moving into my host family was a huge thing for me. With my limited spanish, I have to communicate everyting form washing my clothes, to eating, to telling them if i want sugar to whatever else comes up all in spanish! It is getting a lot better, although the dinners are usually quiet do to the lack of spanish!
As for some of the stuff that I am learning and doing: the Peace Corps Agriculture position is a great program to practice a wide variety of things. We are learning all of the ag stuff that you would expect-land management, sustainability crops and fertilizers. On top of it, we have a week session about cook stoves, another week on fruit drying, and as a training group of 22 we are starting a micro-finance banco-Grameen style. We are doing it with our own money so we can understand it and then take it out to our rural communities where we will be placed. As you can tell I am super stoked to be learning and working in so many different areas! Also I may be working with solar PV and solar hot water.

I hope everything is going great with you all-Love to hear from you via email(sorry if it is a delayed response)

Wes
wlmeier@gmail.com

Sept. 9th, 2008

Hello everyone!
I arrived in Nicaragua safely on Wednesday and have been in training in Managua(the capital city) until now. I am all packed up to head to my host family´s house today. For the next eleven weeks I will be training for Spanish with a personal tutor, learning sustainable ag techniques by traveling to other Peace Corps Volunteer´s site, and learning the culture simply by living with my host family!
I appoligize if this page is not updated for those eleven weeks as the training will be very busy and may keep me in rural locations without internet!

First Post

Mixing clay, water and straw together to make briks for the new stove design.