Diakachimba

Phoebe, Shohta, and I have settled nicely into our house a few blocks from central park. We have a lovely house with a big open space, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom downstairs, and two bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs. Phoebe and I live upstairs and each have a shower in our rooms, which is awesome. We've explored the market thoroughly. We can buy anything from street food, to fruit, shampoo, rice, veggies, flip flops, bras, notebooks...the list goes on. It's all packed into a small area. People just throw garbage on the ground, but someone comes around with a garbage wagon to sweep it up. Two more interns arrived this week, Margot and Corie, so six interns went with Gilberts and Marcela (the Nicaraguan employees of People Helping People Global) to the Friday repayment meetings with the group leaders. On Fridays, we meet with a total of 6 group leaders. The first two leaders have 'Pulperias' or little convenient stores. Some of the other popular businesses of our clients are firewood cutting, selling clothes or other goods in the market, and there is even one dentist. I think I'm starting to get a better idea of the layout of the community. Shohta is working on a map of the area which we can then fill in and add more details, such as specific houses and landmarks, to help us get around when we don't have the guidance of Marcela and Gilberts. The picture is of some of the kids at the third or fourth group leaders house. They were super excited when Margot started taking pictures of them, so I had to join in and catch one of them posing for the camera. After our visits to the group leaders, we were asking Marcela and Gilberts about Nicaraguan slang and how to say things like 'cool.' They taught us 'dia kachimba' which means something along the lines of 'cool' or 'awesome' if someone asks you how you feel. On our way back to our house, we passed this little old lady selling merengues on the corner. So we decided to buy some. She counted our change for us in English, so Phoebe asked her how she knows English and she launched into her family history, telling us about her 9 children and how she was a nurse (we think that's what she said, but something might have been lost in translation). The merengues were too sweet for our liking, but we will stop and chat next time we pass her. Side Note: On our walk from house to house on Friday, we came across the coolest plant. It looks like a tiny fern, but when you touch the leaves, it folds and closes. Part of what we'll be doing this summer is working on independent projects, such as the map, quality of life surveys, and making small videos to send to donors. Phoebe and I are trying to gauge the health needs of the community to see if there is a health education program we can incorporate into the micro-lending model. We found out that visits to the local health center are free. However, prescription drugs are not. We plan on visiting the health center early Monday to ask them questions to find out more about the health problems specific to the communities we're working with.

Nicaragua

After almost three years since I left Asia, I'm back on the road for a few months. I'll be working for People Helping People Global, a non-profit NGO that give micro-loans to individuals in a few communities in Nicaragua. I'll be based in Granada but will be travelling around Nicaragua, and hopefully Honduras and El Salvador. I arrived in Managua, Nicaragua on Thursday night and made it to a hostel for the night just before it started pouring. The hostel was quiet and nice with a few hammocks out by the pool. A girl in my dorm was headed to the same bus station as me, so we split a taxi and went our own ways: me to Granada, a colonial city on Lake Nicaragua, and her to San Juan al Sur, a beach town. The bus cost about $3-$4 dollars including a tip for the guy who showed me to the right bus and carried my bag. It was only about an hour to Granada. I found a hostel, threw my stuff in a locker and headed to the central park to meet two fellow interns, Shohta and Morgan and one of the staff members of People Helping People Global, Gilbert. From there we walked about a mile to a community called Pantanal, first meeting up with Marcela, the other PHPG employee. Alex and Isabell, the founders of PHPG were here last week, but I didn't get to meet them. They will be in Vermont during the 2 and half months I'm here. In Pantanal, we visited the houses of six group leaders. PHPG lend out small amounts of money to groups of borrowers to improve or start their own business. Each individual is responsible for paying back their loan, but elect a group leader that collects the money, so each week we only have to visit a few households instead of everyone. I think they used to have repayment meetings in which all borrowers met at a specific time and day each week to repay the loans, but it was hard for everyone to make it and they turned to group leaders to improve efficiency. Individual borrowers are required to pay 60 cordoba each week (less than $3) to pay back the loan over a year period or they can opt to pay more to pay off the loan faster. PHPG charge no interest. This is largely due to the hight interest rates that plagued Nicaragua around 2008 and led to the 'no pago' (non-payment) movement in the north in which President Ortega encouraged agricultural producers to refuse to pay back their loans. Instead of charging interest, PHPG uses donor money to pay the Nicaraguan staff and other expenses to make sure the people who need the money most are getting it. They have been successful with approximately a 95% repayment rate. The group visits took several hours, partly because we had to wait about an hour for one woman receiving a loan to get home. But it was nice to chat with Gilbert and one of the group leaders Carlos for a while. My Spanish isn't great, but it's enough to get around and it will get better with practice. The community we visited, Pantanal had few paved roads, most were dirt roads or paths and we wound around visiting the six houses following Marcela and Gilbert. Most of the houses had barbed wire fences out front, mostly to mark their property, since the gaps in the wire are big enough for a dog or human to fit under. The floors were dirt and the ceilings were atin. The walls ranged from wood planks to tin. We were invited into one of the houses in which there were two beds, a freezer, a few chairs, and a tv. A few kids were on the beds watching tv and eyeing us suspiciously. Most of the kids we passed in the community yelled 'hello' to us and kept waving. The next round of repayment collections is Monday here in Granada and Tuesday in Matagalpa. I'm waiting to hear if there is room in the car that is going from Matagalpa to the community PHPG just starting loaning to. If there is, I plan on going to Matagalpa Monday morning and staying for two nights for the meetings there and heading back to Granada on Wednesday. I just settled into a room in house a few blocks from the central park. Shohta is also staying here and possibly another intern as well when she gets back from a mini-trip to the south. Right now there is an older gentleman who is living in one of the rooms, but he'll be moving out next week. In total, there are 3 rooms, so it'll be a little intern house. While walking around the central park in search of some breakfast, two high school girls approached me with a survey about what I think about Nicaragua. And then 3 boys with the same survey came up to me at a cafe. I think they were offended that I guessed their age was 14 (they're 16), but looked so much younger. They were friendly and were interested in my taste of music, particularly rock- they are slip-knot fans. Anyway, that is all I have time for now. I'm off to the market to buy a cell phone and some fruit.