After living in Nicaragua for 8 months, we have some thoughts...
Positive First
1. Fruit: Tropical delicious fruit is plentiful and super cheap. Snapshot: 6 pineapples for 40 cents, 25 bananas for 60 cents and 2 dozen mangoes for 80 cents. We eat lots of smoothies.
2. Cheap & frequent buses most places: Buses within the city cost 10 cents, an hour long bus to the campo costs 1 dollar.
3. Urania: Our super positive, sweet host-mom. We rent a room in her house. She loves anything we make in the kitchen, says “Gracias a Dios” about 18 times per day, and is one of the most caring people we know.
4. Cheap living: Rent is 1/8th what we've paid in California.
5. More sustainable lifestyles: Reuse is the norm, used clothing stores & market stalls everywhere, and you can’t help but know how much water you’re using when you have to flush a toilet by pouring 5 gallons into the tank. In the communities, people grow most of their own food, use minimal water, and only a few hours of electricity a day.
6. Hammocks: Most households have one of these relaxing bad-boys in the center of their living rooms. And are even found on boats.
7. Family time: People spend a lot of time visiting their family members’ and neighbors’ homes. It’s refreshing to see how close an entire family can stay.
8. Rainy season: Photo shoots become even easier between the months of June to November when the environment is green, lush, and wet.
9. Ometepe Island: Two volcanoes stationed on an island in the middle of a giant lake, beaches, hiking, biking, fishing, and Urania’s mom, Rosita. What’s not to like?
10. Baseball: Played nearly every day in the campo on a really rocky, inclined and worst quality field we’ve ever seen. Yet super fun to play with people that care so much about the sport.
Definitely Needs Improvement
1. Education system: Many students have to travel over an hour and a half by bus just to get to high school, which is one day a week on Sundays. Even those who make it to college seem to be very short on knowledge. Both access and quality are big issues.
2. Trash: Gets burned on the streets, breathing it in and smelling it is terrible. It's normal to litter and throw trash out bus windows.
3. Gender division: Women clean & cook in the house, men work outside, girls don’t play sports.
4. Managua: Disorganized. Hot and Humid, near constant sweating. Terrible place to walk or bicycle anywhere. Lake Managua is so polluted you can’t touch it. No street names or addresses exist....and that's confusing to deal with.
5. Lack of activities: When not working, most people sit, talking with family, or sitting and not talking, or watching TV. Not much of an activity based culture in Managua and hard to find things to do.
6. The nation’s main food dishes: Rice and beans without spices…every day. 2-3 times a day.
7. Lack of trust and collaboration between people: Outside of families, people don’t really work together. A lot more could be accomplished if people worked as a team to change their country for the better, community meetings, lobbying the government, or even starting projects together without relying on the government.
8. Less than effective government: Weak police presence, majority of wealth concentrated in 8 families, big promises for its people with little follow through.
9. How badly dogs are treated: Dogs are kept as pets for security, they don’t get petted or loved, get kicked and verbally punished for anything, and in the rural communities, only get fed old tortillas.
10. Overcrowded public transport: I didn’t think more than 20 people could fit in a 12 passenger van, but Nicaragua, you win.
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