The dry season is here and we're doing fine

 

 

The rainy season is wrapping up here, along with what for us were an exhausting few months. I hesitated to share it, because we don’t like to worry folks. But since the purpose of these updates is to let you all know how we’re doing, it didn’t seem worthwhile to make something up. And besides, for those that we’ve talked to over the last couple of months, we wanted to let you know that everything’s much better. Take a look at our album of happy faces.

The hard spell started at the beginning of September when the boys went through a long-round of fevers with a few visits to the doctor’s office.

Steph was mugged in the middle of the month. Thankfully she wasn’t touched, and didn’t even have anything on her at the time. It was very unusual for León and we were shaken up.

The next week our puppy Provi died. She had canine epilepsy, and even though we were giving her daily medications, early one morning she went into a long series of seizures and her body gave out. We’d only had Provi for a few months, but we took her death quite hard. 

Throughout September and October we were trying to wrap up things with the contractor that was doing most of the work on our bedrooms. It was a messy – a tiring finish to what has been a long process. 

On top of that, Manuelito was going through a tough stretch of something. Even after a trip to the clinic, we’re not sure exactly what it was (although having his first stitches after getting a cut on his toe didn’t help things either). Suffice it to say, for most of the day he was not very happy. And when Manuelito isn’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

At the end of October I think I could say we are the most tired we´ve been since Steph was 30 weeks pregnant and we all got mononucleosis.

But now the dry season is hear, we’ve been doing much better.

We’ve all been healthy for the last month.

While it may seem unusual, Steph has felt like the mugging was, on the whole, a positive thing for her – an opportunity for reflections and new resolutions.

We just planted some bougainvilleas over Provi last weekend. It’s still sad, but now we mostly feel grateful for the few months she helped us settle into the new house.

The construction on the house is in the very last stages, we’re working with a carpenter we really like. We don’t have guys working in the house every day. School’s out for August, and all the boys have loved having the yard back. We’ve even managed to make it a little homier by hanging up the hammocks a tree swing.

And best of all, Manuel got his stitches out, is sleeping better, and seems generally to be on the on the up and up.

We’ve recovered and are feeling blessed. The weather is beautiful. The Christmas holiday will be here soon and my parents are coming to visit. For those of you that have been encouraging us over the last few months, thank you so much. It helped, and we’re doing fine.

Moments from Decemberish

If you want to catch a few end of the year Pekrul moments, have a look at this album.

Roads as Freedom

I had a conversation with Doña Melba and Doña Selfida a couple of weeks ago which gave me a new appreciation for the importance of road building in rural communities.   Melba and Selfida are both elderly women from El Ojochal del Listón.  Melba had come to visit Selfida for the morning and they were lamenting about the difficulties of getting older: how they had lost their confidence in riding horses, which made it difficult to get down to town, and how their legs ached when hiking up the mountain and so they didn’t like leaving their homes much anymore.

Rural road improvements won’t address the hardships of aging, but Melba and Selfida’s conversation reminded me of talks I’ve had with my own grandparents about the difficulties of getting around and how they sometimes felt isolated or penned in or worried about what would happen if they were hurt and no one was around.  Among the rural poor Nicaragua, without a decent road to their home, even the young and healthy can feel this way.  Remembering the people I’ve known from home who have felt this way, like my grandparents or immigrant families I worked with who couldn’t afford a car to get to work, it made me appreciate more how freeing it must feel to finally have a decent road. 

Day of The Race & Monsters Under the Bed

When we came to Nicaragua I knew we would need to hold our assumptions lightly, but I did assume we could remain confident about a few things.

For example, I would have been pretty sure that I'd never be dressing up my son for a national Day of The Race.  What we celebrate in the US as Columbus Day, is celebrated in most of Latin America as El día de la raza or the Day of The [Hispanic] Race.  For many Latinos in the US and indigenous rights groups in the rest of the Americas it has become a chance to celebrate culture and advocate for marginalized groups, but in Nicaragua it is largely a day for national pride and chance to remember Nicaraguan folk traditions.  So August went off to school dressed up in his embroidered “peasants smock” and straw hat.  It was pretty cute.

   

I would also have been confident that I would never actually have to catch monsters from under my children's bed.  But yesterday an iguana crawled into our garden, got spooked, ran into Solomon’s room, and hopped into his bed.  I had to catch him and let him go over our wall.  

Just in case any of you need to catch an iguana in your house someday, it’s not as hard as you think.  They often run themselves into a corner.  When they do, pin down their head with the end of a broom handle, slip in your hand behind and clamp their snout shut.  When you do that their whole body goes limp and it’s easy to pick them up and release them.  I do have to warn any gringo dads, however, that catching iguanas does make me feel cooler that it probably should.

 

And to keep with the challenging assumptions theme, I wouldn't have guessed that boys of mine could be so good looking or sweet.  It doesn't really have anything to do with Nicaragua, but I was looking for an excuse to throw in a couple other nice photos of Solo and Manuel.  All the boys are doing very well, and are happy (usually) to have a Skype chat with anyone who would like to fawn over them.  Hope you hear from some of you soon!

Finding Food Security

Most poor subsistence farmers live under a burden of constant vulnerability and uncertainty because they are dependent on a small number of rainfed crops grown with expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  We saw the hard reality of rural poverty in October of last year, when many farmers in the communities where Nuevas Esperanzas works lost the majority of their bean crop.  Many were forced to sell off their assets, leave the community for work, and have been living on meager diets for the last six months.

To help bring more security to these families, Nuevas Esperanzas has been showing farmers how to grow a greater variety of crops, in order to spread out the risk if one crop is lost.  We have also been teaching farmers new techniques to maximize the land, water and other resources they already have available to them, so that they can grow more food and take on less debt.  The results of the most recent family gardens project have been hopeful: the gardens are helping to lighten the impact of last year's crop loss, crops to help with diversification are being identified, and farmers are experimenting with new techniques that will make their farms more resilient.

If you are interested in reading more about why poor farmers have a hard time growing enough food to eat and what can be done to help, read the full review of Nuevas Esperanzas' latest family gardens project.

Manuelito

Healthy Manuelito was born on June 29!  That little cat stayed healthy even though he was living with 4 mononucleosis-infested family members.  Our ‘life with mono’ is a long boring story which is punctuated frequently with the word ‘exhaustion’.  But we made it.  I don’t recommend it; avoid it at all costs.

August + Solo think Manuel is neat.  The addition of a new little boy around here was non-issue.

Luke has a hidden talent of designing houses, conveniently – as we bought one.  We hope to be living inside of it before Christmas, as we are making some slight tweaks to it.

The boys and I are still figuring out ‘normal’.  I’m keeping my eye out for any routines that I can establish.  I'm also scouring the city for the best sinks/showerheads/light fixtures .

August is enamored with Matchbox cars.  Most of the day + night he has one in each hand.  He (currently) likes school and daily improves in his Spanish.

Solo, also, can be found most of the day with Matchbox cars in hand.  He loves chocolate and talks and/or sings about it more than I would ever have assumed.

Manuel treats us with his smiles, is close to rolling over and sleeps like a champ.

Smile.  This reminds me of a Christmas card update. 

Alert: There are a lot of photos to peruse as I have not posted in several months.

Love from down south,

Stephanie, Luke, August, Solobaby and Manuelito

Moments: June - September