Pics from Managua

As promised here are a couple of pictures from Managua. First a little bit about the house that we stayed in there. The house is owned by Luz Marina. When I was in Nicaragua for the first time in 95 or so I stayed there with her and her kids. She is know married to an American and they live in the States sometimes and are building a house on the Island of Ometepe. The second time that I came to visit. Luz was living in the States but I stayed in her house with some other folks. The people who lived with me at that time were Felipe who is my age and was dating Tati who is also my age. Then there were three 15 year olds; Ernesto who is Felipe´s brother, Alfonsos and Scarlet who is Luz´s niece. This time when I got to Nicaragua I again lived in that house this time with Felipe and his new wife Yessira (I think that is her name), and their son Hamilton. Luz was also there and her husband Rock came for a few nights from Ometepe.
Did you get all that?

Here is the 6 of us just before Mark left. A solar water heater that I helped make 5 years

ago. Which is still working well. Apparently I

did something right in my time there.

This is Ernesto who came to visit one morning.

This is me holding Hamilton.

He was fascinated with my camera

so I have quite few of these pictures.

Mark teaching Hamilton how to play the guitar.

Uniles, Nicaragua

After spending a night in Somoto we got up, ate some corn flakes and took a slightly beat up taxi into the countryside. It was an interesting feeling to enter the dusty hills again after being away for over a year and a half now. No sooner had we stepped out of the car and walked a few steps up the path did I see the first familar face in Unile. '"Hoy, Webb!" called out Chungo, the captain of the Unile soccer team, as he rode towards us on his bike. After a brief conversation he headed on and we kept going along the path. We arrived at our first stop, the home of the previous promoter of the solar cooker project I had been working for. She wasn't there but some of her family was so we stopped and chatted some more.

Then, we started our journey up the mountain towards the home where I lived for six months in 2005. I spent some much time making that journey that climbing the hill again felt eerily familar. We made a few stops along the way, greeting a few of the women who were a part of the solar oven group. At the house of Dona Christiana, the house where I would pick up and drop off my bicycle every morning and evening during my time volunteering, we learned that my host father, Juan was working on a construction project just down the road.

We headed along and sure enough, just around the bend I could see Juan's distinct figure, his small, muscular body, and heavily hunched back from years of working in the fields. He saw me coming and gave a shout, "Markitos!". "Juancito!", I replied and we ran towards each other and hugged happily. We learned he would be working for a few more hours so we decided to go ahead with the final stretch of the journey, to visit my host mom, Bernarda, at the top of the hill.

When we arrived at the top of the hill, out of breath from the rather steep final incline, no one was home. I knew one of Bernarda's sisters would probably be at the main family house just across the way so we headed over and sure enough there they were, cousins, sisters, and grampa Marcos too! It was a big reunion, and just as things started to settle down, Bernarda came in from doing laundry at the pump, and there were more hugs to be given.

Jacob stayed with Juan and Bernarda for a couple of nights before heading to Managua. I stayed with for a whole week, had lots of fun playing soccer and visiting with familar faces. It felt good to be back.

Entering Nicaragua and Savana Grande

This post time line wise should come before Mangagua. We arrived in Northern Nicaragua from El Salvador via Honduras. We thought that we were going to have to stay on the Honduran side of the border because our guide book told us that the border closed at 5 PM and our buses had taken a little longer than expected. But after talking to some locals that were also headed for the border who said that it would be open we decided to go for it. The border was in fact open and we took a luxury bus the 25 kilometers from the border to Somoto. Check out the link to the right for a map of Nicaragua. Somoto is a small town outside the even small community of Uniles where Mark stayed for 6 months about a year and a half ago. You can read about our adventures there in his post. Since there is not a lot of things to do in Unile other than look at the beautiful scenery, I headed to Savana Grande a small community on the road from Somoto to Ocotal. Grupo Fenix the organization that we both volunteered with in Nicaragua is building a Solar Center(Again see right for more info). We were able to get down and dirty and throw some roof tiles and dirt around. In the foreground of the picture to the left is Rod a volunteer from Canada is smoking out some hornets that had made their nest in the place that we needed to work. The center is made out of adobe bricks which will then be covered with a plaster like substance. We were taking off the roof tiles which were temporarily put up there to protect the adobe so that the real roof could be put on. Hopefully it will happen before the rainy season. After a few days working it was on to Managua.