domingo, 29 de enero de 2012

Street Kids Projects

I haven’t been on a hike for almost a week, which has been a bit frustrating. I was scheduled for Cerro Negro twice in the last week and both times the trips were cancelled due to lack of clients. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy though. On Friday I finally got my first glimpse of the reason we are all here volunteering- the “street kids projects”. I spent a good part of the day at Las Chavaladas with Julia, one of the three organizations which receive all of Quetzaltrekker’s profits. The other two are Las Tias and Los Barilettes, each independent from each other- their common trait is that they all work with street kids in Leon. Las Chavaladas differs from the other two because it is boys-only.

Las Chavaladas was a bit of a slap in the face for me, because the kids we play with on Fridays come from the underbelly of Leon; they are kids who don’t believe they have a future and therefore have a lot of issues. All of them are addicted to sniffing glue. I was really nervous about how I would react to this before I left, and my fears were realized- it’s difficult to see what’s going on with these kids and accept the reality of the situation.

Every Friday, a couple Quetzaltrekkers volunteers walk the 10 or so blocks to the organization’s house, join up with one of the leaders, pick up as many street kids as we can at the market (where they hang out), and then spend the day at the baseball stadium, playing baseball and soccer with the kids. It was simultaneously fun depressing.  I was useless at baseball but had an awesome time playing soccer, and got really into it. I miss soccer! The Friday sports program caters to boys who don’t spend a lot of time at the Las Chavaladas House, which is why we go to them. 

While playing sports, the boys get their glue bottles taken away and put in the leader’s backpack. If they don’t surrender their drug, they don’t get a popsicle at the end of the day. The hope is that we can build trust with these kids over time and eventually convince them to spend more time sober, and more time at the Las Chavaladas house (obviously they can’t bring their glue in).

The majority of the boys who came to play willingly handed over their glue, but there were several who spent the entire time sitting on the bleachers, glass coca cola bottles filled with a sticky bright orange sludge tucked down their t-shirts. They keep the bottles hidden that way because it is an illegal activity, so they have to be discreet in public and especially around the police. When the majority of us had gone off to play and there were a couple of boys with noses still buried in toxic fumes, I surprised myself by getting pretty angry and marching over to demand they give me their glue and play. I managed to convince one boy, but a couple wouldn’t budge. Julia had to come over and convince me to drop it- if we’re too demanding and force these boys to sober up harshly, we will never build up trust and they’ll stop coming at all on Friday mornings.

Not all of the kids at Las Chavaladas sniff glue. The organization acts as a sort of daycare community center and isn’t limited to kids with drug problems. Las Chavaladas caters to kids with bad family lives. The idea of the organization is that kids with problems such as glue sniffing addictions run-ins with the law, running away from home etc., stem from unhealthy home situations. Las Chavaladas serves as an intermediary between an unhealthy home and a healthy home. Whether that home is the same or a new home depends on if the problems can be fixed through counseling, and if the organization is able to find a new suitable home. 

Kids in Nicaragua only go to school for half of the day, either in the morning or the afternoon. So for half the day, a lot o kids have nowhere to go and end up on the streets, getting in trouble or going hungry. At Las Chavaladas they get a free lunch, showers, a basketball court, and even a place to sleep if they don’t want to go back to their families at night. Las Chavaladas isn’t an orphanage though; when kids stay there, the goal is to limit their stay to a week or so, and then make efforts to integrate them back into their families or if there are serious problems at home, to find a family member such as an aunt or uncle to serve as a guardian.

The kids who spend almost every day at Las Chavaladas are in pretty good shape. We had lunch there, and they were surprisingly polite and almost anal about the organization’s rules. First, I was reminded about 5 times to wash my hands before lunch. Then, I was wearing a cowboy hat that one of the little boys had given me, and the boys told me very sweetly that I had to remove it at the table.  At that point I started really concentrating on behaving myself, but then my juice glass was in the wrong place- it needs to be in front of your plate, NOT beside it.

One of the glue sniffers from baseball and soccer was there, high, and he was the only one not following every rule; he could barely sit up on his own and spent a lot of time shouting nonsensical things and telling me all about my madrina- his mom- because I was his girlfriend for the day, and madrina is the word for mother in law. 

The workers at Las Chavaladas are great, and each one serves a particular purpose. There’s the “fun guy”, who spends his time at the center goofing off with the kids. He’s literally a clown- that’s his occupation. There’s the “sports guy”, who went with us to play baseball and soccer. Then there’s the cook, the loving maternal type, the directora… I was impressed by how everything was run. 

Quetzaltrekkers isn’t currently funding anything at the Las Chavaladas house, but we are funding the teacher’s salary for a “mobile school”. The idea is that since a lot of kids in Leon don’t go to school, the school will come to them. A certified teacher will take a cart around the barrios of Leon and give lessons on the move. In the past, there was a dump that became the home for much of the homeless kids in the area, but recently the dump was converted into a recycling center, and the kids were displaced again. Now they’re scattered all around Leon. 

After we got back, I was pretty upset for the rest of the day, and haven’t completely gotten these kids off my mind. It’s easy to get lost in the exhilaration of hiking volcanoes and the fun of the more privileged life in Leon, and inadvertently turn a blind eye to what’s really going on all around us, and what we’re really working for. 

Yesterday I visited Las Barilettes and had a bit more of a positive experience. Las Barilettes is also a day care, but the purpose is simply to provide activities for kids, both boys and girls, while they’re not in school. They also get lunch there; they might otherwise not eat at all. Quetzaltrekkers bought the house for Las Barilettes and sends volunteers on Tuesdays to tutor. I was supposed to tutor math- a partially successful endeavor, but short lived. We couldn’t figure out what the kids had previously been studying in their math classes because they just couldn’t remember. So, I experimented by showing them different types of problems until we found something we could work with. My proudest moment was successfully explaining equations to one girl and having her correctly sole a whole string of simple equations. After an hour or so, we all burnt out on math and chatted for the rest of the time. I was really happy about that because I haven’t been practicing my Spanish as much as I would like.
One kid said he was learning German. Impressed, I asked him to tell me what he knew. What he said sounded like gibberish, so I asked him to repeat it again and again. When I still couldn’t understand, I asked him to write it down. After about 10 minutes I figured out he was trying to say “Gutentag.” I spent the next half an hour going through his severely misspelled German numbers and correcting them. Somehow I’m managing to speak almost more German in Nicaragua than Spanish; it’s very strange.

sábado, 21 de enero de 2012

Second hike: Telica

I have now done both of the two most important Quetzaltrekkers hikes, El Hoyo and Telica. On Sunday, I had a free day, and since I wasn´t scheduled for Telica for more than a week, two other guides and I decided to do the hike for fun (I mean for "training purposes") in one day, rather than the usual two day camping trip.

It turned out to be nine hours of hiking. A long day, and it didn´t help that I was still a bit wiped from El Hoyo and hadn´t been sleeping enough. We woke early and I packed a day pack with lunch and water. We caught camionetas and busses to a very random spot on the highway (which I have no idea how I´ll remember when I actually guide this thing) to begin the hike. The first several hours were beautiful but became a bit monotonous when I realized that the scenery wasn´t going to change for a while. We walked along a thin, dry riverbed with canyon like dirt walls on either side, retained by gnareled roots of beautiful, smooth Guanacaste trees.





Can you spot the little kids in the tree?





Beautiful Guanacaste trees.

We passed by many farms and were passed by many farmers; tough, rough shirtless Nicaraguan men ranging from little kids to old geezers, all wearing dirty baseball caps and riding on wooden horse drawn wagons. They sat atop bales of hay or guided herds of cows, and all greeted us warmly as their horses clopped by. Often times we had to scramble up the muddy banks to get out of their way in time.










We ate our snack in the usual lunch spot, under a huge black Guanacaste tree (they can be either white or black). A couple more hours of trudging along these paths, with teasing glimpses of Telaica and the other surrounding volcanoes through thick foliage, and then BAM! The path opens up to breathtaking views of sweeping farmland and the Maribios cordillera fading from green to blue into the distance.





Just as we emerged onto a high rock plateau with this vista, a tiny boy, maybe 5 years old, appeared around the corner on horseback. This adorable munchkin was leading an entire herd of cows! It was an amazing sight. I chatted with him for a bit and he smiled and smiled. I can´t beleive the respobnsibility given to someone so young. I would be worried about my kid falling off a horse, let alone falling off of a huge cliff on a horse, let alone being in charge of a full herd of dangerous looking bulls, while riding a horse, along a cliff. Craziness.






We hiked the exposed path for quite some time until suddenly to our right, the black mound of Telica loomed above us. Telica´s upper half is similar to cerro Negro in that it´s comprised of black basalt with minimal vegetation. Once we came to a random, invisible landmark and Annika stopped us and explained that now we leave the path and start climbing the volcano. There is no path, you just have to blaze your own way by scrambling up the basalt boulders and sketchy pebbly stretches that seem the most solid.





Coming up on Telica!

















 Scrambling up!

We kept climbing until we reached the crater. Several hundred feet away from the crater, you begin to hear the rumbling of volcanic activity. Once you reach the rim, it´s wild: the mouth is gigantic, 700 meters wide, and the biggest yet, and roars like crashing ocean surf. I had no idea that you could hear volcanic activity! It is really incredible. You stand at the lip, crumbly black stones beneath your trembling feet, and are enveloped in the luminous steam that pours out of the depths of this monster. You can barely see to the bottom. It´s very scary to get close enough, but when the steam clears enough you can see cracks and fissures running through the bottom. The roaring sound grips you and shakes your whole body; you can barely hear yourself think. The crater is 120 meters deep, and although I couldn´t really see it, there is an intracrater 50 meters in diameter down there, rendering the hole a double crater.


The crater!




















I felt as if I shouldn´t be there; as if I was intruding on some secret violence of mother nature best kept away from human kind. I had the feeling that the longer I stayed next to that abyss, the bigger the chance was that it would suck me in and devour me. Telica is 1061 meters tall. Its last known eruption was in 2007, so it is very active, one of Nicaragua´s most active, at once very apparent when standing at the crater. It has erupted 18 times in the last 100 years, but luckily most were not violent and were limited to gas emission. Unlike the other volcanoers I have seen thus far, Telica is what you´d expect an active volcano to look like. It helps that the main crater is at the summit rather than in a random spot. This is called a “Summit pit crater”, and was created by the walls collapsing inward due to gasses leaking through side vents.


Inside the crater.















Uneasy with dallying for too long, we hastened down to the campsite for lunch. Contrary to El Hoyo´s campsite where you look down at the volcanoes below, Telica´s campsite is a low lying field at the base of the mountain. As we scrambled down, we watched the tiny shapes of wild horses meandering about the field below, under dappeled shade of stout, leafy tres and tall palms. Everyone agrees that the campsite looks like the Garden of Eden. In contrast to the barren moonscape of Telica´s upper half, the fields below are lusciously fertile and green.


Our campsite from above.








From the campsite, looking back up at Telica.


Arriving at the bottom, we found that the usual eating spot under the tree was occupied by a herd of wild horses, so we continued on to the next tree. This one was occupied also, but by another touring company, so we ate lunch with them. I would have preferred eating with the horses, but they were too shy when I approached them.


















Lunch.

 We moved on pretty quickly after lunch, and the remainder of the hike was a mostly downhill dirt path that meandered nonsensically through a combination of forested ridges with beautiful views, and sweeping corn fields. I have no idea how I´m going to remember this route! Every so often we would come across a wild horse or two wandering through the fields.










































I hadn´t slept much the night before, or the last couple nights, and towards the afternoon I started really feeling it. The last hour or two, I got a little loopy, trudging along with an unintentional swagger, humming to myself, thinking silly thoughts… Hiking for 9 hours can do that to you no matter how loong you´ve been sleeping. When we emerged from the wilderness and glimpsed civilization, the town that serves as our exit from the nature reserve, I was releived.

Walking into town I was immediately approached by a band of little kids shouting  ”Give me a cooke! Give me a cookie!” In my lethargy I briefly mused how they knew I had a stash of cookies in my pack, then shrugged and surrendered all of my cookies. As soon as I handed them the packages I realized how hungry I was, and much I really wanted those cookies (the last of my food). I kicked myself thinking ”Hey! I need those cookies more than these kids!” But alas it was too late, and I had to endure my sugar low for the remainder of the trip.


Waiting for the bus.

We were just in time for the last bus. As I got on, I had the brief suspicion that we had accidentally mounted a mobile church. Copious ammounts of crosses, Jesus pictures, and other Christian paraphenielia covered the inside of the bus, and as soon as I took a seat, an old woman stood up and began to preach to us. I guess this kind of thing is normal for busses here; they provide the perfect captive audience. The serman was very soothing, and actually a perfect lullaby, especially because I couldn´t understand much of what she was saying. I passed out pretty much right away.

Annika and I were FAST asleep, and luckily Aymie, who actually had no idea where we were supposed to get off, happened to wake us up just in time. We stumbled down the street to catch a camioneta in a daze, and arrived exhausted at Quetzaltrekkers around 6, just in time for family dinner! Marie had gone to the beach and brought back a heap of whole, shiny silver fish caught fresh just a couple back. She made an incredible meal of tender, garlicy fish and two pots of veggies each with a different spice theme. It was the best fish I had ever had, and I ate piles and piles until I fell asleep.