School's Out
Hello all,
Since the last time I posted, I have started living with a family in the town of Tola, about 20 minutes west of Rivas. I am living with José Ramón, a teacher at the school where I'm working, and his son Daniel, who is in ninth grade at the school. Thank you so much to you two for welcoming me into your home and into your family! Here are a few pictures of the family, the house, and the neighborhood.
On Monday I taught my first day of classes. I taught for seven and a half hours, so I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. The students as a whole were extremely well-behaved and excited to learn.
That night, however, we were notified that classes had been cancelled at the school for the remainder of the week. The next day at a meeting with all of the teachers, Fray Carlos let us know that classes had been cancelled because many students were having great difficulty getting to school because of the roadblocks. These blocks have resulted in there being almost no gas in Rivas because the route from Managua is blocked. For this reason, Fray Carlos decided to cancel classes until the majority of students could arrive.
To explain in a nutshell what is going on with the roadblocks from what I have gathered, the blocks are in protest against the government of Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega. The roadblocks are able to stay in place because the Nicaraguan police have been almost completely inactive since they were accused of oppressing the people after the violent protests on April 18th. The police have resolved to not act in the face of this chaos in an attempt to prove to the Nicaraguan people that they and the government of Daniel Ortega are not, in fact, oppressing the people.
Unfortunately these roadblocks and inaction from law enforcement have resulted in a country that has had trouble functioning with many schools having to close this week and many people having difficulty getting to work.
In the mean time, my host brother, Daniel, and I have been trying to keep ourselves busy. We've been watching a bunch of movies and also hiking some of the mountains that are close to the house. Wednesday, we went with Daniel's mother, step brother, step father, and a couple of other friends of getting family to a farm to help plant plantains. So we woke up on Wednesday at 3:45 and worked for the whole morning. Because I knew nothing about farming they gave me a pretty easy job. I had to walk next to the horse that was pulling the cart full of seeds and put one seed down every two strides. Then others would come and put soil over the seeds. As you can probably tell from the pictures below, it was a pretty wet day, so we got filthy. Probably because it stayed cool with the rain, I really enjoyed the planting. It was hard work, especially for those who were shoveling dirt, and I'm sure that this work is even harder under the sun. So, the millions of Nicaraguan campesinos have my fullest admiration for doing this work every day.
I would like to make it clear again that I am very safe here. Southern Nicaragua is removed from where the protests and roadblocks are happening. Please keep praying for peace here in Nicaragua so that people can go back to work and children can go back to school.
All the best,
Jack
Since the last time I posted, I have started living with a family in the town of Tola, about 20 minutes west of Rivas. I am living with José Ramón, a teacher at the school where I'm working, and his son Daniel, who is in ninth grade at the school. Thank you so much to you two for welcoming me into your home and into your family! Here are a few pictures of the family, the house, and the neighborhood.
On Monday I taught my first day of classes. I taught for seven and a half hours, so I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. The students as a whole were extremely well-behaved and excited to learn.
That night, however, we were notified that classes had been cancelled at the school for the remainder of the week. The next day at a meeting with all of the teachers, Fray Carlos let us know that classes had been cancelled because many students were having great difficulty getting to school because of the roadblocks. These blocks have resulted in there being almost no gas in Rivas because the route from Managua is blocked. For this reason, Fray Carlos decided to cancel classes until the majority of students could arrive.
To explain in a nutshell what is going on with the roadblocks from what I have gathered, the blocks are in protest against the government of Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega. The roadblocks are able to stay in place because the Nicaraguan police have been almost completely inactive since they were accused of oppressing the people after the violent protests on April 18th. The police have resolved to not act in the face of this chaos in an attempt to prove to the Nicaraguan people that they and the government of Daniel Ortega are not, in fact, oppressing the people.
Unfortunately these roadblocks and inaction from law enforcement have resulted in a country that has had trouble functioning with many schools having to close this week and many people having difficulty getting to work.
In the mean time, my host brother, Daniel, and I have been trying to keep ourselves busy. We've been watching a bunch of movies and also hiking some of the mountains that are close to the house. Wednesday, we went with Daniel's mother, step brother, step father, and a couple of other friends of getting family to a farm to help plant plantains. So we woke up on Wednesday at 3:45 and worked for the whole morning. Because I knew nothing about farming they gave me a pretty easy job. I had to walk next to the horse that was pulling the cart full of seeds and put one seed down every two strides. Then others would come and put soil over the seeds. As you can probably tell from the pictures below, it was a pretty wet day, so we got filthy. Probably because it stayed cool with the rain, I really enjoyed the planting. It was hard work, especially for those who were shoveling dirt, and I'm sure that this work is even harder under the sun. So, the millions of Nicaraguan campesinos have my fullest admiration for doing this work every day.
I would like to make it clear again that I am very safe here. Southern Nicaragua is removed from where the protests and roadblocks are happening. Please keep praying for peace here in Nicaragua so that people can go back to work and children can go back to school.
All the best,
Jack
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