Nicaragua

I am now in Costa Rica after a wonderful experience in Nicaragua. It is nice to be in a house with a bathroom and to be clean.

I was in Nicaragua for almost two weeks and for one of those weeks I lived with a family. I had a mom names Lorena, brother Bosco (17), and sister Scarleth (14). They live just outside of Masaya in a little town called Tipitopa. I lived on a farm with a bunch of cows, chickens, roosters, pig, and a dog. It was fun.

I lived in a little bitty house with one bedroom and then one room for the rest of the house. They gave me the one bedroom and allowed me to sleep in there. We had electricity which was great and also running water. The water was only outside. There was a sink for washing dishes, also a shower with water, and then a sink type thing in with the cows for them to drink. Both the toilet and shower were outside. The shower had windows in it about chest height and then a sheet metal door that you just leaned against it. The ‘toilet’ was an outhouse type thing, you just had to squat, there wasn’t actually a seat or anything. It was just basically sticks with sheet metal leaning against it to kind of close it in. It was interesting, but it was there life and it was great that they were willing to share it with me.

They were about middle class; I had a lot better living conditions than most of the people in the group. Most people had 10 or more people living in a one room house that hardly had walls. Usually they didn’t have running water and would bath in the river.

The food was great in Nicaragua; it was a lot better than here in Costa Rica. The only bad thing is that there is this cheese that the Nicaraguans eat a lot of and it is disgusting!! It was really hard to eat it, but I always managed to with a smile on. After some meals I felt huge, I ate so much food. At meal time I would look at the food on my plate and have no idea how I was supposed to eat it all.

The culture in Nicaragua is very different than anything I have ever experienced. It took several days to figure some things out. They speak very differently than the Costa Ricans and have a very small vocabulary. Costa Ricans talk in an embellished way, they are just very friendly and polite with everything. Nicaraguans are basically the opposite. After several days I was figuring out what vocabulary they use, how to joke with them, how to interpret what they say, and all that fun stuff. I feel like I really learned a lot about their society in my two weeks there.

I have many stories to tell about those weeks, so if you want to know more you will have to ask me sometime.

-Carol