We arrived in Manague Airport (officially Agusto Sandino Aeroporto) on Tuesday at 2 pm. After a delicious lunch, we started to make our way to San Juan del Sur. It's a 3 hour drive, but we decide to go at a slow pace. We stop in the town of San Juan de Oriente to see a small library and meet the librarian. We take a small tour and then visit a potter Jane (our host) patronizes. His family has been making pottery for as far back as he can remember and his whole family is involved in the business. He was gracious enough to invite us into his house and show us his workspace. In the back of his house is a kiln where he fires (glazes?) his pottery. I took some pictures of his amazing work & ended up buying a vase. We bid him farewell & went on our way.
We arrived in SJDS around 6:30 pm. I have to say the way people drive here is amazing. There aren't any paved roads except in the cities, so we drove pretty much on dirt roads. Dirt roads that are very, very bumpy. I swear we spent more time on the opposite side of the road. But Nicaraguans are very polite - if you need to be on the other side of the road because your side is riddled with pot holes, just beep your horn or flasj your brights to oncoming traffic. I said a few Hail Mary's - but our drivers were very, very competent.
Nicaragua is full of contrasts. It's not uncommon to see people driving Range Rovers and sharing the road with people still riding horses and wagons. Cars are only for the rich, or rather only the rich can afford cars. Which means that the majority of Nicaraguans walk, bike, or hitch a ride.
On Wednesday we left SJDS at 8 am to join the book mobile. We rode 90 minutes to the Costa Rican border to the town of Pochote (forgive me if I misspell the town, I don't have a map or dictionary). We got there at about 9:30 and the children of the town slowly and shyly came over. Eventually, 30 or 40 children were there, browsing the boxes of books, reading them and checking them out. I coaxed a few kids into playing frisbee while my friend Nicola started a baseball game. Soon I made my way over to the books and started to read with the children. Now, I can't speak a lick of Spanish except for "please", "thank you", and "I don't speak Spanish". The children decided they would teach me Spanish and started to read the books to me. I repeated the words back to them. I mostly learned about animals and insects - those seem to be the most popular subjects!
The children were warm and welcoming - some sitting right next to me and even on my lap. A few tried out their English on me and we were able to communicate through broken Spanish, broken English and a lot of gestures. The children kept on asking where we were from and when we were coming back. WE left after about 2 hours and had lunch on the beach with the Costa Rican border in the distance.
We came back to SJDS after lunch and joined the staff of Biblioteca Movil. The children have been reading "The Story of Ferdinand", or "Ferdinando". The children were putting on a play version of Ferdinand especially for us. Later we found out that over 2,000 Nicaraguan children have read the story of Ferdinand. This is loosely based on the American program Read for the Record (where U.S. children read one book/month). Jane donated copies of Ferdinand to any library in Nicaragua and gave the children 2 months to read the book. Literacy activities about Ferdinand are happening all over Nicaragua.
I have so much more to write, but will log off now as I don't want to hog the computer! I'll try to post more in the next few days, as well as the many, many pictures I've taken.
Hasta luego!
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