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August 31, 2006
Seriously, now...
Without pens, we had nothing with which to fill out the immigrations and customs forms required for international flights arriving at their first port of entry to the United States. We ended up -- all 172 of us -- sharing the chief flight attendant's pen, passing it from row to row.
The war on moisture's been extended to PENS? (uncorroborated blog from UK only thus far), via boingboing.
I think we should ban all unapproved books and burn them at the gate, since books can spread subversive thought (and give nasty papercuts!). In fact, it'd prolly be best if we were just shackled and ball-gagged before walking down the gangplank, and then securely buckled into our seats. A few deaths from deep-vein thrombosis is a small price to pay for freedom. Catheters or adult diapers could take care of bathroom needs. They could play pro-democracy readings of the US Constitution (censored, naturally).
Posted by griffjon at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2006
Airport Security
The War on Moisture is pure insanity. This past trip to Nicaragua was the first time I checked luggage (only coming back, mind you) since leaving Jamaica. It's a hassle, adds time pre-departure, adds the risk of loosing luggage, and takes forever when you arrive, at least in comparison to lugging your carry-on and going. Now, unless I want to buy a new set of toothpaste/deoderant/etc. at every place I go, this means I always have to check some piddling piece of luggage.
Can we cut it with the paranoia?
Even better is poor Raed, who was detained for wearing a shirt that read "We will not be silent" - in English and *gasp* Arabic script! Evidentially it's not cool to wear anything in an entire language in the airport. Luckily there's now a shirt that reads very clearly, "I am not a terrorist" (in Arabic script of course), with the $1 profit off of each shirt going to the ACLU.
Posted by griffjon at 10:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 23, 2006
More Nica Photos
More photos are up from Nicaragua at flickr
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August 21, 2006
Campo
Let me break into this sum-up of my campo trip by saying that Jamaican transit, for all its foibles, may in fact be better than the cross-country chicken-buses of Nicaragua. Also, for all the bad press this old form of development project gets, hey, someone build some paved roads down here, OK? Aside from the Panamerican highway and parts of Managua, it's all Somozo-bricked roads [1] at best, dirt in general. That being said, fun bus travel games to play include "Which Box Has the Chickens?" and "How Many People Can Really Fit?"
Our first stop was...well, actually at the Managua northbound bus station. We missed the last bus to Esteli, so instead spent the night at a ... well, crappy hotel. Such is life. We got up at the ass-crack of dawn and caught an early bus on to Esteli, where the museum we were trying to go to (of martyrs of the war, put together by their mothers) was closed. We ate breakfast in town and then an early light lunch at La Casita, which is an awesome organic garden place run by a former development worker who's now "living by example." It's a very tranquilo place, with double-ventilated composting pit latrines (that's in there for the water san volunteer(s) reading this).
So early afternoon, we caught a PACKED bus up to San Juan de Limay - it turns out it was the last bus of the day, and students from the region take it home after their saturday classes. I stood for most of the way up to Limay, in an old schoolbus packed 3 adults to a seat on both sides and two thick down the center aisle.
San Juan de Limay
In San Juan de Limay, a town that Chanita assured me is a metropolis, the primary mode of intra-city transit is by foot, with horses being a close second. It's a super tranquilo town, with a few tiny general stores, a bar/restaurant, and a hospedaje(guest house)/bar/restaurant - Mi Rancho - where we stayed. and, uh, that's it. no cybercafes, no nothin' else.The owner of Mi Rancho was leaving early the next morning (it turns out, to go to Managua as a candidate for his area on the PLC / conservative party), so we had to get out of the hospedaje at an ass-early hour. So we dropped our packs off at the house of this cute abuelita we'd talked to the day before (who it turns out was our host's aunt -- small towns for ya). We were strolling around town, waiting for the (other) restaurant to open, and were invited to walk with Marta, who was going out to her parcel of land to check on the wells and for her children to swim/bathe in the river. We ended up spending most of the morning walking around with her, learning how her family made mud bricks to sell in town (manually), her husband is working in Barquismetro, Venezuela, and we got to see their garden where they grow most of the food they eat. We got back into town, had breakfast (and coffee finally!) and went to visit one of the EeA artisans, Ramon, who is a stonecarver. He works mostly in marmolina, but is moving to marmol (I think that's soapstone, and marble, respectively - I need to figure this out tho). He showed me how he carves the stone, and gifted me a new carving at the end of our visit. It's amazing to see how much he has been able to accomplish thanks to being able to sell his sculptures at a fair price. He's rebuilt his home (with brick instead of unfinished wooden planks), to begin with.
We then walked down to another nearby community, Rio Abajo, where there is a cooperative of potters who use local clay and seed dyes to color their pots. They have one spinning wheel (manual/kick wheel) and turn out some amazing pieces.
Somoto
That afternoon we took a bus back through to Esteli, then out to Somoto, a town further up in the mountains, and the capital of the poorest state in Nica (Nica is the 2nd poorest country in the Western hemisphere, behind Haiti). It's an... odd place. It reminded me of Merida slightly (tho much much smaller). There's a humongous presence of aid/development workers in the town, so the town has adapted to cater to their tastes. There are cyber cafes and fancy restaurants (and pizza even!) With any luck, they will be able to broaden their focus and become their own tourist destination (they're close to the Honduran border, and on the panam highway), so as to not become a ghosttown if the dev community moves on.We hiked up to another artisan's house, Christian, who at somewhere around 19 is his family's prime breadwinner through his painting. He has never finished school not even taken an art class, but is an obviously skilled painter. Another example of the impressive power of sustained, well-developed fair trade / economic justice work - not only is he able to support his family, his sick brother, but he also rebuilt his house with stone bricks (and bought himself a bike). Just as a tip of the hat to the hardcoreness of his entire family, his father is a carpenter, and I saw him sketching out marks on a piece of wood to cut. His straightedge? The disassembled barrel of a rifle. Probably, his own rifle from the 80s. Swords to plowshares.
There's probably a whole lot more that I'm leaving out. I'll try to add some detailed mini-stories as they come back to me, and photos will be appearing on flickr soon.
[1] The Somozo family ran Nica as a dictatorship for over 40 years, and repaved most of the paved roads with bricks manufactured in their family's factories.
Posted by griffjon at 09:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 17, 2006
fotos!
A few fotos from thus far:
http://flickr.com/photos/griffjon/tags/nicaragua/
Posted by griffjon at 11:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 16, 2006
Managua
History Tour
My first full day in Managua I walked around the city with a friend of Chana's quien se llama Shaggy. He works with a human rights organization and gives walking history lessons to delegations and volunteers coming to Managua. He gave me a huge and depressing history lesson of Nicaragua and its relation with Spain and the U.S.. It was one of those lessons that every U.S. citizen should have, to be reminded both of the U.S.'s poor history with supporting Democracy abroad, and of what "struggle" really is.
I'll post photos in Flickr soon enough, but really I wish I could just recreate the entire text of the tour, from the explanation of how an American "entrepreneur" took over Nicaragua to Aleman's redirected relief funding to his own pockets to the Pope refusing to bless children lost to the Contras because he was anti-Sandinista -- and getting booed offstage by a Catholic country.
That would have been Thursday. Friday was a day of work and learning the local neighborhood, beginning work on the computer systems in the office, and going to the nearby market.
Saturday and Sunday were spent at the Laguna de Apoyo, which I've already covered. Sunday night we visited another of Chana's friends who is the Deputy Director of the Nica Peace Corps -- Nica's mission definitely has it together much more than Ja I must say.
Descent
On Monday, I spent the morning with the computers, and then la luz se fue (we have blackouts basically every afternoon, and sometimes overnight, without warning or predictable duration). I then went with Chana's friend and an employee of Esperanza En Accion, to her community for a tour of it. She took me by her lunch spot, and her home to meet her daughters and sisters, and then to an adjoining community, La Chureca, which is a burning, dusty city dump where some of the most poor of the city have cardboard/tin/plastic sheet huts and sort the city's refuse for recyclable objects, and sell them. Most of the dump was smoldering or burning, and I doubt there are many other places on Earth more like descending into Hell.
After that, I got back to the EeA house and we reconvened to go to a party for some other members of the solidarity group, which turned into a wonderful and flowing conversation of amusing travel stories, depressing international relations/visa stories (not just for the US, either) and whatnot, in a constantly shifting cloud of English and Spanish and participants in each individual conversation.
When we got back from that, around 11, our key broke in the lock (it was a weak key), so we had to taxi over to the Witness for Peace office to crash until the locksmith could come the next day. This worked surprisingly well (showing up at almost midnight without warning looking for beds), until as we were putting sheets on my matress we noticed that the matress had been covering a largish dead rat. Disposing of the rat was not too difficult, but the room stank, so we moved the mattress out into the common area. The matress itself didn´t smell too fantastic, but it worked well enough if I slept with my head as far away from where it´d been covering the rat as possible.
I can only think that I am a rare case where living and working in a hot, dusty and smoky sprawl of a city that´s been continuously demolished by hurricanes and earthquakes, mucking around with old computers and punching down ethernet jacks with my CVS keyring card, and sleeping on matresses that smell like dead rats is a refreshing and centering experience, reminding me why I´m paying good money and effort to get my Master´s degree.
Posted by griffjon at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2006
The Monkey Hut
Despite my GWU frustrations, I had a WONDERFUL and TRANQUILO weekend at Laguna de Apoyo between Granada and Masaya. It's an old mostly-dormant volcano with a lake in the crater (very minor thermal activity). The water is slightly salty, but super-clear and blue. I got to kayak, tube, swim, dive, hike, chat and relax all weekend. Chana has some photos on her flickr account here: http://flickr.com/photos/oklanica/sets/774400/ , I'll upload my own Monkey Hut/Apoyo photos when I return or take the time to download from my camera.
Even better is the fact that the resort is run on the honor system. There's a snack counter, a soft-drink fridge and a beer fridge. You take a beer, and make a note on your check. There are canoes/kayaks/tubes[1], you take them out on the water (free/included in being there for the day). There's a coffee maker and coffee, it's free, just make it. There's a full kitchen for general use, just clean up after yourself. They recommend a local grocery (pulperia) and local restaurants nearby, if you don't want to buy their snacks. Their beer, when you sum it up and pay your bill, turns out to be expensive -- it's almost a dollar US per beer. If I ever own a resort hotel, I will run it this way.
http://www.thebeardedmonkey.com/monkeyhut.htm
Next weekend we're going through here (http://flickr.com/photos/oklanica/sets/813101/) on our campo trip.
[1] Real inner tubes, with the tire-inflation knob sticking out!
Posted by griffjon at 10:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Things I shouldn't be dealing with while in Nica
I am now only registered for exactly one course for the fall.
I #$&%@$%!* hate GWU and their lack of information about courses. I am not in a position to pay 20% or 80% or whatever of course-drop fees and over-subscribe to courses so as to find one that works and drop the rest after the first class. And I can't even do that, or sneakily attend first classes, because they all overlap one another anyhow.
Why can't they have reasonable descriptions online? In what world does someone invest that many hours of in class and out-of-class time, as well as pay almost $3k, on the basis of a bland sentence, especially when time and absolute number of courses to take is somewhat limited? I want CVs, syllabi, topics covered, reading lists, and ideally student reviews and UT-style slam tables, damnit.
Why can't I take half the courses in the International Dev Studies program? Why does my "advisor" wait until Aug 12 to tell me that he's kicking me out of an IDS course that I wasn't supposed to register for, instead of, well, when I was registering (during midterms and such) back in the spring?
I didn't really expect to find courses in IT and development, but not being able to find courses in either IT OR development really makes me regret my investment in stress, time and money, as well as going deeply in debt (for the first time in my life) for GWU.
P.S. Why does this have to be happening while I'm in Nicaragua?
P.P.S. Nicaragua, apart from this, is great. Hot, dusty, and muggy, but hey.
Posted by griffjon at 09:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 05, 2006
Dollars and Sense
I have recently been gifted a subscription to Dollars & Sense, a magazine of economic justice. It's a pretty excellent source of independent thought on economic and labor issues. I'm now shilling for their blog, because hey, blogs.
Posted by griffjon at 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Parties, parties everywhere!
TakomaHouse has thrown its first official party, and it was good. We served up margaritas, beer, and sangria, and had fire spinners and a DJ for parts of the evening.
It went well, though I crashed out early. Initial forays have not revealed any widespread damages, though my old laptop power supply (the external part, thankfully) is kaput and I'm seeking out a replacement. I guess that this answers my question of whether I'm taking a laptop to Nicaragua, tho! (My main laptop/desktop replacement is still fully functional, but I can think of smarter things than lugging my poorly-backed-up life and media around with me, when it's also a high-value item.)
Last weekend was a whirlwind Texas tour to see my parents, install their new shiny computer, and attend Farm Party XII ("Casual Dodecadence"). FPXII was laid back, but excellent. The new heat-reflective tiles for the dome worked wonders, and my hammock (it seems to get more use in Texas than it gets in DC!) was popular. John K and I handled the Saturday grilling. He slaved over the brisket while I handled most of the rest. We prepared jerked chicken and tofu with rice-and-peas, garlic basil tofu, lemon garlic asparagus, corn, salmon steak and trout filets, as well as portabello mushrooms. All I can say is that it was all Damned Good and I was in a meat coma by the end of the day.
Posted by jon at 03:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Webcomics
xkcd is one of my favorite webcomics, just because it so often hits the nail square on the head:
Posted by griffjon at 03:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack