Nicaragua

We've been in Nicaragua for about one month now and tomorrow morning we are going to take a bus to Costa Rica. Last week we agonized over whether to go back to Guatemala, go to Costa Rica, or go to Panama and finally decided to go spend a month on an organic farm in Costa Rica. The farm is called Rancho Margot and it is pretty close to the border with Nicaragua and it sounds really nice. We're looking forward to a cooler climate and spending some time in nature!

Our last week in Nica has been pretty hectic with getting a lot of last minute stuff done. Last weekend we took Engel, David, Marlon and his siblings and two nephews to Granada for the weekeend (14 people total). We spent the night in a nice hostel and in the morning went for a boat ride on Lake Nicaragua.

On Wednesday we went and visited the city garbage dump in Managua. We have a local friend who works with a project at the dump and so she arranged for someone to drive us through the dump and then drop us off at a school located within the dump to hang out and meet some of the kids. I was curious to see how the dump compares to the one in Guatemala City and it is completely different. The dump has not been walled off like the one in Guatemala so people live within the dump boundaries and can work whenever they want. When we first drove in, I was surprised to see cows grazing everywhere in trash. The guy we were with said that the people who work in the dump always graze their cows there during the day. The school was much smaller than Safe Passage, it only has about 250 students, but before it was built 7 years ago none of the children currently in the school had the opportunity to attend classes.

Yesterday we had planned to spend the day taking Engel's house apart and then putting it back together with more materials. Leah's mom donated some money to buy more wood and tin because water was constantly getting into his house. We bought the materials in the morning and then the boys arranged for a man with a horse and cart to carry the materials from the market to his house. It took the poor horse about an hour to get all the way to his house and when we got there his neighbor had bad news for us. First he said that he was going to sell the land and that Engel had to leave that same day. We considered buying the land ourselves when we found out how cheap it was (around $175), but then the man came back and said that his wife wouldn't let him sell the land and that Engel had to leave anyway. The man with the cart had stayed with us throughout all this and offered a place on his land for Engel to build a room. Engel seriousely considered it, but then at the last minute decided to move in with an aunt so we loaded all the materials back onto the cart and it took an hour and half to get from Engel's house to his aunts house. It was a crazy day! I'm just glad that Engel found out that he had to move out of his house before we spent the day working on the house.

I gotta run...tonight we are taking all the boys out to dinner.
xoxo, Katie
p.s. Keep in touch!