Mount Somoto

I can´t believe as of yesterday I have only 1 month remaining in Somoto! Which means in exactly 1 month I will be back in Canada to start the Canadian portion of my journey, where I will be volunteering in Prine Albert, Saskatchewan. But in this remailing month I look forward to the new experianes, and new lessons I am learning every day. Each day I can feel my spanish improving, which was one of my biggest goals that I had set for myself before entering the program.

Well the day will eventually come when I have to leave this wonderful place, and I dont need to dwell on the moment, I just need to focus on the ¨now.¨ But, for now I am going to write about my experiences as I usually do.

This new story starts a day after the epic boxing match of mass proportions:

So I knew it was going to be a busy and exhausting weekend before it started, because I had my Boxing Match, and early the next morning we were heading out to climb the biggest mountain i Somoto, which surprisingly has no name, so I will refer to it as Mount Somoto. We woke up early the next morning at 7pm to pack our lunches and bags for the long journey up the mountain, but little did we know how long of a journey it would be.

So about 10 of us officially started the march at 7:45am, I use the word march because we stil had to walk to the mountain. After about 30 mintues we started the uphill climb towards the mountain. This uphill hike lasted about one hour and thirty minutes.

This picture is one we took during the climb to the base of the mountain. Yes i do know that is sideways, and no i do not know how to fix it, so you´ll just have to tilt your head to see it. The guy to my left is one of the Nicaraguans in our group. But that is not what makes him interesting. He was one of the only Nicaraguans selected to compete at the Beijing olympics. He competed in the 200m sprint. He managed to place 9th, and he was eliminated by Usain Bolt, who was sprinting in the next lane. anyways back to the mountain climb!

once we hit the 2 hour mark we were informed we were still an hour hike from the base of the mountain. This is when we lost about half our group because they were too tired to make the rest of the climb. Now we were left with only 5 people remaining who were left to climb the mountain.

So 3 hours after we left home we managed to get to the very start of the mountain. It was a pretty vigourous hike. It had lots of steep paths that were vey narrow. But the views were spectacular, as you can see by the picture below.


It took us exactly 2:30 hours from the base of the mountain to reach the summit of the mountain. I took this next picture about 100 metres from the top, because from the very top you couldnt see anything because there is so much plant life and trees that seeing anything is impossible.


Those little cluster of houses and buildings you see in the bottom left is our little town of Somoto.

We managed to reach the summit at around 1pm, where we all ate like 6 sandwiches each because we were so hungry from the hike.


This last picture was taken from the very top of the mountain, told you you couldnt see anything. But this is the team of us who managed to make the exhausting but unforgetable trip up the mountain. (photo cred goes to the sherpa guide)


Well you might think this story is finished because we are at the top and everything is all happy, but if you think that then you would be sadly mistaken, becuase we still have the trip down the mountain.

Our guide decided that we would take a different path down the mountain than the way we went up. So we followed without questions. We ended up hiking down a path down for about 20 minutes when it suddenly ended. So we had two options, either go back up and go the same way down, or we were making our own way down the mountian. We opted for the latter. Armed with sticks in hand we had to beat the plants out of the way to clear a path for us down the mountain.

This was probably one of the most fun things we did. I actually felt like an explorer of some sorts. Well we managed to get down the moutain in about two hours. No remember the mountain is still about 3 hours away from Somoto.

So we had been walking and climbing for about 8 hours now, and we still had the walk to Somoto to go. And to make matters better it had just started to rain, well at least it didnt rain while we were climbing.

Well we walked two hours towards Somoto, and by this time we were exhausted, and none of us wanted to go a step further. This is when we called Luis´s father who thankfully picked us up in the pouring rain, and dropped us all to our respective homes.

So the official time for how long the climb took us 10 grueling hours.

M.I.A + Boxing MAtch

So its been a week and a hlaf since my last post, and alot has happend since then. When I last left off, I was writing about how I had a boxing match. And since that time I have:

• Done the Boxing Match
• Climbed the Biggest Mountain in Somoto
• Volunteered at a Fair to help send rural area kids to university
• Done All my work throughout the week (Palmiras and Agriculture stuff)
• And yesterday I just got back from Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, where we also took a trip to the beach!

So if you were wondering why I havnt posted in the last little while you can read the above list and see why for yourself :)

So in this post I am not going to bore you and myself by writing about all that in one shot, so I am just going to write about the boxing match, and this time I actually have pictures!

The day of the boxing match was a pretty nerve racking day, but also one of the most relaxing days I have had. I woke up fairly late, and fairly late in Somoto means like 9am. I think the nereves really kicked in right when I woke up. It was hard to imagine that I would be in the boxing ring in less than 10 hours time.

But I tried to relax myself by going though my usual routine. I ended up playing chess with Luis´s brother Emir, and I lost to him twice in a row. I was hoping that when I lost, that was the only losing I would do that day.

So a little intermission:
I started writing this post exactly 6 days ago, and I stopped exactly at the end of the last paragraph. The reason I stopped there is because the power went out. The power was out for a full 4 days. Here in Somoto when electricity goes, so does running water....uh oh! Well Lucky for me this much of the post was saved.

So now to continue my story:
I arrived at the boxing gym at around 6:00pm, and the fights were scheduled to start at 7:00. During this time the people started to pile in. I estimate there was about 200 people there to see the fights that night. I wont be so bold as to say they were all there to see the ¨professional Canadians¨ Just before the first fights were about to start, I was introduced to the Head Coach of the Managua team that drove 3 hours for their fights. Apparently this guy, whose name I canot remember used to be one of the top boxers in Nicaragua. Now he is one of the top female coaches. Below is the Picture I got to take with him:


After this picture was taken, all the boxers were asked to enter the ring, where all the Coaches and teams were introduced to the crowd. There was 4 teams, Managua, Estele, San Juan, and my home team Somoto. Once all the competitors were in the ring and all the introductions were made the crowd was instructed to stand for the National anthem. Unfortunately they didnt play the Canadian anthem, I was kinda hoping they would play the anthem for us, but it was not to be, and anyways I had more pressing matters at hand...or fist.

We were to be the 2nd fight of the night. I dont really know what happend in the first fight, cuz at that point I wasnt really paying attention, all I remember is that the crowed wasnt really into it.

Well it was our time to go up, it was time to see if all my training had paid off. For some reason at this point the crowed erupted, when they found out the Canadians would be going up to fight.

I really dont remember much of the fight to be honest, I was far too focused. All I do remember of the fight was I managed to get the first really good punch in of the match, which connected right to my opponents face.

I also managed to knock him to the ground in the 2nd round. And in the break between rounds I was drinking water and I didnt want to swallow it, so I decided to spit it out. And just as I was doing so, a little girl ran right beside ring and got all the water from my mouth right on the top of her head, I thought that was hillarious. By the third and final round I was exausted and you could tell that both of us were exhausted by how slow we were moving. The final bell finally rang to signify the end of the match.


I really like this picture because of all the cameras you can see behind me. It almost looks like im somewhat important. Well by the end of the 3rd round I had a feeling that I had won. But we had to abide by boxing tradition and meet at the center where the refereee holds the arm up of the winner.




Then the anouncers voice then adresses the crowd. And to increase the suspense he pauses for a full five seconds before he anounes the winner.......................................

after the heart wrenching seconds he finally anounces the winner, ¨Kalil Berani¨

Dammit, No one ever gets my name right!!! But it was still a win, and it was a win by 9-6


Unfortunately I dont have a picture with my arm being raised, that pictue is on someone elses camera. But you´ll see that one eventually!

That definatly brightened my day considerably and made the post fight beers taste that much better, but before the post fight beers I had to watch the other fights of the night and support team Somoto.

The fights were all girls fights, since this was a girls tournament.

The first girl from Somoto faught a girl from Managua, and won the fight in the very first round. Ahe came out with soo much power and dominance that the opposing coach was forced to throw in the towel after the first round for the safety of his fighter.

The second fight for Somoto was a hard battle, and went right down to the wire. It went the full three rounds. Late in the 3rd round the Somoto girl made a strong left hook which caught the other girl right in the jaw. But after the punch the Girl from team somoto, was seen to be in considerable pain. But she pushed hard till the end of the round, were she took some hard blows. But at the end of it all the Somoto girl was declared the winner. Once she exited the ring she painfully pulled off her glove, and her wrist was declared to be broken; but that didnt stop her from doing a celebratory dance!

and the third and final fight for team Somoto, was the biggest fight of the night.
Another really hard fought match. After the first round the crowed could tell this fight would be right down to the final bell. In the second round team Somoto took some hard hits and it looked like she was out of it in the second round. But once the 3rd round started she was firing on all cylinders, and in her first or second punch she sucessfully broke the other girls nose. Which caused the visiting team to need a few seconds to patch up the bleeding. The other tem would need two of these such breaks. But unfortunatly once the final score was read it was 9-8 in foavour of the visiting girl. Too bad the night didnt for a perfect somoto record.

Well After this night I was really exhausted and got one of the best sleeps ive gotten since being here. And I went to sleep knowing that I won my first ever boxing match, and it was in Somoto Nicaragua!

Frist Boxing Match

Told You Id start to get lazy!

But its probablly better off that way since I havnt really had anything new to write about. Your prolly bored of me going on and on about Palmira. So I have decided to tell you about another exciting thing in my life.

So I have told you that A friend and I have joined a Boxing Gym in Somoto.... right? Sooo this Saturday will be our first offical match!! Sounds Big right? Well its bigtger than just big, its pretty frikken huge! Our names were announced on the Radio. Theres actually a flyer thats out right now, that claims that we are proffessional boxers from Canada. Thats a bit scary since I know for a fact that I am not a professional boxer, and I have only been doing this fora month. Oh...I forgot to mention, this fight will actually be on TV!!!

Here is one of the flyers which I was given, it is not the offical one but it gets the message across!






So ya ya I know I made it sound like we were the only ones boxing. But I also have a feeling that we will be the main event! I keep getting that feeling, maybe its because the flyer says Boxeo Professional Internacianal Masculino. Im really glad it specifies Mascualino because it says in big writing Femenino. And if you noticed people actually have to pay to come watch...no one has ever had to pay to come see us!

So funny Story that I ust heard like 30 seconds ago:
So my Supervisor wasjust in my house and I was talking to him. He told me that he was talking to the vice mayor of Somoto today. When the supervisor told the Mayor that he was Canadian, the mayor said, ¨Oh theres professional Canadian Boxers fighting here on Saturday.¨ So our supervisor said, ¨Ya they are part of my Group, and they are more or less professional, but less is more likely.¨

So it looks as though we have a lot to live up to for this match if the people of Somoto are expecting professional Canadian boxers.

See ya!

PS I know my name is spelled wrong in the flyer, but I assure you its me!

The Aftermath

So as you might know I have started my musical career and had my first ever gig, and we performed infront of at least 300 people. I have a picture of the crowd but its on someone elses camera so I will post that when possible. This was my first time ever performing infornt of people, and man oh man this was a big crowd. I didn´t know that the crowd was going to be that big, because on the other 2 nights of the festival it was not that busy. I guess they all just wanted to see me really badly. The band decided to get a practice sesh in before we performed, and by practice sesion I mean we split a bottle of rum to cool the nerves. I think I was still shitting my pants even with the liquid courage.

So our set list was:
hallelujah - Leonard Cohen that was performed by Shayne and Catherine

The Weight - The BAnd performed by Shayne, Ian, and myself Singing Back up: Catherine Vilma

Brown Eyed Girl - Green Day performed by Shayne and Myself backup: Ian and Catherine

Stand By Me- ??? performed by: Shayne, Ian, and Catherine backup: Yours Truely

So let me give you a break down of how the songs went: hallelujah was done incredibly as both Shayne and Catherine have incredible voices, and probably was one of the best songs of the night.

Then came The Weight. Here I was playing guitar and I was responsible for singing a verse. Well it went pretty ok, except for the fact that my mic conked out as I was singing my verse, If you watch the video youll see the mic just cut out mid way through. But the other band members made a god save and sang the rest into their mics.

Well after the mic mishap we got everything fixed, for out next song which was brown eyed girl, and that went off without a hitch. It went really well. And my guitar managed to not break a string during the intro I got to play :)

Stand By Me was our last song, and I did not have my guitar for this song, but I did get to oin in the chorus. This song was also done really well.

Well thats my breakdown of the perfrmance, Hopefully in the next post Ill have pics and videos for you. And if you want my autograph youll have to wait till December!!

OOOH and today me and a fellow volunteer decided that we are going to teach an english class every monday! I think thats pretty exciting! I just dont know how Im going to go about doing that. Well Ill try and keep everyone posted, and if you have any questions about what Im doing here or nething give me a shout!!

Fiestas Patronales 2010!!

So this weekend has been a pretty busy week here in Somoto. Right now it is the Fiestas Patronales, and it lasts for 3 days, and these people I assure you these peolpe know how to party. I guess anyone would when beers are only $1.00

Friday we went to the central area of Somoto, and of course a few beers were necessary to start off the night. Then usually around 7pm the entertainment starts. Theres a ton of loud music, and people dancing ther local dances etc. Everyone has a ton of fun, I´d even say a little too much fun! There are a ton of drunks here in Somoto, and some of the drunks even enjoy dancing. On Friday there were 4 drunks, all of which were of the male gender. And they started dancing together, and when I say together I really mean together, on of the guys was resting his head on the other guys shoulders, and they were doing a slow dance, kind of a waltz. It was very interesting, and quite hillarious, and it was to the point where people stopped watching the band and watched the guys dancing. The funny part is that they were actually very good at dancing and their steps matched eachothers almost perfectly.

This brings me to Saturday night...so last night we got to go to the arena and watch the gladiators!...ha no just kidding. But we did go to the arena to go watch bull riding. I thought it was really really cool. I have never actuallygotten to see anything like that, and it was really interesting to see something that is part of their culture. I´m sure this was notthing compared to the bull riding you´d find at the Calgary Satmpede, but all in all it was a pretty solid night.

So the most exciting news of all, which I am kinda excited for and kinda very nervous for is....well for this festival the town has invited us to play music in the closing ceremonies for the festival. So 3 of us will be up playing guitar and some of us will be singing. I am pretty nervous cuz there is about 200 people watching and I have both a guitar solo and a singing solo, which is really scary to me. I know I dont have the greatest voice, so its making me even more nervous. If youve noticed how jumpy this post is, its prolly cuz my mind has been focused on tonight´s performance. Hopefully by tomorow there will be a video or at least a picture of the performace.

Ill post soon, see ya! and wich me luck cuz I will sure as hell need at much of it as I can get!

What I do!

Sooooo, you know I have been working in Palmira Thursday and Friday........you do know that dont you because you HAVE been reading my blog right?? Well for those who do know you must be wondering, ¨What the frig does he do there for the remaining 5 days?.¨

Well for the frigging days that are Tuesday and Wednesday I work in the town of Totogalpa. And in Totogalpa there is a school named Tepochcali. And behind Tepochcali the are crops that grow out there. A few of our group members are assigned to work and fam the fields. At the beggining we were given a plot of land in which we have complete and total control over. We have to first clear the land. Dig up the grass. After that I dont know cuz im not a farmer! But I´ll definatly learn. We even get to choose what sort of vegetables we will grow there. So now you know what i do for 4 days of the week. Ill tell you about the other days in a later post.

So lately Ive been talking about how The group and I are frequently in the paper, and I have not offered any proof as of yet. Well heres the picture that was posted in the article:

Yay isnt that cool! any ways heres the link to the article so you may read it, although it is in Spanish. For you keeners you can translate it using google translator!!!

http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2010/07/19/nacionales/31976

Well im off to bed had a long day of working the fields, and went to the boxing gym again today!

A Long Week

So a new post has been a long time coming, but I´ve had a very tiresome week and I just plain didnt feel like blogging. Ive done alot this week, so embrace yourself cuz I think this one is going to be a long one. So my post will be in chronological order, or as close as I can get it. So the first thing im going to write about occurs exactly a few days after my last post, or something like that so Ill call that monday.

So it is monday night (I think) and our whole group gets invited to a political rally. This rally was held by the Sandanista government, which is the current government in power at the moment. Before I go on about my experiane at the rally it is important to understand a bit about the country´s rich political history. I am going to give you only the basics, because I do not wish to make a mistake and ruin the legacy.

Before democracy existed in Nicaragua, there was a different type of government in power. Nicaragua was run by Anarchists. These anarchists were known as the Somozas. They held power from 1936 to 1979, they passed power down the familty line. Their rule angered many people in Nicaragua, which led to a start of a National revolution. The revolutionists called themselves the Sandinistas. They got their name from Augusto César Sandino who lead a revolt against the Americans whom were occupying Nicaragua in the 30´s. AFter many years of revolt and guerilla warfare, the Sandinistas took control in 1972, and they held control until 1990, where they were beat by another democratic party; but today the Sandinistas are in power.

That was a very basic synopsis of the revolution, and many key parts have been skipped over so I suggest reading up on it if you ever find time. Now back to monday and the rally. When I heard about the rally I assumed it would be a bunch of old people that would be in attendance, as it would be in Canada. When I went there I was amazed to see that the maority of the people were under the age of 19. Many were over that age, but everywhere I looked there were kids. The revolution of Nicaragua was lead by the young, and politics remain an important part of their lives. It is possible to have a converstaion here in Nicaragua about politics with a 15 year old child. A 15 year old in Canada probably couldnt name 3 political party´s. A 20 year old prolly coudlnt name 4 without including the Mirajuana party in their selection. The point being is the children are taught about politics and their country at a very young age, and is something our country who also has a rich political history should also be doing. Final point, they take pride in who they are and where they came from.

So tuesday and wednesday were pretty boring days. I wake up at 5:30 am and play soccer till about 7am. Then I go to work at the INPRHU office. By the time I get home I am ready to go to sleep.

Thursday of course is Palmira day, and once again we help constuct things. This Thursday we help build their adobe houses, which is very slow and strenuous labour. Each brick has to be made one by one by mixing mud shoveled from the ground and water to make it sticky. It is they put into a mold which makes 2 bricks and has to be left in the sun to harden. We made bricks and we laid them, over and over. There is no such thing as cement to seal the bricks in place, the same compound use to make the bricks is used as sealant. A very labour intensive day, but a very satisfied feeling follows.

So that brings me to today. Usually Fridays are INPRHU days as well, but this friday and every other one we again will be going to Palmira. We are going on fridays as well because a mother of 6 has recently been left by her husband, which means that the building of her house will rapidly decline with the loss of the main source of labour for her family. As a special favour to her, our group will be going to Palmira every friday to continue to build her house. Also they have asked our help in the production of the comunity centre in Palmira which half the group will be responsible for on Fridays. My responsibilty lies with the mother and her house, and today we were making the adobe bricks once again. The group of about 7 or 8 people worked for 3 hours today. In that time we were able to create only 28 bricks. They say to comletely finish the house 500 additional bricks are required. At a rate of about 9 bricks an hour, thats a long ass time to make a house.

Each day I try to have a new sort of experiance, somedays itll be interesting and not worth mentioning, and others will be a bit more intriguing. Today I decided to get a hair cut and a shave at a barberia (barber) this may not be interesting to you, but to someone who despises shaving it sure intrests me. First the barber tried speaking to me in Spanish, but my spanish still isnt that good, so I used my counterpart Luis as my translator. He asked me how I´d like my hair and this is the first time in about 3 years I´ve gone to a different barber, so I didnt even know how to answer. My counterpart was able to explain it too him, and we were on our way. I assumed the haircut would be very quick, but the barber took meticulous care of his job and about 30 minutes and 50 cordobas later ($2.50) he was done. Next came the part I was most interested in, the shave. He first used a brush to apply baby powder to my face, then made a concoction of some sort in a water bottle. It didnt really lather like shaving cream but it did the trick. He then took a new single razor out of the package and inserted into the device that those old school barbers have. He started with a steady hand on my cheeks and jaw. At this point I felt very calm and the process relaxing. The spanish music played from a boombox in the corner only furthered my relaxation. Again with meticulous care he worked. He then got to my neck, and it got me thinking; this guy has a razor blade to my throught, and once slip could render me bleeding on the floor. So at this point I tensed up a bit, but then his meticulous care calmed me down once again. This process again took him 30 minutes, and again the charge was 50 cordobas. So in total it was 100 cordobas which is aporximately 5 dollars canadian. I ended up getting a good hair cut and an experiance I´d never be able to get in Canada for 5 dollars. And I ended up tipping the man another 50 cordobas, which was half of what he asked for. But I felt it was well deserved since he didnt slice my throught open. As I left he only asked for once thing, he asked me to send a magazine from Canada back with Luis when he returns from Canada in 5 months, which I will gladly oblige.

Sorry for the long post and the lack of pretty pictures, maybe next time!

Peace!