Pictures & Politics

We finally figured out the Wi-Fi password at this place, so can now upload pictures to blog entries! Please look back over our last two entries. They now contain photo galleries of our travel day and first full day in Nicaragua.

We found out that unfortunately it was probably more than car sickness that made Quin throw up last night. He threw up two more times during the night and spent most of the day in bed reading and liquids. I think he is turning the corner, and hopefully can bounce back tomorrow.

Another interesting note about last night, I halfway remember hearing someone driving around with a speaker system making announcements around 3am. Turns out someone in the town died, and I guess you can hire someone with a vehicle and huge sound system to drive around and announce who died, and the survivors… at 3am. One of those interesting cultural things we don’t get to experience back home.

Cheyenne was up at 6am, and after dragging myself out of bed, enjoyed walking the campus and visiting the monkeys with her. After breakfast, all of us (minus Quin) settled into our new routines of conversational Spanish and then grammar.

Following lunch, we put Cheyenne down for a nap, and then one of her teachers watched the kids, while Tara and I attended a class on the current political climate in Nicaragua and what has transpired in the last 8 months. It’s more then I want to get into in a blog post, and bit sensitive. In a nutshell, protest in April 2018 against the current government turned deadly with many students getting shot (likely by snipers). Things continued to turn ugly, and the current government has cracked down heavily since then (but denying a lot of their own involvement or blaming other). Because of the heavy crack down, things have stabilized since then (and we haven’t seen any evidence of the conflict). I appreciated hearing the first-hand stories from people who lived through it. It’s important to note, staff at La Mariposa has avoided taking sides and both sides have their issues. However, it is clear to me that those currently in power have abused it. Elections are in 2021, however the current president has removed term limits, and will likely run again (or put his wife in office) and squashed most opposition.

All of this has hurt the economy and tourism in Nicaragua. Currently we have about 7 other students besides ourselves, when the school is equipped to handle much larger groups. We are glad to help contribute to the return of tourism and spread the word about this neat school to anybody else interested in similar experience.