Iguana Soup

The iguana in the video is dinner for the family, or I could have bought it for $2.50. On Fridays they can't eat meat as they are Catholics (which is I think is fact), so instead of fish fridays its Iguana. Apparently they are illegal to catch but it seems to be part of the diet here. Ive seen quite a lot so hopefully not endangered.

The houses have run into some trouble. Engineer and Architect volunteers have arrived and looking at the design of the roof say that it would be a bad idea to have the gutter in the middle of the roof; torrential rain for 4 months might cause some problems, so they've designed a new roof. The original design was also quite complicated, therefor expensive. Keep it simple architects!

Its pretty useful to speak spanish if you visit Latin America otherwise you do miss out on quite a lot. Its like going to a funpark and being to short to do all the rides. But for constuction it's pretty simple, like, "mas agua, mas mezclar, mas arena" . . . more water, more cement, more sand. The spanish argue quite a lot, but Nicaraguans don't seem so outgoing and expressive. There is an ongoing argument between Spanish and Americans of who is dirtier. Although here pretty much everyone is dirty.

Im reading Open veins of latin America, which is a scathing history of the exploitation of the Americas. Basically a history not written by the winner. Theres nothing good to say about the United States in it (or Europe). Although it can´t be true Americans are always saying,"We have the greatest country in the world!".

Im travelling to Guatemala next week as have heard of another project there.

ALso here is a tiny lizard similar to ones that you see everywhere.

Adios

gangsta radio

Hope this video works. Its from the taxi ride up to La prusia after we were at the market. The volunteer with crazy hair is Mitch from Boston who is here for a year.

This past week has been pretty quiet in the construction, waiting for pipes to arrive for water and electicity. A new house should be started this week hopefully. Free time is usually spent either reading, playing cards or Settlers of Catan [awesome nerdy game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_of_Catan], although I did have to cook yesterday. There are 20 people now so it took a couple of trips to the market to get all the food, and I only got charged double for some cabbage so did ok there. The sellers tend to quote ok prices in the market even if you are a gringo. It´s 8 cords for a dozen banannas, so theres 20.9 cords to the dollar . . . i think its 40 cents for a dozen . . not sure what the pound is at 1.5? so 27p for a dozen banannas. . . 2p per bananna, thats cheap! I made burgers followed by smoothies, just because I knew the Americans wanted it but didnt want to make it due to stereotyping slagging from Spanish. There is the supermarket Pali (Walmart company) but I just got a bag of meat there because the market meat is more . . flavoursome?

In other news one of the volunteers is trying to start radio in the barrio, for public announcements (and constant reggaeton no doubt) . . . Check out
tocarte toa (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKfnvLPdLM)

daddy yankee (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgnebZ_jYo)

or oh dear god the bachata king Frank Reyes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0CTuzPQiWY)

. . . for the popular music here.

In nature watch there are lots of birds, no idea what they are, sorry! I think the snake was a banded brown snake but not sure.

hasta pronto

tennents a great English beer . . .

A month now in La Prusia. The squirrels are black and white, the oranges are green and I eat more fruit in a day here than I do in a month in Scotland. Got some charity chat this week;

It´s true that Casa´s de la Esperanza must be one of the few charities that it doesn't charge money volunteers to stay. The money is made from companies sponsoring the project, and people occasionally donate. So there´s no shortage of the volunteer, and long term ones too. . A 62 year old Canadian is even here but rents a room in Granada. He did say to me this week that English beer is terrible because of going into a shop in Manchester and buying Tennents, which was pretty funny . . The point in the charity was initially to build homes for people so they could own land/property, but that´s just the tip of the iceberg. Then everyone needs jobs to pay back the charity for the homes, which are hard to find anywhere (like chicken and the egg situation). So thats the part where people get trained in construction skills (welding, diggers, etc..).

So the charity brought electricity and water to this area 5 years ago, but people still forage for dead wood for cooking in the forest. if no concrete homes were built maybe more forest would be chopped for timber squatter houses . . [Bought myself a hammock by the way, it is awesome] . . The people put in the time to build their own new houses but if they can't afford to pay the charity back through micro-business then the charity relies on donations too much . . [the original idea was influenced by Muhammad Yunus the economist who gave loans for poor entrepreneurs from his bank and stayed solvent, and got noble peace prize] . . The charity has a welding school that starts soon, and along with the drivers of the two mini-diggers (that get plenty of work) [I want one], more of the community should have jobs. . ok enough . . education, etc but I know less about that. .

My BACK is quite stiff, we mixed about 20 bags of cement on Friday to do the floor and now a different guy is coming to do the roof. .





There´s snakes here saw a big one yesterday and found chopped one, awesome reptile. . .and also an evil looking spider, which you can compare your house spiders to if you get scared.

Any comments or questions are much appreciated from this side!