Happy Canada Day!

Hello friends.

So I am no longer sick. This is a very good thing as I can now continue living my life. It was a few rough days but I think I was lucky because it was short but intense instead of drawn out over a period of a couple weeks. Everything seems back to normal other than the odd stomach feelings here and there but that is just expected. All my medications are done too which is awesome because they made me feel like crap. But, it made me feel a little better knowing that I was not the only one getting needles in the buttocks….hang in there Dave! Seriously, they hurt though, I’m sure Dave can attest to that. I limped back from the clinic every time I got one, did you Dave?

So…what else happened lately. Oh yes. super super busy at work. I pulled 2 ten hour days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was a meeting with my boss, Director of Oxfam-Quebec here and the directors of the partner organizations and he wanted a bunch of analyses and tools and stuff done by then with regards to costs of production for different types of crops, timelines, prices, returns on investment for different crops etc etc. I won’t bore you any further. Anyways, it was a lot of work. I also learned that things get done even slower than I thought here. I needed prices for these 5 main crops for 2006 and 2007. Well, Oxfam has been trying to obtain these prices for 2 years and finally a woman and I at work were able to find a contact in the ministry of agriculture in the government who could get this for us. Well, 3 days later, an hour before the meeting is supposed to happen I still don’t have these prices and my whole thing depends on these prices. Anyways, the woman I was working with gets on the phone to our contact and starts bitching him out and low and behold 25 minutes later I have the prices from 2000 until now hahaha. Lesson of the day, if you need something done, don’t be nice, just make sure you get what you need. Anyways, the meeting ended up being cancelled until next week. With this and with the information that I got which was more and better than expected I spent some time re-working what I originally did, and I actually think I produced one kick ass product that will be really useful for the partners from here on out, hopefully they feel the same way. Anyways, enough about work, but it is going well and is interesting, a lot better than I had expected it to be. I am enjoying it which is awesome.

So Tuesday was Fête St. Jean. This is like the equivalent of Canada Day for Quebec, like Quebec Day sort of. Anyway, since this is Oxfam-Québec, the other 6 canadians here are Québecois. So of course there was a little bit of a celebration. We made poutine Nica style, using the ingredients we had and then just hung around, and had a couple of beers relaxingly. I woke my up at 5:30am on tuesday and went to the gym. I felt really weak after being sick so decided I should start going to the gym again, plus it is a very popular thing to do here. People have been bugging me to go. It costs about 70cents each time I go. It is nothing fancy, 4 conrete walls with afew mirrors, a concrete floor and a bunch of weights strewn about and machines, 1/3 of which are broken. But is gets the job done. I am going to try and get into the routine of going.

What else….oh yes. I, along with the other 6 canadians in the office received an invitation from the Canadian Ambassador here in Nicaragua to go to Managua on Thursday for a Canada Day celebration. The invitation said at the Hotel Intercontinental and some singer from Canada would be singing. Well, what the hell we thought, we might as well go, it is a change of scenery, we can book a couple hotel rooms (not at hotel intercontinental of course, but at a cheap hotel 10 minutes away because who can afford hotel intercontinental other than government officials). So that was the plan and we were pretty excited. So at 4 on Thursday afternoon we hopped in 2 cars, a pickup, and a small mr. bean car. this car is hilarious it is soo tiny and crappy. I don’t know how it runs or how I got stuck riding in it. So we made the 2.5 hour drive to Managua and decided we should probably dress a little nicer than jeans but no need for ‘dress clothes’, our excuse was we are from Esteli, so I threw on some khakis and a button down shirt.

So the party held by the ambassador. Well that sucked. Why? Well a few reasons, 1st could not have been more boring. 2nd we definitely did not fit in. I was under the impression that it was all Canadians registered working here invited. I was wrong, it was Canadian gov’t officials and special guests. The special guests included us and then a whole bunch of private interests. First of all, we were not a bunch of rich, stuck up middle aged to old people wearing suits and ties and nice dresses and shit. We are not government officials, nor are we owners or representatives of private capital and interests trying to shmooze our way into being able producing our t-shirts even cheaper than we already do. Nor are we owners of private capital or interests trying to get in on the action of exploiting poor women and children in free-trade zones to once again produce t-shirts at as minimal cost as possible or exploit the country’s natural resources. So, this was definitely just a big opportunity for all these scumbags and officials to make contacts and to network. Shame on you Mr. Ambassador, you are an ass. Ok ok, I am being a bit harsh. Mr. Ambassador did make a rather nice speech, although my Spanish accent is better than his, and his supposed bi-lingual speech for the Canadians only contained 2 lines in French. Regardless, it was a nice speech, talking about all the nice relations between Canada and Nicaragua and how Canada is so free and democratic and how we give so much money to Nicaragua and that Nicaragua has come a long way and is experiencing much success opening up its economy and establishing those oh so profitable free-trade zones full of maquilas which really do generate a lot of high quality employment. Right. After you finish schmoozing with the owners of those maquilas, get back in your limo, go back to your mansion and shut the fuck up. Pinche madre.

I apologize for the rant. Thank God for free wine and finger foods though. Mainly the wine, it was definitely needed to be able to stand 2 hours with those people.
We did meet a few cool people though. One guy was a rep. from CIDA. He came and talked to us after talking to the reps from Gildon. A company that makes shirts and other clothes, similar to Fruit of the Loom and they own many a maquila here in Nicaragua. Anyways, he comes over and is like man, I need a drink. I can’t talk to those people. He was like, I asked them if they improved their standards in their maquilas and they assured me they have and when I asked what is the minimum wage they were like oh well you know, there is no set wage because we pay by amount produced, so you know, the more people produce the more they make. The people now only work a minimum of 10 hour days for around $30 a week. Anyways, he was pretty funny talking about he hates how there are private interests invited to these things but that they are all connected somehow with government officials in both Canada and Nicaragua. Anyways, all in all I am not convinced it was a very good use of all of your tax dollars.
Anyways, we only lasted 2 hours there and then my boss was like ok guys lets get out of here (see, its not only me being young and naïve and stupid, my boss is 40 and had the same feelings as I did, and the others as well, and so did the CIDA guy). So we went out and drank margaritas and ate quesadillas til our hearts content. Lesson #2 of the week. Do not drink with the boss unless you want heated discussions about politics.
After that we went back to our hotel hung out a bit on the patio. We only had 2 rooms booked (well the boss and his wife had their room) and then there were 2 rooms for the other 6 of us. Out of the 6, there is a couple and another girl who live in the same house together so they took one room, and then it was me and my housemate and another lady from work so we figured the two females can share a bed and I can get the other bed. Anyways, me and my housemate head up to the room and Veronique S. (the other lady, Veronique is also the name of my housemate, but she is Veronique C) was already asleep sprawled over the bed and my housemate was like oh man we can’t wake her up. So we looked at each other and were like hey, you up for spooning? hahaha just kidding. We acted like mature adults and shared the bed. Wake up call was an early 7am so we could get back to Esteli somewhat early so the whole work day was not wasted. Managua is interesting, I have only experienced a little bit of it a couple of times, but it’s nice to be back in Esteli. It is so much more relaxed and chill here.

Today (Friday) is a tranquil rainy day. Very quiet at the office, just going to relax tonight.

Did you know that 20% of world corn production goes to producing ethanol. Yes, 20% of the world production of one of the main staple foods goes to producing fuel so people can drive their oh so lovely SUVs while millions of people starve.
Did you know that there is a major food shortage/brink of famine in China because the water used to irrigate crops is being used to water grass and fields in Beijing so that the grass is green for the Olympics. Hmm, so millions more starve so we can have green grass for a stupid sporting event.

This is definitely one of those pessimistic I hate people days. Next post I promise to be more chipper.

Have a good long weekend and a good Canada day!