When the Almond Tree Blooms

It's summer time but the livin' ain't so easy when you're at a year round school and have to go back in mid-July. There's much to gripe about at the beginning of the new school year, but the garden is looking great. Check out the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/SummerTimeInTheParkGarden# As usual, there is a lot on my mind, but for now, if you're checking out my blog, why don't you check out the photos and enjoy something nice?

It's a sunny Saturday morning in Fruitvale. A bit of chill still hangs in the air. I take a walk down to Fruitvale and Foothill to find something to eat. I pass a senior citizen outside the Posada de Colores retirement home. He greets me with a nod and a smile as I walk by. At the corner, the laundromat is already open and I see families dragging enormous sacks of clothing inside. The taco truck is still closed. On the other side of the street, day laborers gather in the Kragen parking lot, hoping for some work and a bit of pay to send back to families in Mexico, Guatemala and beyond. Picky shoppers crowd around big crates of corn that have just arrived outside one of the many produce stores that line that stretch of Foothill between Fruitvale and 35th Avenue. A dozen workers breakfast on rice, beans, pupusas, tacos and tamales outside the 'Pupusas Mi Lupita' stand. I go into a restaurant to order a licuado to soothe my hunger and still-unsettled stomach. Back at

I have put some of my photos from the past two and a half weeks I spent in Nicaragua on my Picasa Web album. Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/NicaraguaEnVerde# I returned to Oakland last night after two and a half weeks in Nicaragua. I feel as if I've been gone much longer than that. Traveling a lot certainly has much to do with this: we packed a lot into a few days, with many early mornings, long bus rides, new places and many people we encountered along the way. Also, being in Managua for 24 hours before leaving Nicaragua was intense. Managua is an intense place. On my first visit to Nicaragua, I only passed through it on the way to and from Leon, and found it off putting and depressing: dirty, chaotic, noisy and poor. While the city certainly has plenty of these four qualities, I gained more of an appreciation for Managua this time around. Most of this has to do with the wonderful time I spent with Atalanta and her family. They are incredible

The noises of cars and pedestrians on the street here in Rivas are a strange shock after having spent nearly all of my time so far in Nicaragua in the campo . On Monday, Rawley and I left Lagartillo on the 6:30 bus (the times I´ve been waking up at will make going back to work seem like sleeping in) for Esteli, leaving behind friends and a great community. We arrived in Esteli, did some errands then left for Miraflor that afternoon. The bus gradually climbed through cattle pastures and forests to the highlands of Miraflor located north of the city. As we gained elevation, moss cloaked trees, small fincas and fields of corn, potatoes and cabbage appeared out of the drizzle. We passed small communities, eventually arriving at Puertas Azules. From there we hiked along a gravel road a few kilometers to Posada La Perla, located at the highest point of Miraflor. We had reservations to stay two nights there at the small farm of Maribel Gonzales and her family. The finca is a rustic sp

I am here on a cloudy Friday morning in Esteli. I needed to run an errand (get money from the bank) which means taking a 2 hour bus ride across the mountains. On the plus side, the landscape is beautiful because it has been raining a lot, and there´s no dust to inhale during the journey. I just have a couple of things to do so I´m returning to Lagartillo this afternoon. It´s been a week since I arrived in Nicaragua but feels longer than that because it´s been easy to slide back into the routine of life in Lagartillo. It´s a little different this time of year though since sometimes it rains for a few hours and the rains are heavy so everything comes to a stop for a while. Earlier this week it rained a lot, but the rains haven´t been as hard the last couple of days, so things have dried out a bit, which is good because all of my stuff was getting damp. Limpiando frijoles As some of you may remember from earlier posts, agriculture is a big focus of my experience here. Last January I

Writing about travel is simply more fun than writing about everyday life. Things are new and exciting, and the unexpected becomes much more a part of the everyday experience. It´s my first full day here in Nicaragua. I arrived in Managua yesterday morning after a long but not so bad trip from San Francisco, via San Salvador. This time around, I was unable to get a deal on a first class ticket, so I rode in the coach section, which was less comfortable but more interesting. I spent much of the trip chatting with the woman sitting next to me, who was traveling with her two kids to visit family in Masaya, Nicaragua where she was from. I didn´t get much sleep, which was too bad since it was a night flight. Also on my flight was the daughter of one of my coworkers from Hayward, who was traveling with relatives to visit family in Guatemala. When I arrived in Managua, I headed to the bus station, where I ate a quick meal (fried chicken, salad, rice, beans, tostones and a drink) then

In nearly twelve hours, I'll be arriving in San Salvador, El Salvador, aboard a night flight from San Francisco. From there, it's just a quick hop to Managua, Nicaragua, then a bus ride up north to Esteli. I must admit, it feels a bit strange going back to a country where I was just six months ago. I spent a little more than a month in Nicaragua this past December and January and had an incredible experience there, mostly because of the time I spent studying Spanish in the remote mountain community of Lagartillo. For those interested in hearing more about my time in Lagartillo, please check out my earlier posts. After returning to the states, I was happy to be back but scheming about returning to Nicaragua, hoping to stay longer in Lagartillo. My dream of spending many months there turned into a month long trip, now I am only going to be in Nicaragua for two and a half weeks. Life--recovering from a hernia surgery and having to find a new place to live--kept me from goi

The other night, I had the pleasure to watch an excellent movie called 'The Edge of Heaven'. The film that takes place in Germany and Turkey; I bring it up not because I want to write a review, but because the movie got me thinking about a past life I once had. From September 2002 until August 2003, I lived, studied and traveled in Turkey. I spent most of my time in Istanbul, a beautiful, ancient, crowded, intense, and overwhelming city. In my daily life here in U.S., I don't often think of my year in Turkey, and my time there holds this strange place in the chronology of my life. That time is strangely disconnected with the rest of my life: I never speak Turkish (I've forgotten most of what I learned there) and rarely meet Turks and there is no one from that experience that I encounter in my daily life. Since watching the film, memories from my life in Turkey have flooded back into my mind. I think about catching a bus on a cold fall night on my way back home from

Last weekend, I was going to write something about rain. On Saturday night and early Sunday morning, we had some rain here in the Bay Area. What began as a reflection about rain's significance in a time of drought became a much wider inquiry into climate change, the future of humanity and the planet, and our role in the current crises we face. I like to think of myself as someone who works on the land. I coordinate a school garden program and grow food with inquisitive, sometimes exhausting but ultimately inspiring elementary age kids. I've been doing this work for over four years, and since then, I've become more and more in tune with the workings of nature. Farmers, many have written, are on the front lines of climate change. Across the world, those of us who grow food from the land are facing changing weather patterns which is making agriculture more difficult. Unlike most farmers, I don't rely on what I grow either for sustenance, like the campesinos I had

I felt a surprising surge of emotion when I read yesterday evening that the leftist FMLN Party in El Salvador had claimed victory in that country's presidential election. Why should I care about an election in a tiny little Central American country? My interest in El Salvador--and in Central America as a region--goes beyond just its' pupusas and fine coffee. For many years, I knew little about El Salvador, but in the years I've spent working in the East Bay, I've met many Salvadorans and became interested in their stories and the history of their small nation. When I decided to travel to Central America a little over a year ago, I had my sights set on spending some time in El Salvador, so I delved into a few books about the history of that country's civil war. It became clear to me that the FMLN had waged a just guerilla war against a brutal, repressive right-wing regime for nearly a decade. It always seemed sad to me that after the Peace Accords in 1992?, the

It's a windy, cold afternoon here in Oakland, and I am looking out my not-so-clean window at the vacant yard that once belonged to my neighbors. Yet another victim of foreclosure, they moved out a few weeks ago, taking with them their assorted vehicles, weight set and junk that once crowded the small, concrete back patio. Sometimes loud and raucous, always lively, I will miss them and the little piece of Central America they brought to the neighborhood. I recall one summer afternoon when I dozed off in my backyard to the soothing sounds of their Guatemalan marimba music. Now, it's just an empty space, one of many in this city. Bad news is not hard to find these days. Sixteen teachers at the elementary school where I work got pink slips yesterday. Families and staff are concerned what will happen to the school. Many of the dedicated educators who have served there now find their future uncertain. I am lucky that the grant money that supports my position as a school garde

As I spend a quiet Saturday reading, writing and cooking beans, my mind drifts back to the month I spent in Nicaragua. I've lost track of how much time it's been since I returned from Central America, but I know I've been back for well over a month. At work, people are counting down the weeks before our spring break--four more to go. I am thinking ahead of projects to do in the school garden where I work once spring arrives, which here in the Bay Area will be soon. I am also thinking of another school garden project--the one in Lagartillo, the community in Nicaragua where I spent a month studying Spanish this past winter vacation. When I was in Lagartillo, some of the community elders spoke of starting a garden project at the school. A nonprofit organization that supports initiatives for women and children in Nicaragua, Project Sonrisas (http://www.projectsonrisas.org/) is working with the community in Lagartillo to help make the project a reality. To quote the Pro

I have laryngitis and can't talk today. I had to take a sick day since if I can't talk, I can't teach, especially to large groups of sixth graders. Which is disappointing, since I really did want to work today... Since I can't talk, I figure I can write. It's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog. It's been a few weeks since I returned from Nicaragua and I've slid back into my routine here: work, King's Boxing Gym, cooking, hanging out. After a January that was more like April in terms of weather, winter is back, and I'm feeling the cold here in my drafty, unheated house on 27th Avenue. We're getting rain though, so I can't really complain, and the plants are happy. The news here is of recession, of course, and it's usually not positive. I think we would all like it if things were easier. But here we are, and perhaps we can find something good in all this. Hard times inevitably draw people together, with less,

Hi Folks, I'm back in Oakland, I arrived late last night. I'm tired. I posted photos on my Picasa photo page. Come take a look: http://picasaweb.google.com/rfadam/QueLindaEsNicaragua# Last time I posted, I was about to leave for the Las Penitas beach not far from Leon. The short trip turned into more of an adventure than I had imagined. I took a bus from the centro near my hostel to a small mercado in the Subtiava barrio , where I boarded the bus to Las Penitas. There was a really annoying drunk on the bus--at 10 AM in the morning, he and his two buddies were already out of the minds from cheap aguardiente . He kept asking me over and over whether I was going to surf at the beach, so eventually I started ignoring him. The road to Las Penitas, like most roads in Nicaragua, is undergoing repairs and improvements, and on one of the spots under construction, our bus broke an axel. We all got off and waited for the next bus, which came, already full, in about ten m

Hi Folks. I´m back in Leon, where I am hoping to spend my last full day in Nicaragua at the beach, enjoying the warm weather before I head back to that ice box of a house where I live in Oakland tomorrow night. It´s plenty hot here so I need to enjoy the sun and sweat while I can. I left Lagartillo yesterday afternoon. It was not easy to leave. I had a wonderful week relaxing, working and exploring. On Monday, I returned to Lagartillo from Leon, the bus was empty compared with the day before, and I made sure to appreciate the spectacular mountain scenery along the way. On Monday afternoon, I went with Willa (the long term student who has been in Lagartillo for three months, I think), her professora Lizbeth, Lizbeth´s husband and their little boy Gaby to watch the sunset. We went to a large rock with a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside and the volcanoes in the distance to the west. After having spent a few weeks in Lagartillo, I´ve become more familiar with th

Finally, some photos for those of you who´ve been following my blog... (they´re backwards, but who really cares...) Las Brisas Waterfall The Mural at the Lagartillo school finished The Mural in progress Monchito and Roniel at the Las Lajas Waterfall This Sunday finds me again in Esteli, I came to buy coffee to take back to the states, to use the net and eat a quesillo (like a quesadilla but not only with cheese, but also cream and spicy onions...mmm). I had originally planned to leave Lagartillo for good this weekend, but I am returning to the community tomorrow for the rest of the week. My plan was to travel and see other places in Nicaragua, but there´s so much to do in Lagartillo (not to mention so many wonderful people to hang out with), that I don´t really feel like leaving. So I changed my plans and will probably stay there until next Saturday. What are plans for besides to change them anyways. If I had known how bad the bus ride today was going to be, I might not ha