Mes de la Patria

This month, as was the case in most Latin American countries, Nicaragua celebrated its independence. The Granada celebrations for Independence Day were pretty underwhelming. The main festivity was a parade in which every school in Granada is represented with a combination of marching, a band and dancing. Besides that, the city more or less shut down for a few days, schools were closed and people relaxed. When I asked Angela, a woman I live with in Doña Chilo's house what they were going to do to celebrate she said the women planned to "wake up, gossip, eat, fall asleep and the following day will be another day."

At Soccer Without Borders we kept our schedule and activities open as usual. The independence week off from school actually allowed quite a few girls who's school schedules conflict with our programming to attend all of our activities for the week. That Tuesday at soccer practice we had a mini five versus five tournament with the girls and coaches playing together on each team. A curveball for that day was that the majority of the field flooded from all of the rain we've been having lately (see picture below), but the spacing worked out well and no one got too muddy.

Our field at the Malecón. In the background is Lake Nicaragua. In the middle of the image you can kind of see a huge puddle on the field.

Being the mes de la patria, the theme of the office activities this month has been Nicaraguan history and independence. Each week we've chosen a different theme within that theme, ranging from national symbols, to important people to tourism. For the first half of the month, Cindy, a Nicaraguan, and I worked with the pequeñas. I've finally gotten all of their names down and am starting to learn more about each girl and her personality. The pequeñas, although often a chaotic group, are fun to work with because as long as you mirror their energy, they are enthusiastic and participate in the activities. The first week of the month, we split the group up, and each group was assigned a different Nicaraguan myth or legend. Within these groups, we read the stories and then had to figure out how to act them out for the rest of the group at the end of the week. My group got a myth about hunters on the Miskito Coast denying their traditional hunting tools for guns and the consequences they dealt with because of that decision. I give a lot of credit to the girls; they were enthusiastic and generally had a strong presence on the stage, but the performance itself was a bit of a disaster. No one knew which line to say when, and I was left unsure of whether or not to laugh or cry.

The following week with the pequeñas, we talked about national heroes and each girl made a mask of her favorite national hero...and a confused girl drew Abraham Lincoln.

Some of the pequeñas showing off their masks.

At the midway point of this month, I switched gears and worked with the grandes (older girls) and their current leader, Veronica. These girls range from 12-20 years old. Within them, there's a consistent group that comes to every session, practice and are also part of the Soccer Without Borders team that plays in a Sunday women's league. I was excited by the prospect of working on the activity nights with them for the first time. They are definitely a harder crowd to win over then the pequeñas, but that makes a good conversation or activity with them give me a lot of momentum. My first week with the grandes, the theme was symbols. We started off the week by introducing international symbols (recycle, peace sign, etc) and then had each grande make her own symbol and present it. The week concluded with a trivia night, in which we split the group up into four teams and quizzed them on Nicaraguan history and symbols. Nicaraguan history and geography are greatly stressed in schools here, so they had no problems fielding most of the questions. Last week the theme was tourism and for most of the week we worked on tourist pamphlets of different cities in Nicaragua.

After having spent time with both the grandes and pequeñas, I am excited that I will be able to continue to alternate between the two groups throughout the year. The energy of the pequeñas is exhilarating and a hug or joke is usually enough to win them over. The grandes are good at having attitudes and being teenage girls, but the depth of activities and discussions that can be done with them and amongst them is a lot greater.

¡Tres Pisos!

The last few weeks have been busy as we've been moving into a new office space! The now former Soccer Without Borders office had been home to our programs for about a year and a half. Although it holds a special place in T.E.A.M. Granada history, the space itself had become too small for our activity nights. So a few weeks ago we moved down the street to the office space, which is affectionately called "Tres Pisos" (three floors). The building is a former hotel and offers ample space. On the first floor, there's a coach's office, intern office, kitchen, and bodega where all of the soccer equipment is stored. On the second floor there is ample space for the pequeñas and four bedrooms which will soon be inhabited by Larkin, myself, Cesar and Chepe. The third floor is a wide-open space where the grandes have their activity nights.

The former SWB office.

The move is very exciting for many reasons. The space itself is a lot bigger and more comfortable. Every room has a fan and there are many windows, which help ventilate the place. It's been really nice to have so much space available while running the activity nights. Now that we have a kitchen, we're hoping to host some sort of holiday dinner for the girls and their families and also have a Nicaraguan feast at the end of this month to conclude the month of the patria. All in all the hope and expectation is that Tres Pisos will become much more of a community center than the former office ever was. The old office was only ever consistently open for the activity nights. Now that we’re in Tres Pisos, the office is open much more regularly and we have made available office/drop-in hours for the girls throughout the week.

The excitement throughout the Soccer Without Borders community surrounding the new office has been impressive and given me great momentum. We probably average around 30-40 girls at our activity nights, but at the first activity night in the new office more than 70 girls showed up! It was really chaotic but a lot of fun.

Tres Pisos.

In October, Larkin and I will be moving into rooms at Tres Pisos. I'm pretty excited for that. Living with Doña Chilo and the rest of her crew has been generally fun, interesting and a good introduction into Nicaragua, but I am looking forward to having a bit more privacy. Although it sounds counterintuitive, I think having my own space within the Soccer Without Borders office will create more of a separation between a home life and work life.