Autumn in New York

I don't usually blog about transits, but New York deserves to be the exception. Having just arrived back in the UK to true winter temperatures, it's strange to think that only yesterday I was experiencing autumn in New York. With temperatures hovering in the mid-late teens and beautiful rusts and golds in the trees, it seemed more like early October than late November.

View over the city from the plane

My journey from Managua to New York wasn't the most relaxing of experiences. But I've only got myself to blame. When I left the UK, east coast USA was 4 hours behind the UK (with UK clocks going back the night before I flew out to Bolivia). However what I didn't realise was that a week later, American clocks also went back an hour. So when I arrived in Miami for my transit to New York I was convinced it was noon and only had an hour and half to clear immigration and customs. Sounds like plenty of time, but for anyone who's every transited through Miami, you'll know what I'm talking about. The line for immigration snakes back and forth, 10 lines wide with each lane about 50 metres long. It took me just over an hour to get through so I had 30 minutes to left to collect my bag, clear customs, recheck my bag, go through security and get to my gate. Challenge accepted.

After long lines at every stage, I finally arrived at my gate virtually exactly to the minute (I thought) the gate should open. Turns out right minute, wrong hour. I still had a whole hour to go as my watch was on east coast summertime. Yes, I know... Why didn't I look at an airport clock instead? Why didn't I figure out the time difference in advance? Why didn't I ask someone if I was going to make the flight so that they could tell me what an idiot I was? Hindsight's a wonderful thing. But not quite as wonderful as the whole hour I had to enjoy my lunchtime gin and tonic and chicken chimichanga...

The PHEW G&T

So, why New York? Well, for starters, it was on the way home, I haven't been there for about six years and it's an amazing city. But mainly because two years after meeting them on a Restless Development trek I did in Nepal (before I started blogging) I could finally catch up with the lovely Ezrins. When you walk and talk for seven days, sleep on the ground, don't shower and eat the same food nearly 3 times a day, you fast forward friendships that take years to build, so catching up with Josh and Carolyn after two years felt like I'd only seen them last week. Thank you so much for having me to stay in your beautiful home - looking forward to returning the favour in my teeny tiny flat whenever you're ready!

Having been to New York a few times before, it was so nice to visit the city and just soak it in, rather than get on the tourist trail. So we went for dinner on the Upper East Side, took a yoga class, had brunch, wandered around with no pre-planned routes, had coffee and went running round the reservoir in Central Park. It was also really good to catch up with Andy, my old flatmate in London, as well as Martina and Stefano who've moved to the city from London as Martina just started work at the UN. 

Post-yoga brunch with Carolyn and Wendy

View onto Madison Avenue from apartment

Beautiful Upper East Side architecture

Autumn colours in Central Park (in winter!)

View across the reservoir on a cloudy Sunday...

And bright Monday

Monday morning run round Central Park and reservoir

New York selfie with Martina and Stefano

So, ten flights and just over three weeks later, I'm back home in a bit of a jet lag haze. Think this one might have been pushing the limits, even for a nomad like me. So I'm looking forward to staying well away from longhaul flights/airports till the new year when I can hopefully move into my new flat in London before heading off to Thailand and the Philippines in February.

Regional ICS Latin America Workshop, Nicaragua

This week I was facilitating a training workshop in Granada for country office staff based at the ICS agencies that have volunteers in Latin America. As well as staff from Bolivia (Tearfund and International Service) where I did my recent project visits, we were joined by Nicaragua (Progressio and Raleigh International), Honduras (Progressio) and El Salvador (Progressio). It was such a great opportunity to have direct contact with the people who actually implement the programme at a grassroots level. Usually in my role I have more contact with their colleagues in the UK so can often feel quite far removed from the real action!

Workshop participants (unfortunately minus Raleigh International and half of Glenda's head!)

The purpose of the week was to provide training in some of the more technical aspects of the programme, such as how to use the ICS database and the monitoring and evaluation framework. But equally it was a chance for agencies to network and share/learn from their different approaches, so the sessions were very participatory. Although ICS is based on some key quality principles (e.g. diversity; volunteer learning; strong supervision and support; community-based working and project impact, to name a few), the actual implementation models can vary from agency to agency so the workshop provided a useful opportunity to look at the challenges and strengths of these different models as well as create action plans for future programming.

As well as the sessions during the day it was great to get to know some of the country office staff in a more informal environment in the evenings. So as much as there was inter-agency sharing and learning, I also took a lot away from my conversations with individual participants over breakfast, lunch and dinnner as well as their contributions to sessions and country presentations where they shared one aspect of their programming in more detail. 

Raleigh International presentation

On Thursday evening we decided to venture out of the hotel (four days of training can get a bit like cabin fever after a while) and visit an artisan market in nearby Masaya. Everyone was really looking forward to seeing/buying some of the beautiful local pottery but when we got there it was in pitch darkness. So with fifteen participants all set to buy souvenirs, we set out for another town only to find that closed too. Just when I was thinking we'd need to head back to the hotel so I could buy a round of consolatory cocktails, our driver managed to track down not just a market/shop but a whole pottery school where they gave us a full demonstration on how it is made before opening up the shop so everyone could buy souvenirs. Double win (and lots of happy workshop participants)!

The trip that never was (to Masaya)

A very closed market

But an open pottery school...

...and shop!

Laguna de Apoyo and Volcán Mombacho, Nicaragua

After some mad dashes through airports to make connections, losing my insect repellant and sun cream (confiscated from hand luggage in Colombia) and one of my favourite Omani scarves (fell out of bag when running to gate in Costa Rica) along the way, I finally made it to Nicaragua in Central America.

With a weekend off before the participants for the ICS Regional Latin America Workshop arrive in Granada, I decided to head to the nearby Laguna de Apoyo to catch my breath (and catch up on emails) for a couple of days. Seemed like a great idea until I tried to take some money out and discovered my bank card had been blocked. Apparently even the Natwest fraud team think my travel plans might be a bit unrealistic. But as my Dad always tells me, "you never take the easy road but it always works out in the end"!

Laguna de Apoyo (Mombacho in background)

Close up on Volcán Mombacho

Hammocks outside cabanas

Open air shower in cabana

The story goes that Laguna de Apoyo was created by the collapse of a large volcano, 23,000 years ago. Filled with rainwater and supplemented by a network of underwater streams and warm fumaroles, the water is a blissful 26 to 28 degrees. The crater bottom lies 200 metres below the surface and is about 100 metres below sea level, apparently the deepest point in Central America. With the hotel for the training workshop fully booked for the weekend, I set up office at San Simian Eco Lodge, with its rustic cabanas, open air showers and "howling monkey" alarm clocks. It was the perfect place to catch up on some last minute workshop preparations after my busy schedule in La Paz as well as finding a bit of time to read, swim and kayak. If you're ever anyway nearby, I highly recommend it: http://www.sansimian.com/

Work...

Read...

Kayak...

On Saturday night I headed into Granada to stay at the hotel where we'll be based for the next week, with workshop participants coming in from ICS Country Offices in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Bolivia on Monday. Granada is described by the Lonely Planet as a "Spanish colonial masterpiece" and the hotel is no exception. The beautiful architecture, horse-drawn carriages and lively mardi-gras atmosphere on the streets doesn't disappoint and, after two weeks travelling on my own, I'm looking forward to spending the whole week here with colleagues from the ICS Hub in London as well as the workshop participants.

Before Sarah, Dave and Phil from the Hub arrived this afternoon, I headed off to explore Volcán Mombacho, a 1344 metre active volcano which provides the backdrop to the city of Granada. On the way up I met a Canadian couple who were keen to do the longer of the two crater hiking trails at the top, but when we got up there, the clouds rolled in and they closed all but the shortest of the trails. We still got to walk around the crater (not that you could see much because of the clouds) but it was still an interesting place to go, with a few fumaroles (cracks in the earth's crust) that, when you stand over them, feel like you're doing a facial steam. Just chuck in some vicks vaporub and it's the perfect decongestant!

On the way to the crater

Doesn't look hopeful!

With Sabrina and Reg enjoying the "view"!

The "view" (over the crater)

Fumarole face steam

On the way back down we visited the reserve's coffee plantation and hacienda. Coffee is Nicaragua's largest export so often what remains in the country doesn't taste that great but it was fun to try out some of the different grounds. On the way back to Granada we got caught in a massive downpour as we tried to (unsuccessfully) shelter ourselves in the back of a tuk tuk. Did I forget to mention the rainy season? Probably because I didn't really know myself until I got here, but so far it's rained most afternoons or evenings (sometimes both). At Laguna de Apoyo it was actually quite dramatic, watching the dark clouds roll in from the other side of the lake and then turn to blue skies half an hour later. The mosquitoes aren't such a positive effect, and with an increase in incidences of dengue fever, I'm getting used to stinking of insect repellant 24 hours a day!

View from coffee plantation

From plant...

...To roast

A very wet tuk tuk ride back to Granada

International Service Bolivia Project Visits in and around La Paz

Round two of ICS project visits in Bolivia was with an agency in the consortium called International Service. International Service has ICS volunteers in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Palestine and Bolivia, so a really diverse range of countries as well as diverse volunteers.

La Paz is the highest capital city in the world and with streets as steep as San Francisco at an altitude of 4000 metres above sea level, it's not a place to stroll around unless you're feeling like superman. So with project visits in La Paz, El Alto (much higher) and the nearby community of Mallassa in Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) my ears were constantly popping, but it was great to see such a variety of different activities.

With the same two main objectives as for my Tearfund project visits, it was really interesting to see some of the differences and similarities of a different ICS agency's programme operating in the same country. 

I spent my first morning in the International Service office, doing a presentation/Q&A type session with staff and volunteers, followed by each of the four teams doing presentations on their respective projects. I was really impressed by the critical thinking of the ICS volunteers, many of whom had strong opinions on the role of youth volunteering in international development and the impact of the work they were doing.

My first of four project visits was to a children's centre in La Paz itself, supported by ChildFund Bolivia. The main focus of their ICS volunteers' project is to deliver pilot education sessions to the children about preventable diseases with the aim of producing a preventable diseases education manual containing the sessions that have worked the best. As well as this main focus, volunteers have also committed to providing general support at the four children's centres around the city (ChildFund support a total of 50), playing games and painting murals.

The next day I visited two more projects around El Alto and La Paz. I was particularly impressed with the first project linked to a local partner organisation called Focapasi which supports/trains women to build their own greenhouses/plant vegetables to a) maintain the health and nutrition of their own family and b) sell their produce to contribute to their household income. I was impressed to see that ICS volunteers who previously had no knowledge of urban gardening can now talk knowledgeably about the best environment to grow plants at altitude because of the experimental planting they're doing in the training greenhouse. As well as doing planting themselves, the volunteers have been involved in training the women in different gardening techniques, as well as marketing their produce to various cafes and restaurants in La Paz. As a sideline to these activities, volunteers also go into children's centres run by the partner Aldeas SOS and teach children about healthy eating and nutrition. So I watched as they played games like "pin the udder on the cow" and sang songs about how carbohydrates giving you energy, before demonstrating with the breaking of polystyrene sheets what happens to your bones if you don't drink milk! 

Harriet and Archie check the plants' progress

Piloting innovative ways to keep the soil warm over night - rainwater in plastic bottles works!

Harriet soil sieving and worm rescuing

Learning about a balanced diet

Little girl in pink not so into the "plants grow tall" song

The other main project visit of the day was to an awareness-raising event for the parents of children at another centre, about the prevention of cervical, breast and prostate cancer as well as HIV/AIDS. The event was really well attended (14 women and 8 men) and as a result, most of the women committed to going to a health clinic for a pap test. ICS volunteers will be supporting this process as well as conducting more awareness-raising events.

Open discussion about prevention of cancers

Giving out leaflets after the event

While we were driving around La Paz, we also got to see the community volunteer zebras in action, a project that ICS is looking at working with next year. In short, young people hang around at zebra crossings, from time to time stopping the traffic (which is chaos in La Paz) and helping pedestrians cross safely. Perhaps the Bolivian equivalent of lollipop ladies?!

On the last day, I went just outside the city to Mallassa in the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) where ICS volunteers are working with a local community-based organisation called Up Close Bolivia. It's a family-run Bolivian-British initiative with widespread community participation all based around a children's centre but also delivering projects in response to community need such as "Nuestro Espacio" (Our Space), a very similar initiative to one of the Tearfund projects in Cochabamba. Rather than paying to rent/build a permanent space, Nuestro Espacio works on the same basis as the recent London trend of pop up shops, using existing community infrastructure on a temporary basis in order to provide a safe space for children to go after school while their parents are still at work. At the children's centre, the mothers all contribute to the running of the centre ranging from a rota for baking bread to covering for the teachers/carers when they have to go into the city to get their wages. I've rarely seen such a genuine model of community participation and seeing it in action makes it clear how sustainable it is. Because Up Close is run by volunteers (including those with ICS) and doesn't pay any salaries, it's one of those small organisations where you can know that your money is going directly to the people who need it. So if you're looking for a project to support, either through volunteering or donating, I really recommend getting in touch with Emma and her husband Ronaldo: http://upclosebolivia.org/

At the end of the three days I wrapped up my time with International Service with a debrief meeting with their Country Director, followed by some horse riding on the ranch in Valle de las Flores just down from Mallassa and a fundraising pub quiz in La Paz where ICS volunteers raised money for Up Close Bolivia. 

Valle de las Flores - Valley of the flowers

With Naomi, one of International Service's Team Leaders, based with Up Close Bolivia

I've now got 3 hours to get some sleep before I have to get up at 1:30am for my 4:30am flight to Nicaragua via Colombia and Costa Rica. Not sure it was the most direct route, but pretty sure it was the cheapest!