San Ramon, Coffee farm and Jinotega!

San Ramon! i took a short bus ride from Matagalpa to San Ramon to spend a few days checking out Durham, NC´s sister city. this was actually my first time to stay awhile small town. San Ramon has 5,000 people in the town proper. i walked the whole town in about 10 minutes and encountered no less than 8 churches. this is a picture of a giant bible in the middle of town.



during my stay i made a trip to the community of El Chile about an hour outside of town to visit a group of women who weave bags with beautiful handmade string. this woman was super sweet and talked to me a bit about her life. she lives in a cottage way out in the country where the women come to weave. she spends her days weaving, gardening and writing poetry. :)




i also made a day trip to the farm Finca Esperanza Verde - an eco-coffee farm that through the Durham sister city program is connected with a coffee roaster in NC! it was a fun day of walking trails through the mountainous, shady coffee farm, having an awesome but $9 lunch (ahh! tourist prices!) and then going on a tour to see how organic coffee processing is different from conventional. it was great and i even got to meet the woman from Durham who started it all - she came to Nicaragua looking for a way to help after the Contra war and ended up providing countless services for San Ramon through the sister city project and starting this organic, eco-tourity coffee plantation!


also, at the farm i met Pedro Antonio - a nearby coffee farmer who had some time on his hands and really wanted me to take a picture of his cows. so i said why not and got about an hour and a half tour of his land and got to hear about his typical day. when i asked about his bloody shirt (it took some courage), he pointed to a calf and said, ¨oh, i helped birth her last night¨ ha! so this is a picture of a day old calf and her mom. :)


then it was on to Jinotega - ¨City of Mists.¨ it was a lot like Matagalpa - friendly and mountainy - but smaller. i didn´t have much to do there, as there wasn´t a spanish school or many tourist activities. but i walked around a lot and enjoyed seeing a new town. the journey there was pretty interesting, though - about half an hour outside of town a group of farmers flagged down the bus and helped a man bleeding severely through the bandages on his head onto the bus. he had obviously been hurt while working and needed to get to the city for medical care. what surprised me was the amount of calm people had - the bus still drove it´s same route at the same pace. in fact, the money collector had the bus driver stop at one point because the wounded guy and his friend didn´t seem to have the money to pay for the trip. what?!! but eventually money exchanged hands and the bus puttered on. i´m still not sure how to process all that but thought i´d share...

next it´s on to San Rafael del Norte and then back to Esteli for a few days before my friend Meredith comes to visit!!!

(oh, and the cow is just to end things on a light note)

:)