Day 25

This is it. It's time to pack and go home. First of all I'd like to thank those who have taken some time to read my musings. I've enjoyed writing this blog and hopefully you have got something out of it. I've had a wonderful time and I am very grateful for the opportunity I've had to come here and have so many great experiences. This will by my last entry in Nicaragua. I feel I have so much to say because I've learned so much but I don't know where to start. It is so ironic that you just can't get ahead. I find that whenever I try to give service I always get more in return that I ever give. Perhaps that is why I like doing it?

Believe me I feel like we have done some good and accomplished some things that really will help some people here, but chances are they will all have forgotten about me in a year or two. I will always remember the month I spend in Chinandega though. I feel I have learned a lot about business and consulting, I've been able to practice and use my Spanish skills that were way too rusty, I was able get to know another culture and their food. I was able to indulge in my favorite fruit in the world that I can't get in the states. Here it is call mamon, in Puerto Rico it is called canepa. Either way it was a treat for me. It was great for me to attend church here and see the faith of the saints. It still kind of blows my mind that there can be two cars in a church parking lot and a full chapel at 9:00 AM while back home we can't make it there on time in our luxury automobiles. It made me want to try harder and to be more faithful. I was offered a great internship with Symantec while here by interviewing on Skype. I realized that life goes on without turning on a cell phone for three weeks. I laughed until I cried once (hasn't happened in years), and I made a great friend. I'll be getting on a plane tomorrow with a new perspective on life and more motivation to be a better person and serve my fellow man more.

There is one last thing I want to say. I realized this when I first got here and whether I wrote about it or not I want to talk about it again here. I learned something about happiness. As we walked and drove around I kept seeing little children that were happy. The smiles on their faces couldn't lie. These smiles told the story that they are content and happy with what they have. I'm struggling to describe but it was something you could see in their faces. Some of these children lived in decent homes and others lived in one room homes with dirt floors. It didn't really matter though. And what this taught me is that happiness is not based on material things. Granted it is important to have our basic needs met, but aside from that there is another source of happiness that isn't in material goods. My thoughts are that much of the unhappiness we find in our society is a learned behavior. We have chosen to be unhappy because we dont have this car or we don't live in that house. There is more to life than that.

Day 24

We spent a lot of time in the car today. We left a little before 8 AM and got back just after 8 PM. It was fun to see some different parts of the country, but we did spend a lot of time driving around. Our first stop was to eat Quesillos. These things are not good. It is essentially a couple tortillas with chopped onions with some sort of cream on top. Of course they ordered me the extra large plate at 9 in the morning when I wasn't even remotely hungry. The people here love them and as far as I'm concerned they can keep them. After choking down half a plate we went to the top of this volcano in a national park here. I didn't know this before, but Nicaragua is an active volcanic region. I guess they erupt every once in a while but they are usually smoking as you can see in the pictures. It was really cool to see it so close up.

After that we went to Masaya which is a little bit touristy. The thing I hate about tourist areas is you are a target for every man, woman, or child peddling something. If that isn't annoying enough, while we were eating lunch in a restaurant at least five different peddlers came up to our table trying to sell us there junk. I can't believe the restaurant owners would even allow it. I didn't like that aspect of things but I'm done complaining. We saw this old volcano crater lake afterwards and then made our way back home. All in all it was a really fun day. We saw a lot of cool places and had a lot of laughs along the way. One more day to go...

Day 23

Busy and good day. I'll hit the highlights. We stopped by Marlon's little DVD business and he is doing well. He used to sell around 25 DVD/CD's a day. He is between 30 and 50 now and he hit a new record of 73 last week! Pretty cool. We have also helped him create a little label he can put on his DVD's to help establish his brand. He is now the only DVD store in Chinandega (and there are probably 20) that has its own label and brand on the merchandise they sell.

Lunch was kind of exciting because I ordered cow tongue. Definitely hard to think about what it actually is, but it still tastes good. I figured I'm not going to have much of a chance to eat it again so what the heck. I really did like it.

This afternoon we helped a guy named Chamorro build his own little website/blog. He has a couple of different businesses and he does a good job. He wants to develop an conveyor belt type business that could not only make him a lot of money, but could also employ over 20 people. One thing he said he wanted help with when we met with him was a website. Neither of us really knew how to do that but after a couple days we realized we've learned how to blog and there is no reason he couldn't have his own blog for his business. We got that set up for him and taught him how to continue to work on and develop it.

After that there was a younger gentleman that wanted some help with some marketing materials. He is an electrician by trade and seems to do pretty OK but he wanted some help making some business cards. The first thing we had to do was come up with a business name. After that it wasn't all that tough but thank goodness for Microsoft Word templates. He seemed really happy about his new business name and business cards.

Day 22

Today we went through all the businesses we've met with and wrote up individual reports for all of them. It was quite a bit of work, but it will be a nice record of what we have done and how we feel they can improve. We've only got a couple days left so we are hoping to meet with with most of these people one last time and get them set on the right course. This afternoon we actually met with a couple of ladies we worked with before and they were very appreciative of our suggestions. It is too bad we won't necessarily be here long enough to see how things turn out. I'm surprised at how willing people are to listen to us and try what we suggest. They really are hungry to succeed. It is just a very different business/economic culture.

We went to some guy's house today to research a couple business ideas for people in the future. One of them is to sell Popsicles and ice cream. This place is essentially a junk yard. He buys broken down appliances and such, fixes them, and sells them. We were looking into some of the freezers he has there for the ice cream business. It was nuts though. There is literally junk all over the place. There is no organization of anything and this is where the guy lives with his family. He isn't part of Cause for Hope so we weren't there to help him, but if he simply cleaned things up, organized his merchandise in categories and separated the stuff he was working on, he'd probably sell a lot more. They haven't quite figured out the concept of presenation yet.

We were supposed to present a class tonight about record keeping and some of the "best practices" that we have found here but only one guy showed up and he was an hour late. I guess it wasn't a high priority even though we had about 10 verbal commitments. All you can do is try.

Day 21

For the first time since I've been here I just kind of wanted to be home today. Not that I haven't enjoyed it, but I miss home. But that made me realize I don't really have a home so I got over it. This picture is of Jose Maravilla and his family. They have invited us over to their home for dinner a couple of times which has been fun. I asked him point blank tonight if he thinks we've had a positive impact while we've been here. I asked him to tell me his honest opinion and not to sugar coat it. He said that he really thinks we have been of service and we've helped a lot of people. He told us that both Jose Luis (cell phones) and Axel (oil & lubricants) are doing better because of our suggestions and are excited to keep going with the things we are teaching. He and his wife have decided to run their store themselves to see if they can stop the bleeding and he said that it was because of our help. I know there are others that have also benefitted so I feel good about the fact we seem to be making a difference. We do have one really big challenge that is still staring us in the face...Record Keeping.

We spent most of the morning brainstorming and talking about ideas how we can help the people here start keeping records of of their business dealings. It is a recurring weakness almost everyone has. They know how much their products cost, they know when they make a sale and how much they make, but they have no idea if the business is profitable at the end of the month. What happens is that they make a sale so they have money in their pocket and they need to buy food. So the money goes to food. It is all just mixed up together and aside from a record of sales, there is no such thing as real accounting. I was thinking that this really could be the competitive advantage that really could elevate these businesses above all the other ones just down the street. The people work hard, they have good ideas, but they have no idea what is happening with their numbers. This is the problem we have to solve. We came up with a plan where included with their loan payment is a monthly review of the records they have kept. Everyone comes into the office to pay their loan so I suggested that part of that process would be a review of what is going on in their business. These numbers could be entered in the computer and see what their gains and losses are. Maravilla agreed. The real chore is making it simple enough for the people to do it. I honestly think that if we can make this work, it will really be able to change the entire Cause for Hope program for the better. Game on!
Aside from the regular work we are doing, I have one remaining goal in this final week: eat iguana. Maybe I will be able to catch this one.

Day 20

Frankly there wasn't a whole lot that would be interesting or new to say that happened today so I'll keep this short. We went to church, talked to a few people afterward, went to a meeting that we really didn't need to go to tonight that was way longer than it needed to be, and here we are. I'm still enjoying this experience very much and I'm thankful I've been healthy the whole time. We are going to have a busy week to get everything done that we want to so things should be fun.

Day 19

Campuzano was where we went today. We have been hearing about this natural spring that has super clear waters that are just gorgeous. I guess I had something a little different in my head going into this experience, but I wasn't all that impressed. It wasn't bad, just not the Garden of Eden like I was expecting. It is a natural spring and someone has essentially poured concrete to create three pond-like swimming pools. The water was clear, but there was still some debris and leaves floating on top. There were also a bunch of little fish swimming in there. These fish were not shy. As a matter of fact, if you stood still, they would come up and nibble on you. It didn't hurt but it kind of felt odd. Maravilla was telling us that apparently that is how they do pedicures in Japan. They just stick your feet in a pool of fish and let them knaw the dead skin off. According to him it is the best way to go. I got curious so I had to consult the Web. YouTube confirms that this nonsense is true! (I've added a link in the Relevant Links section). Being a proponent of pedicures I refuse to mock what I don't understand. Who would have thought I would be learning about advance Japanese pedicure techniques in the middle of Nicaragua? I digress. This swimming experience wasn't all that transcendental for me. Besides the fish, there were a lot of semi-jagged rocks on the pool floors, and no chlorine. Paul and I weren't too sure about how great of an idea it was to share a swimming pool with hundreds of people swimming in their clothes. We've both been healthy the whole time and we consider this our final test. So far so good.