tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65614244045291546832011-04-21T19:52:46.831-07:00This is our family blog, with impressions from and opinions on our experiences and life in Nicaragua.Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.comBlogger131100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-50200102964272621402008-04-14T15:33:00.000-07:002008-04-14T15:40:02.612-07:00

Yesterday I heard something I had never heard before. The sound of silence. It was wonderful and made me wonder how come I had to turn 41 before I could actually appreciate it.The thing is that we went to the beach. Los Cardones it is called, just an hour away from noisy Managua with oversize loudspeakers, honking cars, street vendors and barking dogs. Obviously, the beach is not a silent place.

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-7207503493972109252008-03-24T11:29:00.000-07:002008-03-24T11:36:31.153-07:00

Living conditions for many coffee growers in Nicaragua are pretty bad.They keep growing the coffee because “that is always what we have done”, but the financial result is meager. Prices have gone up quite a lot since the crisis years 2001-2003, but coffee still isn’t very good business for many growers. Paradoxically, coffee is at the same time the world’s second largest commodity, only surpassed

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-31257875764803916412008-03-17T10:52:00.000-07:002008-03-17T15:34:20.997-07:00

Junk is a hot issue these days in Nicaragua.Not because there is junk at home, in the streets, and on empty lots. That’s nothing new. Nicaraguans have acquired the extremely bad habit of dumping junk wherever they consider it convenient. It is not yet a dirty country… but we are getting there bit by bit. Wonder what a bit of environmental education could do?Anyway, the junk on the streets is not

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-76826095296061793892007-09-05T10:58:00.001-07:002008-03-17T11:07:38.556-07:00

Just in case anyone out there is wondering, we are all fine.Hurricane Felix struck the Northern part of Nicaragua at 5:30 yesterday morning, just North of Puerto Cabezas, then moved South, and as a consequence spent the entire day in Nicaraguan territory, before disintegrating itself and moving on to Honduras as a tropical storm.The Northern RAAN region is struck pretty hard; the media reports

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-74059695907480038952007-08-19T22:01:00.000-07:002007-08-20T12:33:31.314-07:00

I have just carried out my most difficult interview ever. I don’t quite know how I will ever be able to write the article I am supposed to – and then at the same time I can’t avoid writing at least something down right away.I am in Guatemala. A beautiful country with a violent history – and a violent present. Twice a day, a woman is murdered somewhere in the country, and the murderers are seldom

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-82325793001350355962007-08-19T19:03:00.000-07:002007-08-19T19:05:17.765-07:00

I’ve been at the end of the world. Eights hours drive from Managua on bumpy roads, followed by three hours by boat down the San Juan River will take you to the edge of the Natural Reserve Indio Maíz. No light, no internet, no cars, no tv. Wonderful, natural – and isolated.Suppose it has to be that way, the end of the world just wouldn’t be the same if you could just get there in half an hour.

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-77199683100008966822007-07-08T19:10:00.001-07:002007-07-08T19:25:40.263-07:00

I’ve been on quite a lot of volcanoes. No big deal, in Central America they stretch from Guatemala through El Salvador, continues through Nicaragua and straight on to Costa Rica. There are so many, I don’t even know how many, but there are a lot. I haven’t been on all of them, obviously, but I’ve walked up more than I like to think of, and have driven past so many perfect cones that I stopped

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-76552123439342848432007-06-29T12:16:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:30:36.357-07:00

Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega seems set on accomplishing what scientists for centuries have failed to manage. Apparently he wants to invent the time machine – and he seems pretty keen on the project.As most will recall, Ortega used to be president in Nicaragua back in the 1980’s when the civil war ripped the country apart. That was when the ‘imperialists’ in Washington fought against ‘

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-45229710305574680082007-06-04T20:09:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:31:07.388-07:00

Nicaragua is baseball territory. All of it, even the countryside with the dusty roads, horsemen wearing the compulsory baseball caps, wandering dogs and cows – and a few overloaded trucks. Add to that quite a lot of coffee, a few cabbage fields, lots of potatoes – and the local baseball field. That more or less describes the Estelí countryside. And the field was where I ended up with some friends

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-83319194952378836412007-06-04T20:08:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:31:22.224-07:00

Last weekend I went to the Northern part of Nicaragua with my family and a couple of friends. Two days out where the only light is brought to you by solar cells on the roof, where water is scarce and where the loo is a brick construction with a hole in the ground and a door that cannot close. But at least you get rid of the bad odours pretty fast.Tourism is only in its early childhood here.

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-33242018294453186912007-06-04T20:07:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:31:38.457-07:00

Whenever the United Nations Development Programme publishes it human development index, Nicaragua inevitably ends up as number hundred-and-something. No matter the personal efforts and sacrifices of the individual Nicaraguan, the policies carried out by inept politicians, combined with an unjust, international trade system, confines this small, Central American country to third-class human

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-17263661893389770372007-05-19T06:28:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:32:25.339-07:00

Nicaragua is most certainly the place where the word ‘extremes’ was invented. Either it is so dry that your feet hurt when you walk on the dry grass in our garden – or it is so wet that the same lawn could be used for mud wrestling. As always in this country, it is either-or: Drought or inundation.And so it started two nights ago. The winter. After six months of drought, the sky suddenly looked

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561424404529154683.post-51518402052972862482007-05-14T22:10:00.000-07:002007-07-03T06:32:39.791-07:00

A couple of nights ago, I took my dear wife to a concert with Guatemala singer and songwriter Ricardo Arjona in the national baseball stadium of Managua. An excellent concert that left me full of admiration of the magic Arjona performs with words. Only few manage to combine social indignation, voice, music and humble performance as he does. I recommend his newest cd – Adentro – and in case you

Korsgaard Sedóhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06164915938669484147noreply@blogger.com0