Spent most of days 8 and 9 at Santa Rosa, one of the few remaining collectives in Nicaragua. The land belonging to the collective was originally a privately-owned hacienda. When the owners fled during the revolution, the people who had been working for them moved onto the land and set up the collective and then persisted, despite several changes in government and political ideologies, in gaining title to the land. Each family in the collective is allotted land to live and work on and if they do not maintain their home or their land they are evicted.
The pottery there is run by one family and a portion of their profits, and those of other money-making enterprises, goes back to the community. The potters of Santa Rosa include Consuelo, who came along on last year’s brigade, her mother and her aunt, as well as her husband, although he spends some of his time raising vegetables with his own father. Consuelo’s father is chairman of the board of directors of the cooperative.
After introductions we were invited to help unload the new kiln which had been built by Potters for Peace thanks to a generous donation of $600 from one of our brigade members who shyly accepted their thanks. We were glad to help, although later, when we knew each other better, Consuelo confessed that, although they had planned the firing so that we would be there for the unloading, a buyer had turned up early so they had to unload it without us and then, so that we wouldn’t be disappointed, they put most of the pots back. I could see by the huge change and expansion in the work being produced at Santa Rosa that Consuelo had taken full advantage of the opportunity to learn from the other potters that she met on the brigade last year.
During the two days we took turns throwing and handbuilding and Daisy, George (from Iowa) and I got a chance to demonstrate some techniques and Consuelo showed us how she applies slip trailing decoration (for the non-potters, that means squeezing spaghetti-like lines of liquid clay onto a semi-dry pot) to her pots using a plastic bag, a technique that seemed to me to be a lot easier than trying to squeeze a hard plastic slip trailer.
At noon, as we meandered through the village in the direction of Consuelo’s house, her daughter Cindy, looking very much like a city girl, came running up the road to meet us and show us the way. Lunch was a delicious homegrown chicken stew which we ate while sitting in the shade in the backyard.
On the second afternoon we walked through the village, along a road, past a deposit of yellowish clay, down a big hill, across a swampy area, and up another small hill in the woods to the pottery’s deposit of black clay, which is on land that has been designated to Consuelo’s mother. The walk was beautiful but it was also hot and the trail was rough in places — no wonder I felt sheepish when, in reply to Consuelo’s question of where I got my clay from, I answered “from the store, in a box.”
On the way to Santa Rosa on our second day, we stopped in at a filter and brick factory that is run by a fellow named Tito, who is part of a family that, before the revolution, were wealthy landowners. Tito’s family now lives in Mexico but he has returned to Nicaragua to try to regain title to some of their lands (land title in Nicaragua is incredibly complex due to the revolution and other changes in government). At the filter and brick factory Tito employs many young men, most of whom are university students. Tile-making is monotonous and sometimes back-breaking work but the workers take turns at each job so they don’t wear themselves out. Some of the men have become competent throwers and the factory also produces a line of flower pots.
Unfortunately, after our first day in Santa Rosa, George (from Florida) decided he would have to leave the brigade: he had a case of “stomach troubles” that he just couldn’t shake and he was finding that he just didn’t have the energy needed to get the most out of the brigade. Robert’s wife, Bev, who had driven up to Santa Rosa to meet us, took George with her on the 4-hour drive back to Managua.
This was first posted at geist.com.
This morning we “borrowed” the kitchen of the comidor where we have been eating and four of our bravest brigadistas cooked breakfast for us using a traditional Nicaraguan wood stove: a long, narrow firebox that is fed with long branches at the end of which are a couple of holes to put pots onto the direct flame. I wasn’t part of this adventure but I heard that all would have been lost without the help of Maritza, our native Nicaraguan brigadista.
The final product was delicious but it took a little longer (okay, a lot longer) to prepare than we had anticipated, which gave the rest of us time to walk the streets of San Juan de Limay and watch people starting their day: collecting tortillas for their breakfast, sweeping their doorsteps and the street in front of their houses, sitting outside their front doors looking at us as we looked at them, and, in the case of the dogs, sleeping in the middle of the road.
On our way to La Naranja pottery, we passed another gordita, this one holding a djembe, an African drum that was introduced to Nicaragua by a potter from Africa and has since become known to gringos who are not as well-informed as we are, as a “traditional Nicaraguan drum.” La Naranja is a family-run pottery that you get to by takinga short drive from San Juan de Limay and a longer walk down a steep and rocky road. We pulled several mysterious and heavy metal pieces from the back of the van and lugged them down the hill and they turned out to be the parts for an 
We hung out at La Naranja for the rest of the morning playing with the extruder (Maritza gave a demo of an extruded boat that she had learned how to make at a Potters for Peace workshop last year), sharing pottery techniques and buying pottery pieces that we would later stuff into the space left by the extruder parts and then we said goodbye and walked back up the long, hot hill.
In the afternoon we visited the pottery at El Calero, a pueblo that was created to house people who survived when Hurrican Mitch wiped out their previous pueblo, 
Later, on a winding road through the mountains we encountered the first of a series of stone statues of 
Spent the afternoon at the home and studio of the stone carver Oscar Casco where we learned to carve marmolina (soapstone) using first a machete and then finer instruments. Oscar put both his studio and his workers at our disposal and some of us managed, with a lot of help, to end up with carvings.
The pots are fired again, this time in a smokey atmosphere so that the clay that has not been covered with slip turns a dark brown, while the clay that has been protected by the slip remains a browny-orange colour. When the pots are cool, the slip is washed off so that the unsmoked decoration is revealed, and then scraffito lines are added.
We spent the day trying to master the art of painting thick slip with a chicken feather and then scratching outlines around the decorations using a spoke from a bicycle wheel. Meanwhile, the Ducuale potters put up with us getting underfoot while they carried on burnishing their own pots, smoking our pots, selling pots to a busload of gringos, and even cooking us a delicious chicken stew for lunch.
Take a group photo outside the kiln and accept your host’s assurances that she will burn out the twig frame once the mortar is dry. Try not to think that perhaps, once we drive off, she and her family and friends will tear down our version of a kiln and build a proper one.
Allison, the youngest brigadista and a self-professed city girl, got me to take a photo of her in her bunk to prove to her parents that she had actually slept in such a rustic place. In the light of the next morning we admired the mural on the outside wall.
Up early, luggage onto the top of the van (thanks to the tall people), then on to the AquaFiltro Filter Factory, a family-run business that makes clay filters. The 
Our next stop was the town of 
Members of the brigade included Robert Pillers, an American living in Managua and the leader of the expedition; Alvaro Aburto, Robert’s son-in-law and our leader-in-training; Beatriz Fiallos, our Nicaraguan interpreter and her husband Fred Hamann, an American potter; Ivan Hernandez, our driver; and the brigadistas: Allison (California) Chris (Kentucky), Daisy (New Mexico) George (Iowa), other George (Florida), Maritza (La Sabaneta, Nicaragua), Merilee (Maryland), Mike (Oregon), and me (Vancouver, Canada). We got to know each other over a home-cooked breakfast on the patio of 
Next stop, the colonial city of 
After a walk around the town square we climbed to the top of 
Day 10: Nicaraguan Journal
The road to Loma Panda is steep and rocky and runs through a river bed but we were lucky because it was not washed out so we were able to ride all the way there, although we had to do it in the back of a pickup truck.
Later the potters of Loma Panda demonstrated their handbuilding techniques and gave us a chance to try out their techniques. Their clay is difficult to work with and to smooth the surface they make the surface quite wet and then rub it with various pieces of plastic of different shapes. My usual method of smoothing clay when handbuilding is to use as little water as possible but this didn’t work well at Loma Panda.
Maritza, who hadn’t been able to show us much of her work (when we visited her pueblo we were busy building a kiln), went on a creative frenzy and, in a couple of hours, made these:
Back at our hotel in Somoto, we piled out of the truck and as we walked into the lobby we passed a group of newly-arrived Americans who had come to Nicaragua to build a church. Compared to our sweaty, dusty, wise-cracking selves they seemed way too clean and naive to survive in this country, although give them a few days and they’d probably be dirty and sweaty at least.
This was first posted at geist.com.