My assimilation into the Nicaraguan culture is moving slowly but surely and I am starting to make friends of all different ages. Although, I have found it difficult to find anyone who is my age, (female or male in their 20s) who is not married or does not have kids. This is one of the realities of living in Nicaragua, where many people get married or have babies during their adolescent years and end up having very large families. It´s sad to see that many of these large families in reality cannot afford or financially support all of the people of their nuclear family, but this is one of the reasons Peace Corps and I am here to reduce adolescent pregnancy through health education and promotion and through training native Nicaraguan health promoters.
In other words, I don´t have a whole lot of news to talk about, so I decided to share a little of my culture shock here in Nicaragua. Everyone in Nicaragua who is Nicaraguan calls me “Chino”. In Spanish, Chino is used to refer to someone who is of Chinese descent. If they don´t call me Chino they call me Taiwan, because there are people fulfilling their foreign service duty here in San Isidro, from Taiwan and their organization is called Mission Taiwan. In other words the world view of almost every Nicaraguan seems to be a bit skewed and very narrow. That is not to say that these Nicaraguans’ who call me “Chino” or “Taiwan” are doing so out of hate, they are doing so because in their worldview everyone who appears to be Asian must be Chinese, or at the very least be able to speak one of the following languages: Chinese or Japanese. That reminds me of another experience I have had. A few times I have been walking down the dirt street and hear a person or two trying to greet me in what appears to sound like an imitation of Chinese or Japanese. This does offend me, but usually I just ignore it.
What I have not been ignoring are the opportunities I have been having with Nicaraguan´s who are truly interested and curious in what my ethnic background is and where I come from. In this respect, Nicaraguan´s have been very open and conducive to learning and listening to my unique story of being born in South Korea, becoming an orphan, being adopted, and moving to the United States where I have lived my last 20 years and 4 months. This part of the cultural exchange is exactly one of the goals of Peace Corps to introduce U.S. culture (in this situation the diversity of the U.S. as a “melting pot”) to a developing country and for the volunteer to reciprocate a cultural change of the developing country´s culture when they return to the U.S.
In closing, for Nicaraguans´ it is very hard to conceptualize who Nicholas Kyuyeob Halbert is. When I tell them I am from the United States, they will repeat the question, (asking where am I from) in disbelief that a person with my appearance could be North American. Then they will assume that I speak Chinese or Japanese. But this is one of the realities of living in such a large and diverse world and this is one of the reasons that Peace Corps exists, to be used as a vehicle or means to build world solidarity and strive for world Peace.
