This past Sunday, we visited San Juan, Nicaragua. We discovered that San Juan was one of many indigenous towns here in Nicaragua. In San Juan, we had the opportunity to speak with an indigenous leader, Valentin Lopez. Lopez introduced us to some of the important culture traditions that included what we would call back home, pottery. Lopez also explained to us how the indigenous clay is still located in the town of San Juan and eventually demonstrated the process on how to break down the clay and create pottery with it. Most people begin working with clay at the age of 8. We learned that Lopez has been working with clay for 20 years. The first step within the process is something that I found to be obvious which happened to be using tools to break down the clay. Although this was an obvious first step, there was something surprising about the kind of tools that were used for this process. According to Lopez, it is our own feet that is considered the tool to break down the clay. Lopez explained that we “dance” on the clay with our feet to break it down. The next step includes a kick-wheel like machine that breaks down the clay even more. After the clay goes through the entire break down process, it is ready to be created into different pottery pieces. This tradition runs through many families in San Juan. Lopez explained to us that beginners take up to 2 hours or more with this entire process where as to those with experience can take up to 5-10 minutes. It took Lopez around 8 minutes to show us the entire process from start to finish.
Student, Beyla Hood.