Costa Jill

Baile Folklórico Casas Viejas

El Porvenir’s Impact on the Community – Spring 2011

At the end of El Porvenir’s 5-day Casas Viejas, Nicaragua construction project the community members of all ages and the volunteers celebrated together in the school yard with a piñata for the children, a local band, students performing folkloric dances, and lots of happiness.

The Casas Viejas community received three new latrines, a handwashing station and a re-connected water line to a school that had been without any of these basic needs for many years. In terms of personal relations even more was accomplished. Although all construction materials and planning was handled by El Porvenir, community members learned to work together and with the volunteers; from Jose, the foreman of the work crew, to his wife, Chepita, who handled all the lunches for the volunteers, to the women and children of all ages who arrived everyday on site to help with whatever jobs were necessary: hauling sand, site clean-up, digging lines, carrying water, etc…

The pride of accomplishment shown in all of us, foreigners and community members alike, as we danced, sang and celebrated the completion of our goals – the addition of basic water needs for the primary school of Casas Viejas.

I’m updating my spring trip with El Porvenir with an impact statement which will appear in the El Porvenir newsletter by Jo Buescher. Thought the rest of you might be interested since I never finished my NIcaragua blog. Sorry.

Next post will continue my struggle with public relations for Free To Bloom.

Sebaco

Back on the road with El Porvenir, a national NGO, we travel the Pan-American Highway, trashed with plastic bags and bottles, through Nicaragua to Sebaco and check in to one of the only hotels. We are in the breadbasket of the country. Fields of sugarcane, rice, beans, peanuts, tomatoes, and at higher elevations, coffee, surround the valley. Semi-trailers and buses carry workers, animals and vegetables to and fro. The town is a trade center disguised as a truck stop with lots of banks, prostitutes and gas stations on a contaminated river.

The afternoon is free so Bob and I hike into town for some local color. We hail a bicycle taxi and ask for a tour. To alleviate drabness the storefronts, though neither colonial nor quaint, are painted in gorgeous bright colors, especially pink and purple. The market, filled with friendly vendors, is a profusion of mounded fruit and vegetables shining in the afternoon sun. We return unharmed from our rich experience to admonitions of “Stay out of Sebaco! It’s a dangerous haven for robbers, gangs and prostitutes.”

The next day we’re off to Casas Viejas on a rutted dirt road rough enough to break an axle. Stark serene mountains on both sides frame the dry dusty terrain clotted with brown stubby trees. The tiny village is far enough away and hard enough to reach that it is isolated not only from the crime and politics of the big cities, but also from the ‘basic necessities’ of potable water and sanitation. And that’s what we’re here for.

typical house Casas Viejas

Latrines and handwashing station in progress

The village has been approved for a project by El Porvenir. Three latrines and a hand washing station with piped in potable water will be built by community members and volunteers (us) before school starts. All materials and training are supplied by El Porvenir. We are greeted by the teachers and children the first day. We volunteers do mostly grunt work along with the children – carrying sand for cement, rocks for the drain field. There’s no electricity so everything is hecho por mano, done by hand. The locals like to see and get to know the volunteers and vice-versa. We four Gringo volunteers and two El Porvenir staff drive up two plus hours each day to help. Jose is the local foreman and his wife Chepita cooks lunch for us at their house. Walking through the village we get a view of the valley below, meet the neighbors, check out the mud/thatch houses, doors flung open to catch the light and breeze. I’m surprised to see the contented, though not easy, lives they lead. A teacher says, “the children like to work, they want to help. They’ve been raised that way.”

Jill and her students

translator Marco, volunteers Tim, Connie at work

Casas Viejas has almost 500 inhabitants, approximately 6 per house. There is a church, a primary school with no water or sanitation, a clinic open only once a month, and no stores. A truck with a bench along one side for riders comes once a day from the closest town, Dario. After six years of school hardly anyone continues their education. It’s too far and costs too much ($1 ea. way).

across from the school

family members at work

Learning to live and work together is inherent. Older children take care of younger and all have chores: in the garden, feeding the chickens, milking the cows, grinding corn, washing clothes. The women and children handle the stuff of life in the village. Most the men are either non-existent or have work far away. Self-sufficiency is a necessity. If a job is available, average pay is only $2 per day.

view of the valley, Bob and pal Jose

On the third day of construction I hurt my back and can’t dig or carry. I become the Pied Piper and gather the children together for English lessons. They are thrilled and eager. With only the occasional cry of a baby, the children are happy and busy. Siblings don’t fight, parents don’t scream. Talking with them I find that they’d like to continue their education past sixth grade. Young Jose, who comes every day, takes a liking to Bob and me. He says sadly, “This is my last year of school. We don’t have enough money for the trip to town.”

Check in next time – Getting to Know You Nicaraguan People.

Farmer’s Market Rincon de Uvita, Costa Ballena, Costa Rica open Saturdays 8am – 1pm

My productivity as a writer is increasing, and when the writing helps those in need, that’s even better. In his book The Geography of Bliss Eric Weiner travels the world looking for the happiest place and/or people who have the essential ingredients of a ‘good life’. A foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) he is typically expected to discover breaking news, which usually involves death and destruction. As he says, “It’s rewarding work, but can be a real bummer.” So he takes a break from the negative to “turn journalism on its head and seek out the world’s unheralded positives.” One of the major criteria for happiness that keeps turning up for Weiner is feeling good, and a big chunk of that is feeling good about helping others in need.

I read Weiner’s book after spending time working for nonprofits Water for People and El Porvenir in Nicaragua and chronicling the experience here. It gave me the impetus to talk of my experience on my NPR station WSLR in Sarasota, FL, and write a perspective piece in the national English language newspaper in Costa Rica and Nicaragua -The Tico/Nica Times.

Since the Geography of Bliss was printed Costa Rica has been voted the “Happiest” places in the world, according to Nicholas Kristoff in a recent NY Times article, but disasters still occur. I have just returned to my second home on the Costa Ballena, Costa Rica to the aftermath another horrible accident on the dangerous Costanera highway. Juan Carlos Guadmuz, the brother of my caretaker Edgar, was driving home to Hermosa from Cortez with his family and two local women when a car tried to pass three semis on a curve, causing the Guadamuz car to swerve into the oncoming truck with disastrous results. Of the seven people in the car four died – the two women from Uvita, and a Guadamuz son and grandson. Juan Carlos, his wife Maria and another son survived, but with serious injuries. They are trying to put their lives back together and are recuperating slowly, but neither husband nor wife is able to work yet, and the car was totaled.

Again, I am writing this in the hope that you will join me in feeling good about helping some good people in dire need – the Guadmuz family. They are some of our local hardworking and proud pioneers. In fact, Juan Carlos’ father’s life was recently chronicled in one of our monthly magazines – Ballena Tales.

Diana & Ian, Made FromScratch booth at Feria - Uvita

We will have a donation box for the next several weeks at the local farmer’s market, Feria – Rincon de Uvita at Diana’s ‘Made-from-Scratch’ booth. The Feria is open every Saturday from 8 am to 1 pm. The family would appreciate any money or non-perishable food items to help them get through the next couple of months.

Staff and volunteers at El Porvenir office

We spent our last days back in Managua getting a tour of the main office of El Porvenir, meeting the dedicated staff, getting a taxi tour of the central market, and the highly guarded, decorated and chain-linked waterfront. We climbed the semi-active Volcan Masaya, and ended the experience being taken to dinner by Rob Bell, the director of the El Porvenir office.

Central Market Managua

On the Waterfront

Taking our last evening walk, we were urged to be in before dark, not to wear jewelry, cameras or purses, and to watch our backs. Graffiti covered every space, but only Sandanista graffiti. The major area of employment could be security guards from the numbers of men we saw in uniforms with big guns, behind chain-link fences. In front of the baseball stadium stood a huge statue of the Sandanista hero Gen. Augusto Sandino. Across the street was a retrospective of the Sandanista Party behind the ubiquitous chain-link fence. Since we were protected by the gun-carrying guard, I took out my camera to record this history and Bob. While he was flashing a few of me with poet Ruben Dario and Gen Augusto Sandino, a guard came up to him from behind, sticking two fingers into his neck. Bob, startled, turned, ready to fight. “What’re you doing?”

“You wanna keep your camera? And your life? Then put that away before you leave this exhibit.” (In Spanish)

“Por Supuesto!” Bob agreed quickly. “Muchisimas gracias!” we thanked him for the warning and safely returned to the hotel, watching our backs.

The Sandanista retrospective was an impressive mix of history, poetry, sculpture and graffiti recording a fight for freedom through the years. But what has happened? Crime is rampant. So many people in the country live without water and toilets. The socialist ideal of a “system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness” has deteriorated to the point of the second-time president  Daniel Ortega, owning one of the largest hotels (The Seminole Hotel) and casinos in town. A socialist turned capitalist? That money certainly isn’t going to the people that need it most.

Graffiti in Managua

Well, life is never fair, but let’s keep fighting to make it so. To end on a positive note, thanks to Water for People; and the non-profit, El Porvenir, on it’s 20^th anniversary, should be tremendously honored for having completed 600 projects and helped over 70,000 people in Nicaragua. Both non-profits have pages on Facebook. Become a fan and get involved.

Dario, Jill, Sandino

Riding the roads in the back of the truck

A few statistics on Nicaragua:

· $1028 – Second lowest per capita income in the Americas

· 48% of population live below poverty line

· 30 – 40% of homes have a woman head of household

· President – Daniel Ortega – Sandanista Party – for the 2^nd time.

Two of our traveling companions, one from the U.S. and one from Nicaragua, are political history buffs. During our many hours of traveling to and from our survey sites we had plenty of time for lively, interesting, informative discussions on the history, culture and politics of Nicaragua; the latter being incendiary, difficult, multi-faceted, dangerous, murky. What’s the truth? I’m not sure. I can only give you my observations.

Fighting rooster atop ring-legal in Nicaragua

In the isolated countryside, life goes on as it has for 100’s of years. There’s no time for anything but surviving in the simplest manner. Lack of money, jobs and transportation keeps subsistence farming alive. The simple homes of either handmade clay bricks or gleaned wood are clean.

Our survey was to inspect the condition and use of the latrines (installed in the last two years) and the older water systems in the area surrounding El Sauce. If the results are good, the Water for People funding will continue. And they were.

· Almost all households were headed by women.

· All agreed to allow us to view the latrines and answer questions about use and cleanliness.

· All latrines were clean and most decorated.

· All the people we talked to were friendly, open and educated in water use.

· No households had indoor water or plumbing.

Public school-one teacher for 150 kids

The exception was in public institutions – both schools and health clinics. The older latrines, not installed by El Porvenir and WFP, were in bad condition, generally not functioning. There were few if any supplies or books. The buildings were rundown and in need of repair. When I asked about the sad conditions, I was told that education and health care were free, but the government “won’t put its money where its mouth is.” And “Since they’re “free”, the government won’t accept private funds when offered.” What?

Unusable school latrines

When we returned to Managua, the political center of the country, the contrast was extreme. Nothing like the bucolic countryside filled with simple hard-working people. That’s the next and last story from Nicaragua.

El Porvenir Staff, El Sauce

Jimmy stays with us at the only hotel in town, El Blanco, run by a Katherine Zeta Jones look-alike, with an added Latin American plumpness. Elvis lives in El Sauce and is finally able to go home. I decide to enter the data from the previous afternoon and give thanks that Jimmy is staying in the next room and comes to my call with help on the myriad extra steps one must take on the PC I’ve borrowed from his office.

Mercedes in her kitchen

We start the morning at the El Porvenir staff’s favorite restaurant, Mercedes’ Kitchen, and that’s all it really is. She opens her home and we enter the kitchen and look in all the pots to decide what we want. Of course there’s gallo pinto (a mix of yesterday’s red beans and rice) that is the mandatory filler for a hard day’s work, then eggs, fruit, tortillas, and meat. Coffee is drunk short, sweet and dark, not like in my adopted country of Costa Rica where it’s big and creamy with milk.

Water Source, Rope Well

Elvis handles the truck like a professional semi driver and takes us immediately off the paved road into billows of dust and heat. We split up on gender lines: the men and Bob survey most of the water sources, both springs and wells, the women and myself do most of the household surveys. In each small community the houses are clustered 6 – 12 together in the drought-ridden countryside for both family and economic support. They tend domestic animals, small gardens, children, hornos (outdoor bread baking ovens). We are always invited in to sit on the plastic chairs they stack in the corner and use only if a visitor arrives. A hammock is slung across the bare but cleanly swept dirt floor, and the prized, nod-to-technology TV winks from the corner. All washing and most of the cooking is done outside. And in every yard, usually decorated and always clean, is the recently installed vented latrine surrounded by grazing animals and a healthy garden.

Pastoral with Latrine

Horno - bread oven

How can I ask these humble strangers from a simpler time the most difficult questions on the survey? “May I see your latrine? Do all of you use it? When do you wash your hands? They may be simple but they’re not stupid. Find out next posting along with the other hard questions I must ask in this volatile Sandanista powered country – their politics.

Oxen carrying firewood

Up with the dawn – as usual – Bob and I walk the waking streets of Dario. See it cool and quaint. Men with oxen make their rounds delivering lena (stove wood) gleaned from all nearby bushes and trees, for the breakfast fires. No wonder there’s a sparse treeless environment surrounding every village. Women with children carry straw baskets on their heads filled with the day’s wares; fruits and vegetables, fresh baked bread and rozquitos (flour cakes filled with cane syrup), pork and chicken; looking for the perfect location to set up for the day.

The small colonial houses are set close together on the decorative cobblestone streets, like almost all the streets we travel that are not dirt or newly paved asphalt. As the doors open to the morning we get a voyeur’s glimpse of life inside: beautiful antique tile floors, sparse stucco walls with an occasional painting of an old sailing ship or decorated ancestor, a pharmacy selling everything from hula hoops and junk food to drugs and bottled water.

The heat of the day is not upon us yet. Give it a couple more hours. It’s the dry season or verano, a good time to be checking water levels and functioning of the wells put in by El Porvenir. We meet up the our El Porvenir crew at the favorite local restaurant down the street from our hostel Seeds of Learning. Elaine gives me ‘a lick and a promise’ on the alien aspects of PC’s and Excel. Both totally frustrated, we hope it’ll all work out in the end, when we must post our data.

We switch vehicles. Elaine, John, two larger members of El Porvenir, and the luggage are crammed into a tiny Suzuki and off to Wiwili in the far mountainous reaches of the country bordering Honduras. Elvis drives our truck, Jimmy shotgun, Bob and I on the benches in the tarp-covered back with the gear. “Three hours to El Sauce with a stop in between to do our first surveys. I’m ready,” I’m psyched.

“Yea. And we’re lucky. It’s cloudy and breezy,” smiles Bob. We’ve checked the weather of our destination on line and it’s one of the hottest driest areas of Nicaragua. We leave the paved road to the isolated communities of Caracol and Monte Grande. Jimmy and I do the household surveys in the former, while Bob and Elvis check the water systems in the latter. Slow going until we get our ‘sea legs’. The process goes like this: An El Porvenir staff member introduces us and asks if they will answer some questions about the functioning of their water systems and/or latrines. They all agree and have no problem letting us check them, take GPS readings and photos. Though the families are poor with few amenities, they seem content. Most have animals and small gardens surrounding their neat simple handmade brick or wood homes. I thoroughly enjoy getting to know them and seeing how they live. It’s like subsistence farming communities of years ago.

We finish by late afternoon, still under a rare cloudy sky, and head for our final destination of El Sauce. The sky darkens. Thunder rumbles. Sheets of rain slash through the slits in the tarp. We’re soaked, and it doesn’t stop until we pull into town. Jimmy can’t believe it. “This is the dry season. It never rains this time of year.”

“Guess we’re just lucky.” I sigh, exhausted, again. We arrive at the only hotel in town, get dry and fall into bed.

Hotel Las Mercedes

Immediately upon arriving three hours late in the capital city of Managua, Bob and I get tremors of third world country glitches. The chip installed in my phone doesn’t work, but it’s a nice relief. The representative of our hotel tells us we have no reservations, but we check in anyway. We don’t actually meet up with anyone until the next morning. Everybody’s late. After breakfast Bob and I meet and greet the other two World Water Corps, Water for People volunteers. Elaine, our team leader from Denver, is an EPA employee who lives close to the home office. John is pipe fitter from Wisconsin Rapids, WI. His Midwest accent brings back sentimental memories of my Milwaukee heritage.

Dario, Nicaragua

Public Admin. Dario

We’re off to our training session with El Porvenir (the future) in the quaint colonial town of Dario, named for the famous Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario. The group has been working hand-in-hand with WFP in Nicaragua for the last two years, though they have been in existence for more than twenty, bringing water and sanitation to isolated people in the rural campo. We split up, half in the El Porvenir tarp-covered truck and half (Bob and I included) in the tiny air-conditioned car. The meeting gives us an introduction to both groups and their on-going and future projects and our modus operandi, monitoring the water and sanitation systems already in place.

Our day drags on, as Latin American meetings do. Our American counterpart, Elaine has lots to present. She has been trained by the Water for People staff and told to pay great attention to detail since this is the first monitoring survey since WFP joined with El Porvenir. Future donations depend on it. Everything must be translated into Spanish or English and that doubles the time. After numerous breaks for meals, GPS training, computer problems, etc. we are in session for 12 hours! I’m exhausted. Our expert translator, Jimmy begins to lose his voice by the end of the day (rather night). Is this any indication of how long our surveys will last?

Training-Fermin, Cesar, Jimmy, Elaine

Elaine asks if she can train me on the PC and Excel before we retire for the night. I had planned to bring my Mac computer, but at the last minute find out the GPS stuff can’t be downloaded to Mac, and being a writer, not an accountant, I’ve never experienced the wonders of Excel. I’m so tired my eyes are crossing, and ask for a good night’s rest. “Can’t we do this in the morning?”

“Well, you know that John and I are going to Wiwili and it’s a seven hour drive. I’d rather do it tonight.”

“I’m an old morning person and my brain is mush. How about 6 or 7 am? So you can still make it to Wiwili before dark.”

But she’s a night person and only in her 30’s. “I can’t make it that early.” She frowns, “how about 8 am?” Agreed.

Seeds of Learning

We’re hauled in the back of the truck, like cattle to market, to our hostel for the night, a quaint humble place with a big surprise inside. Named Seeds of Learning, its main raison d’etre is as a children’s library and learning center. Started twenty plus years ago by an old gringo and his Nica wife, it even includes a sewing room with machines to teach the women a viable craft.

We all double up in the rooms and fall exhausted into our dreams of what tomorrow will bring.