The Animals of Nicaragua

The Beautiful People of Nicaragua

Day 5: Common Pots and Commuting Cows

First, I have to apologize. Yesterday I had blogged the incorrect cost of a Habitat House in Nicaragua. The correct cost is $6500. Please forgive me...it was late...I was Brick-Maker tired. But think about that for a minute. Imagine your council sponsoring a house? A house that gets children off of dirt floors? Yeah, that would be pretty awesome.

Our last full day in Nicaragua began with a wheelchair delivery to a small farmhouse in an overgrown field. The ride out of Managua was short, and we were not quite emotionally prepared for the visit. Reyna was our recipient. Lisa Lunsford-Jackson delivered the chair to Reyna who sat in her mom’s lap. It quickly became obvious that Reyna had severe cognitive disabilities and loss of control in her twisted feet and hands as well as an inability to speak. She sat restless until the chair was in place.

As her mom was placing her in the chair, a pickup truck with a giant speaker on the back drove down the dirt road blasting looped political propaganda. Some politician was telling the struggling farmers just how much he was doing for them. The scene was almost surreal. Reyna is about twelve years old. She was born in good health but at ten months she developed a very high fever and her parents lacked the medical access to control it, resulting in brain damage. We all stood on and around her porch watching in silence...not knowing exactly what to say. We each were likely contemplating the incredible task her mother faces daily. Not only does she deal with the rigors of living in a worn down two room shack with an outdoor kitchen and a pit toilet, she has a child that will require constant attention the rest of her life. The wheelchair will definitely lighten her burden....but we all felt somewhat helpless and inadequate as we stepped off of that porch and headed back to the bus. Sometimes it just doesn't seem like enough.

We visited two more Free Wheelchair Mission wheelchair recipients. The wheelchairs were life changing and holding up great. Next was Teltpetlapan. All World Vision ADP's (Area Development Projects) host twice a week "Common Pot" meals. Local mothers gather together somewhere in the village and kids can come to receive a nutritious meal. The children's weight is tracked to ensure they are getting enough food. We spent an hour or so with the kids. We were invited to share the Common Pot meal so we all took a bowl and enjoyed it with the forty-something kids...sitting in a dark and damp room eating. The children are so beautiful, well mannered and sweet.

After lunch we went outside and heard from a group of village women who had formed an advocacy group called the Promoters of Justice. They work to bring justice to people who commit crimes against women and children, domestic violence, and causes that sometimes hide in the closets of communities like theirs. The women were confident and strong. We loved hearing them explain their mission with such passion. You don't want to get on the wrong side of these women.

The last leg of our day involved a very long ride up to an area called San Marcos Caraco. Before we were out of the urban chaos of Managua we spotted two cows walking down the sidewalk...with no present owner. The cows seemed to be confidently strolling to a known destination like they had just gotten off of a bus. The scenery was incredible as we trekked across the ridge of a mountain range. Often we could spot active volcanoes in the distance and the forest was lush and tropical. One of our team commented that it looked like a scene from Avatar. 

After an hour and a half of a bouncing steep dirt road we stopped and were welcomed to a village where an older ADP appeared to be having a tremendous impact. Children were learning to sew and do carpentry. The houses appeared to be in safer condition with access to drinking water. The children had shoes, appeared fed and most of the flooring was concrete.

The final event of our day was in a small Church where thirty children sang songs to us. We even coaxed our teammate Jennifer Collison to stand up and sing a song for the kids. Jennifer has a tremendous voice and somehow she even knew a song in Spanish. The kids cheered loudly for her while outside a heavy rain was making us all a little concerned about that deeply rutted, foggy and steep road on which we had arrived.

The ride home went smoothly, albeit a few stops for crossing cows, pigs, horses, dogs and the always present skinny chickens. We used the travel time as an opportunity to share our reflections on the trip. We all agreed that leaving Nicaragua was actually hard. In just four days we had fallen in love with the people. We had seen living conditions that we had never comprehended as possible. We had visited and learned about three organizations that are alike yet different...providing different levels of support to these amazing people. Opportunity International is heavily focused on sustainability...basically teaching business people/farmers/artisans to manage their businesses effectively, translating to an improved lifestyle. For Free Wheelchair Mission and Habitat for Humanity...the goal is centered on basic human need. Get people off of the ground. Lift them up and show them a life with dignity and free from dirt and parasites. Then there is World Vision. There are 40,000 World Vision employees around the world. They are present in villages you can’t pronounce in areas you have never heard about. They promote "Empowerment" in the truest sense of the word. Empower people with a little support, the right tools and education, and people will fix their own issues and build a better life for themselves. We saw it in action several times this week. The ADPs are staffed by Nicaraguans. The process is organic and the older ADPs showed clear and almost miraculous improvement. World Vision plays an extremely critical role in supporting the world’s poor, yet most people have no concept of their scope of influence.

As we all contemplate our Foundation Council contributions, we should think about Empowerment as well as basic need. All of us at some point in our life had some level of support to get where we are. Even if we are fiercely independent...there is someone, maybe even someone that we don't know...who gave us a little lift up...provided a basic need, gave us training or the proper tools to build the life we have.

Disadvantaged people across the world are not expecting their issues to be magically fixed by someone else. We have looked into their eyes. They want to do it themselves. In the last four days we have not heard a single person complain about their situation no matter how dire. We have only heard thanks for our small acts of support. Your contributions to the Foundation and subsequently our Global Partners...continue the process one child, one mother, one 375 square foot house at a time. 

Thanks again for reading. Thanks to our new friend and partner Jim Fischerkeller and the wonderful staff at World Vision. Thanks for allowing us to take this trip. Thanks for being an amazing company.

Sincerely,

Your Nicaragua Travel Team

Day 4: Habitat for Humanity and the Fine Art of Brick Making

Have you ever imagined how your life would change if your floor were simply dirt? When it rains hard the ground in your kitchen develops little streams that run through your home. Everything you put down gets dirty...including your baby. Everything you spill is absorbed into the ground and the smell just stays there. Forty-seven percent of all homes in Nicaragua...have dirt floors. Mothers carry their children much longer during infancy because they are afraid to put them down to crawl on a dirt floor where they would be exposed to parasites. Since children aren't able to crawl they often have developmental issues with large motor skills, depth perception and even reading because they are not familiar with viewing things up-close. The homes don't have material floors because many of them were simply constructed from scrap material. Having a home with solid walls and a floor is a basic need. Our Wednesday was spent working with Habitat For Humanity International. 

Our Habitat representative Vittoria met us at our hotel and on the way to our first site...she talked to us about Habitat’s work. Adequate housing is a severe problem in Nicaragua, and Habitat is working to address the issue one house at a time. For about sixty-five hundred dollars, a block home can be constructed. The average home size is 375 square feet...much less than most American garages.

Our first project was at an open-air shelter where a primitive "Brick Factory" had been set-up. We grabbed shovels and wheel barrels and proceeded to mix large piles of dirt with dry concrete mix and limestone. The work was very physically demanding. The dirt piles were very large and we had to move them from one place to the next to complete the mixing procedure.

When that was done we shoveled the mixture into buckets and then passed them up into a rudimentary brick pressing machine that made very large and simple clay bricks. You would have been very proud to see your Nicaragua Travel Team work. Our associates from all different functions and business units...drenched in sweat and dirt...set a goal to make one-hundred and fifty bricks before lunchtime. The bricks are large (about 5 inches thick and 16 inches long) and require about two five-gallon buckets of dirt to make one brick. Your team pushed hard and made one-hundred and ninety-two bricks before lunch!

Rain clouds form quickly here, and the rain comes down hard. A nice cooling rain drenched us as we got into the van to head to our next project. What we saw over the next few minutes will probably change the way we think about our lives. Those Homeowners Association meetings where we debate the smallest details of our manicured cul-de-sac neighborhoods will become somewhat ridiculous when we recall the places that we have seen in the La Gallina (Chickens) neighborhood. To get there we traveled down a long straight road made of individual paving stones. It was the nicest road we had seen in Nicaragua and Vittoria told us that a former dictator had it built by hand so that he could access his vacation home on the coast. We parked beside that road and walked down a ruddy dirt road to the village. Vittoria was explaining that this village was a Habitat Project that intended to slowly replace the tiny pieced-together shacks that looked as if you could push them over with your hands. An eight year old kid pushing a cart (headed to the community well) passed us, and Vittoria engaged him. Vittoria knows everyone by name in this village. Her passion for the people and her unwavering desire to help them achieve better living conditions was very motivating. As we walked through the village, several kids came out to say hi. All of them barefoot, dirty and wearing thin clothes that had likely been passed down for years. But all of them were happy and playful. Dogs strolled everywhere...gaunt and looking as if they were in constant pain. Chickens darted across the walking path as we visited home after home. The people were so kind and welcoming to let this large group of strangers into their tiny homes to see their accommodations. Most of the Habitat Homes are built in front of ...or beside their existing "shack" home so that they can transition into it as the construction finishes. Once they move into their Habitat home they typically leave the shack standing and use it for a kitchen or to house animals. The shacks are extremely unsafe for many reasons. Most of the cooking is done on a stove made of rocks with a little fire in the middle. The smoke from a stove constructed this way fills the little shack constantly and the families develop breathing problems and sometimes lung cancer. There simply isn't proper ventilation.

At this point it would be easy to jump to judgment about the people who live in these conditions. Why don't they find better paying jobs and make a better life for themselves? Why don't they get better materials and construct better homes? Why do they continue to bring kids into this life? The issues in impoverished environments are perpetual because of the lack of education and gainful employment. When a child is born to a sixteen year old mother, in a village in a country that has been controlled by greedy dictators for hundreds of years...they simply have no exposure to a different way of life. They suffer, but do not know of another lifestyle or how to achieve it. Any improvement is a step to change that paradigm and over the course of several years the benefits of a real home with a safe kitchen and material floor will encourage and educate younger people to seek out a more sustainable living environment. As we drove in we passed several sugar cane fields where most of the villagers work...for less than two-hundred dollars a month. That sugar is used to feed the world, yet these people are not collecting the benefits of their natural resources.

After our shocking tour of the village we made our way to the build site. Three small block homes, about four feet apart from each other, stood in various stages of construction. We were introduced to the beautiful twenty year old owner of the home we would work on for the evening. Maria is currently twenty years old but became pregnant at fifteen. She now has two kids and is one of the fortunate girls because the birth father is still with her. The four of them currently live in ten-by-ten shack...with one bed. Maria proudly showed us the shell of her new home, then took us in to see the interior of her current shack. It is so hard visiting the insides of these homes. A beautiful young girl showing you where she sleeps. To her it isn't bad. It is home. It is hard not to wince thinking about the dark and pungent nights spent in such an environment. Only twenty-four percent of Nicaraguan homes have a toilet inside the home. Most toilets are pits or what we called "outhouses" in the US. Vittoria showed us the new toilet that would accompany Maria's house. Habitat has been experimenting with a new design that filters and processes the waste, making a much more sanitary "outhouse" with a metal stall and real commode. It is still outside the home, but a much more pleasant and dignified environment.

Our Habitat Project for the rest of the day involved hauling rock inside the partially constructed block walls of Maria's home to create a base for her concrete floor. Your Travel Team once again would have made you proud with the effort they put into Maria's home. Lisa Lunsford with her incredibly beautiful long fingernails was trowing cement into cracks in the walls. Helen Brewer, Shelly Flanagan and Kelly Overton were tamping down the rock with long sticks weighted on the end by a large block of concrete.

Jennifer Collison, Richard James, and Alex Rodriguez were joined by Jason Barr and our World Vision host Jim Fischer as they shoveled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of rock and slate into the house. The unflappable Glenn Nichols spread rock with a shovel. Tiny Maria worked side-by-side with us to build her home. By this time we were getting really tired but her energy and radiant smile kept us moving. We all kept imagining the day when she could move in and get her children off of the dirt.

To end this remarkable day, Vittoria took us to the Pacific Ocean where we walked down the beach. It was a perfect ending to all that we had seen and done. The fishermen had just come in and we got to see the days catch of mahi-mahi, red snapper...and a rather disgusting cart full of gutted sharks. But the ocean breeze was cooling and we felt refreshed. We returned to Managua very tired but with a new appreciation for the people of Nicaragua, the blessings of our own lives and respect for the amazing contributions of our International Partners.

A Glimpse of Life in Nicaragua