Villa Nueva

Carazo and Foods Resource Bank

Day 2

 As I mentioned in my pervious post, I spent last week in Carazo with a group from the United States. The second day, we drove out to Villa Nueva, a small community in the mountians that I have visited during my first week working with CIEETS. 

We started our day helping the community members cover one of their wells. The well had been open and dust, leaves, branches, and mangos were constantly falling in the water that the family used for washing, bathing, and drinking. 

Like most community projects, there was lots of helpers and even more watchers.

After lunch, the women showed us the bags that they crocheted made out of recycle plastic bags they picked up on the beach. Nicaragua struggles with polution and litering, and people are becoming increasingly aware of the effect it is having on the environment. I was pretty impressed by their bags, as you can tell.

In the afternoon, we spilt into two groups. The first helped continue construction on a latreen. Because there isn´t plumming in much of rural Nicaragua, CIEETS does a lot of working building and helping communities build safe latreens that does contaminate local water sources.

The second group went to the kitchen to make corn tortillas. I tried making corn tortillas once, they were pretty much a flop. I´ve come to see that when making tortillas, less is more. Let me show you hows its done. 

First you wash and soak the corn until is squeeky clean and a little bit swollen from the water. 

 

Heat your skillet.

 

While the skillet is heating, grind the kurnels and a little bit of water in the grinder.

 

Grab a couple stones and grind some more until the resulting dough is nice and fine.

 

Take a quick break to play with the puppy. 

Press the dough into a circle and pause to show off your work.

 

Fry the tortilla over an open fire (watch out, its pretty hot!)

 

 Its a shame I don´t have a photo of the finish product. For only being made of corn and water, I was surpised at how good they tastes (although there was a very distict popcorn flavor).

 

El Quinal

Carazo and Foods Resource Bank

Day 1

CIEETS does a number of community development projects throughout Nicaragua, primarly in partnership with other non-governmental organizations from Central America, North America and Europe. Groups often visit Nicaragua to see the work CIEETS is doing. In the last two months alone, I´ve met with people from Switerland, the United States, France, Panama, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Costa Rice and Boliva.

Last week I was invited to join a team that was visiting from the states as they were shown the work being done in the department (Nicaraguan equivelant of a state) of Carazo. This was an educational trip led by Foods Resource Bank in partnership with Church World Service, and Week of Compassion.

View Carazo in a larger map

Through out our trip, we stayed in Jinotepe, a smaller city about an hour south of Managua. It was so nice to be up in the mountians a bit where its cooler and not as dry. Each day we piled into two pick-ups and  drove into some of the most rural areas of western Nicaragua. 

The first day we visited El Quinal, a small farm that the owner hopes to eventually make into an educational center where people can learn about organic, more natural growing practices.  In an area that traditionally only grows corn, CIEETS is encouraging farmers to diversify their crops. We were shown to a small field that currently has corn, rice, beans, peppers, tomatos, watermelon, and fruit trees.

The the owner used a near by stream to create an irregation system that allows him to continue growing through the dry season. Nicaragua has a large problem, especially in the rural areas, with people migrating to Costa Rica during the dry seaons because they aren´t able to grow or earn enough to support their families. Unfortunatly, this leads to a host of other problems. By showing farmers how to use irregation terrieces, natural water conservation barriers and other methods of retaining water in the soil, farmers are able to have a more secure food source through out the year.

One new practice added this year was using corn in place of poles for the tomato plants to climb. The hope is that the tomatos will be able to climb the corn stalks without compeating for nutrients and water in the soil. The tomatos were plants about a month ago and it looked like it was going to be successful, until the neighbor´s cow got in the field and at the corn off. I guess we´ll have to wait until next year to if that one will work.

While I was there, I saw my first cashew tree while I was there. Its a little hard to see in the photo, but on the end of each of those tangarine colored fruits is a very large, black cashew nut. I even tried a bit out of the fruit (I wouldn´t recommend it, very bitter and juicy, while leaving your mouth very dry). Later I told another MCCer that I saw a cashew tree. Before I could go any further, she exclaim "Oh no! I hope you didn´t touch it! They can give you a bad rash and the juice in the nut can like, blind you!"

Frankly, I feel lucky to still be alive.

Because this farm was also a learning and demonstration farm, there were a couple other practices that were being tested and are much less common in the area. One of the most impressive was the biodigester that had been installed. A large tank is put in the ground and covered with a heavy duty plastic bag. 

Every day, a bucket of half cow manure and half water is added to one end and a bucket of compost is drawn out of the other end. The plastic bag captures the methane gas, which is then piped to an out door stove.  Enough natural gas is produced to run the stove for six hours daily and the family uses it for most of their cooking. Not only does this help reduce deforestation, it prevents families from having to spend money buying firewood.

There is also a program in Nicaragua that is trying to remove the iguana from the endangered species list. The farmer we visited had a large pen with 8 iguanas. He watches them closely and when one lays eggs, he carfully removes them and places them in incubation coolers. Once the baby iguanas are large enough to make it on their own, they are released back into the wild again.

It was a long day, but I´m thankful I got to go along. Life in Managua is so different from live in the country here. Just an hour outside of the capital city, you can find communitys with not running water and latreens out back. Plus, I would never be able to meet such a hansome gentleman as this in the city.

Developing a Community

 A couple weeks ago I went on an overnight trip to Villa Nueva, a small community near the boarder of Honduras. CIEETS, the organization I work for, was there in partnership with ChristianAid. Together, we are starting what will be a long-term community development project. This was one of the first meetings that had been had with the community. Its goal was to work with Villa Nueva to identify their resources and weakness and together devope a plan for strengthening the community.

Based on that weekend, here is my "How-To Guide to Starting to Developing a Community"

 1. Take a look at what they have, the houses, wells, latrines, animals and fields.

2. Get everyone together - young, old, moms, dads, grandmas and grandpa.

 

3. Talk, a lot. Break into small groups, let everyone share and listen to what they have to say. Identify problems and celebrate strengths.

 3. Share with the whole group.

 4. Take a break for lunch.

 

5.  Be happy with the progress you made and make plans to come visit again soon.

LATINOAMÉRICA

Today I have a music video for you from the group Calle 13. It is full of shots of South and Central America as life really is. There are women in traditional dress from the Andes mountians like I saw in Bolivia, rural school children and children of the street, and fisherman and farmers.

Chorus:

Tú no puedes comprar al viento, 
Tú no puedes comprar al sol
Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia,
Tú no puedes comprar al calor.
Tú no puedes comprar las nubes,
Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría,
Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores.

Vamos caminado, aquí se respira lucha.
Vamos caminando, yo canto porque se escucha.
Vamos caminando, aquí estamos de pie.
Que viva Latinoamérica.
No puedes comprar mi vida!

You can´t buy the wind

You can´t buy the sun

You can´t buy the rain

You can´t buy the heat

You can´t buy the clouds

You can´t buy my happiness

You can´t buy my pain

We walk, here you fight to breath

We walk, I sing, because you hear

We walk, here we sant

Long live Latinoamerica

You can´t buy my life!

Managua In Real Life

I took these two photos just the other ay and had to share them with you. They were both taken on my balcony, just off of my bedroom (yes, I have a balcony). The first was taken around 5:00 p.m. just as the sun was going down. 

The second photo is of the mango tree that grows to one side of our patio. Mango season starts in late March and you can see how big they are getting already. As much as I'm looking forward to having fresh mangos, I am not looking forward to having them fall on the tin roof in the middle of the night. I've already been woken up with a start one night, convinced something important had toppled over.

Mumbacho - A Volcano Adventure

When you find yourself in Nicaragua with a free weekend, I can think of no better way to spend it then hiking a volcano. Three of the other SALTers and I left Managua early one morning. After two buses, one market, and a bag of fried banana chips, and a moto taxi that looked something like this:

We found ourselves waiting about half way up the volcano. We had just missed a shuttle bus that had taken a group of people up and the next one wasn't expected for another 45 minutes. Luckly, a truck drove by, and after the natural reserve workers flagged it down, we hopped in the flat bed. We shared our ride with two men, one older, the other our age. Both carried large guns, probably loaded. They worked for local coffee plantations, protecting against animals and people who liked to help themselves to the coffee crop.

After a steep twenty minute ride, we reached something like a base camp where we directed to a converted army jeep filled with people which would take us the rest of the way us. Like most Nica transportation, it was crowded, full of people from all over the world - Nicaraguans, Germans, and New Yorkers.

Once we reached the top, we were free to wander as we wanted - just so long as we made it back in time for the bus down. Mumbacho is an active volcano, but its last eruption was in 1570. Nevertheless, there were places where you could see the smoke and sulfur creeping out of the earth.

Mumbacho over looks the city of Granada and Lake Nicaragua. At one of the best look-outs, we pulled out our packed lunch of cold spaghetti, bananas, and cheese and crackers. I'm fairly certain the other hikers that wandered past us were jealous of our meal. 

The volcano has countless plant species that are native only to that region, many of them different type of orchids. I love being able to see bright flowers in the middle of winter. Even though the temperatures have been colder, a low of 68 is a far cry from what I'm used to.

On our way back down the volcano, I sat to an ENT doctor from Germany. He told me about what life was when he was growing up. How his uncle crashed in a German plane some where in France during war. How, when he wanted to visit his grandmother, he had to cross four boarders, all within his own city. How before his cousin passed away, he gave him a piece of the wall that he had taken when it finally fell. I listened him as the jungled passed beside me and thought about the two paths that had brought us both to this conversation and how different we were. Inspite of that, we were both there, enjoying the same thing and sharing a bit of who were were for a moment.

San Juan del Sur

Just after I arrived in Managua, we left again for San Juan del Sur for the MCC Spiritual Retreat. San Juan is a short 2 hour bus ride to the south and has a beautiful beach and cove along the Pacific Ocean.

We had a lovely weekend, spending time on the beach, exploring and growing closer as a team. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the weekend.

All the SALT and Yamen-ers of Nicaragua

There is nothing like enjoying a sunset on the beach.

We did some exploreing and hiked out onto the rocks far on the edge of the cove.

I was so thankful to have this weekend to relax and get to know the team here better. It was such a nice change from the big cities of Santa Cruz and Managua.