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.