NICARAGUA
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Photo Of The Women We Worked With
My experience in Nicaragua was an adventure.
By Laura Rigoni
I learned a lot about how people live in that part of the world. Imagine living in a three hundred square foot tin shack with eight other members of your family. The walls are curtains which separate off the sleeping areas, and the area for food prep is a small corner. The cooking area is attached to the outside off the house, and the shower, sink and toilet are at opposite corners of your plot. Your only source of water is your sink which is used for washing both clothes and dishes. You have to bring a bucket of water from the sink to the shower in order to bathe. Water and electricity is unreliable at best, and are off for many hours a day in many places. Your bed has a two inch mattress on a sheet of plywood with no springs and is shared with your parents and children, or is the hammock hanging above the bed which is also shared. Your house is be fenced in for security and the house needs to be kept locked. You and your neighbors all have dogs for safety as well, and the neighborhood dogs bark all night. This scenario is if you're lucky. There are people you know who are living in tarp tents along the side of the road, and among the garbage at the city dump.
Imagine not being able to find a job. Not just a job you want, but any job. There are no help wanted signs, but if you are lucky you can get a job at the sweat shop and earn ten dollars a day. You work a twelve hour day with two preset bathroom breaks, and if you miss a day of work because you're ill you lose your job. It costs three hundred dollars to feed your family rice and beans for the month. Otherwise you might work as a street vendor peddling whatever items you can create, or a farmer hand picking beans and drying them in the sun. The alternative is picking metal and plastic out of the city dump for roughly twenty five cents per pound.
Now think for a moment how happy you would be living in the conditions described above. The very simple conditions described above are how I witnessed the common person in Nicaragua living every day. The people were clean and the children were healthy. The people I met were happy, very friendly, appreciative for the work we did, and prayed for our safety during our travels.
The schools are overcrowded with sixty preschoolers to one teacher. The government pays the teacher salary and utilities, however the students must pay for all the supplies needed to teach them. Many families need to have all able persons working just to put food on the table, so there is no money for school and the children grow up uneducated – destined to live another generation in the same conditions as their parents.
In Chacocente, Cherito Avery has done amazing work. She is breaking the cycle by moving families to her property and teaching them new ways. She maintains strict standards regarding abuse, mandatory meetings, work ethic, and community support. There are many families which have tried her project and failed. If they can abide her rules and teachings, the family will own the house that they live in on the project in five years. She teaches new skills so that people can do weaving, farming, construction, plumbing, or other vocations. She enables these families to support each other and to start up businesses of their own. The school at Chococente feeds the children a hot lunch every day and makes the children brush their teeth every day.
This experience has opened my eyes to the reality of how people live in much of the world. Kids are kids the world over, whether they are American or Nicaraguan they each have their own personality but still revel the the delights and innocence of childhood. Beauty exists the world around, whether in the scenic views from a volcano rim or looking into the face of a person you have helped who cannot find words to express their emotions. Happiness is not tied to material belongings. 'Things' may make life easier or more comfortable, but they also frequently pollute the soul in thinking that more is needed when it actually is not.[/b]