Last Day

Mallory, Colin, Rosie, and Michelle have arrived safely back in Portland and the rest of the group also had a travel day on the bus to Costa Rica.

We spent our last few days together with Witness for Peace. Friday we visited the Los Quinchos boys' and girls' homes for street children where we saw a new water storage system was installed, thanks to a donation made by last year's Nica group. The girls were incredibly grateful to have running water and they had all prepared handmade thank you cards. We also spent time on "retreat" at a beautiful crater lake to reflect on our whole experience, relax, and enjoy our last weekend together. During this time, we did some action planning and started brainstorming how we're going to take what we've learned back into our lives in the States. Our last full day was in Managua so we visited a fair trade store and had a meeting at the U.S. Embassy. Hopefully the folks in Costa Rica will have some time this next week to post more reflections on some of these things, but until then... thanks for reading. We had an amazing, unforgettable experience and have grown to appreciate so many aspects of the Nicaraguan culture and people.

Here's us at the school we helped build in San Ramon:

Last day in San Ramon

These pictures are from our last day in Santa Isabel. We had a ¨despedida¨(going away ceremony) in the community, which was a lot of fun but we were sad to say goodbye. Tomorrow we are wrapping up our time with Seeds of Learning, visiting a coffee processing plant, and heading back to Managua with Witness for Peace.

Mas fotos!

This is the free AND fair trade factory we visited, the first owned as a cooperative by Nicaraguans. Compared to the factory we saw making North Face clothing, this one was by far more humane and friendly. (Taken a week ago.)


Max with his and Kevin´s host family in the campo. Little Cristiano loved the blow up ball. (Taken 4 days ago.)

San Ramon and Seeds of Learning!

¡Hola, mis amigos!

After saying goodbye to our talented guide, Ben Beachy, and Witness for Peace in Matagalpa on Saturday, we headed for the small municipality of San Ramon to the north which is surrounded by thousands of acres of coffee plantations. The weather is mercifully cooler and damper up here at a few thousand feet, and our hotel, Sueño de la Campana, is situated on a ridge overlooking the quaint town with a breathtaking view of the surrounding hills. We were greeted by Daniel, our new guide who works for Seeds of Learning, who explained his organization´s mission and history in Central America and more specifically in the San Ramon area.
Seeds of Learning helps fund and organize school construction projects in communities that either lack a school or have an inadequate facility. Daniel explained that the community we were going to start work in on Monday, Santa Isabel, only had a temporary wooden structure in the middle of a coffee field. The sturcture is extremely dark and cramped and not a dignified space in which to learn. Also, Nicaraguan law requires that the preschool be in a seperate room which meant those students currently have to meet in someone´s house in the community. Daniel made sure to point out that they are unlike other organizations that just swoop in, build a structure in a few days, and pack up and leave. Seeds of Learning works in solidarity with the people it serves by fully including them in every part of the process. Additionally, both the locals and volunteers work together to build the school, which takes longer, but it develops important relationships that help close the gap that countless years of arrogance and oppression have created. Needless to say, we were all excited to be a part of this project.
On Monday, we rode in the back of a couple of trucks up into the misty hills surrounding San Ramon. We could hear Congo monkeys with their powerful calls that carry for miles while light rain cooled our bodies. We hopped out, and after a short welcome that included songs and poetry from some of the local students, we eagerly began work with both the adults and children of Santa Isabel. Some of us organized into groups that mixed concrete and laid bricks on the foundation which was already poured while other trucked off into the campo to get choice compacting dirt from a distant hillside. The work is tiring but the local residents have been extremely gracious hosts, including offering us freshly cooked meals to eat during breaks. Also, we all took turns socializing with the adults or playing with the children because while the school is the excuse for everyone to gather, the point is developing relationships which is the heart of social justice. Not too far in, the wet season decided to arrive and mother nature dumped at least a couple inches of rain on us in a period of less than an hour which halted work as everyone huddled under a few shelters. We only completed a little more before the work day was done and some of the community leaders invited us to see their homes. The hike was treacherous at times as we climbed 45 degree hills of moving mud, but we were playing tag and other games with the group of children who were gleefully following our every move as a group. During the tour, the residents explained some of the difficulties of campo life which were similar to what we observed during our homestay in Ramon Garcia, but with the important difference that this community lived on a finca which is a large plot of land owned by one person who does not live in the community. This community depends almost solely on coffee production unlike the families of Ramon Garcia which were able to sustain themselves by having diversifed crops on land that they themselves owned.
Tuesday proved to be much more productive in terms of the actual amount of work that we completed on the school. We laid more than triple the amount of bricks that we laid on Monday thanks to the beautiful weather that was remarkably rain free. The project is shaping up nicely and pictures are soon to come!

¡Hasta luego and Adio!

Tiempo en el campo (homestays in Ramon Garcia)

Laying on my cot, still wearing the same clothes I had worn that day, I pulled my sheet cover over my head to keep out the huge bugs that buzzed around the room. The sweat, sunscreen, and bugspray caked to my body failed to keep me warm that first night in the campo, but the "sonidos de la noche" (sounds of the night) seemed to make up for my lack of sleep: the crickets sang their sweet melody, the frogs croaked, the neighbors were talking in their homes, the bugs buzzed around the room. The early wake-up call by the roosters' cock-a-doodle-doo got us up in time to help our host-mom make corn tortillas. While getting ready for the day and trying not to wake up the three hermanos on the other side of the fabric wall, we walked out of the 30x20 ft one-room house into the kitchen/dining area/living room. Our shy host mom, Maria, showed us how the corn is first mixed with meat, put into a machine that is cranked to a mush, formed like a pancake with your hands, and placed in a pan on the woodstove in the corner. We ate corn tortillas, beans, and rice for almost every meal. It was great, though, no complaining!
Our group had the absolute honor and privilege of staying with the rural community of Ramon Garcia, who graciously welcomed us into their community for two and a half days. After learning about the struggles this community had gone through in keeping their land and their pride, it was evident that this was a strong and community-oriented group of people.
My host-dad, Fausto, is one of the most humble and inspiring people I have ever met. He was so open and loving in allowing us to stay with his family for two nights and in sharing about his life and dreams. He brought us down to the river behind their house to show us the pipe that he had engineered to pump water up to their house. His gaunt face was gleaming as he showed us how it worked and how he had taught others in the community how to build one. Later that afternoon, he took us to his parcel of land, which I was not expecting to be much, because of how poor their family was... We walked through the coffee plants, he pointed out a mango tree or two, and we started walking up the hill. We walked and walked all the way up the hill, through palm, mango, and banana trees until we got to the very top with one of the most breath-taking views I had ever seen in my life! Surrounding us and the valley was a wall of mountains that were of a lush green, the tops disappearing into the clouds. We saw a rainbow off to the right, which made the scene complete. It was absolutely majestic. The profound tranquility I felt seemed to open my heart to hear the wisdom that this simple man had to offer.
Fausto began to tell us his dreams for his children and for his land. He realizes the richness of the land and wishes for his children to appreciate and take care of it after his is gone. He wishes that his children could get a good education, but he seems to realize that it is not likely because of the fact that his family has little to no money. His dream for the land is to build a small home where we were sitting for one of his children and their family, but they would need a well up there also, because it is too far away from the river. He has all of these dreams, but because they are extremely poor, they might not ever happen. Fausto seemed very aware of this fact, and yet he still has these dreams. Amazing.
The way they live is incredible as well. Using the river as a place to bathe, do laundry, and take a swim, they seem to fair just fine. They carry their drinking and cooking water to their home from a well by the school. They have electricity, but the only thing my family used it for was the one lightbulb in the house and the radio. Their bathroom consisted of a latrine (like an outhouse, but with no toilet paper) located about twenty feet from the house. It felt like camping, and although most of the comforts I am used to were not there, the shack was made into a home with the love, laughter, and simplicity of their humble lives.
We had great coversations about his time serving in the war during the revolution, their daily lives now; we shared pictures of our own families; talked about our lives in America and the struggles and problems of Nicaragua; played cards and hacky sack with the kids; and laughed about Nicaraguan sayings and how they just do not quite translate well into English.
After only two and a half days, I felt like part of the family and did not want to leave! It would be difficult to physically live the way they do, but it seems like the more simply one lives, the richer their life becomes, especially when one values God, family, and community.

Fotos!!

Here are two photos from our adventures. It takes a long time to upload, so we're starting small!

Kenzie tries her hand at making a tortilla with her homestay family in Ramon Garcia. Tortillas are cooked over the wood stove behind her.

This is our happy group on the Nicaragua Immersion, saying our goodbye's to Witness for Peace leader, Ben, before heading out to work with Seeds of Learning.

Day 8

We can't believe we've been in Nicaragua for a week. We've learned so much and experienced so many new things! We spent the last three days (two nights) with homestays in a beautiful but poor community called Ramon Garcia. Hopefully we'll have more time soon to post some stories. The people we've spent time with seem to hold so much wisdom. At one of our reflections recently we discussed how our American society and culture puts such a high value on "progress" (technology, efficiency, accumulation of wealth) but what we've experienced in the lives of the Nicaraguans is something even more profound- something that makes our American progress seem so very backwards.

Anyway, we are all doing well. There have been some minor encounters with diarhea and such but nothing we can't handle! Dios les bendiga.

Free Trade versus Fair Trade?

Tuesday, 05/11/2010, we focused on free trade and how it has affected Nicaraguan politics, economics, and daily life for many of the people here. We were prepped for today with a lecture on NAFTA and CAFTA and what these agreement mean (in general) for participating countries. Free trade in general implies that no taxes or tariffs/regulations on trade will be imposed that would in anyway inhibit trade, this makes the policies international by defintion. Narrowing down our focus to NAFTA, we talked about how the corn farming industry had been affected by the agreement once it wa instituted in 1994. Basically, the Mexican corn farmers were forced to leave their fields in search of manufacturing jobs in the city because they could now longer afford to compete with heavily subsidized American corn that was all of a sudden very cheap once the tariffs were lifted from the price tag. The cultural implications of that transition were devastating to Mexico, and the loss of their agricultural business to large scale American agri-corporations meant that Mexico no longer had the luxury of food security either. From there, we moved on to CAFTA, coming back to our focus on Nicaragua. CAFTA had the same sort of effect on Nicaragua that NAFTA had had on Mexico, but instead of corn, rice was the staple product that was lost to United States agri-business. Although it is argued that CAFTA has created jobs for Nicaraguans, most of these jobs are neither secure, nor lucrative enough to feed the average family. Nicaragua did increase its exports (up 19.6% in the first three months of 2007 compared to 2006) but its imports account for more than twice the amount of exports annually. Due to the unavailability of work that pays enough to feed their families, many Nicaraguans are forced to emigrate and now, an estimated 900,000-1.5 million Nicaraguans reside either permanently or seasonally outside of their own country.

To see what physical and social effects these policies have had on the area we are currently in, Managua, Nicaragua, we went to a factory within the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone to meet with an administrator of the factory and then go on a tour of the factory guided by the human resources manager. The minute we walked into the first meeting with the administrator, things felt wrong. We had walked into an air conditioned, very posh meeting room with reclining, heavily cushioned seats and bottled water waiting for each of us. A few minutes after sitting down, a woman offered us coffee as well. They showed a promotional video that CNZF (National Comission for Free Trade Zones- in english) that had business owners referring to Nicaraguans as quality workers that are very eager to work for low wages. It was almost ridiculous, something we would have made at home as a joke, but never believed could possibly be real. The administrator continued to tell us about the better qualities of inacting free trade policies while pointing out that clearly, the system has flaws. Referencing the working conditions of the factory, he said that the problem was not the lack of labor laws to protect the workers... but the refusal of many factories to implement and follow those laws. Specific problems are the number of hours at a time the worker is allowed to work (it should be eight hours a day but shifts have often extended to 24 hours), overtime pay must be given if extra hours are worked, health care is mandatory but rarely given, harassment (whether it is verbal, physical, emotional, or sexual) is commonplace, and many women suffer from not being allowed anykind of maternity leave. The meeting was ended with the question of why Nicaragua is in the spotlight for these problems when they are occurring elsewhere? China has factories that violate all of the same labor laws/rights, yet Americans do nothing. He said that we are too dependent on them now economically to question it, but that we should if we are going to do so in Central America.On the tour of the factory, bad feelings towards the business became more widely and dramatically felt for the group. It was a huge room filled with hundreds of people all working in 3x3 sq ft spaces on the same menial task over and over and over. They were crammed in so as to fit as many workers into one space as possible. Some workers were wearing face masks. Others were wearing no protective gear, and many even lacked proper shoes... wearing flip flops in an industrial setting. The questions we asked the human resources manager (who was from Taiwan, where the owners of the company are from) were all answered readily, but in a way that not all of us quite believed every time. Walking through the factory lines, we watched as these workers made clothes we see at the University of Portland every day. They were making North Face jackets that cost the same amount of money that the workers make per month, approximately $120.

After the tour of the factory in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone, we ventured to another factory that operates in a free trade district. This factory was started by a group of Nicaraguan women who were displaced from work in 1998 and then lost everything to Hurricane Mitch. They modeled their factory after American co-operatives, and initiated a project that would serve as a model for worker run factories. It took them two years to build the factory building (as well as many, many personal sacrifices) and have overcome many obstacles. One of the obstacles the founder told us about was when the Ministry of Labor tried to shut them down for having half the number of workers they needed to legally operate (15 versus 30). A bank in Houston, TX came to their aid and loaned them enough to hire the extra fifteen workers and continue to fill work orders. Today, 40 people work in the factory and their biggest buyer is the Presbyterian church. Although they cannot afford an advertising campaign in the States, they have brochures, a website, and go on many speaking tours to promote their factory. They have spoken in 22 states now. The factory workers are the directors, so they are definitely treated with respect, dignified wages, and have access to healthcare with an on-site clinic, maternity leave, and a work day that averages from 7 am to 5:30 pm. Any overtime is recognized so employees are not cheated out of their deserved earnings. The difference just in atmosphere between the two factories was like the difference between night and day. In one factory, the workers were almost faceless in the sea of products and other people... in the second, they were people who played baseball during their lunch break. At the second factory, instead of feeling guilty about the clothing choices we had made while in Portland, people were excited to buy new clothes and many of us have new tee shirts from the fair trade factory within the free trade zone.

Nemagon? Thats Bananas.

Today we visited a protesting community of Nicaraguan banana workers who were affected by the chemical nemagon. In the 1970s, large banana corportations such as Dole and Chiquita Banana sprayed their banana farms with nemagon, a fertilizer that is poisonous to everything expect banana trees. These corporations were fully aware that it had been banned by the EPA 20 years prior but used it anyway without telling its workers. The chemical causes 4 different types of cancer, chronic renal problems, sterility, skin lesions, hair and teeth loss, among other problems. 2518 workers have died from it so far and many are on their finals days. There are now 600 workers who live on the site they set up in front of the National Assembly. They have been legally fighting for financial compensation from the corporations to pay for medical bills and much needed medical attention for the past 18 years. Due to a tainted image from a few ill Nicaraguans falsely testifying that they had worked in the fields and general corruption within the government and legal systems, the corporations claimed that these people were just out for money. The corporations were found not guilty and the case was dismissed in U.S. courts. The bottom line is that these enormous corporations just dont want to own up to the millions and millions of dollars they rightfully owe to their workers. The three workers who spoke to us were not bitter with the U.S. government, for they understand the corporations for what they are. Fortunately, there has been some media coverage from a previous delegation and a recent documentary called, Bananas, but the workers still have not received a penny. There is little hope that the corporations will take responsibility for their inhumane decisions anytime soon but the persevering spirit of of the workers deserves much admiration.

First Few Days

Saturday morning was spent going over the history of WFP and becoming aware of culture norms in Nica. Then we took our first trek into the city during the daytime. Visiting both the market full of fresh fruits, veggies and raw meat was quite a contrast to the upscale mall. Learning that the average Nicaraguan lives on $2 a day, it was really hard to comprehend how they feed the average family of 6.

In the afternoon we covered a historical timeline, focusing on the cycles of military and economic violence, much of which has involved the United States. After this discussion we were able to tour the historical sites we learned about and see them firsthand.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning we participated in a power and privilege activity and self-reflection on where we come from. After this, we learned about neolibralism, debt and structural adjustments in Nicaragua. Our leader at WFP Ben does a great job explaining the context of the situations we are learning about. Many participants get very fired up after learning about these injustices.

The last two aspects of Sunday involved visiting the homes of two very strong, courageous women. The first was Maria, who lives in a squatter community that has been in the same location for over 30 years. She works, goes to school and helps run a community health clinic out of her own home. The project is funded by a private Canadian non-profit. She has about 20 meds on hand and then a doctor visits the community once a week for a few hours in the afternoon and sees 20-25 patients. Maria's home is open 24/7 and she has 2-3 people each day seeking her guidance.

The second woman, Yamileth lives just outside Managua's public dump. She lived in the dump for many years and worked off the dump, before having children. When her daughters were born, she decided she no longer wanted to live off the dump and never wanted her girls too. She also runs a publicly funded health clinic for the community of Acahualinca where she has 4 different medicines to distribute. Because of her prevention and community action, the neighborhood's health and safety has greatly improved. Make sure to ask a participant more about Yami's story!

Despite all the structural challenges, it is leaders like these women who are inspiring us. Stay tuned. We're all doing well (slightly overwhelmed with information) and excited to learn more stories to share with everyone.

We made it!

We have arrived safe and sound in Managua. Everyone is in good spirits and wishes their mothers Happy Mothers Day. It was dark when we landed at the airport so we look forward to seeing the city in daylight tomorrow. Witness for Peace gave us an initial orientation and we have a full schedule ahead of us. We pray for Fr.Pat to get well. We may or may not be able to update the blog regularly but will try at least once a week! Hasta la proxima.

On our way to the airport. Fr Pat is ill and wont be flying w us. Pray he can join us later.

Brief Itinerary

The trip is rapidly approaching with only four days until we leave. The group has bonded already, but we are excited to see how they will grow as individuals and friends through the amazing experiences we will have on the trip. Hopefully, we will be able to post updates on the trip (but they will definitely be infrequent).

Here's a brief, outlined itinerary of when and where we will be working with both organizations.

Itinerary
May 7 – May 11: Managua, Nicaragua with Witness for Peace
May 12 – May 14: Matagalpa, Nicaragua with Witness for Peace
May 15 – May 21: San Ramon, Nicaragua with Seeds of Learning
May 21 – May 25: Managua, Nicaragua with Witness for Peace

Getting closer...

We had our weekly meeting last night and it came as a shock to most of the participants that after we get back from spring break there will only be 8 weeks left until we leave for Nicaragua. Time seems to be moving extremely quickly and there's still so much left to do!

Although fundraising is a constant concern, the people of Nicaragua are never far from our minds. At last night's meeting we watched a filmed called Pictures from a Revolution. It is a documentary that recalls the Nicaraguan revolution and war during the 70s and 80s. Photographer Susan Meiselas was in Nicaragua at that time and made a book out of the photos she took. She returned to Nicaragua ten years later to track down the people in her photos and see how life has changed for the Nicaraguan people. The film was moving and insightful. The students gained a new perspective on Nicaragua and the war through the interviews with Nicaraguans who lived through it.

Hello from the Nicaragua Immersion

For those of you who are new to the happenings of the Nicaragua Immersion here is a quick overview of what our plunge is all about.

We are a group of 16 students, 2 student leaders, and 3 accompaniers who will be traveling to Nicaragua in May 2010 to immerse ourselves in the culture, learn about Nicaragua, share experiences with the Nicaraguan people and share all of our experiences with you when we get back.

We will be working with two organizations on our trip: Seeds of Learning and Witness for Peace.

Right now we are in the planning and fundraising stage so there will be plenty of updates about how to support our immersion and what we will be doing.