Blog Entry #3, Nicaragua: Living in Sabana Grande (Days 3-5)

Anything is possible.  A mini cab with a hatchback drew up at the corner by our Esteli hotel, and offered to take us to the bus station going north (there is another station if you are going south!).  Our massive luggage stuck out the back of this cab and had to be bungie corded together, but we made it to the station.  Once there, a brightly colored second hand bus with railings on top was ready for us.  A pig was already strapped up there, and was soon joined by giant baskets of produce and our own equally giant red suitcase and extra heavy duffel of art supplies. 

This bus stopped every five minutes for two hours, but it never stopped for long!  The driver’s helper had to swing new luggage up on top and then ride to the next stop hanging onto the ladder, since the bus always took off before he finished.  We began to worry how we would get ourselves and our six pieces of luggage off in time when we reached the solar center, especially since we didn’t really recognize our stop.  After reminding the driver 4 times where we were going, and driving for two hours through the rain, we were told to run for it.  Within two minutes, our luggage had been thrown down and we had been half helped, half pushed out the back door of the bus.  To our delight, Deb (who went ahead yesterday) appeared miraculously on the other side of the road before we even had time to ponder which way to go.   

The solar center at Grupo Fenix has grown an amazing degree in the last four years since I was here with Sac State students.  A “solar restaurant” has been built.  It consists of a beautiful and huge covered patio with hand made, primitive wooden tables and chairs; a kitchen building; a kitchen garden; and four solar ovens in back doing the cooking.  Today the lunch menu is chicken, rice, beans, avocado, tomatoes and cucumbers, and fresh made passion fruit juice.  We are thrilled to have landed from our bus ride to enjoy this bounty, under a lovely tile roof which keeps off the pelting rain. 

The sustainability projects in Sabana Grande have also grown, and are both diverse and interrelated.  Vet students from UC Davis have recently been here, working with teaching farmers to inoculate chickens.  The “solar mountain” now has a community built cob and natural wood conference pavilion, as well as orchards growing traditional and native tropical fruits, herbal gardens, and many acres of reforestation.  A daycare center has been built and is about to open.  And a group of high school and college students in Sabana Grande, inspired by our Da Vinci students, have formed a bicycle driven collective to work on various projects and  tours.  

Teachers Gaby and Emma in front of the new solar childcare center, built of cob (mud).

The new solar restaurant feeds Da Vinci volunteers and others from universities.

Peregrine School is well represented already, by a dozen Da Vinci high school students and their two teachers, who have been assisting them in installing a bicycle driven water pump in the school and in teaching science to the children for a week.  Now we have arrived, with Gaby Valenzuela, Emma Clancy, and me, as well as Deb Bruns, who has initiated this project.  Our task is to explore ways of making Peregrine a “sister school” with the village school here, San Miguel Arcangel, by creating shared books about their lives with kids from both places.  We will bring back materials, mostly in the form of children’s writings, drawings, and photos, which can help our students and parents to better understand life in this village.  Since Davis and Sabana Grande share many features as communities committed to sustainability and to agriculture, we feel that this partnership is particularly rich.  There are many things dramatically the same and dramatically different about our two communities, and both communities are open to sharing their experience. 

Staying in Sabana Grande for a week is a life changing experience for most Americans, even without the things one can learn about solar and photovoltaic technologies, sustainable agriculture, and natural building.  American students and teachers enter households where electricity is either not available or is available through solar devices which provide a limited amount.  As one woman said, “if I charge my cell phone, I need to go to bed at 8:30.”  I am currently typing this blog using my head lamp flashlight, because today was a cloudy day so my host family has no photovoltaic power for a light bulb. 

Dirt walking and horse or bike paths are the only roads in Sabana Grande.

Showers at our houses are small outdoor shelters where a large container of rain water has been collected on the roof and funneled in.  Dippers are provided.  The toilet is an outhouse, some distance from the house.  Don’t forget to bring a flashlight for night visits. 

Cooking is efficient here, since much research has gone into alternatives that can serve as a model to others nearby.  Solar ovens are present in most houses.  They are particularly good for slow cooking, cooking in the dry season, and coffee drying.  (Local coffee is grown and sold by the women here.)  In addition, there are elegantly designed “rocket” stoves of mud and brick which provide convection features and cleanly remove smoke.  They are very fuel efficient, an important thing since deforestation for firewood is a big issue.  Dishes are washed in buckets from the rainwater (it rains most of the night each night), and no hot water is available.  In this equatorial environment, it gets light at 6 AM and dark at 6 PM year round, so much cooking and clean up is done by lantern light. 

We share our meals with the family of the house, which generally includes three generations.  My household currently houses two Da Vinci high school boys and me, as well as three sons, two daughters, two parents, a granddaughter, and a ninety nine year old grandma who is blind and needs constant care.  The teenage boys and girls take turns helping the grandma when the mother goes to work.

 Bedrooms consist of a bed with a mosquito net in an adobe or concrete block room, with a bedside table and a rope across the ceiling to hang towels and clothes to dry.  It is generally very dark, with few windows.  The house is really just for sleeping.  Work is outside, and eating is in covered pavilions, which keep the rain off.  

One of many idyllic Brahman cows

The yard has an outhouse and shower stall, many chickens , a dog, and a milk cow and her calf.  Most families in Sabana Grande are farmers who work corn and bean fields which alternate with pasture fields for their cows.  Tortillas and beans from these crops provide the daily staple foods.  One wakes to the sound of tortillas being pounded by hand.  Most people have fruit trees around their houses, and currently in season are bananas, avocados, maracuya, and pitoya (a fruit which Californians call “dragon fruit”.) Tree covered mountains rise up in the distance behind the “sabana grande”, or rolling plain, we are on, creating a bucoloic scene.  Village life centers around the ceiba tree, which is thirty feet around and 600 years old. 

To say this way of life contrasts with Davis would be an understatement, and yet much is also the same.  A new and up to date agricultural trade school just opened on the edge of town, where regional farmers will be trained.  Young people more commonly go to school to learn this and other trades than in the past.  Agricultural fields, orchards, and cows are a common sight, as are bikes.  And much of the populace has made a commitment to sustainability in energy and agriculture. 

Visiting here makes one think more deeply about what sustainability really means.  Exposing our Peregrine students to the vibrant but different lifestyle, and massively smaller energy footprint that families experience here, will prove a challenge that we look forward to as we reflect upon this journey ourselves and prepare to share it with our students.  Thanks again to those of you who helped sustain this trip.

Village life is inspired by this massive ceiba tree, 600 years old, where people gather. 

Sister School Trip to Nicaragua Blog Entry 2: Nicaragua - An Introduction

Gaby, Lorie, and Emma stand in front of a 2012 mural, made by school children, centered around a hope for peace, with the Gandhi quote (translated): “An eye for an eye and the whole world will be made blind.”  

One of the reasons that Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Americas, after Haiti, is that it experienced many years of revolution and civil war.  This history is chronicled in Esteli, which we visited first and which served as a good introduction to Nicaragua.

Esteli is famous for its political murals.  These murals express many aspects of the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979 , the many years of war which followed, and the evolution of the country into a peaceful democracy.   In the 1970’s, many Nicaraguans became Sandinistas, revolting against Somosa, a cruel dictator who had ruled for many years, and against the international corporations, such as United Fruit, which worked hand in hand with dictatorial governments to assure that almost all Nicaraguans lived under essentially feudal conditions.   Like many other Central American countries, Nicaragua is populated by mostly indigenous peoples who traditionally farmed but did not hold title to their lands, and became easy prey for individuals and corporations who bought up land, and hired its original residents to work for almost nothing.

The Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, held democratic goals such as a decent standard of living for all; social, educational, and medical services; and land reforms which would allow campesinos to own the land on which they worked.   These ideals led to a socialist revolution, which in turn triggered a panic reaction in the Cold War United States.  A brutal civil war between Sandinistas (defenders of their their new revolutionary government) and Contras (highly subsidized opposition forces to the new revolutionary government), which lasted more than a decade and cost innumerable lives.  Various other governments, including the USA, fueled this conflict with arms, which extended the struggle for many years.

Ever since their revolutionary period, a cultural climate in Nicaragua developed which is open to cooperative movements and innovative solutions.  Projects involving Nicaraguans and internationals abound, and a spirit of possibility remains in Nicaragua paralleled by persistently difficult economic circumstances. 

In Esteli, we witnessed a collective of women, las mujeres ambientalistas, who recycle corn husks and other fibers, along with paper trash, from the largest market in the city to create a hand made paper operation.   These women turn market refuse into beautiful paper which is then made into greeting cards and journals.  This is one of many examples of kind of independent nonprofit groups which exist in Nicaragua.

This woman demonstrates for us how she and her colleagues make paper out of recycled materials.

On Saturdays, they work with school children to teach them to make paper too.This woman demonstrates for us how she and her colleagues make paper out of recycled materials.

We also toured the famous Esteli political murals which number over one hundred, in which school children and artists have been expressing their dreams for the future for thirty years.  The images below represent this work, which is ongoing and reflects the evolution of Nicaraguan society.  In these murals, images of gun toting revolutionaries morph over time into images of health care, children at play, and peace.  Likewise, dark colors gradually change to rainbows of hope.  The projects which we are about to experience in Sabana Grande represent a part of this tradition of small scale, collaborative, nonprofit projects-- a tradition through which Nicaraguan communities work steadily to make their lives better.

This woman demonstrates the idea that people of any age can learn to read.  A major literacy campaign has been an essential part of the ongoing Nicaraguan revolution.

A mural illustrates the importance of media, in the form of a radio station, to spreading the word and giving people voice.

 

The key to the future is in our hands… A world of hope, where nature is not abused.