The Taj Mahal and Red Fort: Tourism in an emergent capitalist society (Lorie in India, Blog #4)

Everyone knows that India is disturbing because of the extremes of poverty and wealth, with an emphasis on the former.  Street children, dirty and clothed in rags, walk between cars, barely avoiding being hit. Cripples sit on the ground and beg.  Some city people live and sleep in falling down buildings, their facades open to the street.  Dogs and goats eat piles of garbage on the sidewalk.  In the countryside, people live in huts, although rural poverty always seems to me to have a softer face.  We expected and see all these forms of poverty, which is shocking but expected.

At the same time, there is a clearly growing middle class.  We see it in the hundreds of students in school uniforms visiting the museums, the thousands of families in the monuments.  There seems to be increasing hope for the future. 

But there is another side to a madly capitalist society attempting to “develop” as fast as possible which is disconcerting to me and Crystal.  I think it has to do with some kind of convergence of capitalism itself and of culture.  This convergence reaches a kind of extreme in India, and provides a constant distraction when one is a tourist. 

Rewind to the Raj- the time of British colonialism in India.  To a colonial power, a country being colonized is just a commodity.  Its people, resources, animals, are all potential commodities to bring wealth to the mother country.  It takes many years and many liberation movements to recover from being treated as a commodity in one’s own country, and India, like so many countries, struggles with this. 

But now we are in a new historical phase.  We, as white people, look like a commodity to Indians and other world peoples who are struggling to reach the middle class.  This group of people includes those in the service industries, such as car drivers, tour guides, and more.   These people see us as an opportunity which they want to push as hard as they can to gain some advantage.  It is not enough that we pay them to drive us to a monument, they want to take us to their brother’s rug shop, or to a handicraft store where they get a commission.  We expected hawkers  to sell things on the street, or people to beg.  This is disturbing but to be expected.  But more middle class agents, such as drivers and guides, are “on the take” to a degree which distorts the relationships with us upon which our trip depends.

For example, our Taj Mahal guide took us to a marble carving “factory” where we were told that the family had been making marble inlaid with semi-precious stones for nine generations, and were in fact descendents of the Aryan (Persian) people who settled in this area many centuries ago and built the Taj Mahal.  We knew they were trying to sell us marble tables.  We visited the family shop and watched them at work.  I did not think that the hand grinders and small pieces of marble they were using would account for the big pieces they were selling in their shop.  And, in fact,  we were later told by another driver that these shops in Agra are put-up jobs, that the marble is made in another town and the workers are acting as if they make the products here, because this is where the tourists are.  To me this is disturbing because it also implicates our guide, a nice young man with whom we spent the day and whom we enjoyed getting to know.  Since he lied to us about the marble, to get a commission if we had bought some, we cannot help but wonder what is true and not true about all the things he told us about Indian life.  After two days of being guided or driven by a series of people who all had a hidden agenda, and contradicted each others’ information about India, we began to avoid contact with people.  But this is sad, since that contact is what generally makes travel so interesting. 

In contradiction to this experience with drivers and guides is the other side of India- the fact that in these two days we saw incredible things.  The Taj Mahal is more majestic than one can imagine from the pictures we have all seen.  Most impressive are the detailed inlaid stones and carvings which cover it and can only be seen up close, and the extraordinary 4-way symmetry of this building/sculpture from every angle, inside and out.  Also amazing is how it changes color from brilliant white to rose, and more, depending on the sun.  Equally amazing are the beautiful Indian families who experience this with us, and want authentically to be photographed together and to talk a bit, without making any demands.

the Taj Mahal at 3:00 PM. As shiny white as a giant sugar cube

Two hours later, at 5:00 p.m. sunset

Crystal with three Indian girls and women next to the Taj

The road to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri (Lorie in India, Blog #3)

On Day 2 in Delhi, we took a long car trip with a hired driver to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is.  We also wanted to see another site from the Moghul period, Fatehpur Sikri, a short term capital of India during the reign of Emperor Akbar.  While we started at 6 AM, our driver got lost finding Fatehpur Sikri, so we drove through the countryside for 5 hours before we got there.  This was a blessing in disguise, although somewhat annoying (he was trying to avoid paying tolls on toll roads), because it was great to see small villages with goats, water buffalos, huts, markets, and the agricultural fields.  This is a well farmed area- a great flat plain near Delhi.

We stopped on the way for breakfast, and I ate my new favorie traditional northern breakfast consisting of a potato chapatti (forgot its name) which is dipped in a semi-liquid yogurt called curds.  The yogurt is tart and delicious.  This is served with massala tea, or chai, cooked with milk and generally drunk sweetened.  It is also sometimes serve with dal, a lentil mash or stew.  Yum.

The old and the new- always side by side

Fatepur Sikri is a red sandstone palace of great dimensions, a city really, which was built by Emperor Akbar after a Sufi Saint there prophesied that he would have three sons, and he did.  He built it in gratitude, and made the capital there for a time.  Akbur is famous for trying to heal the rift between religions.  He had three wives, the story goes, one Christian, one Hindu, one Moslem.  The castle has sections built for each wife, according the architecture of each group.  This makes the city good architectural history, especially since it was deserted so things are intact.  This pillar is decorated in three parts, to also represent these different religions of India.

Jump to the 20th century: Gandhi and Jamini Roy (Lorie in India, Blog #2)

People might think I am crazy, but for me travel is actually Project Based Learning in the most active and true sense.  I have also realized that this is why I am so addicted to it.  At our elementary school, we begin with “building background knowledge”.  The combination of going to museums, looking at daily life today, seeing the architecture, eating and looking at markets/agriculture, and interacting with people, give the traveler an extraordinarily fast learning curve for background knowledge, especially when the place is one which I initially know little about.  The little studying I have done prior to the experience comes to life in a new way when it is embodied in its place. 

In our studies at school, we next do what is called “sensemaking”- discussing and mulling over what we have learned, and trying to make sense of it.  Crystal and I dialogue about what we see constantly, and question everyone we talk to- guides, people we meet on the street, and more.  Finally, we express it in some way ourselves (at school this would be the project or study).  For me, always, it is attempting to share it—this blog.  Please realize that this blog is an attempt at sensemaking by a true novice to India.  I realize there may be many inaccuracies, many of my own personal biases, and certainly a naïve point of view.  I welcome dialogue from anyone who reads this. I am also excited to imagine the innumerable ways in which I can share a trip like this at our school. 

We ended our first day with two more museums: Gandhi Smriti and the National Gallery of Modern Art.  We also learned that New Delhi is reminiscent of the mall in Washington, DC, in that the government is at one end and museums at the other end of a several mile long linear park, ending at the famous Gate of India, which looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  This makes it easy to visit several museums, and creates a lovely environment of tree lined parks on a large boulevard. 

Gandhi Smriti is a memorial in the place where Gandhi worked as a peacemaker, meeting with various factions, during the last 144 days of his life, and was shot walking to his meditation garden.  It is a very moving place.  The path which he took from his bedroom to the garden gazebo where was shot is reproduced in cement footprints, so we are encouraged to meditate upon his final journey. (see below)

The museum is interactive and high tech, yet celebrates Indian independence and self reliance through the spinning wheel and the salt march.  There is a small store on the property where one can buy local, hand spun cotton garments.  Making one’s own garments rather than relying on the British trade industry was a hallmark of Gandhi’s nationalist movement.

As one walks through the galleries, one at first sees Gandhi’s bedroom and sitting room/meditation table, with his few worldly possessions preserved.

One then goes upstairs to a series of exhibits in which an object, often some sort of spinning wheel, when spun, triggers a video to appear on the screen and explain the movement involved with this object.  In the case of the salt marches, which are like our “tea party” (the real one), in which a British tax on salt is being protested, one sifts through a pile of mock salt (tiny white beads) and when throwing them back in a bowl, triggers a video on the salt marches.

One moving video features various retreat centers which Gandhi built and participated in with others at different times of his life.  Its purpose is to show how his life philosophy evolved.  One center was in Phoenix, Arizona, and focused on the civil rights movement.  Another was a retreat center in India which focused on nationalism, but was built from exotic woods and was very comfortable.  His final one emphasized only local materials and simplicity.  His statement: “My message is my life,” was made very clear. 

Several monuments to peace and inter-group understanding are placed around the park at Gandhi Smriti (memorial).  One is a giant peace gong.  

Jamini Roy:  We also visited the National Gallery of Modern Art, where we saw a special exhibit on Jamini Roy, an Indian painter who lived from 1997-1972, hence experiencing the emergence of modernism and the independence movement in India.  Seeing Roy on the same day as Gandhi and the history museum was profound in several ways.

Roy began by studying in an art school influenced by European masters and the new impressionists, cubists, etc. in Europe.  Cubism is especially noticeable as an influence in all his work.  His early work is in oils and is part of these movements.

Later, Roy returned to his Bengal village and began to explore art as a form of national pride.  He was a supporter of and was inspired by Gandhi.  He began to express daily life in his village, yet to bring in other influences in ways he believed would be understandable to villagers.  For example, he did many paintings using Christian images interpreted through Indian images, in an attempt to “explain” the Christian symbols to his own people. 

He rejected European materials and began to make his own paints as tempra pigments ground from local rocks and extracted from local plants.  He also began to paint on cheap and local materials, such as cardboard or bamboo screens. In many ways, his art reminded me of the work of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, who also tried to work through popular culture icons and themes.

Over his lifetime, Roy’s paintings began to simplify in a manner reminiscent of Gandhi’s journey.  He tried to express his ideas using simple lines and few colors.  His paintings also began to look more universal, for example, a simple line connoting a mother holding a child. 

An inspiring day!

At risk of oversimplifying highly nuanced subjects, Crystal and I felt that our day had fit together in a remarkable way.  The early history of India which included endless conquering by outsiders, ending with two hundred years of British colonialism, made the importance of the independence and nationalist movements of the 19^th and 20^th centuries profoundly meaningful.  One could see how the celebration of what is Indian  through self reliance on that which is local, natural, and simple- cotton, salt, natural tempera paint- took on great meaning.  Yet for Gandhi and Roy, and even earlier figures such as Ashoka, universal understanding, rather than national or religious factionalism, emerged as most important in the end.   All of these figures- Ashoka, Gandi, and Roy- had lives in which their ideas evolved and changed, sometimes abruptly, in response to their experience.  Gandhi’s social conscience was born when he was a British trained lawyer working in South Africa and was thrown off a train for having brown skin, regardless of his credentials.  Ashoka waged war, then peace.  Roy admired European art, then chose to celebrate the local images and pigments of his own country.  India is often seen as a country involved in spiritual journey and growth.  The figures it celebrates in its national museums exemplify for this message.

India: Exploring its heroes (from Delhi)

We have now spent three days in Delhi, quite intensely busy while still staving off jet lag.  The first day started with a visit to the National Museum, to get an overview of Indian history which seemed necessary for understanding the things we will later see.  It was a good call, and an impressive museum.  We learned about how ancient this culture is: many thousand years of civilization and recorded history, a lot from the point of view of a Californian, where 200 years is a long time.  We also learned how many layers of people came in from other places, mostly the Middle East and the North, and conquered the farmers living in the Indus River Valley, where Delhi is and the main center of power has generally remained.  There were Turks and Aryans, who turn out to be Persians/Iranians, creating great Muslim empires on top of the existing Hindu culture. 

The greatest early leader was Ashoka, in about 300 BC, who was at first a warlord, conquering and gathering territories, and later became converted to Buddhism by his Buddhist wife (Buddhism had begun with Siddhartha’s life in about 700 BC), and became a peace lover and a great philanthropist, caring for people and animals alike and spreading Buddhism in his kingdom and beyond.  He wrote his edicts about how to live by carving them on giant stones all over his empire (nearly all of India today).  We saw one such stone at the museum.  Apparently historians only learned to read his language recently, so Ashoka is only recently fully appreciated, and is now a national hero.  His edicts are quite impressive, including the right of people to a good life and medical care, a prohibition of sacrifices and commitment to be nice to animals, tolerance between groups, and no war.  We could learn from him today!  I really like the idea of this “early billboard” in the shape of a carved stone.  Labor intensive but obviously durable.

Obviously I am quite taken by Ashoka, because his ideas are so ahead of his time and in contrast to things that came after (more conquerers), but he ruled peacefully for another 40 years, acting these things out.  After he died, his kingdom was overtaken by Alexander the Great and became part of the Greek Empire briefly, then was later conquered by Aryans from Persia and other Islamic groups, eventually evolving into the great Moghul Empires of the 13-15 century, which built the Taj Mahal and other of the great historical works (the Red Forts in both Agra and Delhi, many great mosques, etc.)  Many of these are the monuments for which India is most famous.

Early civilizations of India went on to be very early and very great, something we learn nothing about in our West oriented American educations, and which I intend to do something about at Peregrine School!  There are too many fascinating stories to tell, but people were making bronze statues, like the dancing girl below, using the lost wax technique, many centuries BC, and numerous developed and well organized cities, with elaborate street grids and irrigation systems, existed in the Indus River Valley well before Christ as well.  (See below)  As usual, a key drawing point was rich river valleys which supported agriculture, the main grains being wheat and barley.  As always, these formed the basis of civilization, creating enough people with leisure time from producing food to make cities, art, and all the rest.  Some of these valley civilizations later became drier, as climates changed (something to think about), and these cities remain only as ruins, some only recently re-discovered.  Others became consistently great power centers, such as Delhi. 

I was there!  Lorie in front of Ashoka’s stone, imported to the museum. 

Something I didn’t know until this trip is that wheat remains the key grain, along with lentils and beans (dal) as legumes, in India’s north, resulting in various chapattis, naan breads, samosas, and more.  Whereas in the south we will encounter more rice.  We were initially surprised not to be given rice with meals.  It is typical to eat the saucy dishes with dipped chapattis, as Mexicans do with beans and tortillas.  This is like China, with noodles and dumplings in the north and rice in the south.  To me, everything always comes down to climate and agriculture- to the ecology of place, and what it makes possible.

Dancing girl made of bronze using sophisticated lost wax technique.

Indus River Valley Civilization.  Irrigation runs from rivers through whole cities.

Nicaragua Blog #4: Working in San Miguel Arcangel School in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua

Students at San Miguel Arcangel School, with Grupo Fenix coordinator Susan Kinne and our team members Deb Bruns, Lorie Hammond, Emma Clancy, and Gaby Valenzuela

We were there!  For one week, we taught at San Miguel Arcangel, a small public school with three classrooms: kindergarten, 1-3 grade, and 4-6 grade.  Just as Davis is a parallel sister community to Sabana Grande, due to both of their environmentalism, agricultural emphasis, and emphasis on civic action, this village school seems a great sister school for Peregrine, due to its similar scale.

The school day in Sabana Grande begins with a flag salute, in which children sing patriotic songs, and sometimes recite poetry.  Here children enthusiastically raise their hands to their revolution and democracy. Most wear blue and white uniforms.

Maestras Gaby and Emma teach Peregrine school Spanish songs such as Buenos Dias and Hey, Hey, Siguen me, to the school children in Sabana Grande

The week before we arrived in Nicaragua, high school students from Da Vinci High in Davis helped the students in San Miguel Arcangel School to rig up a bicycle driven water pump for their vegetable garden.  Shown below is the endpoint for this pump- a hose which brings water to their garden.  Pictured are the hose and some healty carrot beds in the garden.  If water can be brought to the garden using bicycle pumping, it is much easier than carrying it in buckets, as they had to do before. 

In our week in Nicaragua, we did a lot of music and dancing led by Maestras Gaby and Emma.  We also did a community study to share with our students at Peregrine School, so that children can compare their lives.  This will be one of our study themes this year.

Students at the school were asked to make a map of their town, and then to build models of their houses and other important places and put them on their map.  Theirs is a very small town, with no paved roads and no major buildings, save the new solar center and solar restaurant which are part of the Grupo Fenix project. 

The central feature of Sabana Grande is the mighty Ceiba Tree, where most important ceremonies such as graduations, weddings, communions, and more are held.  Susan Kinne, the coordinator of Grupo Fenix, and our teachers, Deb, and I worked with students to make models of their houses out of paper and various materials, and to construct a map of their village showing where these houses go in relation to the highways and the ceiba tree.  

Susan Kinne, Engineering Professor, works with students on their 3-D paper houses for their

Community map

Each student at Sabana Grande also wrote a letter to Peregrine Students, so that we can match students with pen pals at the elementary school.  Our goal is to create a spirit of internationalism and sharing, with a realization that we are both similar and different communities.  Our similarities lie in our commitments to agriculture, environmentalism, and civic involvement.  Our differences are in our resource base: Sabana Grande is not on the grid, and has many fewer economic resources.

One challenge which knowing life in Sabana Grande creates for all of us can be framed:

If a community not on the world energy grid, i.e. not using fossil fuels, is able to provide for its needs with solar and bicycle power, as well as people power, can Americans do the same?  

Children create 3-D houses in ingenious ways using colored paper and other simple materials.  

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.