"Study History! Study History!"

To attempt development work prior to understanding its historical context could be equated to lifeguarding before learning to swim. Here's to swimming lessons!

"In no country is it possible to trace the cycle of rebellion and American-sponsored reaction as clearly as it is in Nicaragua. After the United States deposed President Zelaya, patriots rose up in arms against the new regime. The regime defeated them with the help of U.S. Marines. That intervention stirred the conscience of Augusto César Sandino, who launched another revolt and fought the Marines to a standstill in the 1920s and 30s. Sandino was assassinated at the orders of General Anastasio Somoza García, whose family ruled the country with unstinting American support for the next forty years. Its repression sparked the revolution that brought the Sandinistas to power in 1979. Their embrace of Marxism set off the next American intervention, the contra war of the 1980s. That war tore the country apart so completely that voters, given an unexpected chance to express their will, threw the Sandinistas out of office in 1990.

"This reversal gave the United States a chance to redeem itself in Nicaragua by helping pro-American leaders rebuild their shattered country. Instead, the United States turned its back on the country where it had sowed so much pain. This shortsightedness led to a result that shocked many people in Washington and beyond: the decision of voters in 2006 to give the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, another chance at power.

"[Nicaraguans] agree that their country did not suffer because its leaders were passionately committed to hostile ideologies, as it seemed at the time. The war, they now say, was an old-fashioned Nicaraguan power rivalry that had spun horribly out of control after it was swept up into the Soviet-American conflict."

Blood of Brothers is the most accessible and expansive book on Nicaraguan history and culture that I have seen printed in the English language. It is authored by former New York Times bureau chief Stephen Kinzer. It comes with strong recommendations to anyone curious to better understand Nicaragua and its people.

Transforming Chureca

Managua's municipal dump, La Chureca, has sat on the shore of Lake Managua since 1973.  Each of those 37 years has seen the refuse pile and conditions worsen... until now.

In August 2007 María Teresa Fernández, the Vice President of Spain, was so moved by a visit to Chureca that she committed US$45 million to transform, in her words, "garbage to human dignity."  After an extended legal battle with Chureca's owners over purchasing the property, we are finally seeing action.

The Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI) has partnered with Managua's mayorship to enact a sweeping plan to transform Chureca.  The plan will cover the trash, creating a landfill.  More impressively, though, a recycling plant will be built, which will employ 2,000 workers living in Chureca.  New homes will be built, a bit farther from the landfill, and families will be moved out of the slums adjacent to the trash.

For more information about the AECI program, read The "New" Chureca.

Dirt movers are now a common sight, pushing mounds of earth over the trash

Project workers (in construction vests) rest as tractors clear a space for new homes (background)

Temporary houses have been built for families living too close to construction 

Chureca from a nearby vantage point

The Three Sectors

My undergraduate studies focused on governments' ability to enact change.  Though that capacity is great,  it is often misguided by political leaders' ambitions providing an incentive to maintain the status quo, and on a global scale is inhibited by nations' territorial sovereignty.  Even the political body with the most extensive multilateral support, the UN, has had its hands tied by China's unmoving commitment to noninterference.

Deciding that large-scale political change moved far too slowly for me, I committed to a year in the non-profit sector, hoping a small-scale operation, if limited in geographical impact, could at least enact change more quickly than government bureaucracy.  Working with Manna Project, I have seen, by absence rather than example, that if an NGO is adequately focused in its mission, and governed well, it can indeed see a measurable impact (preferably, impact would be measured).

Yet, I cannot help but think that there must be a manner to address global poverty that has the scope of the public sector and the intimate impact of a focused non-profit.  It is with a desire to find such a vehicle of comprehensive change that I turn my hopes to mobilizing that final sector, by far the largest and most dynamic.  If consumers and investors are encouraged to view private capital as mutually inclusive with social responsibility, the world may see some unbelievable results.

Six Months In

After a three-week holiday break, MPI Nicaragua's Program Directors (PDs) have returned to the Manna house.  Returning to a place that is at once foreign and familiar has been a surreal experience.  By now, we are accustomed to dodging ox carts, potholes, and horses on the highway.  Here, it is completely normal to be offered a duck for 20 córdobas ($1) while waiting at a red light.  It is also accepted to ignore those lights when convenient.

Six months in, we know that no explanation is necessary when you don't feel a stoplight clown or windshield wash is deserving of a cookie or a few cents; a smile and a joke will do just fine.  We know that no offense is meant by a public observation of weight gained or the shade of your skin, and that none is taken when the answer to a request is "no."

Here, when your instinct is to feel you and your country are judged when you deny a dollar to someone who begs it, you may be called "pinche," or stingy, but follow with a high-five and a laugh and you will find it reciprocated.  When a family appears intimidating, know that they would gladly welcome you into their home and offer you the national dish and drink of gallo pinto and pinolillo.  If you are fortunate enough one day to find yourself in Nicaragua, save a bit a mental stress and trust in the frankness, the humor, the resilience, and the kindness of its people.

Showing Them The World

Literacy's (Cedro Galan) weekly trip to the library at El Salero has brought with it exposure to a certain learning device that, while regarded as a typical school wall decoration, is sadly lacking in many Nicaraguan classrooms. That tool is... a world map. I had been very grateful for it and the other Central American and Nicaraguan maps that hang in the August's library, and smiled to see that our students often gazed at them. However, I became slightly less hopeful when at one point I walked up to two of our 14 year-old girls and asked them to show me where Nicaragua was.

After a full minute of moving through Asia, Europe, and Africa with their index fingers, glancing expectantly back at me for my withheld affirmation, I laughed and pointed to Nicaragua for them.

Manna has both Literacy and Mathematics classes to address illiteracy and innumeracy, but an oft forgotten basic functionality is map literacy. In an attempt to meet the needs presented by map illiteracy, and with the added bonus of expanding our students' exposure to world cultures, Kelly and I have incorporated a world tour into MPI's Creative Arts program in Cedro Galan. To help in this venture, Manna has purchased its own world map that now hangs in El Farito, our classroom building.

Kelly's Continent Showdown has been a hit with the kids

In an introduction into geography in which we colored our own maps by continent and made paper machê globes. Our study of art around the world first took us to France, where we painted in the styles of Van Gogh and Monet, and also built our own Eiffel Towers from marshmallows and toothpicks. Our next stop was the U.S., where we studied Native (North) Americans, making headdresses and dancing along with a pow wow video.

Ulises concentrates on painting the continents on his globe

The United States also presented the opportunity to introduce our class to abstract art, something Kelly and I had been looking forward to, because what better way to express creativity and originality? After a slide show of paintings by Rothko and Pollock, we followed the style of the latter to create our own action art.

Samuel and Geral took a particular liking to the new style of painting

Our world tour through art has also taken us to Spain, which saw our Creative Arts class act out bull fighting, the running of the bulls, as well as drawing our dreams like Dalí and our self-portraits in the cubist style of Picasso.  We then visited Japan, working with origami and anime, and followed with painting pyramids, making glittery sarcophagus masks, and drawing the animal-headed gods of Egypt.  My heart aches when community members ask how many countries I have seen and I must watch the longing in their eyes as they force me to list them.  The world holds immeasurable beauty, and there are so many who long to see what their circumstances will likely never allow.  I may not be able to take the children in my art class around the world, but I will do my best to show it to them.

School of Hope

I believe that in order to realistically strive for equality of attainable capabilities, basic health care and education must be held as paramount. Without either, poverty is allowed too strong a footing vis-a-vis the opportunity to overcome it. At Manna Project, through our Child Sponsorship Program and our support of Casa Base de Salud clinic in Chureca, we attempt to provide nutrition and health care to the dump's inhabitants, particularly its children. I am incredibly grateful that the second essential precondition to poverty relief is also being offered to Chureca's little ones. Colegio de Esperanza, or "School of Hope," provides a completely free-of-charge education to any child who walks out of the trash and through its gates. As most of the school-aged children in our nutrition program attend Esperanza, I make occasional visits to the school to take note of and encourage their attendance.

Again, Love Light & Melody provides an invaluable lens into life in Chureca, as well as a look into the time I spend there. The following video highlights Colegio de Esperanza in particular.

School of Hope from Love Light & Melody on Vimeo.

Joy Is Resilient

Our visitations last Thursday to families in our nutrition program took us through the heaviest fumes my lungs have yet braved. With burning eyes and failing voices, we walked through white smoke so thick that shadows cut visible swaths of black in the milky air. Though worried for her, it was no surprise that Maudelia's two year-old daughter, who she carried at her side, carried in turn a coarse and incessant cough.

As we rounded a corner of the single-room school that services the area, I noticed a boy gazing down at us from his perch in the leafless branches of a tree that barely rose above the corrugated metal separating his house from the next. He wore only tattered shorts and splashed mud on his chest. He looked to be well past seven, the age at which Nicaraguan children begin their schooling.

After trading his name for mine I asked, "Y porque no andas en escuela?" And why are you not in school?

In the broken Nicañole that Chureca teaches its children, he patiently explained that he was not permitted the luxury of an education because the house could not be left unattended while his father worked in the trash.

Left with a piercing feeling of impotence and that now familiar loss for words, my gaze fell through the fumes to my feet and the mange-riden animal not far from them. The seconds passed, and not knowing what else to say to my new friend whose unfortunate predicament I had just reminded him of, I absent-mindedly directed my next words to the dog at my feet. "Qué nota, perro?" What's up, dog?

Laughter suddenly burst through the air. Surprised and confused, my downtrodden spirit eagerly soaked in his broad smile and careless cackles. And, in that moment, as his laughter infected the air, I knew that it was no less real than the smoke it joined.

As living conditions range, nothing that I have known has any liberty to call itself Chureca's peer. This reality in mind, I am constantly perplexed that thoughts of my mornings in that desolate place are inexorably... joyful. Though seemingly quixotic, I cannot ignore that each visit brings cheer with a frequency almost insultingly disproportionate to the surrounding destitution.

Nicaragua's second discourse, taught in strife witnessed and smiles wielded, has been that whether life exists in privilege or penury, whether found on marble floors or shattered glass, joy is resilient.

A Thank You

I have always wondered at the mechanics of gratitude. It is a particularly trying dilemma when I feel, or know, that I am incapable of returning the kindness received. Attempts and failures to duly thank those incredible lives that have been placed into mine have led to the following realization, that every action holds the potential for two orders of dedication.

First, there is the direct recipient of the action. The soul on the other end of the hand we hold. Second, there is the indirect recipient. That is, the name in which we reach out our hand, or the recipient of that action's honor. With dual beneficiaries, each action may thus be given twice. My suspicion is that the latter beneficiary is equally, if not more, important than the former. I pray that I will come to understand the latter more intimately. And so, a thank you.

To that brilliant woman who has so often opened my eyes to the beauty and power of creativity, I dedicate my leadership in our creative arts program. To the man whose wisdom I cannot ignore, though he himself may be oceans away, who has dedicated his life to job creation, I dedicate my involvement with our budding business development program. Finally, for that angel of a woman I am blessed to call my mother, to whom I owe my nurturing and my life, I dedicate my role in our children's nutrition program, which provides oatmeal, milk, and vitamins to Chureca's malnourished children.

The immeasurable love I have been shown throughout my life may only begin to be paid tribute through reflecting that love forward. And so, it is with these dedications that I fully enter my year of service.

[Untitled]

Attempts to match my words to my deepest emotions expose that I am given to use of the phrase, "there are no words to describe." Though my affinity for hyperbole perhaps leads me to overuse the construction, there are times I will defend the appropriateness of the title "indescribable." The term has rigidly applied to relationships with loved ones, materializing in thank-you's and goodbyes. One week ago, a pile of trash shattered my understanding of that steadfast and hallowed word.

It has taken a week and three return trips to come to terms with my inability to describe Chureca. It is so bad. So bad. In a way, when I say that there are no words, I mean that there are too many; more accurately, too many to be efficient. That place is so bad. So bad. Words have incredible power, but if I may be louder I must be.

Last Tuesday we walked the long and sodden path out of the dump in near silence. The occasional glance over my shoulder revealed again the circling of those black and outsize birds. That ominous cloud fixed in Chureca's sky reminded me with renewed sorrow that what I neither dared nor desired to describe survived my wish that it had been a terrible dream.

In my room at Vanderbilt a small flier that once caught my eye hung just above the light switch. It read, "Compassion = Action." If I may be louder, I must be.

The Smoke Was A Beacon

I do not claim to portend the will of God, but I am certain that there are instances in which an aspect of his incomprehensible plan is made known to us, a phenomenon that often requires only that we open our hearts to the possibility. Whether words itching to be extended to a stranger or a turn made inexplicably attractive, there are times when an action demands fulfillment independent of any moral criterion. This is the experience to which many Christ followers refer when they use the term "called," and something like it has been tugging at my heart, whispering the word "Chureca" into my very being. A number of dear friends have seen and attempted to describe Managua's city dump, where over a thousand pairs of hands dig through scrap for daily sustenance, where selling a thirteen year-old daughter's body in return for first pick on a new truckload of trash is an accepted reality and children huff glue to stave off hunger pangs, and it has been these tales that have been my clarion call and have drawn me hence.

There are frequently discarded chemicals that require only the heat of the Central American sun to ignite. Combustion of these chemicals often produces thick, noxious fumes. Last week the team's familiarization with Managua took us to the historically prominent and monument-laden hill overlooking the city. The view of Nicaragua's capital and the adjacent lake was beautiful, save the blemish of a strange plume of smoke rising from the city's northwestern edge.

From my vantage point I stood, safely horrified by what I assumed must be a devastating blaze, waiting for fire engines to scream relief to affected lives and end the torrent of smoke riding the wind into the distance. I turned to see Leah, realizing that she too had been captivated by the sight of the plume.

"What is that?" I asked, startled by her dire expression.

"Chureca," she said with the glaze of pensive severity cast over her eyes.

It is a powerful thing to look for the first time on a destination of unknown but certain importance. Knowing that I would soon stand within that white squall, understanding that the smoke was a beacon, I nodded as if I had not already accepted the challenge of its call, and turned to rejoin the group, still listening for the sirens that never came.

Tomorrow, we will know Chureca.

To Know You Are Not Alone

I suspect that if we are honest with ourselves, our favorite places will ultimately draw their appeal more from the people we knew them with than any quality provided by the flora, the buildings, or the landscape, however magnificent. The tales our lives here are to tell will serve better than any picture to relate the qualities of the team that surrounds me, but to suffice until those stories are written...

Top left to bottom right: Me, Adam Horn, Jan Margaret Rogers, Kelly Michaelis, Daniel Gehrig, Andrew Hemby, Lauren Page Black, Amelia Graves, Anina Hewey, and Leah Croker.

Nicaragua's First Lesson

Each place in the world, with its unique history, geography, and people, has its own lessons. If you are silent in a place long enough, you can hear the secrets that a culture bestows subtly on those visitors willing to listen. Reflecting on the past two weeks, having spent them with a family on a packed upper lower-class street in downtown Managua, I feel that I have heard Nicaragua's first whispered lecture. Woken every morning either by the proximity of our neighbor's PBC pipe shower or the volume of the avocado and mango hawkers shouting their prices outside our padlocked front gate-door, and frequently falling asleep soaked in my own sweat, as well as that of the children whose nightly street games begged our participation, unable to take my dripping shower with the water cut off, I listened. The life of the average Managuan will teach even the most recalcitrant student that here, the delineation between surroundings and self is not quite so rigid as its American contemporary.

A fly makes his way across the screen of my laptop. A pause to think takes my eyes to his spasmodic jaunt, his movements often too fast for my eye to process. My thoughts formed, I avert my eyes without incident. Two weeks ago I would not have suffered the intrusion, but here his erratic stroll is welcome.

My Newly Moored Ship

I am sitting in the open-air living room of what will be my home for the next 13 months, on a couch that is less than five feet from rain falling on the stones of the front porch.  The Managua airport, only slightly over two hours from Miami International, did not feel much more foreign than our South Floridian departure city, but the feeling of strolling in my own back yard did not last.  The Manna micro-bus picked us up, driven by two delightful '08-'09 Program Directors, or "PDs" in Manna jargon, and I volunteered for the front passenger seat.  Soon we were zipping along the main road that runs across the Nicaraguan capital's northern edge.  The humid air ripped through my already oily hair as our route traced miles of dimly lit street bordered by cement buildings painted with signs, slogans, and graffiti, men leaning confidently on exterior walls as children ran occasionally visible between the shadows cast by their dark playgrounds.

The miles thinned the buildings and further dimmed the light on the street as we distanced ourselves from Managua proper, and twenty, maybe thirty minutes brought us to our neighborhood and the Manna house, our new home.  Even though it is my first time in this house, I feel as though the friends that, on spring or summer service trips, have spent time in this very room welcome and warm me to a place I know has meant so much to them.  It was, after all, their stories that so captured my heart and drew me here.

1 Corinthians 12:22

If nothing else, I pray that a year in Nicaragua reveals the truth of Paul's assertion in his first letter to the church in Corinth that, "those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable."  Show me why I need Nicaragua.  In our indigence, your surfeit.

Looking Ahead to Nicaragua

To picture what my life will look like one week from today and thenceforth would exceed my creative foresight, but it is atypical that I have yet to try.  Any trip or event of consequence has always been preceded by those daydreams in which I am already the man I aspire to be.  And, always prolouged by the acknowledgment that I have a long way to go, that I proved too timid or weak to say what I dreamed I would say or take that action I promised my imagination I would.  Yet, with only seven days separating me from Nicaragua, no tales of what I would do have been fabricated, no improbable standard has been set.  Strangely, my eager imagination has laid dormant in anticipation of this, my greatest adventure.  With a college diploma has that imagination convinced itself to tame the reckless hope of youth's wild dreams, or could it be that my heart has finally shown the courage to promise those dreams a better story than they would dare to predict?