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

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.

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.

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.