Monday, June 2, 2008

Tropical Storms, A dog bite, Lost Luggage - but then there is Nicaragua!

Lost luggage, a hurricane, a rooster, and a dog bite. How enticing! My parents have persuaded me to describe these four instances to get you hooked. My luggage was lost the first night, the rooster kept me up while in Estali the third night, the hurricane/tropical storm hit the fifth night, and I got bit by a dog in my homestay house. Despite those instances, I had a great week! Below are a few excerpts from my journal:

Day 1: I boarded my plane and sat next to miguel angel. What a great guy! We talked for two hours. He is 31 and from Mexico - works for Mava, a company which works in conjunction with GE. He was in louisville for 10 days so we had a lot to talk about, and he was thoroughly interested in my trip because he wants to get his Ph.D studying poverty in developing countries. We conversed half the time in Spanish, which was a great comfort to me upon entering Nicaragua. I then had a two hour layover in Houston and boarded the 747 to Managua.

Again I made friends with my fellow row mate, an old man from Nicaragua, named Juan, who was traveling to visit his family. He works in Nebraska most of the year and travels home once in a while to experience his old life and relax with his family. I wouldn't doubt it if he had fought in the revolution. I didn't have the guts to ask about it.

The flight was great. I talked to Juan in Spanish for a while, which was quite difficult because his Spanish was really slurred and difficult to understand. He said my accent was fine and should be great once i spend some time in his country. The weather was a bit shaky, but it was incredible to watch the lightning show from right next door! The sky was gorgeous and it was awesome to watch the storm as if I were in an imax theater.


We waited in line through immigration and went to baggage claim....I waited and waited, but I recognized no bags! I am currently without my luggage and will hopefully get them later. We are off to Estali tomorrow morning, and Lillian (she runs the quaker house) is going to the airport tomorrow to get them and will bring them to me on Monday. Esteli is about two and half hours from Managua.


The country is great in terms of culture, but it reminds me a lot of the 9th ward in terms of poverty. There are very few green spaces in Managua, and the places that are green are only in existence because they in the spaces of destroyed buildings, which were annihilated by the 1972 earthquake. 10,000 people died from the quake and the center of the city was destroyed. This is currently one of the reasons why Managua is so dysfunctional, it has a poverty stricken, non-existent center.

Day 2: It is hard to sleep when it is 80 degrees, but I am sure I will get acclimated soon. Air conditioning is something I have taken for granted! Dina and I sat out on the patio during breakfast and soaked up a few minutes of sun while eating. It was delightful to breathe in the fresh, warm air and feel my pale skin absorbing some Vitamin D. all of us then drove about twenty minutes to the bus station to depart for Estali.

The drive was interesting scenery wise. I gazed at the beautiful mountains and volcanoes which were scattered with makeshift, tin houses without walls. Trash lined all of the roads and every so often I would see a poor dog sifting through the trash would catch my attention. I tried to not allow it get to me, but since my parents have brought me up to be an animal lover, I was somewhat devastated. The dogs weren't very cute ...skinny and puney, but all the more alive and suffering. there are several volcanoes along the mountain ranges, which i find fascinating.

Estali is much prettier than Managua. There is a significantly smaller presence of trash and many of the houses are in better shape, and provide more imaginable living conditions. Although, there are very distinct parts of Estali which are awful, we have yet to visit them. I am becoming better at navigating 3rd world cities without street names as we speak. It is all about landmarks...which may seem obvious but at first it is second nature. No Washington street, no 1st Avenue?


We met with Doñamina at the Galleria for Heroes and Martyrs, a museum which is a tribute to the brave and patriotic men and women who died for the Sandinistas during the years of the Nicaraguan revolution. It was she who marched us around Estali to our homestay families. Francisca is my homestay "mother" and boy is she fascinating! Three of her five children live in the US. I have come to know her whole family relation to Doñamina, who lost two of her sons to the war.

Fransisca guided me to Doñamina's house after I was settled. It was interesting talking to her various family members about their family drama, the country as a whole, and the various music that is popular. It has been difficult to take everything in at once.

Nicaraguans are friendly and kind, the children smile a lot, and the country is dying for attention. So many of people have the potential to succeed, but haven´t been taught how. There is too much to be done and not enough help. Only time and energy will tell in this country. I am only glad to be a part of it for a time and have the opportunity to interact with children that need attention.



A brief history lesson


I myself am not a history buff, or even one who thoroughly enjoys history, but I have to say that Nicaragua beholds a bittersweet, wild, and devastating past 100 years. Pre-departure Nicaragua, I was somewhat eager to learn about the country I was soon to be a part of, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of hardship that is so prevalent to this day.

If you are a history person, or are interested in a brief history of Nicaragua, Dina Rubey, a wonderful friend from Bryn Mawr, who is also in Nicaragua for an internship, sited a brief history from the Loney Planet Guidbook. If you care to read it, please do. I have finally found some history that strikes my interest! Please don't be baffled by the long entry if you are not a history person; merely read it if it interests you:

(Paige R. Penland, Gary Chandler, Liza Prado. Nicaragua and El Salvador. Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd. 2006. 55-58).

"Nicaragua won independence from Spain in 1821, and the resulting power vacuum led to a civil war. In 1852 the conservatives took power for 30 years of peace, if not prosperity. For the next two decades the USA dominated politics in Nicaragua. In 1914 the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty was signed, granting the USA exclusive rights to a canal it had no intention of building, just to shut out the competition. The occupations casual brutality- torture, political killings, dragging the bodies of dead rebels through the city streets- inspired one teenage boy, Augusto C. Sandino.
The liberals mounted a noble, if ineffective, resistance to the US occupation, which wilted completely in the 1920’s. But Sandino- by now a commander of his own personal army- continued fighting. The US trained the Nicaraguan National Guard under the command of loyal bureaucrat Anastasio Somoza Garcia.

In 1934, Sandino was murdered. Somoza overthrew the President in 1937 and took power in a US-backed dictatorship. The US allowed Somoza to amass landholdings equal to all of El Salvador. After his 1956 assasination, Somoza was succeeded by his oldest son, Luis Somoza Debayle. The US Kennedy administration was graciously granted full use of Puerto Cabezas for launching its disastrous 1961 invasion of Cuba. Luis Somoza called for elections shortly afterwards, lost handily to Liberal Renee Schick, then quietly retired.

His younger brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was not as eager to give up his birthright.
Luis died in 1967 and Anastasio assumed the presidency. The West Point graduate used the National Guard ruthlessly, stifling a growing call for democracy. An increasingly militant group of university students calling themselves the Sandinistas tried to counter him.

A 6.3 earthquake in the early morning of December 23, 1972 killed 6,000 people and reduced 15 sq. kilometers of Managua to rubble. The world, moved by the holiday devastation, donated aid on an unprecedented scale; Somoza diverted almost everything to family and friends. The Sandinistas were, with this one powerful betrayal, legitimized. Nicaraguans from every walk of life threw in their support, and over the next five years the nation became ungovernable. The Narional Guard destroyed entire cities and assassinated journalists.

Almost every country in the Americas and Europe cut ties with the Somoa regime… except the U.S.

The revolution marched to victory on July 19, 1979, and Somoza fled the country. He was assassinated shortly afterwards in Paraguay.

The Sandinistas inherited a country in shambles. Poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, and staggeringly inadequate health care were just a few of the widespread problems. Some 50,000 people have been killed in the revolutionary struggle and 50,000 were made refugees.
The FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) took power, and the National Guard was replaced but he Sandinista Peoples Army.

In 1981, just days after taking office, US President Ronald Reagan canceled Nicaragua’s aid package and publicly committed his administration to helpoing the National Guard regroup and re-arm as the Contras, whose mission to overthrow the Sandinista-led Nicaraguan government would last a decade. Reagan constructed bases for Contras in Honduras and Costa Rica offering millions in training and material aid. The civil war between the Contras and democratic Sandinista government force intensified after Daniel Ortega (current Nicaraguan President) won apparently free and fair elections in 1984.

In 1985, the US implemented a full economic blockade, including food and medicine. 50,000 civilians died.

Ortega lifted press censorship, enforced a ceasefire and called for geenral elections to be held in 1990. Violete Barrios de Chamorro became the first female head of state in Central America in 1990. The transition to power was relatively peaceful. The USA finally called off the embargo, but the country was in ruins.

Chamorro decentralized the government brought the police and military under civilian control, and cut the military’s numbers from almost 95,000 at th war’s peak to less than 20,000. She constructed a stable foundation on which the nation could rebuild.

Chamorro’s replacement, who handily beat Ortega, was a blast from the dictatorial past: corpulent Liberal Arnoldo Aleman, voted one of the world’s 10 most corrupt politicians by the UN Human Rights Subcommission. Aleman siphoned off some US $100 million from government coffers, which may be chump change where you’re from, but not in Nicaragua. Even after Hurricane Mitch savaged the country in 1998 - killing 4,000 people are destroying a surreal 70% of the infrastructure - he stayed on the take.

Enrique Bolanos, also of the Liberal Party, took office in 2001, he promised to put Aleman in jail. To everyone’s surprise, Bolanos actually did it. But it was too late, in a way.
Five years later, in 2006, Daniel Ortega of the FSLN, was democratically elected yet again."

And so we are, seven women from Haverford and Bryn Mawr immersed in this post-war, progressive country. We can only hope to give back to Nicaragua a small bit in comparison to what it will give to us.