Morrito Nicaragua: Difference between revisions

Template:AAG active project In a nutshell: through Engineers Without Borders, we have learned of a town in Nicaragua called Morrito. None of us have been there, so we can't say exactly what our project is yet. What we do know is that their elementary schools are poorly built, there is no dedicated secondary school, no library, and no internet access. So one potential project is building a library/secondary school. We have also heard about a well which was built several years ago by an NGO which gets contaminated with lake water. So another potential project is fixing the existing well or constructing a new one. In general, it sounds like we will be able to find a place to help out if we go there, so that's what we are doing. Therefore, the goal of our trip this summer is to visit the community, establish contacts, and choose an ongoing project. We don't plan to do any actual work on that project during this trip, work will be completed on subsequent trips (probably next January).

Please keep checking back on this page, we will update as much as we can. david.reber (talk · contribs)

Background Materials

this PDF has some background information on Morrito

This pdf also has descriptions for several projects available.

Travel Log

These are David Reber's writings from the first half of this trip. I probably won't get the second half up until we get back to the USA.

Date: Aug 10, 11:04AM

Location: Tom C's House in Granada

Things seem to be slowing down quite a bit. We wake up later and later every day and this is the first time that I don't really have something bursting to write about in the morning.

Yesterday, Jorge from Living Water never arrived so we started making calls to other contacts regarding what to do. Kristine called Janet S and she said that she could get us a place to sleep in Granada, Tom C's house.

So yesterday was spent mostly traveling. We tried to get some things done when we passed through Managua - getting in contact with local engineering colleges and the water ministry, but it was Saturday and everything was closed.

It is now Sunday and Janet S is off work so we probably won't get a chance to see her. We will be leaving for Morrito tomorrow.

Since our first experience with Rolando, we have made a couple of ATM stops. Typically, there is a $5 transfer fee and you are given the option of withdrawing in Cordobas or Dollars. The exchange rate at the ATM's is typically competitive with the people in the markets and it seems to me to be a whole lot safer, so we withdraw in Cordobas.

We have already started planning our January trip. It will be 3 weeks long starting on the 28th. Kristine, Mark and myself will each guide a small group of students an each group will spend one week traveling and 2 weeks working on whatever project we take on.

Date: Aug 9, 7:17AM

Location: some hotel in Leon

I don't even know how to deal with yesterday. Even in my head, I find myself pushing away the thoughts. Yesterday, the four of us took a taxi out to the dump in Chinendega. We were there because I had heard news reports of hundreds of kids who lived in this dump. The news report didn't have any pictures and I wasn't very inclined to believe them. However, I was curious enough to go there and see with my own eyes. What I saw were 20-30 small kids and the odd adult picking around through the rubbish in bare feet.

I need more information. Why are these kids here? What are they doing? Who runs the dump and why do they allow this? Where do these kids live and what do they eat? Most importantly, why hasn't anyone done anything and what can I do? If I am to chose my battles, that is the most worthy battle I have come accross.

But when? where? how? What is the best path to help them? Should I run back to america and waste another 9 months? Should I open an orphanage? Should I have a youtube show to raise awareness?

Date: Aug 8, 8:43AM

Location: Hotel Chinendegano in Chinendega

Yesterday, we were met at about 11AM by Ralph H of Whirlwhind Wheelchair who showed us around Chinendega. With him he brought Thelma and her daughter.

The hardware stores here are awesome. You can buy a generator for $250 and a pump for around $150. I took photos and videos of the hardware store for future reference. A bag of Cement here is 160 Cordobas (8 Dollars). Coke is 10 cordobas (50 cents). The official minimum wage here is $4/day which men can get more often than women and they are more likely to get it at the more official businesses.

I have been really interested in how much things cost because having these costs as points of reference, I can start to understand the economy. For someone making minimum wage, a can of coke takes an hours wages. Another way to look at it is to say that this summer I had an internship paying 18$/hr and in a day I made 144 Dollars (before taxes) and could have hired Nicaraguans for 36 days on my day's wages.

We asked Ralph what kinds of things were difficult to find in Nicaragua. These include SAE washers, metal protractors, small crowbars, tweezers, vial adhesive, small ball peen hammers and metric taps.

While Ralph was leading us around, he took us to Thelma's parents house. It is composed of 3 cinder block structures surrounded by a cinder block wall. The structures are topped with tin roofs and plastic sheeting where the tin roofs leak. The inside of the house was sparsely decorated. There were professional photos of most of the family mebers on the wall of the common room. We sat on plastic lawn chairs. There was electric wiring running along the outside of the walls which suppplied a small battery backed up fluorescent lamp and television. The battery backup in the lamp is necessary because they had power rationing a year back in which the power was shut off for 5 hours per day.

They do many things for income. In a covered outdoor area they cook tortillas which their children sell around the neighborhood for 1 Cordoba (5 Cents) each. The stove they used for cooking was very unimproved, just pieces of sticks stuck into a burning area with a pot held above. This produced copious amounts of smoke which made one of Thelma's family members completely blind and will probably cut several years off of everyone else who breaths it.

In the back yard, there was a man constructing tables assisted by his wife and children. He said that he could make 5 tables per day. Materials cost him 400 Cordoba (20 Dollars) per table and he sold them for 500 Cordoba (25 Dollars) each. That means that on a good day he could make 25 Dollars profit or 6 times minimum wage.

One of the young men in the family has an alcohol problem. He rides one of the tricycle taxis on which he charges 10 Cordoba (50 cents) per ride. When he gets 20 extra Cordobas, he buys a bottle of Gwedo which is cheep, strong, locally produced Tequilla.

We finally got rained on here in Nicaragua. It was a hot, humid and short experience. It has been raining this morning but I haven't been outside.

I bought a bag of sliced Mangos from a street vendor thinking that purchasing fruit would be safe. Ralph told me that eating them was "not without risk" and when I decided to eat them anyway, he said "audios buddy" which was pretty funny. That was 20 hours ago now and I am fine. Ralph's recommendation for eating in Nicaragua is to eat anything still in its peel. Use a clean knife and washed hands.

We plan to go to the Chinendega dump and Leon today and visit living water tomorrow. The day after, we go to Granada and then to Morrito on Monday.

Date: Aug 7 10:46AM

Location: the same hotel room in Bhinendaga.

Yesterday was awesome. we went with Rolando to Amaya (a teeny tiny community North of Chinendega) to work on the medical clinic. It has been really nice being surrounded by friends on the entrance to this trip. When we changed money right after the airport, Rolando knew of money changers who sat on the side of the street holding 4 inch thick wads of bills. we pulled up and gave them several hundred US Dollars and they gave us the equivalent several thousand Cordobas. There is no way I would have trusted that situation had we not been with friends.(EDIT: after being in Nicaragua for several days now, you can find these money changers in any open air market).

Then they took us to a US style convienance store which was staffed by nicaraguans. it was really nice that they eased us into Nicaragua. I played a soccer game with the local Nicaraguan kids and they simply kicked my butt. I think that they play soccer quite a bit. I don't.

Besides that, I learned a lot about how they do construction. For mixing the concrete, we added two wheel barrels of sand to one wheel barrel of gravel and added a 42kg of cement. Then we added water until it was very soupy. Much wetter than in America but in America we vibrate the concrete after pouring to get it into all of the cracks and crevices. Since they have no vibrators, they need a wet concrete to flow into the tight areas. Also, we did tie rebar and place it into the formed trenches before pouring. Much as in America, although engineers didn't calculate and specify the rebar quantities and arrangements.

I took a walk up and down the street. It was very hot and humid. And loud. There were birds and bugs and wind noises coming from every direction and in great quantity. And the people there were porer than anyone I have ever seen. They lived in small huts, barely considered to be indoors as they had no glass and their walls and roofs were never solid, they were frequently constructed of tarps or plastic sheeting stretched between sticks, much of it falling to tatters. Almost every hut had a hammock in the front yard and they were very frequently people in these hammocks just chilling out. The children were walking up and down the road in large groups. Some of them had bikes. Sometimes I was passed by adults on the bike taxis - they weren't offering or giving rides, these bike taxis were used in a manner akin to pickup trucks - they hauled large lodes of wood or other items. Our construction site was visited by a man on a bike with a cooler in the front. He was selling frozen coconut juice with berries in it. Several of the children that were playing in the yard went to a neighbors yard and stole water melons. We sat eating these lovely watermelons when their owner showed up and started yelling at everyone. Rolando talked to him and resolved the issue.

I have heard that workers in the field get paid $2.50/day and that a water mellon costs 1$. I got my haircut and it cost 1$. We ate at a local resteraunt and 4 people ate good dinners for $7.50.

After 24 hours in the country, the thought that I find myself leaning towards is that these people don't want libraries or schools. If i were here working for $2.50/day I would want a higher paying job. Of course I acknowledge that I don't have any right to pass these kind of judgments. I need to talk to and live with these people.

I would like to visit the Chinendega dump as I have heard more reports this time oral that there are children living there.

I also want to visit Living Water - Mark's contact - as they dig wells and we could learn much from them.

We met Roberto P - the son of the owner of this hotel. He seems like he would be interested in business ideas such as the translator idea.

We also met Tom G at the construction site - he was an engineer at HP.

I would also like to visit the Water Ministry in Managua. I want to know how much water costs, where they get it from, how they drill and construct their wells, how they treat their water, and how they distribut their water.

Tom G gave us contact information for Jane M who constructs libaries here.

Date: Aug 6 7:14AM

Location: on a couch outside of our hotel room in Chinendaga

Well, oddly enough, plan A worked. Both Rolando and Albaraleyes where there as planned and we arrived at our hotel in Chinendega approximately 5 hours later.

Things that stand out in my mind on the ride over were all of the people working in the streets. They sit and stand in the medians hawking all sorts of things. then there are these really cool bike taxis all over the place. Pickup truck beds being pulled by animals is a personal favorite. After checking in, we took a walk through the local market and it was amazing. There were hundreds of tiny little stalls selling all sorts of things.

The other thing that surprised me is that everything costs the same, or at least in the places we have been to so far. A red bull is $2.50. A cup of ramen is $1.00. Our hotel (which has TV, hot water, air conditioning, and everything else) cost $50/night.

Date: Aug 5 2008 12:43am

Location: 10000 ft elevation, 40 min before landing in Morrito

The problem with traveling a lot on little sleep is that everything becomes a blur. You end up left with only snippets of memories. The slot machines that greeted us in the Las Vegas terminal. Eating greesy eggs, bacon and grits at 4 am in Texas. Trying to figure out which time zone I am in while eating my grits (it was actually 6AM Texas Time). I have managed no sleep tonight and my companions have fared little better.

This trip is so ommonious for us. None of us have experience in a Third World Country. None of us speak Spanish. We have planned this excruciatingly, exchanged hundreds of emails, come up with plans A, B, C, etc. However, in the end you have to expect that unexpected things will happen and that you have a great deal of learning to do in a very short a period of time.

Hopefully, right now Alabaralys (our translator) and Rolando (a pastor from California who is constructing a medical clinic in the north) are at the airport learning that our flight was delayed by an hour due to hurricane Edward. We just barely escaped it. As we landed in Texas, we could see it in the distance and by the time we left, there was a constant rain. The center of the hurricane was due to hit the airport dead on about 2 hours after we departed.

Plans: These are uncertain. One plan has us going directly to Chinendega to begin working on Rolando's clinic. The other is to rest up and deal with some business in Managua today and head towards Chinendega tomorrow. In my ideal world, we are in Chinendega in 5 hours with a stack of local currency and a translator.

The plane is startin to bank which means we will probably be starting our descent soon and they will make me turn this off. I will upload this to the wiki when I can but for now things are going great.