Photos of Cleanup Day

Community Cleanup

Sometimes I feel so inspired. Nowhere in the world are things perfect, but in some moments parts of life just seem to click so sweetly that you feel like there's some hope for the future. Organizing the jornada de limpieza (neighborhood cleanup day) this week, the strength of community amazed me. A group of about 15 or 20 kids from the Solidaridad de los Pueblos school and the youth group went door to door in their community, informing their neighbors about the cleanup day on Saturday and encouraging them to put out their garbage. To clarify, the garbage truck rarely passes in many areas of the neighborhood. How do people get rid of their garbage then? Burning it, throwing it in the drainage ditch, carrying it to places where the truck does pass, throwing it on the street. It sits in pools of water when it rains, becoming bloated and rotten. So we called and asked the mayors office to send a truck to the neighborhood to collect the garbage and they agreed. It's actually ridiculous that you have to arrange for the truck to come. It should pass regularly and help people manage their waste situation better. But very often here you have to call and demand to receive basic services, particularly when you happen to live in a poor area. So this was actually nothing of a sustainable solution, but a way to start dialogue in the community.

But the most beautiful part was wandering from street to street and seeing the kids really energized about talking to people about how to make the neighborhood cleaner. They ran from house to house, in the ridiculously hot sun of midday, racing to see who could reach the most number of houses. Kids inspire adults to action more than other adults... I mean who can resist an eleven year old engaged in positive activities. People have such a propensity to complain about the bad behavior of youth... But this day they couldn't complain...

Update

Here is an update I wrote to my contacts at AJWS about how things are going at work. I have some pictures but am not so excited about carrying my camera around right now- I don't want it to get stolen...

I hope all is well with you. I wanted to send you an update on how things have been going in Managua at AMUCOBU.

I have been very pleased with how work has been progressing since I returned from the United States. I proposed to the staff here some of the ideas I had discussed with you when I was in NYC, and they were very open to implementing them. Last week I gave the first in a series of workshops to the staff on how to work with youth with drug and alcohol problems. First we discussed the nature of addictions, and then moved into treatment methods, particularly Harm Reduction, which I have extensive experience with from my past job. This week we will continue discussing Harm Reduction as well as practice some practical tools that they can use when working with groups of youth or individuals in counseling. Next I think we'll do some planning about how they can structure their programs here to include youth with drug and alcohol problems, because now they are not really invited to youth group events.

Also, we have had a series of activities related to the environment. I posted about one of them on my blog, with pictures, where we planted trees donated by the mayor's office. Last week I planned and facilitated a workshop with my counterpart, Gustavo, about the environmental impacts of garbage and ways to keep the neighborhood clean. This Saturday we will have a neighborhood cleanup day, with the help of the mayor's office who are providing a truck and 20 workers to help throw away and recycle trash. We formed an ecological brigade with the youth, who will go around the neighborhood on Thurs and Fri alerting families to put out their garbage, and to separate the paper, plastic, glass and aluminum. Hopefully it will go well.

I'm also continuing with English classes. I have a group of dedicated students who are motivated and perseverent. Today one of them sang a song by herself in front of the class, and another presented her, in English, using a marker as a fake microphone. It was fantastic, and very spur of the moment. Some things you just can't plan, and they turn out better than if you had planned them.

Tree planting day

Even though ants are tiny little things, they do a lot of damage! Invade your shoes, bite like needle pricks, and inflame your foot like an air mattress. Then it goes away, like nothing ever happened. I ignored the warnings of Damaris, one of the youth involved in our tree planting day, as I filled up the hole she had made to plant her tree with dirt. When you talk about working collectively, the kids did a great job. Some brought tree saplings, others broke up the hard dry earth, others dug out the holes with shovels, and still others planted. Someone filled up the water bucked and watered the tree. In front of the centro, we cleared the grass and the garbage from the narrow strip of earth between the sidewalk and the wall (accidentally damaging a water pipe- just a minor unexpected crisis), put all the garbage in big sacks and planted a row of trees. Despite being hot, sweaty and hungry, all 35 of us worked on until our quesillos and tiste arrived and we had a chance to sit down and take a break. 100% difference between before and after. .. from garbage strewn to pure earth and trees.

Here's some snapshots of my neighborhood and my neighbors. The first picture is of the houses across the street and the mango tree in front of the house. The second is my porch in the early morning light. The third are my friends Nico and Gladioska who live down the street. And the last one is a street late afternoon in the neighborhood (la Colonia Centroamerica)

electricity problems

The barrio, among other places, has been experiencing some serious energy shortages recently. As I said in the last posting, there has been no electricity in the centro for over a week. Not only the centro, but other parts of the barrio as well have been without electricity. In Managua as a whole, we've been experiencing rolling blackouts for about 2 months, and it appears that there's no end in sight for the energy crisis.

Many people asked me about how Daniel Ortega's new government has been doing since they took power in January, and this is a story that came up often in these conversations. He's been building partnerships with the president of Iran and with Hugo Chavez, making plans to build more hydroelectric plants funded by their oil revenues. Today I read in La Prensa that Daniel met with the president of Iran yesterday to solidify and move forward on these plans, also including funding the building of 10,000 houses, a plastics factory, and a large health center. The projects wouldn't start though for at least a year, leaving citizens struggling to get by without basic necessities.

The barrio residents, having a tradition of organizing themselves when facing problems such as these, called Union Fenosa, the spanish-owned electric company, to send out a representative to the neighborhood to get some honest answers. Apparently, at the meeting on Thursday, some wanted to surround the UF truck and make their demands while others wanted to simply talk with the rep. I don't really know what ended up happening because I didn´t get the full story, but we'll have to see if the people will get their electricity back soon. In the meantime, we'll be trying to work in the office without lights, air conditioning or computers. This may mean going home at noon every day... we'll see.

Santo Domingo

Even though I´ve only been gone for two weeks, it´s funny being back. I´ve traveled many times, but never come back home in the middle of my stay. I so quickly fell back into my Chicago life, my comfort zone, that it was strange to jump back to the chaos of Managua.

I ended up coming back the day of the patron saint festival. There was a procession across the city with a big altar of Santo Domingo, and an hipico, which is a kind of parade of horses. People come from all over the country with their horses, dressed in traditional costume, and march through the streets, making horses dance to the strains of music blasting from competing speaker systems. The city closed off some of the main arteries, the roads I take in the mornings to Puntos on the bus. It was cool to see them lined on all sides by food vendors and beer vendors, shouting out their competing prices for cans of Toña and Victoria. Collapsable stages every 20 feet tried to drown out their neighbors with strains of ranchera, reggaeton, or live music. One stage had some MTV-esque dancers shaking it on platforms. Vendors walked through the crowds selling straw and leather cowboy hats that I was very tempted to buy. The whole festival had this cowboy feel to it.

I of course came back to find my house a complete disaster and have been working on cleaning it little by little, including the nasty broken fridge, which is cleaner now than I´ve ever seen it before, thank god! And today I battled with Managuan traffic and heat again walking from my house to the centro, where I arrived to find that there hasn´t been electricity there for a week! (more about that later). But I felt more ready to enter this battle now that i had 2 weeks of just having to deal with Chicago and New York traffic, nothing compared to here!