NICARAGUA, January 2006

Below are pictures and text from a two week trip to Managua, León and Granada, Nicaragua.


There exists exteme poverty for most Nicaraguans. Around 80% live on $2.00 or less per day. A teacher can expect to make a salary of around $50 a month according to information I gathered on this trip. A doctor, on average makes $300 a month. Pictured is La Chureca, a massive urban garbage dump where the poorest of the poor live, exist, work under highly marginal conditions. Nicaragua is the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.





Hand-in-Hand group working on building a sidewalk at a Managua, Nicaragua health clinic. My job was wheelbarrow and cement mixing duties on this one.


Here are some jovenes, outside of a Managua clinic which our group was working to renovate. The clinic is being built with funds from governmental and NGO funds and is operated by Fr. Luis Peña who is quite an admirable character for his grassroots efforts especially with the youth of Nicaragua and other development projects ("proyectos desarollo").













Here is (mi amigo) Jonathan and I after swimming in Laguna de Apoyo near a town called Masaya in Nicaragua. This lagoon was once an active volcano, now turned transcendent swim hole.














Additional Nicaraguan travels took me to León, Nicaragua. From this 17th century cathedral the Sandinistas fought against United States Marines in the 70s and 80s. Students, who made up significant numbers of the anti-Somozan revolutionaries took over this amazing church and used it as a fort. Another angle of the Catedral shows both Nicaraguan national and Sandinista party flags at the city center.






Nicaragua is a country of extremes. You can see so much of the country's geographical and architectural beauty when you travel there juxtaposed with the immense poverty that exists throughout much of the country. As I mentioned above, Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere next to Haiti.

However there are signs of economic and developmental progress. The steadily strengthening tourism industry is a promising indicator of potential growth. In January I visited a number of national parks and nature preserves including Laguna de Apoyo, Volcan Mombacho, Masaya and Las Ruinas de Leon Viejo (Ruins of Old Leon) and had the opportunity to meet several guides, many of whom were either studying at a local university in the tourism field or were thinking of higher education to meet the greater demand for tourism in the country. Additionally, exports of coffee, fueled by growing international interest and branding of organic coffee continue to bolster econominc growth. On a straining bus ride from Leon to Leon Viejo, my friend and travel partner Jon also had read in La Prensa that Chiquita Banana was preparing to build a factory in Nicaragua in the near future, which has yet to be built. Additionally, the impact of CAFTA is yet to be implemented let alone assessed for its benefit to the region. This agreement potentially will bolster trade, manufacturing and export provided practical, culturally appropriate and -most especially- ethical regulations (i.e. labor, work conditions, safety, sanitation) and provisions are included at grassroots levels in order to protect new and already existing industries.

In another aspect of development, there is a growing emphasis on sanitation and recycling programs, in particular in Managua. I visited a new recycling center there (with Hand-in-Hand Ministries), one of three more yet to be built in the greater Managua area. It was rewarding to see the grassroots efforts, especially lead by Fr. Luis Pena, and realized through governmental, NGO and grassroots funding. Seeing the recycling center was a much needed contrast after seeing the devastation and exploitation involved in the La Chureca garbage dump (pictured above). It also showed the success stories of Nicaraguans willing to work hard to create better conditions and to escape the life of dependency and exploitation fostered by the situation with La Chureca.

Ongoing developments also continue in the areas of health and infrastructure development, although during the first week of my trip the major hospitals in Managua were severly affected by a staff strike related to failed negotiations for salary increases among health care professionals and doctors. Although the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had agreed in December 2005 to a debt relief program which would aim to cancel Nicaragua's $201 million dollar debt, some critical of the ramifications of this contract have suggested that the IMF has exacerbated the problems within the health care system due to built-in caps and regulations on the gross national salary alottments for public sector employees, including doctors.