Matagalpa Treck

It has been great in Nicaragua so far. Just would like to share a couple highlights. The taxi driver from the airport mentioned he hoped there was going to be a coup this summer because he wants Ortega out of office, then the lady at the front desk of the hotel said only positive words about the work Ortega has done for Nicaragua. Then others claim, they don't care who is in office, as long as they help out the community.

Also, we had a meeting at the Ministry of Education with the Director of Primary Education. His assistant started the meeting by quoting the bible, separation of church and state? Then on the wall there were pictures of Che Guivara, Sandino and FSLN. During the meeting he boasted how Nicaragua has an illiteracy rate of 3.3% which is the 4^th lowest in all of the Americas, only following Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. After a small amount of probing different reputable sources claim illiteracy rates are anywhere from 15 to 30 percent! I would like to know from where this information is obtained? Who did the study, how it was conducted? And more importantly, why aren’t people asking the right questions to uncover the discrepencies?

Another note I took was how it looked like a fashion show walking into the US Embassy! It just seemed that the only local Nicaraguans who worked there had to have some connection to get in the door to that privileged job, but I could be wrong… Guthrie? :) However, it was a beautiful campus though and it made me really appreciate how lucky we are as Americans since our government takes such good care of us even outside of our country! It also made me think that it was a great decision on our part to choose to be born here...

Another note, the meeting with a local NGO, ADP was such a positive experience. It was amazing to see what the good people are accomplishing around the world and the impact it has on people’s lives. They showed us a picture of a waterfall from 20 years ago that was a small trickle down the side of the mountain, then after 20 years of planning trees around the water source and along the path of the river, the trickle now has become a healthy down pour. They mentioned deforestation is causing water sources to dry up and even mentioned specifically that if nothing is done in Matagalapa, water will stop flowing there in several decades. It really puts our work into perspective about what we are trying to accomplish this summer.

Projects

Under a week until I travel to Nicaragua. I have been swamped with work, projects around the city, classes – so I am really looking forward to next Tuesday, Feb 16, leaving the daily grind! I have been talking to a friend who as an undergrad took an engineering course about the development of third world countries and she gave me some great ideas about projects she worked with in her class! To be brief, one is a corn husker that was “found” in Ghana, used to de-kernel the corn.

Last summer in Costa Rica, families would go through hundreds of ears of corn by hand, and when there is this simple tool, that costs under 2 dollars to make to help speed the process and would make it easier on their wrists so they can dedicate their time to other activities, it would be nice that they could know about it. I am excited on sharing this with Nicaraguan families and I hope they find it beneficial.

This other idea gives instructs on how to turn a bike into a little machine that can easily turn a blender, a washing machine or anything that needs rotational force. What is nice about this idea, is that it doesn’t require complicated equipment to convert this rotational energy into electrical energy which is difficult to repair and is expensive. We'll see how well these ideas are accepted in the field.

Well - not too much else to say right now, I'll have updates from the field soon.