The Start

The volunteers have all arrived, all 55 of them. After about a week of training, they left for their communities interchanging with the local youth and collaborating to organize the completion of a minio-project of the communities´ choosing.

Its going to be an interesting 6 weeks for them as they have to acclimate to the different idiosyncracies of the life in the campo. Nonetheless, each and everyone of them will have the time of their life. Being so young, the age range is 15-19, and to live so completely differently than normally acheived in the United States makes a large impact on these youth - hence the reason why I think this organization is amazing. It is part of service learning that allow our nation´s youth to live like the bottom billion, to see the struggles and the hard work of subsistence agricultural lifestyles, to see the beauty and the value in community and family, understand simple living. They will come back the better from this experience, and maybe they will not change immediately upon their return, as peer pressure makes many people revert to the status quo, but Amigos has planted the seed. Over the years, it will nuture and with their growing confidence, so too will the tree burgeon that has taken root, and their lives in the future will be focused on serving others instead of vainly living merely for their own self gratification.

One item, I think, that could be improved though, is the sustainability in that year after year, volunteer, supervisor and director, jump ship and join a new project the next summer, a new adventure to see a new country with it´s new experiences and new populations. Although it is clear that our neophile personalities lead this desultory behavoir, it is important to realize that stability is good thing for an organization. This is why this year I am really pushing for one of the team members to return this year to carry on this project in 2011. The bonds with our partnering agency will start strong, an understanding of the culture and the area will be prfound and with it a new project can start running and lead to a better 2011 than 2010 in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Community Survey

The project supervisors who will be directly in charge of the volunteers this summer have all just left today for their "Community Surveys" where they will secure housing, food plans and youth partnerships in each of their communities. Some of these communities will be the first time they meet an Amigo de las America, and for others it will be their second year and will know exactly what to do, but what all communities share in common is that they will all treat their foreign visitors with care, kindness and compassion.


One community was mentioning that they were formed many years ago when the plantation owner had kicked off all the workers of the coffee fields who had been livingon the land for years. They had no where to go, so they settled in un occupied land. Here they lived for years until the government tried to kick them off their unclaimed land until some Spainards came and purchased their land to allow them to stay. Then since they had no schools, or community spaces, another delegation from Spain came with 24 volunteers who built them schools and gave them necessary infrastructure to succeed. Now that Amigos will be there, they are elated that they will receive more help as the community leaders have been reaching out searching for more volunteer groups to come.

While now they have infrastructure, this is a complicated issue because this community received all this from the standpoint of a dependent recipient of wellfare without the means to help themselves, or at least this is how they perceive themselves. Its the reason why if you read below about our community based initiative from below, we try to focus on the community organizing themselves to decide and create what they need with little support from us.

Nonetheless, one positive thing in this community, is that the Spanish Delegation of the schools is making the community pay back 25% of the cost of the school and this money will go towards a microlending fund that will be reinvested in to the community. A decade ago, a school may have just been built and then the community forgot about, it is great to see progressive ways of working with the communities for sustained development.

Allthough the Spanish came and purchased the land they were squatting on, not all stories end with flowers and dandelions. Many times, people in impoverished regions in Nicaraguans, are told by underground organized criminals to move into land to squat on and because there is a law that for after several years the land can be reclaimed legally. The criminals take advantage of these people by putting all the land in one person's name promising to give it to them at a fair price one the land in reclaimed. However, as soon as they legally take ownership of the land, these well connected criminals instead kick out their indigent helpers and instead sell the land to foriegners (many Americans) at an expensive price for the locals yet at a very cheap price for the dollar.

Jobs

On the bus ride to Managua to Matagalpa, very often the bus would stop intermittently at the different cities on the way. Each time the bus stopped, there would be five to ten people who would rush to surround the bus yelling, “Agua, 10 centavos, Agua, 10 centavos”. Or “Caramelo, 5 centavos”. It was interesting that that is their full time job. Day after day, with bags of cold water on their shoulder, standing in the heat, yelling at the passengers to consume their product for pennies. How much can they be making for their job by selling products for under 5 cents? I rarely saw anyone purchasing anything on the bus I was on.

Interestingly it compares rather unfavorably with some American workers who have the gall to complain about their work. It is true that there is more to work than the working conditions, but some of these American employees who complain are sitting in nice chairs at desks, they have air conditioning and are working on a computer. Although one can want another job, or a better job, or a promotion, it is important to realize what we are given, the comfort and the opportunities we have.