It is early January now, and we have been advised by our organizers in Nicaragua that it is probably too unstable as yet for us to carry out our usual annual trip, However, they have emphasized that this year, children need help more than ever to stay in school while their families are out of work or suffering the loss of loved ones. We will not provide dental or veterinary services this year, at least until it is possible to do so safely, but we will provide school supplies as always to five of the schools with the greatest need in the Telica school district.
Here is our Gofundme, or you can donate directly through our home page. Also, Sunday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m. at Peabo’s in Mill Creek, we will have our annual super fun Blues Jam for kids, complete with silent auction featuring hand-crafted items from Nicaragua and other cool things.
Less than a month after we returned from Nicaragua, the country exploded into political violence. The short version of a long story is this: There have been factions in the country that have been displeased with the president, Daniel Ortega, for various reasons. Ortega was a Sandinista military leader during the revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, who was elected president, and his administration did many popular things for the country, such as put in hydroelectric plants to bring power to the unserved rural parts of the country, start a very successful literacy campaign, provide for health care and social security for all, and create low income housing for thousands of impoverished people. While some industries were nationalized, about 70% of the nation’s GDP was produced by private businesses, and the country has had the fastest growing economy in Central America for several years. It was also the safest country for several years.
In recent years, though, some of Ortega’s actions angered many people, including making a controversial deal to build a canal across the country (and through its massive freshwater lake), refusing assistance from Costa Rica to put out a fire burning in a large nature reserve, and maneuvering to have laws rewritten such that term limits no longer applied to him and then running an election that many called rigged, and by naming his wife Rosario Murillo vice president. Finally, in April, his administration (at the behest of the International Monetary Fund) proposed to reduce social security and to ask for greater contributions for health care. Protests erupted and in the ensuing violence, dozens of people were killed. Since then, many more have died. There has been an ongoing effort on the part of many nationwide to get Ortega to step down or at least allow emergency elections. The effort has included tearing up streets and making roadblocks, massive protests, and a huge social media outcry. The country is currently not functioning normally at all.
Most international organizations have left the country, including the Peace Corps, waiting for the situation to stabilize. We are taking our cues from the Peace Corps-when they return to the country, we will consider the situation safe enough to return to the country. We will fundraise as usual, assuming that we will be able to return next March. If we can not, our organizers in Nicaragua, Maverick and Crespin, will be able to carry out the school supplies part of the project themselves, and have pledged to carry out the mission.
I stress that ideas of what kind of government Nicaragua has had in recent years are frequently wrong. I hear people suggesting on one side that Ortega has been smeared as an effort to discredit socialism. Others freely condemn the Sandinista regime, decrying socialism as doomed to fail. Others believe that it was Ortega’s capitalist moves that led to discontent. Nicaragua’s government and society do not fall easily into political and economic categories. The issues that have led to this outbreak of chaos do not map onto simple, cold war era notions of socialism vs. capitalism. Nor is Nicaragua Venezuela. Please respect the dignity and intelligence of the people of Nicaragua and research carefully before expressing opinions.
We have people in our operation who fall on both sides of the conflict. We believe in the people of Nicaragua, and their ability to resolve this conflict and reconcile with each other. We stand ready to assist in the healing process, and we plan to continue to support elementary school education in the Leon region as long as we are able and the help is needed.
In other news, friends of Vecinos pointed out to me a couple months ago that they were unable to fund us in the federal database of non-profit organizations. I investigated and realized I had failed to file some important paperwork. I corrected that, and last week we finally showed up in the database!
We are back from a very successful trip March 16-25.
This year we provided class pictures to each class. We got the teachers to write down the kids’ names on a sheet of paper and took photos on our phones to print out. Our amazing coordinator Maverick is driving around this week to give them to the schools.
The highlight of the trip was the addition of a generator to our project. Last year, we were able to provide a portable dental chair and handset (including drills, etc) to our dental team’s assets. What we soon discovered, though, was that the weak power at the more rural of our schools was not able to support the compressor. So this year we set a goal of raising enough funds to buy a generator. Thanks to the Des Moines Rotary Club and our friend Frank Snow, we got the generator! It a beauty, rather larger than we’d envisioned, but still portable for all that, and it worked like a charm!
This year we provided school supplies to almost 700 kids. There were 672 registered, but some more had arrived late, so we think the number is about 690-710. We also provided teaching supplies to 25 teachers, many, if not most, of whom teach two grades in one room.
The dentists are still working; they were unable to come with use a couple of days due to professional commitments, so they scheduled days to visit those schools after we left. One day alone they saw 80 patients at one school, though, so we expect the number of people treated to be high. They dentists did dental extractions, fillings (thanks to the chair and the generator!) flouride treatments, and dental education.
One of the dentists paints a fluoride gel onto the teeth of a little girl. The gel was provided by an American donor, and was a higher quality gel than those available to our dentists in Nicaragua. They were happy!
The veterinarians gave vitamin and anti-parasite treatments to 73 cows, 80 pigs, 106 horses, 54 dogs, a number of cats and kittens, and two rabbits. This year we were able to provide a better anti-parasite treatment more suitable to horses, as well.
Also, our youth director Robert got a donation of soccer balls from a faculty member at his high school. We gave two to each school. They were well received!
Gina also does this awesome thing where she provides every kid with a little polaroid photo. She and Sherry went through each class doing photos. Those kids love those photos.
Our blacksmith team was busy fixing up the playground equipment at a new school we visited this year. It’s called Los Maribios; it’s the same school in the soccer ball photo above. Everytime we visit a new school they tend to have playground equipment in terrible repair, so we always have a lot to do!
Here are our plans for next year:
This awesome generator is too valuable of a resource to only use one week per year. That is why we plan to expand our dental program this year. The dentists (all of them Nicaraguan volunteers) offered to visit each community for a one-week intensive clinic, so that they can provide education to the entire community, not just the kids, and so they can see the kids and their families. They’ll do three of these clinics a year, and work their way through the communities that we serve on that schedule.
Also, we are leaving some communities that we have served for more than 8 years. The original idea was to provide six years of service to each community we adopted, because after we have left schools better than we found them, we want to work with the Ministry of Education to identify schools that currently have no services and badly need them. Those schools tend to be very rural. We will continue to provide teaching supplies to those communities we have left, because we don’t want to abandon them, and we have developed really nice relationships with the people at them. But next year we plan to take on three new schools, all very rural, and at some of them, we will have to carry supplies for some distance.
I’m really excited about the future. Our boaRd of directors is an awesome group. Having Steve Swank along form the Des Moines Rotary was fantastic, and we are looking forward to having a good relationship with that club, as well as a happy ongoing relationship with the Monroe Rotary Club.
THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT. I HOPE THIS LITTLE WINDOW INTO A BUSY NINE-DAY TRIP GIVES YOU A SENSE OF THE IMPACT YOU ARE HAVING ON KIDS AND FAMILIES IN STRUGGLING COMMUNITIES IN A SMALL AND UNDERDEVELOPED BUT WONDERFUL COUNTRY NOT VERY FAR AWAY.
