Post on Trip to Nicaragua for Saturday, July 18th, and Sunday, July 19th
Saturday. Our Nicaragua Mission Work Team gathered around 9 p.m. at LAX and immediately encountered two serious travel-related issues. 1. The shared-ride shuttle van driver had given one of my bags to the next to last person off the van at Terminal 5 and gave that person's bag to the last person off the van at Terminal 6, me! After a moment of panic, Mayra our team leader, her companion Reg and her son Solomon found the name of the bag's owner inside the bag, called the shuttle's main office and were able to get the cell phone number of the owner. A call to him led to a meeting and an exchange of bags to the relief of all concerned. Problem no. 1 solved!
2. Mary, a team member who is a Canadian citizen, had left her green card at home which meant that while she could leave the US with no problem, she could not get back in. After consulting with Mayra, and realizing she only lived 15-20 minutes away from LAX, Mary called her husband who brought the green card over to the airport. Problem no. 2 solved! We prayed that these would be the least of our problems on the trip and that any would be so easily solved.
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| we are almost there. nicaragua from above. |
Sunday. Our flights from LAX to Panama City, Panama (6 1/2 hours), and from there to Managua, Nicaragua (about an hour), were uneventful, thank God, but very tiring. When we arrived inn Managua we were met by Justin Sundberg, a PCUSA Mission Co-Worker with CEPAD (the Nicaraguan (Protestant Council of Churches) who surprised us with a welcoming team from COOPEMULNATLE (a cooperative for the self-development of four villages with which Pacific Presbytery formed a covenant relationship five years ago). We had formed a partnership through CEPAD ten years ago with one of the villages, Nuevo Vida Goyena, ten years ago.
We and our luggage were piled into an air-conditioned van and we were taken on a tour of Somoza's Palace, which was formerly owned by the deceased Nicaraguan dictator. Because July 19th is a national holiday celebrating the now 36th anniversary of the Sandanista Revolution, our group was divided in two. One group who wanted go to the festivities with the members of the coop and those others who were too exhausted and wanted to go to the CEPAD guest house, relax and clean up. The group who went to the celebration were treated as celebrities by other festival goers, who wanted to know who they were, why they were there, if they could take pictures of themselves with them, and were on the evening's national news coverage!
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| some of us get off the bus at this point to join the parade |
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| president ortega passing by on his way to the rally |
That evening we had a very meaningful discussion with our coop partners about some of the successes of shortcomings of President Daniel Ortega's government. Humberto, one of the coop leaders and a farmer, talked about the government's efforts to provide livestock to poor farmers with mixed results, some succeed in raising more, some sell them all right away, some eat them all). He compared this to the coop's efforts to educate, train, and encourage people in the community in how to use the resources provided them, using a model of self-development and self-reliance. Humberto also spoke of the coop's project to establish a store in one of the villages (as a model for having a store in each of the villages) to provide immediate access to goods they cannot raise or provide for themselves and have to travel a distance to buy as well as providing some local employment opportunities. The presbytery has been involved in supporting this project.
Sonia, another coop leader and a teacher, talked about the coop's efforts to work with families and parents to enroll their children in school among those so desparate they keep them out of school in order to work and help support the family. She said that it is important for these parents to understand that they are violating their children's rights to an education but that the traditional culture in many rural areas mitigates against this. Sonia also mentioned some successes she has had in her first grade class with students who have gone on to become doctors and lawyers.
We also had a preliminary discussion (to continue during our time together) of how the coop leaders and the presbytery's team can have more frequent, on-going and in depth discussions about how the needs of both partners, our mutual support and prayers, and the ongoing development of projects together, as opposed to our once-a-year discussions when the presbytery team is in Nicaragua serving as a our guide for the forthcoming year and with only periodic checking in through our common CEPAD partner. Two areas were seen as possibilities to facilitate this: developing computer literacy among the coop leaders and having Skype technology available. We of the presbytery's team assured them that this is something we are prepared to assist with a used laptop computer with Skype capacity. Q.E.D.
Later in the evening, we got a chance to meet and have dinner with Justin's family at Nejapa Lagoon. This was some what our last get together and bonding time with Justin who is an amazing PCUSA mission worker, Luis our incredible translator and Oscar our fantastic bus driver. we all got to enjoy each others company one more time by sharing stories and laughing with and at each other. After dinner, we all spent some time reflection on the week which was such a beautiful moment because everyone got to share with the group who much love and gratitude they experienced. Something i thank God for was that we all got to laugh and cry together which showed how much this trip meant to each individual. I can honestly say we definitely grew in every aspect.