Nicaragua July '09: Good times, good work. No skiing.

[bristlecone]

Sunrise over Granada can't fail to impress. Mombacho is back there, but don't worry, it hasn't erupted in a while...


We had a brief stop in San Juan del Sur for lunch with subduction-side views of upturned forearc sediments, garish luxury homes, and Jesus.


Sí, Jesús


Where do old school buses go to die? Well, here for one place, where they are retrofitted with low-range climbing gears and made to ply roads that even intrepid New Englanders would classify as 4WD-only.

And they take you here

(The limit of shorefront development at Ostional)

Community Tours is a nice response to the foreign-owned resorts to the north that expedite tourist dollars out of the economy. Here, they own and run everything. It's their town. And can Carolina cook. Damn.


Heavy traffic in town


Heavy traffic at the beach


Turtle love


Fishy death



yep



Pulpo o pepina del mar?


Time's running short, wishing for a fourth night


The welcoming committee turned out to send us off.


One big, giant, juicy, free, renewable salt lick


Hey, clowns need to commute too


Back to Granada


part 2 coming up

[boardman]

VERY COOL! Really looking forward to more! Any climbing or diving down that secluded way?

[bristlecone]

Hildebrando helpfully pulling a machete out of my bike tire, somehow without damage


Plenty of diving, even more on the caribbean side.

More to come.

[TuaGuy]

More to come indeed! I hope so. Not often you get fornicating turtles featured on a bc ski site, and what's the backstory on the commuting clown, and, just curious, how does one get a machette hung up in a bicycle tire anyway? Welcome back. Hope you got mucho accomplished.

[bristlecone]

Granada has many faces. Most tourists see only the grand colonial center, which in a sense remains colonial, owned and occasionally occupied as it is by foreigners and a small group of Nicaraguan elite.

The "middle class" lives one concentric ring outward in areas with dirt streets and simple cinderblock homes. Beyond that are areas gripped by the ongoing generational cycles of poverty, where less than half the parents can read, and where the parents take their kids out of school to work on the streets to provide some income.






Enter Empowerment International (facebook site / fundraising site), who remove the barriers to education by supplying school uniforms, notebooks, pens, and backpacks so that children can attend free public education,




do regular home visits to check on the students' progress and ensure that both kids and parents are placing value on and working for the child's education






And provide daily tutoring, run by teenage volunteers who are also in the program, to make sure that students who can't read are not falling through the cracks of an education system with large classes and very limited resources


Some cases are singular; both her parents have died, and her brother is alcoholic and abusive and thankfully left.

She maintains her home alone and is working to finish her four remaining years of high school.

We've been volunteering with Empowerment International, mostly remotely, helping write newsletters, website content, and fundraising materials. We came back here in part because we needed to spend more time with the program, getting a better sense of the people and work.

A parent's choice: Send your child out to work, bringing in desperately needed income today


or send them to school, which you yourself never finished, at a current loss of income for an uncertain long-term dream that from your own experience you have no reason to believe in


Helping families choose the latter is the core of Empowerment International's work. Certainly not a handout, hardly a hand up, more a way to get people to see that they can step up all on their own.

next - a trip out to a rural community where Empowerment International also works

[boardman]

dude, that's fantastic. kudos to you for your volunteerism.

[K__C]

Programs like this one are absolutely amazing. Kudos x10 for your volunteerism.

[RR]

Thanks!

[NtrentT]

Nice work.

Truly heartwarming, and inspirational.

Thanks for posting and sharing this.

[bristlecone]

The plan: Ride bikes with the Empowerment International staff out to a rural community where they work - they make this 3 hour round-trip trek many times per week.

The fuel


The road is a swamp even in dry conditions, so there was much alternate route-making.








The machete strapped to my bike slipped loose and wedged in like this, stopping my suddenly. Somehow it came out without any tire damage (!)




Finally there


Home visits, checking on progress, encouraging students and parents








Locals keep a watchful eye


The school has two rooms - here for grades 4-6, next door for grades 1-3.


The staff organized an afternoon of fun activities for the kids of the village. They never get to do hardly any of this -

so excited to have stories read to them


so excited to have crayons to color with


so excited to play baseball and games






Their community center had sat empty since a foreign group had built it, so EI started using it for community activitiies and having kids work on finishing the painting. Physical fixes are often rather incomplete, it's changing attitudes, hearts, and minds that is the real key.


We were quite amused by the line.






convivencia

[TuaGuy]

At least the "how does a machete end up in a bicycle tire" thing is cleared up. It may not occur here, but there's a rep for what you and your folks accomplish.

[bristlecone]

Last day in the country, it was time for one more diversion. To Masaya.

There are extranjero-oriented transportation options, but why did we travel all this way? To escape the country? No, local bus. The schedule? Delay the departure time a bit if needed to fill it up...

....then stop to pick up anything that moves. A cheap and effective public service, actually.

Nontheless,

even us nonbelievers got to thinking that it couldn't hurt.

One corner of the Masaya bus station


And to the object of the day, the lively "new market."
Rice and beans


Local artisans - hammocks, woodworking, pottery, paintings


more food


stuff


and these things

We've been to this place three times, and we've gotten lost in there more than three times. It's a tangled riot of sights, sounds, smells, and all sorts of activity. Why do we never remember the compass?

"Nicaragua is my body, Masaya my heart," and no dictatorship for good measure



rain at the old market


Must we leave so soon?

[RR]

Very cool TR!
Proof that skiers do not live for skiing alone.

I hope you will work with your journal to pen a piece for Outside or some other slick.

[bristlecone]

If you've made it this far through this long-winded TR, there must be something about it that grabs you. Consider this - the economic downturn hits us all, but especially hits small nonprofits that rely heavily on small individual donations. Seriously, even $10 makes a difference.

To tempt you to take a look, we made a little video of some stills at our fundraising page for Empowerment International. We have a mountain of actual videos and stories that we are just beginning to sort through - we will be writing these up and posting videos in the donor newsletters over the months to come (and yes, even $10 makes you a donor!). Our first video project is comedic - a POV bike ride through the barrio and muddy road to get to the rural village, complete with machetes being pulled out of bike tires and Hildebrando cheering on Anielka as she tries to make it riding through the mud.

Empowerment International has not yet grown to the size to be rated on Charity Navigator, but I can tell you that they use their funds very frugally and effectively, with tiny amounts toward administrative costs - and the effectiveness and efficiency of the program itself makes a small amount do a lot of good work.

Keeping them in school through graduation is a critical key to breaking generational cycles of poverty.


Off my promotion soapbox, and as TuaGuy likes to say, October cometh.

[TuaGuy]

Kudos, and may the seeds sown reap a full harvest. Maybe it's also time to consider the folks here that volunteer for avy courses, SAR, AMC, etc. In reading the posts it's rare that folks here tell of their "other lives" as good samaritans, but sometimes they slip, and then we know they're out there. Here's to you. See you out there.