I got a ride out in a four door pick-up that at various times had between 2 and 12 people in or on it as we made our way through the campo. Cows were at various times blocking the road, horse drawn carts took their turns as well. The passengers were campesinos (farm workers), Leon street vendors, kids coming with to the afterschool program and a few of the teachers that would conduct the classes.
The children are beautiful and innocent and full of love, and almost equally curious about the pretty sweaty white guy who got out of the truck. I hung out with the school program for an hour or so and was struck by how so very similar that classroom was to my own in terms of student behavior and needs. The program runs from 3 to 5 each day; today was working on words that start with capital and lowercase D.
The school house has beautiful murals on the outside walls, one side gives the rights of children like right to edcuation, health, family, food. This one is a wonderful depcition of life in the community.
The flash went off with this one after I had very quitely and nonchalantly snuck into the doorway so as not to disturb the lesson. Unsuccessful. I´ll be paid back for that during a lesson of my own someday soon.
A large majority of the campesinos work for the San Antonio sugar mill which mainly produces Flor de Cana, a deliciouly sweet rum. For many years a great deal of workers from this mill and many other associated with sugar production have developed Chronic Renal Failure. Its an extremely serious, but difficult to pin down, issue for the community. There is progress being made, but this is an issue tied all the way to the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. And, as I was told today, no hay mucho trabajo cerca de aquí.
I spoke with a brilliant 19 year old woman that is in charge of the next phase of Goyena´s Literacy Campaign from 1980 under then and now President Ortega. It was a national crusade in 1980 with nearly 500,000 brigadistas sent out into the country to irradicate illiteracy. Today the program is a shell of its former self, but the effort is being made and with people like the woman I spoke with behind it, some that cannot will surely be able to read and write soon.
I took a walk after our talk before a storm rolled in and we would have to leave. Dirt, pigs, chickens, horses, no shoes, tin shacks, milky white water everywhere and more smiles that I have encountered anywhere I have been in Nicaragua. The animals roam free unless their owners are wealthy enough to be able to feed them and then they stay in the fenced yard. Status takes on a very different meaning in this setting, a fence, a door, a car, none of these are taken for granted because not all can afford these seeminlgy simple conveneinces.
The poverty was serious and impressive in the sense that everywhere one looks there is something that is striking. A large sow walked out of the house in the first picture as I made my way back to the schoolhouse before the storm. The boys in the second pic were playing what seemed to be volleyball out there in that field. And as can be seen from the last pic, the road had more footprints in it that shoeprints.
Everyone smiles. How? For what? It all begs the question of why people would live there in these conditions, but its so obvious that no one lives this way out of choice. It is directly lack of choices that results in these conditions. It makes so abundantly clear why a community such as this, and to be sure there are more than one often cares to think about, is so ripe when the conditions for revolution come about. I have great hope that these beautiful people can muster the strength for another and that one day corporations and governments realize the grandiose notions they all pretend to subscribe to.
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