Saturday- Laundry Day- equipment travels

We're expecting word from Managua any time  telling us when the equipment will be released and on the road.

With breakfast this morning we had some of the same items with the addition of meat

Before class several of us went for a walk around the town where we saw the town generator and several docks.

eating green bananas

Our view out the restaurant window

We saw some interesting birds and plants.

Pineapple plant

  After the walk, we met for class, but only 2 ladies came and they were an hour late.  WHY???  Saturday is laundry day.  All the fences, bushes and yes, clothes lines were heavy with newly washed clothes.  Washing machines?  Nope, these ladies use a tub/basin and a scrub board.  And their whites were amazingly white.  Note to self-- don't plan to have class on Saturday.  When the 2 ladies did come, we  looked at an enlarged picture of the system (installed) and talked about the function of each part.  We then read the "Woman at the Well" Bible study and discussed the implication and the reason for the Living Water for the World name of our organization.


Today's lunch had lots of sauce on it.

We received word finally that the equipment was released after duty and penalties were paid, but not til noon.  This cut down the the opportunity to get the system parts to us today.  So... The rest of our team was driving across the country to get to Pearle Lagoon, they'll spend the night there and get the panga early Sunday morning.  We should see them early Sunday.  Yovett has requested that her 2 operators Henry and Wavel travel with the equipment and our team members to assist with installation.

We had promised the kids we sang with yesterday that they could do artwork today, so we got our supplies out and waited for them to come.

They must have some kind of ESP, cuz we began with 4 boys, and as they colored and drew, more and more boys came in.  We had about 3 girls in the entire group of approx. 20.

  The kids had a great time coloring and their moms  are like mothers everywhere.  They "guided" the airtwok, insisting that the colors be exactly like the large posters on the wall.  No creativity- just copy exactly.  This is when I first noticed the baby on the poster is "lily white".  Now our in-country partners have skin of all colors, but white.  I've discussed this with a woman from Clean Water U-- our training school and she agrees and is in the process of changing the artwork in the manual and on the posters.    I finally sent the boys (and few girls) home about 4:30 as I was running out of different pictures for them to color.

A story from a previous day-- a child about 14-18 month old was sitting on abuela's lap out front of our classroom.  One of our guys went over to talk to the child who began sobbing.  Grandma told my friend that the child is afraid of white people.  He backed off and the child was fine very soon.

Friday- day 2 of class

Breakfast was eggs (pancake looking omelet), beans and toast with very, very weak cinnamon tea.

Class began with fewer students- the Dr told us that Fridays were very busy for her, so we figured she wouldn't be there, but her nurse was there.
We did skits with costumes-- (Moses and Pharaoh - the parting of the Red Sea and the water from the rock).  The students seemed to enjoy the interaction.  One new student this morning was Earnesto, the minister of the Anglican church and he seemed to be really engaged in the activities.  After the skits, we did "Taste and See" and Take a Risk.  Taste and see shows the students that water that looks fine, isn't always what you want to drink. and the Take a Risk game shows that bacteria in a person's body may not make a person sick the first time it is ingested.  Many adult Nicaraguans have built up an immunity of sorts to the bacteria in their water, but continual use of the water can cause eventual illness.  Small children don't have an immunity, so are more likely to become sick from water borne bacteria.  We stress that many children worldwide die from waterborne pathogens.
We handed out the LWW song sheets and we sang most all the songs.  The students were familiar with most of them and enjoyed the singing.  We taught the song "Use this Water" to a familiar tune.

Yovett has heard from Steve and Bill (Virginia partners) and they think they may get the system out of customs tomorrow.   They are hoping for early in the day so they can get here before dark.

The 3 guys on our team took a panga to Kukra Hill this morning to do the final visit to that system.  Our obligation to a community is two follow up visits to check on their progress.  This is the second visit to Kukra Hill, and I was sorry I was busy teaching and couldn't go for this visit.  Originally we were scheduled to visit there Monday on our way home, but with the system arriving so very late, it seemed appropriate for the guys to do the visit before all the equipment arrives.  When it does get here the rush will be on to get as much completed as possible before we are scheduled to leave on Monday, mid afternoon.

Marjory and I ate lunch at a smaller table with just the 2 of us.  We had shrimp, fried plantains, and fruit.

For the afternoon session, only 2 students showed up and 4 children, so we did the skits again, and sang and sang and sang.   They really seemed to enjoy the Take a Risk game.
I promised the children (all boys at this point)  That if they'd come back tomorrow (Saturday) we'd have art supplies for them with crayons, colored pencils, tape, and pages to be colored.  We had black and while coloring sheets of our "Use this Water" and Wash your hands" posters and we also had creation pictures to be colored. They seemed excited to do this.  A word about school.  Their school year is from February through November.   December and January are their version of summer vacation.

We're still hoping for good news about the system boxes being released from customs tomorrow.

The guys returned from Kukra Hill pretty shaken-- not because of anything wrong in that town, but because of the panga ride.  It was blustery and the ride was very rough.  They said that Kukra Hill operation is doing well and making money, which is enough to pay the operators, provide new filters and maintenance and with some left for helping the community.

Pot roast with tortilla and white cheese for suppor

AT 5:30 WE HEARD THAT THE EQUIPMENT WILL BE RELEASED TOMORROW AND OUR VIRGINIA PARTNERS WILL BE HEADED ACROSS COUNTRY HOPING TO GET HERE BY DARK.

Construction could begin after Mass Sunday morning, which begins at 8am.

Thursday-- Orinoco

we were up early for breakfast that Mrs. Williams (co-owner of the Green Lodge) made for us with eggs, toasted coconut bread and homemade guava jelly.  after eating, we grabbed our luggage with the help of Wavel and Henry who work at the Pearl Lagoon filtration system and 60 empty 5 gal bottles and made our way to the chartered panga for the 45 min ride to Orinoco.

The 5 gal bottles we brought on the Panga

Yovett hired the panga driver for a flat fee plus $20 a day (and $ for gas) to be with us all week in case we needed to order parts from another town, or to take us to Kukra Hill for our last visit.

On arriving we made our way to Hotel Garifuna  a 2 story building with 8 guest rooms and a communal bathroom on the first floor and a restaurant/bar on the second floor.  The hotel had no air conditioning, but included a fan on a stand in each room.  In Nicaragua, a fitted sheet and a top sheet is usually the extent of bedding provided.

It is usually hot enough that "normal" folks don't need a blanket, bedspread or cumforter--- but I am very cold natured and I would have welcomed additional bedding.


I had one window with unmatched curtains, two beds one light bulb in the ceiling and one outlet for the fan or charging a phone.

 Electricity was on from 9 am to 1 am- usually- one night the power stayed on til 5am (we heard later because of an emergency at the clinic which needed it)  No charging phones overnight as I'm used to doing.   The hotel is owned by a man (from Finland whose English is quite  good) and his wife who is, I think, Nicaraguan.

Yovett had arranged for us to eat in a restaurant a few blocks away owned by Miss Erica Crisanto.  She fed us 3 times a day for the 4 days we were there.  We had mostly fried meats (fish, chicken, shrimp), breadfruit, chicharones, casava root, lots of beans and rice both separate and mixed and plantains.    This meal was our first lunch-- there is fried chicken hidden under the cucumbers and tomato slice.  The stuff around the plate is casava root (tastes like potato)   between the cucumbers and chicken is some cabbage salad.  An interesting and very good tasting meal.

Health and Hygiene classes began about 10 am with 7 ladies  to be trained as teachers for their community.  Interesting among these 7 was a doctor, a nurse, and a special ed teacher.  The other 4 were church leaders, but rather shy, so I'm not sure how effective they will be as teachers.  Marjory and I went through the first lesson (what are germs, can you see, smell, taste them)  We talked about the creation and did the lessons contained in the teachers' manual.  We continually reminded our student/teachers that the notebook/manual could be a helpful resource for their classes.  We left quantities of worksheets, coloring pages for children, and games to be used in their teaching.  We brought costumes for the water based skits (Parting of the Red Sea/ water from a rock, woman at the well) which will remain in Orinoco to be used in their teaching.

The Living Waters teaching model requires a different group of students in the afternoon which the morning student/teachers can practice teaching.    This first day of classes, we had a different group to be taught, but few of the original 7 came back.  The doctor taught and Marjory and I taught as well.

As our class was over, we checked with the others on our team to see if the system parts had been released from customs.  The answer was no!  Our driver friend Fernando in Managua, had put the remaining team members in touch with a non-profit in Nicaragua who might be able to help.

Breadfruit

Supper was fried chicken, mashed potatoes (I think?) rice, garlic sauce and fried banana chips.  As a side treat we were treated to fried breadfruit which grows on the trees all around the town.

Walking back from supper, we used flashlights.  While there were a few streetlights, there weren't enough to keep us from stepping in the ever-present horse poop all over the sidewalks. 

View from the porch.

After supper the group met out on the back porch of the hotel to converse and discuss.

The builders in our group had spent a frustrating day, doing what they could to get the site ready for  the eventual arrival of the equipment. (drilling holes in walls, and rewiring for the pump in the well)

The night was long with multiple dog howlings and rooster crowings.  Noises that most city folk are not used to hearing ALL NIGHT LONG.

The Rama Road-- and the road past Rama

 The hotel prepared sack breakfasts for us to take with us, altho' not many of us were ready to eat at 10 til 5.  The breakfast consisted of a piece of fruit - mine was a teeny banana- a box of juice and a ham? and cheese sandwich. A couple of the guys got coffee to go with this breakfast-to-go




We pulled out soon after 5 with our teaching supplies and personal luggage aboard the Toyota  15 passenger van .  The road to Rama (major shipping port of Nica- altho not on an ocean, but a river) was quite good.  This road has been under construction for years and the first portion of it is smooth and like most good roads in the U.S.

At one point just before a bridge, we encountered 8 really high speed bumps and of course there were 8 on the far side of the bridge.  They do have "Slow/Despacio" signs, but the speed bumps MAKE people slow down.  We saw these in small towns and in zona escolar (school zones)  Sure slows the traffic down to protect pedestrians.    Along this road there were vendor booths (small shops), but most were not open when we drove by, too early.

As the sun came up, the terrain looked lots like Alpine, Tx, with mountains in the distance and scrub brush (not lush and tropical as I expected)    Horses and goats were staked to the road "right of way" to "mow" the high grass.    We saw pigs, cattle, horses, goats, chickens.  We saw lots of cell towers and I had decent reception most of the way to Rama.
My phone kept bouncing between two carriers- Claro and Moviestar, and most of the time there was service.

We took a rest stop at a town named Thontales where we got out and stretched and used the facilities.  I bought "corn cookies" which were really crisp and not at all sweet.  A couple of the guys got coffee.

Soon after we got back on the road, we encountered a herd of cattle walking slowly down the middle of the road.  We had to wait til the herders could get them to the side of the road.

This happened two different times- I wonder if they ever get run over when a person in a hurry doesn't want to wait for them to shuffle along.

I gave the guys some pamphlets we use for our community outreach that needed folding and in no time they were done-- gave us all something to do and kept Marjory and me from having to fold them all by ourselves.

Yovett was in contact with Simon the leader at Orinoco and they needed  some parts from Rama so when we got there we stopped at the ferreteria (hardware store) and got what was needed.
At Rama the good road (it had been under construction somewhat, but not bad) ENDED.  From here on we drove on a dirt trail beside major construction.  Trucks continuously brought in rock to be spread on the road and they didn't seem to care if a vehicle was in the way or not.
The road to Rama was 3/4 of the way to our destination, but only 1/2 of the time traveled on the trip because of the condition of the "road".  The driver was holding steady at 20 km per hour speed which is  about 12.5 mph.  We dodged boulders in the road and had to veer off into the mud to get out of the way of the rock trucks.  The driver was white knuckled on this stretch of road and he was probably thinking that he was glad he'd have some daylight for his return trip as well.    By the time darkness fell, the van would be well back into the "good" road.  Several times we had to sit and wait for the rock trucks to dump their cargo (one time 10 minutes) before proceeding.   In one place the lanes were marked by large rocks laid out in a line down the road.

When this road is finally finished from Managua to the eastern part of Nicaragua, there should be much more infrastructure provided to the east.  Who knows, they might just get use of the national postal system.  It is predicted that the "opening up of the east" will bring greater prosperity to this part of Nicaragua-- but at what cost?

Part of our travel was through a palm oil plant-- we saw the "palm fruit/berries" and people harvesting them.

We arrived at the Green Lodge about 2:15 and unloaded and our drivers began their journey back.  This trip across country cost us $350 US for 6 of us and our luggage.

This is the mural on the side of the hotel in PearlLagoon.

Supper was at Casa Ulrich, run by a European (maybe German) where many people from all over the world gather.
A really LONG day-- tomorrow we'll get to Orinoco.  Still no word about our stuff trapped in customs in Managua. 

Tuesday plans B and C

Since we weren't going anywhere early for sure (customs opened at 8:30 or so) we had a leisurely breakfast.  The buffet at the Las Mercedes Best Western is really quite good.  Great local juice, made to order omelets, various side dishes (plantains, bacon, mystery meat, cereal, breads and as always beans and rice).
Before breakfast I was walking around the hotel grounds, when I met a lady who was there on a church building mission trip.  Her group included 12 people  from Mississippi and they were building several churches in the general area, and staying in Managua each night.  We chatted about our respective goals for our trips and she mentioned that she'd like to come with us.  

We're still hoping to have our equipment released, but it looks like with all the extra paperwork required, it's not happening today.  The guys, Walter, David and Harry decide on a tour of Granada with one of Fernando's drivers driving them and Yovett as translator (driver didn't speak English)  The ladies opted for a quiet afternoon at the hotel with some preparation chores to do and lots of chilling.  When the guys returned from their tour, we all sat down to see if we could plan what to do.  It was first thought that the Texans could fly across country quickly to make up some time lost sitting around waiting.  Harry checked on flight information and there were not seats on La Costena for us until Thursday afternoon.  Scratch Plan B-- Plan C was to drive across Nica in one of Fernando's vans beginning Wed morning at 5 am-- why so early?  It is a 9-10 hour trip and the drivers will need to drive back when they drop us off at our Pearl Lagoon Hotel- the Green Lodge.  Which means these guys (trading off) would drive 18-20 hours  straight on some very bad road  some of it in the dark. 
This was  decided, and we prepared our bags and ourselves for a very early morning.
A bit about the Managua hotel-- the water in the bathroom is not safe to drink, so we began brushing teeth with bottled water there.  The shower was adequate, with warm water, but not hot.    All in all it was a good place to stay, with good food available, lovely grounds, air conditioning and the common areas were cleaned constantly.  It has been recently renovated and is still under construction in some place.

Monday--Uneventful travel UNTIL....

volcano

We met at the airport by 6am to catch our flight to Houston at 7:20-- checked bags and enjoyed a good trip, we made good connections in Houston and flew to Managua.  So far very ordinary, and unexciting.   We met our partners from Virginia in Managua (Bill and Steve) who were carrying the parts of the filtration system (first mistake, we should have each been carrying part of the system).  In previous trips, we have had NO problem with customs other than paying a very high duty fee (30% of the value of the items)

This time was different.
1. The personnel working in customs were new and inexperienced,
2. They did not understand the purpose of many of the items being brought in (the parts of the filtration system), so they tried to look up the value of each elbow and piece of PVC on the computer.

3.  They read our invoices together rather than separately (2 people with different items) and declared that we were bringing in more than the $2000 value they were authorized to approve.

They eventually told us that they/we would have to speak to a supervisor to approve our equipment which they guessed would take about a week..  All the above was happening in Spanish and luckily we had 2 Spanish speaking Nicaraguans with us to assist.  Fernando had been hired to drive us across the country tomorrow to Pearle Lagoon.  He knew some people to talk to and we began finding people in authority to help. His help was ultimately INVALUABLE.  Yovett is our eastern Nica co-ordinator and altho' she knows few people in authority in Mananga, she helped greatly in getting us across the country. We finally (after several days) joined up with a Nicaraguan non-profit who wrote us a letter of donation.  We went thru Plan B-E trying to figure our how to get our equipment released as soon as possible.

The Texas folks decided we needed to go ahead and travel into eastern Nica so we could begin Health and Hygiene classes and prepare the site for when the equipment was released.  We were already a day behind having waitted thru Tuesday to see if we could get our stuff. Put that on hold for a minute and let me talk about getting into Managua at the airport.

All foreigners must pay $10 US to enter the country (visa fee) and it must be a crisp new looking bill.  The man ahead of me at the inspection station handed the official a ratty looking worn bill and it wasn't accepted-- he tried again with a better one and was denied again, he finally came up with a new looking one and he was approved to enter the country.   I was about to offer him one of my crisp tens but he came up with a good one.

One of the lovely plants around the hotel

We checked into our Best Western Hotel across the street from the airport and waited for news from our Virginia partners and the customs problems.   The airport  has lovely grounds and is swept hourly.

 At supper,we brainstormed how to proceed with our trip.  Do we turn around and go home, do we (Texans) go ahead and prepare for the others' arrival?  When will the system parts be released?  We went to bed with lots of questions and few answers.

Getting ready for Nicaragua

It's Sunday and I leave tomorrow for  my 3rd Nicaraguan trip.  First trip was to Kukra Hill  (spring, 2016) to install our first water filtration system.  Second trip was to Pearle Lagoon (2017) to speak at the operators conference for all the Living Waters for the World personel in Eastern Nicaragua.  We also visited Kukra Hill for a follow-up and visited Pueblo Nuevo and Orinoco searching for our second installation site. 
We decided to install the system in Orinoco and we leave tomorrow (January 15, 2018). 

We will fly to Houston from DFW and from Houston we fly to Managua, Nicaragua.  Previously we've flown from Managua east to our destination on La Costena airlines, but this time, since we're taking all the system parts with us, we're driving across the country in a rented van with room for all our stuff.  This part of the trip is scheduled to take 8 hours, because of less than stellar roads, to Pearle Lagoon.  The next day (Wed) we'll take a chartered panga (river taxi) to Orinoco to get set up. 

When I return in 8 days  I'll begin posting info about this installation and our other adventures.  Our trip home will be accomplished (hopefully) in one day since we'll be traveling much lighter.