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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 10, 2016)
Street Roots • June 10-16, 2016 News Page 10 The waters of friendship Nicaragua offers unexpected riches to those looking fo r something more than a winter vacation local families to build community wash stations called lavanderías, dig wells, and build la-trines. Some groups also install fuel- arili and Dave Reilly didn’t spend efficient stoves and plant trees. The cost to their winter vacation relaxing as volunteer is $1,175 for a 10-day trip, which they normally would. No, this year, includes lodging and all meals, they spent their winter vacation hauling transportation within Nicaragua, health and cement blocks and buckets of water in the travel insurance, a full-time translator, and tiny rural town of Camoapa, Nicaragua. cultural and recreational activities. The They were part of a seven-member group website, www.elporvenir.org, gives of retired people from S t Michael & All additional information, including the Angels Episcopal Church in Northeast advisory: “Good health is required to Portland. The youngest member was 58 and participate.” the oldest nearly 70, an impressive age El Porvenir took good care of the range for urbanites Portland volunteers. unaccustomed to hard "The greatest challenge of the day is: how In-country staff labor. to bring about a revolution of the heart. members Rosi and The group Jimmy acted as traveled under the interpreters, and José auspices of K1 BY ALICE HARDESTY CONTRIBUTING WRITER M made sure they had P o r v e n ir , a n o n p r o fit o r g a n iz a tio n vrtaose f r e s h f ilt e r e d w a t e r t o drink and brush their mission is to provide teeth. His mom, water and sanitation Catalina, arranged projects in poor a revolution which has to start with each one of us." tours and recreation, communities where and inspected the there is no such thing Dorothy Day kitchens for as plumbing. The cleanliness. Portland group was to Groups from Saint Michael & All Angels build 17 latrines over a period of seven work have been going to Nicaragua for 15 years. days. They worked in crews of two to three This year they stayed in a simple but members, plus the Nicaraguan homeowner who sometimes helped, and a skilled cement comfortable new hotel, which replaced the more rustic lodging of previous years. Bruce mason provided by El Porvenir. They rode to work each day in the back of Collins was making his third trip, Hjalmer Lofstrom his fourth, and Mary Lou a pick-up. On the way they passed women Hennrich her fifth. For Mary Lou’s husband carrying large water jugs on their heads, David Still, Gillian Butler, and Marili and alongside drainage ditches littered with Dave Reilly, it was their first time in . plastic and paper, and yards inhabited by fat Nicaragua. pigs and skinny dogs. Gillian Butler, one of the S t Michael’s volunteers, described the barrio (neighborhood) where they worked in t Michael’s involvement began around Camoapa as “not totally squalid, but 2000 when Marla McGarry-Lawrence, primitive. Some of the houses had S t Michael’s deacon at that time, was electricity, but there was no running water. contacted by Carole Harper, one of the And no toilets.” founders of El Porvenir. In a recent phone This was rural Nicaragua — and it was interview, Marla told me how she decided poor. years ago that the best way to develop ties The work was hot, gritty and exhausting, with her fellow Americans south of the but the volunteers fulfilled their mission. At border was not through conventional the end, they felt they received more than tourism but with a deeper involvement, by they gave. working side-by-side with the Nicaraguan El Porvenir is Spanish for “the future.” people. El Porvenir was the answer. The organization, founded in 1990 and “We’re not the teachers,” Marla said, headquartered in Managua, also has an “We’re the learners. We’re also their office in Denver. Their main purpose is to friends. We feel such gratitude for the improve the standard of living for rural people who open their homes and their lives Nicaraguans. Volunteers work together with S - _ P H O T O B Y M A R IL I R E IL L Y Children pose in front o f their new latrine in Camoapa, Nicaragua. to us, and we honor who they are with deep respect.” In rural Nicaragua she realized the importance of clean water. “Dirty water kills,” she observed. “Especially when mothers mix baby formula with water that isn’t sterilized. The infants develop diarrhea, which is so hard to control.” Marla had been to Nicaragua five times when she and her husband, Gary, stopped going after his 2008 heart surgery. “I saw what we were doing as very deeply connected to baptism,” she said, “the cleansing of the water, water that restores us. This is how we can live out our baptismal promise of making the world a more just and equitable place.” Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti. Nearly half the population lives below the international poverty line, which until recently was $1.25 a day. The official unemployment rate is 7 percent, but 47 percent are considered underemployed. The situation is more desperate for the youth, where 40 percent are either unemployed or work in the “informal” sector. The nation’s economic development was stifled by decades of the brutally repressive Somoza regime, supported by the U.S. government. Then during the 17 years of the Sandinista revolution, the country suffered a devastating earthquake that destroyed its industrial base in Managua. The Sandinista revolution was finally victorious in 1979, but it was followed by 10 years of “Contra” wars. What was publicized in the U.S. as a civil war was really a return of Somoza’s brutal National Guard, attacking the schools, clinics and land cooperatives newly established by the Sandinista government The Contras were a military force funded by the U.S. and, after the funding was withdrawn, covertly supported by the C.I.A. As if this were not enough, Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the resulting floods and more earthquakes-have added to the collective misery. To this day the Nicaraguan people, though proud and stalwart, are still very poor. n her first El Porvenir trip in 2001, Marla’s group went to Matagalpa to visit the grave of one of Nicaragua’s most beloved heroes, Ben Linder. As a young, idealistic engineer from Portland, Linder had moved to Nicaragua in 1983 to create small hydroelectric systems for impoverished rural communities. O See FRIENDSHIP, page 11 The Revolutions o f the Heart senes originates from a workshop taught by Martha Gies, whose students are profiling people in the community, whA inspire us. The title comes from Dorothy Day: “The greatest challenge o f the day is: how to bring about a revolution o f the heart a revolution which ha< to start with each one o f us. ” (Loaves and Fishes: The Inspiring Story o f the Catholic Worker M ovement)
