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)