Water

Clean water is a privilege. But it shouldn’t be. Everyone, everywhere, should have access to it. And yet, they don’t.  It’s easy to take clean water for granted when we live in a place where we choose to drink bottled water over tap, leave the water running while we brush our teeth, and water our lawns to keep them green.

But much of the world does not have these choices. They are forced to drink unsanitary water and often have to travel great distances to get it.

That’s why this spigot is such a big deal. It might look like it belongs with a garden hose on the side of your house, but this spigot is way more important than that. Why? Because this spigot supplies clean water. And for the village of San Jose, this spigot means that they are no longer denied access to clean and sanitary drinking water.

But it still isn’t easy. This is the one and only clean water supply for the entire village. 29 families. 150 people. It is located outside the village commons, and is only turned on for portions of the day. Families must still fill large containers with water and carry them back to their homes. There is still no running water in their homes. They must use out houses for bathrooms, and wash themselves and their clothing in the nearby river. Water is still precious to the village of San Jose. But, it is no longer a privilege denied to them.

Do you want to help provide access to clean water? 

Please consider donating to Agros’ One Seed Alternative Gift Catalog.  You can choose to provide many of the different resources that Agros provides, including access to clean water.

Crafting Abroad

As many of you already know about me, I love a good craft.  So when our service team needed a volunteer to help coordinate a craft for our time in San Jose, I shot my hand right up.

Finding the right craft took time.  It needed to be something that was easily transported on the plane ride down, cost effective, and would be somewhat useful for the people. 

Agros had shared with us the importance of Mother’s Day in Nicaragua.  Celebrated at the end of May, this holiday holds even more importance for Nicaraguan mothers and families than in the states. Since we were traveling to San Jose at the beginning of May, it seemed like a perfect fit to structure a craft around Mother’s Day.

We chose canvas bags that could be decorated and given to the mothers in the village.  Cool, right?  What mother wouldn’t love a bag to carry laundry, groceries, or whatever else. But here’s the best part, the husbands and their kids decorated them.

 

As the men sat down in the school desks awaiting instructions, they looked like deer caught in headlights. Petrified. Nicaragua, like many Central American countries, has very traditional roles for men and women.  Women do the cooking, laundry, home keeping etc. And the men, well, they don’t.  Here we were asking them to step WAY out of their comfort zones and decorate something. They did just that, and it was awesome to watch.

One of the women on our team had the brilliant idea to bring some stencils that she had lying around her house. These were a life saver. Once we showed the men how to use them, they latched onto those stencils like life rafts.

The men stenciled two, sometimes three and four different stencils on their bags, carefully picking different colors for each of them. I was surprised by the detail and effort that each of these husbands put into their bags. They were certainly labors of love, and I dare say that these men might just have enjoyed themselves while they were at it.

Remember Terencio?  He proudly showed me his bag after it was completed, going through each of the decorations that he had chosen for his wife. He was especially proud that he had written her name on it.

We told the men to wait and give their wives the bags as a present for Mother’s Day, but some just couldn’t wait.  Here is one mother who received her gift a little early.

This project was one of the highlights of my trip.  Seeing those men labor over their bags with such love was an unexpected joy for me. And knowing that their wives would be receiving a gift that was evidence of that love made this craft, in my eyes, a success.

Credit Due

Before I go any further with posts about Nicaragua, I owe credit to someone for many of the photographs taken on this trip.  This is Nat (pictured on the right).  He graciously offered to be the photographer on the trip, so that our group wasn’t whipping out 15 + cameras every time we saw something photo worthy.

He captured the essence of our trip perfectly. I am so thankful for his talent, and for his willingness to share his photos with the rest of us.

Coffee

Have you ever thought about where your daily cup of joe comes from?  I don’t mean whether it was brewed at Starbucks or from a can of Folgers, I’m talking about the journey those beans took to get to your cup.  I admit, I hadn’t thought much about it before this trip.  But coffee plays a big role in the village of San Jose, as it does for much of Nicaragua, and we got a crash course in Coffee 101.

These are coffee seedlings. They are growing under a homemade greenhouse made from lashed together sticks covered with banana leaves.

Once the seedlings are big enough, they are transplanted into little plastic bags. But those little plastic bags don’t come filled with dirt. Someone has to fill all those little bags to get them ready for the seedlings.  Enter our team.

We arrived at this spot to find a pretty large pile of dirt.  Just sitting there. Now you might imagine that this dirt was earthy, fertile, nutrient rich soil, just perfect for growing little seedlings into productive mature coffee plants.  Not so much. In fact, not really at all.  The soil was more like little pellets—hard, rocky, and not very much like any soil that something would want to grow in.  But this is what the soil is like before the rainy season in San Jose.  And coffee finds a way to grow in it.

We filled those little plastic bags for hours. On our hands and knees, without any tools, under the hot sun.  Now before you start feeling sorry for us poor gringos, let me remind you that although the work was tedious, it was a perfect introduction to the life of a farmer.  Farmers don’t get the joy of the harvest every day. In fact most days, they toil. But farmers don’t see their daily tasks in isolation, but rather as parts of a labor that will in time produce a harvest.

I think I can learn a thing or two from farmers. It is no wonder that the Bible is filled with so many passages about agriculture.

We also were taught how to prune the coffee plants.  Using a saw-like knife (like the one I’m holding in my right hand), we cut away all of the dead branches, and even many living ones, so that the plants had room to grow.  It seemed like I was cutting off perfectly good branches. But if there are too many branches competing for the nutrients of the soil, water, and sun, they will choke each other, and the plant won’t grow. 

Hmmm…Are you seeing the metaphor unfold?

Eventually, after much laboring, those little seedlings that have been pruned and cut, will grow and mature into coffee plants with beautiful, brightly colored berries.

And all that work will have not been for nothing.  There will be a harvest.

San Jose

San Jose was founded by Agros in 2007. There are 29 families, about 150 people total, currently living in this village. There is so much to say about this village-- the challenges they’ve overcome and the ones they still face, but I’ll start with what makes San Jose what it is, the people. 

Let me introduce you to Moises.

Moises has vision.  Of the 29 families that live in San Jose, only 3 families commercially grow vegetables. And Moises is one of them.  He’s taking a risk as an entrepreneur, away from the security that growing coffee has provided. Vegetables require irrigation, and water is precious.  There are many unknowns in growing vegetables, but there is also opportunity.

So what motivates Moises?  This guy. Jefferson is one of Moises’ three children. And when Moises’ pays off his loan and finally owns his own land, it is this little guy who will reap the benefit.

This is Terencio. Although he is nearly 70 years old, this man has spunk. During our time in the village, Terencio participated in everything.  He attended every devotional, craft, work party, and celebration that was had during our time in the village.

Meet Urania and Julio (wearing the red shirts).  They are in-country staff for Agros and work with the 4 Agros villages in the area. Each lives nearly 3 hours away and commutes to this area for the week. Leaving their own families behind, Urania and Julio provide agricultural technical assistance, and human resources for villages like San Jose. They live an incredibly sacrificial life.

Rosa teaches preschool in San Jose. She also lives there, is mother to three children, and helps her husband (Moises) tend their vegetable crops.  Most of the women in the village stayed in the background during our visit, as is the cultural norm. Not Rosa. She led games with the children, danced traditional Nicaraguan dances for us, and engaged us in conversation.  This vitality reflects her optimism and is another example of the hope that Agros provides.

Then there is this abuela (grandmother). Every day she walks up the steep mountainside to collect firewood to fuel the stove that she uses to cook for her entire family.

Here she is in her kitchen.

No village could be complete without a band.  San Jose’s band lovingly played music for us each morning as we arrived in the village.

And then there are the children. So many precious faces. They were the most beautiful, yet also the most heartbreaking, aspect of the village. Through them, I was reminded of God’s goodness, that there can be happiness, laughter, and hope,  despite circumstances that might seem otherwise.

Agros

source: Agros

Well it has now been a month since Tom and I traveled to Nicaragua, and I am just now writing about it.  I wish I could say that it has taken me so long to write something due to a lack of time, which is partially true. But if I’m honest, it has also taken me this long because I’m not quite sure what to write.

So, let me begin by introducing you to Agros.  Agros is the organization that we traveled with to Nicaragua.  Based out of Seattle, this non-profit does amazing work!

I think that Agros’ own website explains its purpose better than I could, so I’ve taken this blurb straight from there. Here is how Agros defines itself:

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Agros International is committed to breaking the cycle of poverty for rural families in Central America and Mexico by enabling landless communities to achieve land ownership and economic stability. We have learned that the root causes of poverty extend across communities and are passed down from generation to generation, and so the Agros development model is holistic, sustainable, and focused on long term results. This commitment to the long-term sustainability of a whole community serves to break the cycle of poverty in all its forms.

taken from Agros

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What is poverty?

I’ll admit, before this trip, I had a completely different definition of poverty.  Here are some shocking statistics about world poverty courtesy of Agros.

World poverty is largely rural
• 75 % (900 million) of the 1.2 billion people in the world who live in extreme poverty
(earning less than $1 a day) live in rural areas.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, 63% of rural people live in extreme poverty.
Land ownership is the rural poor’s best source of livelihood and opportunity
• Land is their principal source of income, nutrition, security, and status.
• Half of the rural poor—some 230 million households worldwide—lack either access to land or ownership the land they till.
• Those without land are almost always the poorest. There is growing concensus that landless and poverty are intrinsically linked.

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Are you intrigued?  Want to learn more about Agros?  Please take a moment to visit their website and read more about the work that they are doing to restore hope to communities in Central America.

www.agros.org

It may take me some time, but I’m going to be posting a series of short blog posts with pictures and reflections from our time in San Jose. I hope that you will travel with me as I recount our time there!