Welcome to Nicaragua

We'll be here less than a week, but the country still deserves a proper entry in this blog...

About Esteli, Nicaragua
Many people still won't consider traveling to Nicaragua because of its long history as a trouble spot. These days, however, the guidebooks say it is the safest country in Central America. From what I've seen so far, Esteli feels more like a suburb of Houston than an out-of-the-way Central American city. You can find fantastic cafes, a juice bar, fast food joints, gas stations with mini-marts, and the occasional American chain store such as Radio Shack. The big grocery store chain here is owned by Wal-Mart. The streets are wide, clean and well lit.

I'm staying at a boarding house just outside of town along with Aaron and Rufus (Maya and Aviv are in a different house on the other side of town). We have three private rooms with two shared baths, and the other two bedrooms in the house are used by the owner and the live-in housekeeper/cook. It is a simple but comfortable one-story edifice made of concrete block covered with concrete. The bedrooms don't have windows, but there is a green corrugated plastic skylight in one section of the corrugated tin roof to let in a little light. The showers are mostly cold. All meals are provided, so far generally including some form of rice, beans, plantains, and sliced white bread -- all filling and relatively nutritious. We have been encouraged to use the provided mosquito nets when we sleep, but I haven't encountered any mosquitoes yet. This is certainly the most basic of accommodations I've encountered on the trip -- but really, it is perfectly comfortable and we will only be here a few days.

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Building stoves in La Tompson
For four days Aaron, Aviv, Maya and I will be working with GVI staffer Rufus and local workmen to build three stoves in a community outside of Esteli called La Tompson. As with many of the GVI Phoenix projects, the families of children who attend GVI project schools can be eligible for a concrete and brick cooking stove in or near their home. The stoves initially serve as thanks for families who provide special help to a school, and later are allocated to the families most in need. The stoves are funded and built by volunteers, so the speed with which families receive stoves depends on how many volunteers sign up to visit and build them. We each purchased one stove as part of our six-month volunteer trip; three will be built here in La Tompson, the fourth will be built in Ecuador.

La Tompson is only a short bus ride away from Esteli, but it is an entirely different kind of place. My information about the history of the place is largely thiird of fourth-hand, but here's what I know: The government promised land to the nations' veterans. To fulfil this obligation, unimproved parcels of land were appropriated from individuals or companies and handed over bit by bit to eligible citizens. The result is a profileration of high-density shanty towns like La Tompson. This village of nearly 1000 people was created during 2008 in a giant field once owned by a telephone company, complete with defunct communications tower in the center. What we see now is row after row of tiny plots surrounded by barbed wire, many with rough-hewn board shacks.

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I can't help but think of the different frontier towns I've read about in history classes or seen in museums... it looks like a Hoover-ville from post-depression USA, or one of the gold-rush towns in Alaska, or a refugee camp after some major disaster. And yet from what I could see, everyone is banding together to make the best of their newly-granted land-ownership. The neighborhoods were clean and orderly, and everyone has been extremely polite. The first priority seems to be a supply of water to all the homes. We saw fresh trenches with water pipes and many homes already have a water spigot (but no sewage system). We also saw wells dug in several yards. Electricity seems to be far down the priority list.

This new community has a public school with two classrooms, but only one teacher for the 500+ children in the community. Even with separate morning and afternoon classes, there is no way all the children can attend -- so they don't. The GVI project includes the recent construction of a supplementary school for the younger students. Volunteers Noah and Marian (who painted the mural at the school in Honduras) and two others are on the ground to get the school started along with project manager Steve and his intern. The project has a great potential to grow into something wonderful. I look forward to hearing how it evolves along with this brand new frontier town.

About the stoves For those interested in the technical construction of the stoves, I'll attempt to summarize it here. On day 1, the base is constructed with concrete blocks set on packed earth, mortared together with cement. On top of a two-layered U-shape of blocks, we pour a solid slab reinforced with a 4x6 grid of re-bar. We end up with a smooth concrete table with storage underneath for wood or cooking pots. On day 2, on top of the concrete slab we lay three layers of bricks with a small opening in front for the wood. Inside there is a smaller brick firebox with a chimney at the rear. The space between the firebox and exterior surface is insulated with sand, and then the interior is plastered over with a mixture of earth and lime for fireproofing. A brick and metal chimney is fitted onto the rear of the stove, and a steel three-burner plancha (cooking surface) encircled by terracotta tiles makes up the top of the stove. Typically stove construction is completed at the end of the second day, and the stove is ready for use two weeks later (after the concrete has fully cured.)

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Build your own stove with GVI!
(Apologies for the shameless GVI plug.) All of the GVI Latin American projects offer stove construction for the students in their schools; Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the South American countries as well. Most stove volunteer projects are only a week or two, and the end products make a huge impact in the lives of the people who recieve them. The stoves also serve as incentives for families of GVI students to keep their kids in school instead of having them work in the fields or city streets. In addition, the GVI stove projects employ and train local masons to build the stoves. A stove project is a great way to get a taste of another country and do a little good at the same time. Check out the GVI Phoenix web site for more information about how to get involved and maybe build a stove of your own!