Day -33: The Full Circle of Partnership

The book of Ephesians 4:1-17 describes the church's call to unity this way:

"Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love."

This passage was part of a bible study that we led recently with some of our colleagues here at the Inter-Church Center for Theological and Social Studies (CIEETS). The passage led us into a rich dialogue of reflection on what the "ligaments" are that join and knit together the various programs of CIEETS, and has led us to reflect on what those "ligaments" might be that bind U.S. churches to those here in Nicaragua.

Thanks to the work of CIEETS, dozens of rural Nicaragua's most impoverished communities now have access to clean water, improved sanitation, a more reliable food supply, better nutrition, and organic farming methods that help conserve the soil and protect the environment. Thanks to CIEETS, thousands of women and men are reading the Bible together, learning about the importance of social issues for the church, and awakening to the power of women doing theology (who have for so long had theology "done to" them). Thanks to CIEETS, many Nicaraguan Protestant churches have trained pastors and leaders committed to improving life for their communities and their country.

CIEETS organizes its work in two areas: the theological faculty (FEET) and the area for sustainable development and the environment (AMAD). At first glance, these might seem like wildly different areas of focus, but on closer inspection the overlap offers much fertile ground.  In last week's meeting, agronomists and theologians alike described their shared vision of and commitment to social justice that is integrated with Christian faith.

We were invited to facilitate this dialogue to help discover ways the two branches can work together to strengthen the entire institution.  We were asked to facilitate primarily because my work is in theological education and Tim's is in sustainable development and environmental education.  Last year we co-taught a class on Ecology and Theology (in the FEET), and in that course we took the undergraduate theology students to visit one of the AMAD projects, a concrete example of development projects that care for the environment and for people.

Before we closed, they had created a list of 8 concrete things they can do to help each other and learn from each other, starting next month and into the future.  This kind of work is more gritty than glamorous, but it is important for the optimal functioning of the whole.

The Ephesians passage, and the focus on organizational unity took me back to the first Bible study I was ever asked to lead in Nicaragua, in the fall of 2010, in El Sauce, in the Western region.  In preparation for the Christian Mission Church elections in March 2011, our friend Carlos was giving trainings in the rural regions to pastors and delegates on the church by-laws, focusing on the requirements laid out for elected leaders.  I prepared a brief reflection and questions for discussion on the same passage from Ephesians, focusing on the by-laws as the "ligaments" that hold the congregations and the national church together.

What I remember most about that visit was the feeling of fumbling.  I was still learning Spanish, and put hours into writing 4 or 5 questions that I hoped would be intelligible.  Speaking was hard, and trying to understand rural dialects for the first time even harder.  I fumbled as I took Quinn (age 3) to the latrine at night with a flashlight.  Neither the child nor the flashlight fell in, but it was not pretty. And Carlos laughed (not unkindly) as he read one of the questions I had written, which betrayed my total ignorance of a lively internal debate about the nature of spiritual gifts.

Despite that fumbling, we were welcomed with love from the beginning, and have learned so much from La Misión Cristiana and CIEETS.  As we come to the end of our time in Nicaragua, and prepare to travel to U.S. churches sharing stories of our time here, I realize that the work of Global Ministries is also a powerful "ligament" in the body of the global church. Our presence here is a powerful reminder to our Nicaraguan partners that the UCC and Disciples value and support their work. Our presence in North American congregations will share the good news of what other parts of "the body" are doing in other parts of the world.  In my mind, it "completes the circle," of being in relationship across borders.

PS - Over a decade ago, a teaching pastor and mentor of mine gave me a volume of The Gospel in Solentiname, and those dialogues by campesinos on a remote archipelago about the gospel readings were my first introduction to Nicaragua. They were compiled by Ernesto Cardenal, a priest and leader in the liberation theology movement and the Nicaraguan revolution.  We made the pilgrimage to Solentiname last weekend, and it is lovely to see how it has been developed as a tourist destination enough to generate income for the community, while still preserving the lush natural environment.  Another circle completed!

Cuidar la Creación

Laura Jean and I just finished co-teaching a class at the university called Cuidar la Creación: Medio Ambiente, Ética y Teología (Caring for the Creation: Environment, Ethics and Theology). It was a class that combined environmental science and theology -- I'll let you work out which of us taught which parts -- and it was totally a blast, a really fun and rewarding experience. Right now we're gearing up to teach it again starting in a few weeks.

On the science side I talked about how ecosystems work, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, photosynthesis, food webs, ecosystem services, climate change, deforestation, environmental health and more. Good nerdy stuff! We also touched on some ethical and policy issues such as the Tragedy of the Commons, Environmental Justice and the international climate negotiations. On the theology side, Laura Jean began in the beginning with the creation story and its call for humans to "till and keep" and be good stewards of the land. She also touched on the clear connection between the environment and the biblical call for justice, along with newer lines of thought such as ecofeminism.

The main goal of the course was to start from the students' experience of their own environment and then to apply what they learned about science and theology to their own communities and churches. The first homework assignment was an essay asking them to describe an environmental problem in their town or neighborhood, and to think about what the costs were to the community and whether or not anyone benefited from the situation. The results were a fascinating glimpse into the ground-level environmental problems in Nicaragua.

In a large class of nearly 40 students, a mix of urban-dwellers and campesinos, the three biggest problems identified were the following: (1) trash disposal and open trash heaps, (2) contamination of rivers and lakes, and (3) problems connected to clear cutting and deforestation. Teaching is a wonderful thing because you can learn so much from your students. Here's what I learned.

Anyone who has visited Nicaragua will have noticed the trash problem. In Managua the streets and gutters and canals are clogged with trash. Trash cans and dumpsters are non-existent and a culture of littering is well-established. The government has been working at improving the trash pick-up system, but many neighborhoods still suffer from unofficial dumping spots. Until recently, Managua was home to Central America's largest open-air trash dump, La Chureca, where hundreds of families lived by picking through the trash. (La Chureca was recently sealed and converted to a modern trash treatment dump thanks to a large aid package from Spain, and the families living there were given the option of employment at the recycling and sorting center.)

Among the students in the class, there was a pretty strong consensus that trash was Nicaragua's biggest pollution problem. Essay after essay recounted the same story told in a different barrio or pueblo: open-air dumping pits, children living nearby, no help from the government and a lack of concern by too many people. The trash is a clear public health threat, in addition to being generally unpleasant to live next to. People joke cynically that the Nicaraguan national flower is the plastic bag, which can be seen fluttering in the fields all around the country. The culture of littering goes hand in hand with a lack of infrastructure for dealing with the problem, and an explosion in the availability of disposable stuff -- all of which makes it a tough problem to solve. This year the government rolled out a big initiative called Vivir Bonito, Vivir Bien (Live Beautiful, Live Well), in hopes of making a dent in the problem.

Trash is also clearly connected to the second problem - the contamination of the lakes and rivers of Nicaragua. The country is home to two of the largest freshwater lakes in the Americas, Lago Xolotlán (Lake Managua) and Lago Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua). Lake Managua is severely contaminated, thanks to many decades of industrial dumping by factories that no longer exist, but whose contamination lives on after them. The lake also receives runoff from the city of Managua, which went largely untreated until recently. Cocibolca has avoided most of the extreme contamination of its sister to the north, but is currently at the center of the debate about the proposed trans-oceanic canal through Nicaragua.

In rural areas, overuse of pesticides are one of the major sources of water pollution. In Chichigalpa, one of the major sugar cane-producing regions, is currently experiencing an epidemic of chronic kidney disease. Hundreds of young, healthy men working the sugar cane plantations (owned by Nicaragua's wealthiest family, the Pellas) are dying from kidney failure. The disease is especially tragic since it strikes the young and advances rapidly with no cure. And while it has been difficult to pinpoint the cause of the epidemic, some combination of contaminated water and extreme dehydration seem to be the likely culprits. One group of students from that area of Nicaragua did interviews with community groups and workers as part of their final project for the course (more on which soon).

Since the end of the civil war, Nicaragua's agricultural frontier has pushed further into the eastern rainforest. The main culprit, and the eventual endpoint of the land, is cattle ranching -- profitable but destructive. In twenty years from 1990 (the end of the civil war) to 2010, Nicaragua's forested land shrunk from 37% to 25% of the country (FAO 2010). The maps shown here (Liscow 2012) show the tremendous deforestation in the center of the country, from 1983 to 2000.

 

This deforestation is something we have seen first hand on our trips to the campo, and it is one reason behind the church's biodigester project. We have heard time and again from small Nicaraguan farmers about the harm that comes from not conserving the forests -- lack of firewood, erosion, loss of springs and water sources, floods, loss of wildlife and big changes in rainfall patterns.

According to many of our students, the various churches of Nicaragua are asleep when it comes to environmental issues. Several students have told us that the churches are perhaps overly focused on the soul and the hereafter that they forget the body and the present world. But environmental problems continue to grow and occupy a larger space in the national conversation, it's not likely that the churches will remain quiescent for long, at least not if our students have anything to say about it.

Mission Moment

The Global Ministries weekly prayer comes once again to visit Nicaragua. The link is here -- previous mission moments here and here.

Pray for Nicaragua on Sunday, March 10, 2013

Lectionary Selection: Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Prayers for Nicaragua:
Beloved Father, you give to us abundantly, when we manage your gifts responsibly, and when we spend them frivolously.  Profligate God, you bless us richly, when we fall at your feet in gratitude, and when we grumble and worry about receiving our fair share.  We thank you and praise you for who you are.  Give us hearts that are generous to our brothers and sisters, that we may rejoice whole-heartedly when the lost are found and the least are served.

We pray for Nicaragua:

• for so many struggling to survive, whose struggle is made more difficult by global economic turmoil and rising prices for petroleum, for transport, rice and beans.
• for children whose parents are too poor to send them to free public schools, because they can’t afford shoes or school supplies, or rely on them to work so the family can eat.
• We pray for La Misión Cristiana (the Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua): as they work to help children get an education, to help families have enough to eat, to train pastors to care for and inspire their churches and communities, to build biogas stoves and plant trees, and to share a vision of a new Nicaragua.
• for the church leadership, as they work to make these visions reality with very limited resources, that the leadership will be inspired by love of the work to which God has called them, and continue to move forward despite real challenges.

In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.

Mission Stewardship Moment from Nicaragua:
The village of San Pedro is found about an hour from the paved road in the driest, hottest part of Nicaragua. There is no electricity.  Any water for cooking and cleaning must be carried up from the spring in buckets, and to get cell signal you have to climb a mountain. Each day brings only a few vehicles trundling by on the road that passes in front of the church. San Pedro is off the grid. And it was here that several pastors and lay leaders of the Christian Mission Churches gathered last year to kick off a new project -- the building of biogas cooking stoves known as biodigesters.

Rural Nicaraguans typically cook their meals using firewood. This practice often leads to delicious arroz y frijoles or sopa de gallina, but can cause health problems for the women who are in charge of the kitchen. Cutting firewood also accelerates the severe deforestation in the region, which can cause soil erosion, flooding, changes in rainfall patterns and more. And as trees grow more and more scarce, the daily search for firewood can be expensive and time-consuming. For this reason, a good alternative to firewood was one of the primary needs of the community identified by the local pastors.

A biodigester is a technology that converts cow manure (an abundant resource in this cattle ranching area) into methane cooking gas. With the collaboration of several U.S. partner churches, the Christian Mission has now built 3 working biodigesters for families near San Pedro, with plans for 7 more this year. The family who received the first biodigester reports that it is working well and that one bucket of manure yields 3-4 hours of cooking gas a day. The pastors in the region are hopeful that the project can continue and expand to benefit more local families.

Biodigester Update

The biodigester project, which I blogged about previously here and here, has been chugging along nicely. We have been trying to take advantage of the dry season to install as many as possible. In November we met at the village of Tamarindo Malpaso to install our second biodigester at the casa pastoral (parsonage) of the 20th Christian Mission church. Malpaso is another small rural village just a few kilometers up the road from San Pedro. Once again, a core group of local pastors and church leaders showed up to help dig, mix cement, cut PVC pipe, etc. And once again, Davíd from EOS was our guide for the installation.

El proyecto de biodigestores, sobre lo que escribí anteriormente aquí y aquí, ha avanzado bastante. Hemos tratado de aprovechar el verano para instalar el mayor cantidad posible. En noviembre, nos reunimos en el pueblo de Tamarindo Malpaso para instalar el segundo biodigestor en la casa pastoral de la 20a Iglesia Misión Cristiana. Malpaso es otro pequeño pueblo rural, ubicada unos pocos kilometros más alla de San Pedro. Una vez más, un grupo de pastores y líderes de las iglesias locales llegó para ayudar a cavar el hoyo, mezclar el cemento, cortar la tubería, y más. Y una vez más, Davíd de EOS fue nuestro maestro para la instalación.

Here we are installing the black plastic covering for the hole. Aquí se instala el plástico negro para forrar el hoyo.

Pastor Boniche (the national president of the Christian Mission churches) and Victoriano (the pastor of local church #20) listen as Davíd explains the process. Pastor Boniche (el presidente naciónal de las Iglesias Misión Cristiana) y Victoriano (el pastor de la iglesia local #20) escuchen mientras Davíd explica el proceso.

Here are Davíd and Pastor Boniche installing the input tube. Davíd y Pastor Boniche instalan el tubo de entrada.

In December we installed biodigester #3. Hno. Misael is the pastor of the campo (new church start) in nearby La Leonera, but since the campo doesn't yet have a casa pastoral (and is quite difficult to get to without a horse) we installed the biodigester at his family house in San Pedro.

En diciembre se instaló #3. Hno. Misael es el pastor del campo en La Leonera, pero dado que el campo aun no tiene casa pastoral (y es difícil llegar sin caballo) se instaló el biodigestor en la casa familiar de Misael en San Pedro.

Sonia and Pastor Boniche, enjoying the shade and watching the progress on biodigester #3. Sonia y Pastor Boniche, disfrutando la sombra y viendo el progreso en #3.

Here's the completed biodigester, as seen out the window of the house. Aquí se encuentra el biodigestor  terminado, visto a través de la ventana de la casa.

Misael and his wife, showing off the new gas burning stove. Misael y su esposa, mostrando la nueva cocina de gas.

Both biodigesters #2 and #3 will need 50 buckets of manure and 50 buckets of water before they start working, so we're planning to do some follow-up next time we visit the area. While we were in San Pedro the last trip, Davíd was able to visit the site of our first installation to check up on it and give some maintenance advice on how to keep it in working order. I was also interested to see that the local churches had recently installed small solar panels, giving them a bit of daily electricity.

Ambos los biodigestores #2 y #3 necesitarán 50 baldes de estiércol y 50 baldes de agua antes de comenzar a funcionar. Por eso vamos a dar seguimiento durante la próxima visita a la zona. Mientras estábamos en San Pedro para la última visita, Davíd pudo visitar el lugar de la primer instalación para verla y dar unos consejos sobre el buen mantenimiento del biodigestor. También me interesaba ver que las iglesias locales habían instalado unos pequeños paneles solares, dando un poco de electricidad cada día.

Today I want to study

Poster seen in Rancho Grande: "Motherhood can wait, today I want to study." Includes some stats about the risks of early pregnancy for girls. What's interesting is that this is a campaign funded by USAID (i.e. U.S. tax dollars). In our experience, the barrier for most people in continuing their education isn't the lack of desire, but the lack of resources and opportunities... especially in the countryside.

They Paved Paradise

When I was a kid there was an enormous empty field across the street from our house where we spent long hours riding bikes, catching tadpoles, getting muddy and doing all that kid stuff. Sometime in junior high it got bulldozed into a subdivision of houses. Since by then I was too cool for kid stuff, I didn't really mourn its passing, but it was a really special gift to have had this parcel of wildness just outside my door growing up. Like Joni said, "you don't know what you've got til it's gone."

Graffiti in Managua: "To lose Bosawas
(Nicaragua's largest nature reserve) is
to lose everything."

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I think stories like this uncover a bit of our natural ambivalence toward "progress" and "development." Anyway, that was what was bouncing around in my head on during our long, bumpy trip to the campo last week (driving bad roads can be really hypnotic somehow). The dirt road from Matagalpa eastwards to the Atlantic Coast is pretty terrible in the rainy season, muddy and rutted where not washed out entirely. But we passed armies of workers working to extend the cobble-stoned sections of the road, brick by brick, in a constant struggle against the ravages of the tropics.

(Road building in the U.S. is done by machines and a handful of humans; here, where the cost of labor is shockingly low and capital equipment is expensive, roads are built by hundreds of humans armed with shovels.)

It is expected that improved roads will bring economic opportunities and a measure of increased prosperity to the poorest parts of Nicaragua, which is undeniably a good thing! But there are notes of worry and ambivalence too when we listen to the pastors in the region. With roads often come a flood of newcomers, changing the culture and the way of life, new technologies, problems from the big cities, pollution and deforestation. When we visited Ecuador's oilfields a few years ago, many people told us that the road built by Texaco in the 1960s was one of the most destructive elements of the oil exploration, overnight changing an isolated corner of pristine rainforest into a frontier town.

Liscow 2012

This last week I was in the north to teach a class on "The Church and the Environmental Crisis" and several of the studying pastors had harsh words for what they called the "fever of cattle ranching" that has swept Nicaragua in the last few decades, taming the great expanse of Nicaragua's rain forest and converting it into pasture. Since the end of the civil war, Nicaragua's great wild eastern forest--including the vast nature reserves of Bosawas and Indio Maíz--has been nibbled and gnawed, faster and faster, and is now legitimately threatened (see map). According to their testimonials, in the last 30 years, a mere generation, they have seen a drastic reduction in the local forest, and the virtual disappearance of many of the iconic rainforest species. They mentioned, changes in the local climate and rainfall have shifted planting and harvest times by as much as a month.

Apropos of all this, e360 has a really interesting article and video presentation about the planned highway through part of the Bolivian amazon that has pitted Evo Morales against some of the indigenous groups who helped make him Latin America's first indigenous president.

Bolivia has been embroiled in conflict for the past year over the planned construction of a 182-mile highway, 32 miles of which would cut through TIPNIS, a vital ecosystem — located at the geographic heart of South America — that links the Andes and the Amazon basins. The road would be an important addition to Bolivia’s woefully undeveloped highway system. Yet environmental studies predict that the project will cause widespread damage, contaminating the park’s three main rivers, opening large areas of forest to illegal logging and settlement, and altering habitats that are home to 11 endangered species and rare primates. All that would threaten the traditional way of life of the reserve’s three dwindling indigenous cultures — the Tsimanes, Yuracarés and Mojeño-Trinitarios.

There is a sense, fostered by many environmental and development groups, that the twin goals of environmental protection and economic development can be wedded together through the concept of "sustainability." Sustainable development is at heart a positive, hopeful vision of a future that is prosperous, just and green -- although some have argued that it is a mirage that papers over real tensions between the two goals. I still think the concept has a lot of merit, but it's worth recognizing how hard it really is to accomplish, especially when not everyone involved is on board with the idea, even in theory (e.g. a few recent reports on the role of organized crime in driving deforestation).

It Works!

When last we left the biodigester, it had been successfully installed but was not yet functional. The biodigester's big plastic bag needs to be first filled with 50 buckets of (ahem) cow poop and 50 buckets of water (perhaps with a dash of molasses). And then we wait for the bacteria to do their work. The bag begins to inflate with methane gas and after a few weeks it is ready for use.

Pastor Eustachio had told me when I saw him in March that the biodigester was working really well, but we had not been able to return to see for ourselves.  Thankfully a visiting group from Ohio was really excited to make the 3 hour trip to San Pedro to learn about and see the biodigester project. [*]
So, as you can see, it works!  This is the fully inflated biodigester, with the beginnings of a brick protective wall around it.
Pastor Eustachio explains to Hno. Boniche (the presidente of La Misión) and members of the Ohio group how the biodigester works.
And here's the result: a successful blue flame coming out of the stove-top!
A daily bucket of manure and another of water provides about 4 hours of gas for cooking. The one drawback is that the big pots used for soup or other large dishes don't fit on the small range, and so the family still uses the wood stove for some meals. So the biogas is not replacing 100% of the family's wood use, but it's a start!

This month we are laying plans to build the second biodigester (rainy season permitting) in the nearby village of Malpaso. The generous help of several of the groups who have visited La Misión Cristiana this summer--including the brothers and sisters from Ohio who trekked all the way to San Pedro--has been key to moving ahead on this project.

[*] Actually we just said goodbye to the eighth group (out of nine) who has come to visit and spend time with La Misión Cristiana this year. This may help explain why blogging has been light non-existent over the last few months.

Good Intentions

As I was writing that last blog post about life in the countryside, I kept turning over in my head a blog post written by a friend of ours titled "To Hell With Good Intentions." It's smart, eloquent and challenging.  I'll just quote part of it, but the whole thing is good.

For all of us who go to Nicaragua – or indeed, any place poorer than where we are from: India, Mexico, Appalachia, Detroit – our first instinct is to fix it. Whether we will admit it or not, the very first thing we do when confronted with a terrible situation is to furiously work through possible responses to that problem in our mind until we hit upon the “magic” solution.

I know this because I do it all the time. Even after ten years of living in Nicaragua, I still do it. I go to Nueva Vida, the neighborhood created by Hurricane Mitch resettlement, and with everything I see, I work through scenarios to “fix” what is “wrong” in Nicaragua.

I do it too.  I think this instinct is a mixture of good intentions and a subconscious desire to recreate something safe and well-understood amidst the chaos of a different culture.  But I have noticed, after having lived here almost 2 years, that most of my first impressions were untrustworthy.

For me the process cultural acclimatization started out like this: first I encounter something new and unusual.  Cold showers? What's up with all the trash in the streets?  Even more mundane things like, why do they only sell cookies in "wasteful" individual-sized packaging?  My first reaction is to see these things as an irritation (and maybe not even consciously). Or maybe the result of Nicaragua's poverty, and hence, a problem to be fixed.

In fact, it's remarkably easy to pin these differences on poverty because, well, Nicaragua is a poor country and the very real problems of poverty are visible.  But with time you start to realize that many of those "problems" are subtly mixed together with differences in culture and it can be difficult to tease them apart. There are actually really obvious reasons for many of those initial differences I saw.  For example, they individually wrap the cookies because food goes stale much, much faster here than in more temperate climes -- it would actually be much more wasteful to do it the way I wanted to!

I don't mean to minimize the problems that Nicaragua faces, just to say that poor campesinos don't necessarily look at their packed dirt floor and plastic chairs and see a problem to solved.  It's just part of the culture.  I've heard many folks tell us how they prefer the country lifestyle to the more "affluent, western" version they could find in Managua.  Poverty doesn't encompass who they are.  Another section of the post also stuck with me:

When I first came to Nicaragua, I thought I was coming to help Nicaraguans. I was sorely mistaken. None of us are needed here. No matter what my skills are, Nicaraguans are capable of doing everything I will do here, and in most cases, do it better, faster and more efficiently. So what is it exactly that I do?

It's an unsettling perspective, but it kinda fits with our experience here.  In fact, when we first got here we were a bit of a liability.  We spoke Spanish poorly, we didn't know the culture, customs, history or our way around the city.  The folks from the church basically took us in like we were war orphans.

OK, maybe not thaaat bad, but I think it is only now, after a year and half in Nicaragua, that we are starting to pull our weight.  We both bring skills to our work, but they are not unknown skills.  We might not be needed, but I know that the church is happy to have us and the many visiting congregations as partners in their work.  It's a reminder that when we work together in partnerships we can accomplish more.

Life in the Campo

Life in the countryside begins early.  Sometime around 3 or 4 in the morning the rooster begins to crow even though the sun is far from up.  (By the way, spanish-speaking roosters say ¡qui-qui-ri-quí! not cock-a-doodle-doo!) A part of my brain starts to wake up even though I won't drag my body out of bed for a while yet. But that's the luxury of being a guest -- around us the house starts to stir, as it does every morning.  Men head off to work to take advantage of the cool. The kitchen springs to life with the sound of tortillas being prepared.

A fair portion of our job as missionaries is visiting churches and communities outside of Managua.  For Laura Jean's theology education project we have been visiting the campo for 4 to 5 day intensive workshops about once a month.  Usually there is no hospedaje in these communities, so the only place to stay is in the houses of church members, who never fail to show us outrageous and humbling hospitality.  For example, someone usually gives up their own bed for us to sleep in.

Living in Managua is a big change from the United States, but heading out from the capital into the campo is an even bigger cultural jump. In Managua if you want you can live a North American lifestyle, but in the country a shower consists of a bucket of cold water and a small plastic pan to pour it over your head.  For me, dumping that pan over your head in the chill of the morning takes a fair bit of courage (but it definitely does wake you up).  And of course there are no toilets, only latrines.

The houses typically have packed dirt floors and--be they made of concrete, brick or wood--are designed to maximize air flow to cool off the house during the day. The roof is made of traditional brick tiles or metal sheets (which are hotter and louder in the rain). You'll share the house with dogs and chickens and insects. If you want to sit down you can pull up one of the ubiquitous stacking plastic chairs that populate every Misión church. Rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner -- along with cuajada (a salty cheese), plantains, eggs and (since you are a guest) chicken.  And coffee, thankfully.

For better and for worse the natural world is only an arms length away.  The bright green burst of jungle vegetation is constantly in the corner of your eye.  In the dry season you are dusty and wind-whipped.  In the rainy season you get wet and muddy (but then the sun dries you off).

A wave of infrastructure development has come to Nicaragua in recent years and many places we visit have electricity or are getting it for the first time.  With electricity comes cell phones and bright red satellite TV dishes sprouting up on the tops of houses -- even in the campo TV cannot be stopped.

On my first visit to the campo the communities we visited seemed so isolated, like we had traveled to the very edge of the world.  It was only on later trips, while talking with some of the teenagers in the congregations, that I could see that life was normal and boring no matter where you went.  Kids dressing to impress, hanging out in groups, texting on their cell phones.  (I think there is something universal about adolescence -- the adult cultures we grow into may be very different with diverse expectations, but the process of finding your way into your culture, of deciding what type of person you want to be, has very common outlines.)

In the tropics night falls like a rock at around 6pm and by 7pm it is totally dark.  Some nights there is a worship service, other nights people sit around chatting and singing and finishing up in the kitchen, but not too late since the rooster crows early and the next day is coming soon.

Ben Linder

Twenty-five years ago this week Ben Linder, Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales were killed by Contra soldiers while working on a mini-hydroelectric project for the town of San José de Bocay in northern Nicaragua.  Of course thousands of Nicaraguans -- Sandinistas, Contras and average citizens alike -- were killed during the Contra War, but Ben Linder was an American citizen killed by CIA-trained soldiers. As a result, his death made international news and brought down even more scrutiny down on Ronald Reagan's murky war.

Linder was an engineer who had been inspired by the Sandinista revolution and had come to Nicaragua in 1983 wanting to help.  Not one to stay in Managua attending rallies, he eventually made his way to the dangerous northern border region.  He put his engineering skills to work building mini-hydroelectric plants for the small war-torn villages in that region.

By all accounts, he was a good guy -- idealistic, committed, friendly and hard-working.  He was also apparently a very talented clown -- you know, juggling, unicycle, the whole 9 yards -- and we always see his red-nosed clown face gracing Nicaraguan murals from that era.  His killing came in the midst of the Congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal and was immediately sucked into the vortex.  When Ben's parents traveled to Nicaragua for the funeral his father placed blame for his son's death: "Someone who paid someone who paid someone, and so on down the line to the President of the United States."  Administration officials replied stating that Linder had "put himself in harm's way."

Since the '80s, Linder has been an inspiration for many of the foreigners who come to Nicaragua to work for churches or development groups (um, like us!).  In Managua there is a Casa Ben Linder which organizes weekly talks on development and current events, and just this past week organized a 25 year commemoration.

[Update: Here's a nice two-part write-up from Nicaragua Dispatch about Ben and his legacy: Part 1 and Part 2.]

Biodigester!

I'm excited to announce the start of a new church project that we are helping out with.  It's been a long time in the planning, but it's finally kicked off!  On February 18, members of the Christian Mission churches in the western region of Nicaragua gathered to build their first biodigester.  (Español sigue abajo.)

Now what, you might be asking, is a biodigester?  A biodigester is a relatively simple and inexpensive piece of technology that converts animal manure into cooking gas.  While city dwellers often use fossil fuels for cooking, rural families in Nicaragua have traditionally used firewood as their means of preparing food.  Collecting firewood requires a large amount of time and effort (or money) by the family, and the breathing in of woodsmoke is harmful to the health of those who prepare the food.  In addition, the use of firewood contributes to deforestation.

Because of this, there is a great opportunity to improve health and to conserve the environment at the same time.  For the reasons above, people have long realized that the developing world needs better options for cooking their food. This has led to the development of many types of "appropriate technology" including solar cookers and fuel-efficient stoves such as the ones developed by Guatemalan Cultural Action (another Global Ministries partner).  Biodigester projects have been especially successful in China, but a number of Nicaraguan groups have also had success in the hot, western parts of the country, and there are even big plans to expand.

The first beneficiaries of this project are Eustachio Pineda and his family.  Eustachio is the pastor at the Christian Mission church in San Pedro, a small village not yet connected to Nicaragua’s electrical grid. Because the pastors are moved every 3 years, each church comes equipped with a parsonage, and it was there that we gathered that morning.  A team of 4 church members had already done the back-breaking work of digging a pit—3.5m long by 1m wide by 1m deep—in the rocky soil.

David and Eustachio, without shoes

Our leader that morning was David Hernandez, a representative of Emerging Opportunities for Sustainability (EOS), a non-profit organization founded by a pair of former Peace Corps volunteers.  Both David and EOS have several years experience building and installing biodigesters (and other technologies) in this corner of Nicaragua, and in fact David is a friend and neighbor of the regional minister for the Christian Mission churches in that area.  With his expert guidance, the training of the group and the installation of the biodigester only took a few hours.

The basic concept of a biodigester is a large bag made of thick plastic which is then filled with 50 buckets of cow or pig manure and 50 buckets of water.  When animal waste decomposes in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic decomposition) the chemical reaction releases methane gas, commonly known as “swamp gas,” which can be used for cooking.  The methane gas bubbles up to the top of the bag where it exits through a PVC tube, which is then connected to an ordinary gas burning stove in the house.

Installing the big bag

Fresh animal manure is dumped in one end of the bag and the processed manure exits out the other end, and can then be used as a very rich organic fertilizer.  A steady diet of one bucket of manure and one bucket of water will provide a family with up to 5 hours of cooking gas each day.

David, with the completed stove

The first task of the morning was to dig the input and output channels, and then to line the pit with black plastic to protect the plastic bag containing the manure.  The plastic bag is the most important component of the biodigester and a leak or puncture could cause a real problem.  It’s also important to provide a roof for the biodigester since exposure to the sun will greatly reduce the lifespan of the bag.  At each stage in the process, David showed us ingenious ways of getting the work done.  To secure the black plastic in place he fashioned “staples” out of the spokes of an old bicycle wheel and he used a 1.5 liter soda bottle to create an overflow valve to prevent excessive gas buildup.

With help from a few other EOS workers, David retrofitted a simple, commercial, two-burner stove and connected it up to the PVC pipe.  To reduce the diameter of the pipe to match the stove fitting, he partially melted the plastic, refitted it and froze it in place with a splash of water.  Once again a very clever and efficient method, although breathing burning plastic fumes is not generally recommended. The final stages were the input and output basins, constructed out of cement, a handful of bricks and an unused plastic bucket.  All that remains is to fill the bag with enough manure and water so it starts producing gas.  For a fully inflated biodigester check out this video:

The western region of Nicaragua is hot and dry for half the year and suffers from increasing deforestation, which means that each year obtaining firewood becomes more and more time-consuming and expensive.  The clearing of forests brings consequences such as increased soil erosion, biodiversity loss, the loss of freshwater sources and reduced protections against flooding.  Last year, during the rainy season the region experienced catastrophic flooding which led to widespread loss of crops. Globally, deforestation is the second largest cause of carbon emissions, and Nicaragua is one of the countries most at risk of climate change in the coming century.

Just add manure!
Pastor Eustachio told us that the church pays 350 cordobas a month (about $15/month, or $180/year) to buy firewood for the pastoral family.  In comparison, the materials for the biodigester total around $150-$200, meaning that the project will pay for itself within a year.  In this region, which has numerous herds of cattle (and therefore abundant inputs for the biodigester), a biodigester can provide enough cooking gas for a family for several years, is cheaper than buying tanks of propane and has the advantage of being neutral with regards to carbon emissions.

Delicious soup, and a lot of smoke

The benefits are even greater when you factor in improvements to health.  A traditional Nicaraguan wood stove produces delicious food, but also releases a lot of smoke into the house and kitchen.  This smoke can lead to serious health problems for women, who do almost all of the cooking, small children and the elderly.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the use of firewood within the house increases the exposure to harmful substances such as fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide.  These substances increase the risk of illnesses such as pneumonia, chronic bronchitis and other health problems in children and adults.

Undoubtedly, one of the most immediate positive effects will be the reduction in time dedicated to gathering firewood.  Local church leaders tell us that in some communities families have to walk up to two hours daily in search of firewood, or buy it from vendors at a high price.  Often the collection of firewood is the responsability of the children of the family.

It was clear from the assembled crowd watching that there is a lot of interest in project.  In addition to the local church members, a number of pastors and leaders from the other regional churches showed to help and observe.  Many in the crowd were taking notes on the installation process and asking when it might be extended to other villages.  We are hopeful that we can continue this project and benefit many more families and churches in the region!

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Estoy emocionado de anunciar el inicio de un nuevo proyecto de la iglesia con que estamos ayudando.  Ha sido un largo tiempo en planificación, pero por fin comenzó!  El 18 de febrero, los miembros de las iglesias Misión Cristiana en la región occidental de Nicaragua se reunieron para construir su primer biodigestor.

¿Y ahora que, se pregunta, es un biodigestor?  Un biodigestor es una tecnología sencilla y económica para convertir estiércol animal en gas para cocinar.  Mientras los habitantes de las ciudades a menudo utilizan combustibles fósiles para cocinar, las familias campesinas han utilizado de forma tradicional la leña como medio para la preparación de sus alimentos.  Para recoger leña requiere una buena cantidad de tiempo y esfuerzo (o dinero) por la familia y la respiración de humo es perjudicial para la salud de las personas que preparan la comida.  Además, el uso de leña contribuye a la deforestación.

Hay entonces una gran oportunidad para mejorar la salud y para conservar el medio ambiente al mismo tiempo.  Por las razones anteriores, se han dado cuenta que el mundo en desarrollo necesita mejores opciones para cocinar.  Esto ha llevado al desarrollo de varios tipos de "tecnologías adecuadas" incluidas las cocinas solares y cocinas economicas, tales como las desarrolladas por Acción Cultural Guatemalteca (un otro socio del Ministerios Globales).  Proyectos de biodigestores han sido especialmente exitosas en China, pero algunos grupos nicaragüenses también han tenido éxito en las partes calientes y occidentales del país, y aún hay planes para expandir.

Los primeros beneficiarios del proyecto son Eustachio Pineda y su familia.  Eustachio es el pastor de la iglesia Misión Cristiana en San Pedro, un pueblo pequeño que aún no está conectado a la red eléctrica de Nicaragua.  Debido a que los pastores se mueven cada 3 años, cada iglesia tiene una casa pastoral, y era allí donde nos reunimos esa mañana.  Un equipo de 4 miembros de la iglesia ya ha hecho el trabajo más duro de cavar una fosa—3.5m de largo por 1m de ancho por 1m de profundidad—en el suelo rocoso.

Nuestro líder esa mañana era David Hernandez, un representante de EOS, una organización fundada por ex voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz.  Ambos David y EOS tiene varios años de experiencia en construir y instalar biodigestores (y otras tecnologías) en este rincón de Nicaragua, y de hecho, David es amigo y vecino del presbitero de la Misión Cristiana en esa zona.  Con su asesoramiento experto, la capacitación del grupo y la instalación del biodigestor sólo tomó un par de horas.

El concepto básico de un biodigestor es una bolsa grande de plástico grueso, la cual se llena con 50 cubos de estiércol de vaca o de cerdo y 50 cubos de agua.  Cuando se descompone los residuos animales en ausencia de oxígeno (la descomposición anaeróbica) la reacción química libera gas metano, conocido como “gas de pantano,” que se puede utilizar para cocinar.  El gas metano burbujea hasta la parte superior de la bolsa donde sale a través un tubo de PVC, que se conecta a una cocina convenciónal de gas en la casa.

Estiércol animal se vierte en un extremo de la bolsa y el estiércol procesado sale el otro extremo, y se puede utilizar como un rico abono orgánico.  Una dieta constante de un cubo de estiércol y un cubo de agua proveerá una familia con hasta 5 horas de gas para cocinar cada día.

La primera tarea de la mañana era cavar los canales de entrada y salida, y luego para forrar la fosa con plástico negro para proteger la bolsa grande que contiene el estiércol.  La bolsa grande es el componente más importante del biodigestor y una fuga o una punción podría causar un gran problema.  También es importante tener un techo para el biodigestor ya que la exposición del sol puede reducir en gran medida la vida útil de la bolsa.  En cada etapa del proceso, David nos enseñó maneras ingeniosas de hacer el trabajo.  Para fijar el plástico negro en su lugar, él formó “grapas” hecho de los radios de una rueda de bicicleta vieja y ocupó una botella de gaseosa de 1.5 litros para crear una valvula para evitar la acumulación excesiva de gas.

Con la ayuda de otros trabajadores de EOS, David reajustado una sencilla cocina comercial y la conectó a la tubería de PVC.  Para reducir el diámetro del tubo para que coincida con el accesorio de la cocina, él parcialmente derritió el plástico, lo reparó y lo congeló en su lugar con un poco de agua.  Una vez más un metodo muy ingenioso y eficáz, aunque no es muy recomendable respirar los gases de la quema de plástico.  La etapa final era las cuencas de entrada y salida, hechas de cemento, algunos ladrillos y un cubo.  Todo lo que queda es llenar la bolsa grande con suficiente estiércol y agua para que comience producir gas.

La zona occidental es cálido y seco durante la mitad del año y padece una creciente deforestación, que implica que la busca de leña se hace más costoso y gasta más tiempo.  El despale de los bosques trae como consecuencia el incremento de la erosión de los suelos, la pérdida de biodiversidad, un mayor riesgo de inundaciones y la pérdida de fuentes de agua.  El año pasado, durante la época lluviosa, la región sufrió unas inundaciones catastróficas que condujo a la pérdida masiva de los cultivos.  Globalmente, la deforestación es la segunda causa mayor del cambio climático y Nicaragua es uno de los países más expuestos al riesgo del cambio climático en el próximo siglo.

Pastor Eustachio nos dijo que la iglesia paga 350 cordobas por mes ($15/mes, o $180/año) para comprar leña para la familia pastoral.  En comparación, las materiales para el biodigestor suman a $150-$200, que implica que el proyecto se pagará por sí mismo dentro de un año.  En esta zona, que cuenta con bastante ganados (y por eso, insumos abundantes para el biodigestor), un biodigestor puede proveer suficiente gas para una familia por varios años, sale más barata que comprar tanques de propano y tiene la ventaja de ser neutral con respecto a las emisiones de carbono.

Los beneficios son aun más grande cuando se toma en cuenta las mejoras a la salud.  Una estufa tradicional nicaragüense produce una rica comida, pero también libera una gran cantidad de humo en la casa y la cocina.  Este humo puede causar problemas graves para la salud de las mujeres, que hacen casi todos de la cocina, niños pequeños y los del tercer edad.  Según la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), el uso de leña para cocinar dentro de la casa aumenta la exposición a sustancias nocivas tales como las partículas finas y el monóxido de carbono.  Estas sustancias incrementan el riesgo de enfermedades tales como la neumonía, la bronquitis crónica y otros problemas de salud en niños y adultos.

Indudablemente, uno de los efectos positivos más inmediatos será la disminución del tiempo que las personas dedican buscando la leña.  Los líderes de las iglesias locales dicen que en algunas comunidades, las familias tienen que caminar dos horas cada día sólo en busca de leña, o la compran a los vendedores a un precio alto.  A menudo la recogida de leña es la responsabilidad de los niños y niñas de la familia.

Quedó claro que en la multitud reunida viendo que hay mucha interés en el proyecto.  Además de los miembros locales, los pastores y líderes de las otras iglesias de la región llegaron para ayudar y observar.  Muchas personas en el grupo estaban tomando notas sobre el proceso de instalación y estaban preguntando cuando podría extenderse a otros pueblos. Tenemos la esperanza de que podamos continuar con este proyecto y beneficiar a muchas más familias y las iglesias en la región!

The High Cost of Being Poor

My Dad always talks about a story he heard from a Catholic priest who told him that he knew his parish was poor when they passed the offering plate and someone put in a dime and took back a nickel in change.  As a kid I kinda figured this was just one of those stories.  I mean, a nickel?  But down here, a common addition to the offering plate in church is 10 cordobas, or a little less than 50 cents.  The Misión churches are run on a flood of such small offerings, each given freely and with great love by folks who don't have a lot to spare.

Apropos of my last post on mission and development work, I've been thinking about that priest's story.  I guess it dates back to the Depression when the phrase brother can you spare a dime meant something real.  But we hear the same phrase here on the streets -- Dame un peso, chele -- often from little kids begging for change.  In this case, they are literally asking us for a nickel.  We see kids working here all the time.  Kids come by our house selling tortillas, sometimes accompanied by parents, sometimes not.  Kids perform in the street, juggling balls wearing sad-clown make-up, washing windows, selling food or newspapers at the stoplights.  And yeah, we see them working during school hours.

Kids working when they should be learning seems crazy to me. I've always been taught that the way out of poverty is education. And it's true, and education is very clearly one of the church's top priorities.  But in another sense, education is something of a luxury when your family doesn't have enough to eat and even young children are needed to work. Public school is free here, but even so we hear about families who are too poor to buy paper and pencil, much less a uniform.

The economist Jeffrey Sachs has popularized the idea of the "poverty trap" to explain just why it is so difficult for those on the very bottom rungs to climb higher.  The theory is that even smart, motivated, hard-working poor people often cannot escape from poverty because they are blocked at every turn by the need to just survive.  When you spend 100% or more on basic necessities, there's nothing left over to invest in capital for a business start-up and there's nothing to offer as collateral for a loan (assuming there are banks who will loan to you in the first place).  One individual can't buy in bulk to save money (although cooperatives can).  At its most basic level people stuck in a poverty trap can't afford to buy the amount of food that would allow them to work a full day of physical labor for a wage.  And don't even think about catching malaria or HIV or anything else...

In other words, it is expensive to be poor and cheap to be rich.  The playing field is tilted.

In a macroeconomics context, the poverty trap posits that very poor countries don't save money because their citizens are living hand-to-mouth, and are therefore collectively unable to invest in the sort of infrastructure (decent roads to transport goods, electricity, public education, etc.) that make economic growth possible.  From experience, we can say that roads, electricity and schools are all challenges once you get outside the cities.  (If you're interested, click here for a long discussion in the context of tropical Africa; it's technical but not that hard to follow.)

The idea of a poverty trap is not uncontroversial (see here for an alternate view), but I think it makes a certain intuitive sense.  A lot of development programs are based around the idea that well-targeted aid can help people "get over the hump." Some programs provide food security or basic health care so that people are able to work, while others provide access to credit (micro-lending) so people can start small businesses.  Still others work to improve education to open up horizons for the future.

Anyway, this is one of the ways I've been conceptualizing some of the projects that we've been helping out with.  More centrally la Misión Cristiana also sees these projects as one of the many ways it strives to preach the gospel ... using words when necessary.

Doing It Right

We're back in Nicaragua after a great trip to the U.S. (more on which soon). As we get deeper into the projects that we work on with la Misión Cristiana, we've been thinking a little about what it is that we do and how we do it.  To give an example of what I mean, here's an interesting article by Charles Kenny titled "Haiti Doesn't Need Your Old T-Shirt" about the unintended consequences of (some) charity and development work.

Here's the trouble with dumping stuff we don't want on people in need: What they need is rarely the stuff we don't want. And even when they do need that kind of stuff, there are much better ways for them to get it than for a Western NGO to gather donations at a suburban warehouse, ship everything off to Africa or South America, and then try to distribute it to remote areas. World Vision, for example, spends 58 cents per shirt on shipping, warehousing, and distributing them, according to data reported by the blog Aid Watch -- well within the range of what a secondhand shirt costs in a developing country. Bringing in shirts from outside also hurts the local economy: Garth Frazer of the University of Toronto estimates that increased used-clothing imports accounted for about half of the decline in apparel industry employment in Africa between 1981 and 2000. Want to really help a Zambian? Give him a shirt made in Zambia.

Now, our work with Global Ministries doesn't involve t-shirts and is only partially about development work per se, but it's worth asking if we aren't making similar mistakes by emphasizing our priorities and interests instead of listening closer to our Nicaraguan friends.  I hope not, but it is always good to self-examine.

Of course, we all know about the bad old way of doing missions.  Missionary (and development) work used to be a offshoot of colonialism, the system of economic and military domination of poor countries by the rich ones that still echoes around the world today.  In support of empire, churches from the global north were encouraged to pick up the white man's burden, and in turn adopted an attitude of superiority towards their brothers and sisters across the globe.  But just knowing about the wrong way doesn't automatically make it easier do it right.

Global Ministries has adopted an explicitly anti-colonial way of doing overseas ministry and I think they have a really good model for how people and churches from the global north can build links with folks in the global south.  The Spanish word we use to describe the heart of our work is acompañamiento (accompaniment), which implies not leading and not following, but walking together and sharing the road and the struggles.

In a sense, the idea is to move beyond that old adage about teaching a woman to fish.  To mangle the metaphor, a step beyond "teaching" would be working with the fisherfolk to build a self-sustaining, local fishing school, all the while trying not to destroy the local fishing economy or the fishery ecosystem.

The way it works is that la Misión Cristiana sets the priorities, designs the projects (often with our input) and makes the decisions.  American churches can provide resources by giving to Global Ministries (who then passes that money through to various local partners around the world) and by going on people-to-people pilgrimages where groups can visit the local partners to learn and work together.  So far we have been lucky to have several groups visit Nicaragua and in 2012 la Misión will be hosting six (!) groups from the U.S. and one from Puerto Rico.  With so many great projects starting up and so many groups visiting, it should be a very exciting year!

Food Security

I wanted to blog a little bit about the projects we've been working on with the church.

La Misión Cristiana has just completed the first year of a project designed to provide greater food security for communities in the Western region of Nicaragua. The food security project was such a success that they are aiming to expand it to the Eastern region in the coming year. “Food security” is a fancy technical term for making sure everyone has enough to eat. In rural Nicaragua two out of every three people subsist on less than $2 a day, which means that hunger is still a very real problem.

The project has three components. First, La Misión has set up seed banks in seven of the small farming communities where their churches are located. The seed banks provide corn, red bean and sorghum seeds to farmers with the agreement that they will repay 125% of the seeds they receive after the harvest. This structure ensures that the project can continue and benefit more families the following year.  The bank focuses in particular on farmers who own small plots of land or who rent land to farm (sharecroppers) -- the poorest of the poor, in other words.  Many of these farmers could not have afforded to farm otherwise and may have left to find work outside the community.
Church leaders in the Western Region meet to review the re-collection of seeds after the first year's harvest.
The other components of the project involve the gift, to each family in the local churches, of five fruit tree seedlings (3 mango and 2 orange trees) and enough vegetable seeds (tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers and watermelon) to plant a substantial backyard garden. This past weekend, we accompanied a group of pastors and church leaders in a training on how to properly plant and tend a vegetable garden and heard first-hand how the project is already taking root. Here are a few pictures.

In order to load the delivery truck, the fruit tree seedlings had to be brought out by ox-cart.


Delivering the seedlings to church families.


Here's Quinn playing in the type of mango tree the seedlings will one day become. We can confirm that the mangoes are delicious!


Sonia delivering the vegetable garden seeds to the church families.


Josue, Darling and Edgar sort the veggie seeds into individual bags for delivery (with a little help from Quinn).


Don Hector, an agricultural engineer who works with la Misión, gives a training on the proper care and management of vegetable gardens.