X-Street Children in Nicaragua

I arrived in Masaya on Monday evening, and have since been working on a website for the Consumers Defense Association of Masaya (ACODEMA). You can read about their work in earlier entries: Consumer Rights & Their Violation, and Miceofinance: Why it (Sometimes) Just Doesn´t Work.

Roger Lecayo, the President of ACODEMA, met me at the bus and showed me around Masaya. Everyone knew him and greeted him cordially as we passed. When we went to dinner and tried to pay the check, the owner refused to charge him. I got a discount at my hostel for being affiliated with the organization.

Masaya is a lovely city, and has an aesthetic character somewhat like that of Estelí: small and charming, but still a city. It´s charming, friendly, and colorful. However, it isn´t otherwise much like Estelí. In two days here, I´ve met more anti-Sandinistas than I ever could have imagined existed in the whole country, and have seen more street children sniffing glue than there were shoeless kids in all of Estelí.

On Tuesday I arrived at the ACODEMA office preceeded by about twenty citizens seeking help to present their claims against Unión Fenosa, the Spanish company that is the sole distributor of electricity in Nicatagua.

One woman had been billed in June for three times as much electricity as she had used in the preceeding months of this year. She had apparently not acquired any new appliances, nor had she used her existing appliances more than usual.

Another women had arranged a payment schedule with Unión Fenosa previously, but the payment schedule that the company had agreed upon was not honored, and her electricity had been cut. There were as many other complaints as there were poeple in the ACODEMA office, and we all went to Unión Fenosa to get it straightened out.

We waited for 30 minutes before anyone saw us. Roger went into the office with each of the distressed customers individually to give them support and representation in presenting their claim. All were resolved.

¨That seemed easy enough,¨ I said.

¨They respond to ACODEMA representatives,¨ he explained. ¨They know we know our rights and we won´t allow them to be violated. When people contact Unión Fenosa they simply don´t respond. So we go with them and demand a response. And nine out of ten times we win, because their claims are well-founded.¨

I understood, suddenly, why Roger and other ACODEMA staff are so popular in Masaya.

It is my last day in Estelí. It is also the day of nationwide liberation of Nicaragua. Most of my family is in Managua celebrating the holiday’s 29^th anniversary, but I stayed behind to pack and say good-bye to the city that, if I weren’t already a ride-or-die New Yorker, would have stolen my heart completely.

Estelí had its liberation day last Wednesday, July 16^th. After Matagalpa, Estelí was the first city to overcome the National Guard in 1979 and be liberated by the Sandinista Army. The Dictator Somoza held on to the capital, Managua, until the 19^th, when he fled to Miami, where he was granted asylum by the United States government, which had funded the terrorism of Somoza’s National Guard.

Apparently, the Somoza government’s plan was to stay in power until 1980, when the U.S. would have a presidential election and, they suspected, a new U.S. government would grant even more military and other aid to the Somoza dictatorship. They were right. Reagan won, but it was too late for Somoza and his cronies. The Sandinistas triumphed that July.

It was a short-lived triumph. Reagan cut off all aid to the newly liberated, people-led Nicaragua, and funded the Contra army to devastate any democracy or social services the Sandinistas had established in Nicaragua after 1979. For more post-1979 history, see blog entries from June, “A Brief History of Nicaragua” and especially “An Amended and Extended Nicaraguan History.”

I went to get my sandals and workbag repaired today. The repairman I met is deaf, but through my slow, bad, desperate efforts to sign (alphabet and makeshift gestures only) I managed to explain what I needed. He asked me where I was from, and I spelled out U-N-I-T-E-D S-T-A-T-E-S until I realized that those letters do not create words in Spanish. So then I spelled out A-M-E-R-I-C-A and he understood. It was only later that I realized I used the sign for “X” instead of “R” so I effectively spelled out A-M-E-X-I-C-A. I was worried he thought I was Mexican until he charged me an unmistakably gringa price. He signed, “hungry,” so I didn’t negotiate. Well, at least I have a pair of shoes with soles.

Tomorrow I’m going to Masaya to work with the consumer-rights organization ACODEMA for my last two weeks in Nicaragua. Their work, and why it’s so important, is described in June’s blog entries: “Consumer Rights and their Violation,” and “Microfinance: Why It (Sometimes) Just Doesn’t Work.”

I called Roger Lecayo, the director of ACODEMA, to tell him I would be in Masaya to start work on Monday. He said to just go to the ACODEMA office from the bus stop. I don’t know where it is, of course.

“Well, just ask someone,” he said. “It’s not far from the bus station.”

“OK, no problem, Señor Lecayo. Thanks so much and see you Monday!”

“Wait!” he exclaimed. “Make sure you don’t ask a police officer.”

“OK.” In two months in Nicaragua, I can count the number of police officers I’ve seen on one hand. Using two fingers.

“But don’t ask anyone who might work for Union Fenosa either, or anyone who… actually, just call me when your bus arrives, and I’ll come and get you.”

Of course. This is, after all, the man who said he has to look over his shoulder and go home by a different route every day due to the nature of his work.

Corporations are even scarier in Nicaragua than they are in the U.S. Unless you’ve seen “The Insider.”

I woke up a few nights ago to a gunshot, and another one, in quick succession. I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a car backfiring, since that’s what I try to convince myself it is at night in New York. But the hour, and the screaming that followed it, assured me that I wasn’t mistaken, and assured that I wouldn’t fall back asleep for quite a while.

The shots and screaming masses were right outside our front door. Twenty minutes later, there was another shot, and the screaming masses dispersed.

The next day I asked my Nica grandmother what had gone on the previous night.

“I heard shots,” I said.

“Oh, well there is a member of one gang on the right side corner of our street, one from another on the left corner, and then the member of the third gang is just across the street. They’re a bunch of troublemakers.”

“With guns?”

“No the police came and shot into the air one time to break up the fight.”

“I heard three shots.”

“Oh. Well… the police fired three shots then.” And the conversation was over.

Later my fourteen year-old sister said, “The big fight is tonight.”

Oh God.

Yesterday (July 16th) was the 29th anniversary of the liberation of Estelí. I didn´t have work so I went out Tuesday night to a vigil to remember the revolutionaries who died in the war to get Somoza out in the 70´s.

As it turns out, ¨vigília,¨ which I thought meant ¨vigil,¨ actually means block party. The whole city was there, and there was live music and dancing and a lot of fun. It was fun because I knew some of the songs and sang along and that felt good, because I really felt it being American this week. It wasn´t because people treated me badly at all, but because a lot of their struggle and the deaths and suffering they´re remembering today would have been avoided if the United States had cared more about the Nicaraguan people and less about money and control. I couldn´t help remembering that, and wishing things had been different.

On Wednesday I went to a parade and the rally, where Daniel Ortega spoke. He says a lot of stuff that sounds very ideal, and he seems really passionate. It´s really too bad that he doesnt put his policies or the government´s money where his mouth and his ¨heart¨ allegedly is.
At the celebration, there was no recognition that Nicaragua still has any problems and a lot of poverty… it was all, ¨We suffered for years and years of war, first against Somoza, then against the Contras and the yankee imperialists, until 1990 when all of our problems went away forever!¨

But Violeta Chamorro was President in the 1990s and she only won because Nicaraguans couldnt keep fighting theUS so they elected the US-backed candidate who was not a very good leader or person… so it was kind of bizarre, but super fun to be there anyway. I guess on the 4th of July (before Bush was President at least) we didn´t spend our evening lamenting our country´s problems, but remembering how much worse it was, and how we overcame.

The rally was so lively! People are crazy in Nicaragua: they were yelling and dancing and drinking and jumping around and singing and cheering and waving flags and generally going nuts. It was the kind of crowd I´ve never experienced anywhere else, and it was really fun to be there!

AUGUSTO CÉSAR SANDINO – Father of the Nicaraguan Revolution

Assassinated by Dictator Anastasio Somoza on February 21, 1934

On the way back from León on Sunday we sat in the last row of the bus, behind what looked like a couple – or rather, they sat in front of us. The man, who was remarkably unattractive, was stroking the woman´s hair. He put his face right up to hers, which was turned away from him towards the window. She kept turning even farther away from him, putting her head down to escape him, and then he gravved her by the back of her head and kissed her. She was shaking. He grabbed the rest of her and forced her into his arms, and he grabbed her breasts, and other lower parts of her body. She grabbed the back of her headrest with one hand, and the seatback in front of her with the other, and pulled herself away from him and his violating hands.

¨You know, we´re in public,¨I finally said in Spanish. He ignored me, though I´m sure he heard, and forced her hands lower on his body.

If this is how he acts in public, I can´t imagine what he does to her in private. The men sitting infront of them realized what was going on, and did nothing.

I wanted to give her a hundred dollars and tell her to run. But I didn´t.

What could her situation be, that she is with this horrible man? Is he her fiancée? What could her families´situation be, that they would allow her to stay in such an abusive relationship?

Two hours after we got off the bus, as I wrote this, I was still shaking.

What is this world we live in? What can we do?

Go to pronica.org/donate and earmark your donation for the Acahualinca Women´s Center

It all started when I got lost, walking to the library where I work every day. Directions were never my fortê, but luckily a wise bearded man once told me that you´re not lost unless you think you´re lost. So I kept walking in what I knew was probably the wrong direction, and then I suddenly came upon a sign:

ACTION ALREADY!
Investigative Center for Women´s Assistance
Hostel for victims of domestic violence

I walked past it alhamdulallahing, and then stopped in my tracks, wondering why I was passing by. I turned around, took a deep breath, and walked in.

¨Hi I´m Dina I come from the United States and I go to a university for just women and I am interested in women´s rights I saw something on the bus yesterday that upset me because a woman was being maltreated by her fiancèe and I want to work with you since I´m here in Esteli as a volunteer I work at the library but you know they have a lot of resources so I´m looking for other organizations to work with I can make you a website or a publication and try to raise some money or do anything maybe talk with the women I don´t know but you do can you tell me about what you do?¨

And then I was out of breath. And I did present myself that clumsily, in that single run-on paragraph (my creative writing classmates won´t be surprised) because I knew if I shut up for one second I would forget my Spanish and begin stumbling about while standing still and they would think I was a mess and wouldn´t want me to work with them.

I kind of was a mess, I was so excited, so desperate for someone to explain to me that there is help for abused women here.

When I had said my piece, I held my breath. I had to work with them. I had to do whatever I could to make them money, to reach out to more women, like that woman on the bus, who I should have … should have done something for.

The woman I spoke with, a brilliant and compassionate Lawyer named Rosa, invited me to sit down beside her.

¨We are a women´s help center, working with women who have experienced domestic physical and psychological abuse. We encourage women to leave their abusers and come here to our safe house to get help. We have psychologists, social workers, doctors, lawyers, security personnel, and teachers here for the women. We have group and individual therapy, and a solidarity group made up of former victims of domestic abuse who we have worked with. The women who were formerly abused, and had no self-esteem are now leaders. They aren´t afraid anymore; they go out in teams to the barrios and encourage maltreated women to come here and get help.¨

The office I walked into was the safehouse for the women who had just taken the step to leave their abusers. Rosa explained, ¨They stay there and attend therapy, get medical attention, human warmth and care, the feeling that they aren´t alone in this. And…¨she paused. ¨We keep them on suicide watch. It´s really hard to take this step in Nicaragua. Women often think it´s normal to be abused. They think they deserve it, that it´s their fault. We´re open 24/7 to deal with emergencies at any time. We always have a security team. We don´t hide here, we´re into outreach. I can´t tell you how many drunk abusers have shown up on our doorstep. But their wives don´t even know when they´re here. That´s how protected they are in our safehouse.¨

Acción Ya lawyers have helped many women win divorce cases and custody of their children, so they can begin a new life without abuse.

When a woman is ready to leave the womens center, Acción Ya staff visit the woman and her children in their new home at regular intervals to ensure they are doing well. Acción Ya provides each woman with a micro-credit loan and qualitative support to begin her new, independent life.

ALHAMDULALLAH.

They enthusiastically agrees to let me do their website and work on publications for them. They also invited me to go and talk with the women, and I´d like to take them to the library to show them how to use computers and internet. This is all moving at Nica pace, so we haven´t a schedule yet, but I have faith.

After all, just when I thought I was lost, I found what I was looking for.

Ah! They say if you´ve nothing nice to say, don´t say anything…. but someone has to; the backpackers we encountered this past weekend are way too obnoxious for the world to go on like this.

We went to León for the weekend, the first colonial city in Nicaragua. On our first night we stayed in a quaint family-run hostel, but decided to move elsewhere for the second night, since a drunken relative of the owners showed up around 2am to threaten us and tell us to get out of his sovereign nation… or else.

The owner´s response to the threats was to tell us to lock ourselves in our rooms… not to tell the man, who I will call drunk threatening guy, to leave. I got the idea they dealt with this frequently – perhaps even nightly. “No, we can do nothing, but we know him. You just have to go in your room, go! Ignore him! Go in your room and lock the door! Now!”

Stay out of the Hospedaje Viejo.

So the following day we moseyed over to the Big Foot hostel to see if they had beds. They not only had beds, they had an American college dorm building going on there, complete with irresponsible belligerent gringos not wearing shirts, who were burping loudly and laughing hysterically, and all the girls who were swept off their feet by such behavior. And screaming. Screaming a lot.

Couldn´t you do this at home???

As my friend and fellow volunteer Maddie noted, “We are in a different Nicaragua than these kids” who, upon further inspection, knew nothing about Nicaragua, flaunted their inability to speak Spanish as if they were proud of their ignorance, and dressed like they had been scrounging for garbage in La Chureca – which is, as I understand it, pretty offensive to Nicaraguan people, who take pride in their appearance, no matter how poor they are.

Why would you come to a country you have no real interest in?

I cringe to say it, but I understood the drunk threatening dude from the previous night a bit better after meeting the backpacking crowd. I don´t understand his threats, but I do understand his anger and frustration at some gringos continued exploitation of his country.

The most frustrating part for me was the backpacker´s stated conception of themselves as some sort of counter-culture, a group of kids who were “sticking it to the man” just by being in Central America. It seemed to me like they were a bunch of self-indulgent kids without responsibilities, jobs, any need of income, or any interest or concern for the people who´s country they were in … they went to cockfights for God´s sake! Could one travel any more irresponsibly? Probably, actually, but cockfights are pretty up there on the irresponsibility scale.

Yesterday I started a theater workshop at Esteli´s Municipal Library. I had passed invitations out to children and parents on the street, and posted up a few signs around the city.

However, when you pass people in the street here, they say “Adios,”(goodbye!). And that’s the encounter. There is no hello. What? I just started pushing the invitation into their hands. “Adios! Come to my workshop! Adios!” A few people did actually stop, often because they were suspicious of the bizarre looking gringa following children and handing them invitations. “I was an actress in New York. I want to do a theater workshop at the library. Everyone is invited.”

“I don´t understand.” I would explain again, smiling into the parents narrowed eyes.

“Yes gringa, but why?”

I throttled through a few paragraphs about the richness of Nicaraguan history and culture and how much I have to learn from doing this project with the kids. It seems that, despite Nicaraguans (and especially Estelians) enthusiasm for community-building volunteer work, it is hard for some people to wrap their minds around a gringa coming to Nicaragua to do something good for, not something bad to, the people. Who can blame them?

I explained it as if the theater project was all for my own benefit. Which it is, in part.

My biggest fear was that no one would come. Although at least no one called me jankee.

I passed out roughly 100 invitations and had about twenty kids, but I was pleased with the turnout on the first day. The “taller”(workshop) runs from 9-11 am and then from 2-4 pm since school is half a day, and some students go in the morning and others in the evening. Most of the students who came in the morning came again in the afternoon (turns out they had skipped class that morning, tsk tsk).

The activity on the first day was not ostensibly part of a theater program. I brought dream catcher making kits, and had each of the participants make one and then write (or draw) about their dreams for their own futures, the future of their community, and the future of Nicaragua. It helped that I have a dream catcher tattooed on my back, since that apparently meant that they must be pretty powerful.

It was striking what the kids came up with. “I want to save the environment and beautiful Nicaragua´s natural resources,” one seven-year-old explained. “I want to be a doctor because so many people in Nicaragua are sick and no one helps them,” wrote another. “Well I want to be a teacher so poor people can be doctors if they want,” or “I´m going to be a teacher because learning makes people happy.” One six-year-old said, “I want to be a true Sandinista President.” Whoaaa. He wasn´t even old enough to write that down. The taller was for kids between four and eleven years old.

The purpose of this project was to gain an idea of the issues that are important to the children of Esteli. Their articulation of their hopes and dreams (which is also informative about their struggles and fears) has put us on the track to choose or write a play that deals with these dreams and struggles. Furthermore, it helped me establish rapport with them in a calm setting (ok it wasn´t really that calm) before we jump into theater games, which are hard to do among strangers since you really have to put yourself out there and be pretty silly sometimes.

Above all, the lesson we got through yesterday was that everyone is free to express themselves in the way they want to at this workshop, and there are no wrong answers here. Some of the children had difficulty making the dream catchers, and they were thrilled when I told them they weren´t wrong, they were creative, which is the most valuable thing they could bring to a theater workshop.

I was thrilled when I heard them explaining to each other that they had different dream catchers because they all had different, unique dreams for the future. And the six year-old who wants to be a true Sandinista President announced more than a few times that he was creative. I think he should run on that platform. Nicaragua thrives on creative grassroots approaches to strengthen the national community and quality of life. A Nicaraguan politician who actually adopted creative efforts him or herself, instead of “teaming up” with international financial institutions could, perhaps, carry out a real, unarmed, true Sandinista revolution.

The first one is actually getting over cockroaches the size of my fist.

Two nights ago I was laying in my bed, peacefully reflecting about the day and brainstorming ideas for the theater workshop, which I started yesterday (I´ll get to it). I was listening to what wasn´t but might as well have been Enya (I´ll say it was for the affect) when a dear little thing – ok not so dear or little – fell from the ceiling/sky/only god knows right beside me onto the bed!

And the bed actually shook. I jumped up and promptly threw my book towards the intruder. But I guess these cockroaches are at the top of the insect foodchain and have gotten a bick cocky (pun intended), because he didn´t even flinch. I would have known if he had, these guys are big enough to have faces.

I threw a number of other objects at him, but he wasn´t impressed. I didn´t want to kill it – there´s a difference between a squashed bug and a dead corpse in your bed, and this was the latter.

Finally I turned the mattress upside down and he moved; he hid under my sheets, near the pillow.

Oh God.

I was tempted to run away screaming for help, and then I thought about it for a second and reasoned:

1) That idea is, for many obvious reasons, ridiculous.

2) Flies are more dangerous that cockroaches because they can carry parasites. Cockroaches aren´t harmful. They are just nasty.

3) Cockroaches are SO nasty.

4) OK, I should just get him off my bed and then who cares what he does.

So I threw a tape dispenser. The noise woke up the rest of the house (oops) but the bug who wanted to share my bed was unaffected. I lifted the mattress and shook it as hard as I could. He finally fell on the floor with a THUD and climbed into the tablecloth of my bedside stand.

I pretended I hadn´t seen that and that he was outside.

Project Number One: CHECK. I´m over it.

The next morning my homestay mom asked me if I had slept badly. After the incident, I had actually slept like a log. ¨No, I slept very well thanks.¨

¨Oh. I thought there was an animal in your room last night because I heard you trying to kill something.¨

¨Oh, that was just a cockroach who wanted to share my bed. He wasn´t invited.¨

¨That was all for a cockroach?¨She had a good laugh. ¨I thought it was the animals!¨

Project number two: Getting over animals who make their way into my room (?) that may be more dangerous than cockroaches.

I´ll let you know how it goes.

As in many other things, the success of microfinance depends on the company, according to Roger Lecayo, Carlos Vidal, and Gladys Manzares. And in a world gone mad over microfinance enterprises, many microfinance companies are bound to be less effective, if not less “good-intentioned” than others. And, as Nicaragua’s history proves, this Central American country has been a prime target for those with less than honorable intentions.

When the question of whether or not someone is “worthy” of a micro loan depends on what they have by way of collateral, instead of what they plan to invest in and how much qualitative support they’ll have in managing their loan, it is unlikely that the poor borrowers will be able to repay it, let alone the loan and interest.

So if their collateral was their shack, they lose it.

In the world of mirofinance madness, small loan enterprises have been proliferating faster than mosquitoes in the rainy season. And many of them have just one requirement of their clients: collateral. And their collateral can be anything.

Imagine what that includes.

Be careful in selecting which microfinance companies to support. Many of them offer little more to their clients than a loan, when what capital-less pobres really need to succeed includes guidance on investment, capitalist principles, and planning skills. People who have never had money frequently could use some support in figuring out what to do with it to make it grow. Without such support, it is impossible not to default and lose everything as a result.

Finca is a professional and socially responsible microfinance company. Go to www.villagebanking.org/ to learn what they do, and why their efforts work all over the world.

Zona Franca is the Chureca of Nicaragua’s officially employed. The industrial section of Managua employs children and adults for fifteen hours a day, six days a week. Though the law stipulates that employees are entitled to fifteen days of vacation every six months, prevalent unemployment ensures that factories are never missing an employee. Privatization of electricity and other basic needs, and cyclical unemployment ensure that in the midst of nonexistent safety measures, sexual assault, and other human rights violations of factory employees, business is booming, and laborers don’t complain, even in the tobacco factories, where the use of plastic gloves is prohibited, despite the toxic chemicals employees handle for fifteen hours everyday.

At the tobacco factory, we saw a number of pregnant women standing up and preparing tobacco leaves for cigars. We asked what the protocol is if a pregnant woman becomes sick in this highly toxic environment. “She can just tell us if she is uncomfortable, and we will move her to another assembly line,” the manager said. He did not mention the thousands of Nicaraguans who are lined up to take a job if an employee complains about his or her working conditions, before changing the subject to the fine quality of their produce.

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