In a City of Murals: 06/09/10
There is a little kid dando vueltas in front of me. We are now in Esteli, the Sandinista stronghold of Northwest Nicaragua, where the walls of the city are vibrantly painted and we rest in the lap of surrounding mountains. The climate is cooler and the streets a little bit less hectic than the bustling narrow calles of Matagalpa. Still the time is flying and I don´t know where the last three days have gone. On Monday we travelled from Managua to Matagalpa, staying the night at La Casa Materna, a little house run by a clinic that takes in highrisk pregnancy mothers and makes sure that they receive transportation and care in hospitals that they otherwise would not have access to. One mother had walked 4 hours from a rural community on the Atlantic Coast before getting on an 8 hour bus ride to Matagalpa. Over the course of 19 years, and of handling over 14,000 pregnant mothers, only 2 lives have been lost under the care of the Casa Materna. This rate is virtually unheard of in Nicaragua much less the developing world. After this visit we went to visit a campesino coffee farmer, who struggled for 8 years to keep his land despite threats and direct attacks from the terrateniente (landowner) who the land had been seized from during the Sandinista revolution when all of the rich hacienda owners fled after the fall of Somoza. His story of resistence against such injustice was extraordinary but also infuriating in terms of the emotional devastation and inequalities that were wrought on his family during that time. After almost a decade of lawsuits, unlawful incrimination, physical assault and trauma, Vicente has finally can finally claim his 7 acre coffee farm his own, thanks to much help from the Ben Linder House and ProNica, among other organizations. We also made a trip to the small community of San Ramon, where a group of women started a nutritional program, a natural medicine clinic, art classes and a recycled paper making cooperative. The efforts of strong Nicaraguan women bearing the problems of this society are tremendous. Today in Esteli we had the pleasure and fortune of meeting two more, one, Mama Licha who started a free women´s clinic, and another Dona Mina, who started a museum to honor the fallen Sandinista fighters after losing her own in the Revolution. I breath easier among all the difficulties knowing that great great compassion and dedication and heart beats under the weight of many struggles ahead for these people.