Getting acclimatised

At last I'm able to log on and hope to download some photos at last. Various boring technical problems, so posts so far have been via email to Tim.

It is another world here and for all that we read of hear of the poverty and the heat, nothing quite prepared me for actually being here. It's Friday morning here and the others in the delegation are returning to Oxford tomorrow. I'll move out of the hotel and will stay for a few days with a doctor called Aurora. She spent some time in Oxford a few years ago and stayed with Jane Mercer and has kindly offered me her spare room.

So far this morning I visited the covered market of León, which is sort of like ours but with some very strange-looking fruit and veg. I then went to the cathedral and climbed to the roof. Obviously, being the sort of person who often climbs church towers... (how many have fallen off chairs reading this?).

Yesterday I met with some Biologists in the Entomological Museum. Once they got over their disappointment that I'm not a fellow Biologist, but a mere messenger, it was very encouraging to speak about co-operation across the continents in scientific research. I love the idea of students from Oxford coming to do field work here - as long as I don't have to crawl on jungle floors looking at bugs.

In the Museum of Entomolgy

Another mtg was with a retired psychologist from Seattle who, with her Medic partner, spends 5 months per year running a small NGO. One of the things they do is run first aid training for teachers, bus drivers and all sorts of other groups. I hope to visit some of their projects next week.

We were also taken to the lovely Botanical Gardens outside of the city.

My big tale really is Wednesday, when we went "out in the field" with Nuevas Esperanzas. I sent a summary yesterday although hadn't explained clearly that the long pipeline that they are building to take water down the mountain is because the water up the mountain is absolutley pure with no arsenic, so that intention is that this will be the drinking water for the communities on the plain - there is a limited supply. They will use the water with arsenic for washing: it is only poisonous when ingested. This is the compromise solution that seems safest for the people.

Now, at last, some photos:

A well highly contaminated with arsenic on the plain below Volcano Telica

The clean water that will be piped down the volcano to the plain. This is a huge project and will involve building suspention bridges to take the pipes down the canyon to the community 4km below.

Working hard! The local people in the background were discussing forming a co-operative for their beekeeping. This is a project set up by Nuevas Esperazas to encourage diversity and they hope to export the honey to the UK.

 

 Meanwhile Jo, Mike and John visited the bees themselves...

Cllr John Tanner and Mike Rowley prepare to meet the bees.

Hot water spring on the volcano

A rainwater collection tank

View of a volcano from the back of the pick-up

Street scene in León

Making breakfast in the kitchen of a primary school, with funds from another Oxford organisation. (This is was a different day.)

Children eating their breakfast in El Platanal Primary school. The menu was tortilla, beans and rice and a cereal drink. Note the water tower - base made of asbestos...

Thursday 28^th February, 7pm

Wednesday was a big day with Nuevas Esperanzas, an organisation whose projects  we have helped to fund from Oxford.

We set off at 7am to go to the mountains in the Nuevas Esperanzas four wheel drive, pick-up truck. Someone had to travel in the back and for the first stretch it was me!

Andrew has an interesting use of the word "road". He told us they had built roads to reach some of the remote villages. For "road" read "rough, stony, bumpy bridle way”. I was worried about riding a horse but can see they would be the best form of transport here. Even with the potholes of Oxford we cannot imagine driving up a rough stony track.

It was not a smooth ride at all, but it was far too hot to get out and walk. Especially for a wuss like me. Can you believe, when it comes to climbing volcanoes, four wheel drives are even more useful than they are in north Oxford.

We visited lots of NE projects, mostly to do with water supply - tanks to collect rainwater, storage units by fresh springs. We also went to the area contaminated by arsenic and watched as Leo, one of Andrew's employees, analysed the levels of arsenic. Very sad. The WHO standard is 10 parts per billion and we witnessed levels of 35, 50 and over 200.

I did walk, or maybe scrambled is a better description, down to see the spring where they have built a storage tank. Andrew was much kinder than my brothers ever were in helping me down the hard bits. So the earth was dry, black, sandy and very dusty and it was hot. Very Hot. The team are building a pipeline to carry the fresh, filtered water, with the arsenic removed, down to the villages on the plain some km below.

We also went to one of the apiaries that they have set up. John, Mike and Jo all donned the full suits and went to handle bees. Pete and I wimped out and sat with the locals in a veranda and had a go on the hammock. Yes people really do use hammocks!

Rural poverty is something else. It is shocking to see the very basic shacks that serve as houses here. But then I suppose if you live on the side of a volcano, you wouldn’t build a strong brick house!
 
There is lots more to say but we really must go…..

Here at last

León, Nicaragua

Tuesday  26th February,  2.30pm

We finally arrived in León after a Kafkaesque journey.  One competition I never wanted to win was to have a worse journey than my colleague Helen who has some awful tales of woe. But getting to Heathrow for 4am, then after two hours on the plane finding it’s broken and not going anywhere was grim.  BA rerouted us with an overnight stop in Miami but that plane was also delayed,  as was the following morning’s flight to Managua. But we are all here and wow! It is a very different world.

It’s not just the intensity of the heat but everything.  It’ s much more arid than expected - in Java even in the dry season there was a verdancy and lushness everywhere but here it's more like southern Spain in August but with third world levels of poverty.

We have had an intense schedule of visits to projects. The "health" centre/outpost was the first visit on Monday morning.   We (Oxford León Association) want to install running water there but the whole situation with the local authority and the water board is complex.  The  local people will have to dig the trench for the water pipes themselves. Imagine that in Oxford! It seems that if we offer to pay to get everything done, it is likely to fall into disrepair again, but if we involve the community and they have a stake in it (having dug a section of trench) it will probably be taken care of and there will be a pride in it. A foriegn country; they do things differently here.

We later met with some women’s rights activists and heard from a group campaigning against the harassment  of women students.  Then we went to a project that provides an after- school club, a library for children and and a mobile teaching resource centre (which we saw in action today).  The children performed traditional dances for us. We also met up with delegates from Lund, the Swedish city twinned with León.
After that Christian, our token Nicaraguan on OLAT and a friend drove us to watch the sunset over the Pacific. It was magic. The waves were huge and wild and we saw pelicans. Yes, pelicans!  They dived for fish and were incredible to see. The sun was round, red and just lowered itself into the ocean with burst of colour. Yes, I have taken photos of all places but cannot at present download them.

So Monday was quite a day,  with all sorts of sights and contrasts. This morning (Tuesday) we visited more projects: primary schools, nurseries. The state of the buildings is very basic but, with people from the community volunteering (for example by making meals),  all the children seemed well  cared for and there was a good atmosphere. 

Our hotel  is basic and charming, sort of colonial in style.  It's called Posada del Doctor and you can Google it, as I cannot show my photos yet. The streets of León are not like Oxford. They are narrow, the standard of housing is hugely variable and mostly much much smaller and basic. And colourful. We see lots of corrugated iron sheets and boards of asbestos used as walls, even in the schools. It is so shocking to European eyes. Traffic is a mix of cars, bikes, motorbikes, horse drawn carts, oxen carts, bicycle rickshaws and various other contraptions.

That's all for now. This afternoon we visit  a toy project and then have a meeting with the mayor at the town hall.

Introduction

The Oxford León Association and Trust (OLAT) has been supporting development projects in Oxford's twin town in Nicaragua since 1984. Over the years delegations from Oxford have visited León and we have also hosted some visitors from Nicaragua.

In February 2013 a delegation is travelling to León. We will be received by the mayor and will visit some of the projects we have funded in recent years and some we are looking at funding. We hope that there may be some opportunity to see something of the magnificent country: volcanoes, lakes, the Pacific coast and the historic sights of León.

Who’s going:

·         Cllr John Tanner, Vice-chair of OLAT

·         Cllr Mike Rowley

·         Pete Fryer, Unison rep of Oxfordshire County Council

·         Jo Lindsay, Community Youth Worker

·         Jan Marshall, Chair of OLAT (and author of this blog)

OLAT is a registered charity. We have no paid members of staff and are all volunteers. All funds that we raise go directly to supporting projects in Nicaragua and the charity is not paying any expenses of this journey at all.

You can read more about OLAT and our work on our website: www.oxleonlink.org.uk. During the trip I will report on the projects we visit. If you would like to make a donation to our work, you can do so via our Just Giving page:

The cathedral in León