Revisiting a half empty glass...

I am about 3 weeks away from leaving Nicaragua. When I leave, I will have been here for just under two years...

I sold house, car and most of my furniture to relocate to one of the poorest regions of the country to build out my resume with experience working at the bottom of the pyramid, while contributing in some small way to an institute that seemed a perfect match to my previous experience, which was working at the top of the pyramid, and my future thinking, to work in some small way to close tha gap between the top and the bottom.

I will leave feeling disappointed, defeated and just a little lost. The fault is not the institute where I have worked, but the bigger development system and political environment within which they so diligently work. Since I view the bigger system completely broken, I therefore see myself in any role within the system as aiding and abetting the problem. I´m not sure how to change it.

On a recent trip to Quilali - a remote rural town about 2.5 hours away by truck along largely unpaved roads - one of my colleagues asked me why I hadn´t written for so long in my blog (about 5 months). I fessed up. I had nothing good to say, so I chose to say nothing rather than broadcast my glass-half-empty POV.


Her question inspires me to find another way to look at things. To try to see the glass half full.


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The glass is half full...really!

Donald

So, with that idea in mind, here is the first of a series of things for which I am grateful, which have inspired me or at least leave me hopeful.

Donald - a fisherman

I meet Donald on one of my first trips to Quilali - one of a number of workshops to teach young leaders how to audit the work and spending of their local government, a skill of citizenship. A young, bright, skinny young man (in his 20s). Thoughtful, interested and confident, ready to tease me at the drop of a hat.

We spend some time together and I discover he likes fishing. It´s a way to supplement his family´s protein intake. I tell him I will see if Dad has an old fishing rod he no longer needs that I can bring back on my next trip to the UK. It´s a promise.

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Donald helping young painters on a mural in the town.

Panning for gold in Quilali

Fast forward a few months, and Donald invites me up to see a small group of his young friends show me their theater work that they have developed around issues of diversity and tolerance in the local youth group. We take a walk with his sister to the river where he fishes. It´s wide, shallow and hard to imagine that it is rich in fish. Some young men are panning for gold (video at left). They dig in the banks and pan in the river. Occasionally they discover what little was left behind by the Spanish invaders.

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I make the trip to the UK, ask my Dad for a fishing rod and bring it back with me from Wales to Nicaragua. I am busy traveling to Argentina to earn the money I spend volunteering, and I can't take it up to him personally. So my colleague takes ti for me and presents it to him in a semi-formal ceremony at the end of the workshop. His smile says it all!

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I see Donald a number of time over the next few months, and I tell him I will come up to Quilali one day when the truck is taking one of the team up there to run a workshop. I also promise to ask my Dad for one of his fishing nets for him. Sadly I forget to do this when I go home to the UK.

Something gets lost in translation, and he thinks I am going up to Quilali one week. He catches a fine fish for me using my Dad's rod. Has his Mother fry it for me. It´s a surprise for me. He brings it to the workshop only to find I don´t show up. The truck driver eats my fish.

When I find out the next day, I am devastated and make a promise to join my colleague on her next visit to Quilali.

Fast forward another month, and I am on the road again to Quilali. It´s the dry season, and the unpaved road is dusty. There is a chronic water shortage in Quilali and the surrounding communities. Many families must walk far to pull water form central wells. We pass young children, 7 or 8, pushing carts with plastic containers up impossibly steep hills. My heart goes out to them. A few hundred yards on, we pass a truck that is coming back from delivering beer. Two drivers munching down on breakfast sandwiches in their air-conditioned cab of the newish truck. There are only two brands of beer in Nicaragua, both of them like a bad American beer. The same family owns both breweries - a total monopoly. I am quietly fuming that the distribution system for beer is as near perfect as it can be, lining the coffers of one family, while water, none f it really potable, is in short supply and inconveniently located for women andyoug children to haul by hand.

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When I get to Quilali, we look for my friend. He has just started a new job - looking after a cyber (where people rent computers by the hour for about 40 cents an hour). He has been looking for a job for ages. It pays the handsome salary of  $80 per month, before taxes. He's happy.

He has three small fish for me. But he tells me, with a sad look in his eye, that his Mother can't cook them for me, because she doesn't have any wood for the stove. I feel about an inch tall. People buy wood that has been illegally taken from the forested hills (a significant part of the problem of deforestation) to cook on adobe stoves such as the one shown on the right. Each stick of wood costs about 20 cents.

Shortly before coming up to Quilali, I had remembered the promise of a fishing net. The price? About $150 - yes, that's double his monthly salary! So I balk at he idea of spending the equivalent of 750 pieces of cooking fuel on an over-priced, imported fishing net. I'll look for another way to fulfill my promise to Donald. A promise is a promise.

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