To The Village

Hola,

We trust this post finds everyone well back stateside, and elsewhere! A lot has happened in the past few days - we'll try and include everything, and preemptively answer your questions. If you have questions though, post them in the comments section, and we'll do our best to answer them in our next post. Also, please distribute this link to anyone and everyone who may be interested - a lot of people made this school possible, and we want to be sure to keep them apprised of the progress made.

We finished four days of Spanish classes last Friday morning in Granada, a pretty colonial town on the northwest edge of Lake Nicaragua. We found it perfect for getting acclimated to the language, temperature, etc. Friday afternoon, we met up with Danilo to plan our journey north to Esteli. Danilo is buildOn's Trek Coordinator in Nicaragua, and will be with us throughout most of the building process. Given our known future in a small community, Friday night became a night of celebration (no such thing as the calm before the storm). Dinner was at Nuestra Casa, Jimmy 3 Fingers' local establishment. Literally, award winning ribs, and if Jimmy Buffett doesn't write a song about this guy, we would all be shocked. Drinks followed dinner, when we joined fellow classmates and a few of our instructors at a local bar, called Cafe Nuit. Flor de Cana, Tona, and Victoria flow while live, local music plays every night. The town of Granada is usually pretty quiet, but they know how to dance on Friday and Saturday nights. Its possible one buildOn team member was seen on stage during the night...

Saturday was filled with renting a car, and navigating north from Granada to Esteli. Esteli will become home base for blog postings, emails, etc. It is the closest real "civilization" to the village in which we'll work. We met up with Anibal, the Nicaraguan Country Director for buildOn, and planned the specifics of Sunday's trip. In the overall process of buildOn's school construction projects, the events of Sunday are pivotal, but more to come on that shortly.

We headed out Sunday morning from the city of Esteli, and after a 3 1/2 hour drive that included 2 flat tires, arrived in the village of Santa Maria de San Sebastian de Yali to a sea of excited children and adults. The village is comprised of one main dirt road that has houses on either side of it and a small church on top of a hill. It was immediately evident to the three of us the simplicity of life, and the extremity of the poverty; although there is basic electricity, the village does not have running water and many of the houses are dirt floored structures with large families living in them. The students are currently crowded into an extremely small building that is serving as a school while we build their new one. Upon arrival we went to the village church to formally introduce ourselves and participate in the covenant signing. The covenant is a way to formalize the commitment from the community, the local government, and buildOn. It ensures the participation of each in the building process, and explains again what each will contribute to the end result. The village children prepared skits that spoke to the fact that they needed a new school and that their prayers were answered by God. This became the message of the day, as many of the villagers shared their views. The people of Santa Maria are deeply religious and truly believe that our funding of the school was an act of God. From all of this, it was easy to see that the villagers understand the value of education and want to build a new school as quickly as possible.

Work started early in the morning on Monday (days run from 5am - 8pm, between minimal electricity, 2am roosters crowing/pigs/dogs barking, and the sun coming up at 5am - its a different schedule), with planning and staking out the footprint of the school, basic demolition of an old foundation, cement block making, and the digging of the latrine. The three of us obviously found ourselves leading the charge to dig the latrine, which turned out to be a 10 foot by five foot by seven foot deep hole - we all wracked our memories, and despite many years spent with Allen Breed, don't think any of us have ever dug a hole this big. It took an entire day, with constant work alternating between shovels and pick axes, and we weren't quite finished when the day came to an end. Sore and covered in dirt, we retired. Anibal assured us it was one of the more successful first days he has been a part of (he could easily be saying that to make us feel good), but either way, we were pleased.

Early this morning, we came back down to Esteli to finalize the purchase of our new car, and buy a few necessities. We picked up a 1983 Toyota Land Cruiser, 4 speed manual, and runs on diesel - it is Awesome. Evan now has car insurance for a year, so if anyone's interested in buying a car after we leave, talk to him. Definitely tough to drive (lacks power steering and a working speedometer) but is perfect for down here.

Heading back to the village in the morning - we'll hopefully have another post this weekend. Don't get your hopes up for another long one - there was a lot to update ya'll on, but its kept us up way past our normal 8pm bed time.

Again, please send this along to everyone and anyone who would be interested in hearing about our efforts/adventures.

Salud,Taylor, Evan, y John