While I was going to write this blog in Spanish, I decided ultimately that I could not articulate my words well enough to express all that I am feeling in a language other than my own. First of all, I think it is important to include a preface, so that the reader can identify more with what I am saying, because they will see my train of thought, and not just the outcome. This trip, in theory was very simple. It was a group of dedicated students traveling to another country to try to help in some small way, while also developing their meager spanish skills (I am of course referring to myself when I speak of the level of fluency in spanish). What one doesn´t realize, is that real life is actually a lot more difficult to understand, when actually experiencing it. Although I recognized that I would participate in this experience, while in the states, I did not realize the dedication required of me, and the multitude of emotions that I would feel during this trip.
Although we are only in the first week of our stay here in Nicaragua, I have seen such beautiful things. I have seen teachers, who despite their overcrowded classrooms, dirty classrooms (for lack of what we call a custodian), and no running water, continue on day by day, making a difference in children´s lives. I have seen families open up their homes to strange people, who do not share their cultural beliefs, and in some cases do not speak a common language. I have seen people on the bus, despite the lack of space crowd in to fit another passenger, although there are already two people sitting in the seat.
Despite the exultation I have felt from seeing the good in people, I have also had some very low moments. Blind, one-eyed men who rely on the generosity of others; others who already lack the resources to make ends meet, but contribute none-the-less. Water that runs blue from the detergent that was used to clean clothes, because people lack the amazing appliances called ¨washer and dryer¨--which solves two problems in one, cleaning our clothes and clearing our conscious of the damage we are doing to the earth (by emiting CFC´s--unseen toxic gases).
I do not mean to make anyone uncomfortable by what I say, but I speak the truth. I want to share my feelings with others in attempt to change the present into a better future. We can no longer avoid the solving the problem, because it makes us uncomfortable to think of other´s suffering, because in the end, they are suffering whether or not you are thinking of them.
This is my experience, an opening of consciousness...and for that I am very grateful. I hope to bring ESPERANZA to the future, not only of our country, but to the world.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Nicaraguan NGOs
This morning in our Spanish conversation class, my group somehow got on the subject of the government and I saw it as a perfect opportunity to gauge our professor´s opinion of the political history of Nicaragua and the current debates they are having. He mentioned the Somoza dictatorship, what a victory the revolution was and how Daniel Ortega (the current president) played such an integral role. He then went on to lament the fraud that occurred during Aleman´s presidency and the current deception in the second presidency of Ortega. I don´t understand how someone like Ortega who played such an important role in ending the Somoza´s ruling can be so dedicated to the people during one presidency and then be so greedy and fraudulent several years later. He wants to do the same thing he called out the Somozas for doing, extend his presidency for more years than is constitutionally permitted in order to keep himself in power and keep the benefits coming his way.
All of this leads me to the project that I am currently beginning. As president, Ortega has called out several non-governmental organizations for being money launderers and fraudulent. In Nicaragua, there are NGO´s that support the citizens here such as schools and clinics, and there are also NGO´s that demand the rights gauranteed to Nicaraguans in the constitution, such as womens´rights movements. The organizations that Ortega has accused are the latter, saying that they are trying to destabilize the current government. He says they are commiting ¨tercerizacion¨ in which funds coming from outside the country are being used to destablize the Nicaraguan government. He believes they are money laundering and bringing in money illegaly to commit this crime. However, three months after raiding several organizations, the government still does not have any proof of their claims whatsoever.
This is a very bold accusation to make, especially without having any evidence. In addition ot ridiculas accusations, Ortega enacted new laws and deadlines that all NGO´s had to comply with in order to continue working within the country. This left the organizations scrambling to meet deadlines, which was understandably frustrating when they are only trying to help. In his hopes of discouraging these specific NGO´s that challenge his authority, he is also going to discourage the NGO´s that are relinquishing the government of their responsabilities. The NGO´s that provide schooling and healthcare are going to get fed up with his demands and decide that Nicaragua is too difficult to work with, creating more work for the government, and leaving the citizens even worse off than they are currently.
I don´t understand how Ortega can make these accusations. The organizations he is calling out are not radical at all, they are simply trying to give Nicaraguans their constitutional rights. The government wants to allow organizations to finance the citizens well-being, so that it is not their responsability, but not any activity that would challenge the government´s present agenda. The government says it is against the destabalizing of the government, but isn´t challenging the government a constitutional right? These organizations have been very clear about the origins of their funds. They in turn are claiming that the government is trying to suppress the country´s journalists so that the government´s own corruption and lack of transparancy is not evident to the rest of the country.
After doing all this research and reading countless articles from Nicaraguan newspapers, I have come to the conclusion that the government is making these accusations and restrictions as a way to silence their opposition, intimidate them and formce them into self-censurship. They want to monopolize the political floor by making sure they are the only ones that have a voice. To achieve this, the new laws allow them to decide where money goes, so they can direct it to NGO´s the support citizens´ health and education instead of their civil rights movements. The government seems to want to create not a civil democratic soceity, but rather a government that is more totalitarian in nature. To accomplish this goal, the government needed to justifythe restrictions and therefore made the accusations against these specific NGO´s.
All of this leads me to the project that I am currently beginning. As president, Ortega has called out several non-governmental organizations for being money launderers and fraudulent. In Nicaragua, there are NGO´s that support the citizens here such as schools and clinics, and there are also NGO´s that demand the rights gauranteed to Nicaraguans in the constitution, such as womens´rights movements. The organizations that Ortega has accused are the latter, saying that they are trying to destabilize the current government. He says they are commiting ¨tercerizacion¨ in which funds coming from outside the country are being used to destablize the Nicaraguan government. He believes they are money laundering and bringing in money illegaly to commit this crime. However, three months after raiding several organizations, the government still does not have any proof of their claims whatsoever.
This is a very bold accusation to make, especially without having any evidence. In addition ot ridiculas accusations, Ortega enacted new laws and deadlines that all NGO´s had to comply with in order to continue working within the country. This left the organizations scrambling to meet deadlines, which was understandably frustrating when they are only trying to help. In his hopes of discouraging these specific NGO´s that challenge his authority, he is also going to discourage the NGO´s that are relinquishing the government of their responsabilities. The NGO´s that provide schooling and healthcare are going to get fed up with his demands and decide that Nicaragua is too difficult to work with, creating more work for the government, and leaving the citizens even worse off than they are currently.
I don´t understand how Ortega can make these accusations. The organizations he is calling out are not radical at all, they are simply trying to give Nicaraguans their constitutional rights. The government wants to allow organizations to finance the citizens well-being, so that it is not their responsability, but not any activity that would challenge the government´s present agenda. The government says it is against the destabalizing of the government, but isn´t challenging the government a constitutional right? These organizations have been very clear about the origins of their funds. They in turn are claiming that the government is trying to suppress the country´s journalists so that the government´s own corruption and lack of transparancy is not evident to the rest of the country.
After doing all this research and reading countless articles from Nicaraguan newspapers, I have come to the conclusion that the government is making these accusations and restrictions as a way to silence their opposition, intimidate them and formce them into self-censurship. They want to monopolize the political floor by making sure they are the only ones that have a voice. To achieve this, the new laws allow them to decide where money goes, so they can direct it to NGO´s the support citizens´ health and education instead of their civil rights movements. The government seems to want to create not a civil democratic soceity, but rather a government that is more totalitarian in nature. To accomplish this goal, the government needed to justifythe restrictions and therefore made the accusations against these specific NGO´s.
Between Scylla and Charybdis
As I reflected in my previous post, I have been thinking a lot about contrasts. As in the internet cafe and type this, I am spending for an hour of internet more than the average Nicaraguan earns in a month. I have traveled more than most people my age, mostly in developing countries, and I feel that my experiences have helped me learn about the world and people around me. I have learned about the shared commonalities of humanity, and I have come to the conclusion that the divide between rich and poor lies in finances alone. All classes share hopes, dreams, problems, fears and illnesses. The differences are more superficial than one might think.
(Turismas - a common sight. Often more common than Granadinas!)
Although I have been ashamed of the behavior of Americans and other tourists in my travels, my disgust has been especially pronounced on this trip. I have been trying to pinpoint the reason for this and I am grasping for explanations why I feel this way. I have been contemplating my motivations for travel and trying to weigh in my mind if they are worthy or valid. There are many reasons why I feel uncomfortable being here. I am aware of the judgments that I project based on my stereotypes, and I recognize that I might often be wrong. That is one of the reasons why I feel so uncomfortable - I know that others are projecting their judgments onto me, based on my pale skin and huge backpack that is my constant companion.
Last night at the volunteer meeting, the topic of tourist vs. traveler was raised. I feel like tourists come to a place to consume a culture without really caring about or respecting it, while a traveler gains knoweldge of a culture while respecting its people. There was more to it than that, but it is difficult to distill a conversation shared into a blog post. I have spoken to Dra. Skar about this, and this post is not what I intended it to be, and I have not written what I wanted to say, but hopefully I will find the words somehow.
Am I a tourist or a traveler? I don´t know. Maybe that is why I am so uncomfortable. Many of the things that I dislike or find distasteful I often do myself. When I was walking through the barrio on the way home from one of the schools yesterday, I saw a tourist sitting in the backseat of a taxi pour an entire bottle of filtered water over a bunch of mamónes (sweet and tart citrus fruits). When the tourist finished pouring the clean water that he would never drink over the fruits that he would probably never finish, he threw the bottle ¨away¨. There is no ¨away¨, and when people from the ¨First World¨ consume the rest of the world, often through the assistance of petroleum, the environment suffers. It will not be the ¨First World¨ that feels the effects of climate change - it will be the countries that they consume. That I have consumed. And I feel sick about it.
Why does genocide tourism exist? Why do people go on tours to the slums of India and other places in the world, to see how the poorest people in the world live, to consume their poverty and suffering? When they leave, they go back to their air conditioning and their wireless internet and filtered ice water and the pictures that they took so that they can consume. I think that the consumption is what bothers me the most, and that it is so easy to engage in without a second thought.
As I type this, right now, the woman next to me is talking about the consumption of Nicaraguan women. ¨...And he told me the paternity suit left a bad taste in his mouth, but he doesn´t care, because he just found another woman, and that it doesn´t matter anyway because all the women are beautiful and on the tourist street they grab his ass when he walks by...¨ No lo creo. But maybe it goes both ways. I´m not naive or colonial enough to rob Nicaraguans of agency, and if I were a woman here, who knows how I would be.
I do think that we have an obligation to help each other as humans, regardless of nationality, and I often use that as a justification for my travels, as many of my trips have been volunteer-based. Still, what gives me the right to travel to another country to volunteer to study just because I think it would enrich my life and hopefully the lives of others? Who am I to decide?
While in Granada, our group has the privilege of working with La Esperanza Granada, an organization dedicated to community development and the education of children. I am enthused about learning through service, and I believe that giving back to Nicaragua an obligation, especially as I am watching myself learn and grow through being here.
What gives me the right to be here? I don´t know. What gives someone the right to travel to a country that they have no natural ties to, besides the fact that they have money? I have seen so much disrespect and disregard for Nicaraguan culture and Nicaraguan people, and it is not an attitude limited to this country - I have seen it on my other travels as well.
When you bite into a mamón, it is a mixture of sweet and tart and bitter flesh wrapped around a pit. The flavor is constantly changing. You suck the fruit out and roll it around in your mouth until the flesh is gone and you are left with the pit. Somehow, I find that eating a mamón is a apt metaphor for being here and my emotional state. It is easy to digest the fruit, but I am left alone with the hard inner pit of my thoughts and the difficulty trying to reconcile my actions. What right do I have to be here?
-Mercedes
(Turismas - a common sight. Often more common than Granadinas!)
Although I have been ashamed of the behavior of Americans and other tourists in my travels, my disgust has been especially pronounced on this trip. I have been trying to pinpoint the reason for this and I am grasping for explanations why I feel this way. I have been contemplating my motivations for travel and trying to weigh in my mind if they are worthy or valid. There are many reasons why I feel uncomfortable being here. I am aware of the judgments that I project based on my stereotypes, and I recognize that I might often be wrong. That is one of the reasons why I feel so uncomfortable - I know that others are projecting their judgments onto me, based on my pale skin and huge backpack that is my constant companion.
Last night at the volunteer meeting, the topic of tourist vs. traveler was raised. I feel like tourists come to a place to consume a culture without really caring about or respecting it, while a traveler gains knoweldge of a culture while respecting its people. There was more to it than that, but it is difficult to distill a conversation shared into a blog post. I have spoken to Dra. Skar about this, and this post is not what I intended it to be, and I have not written what I wanted to say, but hopefully I will find the words somehow.
Am I a tourist or a traveler? I don´t know. Maybe that is why I am so uncomfortable. Many of the things that I dislike or find distasteful I often do myself. When I was walking through the barrio on the way home from one of the schools yesterday, I saw a tourist sitting in the backseat of a taxi pour an entire bottle of filtered water over a bunch of mamónes (sweet and tart citrus fruits). When the tourist finished pouring the clean water that he would never drink over the fruits that he would probably never finish, he threw the bottle ¨away¨. There is no ¨away¨, and when people from the ¨First World¨ consume the rest of the world, often through the assistance of petroleum, the environment suffers. It will not be the ¨First World¨ that feels the effects of climate change - it will be the countries that they consume. That I have consumed. And I feel sick about it.
Why does genocide tourism exist? Why do people go on tours to the slums of India and other places in the world, to see how the poorest people in the world live, to consume their poverty and suffering? When they leave, they go back to their air conditioning and their wireless internet and filtered ice water and the pictures that they took so that they can consume. I think that the consumption is what bothers me the most, and that it is so easy to engage in without a second thought.
As I type this, right now, the woman next to me is talking about the consumption of Nicaraguan women. ¨...And he told me the paternity suit left a bad taste in his mouth, but he doesn´t care, because he just found another woman, and that it doesn´t matter anyway because all the women are beautiful and on the tourist street they grab his ass when he walks by...¨ No lo creo. But maybe it goes both ways. I´m not naive or colonial enough to rob Nicaraguans of agency, and if I were a woman here, who knows how I would be.
I do think that we have an obligation to help each other as humans, regardless of nationality, and I often use that as a justification for my travels, as many of my trips have been volunteer-based. Still, what gives me the right to travel to another country to volunteer to study just because I think it would enrich my life and hopefully the lives of others? Who am I to decide?
While in Granada, our group has the privilege of working with La Esperanza Granada, an organization dedicated to community development and the education of children. I am enthused about learning through service, and I believe that giving back to Nicaragua an obligation, especially as I am watching myself learn and grow through being here.
What gives me the right to be here? I don´t know. What gives someone the right to travel to a country that they have no natural ties to, besides the fact that they have money? I have seen so much disrespect and disregard for Nicaraguan culture and Nicaraguan people, and it is not an attitude limited to this country - I have seen it on my other travels as well.
When you bite into a mamón, it is a mixture of sweet and tart and bitter flesh wrapped around a pit. The flavor is constantly changing. You suck the fruit out and roll it around in your mouth until the flesh is gone and you are left with the pit. Somehow, I find that eating a mamón is a apt metaphor for being here and my emotional state. It is easy to digest the fruit, but I am left alone with the hard inner pit of my thoughts and the difficulty trying to reconcile my actions. What right do I have to be here?
-Mercedes
Primeras impresións
(The Cathedral in center of Granada)
It is impossible to separate history and economics, especially in Central America. The marriage of politics, economics and history is especially apparent in Granada, a city of sharply pronounced contradictions. In the short time I have been here, what has stood out most is the contrasts. Granada is the oldest colonial city in the Americas, and although the Spaniards may have officially left in 1821, the colonists are still here. They are now tourists.
We arrived three days ago and I have already lost track of time - I could have been here a week, or a month. Everything feels malleable - the time, the texture of my skin, language. Nicaraguans often drop the final S on the end of a word - Adiós becomes adió, gracias becomes gracias, and so forth. Although Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Colombian, one comes to understand how Latin America is the birthplace of magical realism. Anything seems possible in this insufferable heat and humidity and as I sit in an internet cafe typing this, salsa music plays, trucks barrel past and children shout in the streets, playing their games. I hope they are playing games.
In my short life, I have been blessed enough to travel to five continents and twelve countries. What gives me that right? I have the money and I have the resources, but this time is different. I have cried every day, sometimes several times a day, and I often find myself holding back tears as I walk through the central square.
Nicaragua is similar to Costa Rica, Jamaica, Brazil and Ghana - the other tropical countries I have been that are greatly impacted by decisions made by foreign countries. I am not comparing Nicaragua to the other countries that I named because the culture is similar - I have witnessed for myself how previous and modern foreign policy shapes and scars the landscape and the people. In Costa Rica, the land had literally been ripped apart. There were huge gouges in the hills where the topsoil formed ribbons that snaked into the ocean. I was very young when I was there, but I remember that. I remember the children who were my age, who I gave toys to... And where are they now? Have their lives changed? Has the land I traveled through started to heal? My boyfriend traveled to Costa Rica in January and his pictures looked like I remember - destruction for profit. For whose profit? For how long?
Our first day in Nicaragua we traveled to Laguna de Apoyo, the volcanic lake under the protection of the Nicaraguan government. We hiked down a steep incline to plant trees in the soil around the lake. Five years ago you could see the lake from the road, and now the trees are high enough for monkeys to climb and play and have families of their own. That makes my heart happy.
(Laguna de Apoyo)
What breaks my heart the most is the future of the children of Nicaragua. I was walking through the market and a man with a backpack walked past shouting ¨superglue! superglue!¨ Drug addiction and alcoholism is a problem for the street children of Granada, and inexpensive glue is often the drug of choice. When I walk to the convent in the morning for my classes, I saw a boy passed out on a stoop with a tube of glue shoved in his face. Was he dulling the pain? It was 7:30am and he couldn´t have been more than 10 years old. Today when I was walking through the market, I got a sharp whiff of glue that lasted for more than a second. It made me sick to my stomach for more than a moment and I felt dizzy. It wasn´t the smell of the glue that made me sick - I knew what it was, and what it was for, and I started crying. What else could I do?
The tourist brochures leave out the lost boys, the houses without windows, toilets and kitchens for a reason. Without attractions, foreigners would not come and ¨improve¨ the economy with their business and superior currencies. Is tourism bad? I don´t know. Yo soy turismo (I am a tourist) - I travel and I try to support the local economy in what I feel is an appropriate and respectful manner. I see tourists, who come in various flavors but have the shared commonality of money. They are often dressed well (and inappropriately), with expensive digital cameras to record their ¨awesome vaction¨ and huge backpacks, but when the children come to beg, they shoo them away. I don´t think it´s cool or OK to go on vacation and get drunk, rowdy and disrespectful in public, even if you paid a lot of money and it´s your free time, even if it puts money into the local economy. Because I am old enough now, the bipolarity of luxury and crushing, wrenching poverty here is painfully obvious to me. Does anyone else notice the street children and the old, dirty clothing on the vendors when they take their pictures in the central square like they are tourist attractions, similar to the cathedrals and colonial mansions?
When people tell me that I should help the children in the United States, that there is poverty at home, I tell them that I know. I do know. I don´t think that they know how bad it is here, and here could be anywhere in the so-called ¨third world¨. Sometimes I feel so lost and I don´t know what I can do to help. I know that no matter what I do, no matter how much I do, it will never, ever be enough.
-Mercedes DeMasi
"Lions, and Tigers, and Bears...Oh My"
Although first read in Graduate school, I now have reason to reread and reflect on the writing of Thomas Belt's, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, one of the greatest record of the tropics of more than 100 years. I am encouraging our students to really focus on this work as we travel from ecosystem to ecosystem for two reasons. First to see examples of excellent descriptions of plants and animals and what these organisms are doing, and realize that this text represents his travel journal, thus a product of leisurely travel. Keep in mind that Belt was an engineer and his precise descriptions have been the starting point for serious scientific work in ecology and evolution, which was not his field of expertise. This brings me to my second reason for having students read Belt's documentation of Nicaragua in the 1800's. As we take notes in our journals ask yourself if what we are recording will be what students in the next century will want to know about Nicaragua, and the details of it's people and natural resources. Can we contribute to Belt's legacy and help develop a timeline of documented change or will our time here contribute to the gap of global knowledge that exists today regarding tropical biology?
Our day in the field was so rewarding for me, not so much because of the tropical species I witnessed and can add to my life list, but because students I had in Bio100 (WCSU's non-major science course) could make connections between what they were observing and theories we had discussed in class! Ideas of symbiosis between organisms, defense strategies in organisms, and intra-species behavior. Conversations about introduced species and habitat destruction. Conversations about water, sunlight, soil, and ecosystems. I am watching biology majors touch, hear, and see the world around them and the depth of their ideas of how the natural world functions. Exciting to think where these young minds can take me. What a refreshing way to observe students learn!
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