Nicaragua

Live hungry:
no one says it like that.
We say, "They're hungry."
But in Central America, where
a fifth of the people are underfed,
we can truly say these people "live hungry."
It's like starving to death
in slow motion.

Carmelo Gallardo



































Photo taken in the floodplain slums of Grenada, America's oldest colonial city, where an association of women called Casa de la Mujer (an NGO) have been helping to reconstruct and raise shanty town homes so that they will not be flooded by rain, grey water, sewage year-round.

This is in exchange for two workers to help build, some materials, and approximately $200 dollars, paid per month in $25 dollar segments - and women are to be the property owners. These have been set to ensure personal investment, and are particularly designed to address Nicaragua's dependency on aid (both on very small, local, and nation-wide scales).

Many families have been unable to meet these low terms, and on top of the other challenges they face (such as illness, hunger, and extreme poverty), continue to be flooded. Beyond this wall, the inside of this home was filled with a foot and a half of filthy water.

The Casa de la Mujer, funded by Nicaragua's socialist Sandinista housing programs, Grenada's sister cities, and NGOs in France, Spain, and Germany, has recently decided to move forward with its project, covering the costs for these families in a second phase of construction needed to raise the entire town several feet and provide a home for those families that were not included in the first phase.

However, a roof and four walls may serve to house and hide the structural issues that ensure that poverty and misery persist in Nicaragua, which statistics tell us is the poorest country in Central America, and second poorest in Latin America. At the same time, never before have I seen a country that is so wealthy in terms of environmental resources as well as social ones.

The saddest side of Nicaragua, which is also the most fascinating (in my eyes), is how Nicaraguans have been so shaped by their tumultuous past that in a miriad of ways their infrastructure simply cannot support them. But they, too, see how incredible rich and beautiful their country is, and see at the same time that there is no clear path forwards, and that their way is only becoming clouded again in the current political situation.

Nicaragua, at least from what I learned in one week of being in the country, faces an extreme paradox set in the most simple of ways: how does a country that has everything and yet has nothing become something? And if it cannot see its way forward, what will happen?