Nicaragua

For those of you who are not sick and tired of my Nicaragua trip yet, here are more pictures. The rest of you can just wait for the next regular post!

These pictures and videos are from a presentation that I put together to show the church. These aren’t all the pictures, since several of those are already in earlier posts, and the videos will have to be in a separate post below because of strange software trademark issues that are far too complicated to explain right now!

Enjoy!

This is the family that I traveled with. Two-year-old Josiah is being held by Mommy, and four-year-old Analise is standing. Mrs. Toone went to Nicaragua with the mission team Mercy Ships, right after she graduated from college, so she knows the country and the language pretty well. After she got married and had kids, of course, it was too difficult to even visit, so this was her first trip down there in six years. As soon as Josiah was walking and talking,  they were eager to head back down again and see how things have changed. So this trip was mostly an introduction to the country for the kids and I and a reintroduction for the Toones.

One of the first things to notice about Nicaragua is the volcanoes. Nicaragua is inside the ring of fire and everywhere you look on the horizon, you see volcanoes. In the next post I’ll show a video of an active volcanic crater.

These are the bubbling mud pits. See the steam rising in the distance?

 

The lighting that day was a photographers dream; it’s easy to see the steam rising up. This is a picture of Andrew Longley (a friend of Mrs. Toones) holding his daughter, Anna. Yes, that is a caution line that they are standing inside of!

These are the tour guides! At soon as we arrived at the gate to see the mud pits, these kids from the village began swarming us! As we walked down, they chattered constantly in Spanish, telling us about the area in exchange for tips after we got back to the car! The little girl in the blue dress was my guide, she held my hand and chattered and laughed the whole way! I wondered if they had been taught to act cute in hope for more money at the end.

 

The kids kept warning us, “Mucho hot! Mucho hot!” The heat was really incredible. Someone had put up the caution line around the area, but the kids ignored that, leading us up to the best spots for pictures and video.

 

One of the villages we visited was in an area called the Death Triangle! That’s the area of land triangulated between the cemetery, the sewage treatment plant, and the garbage dump. This land was so undesirable that no one lived there for years. After Hurricane Mitch (sort of like Nicaragua’s Katrina), the government was suddenly covered up in refugees, so they gave them this land that no one wanted. It’s easy to see why no one wanted it. The flies swarmed over us as soon as we got out of the car.

This is a fence. Most of the shacks and fences were made out of material like this, rooftops and plywood salvaged from the hurricane debris.

 

It was amazing to see the cheerful attitudes and welcoming smiles even in the poorest of places!

This little girl is washing clothes at an outdoor sink. The water pours from the pump in the top right corner into the basin, which as you can see, is green with mildew. She would dip the water out of that holding basin and pour it into the other side, where you can see the clothes in the sink. Then it would drain out a hole in the back and collect in a hole in the ground that would have to be emptied regularly.

Nicaraguans keep themselves scrupulously clean. It would be an embarrassment to go out with even a sweat stain on your shirt. I wish I had a picture of the little toddlers and babies walking around on these dirt floors wearing clothes so spotlessly white that it looks like they were just purchased. However, they have very little understanding of germs or sanitation. It reminds me of Jesus’ description of the Pharisees who are like cups that are clean on the outside only.

This is one of the projects that Nueves Esperanzas (translated: New Hope; the group that replaced Mercy Ships) is working on currently. Half of the year Nicaraguans live in an intense drought. The people who live on the volcanoes often had to hike two hours a day for water, since the streams on the volcanoes are too mineral-rich for drinking. This photo is of one of the cisterns that Nueves Esperanzas is building to help solve the problem. These tanks collect rain-water during the rainy season and store it for the dry season. Originally, the tanks were only meant for collecting water for washing purposes, but strenuous tests showed that the water was actually clean enough to drink! Don’t you love God’s miracles?

The tanks are taller than a man above ground and go down almost as deep into the ground.

These steps lead down to the tap for getting the water.

We visited during the dry season!

Dust is just a way of life in Nicaragua, some of which comes from the ground and some from the volcanoes! We had to bathe the babies every night before putting them to bed.

This is a building that Mrs. Toone worked in when she was down here six years ago. Since then, the people have moved on to better homes and these old buildings were deserted.

It looks almost like a prison now, but this was once a school!

A Mennonite church in the village of La Palmerita. As you can see, it is open-air, like many buildings here, but they had just gotten a new, concrete floor! Most people here live on dirt floors, so they were very proud of this!

 

Little Josiah got a lot of attention with his white skin, blonde hair and big blue eyes!

 

Mrs. Toone with Tina, one of the girls she mentored when she worked down here!

Apologies for the blurry picture, but this gives you an idea of one of the houses. This house consisted of two rooms, the other room was the same size as this one!

The beauties of an outdoor market! Everything is fresh and local.

No, these aren’t peppers. Most liquids in Nicaragua are sold in plastic bags. These are probably sauces and spices. Sodas and other drinks often come in bags too. It is a common sight to see people walking around sucking on brightly colored bags! To drink one, you simply bite off a corner of the bag and suck through the hole like a straw!

The video post will be below as soon as I’ve finished it! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or to e-mail me!