Investigating. . .

We spent a lot of time in the last month or so getting to know people and exploring the Jalapa Valley. In order to better understand the lives of Jalapeños, Dan worked with people in their daily jobs- repairing busses with our host family, harvesting beans, etc. Dan spent a day with Alejandro Aguirre (from ACADIS) checking on a solar-panel project for communities without electricity. Dan continues to study Spanish as much as possible with Javier, and he and two other friends now work together in a conversational Spanish/English exchange. On 11/15, CCAJ (Cooperative of Active Campesinos of Jalapa) invited us to observe their annual election and report. We were honored and excited to participate.

Karla’s work in the Huertos program is moving along well. She delivered seeds this month and Huertos are growing again, after waiting out the rainy season. She also led a successful vermiculture workshop in Santa Martha (former FCP Huertos beneficiaries donated the worms for this community). Unfortunately, the people in Santa Rosa are somewhat dis-animated at the moment, but Karla noted that after about 9 months in Pasmata, people lost interest after a harvest. She says this is common but surmountable with care and attention; she plans to visit Santa Rosa 2x/week until people get back into it. As we decided to pause program expansion, she has more time to do this than she would have otherwise. Impressively, upon our request to conserve funding, she cut the cost of each workshop in ½, asking communities provide some of the refreshments- things like bananas, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables. People were very understanding, happy and proud to contribute.

PU currently has very few active members- from the 3 Huertos communities, and a couple of friends from organizations around town. Attendance has been low at recent meetings, and after much discussion, the three reps decided that we need to reinvigorate the group. We hope to do so by bringing in new and old FCP comrades and writing organizational by-laws, to clarify the goals and diversify the representative base. At the 12/5 PU meeting, we asked each PU member to invite members from their community who worked with FCP in the past, and to seek out other people from new communities who may like to work with us. We understand that this process will have to be handled delicately and with a view to the future.

Doña Carmen acted immediately, and on 12/10, we met various folks at her house in Santa Martha- people who worked on FCP’s water projects, who are still active members of the El Corozo Water Board, as well as other leaders from communities near Santa Martha. Incidentally as we walked home, a man pulled over the big cargo truck he was driving, jumped out and asked us, “Ustedes son de Colorado- Are you from Colorado?” We told him we were, and he excitedly told us that Colorado are “his people--” that he worked with Brendan on the water project in Teotecacinte, and to hop in so we could chat along the way. This was wonderfully uncanny, as not an hour before, we were all lamenting that we’d lost touch with FCP’s collaborators in Teotecacinte, and didn’t know where to begin to find them, as this town has grown exponentially since we completed the water project.

Dan is researching grant opportunities for FMJ. At an FMJ meeting on 11/24, all recognized the need to formalize the organization with the government to secure such an opportunity. We need come up with a document of legal statutes for FMJ and send it to Managua for approval. The process could take 6 months or more, but Hannah is working with the women to prepare the document. Each woman is also looking for cheap or rent-free places to set up an office. If we can find such a space, FMJ will have a secure, centralized place to base their activities, counsel women and store confidential documents. While room rentals are not more than $100/month, this is currently impossible for FMJ, as the women are all unpaid volunteers and the organization has zero funding.

Hannah has also been researching setting up a fair trade market in the States to sell artisanal pine baskets, made by local women. The baskets are beautiful and a learnable craft, as well as inexpensive to make, using mostly locally sourced pine needles that fall from the trees. We plan to hold workshops in the new year to expand this skill to other women, campesina a campesina as a form of income for Jalapeña families.

Poco Falta la Gloria, Anduvimos en San Pedro.

(Just short of the Glory, we walked in Saint Peter.)
Dan and Hannah spent the final days of November (through 12/3) in San Pedro (Terrerios). This is a remote community, five hours’ ride from Jalapa by mule. There is no electricity and no road into town. The nearest town is Terrerios, which is about an hour’s ride away on a steep, up-and-down trail. Most people grow coffee and depend on this and excess corn and beans for income. As they are currently harvesting coffee, we spent much of our time here saturated with learning about how coffee is initially picked and processed. Hannah was completely fascinated with the entire process and we were both delighted to help in any way we could.

We planned to spend the week picking coffee, but our hosts found this option impermissible- for fear of Coloradillas, little animalitos (bugs) that live in the coffee fields and bite the workers. We said we were willing to risk it, but they would have none of it. They did let us pick coffee for about an hour, a couple of times. We helped dis-pulp the fleshy part of the fruit from the beans, and picked out malos (“bad” beans- damaged from bugs or otherwise malformed) from semi-dry coffee that after sorting, goes to market in Jalapa (5 hours away) at about .41 cents a pound.

This community is organized and people work together to solve their problems, in a way we have not witnessed in Jalapa and other communities sobre la carretera (along the highway), where FCP focuses much of its work. The first morning we were there, we went with Don Juan Quintero (who we stayed with) to a neighbor whose cow had expelled her uterus. Don Juan and others worked on the cow to get the uterus back into its proper place, while others looked on and helped in whatever way possible. Afterword, we drank divine coffee and discussed community issues.

The most pressing issue for San Pedro is that the road to Jalapa is actually a single-track trail, impassible by anything but a horse/mule, bicycles or one’s own feet. The 4 river crossings become dangerous when it rains, severing the community from healthcare and all other basic amenities, available only in Jalapa. Also, there is no high school in Terrerios, so many students in San Pedro receive primary education only, as commuting is impossible. We could potentially work to improve the camino into town, with Dan’s trail building skills and the labor of the community to reduce the river crossing to one (instead of 4), for a start. The idea behind trail work is to use local resources, along the proposed trail. Costs would be limited mostly to labor, to be provided by community itself. This community shows a clear disposition to hard work, demonstrable coherence and internal organization necessary for such a project.

Final note: one morning in San Pedro, Don Juan and Dan went with the rest of the men of the community to a swamp in the middle of the jungle to slaughter another injured cow, weigh it and divide it among the community, taking tabs in a book about who owed what to the cow’s owner. Each man did his part chopping up the cow with machetes and axes until there was nothing left.