I'm Pathetic

So, sorry for the layoff, what it really comes down to is that I am pathetic. Well that and we have not been able to have full use of the internet for some time. So I finally decided to buckle down and send a post without any pictures, so hopefully you can imagine them in your heads.

For the last month Cass and I have been volunteering in Cuidad Sandino, a refugee town outside of Managua that houses people displaced by disasters in Nicaragua. It started out as a temporary placement for families until their houses and communities were restored, but more disasters kept happening and eventually this became a city. Well...kinda. It is now one of the largest in Nicaragua, it is the most densly populated, and it is the most impoverished, which might make it one of the poorest communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Cass and I continue to be amazed and humbled by the spirit of the people of Nicaragua. We have traveled to various regions here and seen and heard the stories of a people who continue to fight for a dignified existence. The myth that the impoverished are lazy is lie that allows those in power to continue on in their dominant ways. And we, Cass and I, continue to see that these people do not want our charity but rather be given the opportunity to provide for themselves, as there is an 80 percent unemployment rate. So it isn't that people will not work, it is that there is no work for them to do.

The organization that we have been working with (Click here for Jubilee House info) has been down in Cuidad Sandino for the last 15 years, working alongside the people of this community to provide sustainable ways to develop (agriculture, technology, health, education, business, etc.). The work that this community does it utterly jaw-dropping. They have started the world's first free-trade zoned fair-trade sewing factory that is owned by the workers themselves, which if you understand what a free trade zone is, it's unheard of. Usually these zones are set up so that multi-national corporations can come in here and basically use slave labor to produce their products. So just one of many things Jubilee House does is organize community members into cooperatives that can start their own businesses, so that they can keep the tax breaks and other perks of working in the free trade zone and therefore reinvest in their own community.

So Cass and I have been working alongside another worker owned cooperative called Genesis, to help build a factory where they will be spinning organic yarn. The people who are building this factory are the same people who will work in it when it is completed. Cass has also been working in the health clinic and has learned to drive a manual transmission car, which she holds over me since I am lost when it comes to shifting a car.

Know that I will be posting a few more things on this work and some other insights we have gained in our month and a half when I did not write. But if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment, and I will respond as best I can.