Nicaragua Track 2: Cultural Integration

The last few days we have been talking to the Alcance Nicaragua staff about integration, an important step in the PHD process.  They have given us advice and guided our exploration of the process, and so yesterday and today we got to try it out.  Yesterday we spent the morning in El Tunel and the afternoon in La Prusia.  In both communities we were with families who were building a new stove.  The traditional stoves are open-topped, so a lot of smoke gets into the house and they need a lot of wood to heat the whole area.  With the help of Alcance Nicaragua, some families are trying a new stove design that requires less wood and channels the smoke through a chimney and out through a hole in the roof so the family is not breathing it in.  This makes them more economical and better for the health of the families, although the community as a whole has not fully adjusted to the idea of using a non-traditional stove.  In the morning they were just beginning the project, so we helped make the cement stove tops.  In the afternoon we helped another family finish a stove by adding the stove tops to the cement and brick base and putting a finishing layer of cement on the outside.  Like any project here, it was humbling because there was nothing we could do that they can't do better, from squaring the molds to mixing the concrete, but they are gracious enough to let us participate.  We used our limited Spanish and gestures to communicate with the adults, and played the universal game of tag with the children.  Although we are far from being experts at integration, these trips were a good practice and a great learning experience.

Today we joined with Track 1 and returned to La Prusia, this time to the school.  The project for the morning was to put in a water pipe from the existing line to the school's water tank so that the school would have running water more consistently.  In the afternoon we returned to the school for an intercultural exchange in the form of a talent show.  Members of the community performed traditional dances and songs, and Graceland students shared our musical talent, mainly in the form of campfire songs.  The work went well and much more quickly than anyone expected and the talent show was a lot of fun, but the really important part was the insight this experience brought to many students.  For some it was the realization that spoken word is not the only language.  For others it was that people in another country are not so different from us in the emotions they express and some of the things they value, like music and laughter.  Each person brings away something different, but I don't think there is a single student or chaperone who will not take home powerful memories.  Tomorrow Track 2 will return to La Prusia in the morning to do more work with the community at the school, so we are looking forward to those experiences.

Graceland students help dig trench for water pipe to the school

Anna Cleland-Leighton