June 5, 2007

Rain is hope

It has started to rain in Managua and most of Nicaragua. Most afternoons there is a heavy downpour that is almost deafening on a corrugated tin roof. It hasn’t rained in Managua since November, and some areas of the country have been dry even longer than that. There have been times when there was no water at our house for several hours at a time and we think that is a problem. However, one of my co-workers lives a few kilometers from Managua, and he hasn’t had water for two or three months. She has had to buy water in 50-gallon drums brought in by horse and cart. Sometimes she has come to work early to take a shower before the work day starts.

After a strong rain, small streams can become rivers strong enough to carry a pickup away.

Now there is rain. The dust has settled and the mud has begun. Our little dogs love to run and play in the mud, so I sometimes think it would be smart to have all my clothing made with a puppy paw pattern. The mud makes problems in the roads in some rural areas, hillsides are slippery and the small creeks and rivers that people drive through are sometimes difficult. But no one is complaining—the rain is here.

Last week we were meeting with a new partnership group at the farm that CEPAD operates in Samulali (near Matagalpa). We met in the new meeting hall that CEPAD has built to do trainings for campesino farmers. Suddenly, it became almost impossible to hear. People were shouting across the room because of the roar on the tin roof. Several of the U.S. people in the group commented on how difficult it was, and also about the mud that the rain left.

But the Nicaraguans just smiled and continued. They didn’t cover their heads and run from one building to another, but walked in the rain, savoring the feel of the cool water. Here rain is not something to be avoided; it is to be welcomed.

The rain is here! That is a wonderful thing to say to most Nicaraguans, especially the rural people with whom CEPAD works. The rain is here! Now we can plant our crops. Now we can have water in the well or the pipes of the water system. Now we can wash clothing without having to worry about every spilled drop. Now the plants will grow, the animals will eat, and soon they won’t be so skinny that you can see their rib cages. The rain is here!

Sure it brings problems. In the city, the torrents sometimes wash away a makeshift house next to one of the drainage ditches. Once in a while there is a flood. But mostly the rain means food and hope.

In February I visited an area near Boaco in the center of Nicaragua. Here people had been without water for months, the last rainy season had not been very heavy, and the rivers had been dry for months. We saw holes dug five or six feet into the dampness of the riverbed, trying to get enough water to fill a bucket to give to one of the starving animals. We heard from people in that area who had to carry water for miles to bring a bucketful back home.

Nicaragua sits here with the largest supply of potable water of anywhere in Central America. Lake Nicaragua is in the same size range as the great lakes of the United States and Canada. There are rivers coming out of the mountains all over the place. And still thousands of people live without access to enough water to drink or wash. And the problem gets worse each year as the water system gets older, the infrastructure wears out, pumps break down, and the sources of water become more polluted from human, animal, and agricultural chemical waste.

I sometimes wish that I could suggest an easy way to fix the problem. Maybe if everyone stopped using so much, maybe they could rebuild the distribution system, maybe this, maybe that. But the fact is that Nicaraguan water consumption per person is (on average) less than half that of the United States. At least half of the population lives without access to a flush toilet, which is the largest consumer of water in U.S. homes. And there isn’t any money to do anything but the most basic repairs for the distribution system (although the new government is doing far more of this than the previous administration).

I don’t believe that there is an easy way to fix the situation, and CEPAD works slowly with one small group of farmers at a time, teaching them how to save water in growing their crops, in processing their coffee, or how to work against the illegal logging that is destroying the watershed of many parts of Nicaragua.

But in the meantime, while some people work toward long-term solutions, other just wait for the rain. Now it is here, and the crops are being planted, the people are smiling. The rain is here! Rain is hope!

Doug

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 58