Water

What would you do if you went to your kitchen faucet and no water came out? You would probably go to another faucet in the house to see if the water was out. Your next step would be to call the water utility to find out what is going on. Needless to say you would feel a bit put out and frustrated that you can't shower when you want to, or do laundry you had planned on doing or clean the floors or make a meal.

Nicaraguans live with water outages on a daily basis. There are times they will get up in the middle of the night in order to wash their clothes (by hand) because the water is only on at night. Or they will get up earlier then they had planned on in order to shower. Water outages happen through out the country and sometimes the outages are on a schedule, but other times there is no warning. The one thing that is consistent is that the water is not always consistent, so people store water in barrels, buckets or whatever they can in order to have enough water. People pay their utility bills, but there just isn’t enough water to go around for everyone. There is also no one to complain to. In the states people would be infuriated if they were paying their bills and still had water outages. People here don’t have that luxury…it is just the way life is here. They are happy they at least have access to water.

When we lived in Managua the water was hardly ever off, but several blocks away from where we lived we knew of people who would be without water all day. Since living in Teustepe we understand what it is like to live life with inconsistent water outages. At first it seemed like there was a schedule…no water from 8am-noon then water on until 5, the water would then be off until midnight. Then we had several days where the water was out from 6am-midnight. The next day the water was on we filled up some buckets we don’t normally use because they don’t have lids, but the water was on all day and for the days following. There was one time Seth woke up at 2am because he heard the water running (we left the shower on). At that time he filled all of our water storage containers and did dishes; then he heard the neighbor up washing clothes (by hand). This week our water has hardly been off. We have had water all day and it goes off around 6ish until 10ish.

So we have learned when the water is on fill up all the storage containers in order to be prepared. We store enough water to do dishes, shower, cook, flush the toilet (we use the motto, if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down), but not enough to do laundry or clean the floors. Therefore, when the water is on we have to do laundry and wash the floors. Our water is on this morning, so this is what a typical morning looks like: Filling all of our containers.

Our filter stores drinking and cooking water.

Pitchers full of drinking water.

Water for washing dishes.

Barrel for bathing and flushing the toilet.

Bucket showering, use the red bowl, you get the idea.

The next time you get a glass of water from your faucet, or shower, or wash clothes when you want to I hope you will be reminded of how water is a precious commodity and to be wise in it's use.

Update on Ricardo's Well

We thought you may be wondering whatever happened to the well that Ricardo was digging. Just to remind for everyone, he had a vision from God about where he would find water on his land, so he began digging.
Well 11 months later his sons and him are still digging with a chisel. They are currently at 80 feet, but have found some water. They are getting 4-5 gallon buckets of water a day. For some of you it may seem like God has not been faithful because that is not enough water. Ricardo believes God will help them discover the larger vein of water that he saw in his vision.

Have you ever wondered, how do the men get in and out of the well to dig? It is not an easy task. They are lowered down by a rope with a pulley (it looks somewhat like repelling) and then work for half the day until lunch is brought from their mother or wife. They then return chiseling away at rock for the afternoon. When it is time to get out the rope the person ties the rope around his waist as a harness and then the person is pulled up. Here is what it looks like:

What Do We Do?

I realized that I have not written recently about our work here in Nicaragua. I tend to write more about the unusual things we have done, but I think it is time to update on our day to day lives. Well, as I have stated before we are living in Teustepe where we spend most of our time, we still have to go to Managua at times for meetings or when groups come. Teustepe is a small town, but big enough not to know everyone, so we are often stared at. It is very common for white people or anyone that looks different to get stared at, which is something that we will never be used to. .

Work wise...we still help some with office work, but from our home in Teustepe. Seth is still helping to write grants for projects. I am still organizing the groups that come from the states to see AsoFenix projects as well as planning for and organizing the intern. Right now we have 4 Swedish interns here for 6 months. The interns generally live in the communities working on small projects or following up on projects and getting to know what life is like in the countryside. We have been working on writing and doing base line surveys before we do projects, so we have something to compare to the results.

Recently I have not done any health trainings nor have we done any trainings in the schools but this will be changing. The focus our last year is to be in the communities more consistently to help with committee organization, project follow up and providing various trainings in the areas of health, nutrition, reforestation, sustainable agriculture and teaching how to use a computer to some of the youth. In addition to this we will continue to help our partner with renewable energy projects. In our time in Nicaragua we have been apart of installing

• a potable water system (picture on the left)
  
• a micro hydro turbine, solar panels and wind turbines to provide energy to isolated communities
• biodigestors for cooking
• drip irrigation systems (picture on the right)
  

We enjoy our work and look forward to being able to be in the communities more frequently. We are also grateful we are able to support AsoFenix.

Delight in the Little Things in Life...Like the Beach

The beginning of September we had the opportunity to get away for the weekend enjoying one of our favorite things...the beach. Nicaragua is not known for the best beaches, but when your from a land locked state far from any beach, they are not too bad. We went to our favorite beach area, San Juan del Sur, about a 3 hour bus ride south of Managua. The beach in the town of San Juan del Sur is not the prettiest, but there are many beaches near there that are absolutely gorgeous.

Our friend, Beth, from MCC went with us...she likes the beach as much as we do. We spent the days enjoying the water and the sun and at night we enjoyed good food and a little bit of the night life. The first night we were there we went to a a place on the beach that had a bonfire, a fire thrower and a live band...we mainly went to see the fire thrower. We saw the fire thrower, but he only did it for 5 minutes, so it was not as exciting as we had anticipated. However, it was nice to sit on the beach with the cool ocean breeze listening to live music.

We spent one day at a nice pool that overlooks San Juan del Sur...it was a fun relaxing day. Although my favorite day was our last day. We took a water taxi to spend the day at a beach north of San Juan del Sur called Majagual. We saw a secluded beach in the distance that we decided to walk to called Florcita. The walk included scaling some rocks to get around bends. Once we finally arrived to Florcita, the sand was white, the water was crystal clear (you could see your feet while in chest deep water) and we were the only ones on the beach...it was heaven. After being there for several hours the tide began to rise, so we decided we should get back to the other beach since we knew there was one section that would be difficult to pass if the tide was too high...you can see it was a bit difficult the way it was. We spent the rest of the day enjoying the ocean at the other beach, which was beautiful and had crystal clear water it just had larger waves.

The boat returned in the late afternoon to take us back to San Juan del Sur. The driver had decided to do some fishing on the way back because he saw birds swarming and diving for fish, so he knew there were schools of fish in the area. So, we got the experience of watching Nicaraguans fishing...as you can see in the picture there is no pole. Once enough fish were caught we began to head back when we saw (what I can only imagine as extremely rare) turtles mating. Yeah, I said mating and on the surface of the water. Seth and I have seen a turtle laying eggs, a baby turtle and snorkeled with turtles, but this was a new experience all together. The turtles were not scared of the boat (I am sure because they were busy), so we were able to take several pictures and Beth got a video. They finished and swam deep into the ocean, so we proceeded back to the bay. In the distance we saw another turtle swimming, but it was scared off quickly once the boat got too close. Once we got back to the beach at San Juan del Sur we enjoyed watching the sunset because it made for a perfect ending to a glorious day.

We have moved

Well we moved to Teustepe, a town 90 km northeast from Managua, the beginning of August. However, we have not been living in Teustepe full time because we had some work things to finish up in Managua before fully relocating. From here on out we should mainly be in Teustepe with a few trips a month to Managua. For those of you that need a recap, we moved to Teustepe in order to be closer to the communities we work in with AsoFenix; more or less our work has changed focus a little. We will be focusing our last year mostly on community development and less on office work (which we had been doing a lot of in Managua the last year). We are excited to see how God uses us in our new roles and in our new home.

Many people have wanted to see pictures of our house, so enjoy the tour. (The tour only includes the rooms that are fully furnished.)

The entrance into the living room (yep, that is our motorbike):

Our living room:

Our kitchen:

A view of the backyard from the kitchen:

Our cozy little breakfast nook just off of the living room:

Our bathroom:

Our workout room (just of the breakfast nook):

Our bedroom (just off of the workout room):

The backyard from our bedroom:

to see more pictures of our new home check out our photo website.