Just back from a trip to Nicaragua with Habitat for Humanity, with a group of 50 people from across Canada and the US and the Netherlands. We participated in a blitz build, where we completed 5 seed houses in one week.
After Haiti, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has not fully recovered from a devastating earthquake that took place in the 1970s, and from the political unrest in the 1980s, when the Sandinistas overthrew the longstanding repressionist dictatorship of the Somoza family, that led to a more peaceful era, but that had a very negative effect on their economy.
According to Habitat Nicaragua, there is a shortfall of 957,000 homes, and 78% of Nicaraguans live in substandard dwellings. Their goals for 2015-2016 include building more homes and eco toilets, and providing microloans for home improvements, particularly to women entrepreneurs with home-based businesses.
In San Cayetano, a small community located on the Pacific coast a few hours from Managua, they built 80 homes and a community well, and plan to complete another 34 seed homes by June 2016, five of which we built at the end of January. Other organizations such as Women Build, and the municipality of San Rafael del Sur have also been involved in building homes and Eco toilets (composting toilets) in this area.
They have also been introducing "módulos húmedos" which are eco bathrooms that consist of an outdoor modular unit with a toilet, shower and laundry sink, all of which drain into a holding tank, that needs to be emptied once every two years. Locals have been trained in the maintenance of the Eco bathrooms, providing some local employment. However, homes do not have running water and many still have to carry buckets of water from the community well or nearby rivers.
We had to haul water for mixing cement, and while I struggled with the heavy bucket, our homeowner Surayda, a grandmother in her late forties, carried her buckets gracefully with ease on her head. The buckets are like the white buckets we get of drywall compound or paint. Try filling one of those to the top and carrying that on your head!
In my next post I will describe more about our team build and the seed house.
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