Troyers in Transition

Take heart! We are back to blogging after a long delay. There is much to report and many more adventures to come. We have transitioned from “language school life” to our work as Disaster Management Coordinators. One aspect of our orientation for this work involves visiting MCC units in several Central American countries to establish working relationships with the MCC unit leaders of each country and several of the national partner organizations who have worked with MCC previously in times of disaster. One could call it a “Learning Tour” in many many respects. We have only completed one unit visit so far, but have already met many wonderful people, and learned many things, but most importantly learned patience, flexibility, and trusting in the Lord. We have felt so fully the love and care of the Lord and appreciated the support, encouragement and prayers of so many of you, and we give thanks.

Our first learning tour took place the last two weeks of October to visit the Nicaragua MCC unit with an add-on trip to San Jose, Costa Rica to renew our travel visa and to meet with Mark Epp, the Associate Director for MCC Latin America/Caribbean and our supervisor for disaster management. To help with the geography, I have included a map so those who are interested can follow the course of our travels.

Also, just a bit about travel modes in Central America. Air flights between countries are expensive while country to country direct buses (similar to Greyhound buses in character) are very economical, safe, dependable and provide relatively on-time travel. Some bus lines even provide snacks, drinks, pillows and blankets...just like the airlines used to provide! Hence, the majority of our travels will be by bus. The only real drawback to busing is the time needed to reach a destination and sometimes having to listen to music videos or bad movies...many long hours of idleness. We have learned to take along a good book, a Sudoku, and a source of our own music.

Our bus trip to Nicaragua took us first from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras to Tegucigulpa, Honduras (our eventual home base). What should have been a 3 ½ hr trip instead turned into an eight hour trip as there was severe flooding and a bridge covered with a foot or more of water about an hour before our destination of Teguc. For two weeks there had been heavy rains causing the nearby dam to have dangerously high levels, so they opened the flood gates for several hours to relieve the pressure above...but severely flooded areas down below and made roads temporarily impassable. The bus wanted to turn around and return to SPS but several of the passengers pleaded to wait till the water went down so they could continue on to Teguc. Supposedly in 1-2 hours the water would go down when the gates up above were closed. So we waited...four hours later, the water was down below the bridge and and it was our turn to pass through. To minimize the weight on the bridge, all the passengers needed to walk across the bridge, then the bus passed over! Oh my! But then off we went to Tegucigulpa. Needless to say, we missed the bus we intended to take to Managua that afternoon and had to find a hotel and leave the next day. Our 10hr bus trip to Managua, Nicaragua was less eventful, but got us to the MCC unit house about midnight.

The next morning we visited Acion Medica Cristiana (AMC) to learn the many ways they are working in the country to promote and improve health in the community. One project has been to work with an at risk population of 39 communities that live along a large river that often floods. Community workshops helped the people to evaluate what resources they already had and what was needed to be better prepared for post hurricane and storm flooding, such as setting up evacuation centers, an evacuation communication system, and a community plan. This is only a fraction of the many things we learned that morning and we were very inspired by the depth of good work this organization is doing to improve the health and well being of the Nicaraguan poor.

Our next learning activity was to visit Grayton, a small remote village in the northeast interior of Nicaragua that had been severely damaged in 2007 from 10hr sustained winds and rain from Hurricane Felix. Our guides for the trip were David and Pastor Mario. David works in the MCC unit office and Mario is a physician and Mennonite pastor in Managua. The Mennonite churches of Nicaragua have formed a emergency response council, Comite' Anabautista Emergencia (CAE) that provides physical and financial assistance to Mennonites and other persons in their community who have suffered from a disaster. In the aftermath of Hurricane Felix, CAE organized Mennonite churches closest to the disaster to assist with immediate needs such as food and plastic for temporary shelters. MCC supported CAE in this process and a second restoration phase to provide permanent housing and seeds for replanting destroyed crops.

Our trip to Grayton again involved busing, but this time we traveled on local buses – old school buses with a big rack on top that carried freight nearly as heavy as the weight of the passengers inside!

The roads were only paved about two hours of our total trip and the rest were dirt roads with an abundance of big pot holes and mud. Our first bus (to Rosita) was an overnight bus – 4:30pm to noon the next day with one stop to eat at 10pm. However, we had several other unplanned stops as the bus broke down 4-5 times along the way and got stuck in the mud once - so I learned to pee along the side of the road and sleep while the music blared and the bus listed side to side as it negotiated the pot holes! The second bus left from Rosita at 1:30pm that same afternoon and we finally arrived at our destination (the end of the line) at 5:45pm that evening.

The bus trip was exhausting and we really wondered at times if we would ever reach our destination. But we did arrive and were graciously welcomed into the home of the local Mennonite pastor who fed us and put us up in his home for the night. Most slept on hammocks that were strung up all about the main room of the house, while Virgil and I were given a bed (boards on a wood frame with a sheet that covered the boards). The house was a very basic wood-sided house, with dirt floor, and had only two rooms with a cooking shelter attached to the back and a outhouse shared by several houses nearby. It was the end of the rainy season so the streets and walkways were all full of mud.

The village was made up of about 30 wooden houses, over half of them newly constructed in the past 10 months after the hurricane - made from wood from the many downed trees in the storm. MCC provided money for the tin roofs of the new houses and replacement roofs for houses who lost their roofs. They also collaborated with another Mennonite organization to build a church and an elementary school for this town as they did not have a school previously. During our 2 day visit to Grayton, they had the dedication of the school and Virgil and I were ask to represent MCC by cutting the ribbon to open the school. It was very special to be able to share in this occasion with the community. As part of our work, we walked around the village and interviewed families to hear their stories of what happened to them during and after the disaster and allowing them to show their new or newly restored homes. They live a very simple life – small one or two room houses with only a dirt floor, minimal furniture, and chickens, ducks, and dogs that run freely through the house and pigs right outside the door. But they also are very proud of what they have - keeping the house clean and working hard to keep themselves clean and healthy. They carry all their drinking and cooking water about a quarter of a mile and wash clothes and bath in the river (we did bucket baths behind the house in the dark as the river was a bit more public that we cared for). They also have a strong faith in God and are dedicated to helping others to know Christ and to serve him. In fact, as an outgrowth of the relief work the Nicaraguan Mennonite churches have done, there have been at least four new churches established in this region.

The afternoon of our visit to Grayton provided us the opportunity to participate in a church service conducted in a home in a neighboring community. We walked with members of the Grayton Mennonite church the 90mins to this home, inviting community members to attend. The pastor spoke and there was much singing...including myself with the support of David, Pastor Mario singing a chorus in Spanish we had sung once earlier in the morning. They probably couldn't understand a thing I sang, but appreciated the effort. As we walked home, the darkness descended. We hopped on a large dump truck for part of the route...including the women and the babies and used the light of the moon and stars to guide us along the road the rest of the way. A real faith test was walking over the “bridge” - a log plank that traversed the river about 20 feet up in the air with only the light of a cell phone pad to guide us! Later that evening, by the light of a candle while sharing our supper of rice and beans around a small table in the house of the pastor, we were privileged to be a part of a discussion and reflection by the young Grayton pastor and the senior visiting pastors on the events that had taken place in this small village and the surrounding communities in the past 13 months since Hurricane Felix. There are still many needs both physically (closer clean water and a substantial bridge) and spiritually (churches in nearby communities that do not currently have), but there is also a sense of hope and of community spirit to work together and improve the lives of the people in that area.

The trip to Grayton was an unforgettable experience. It was a grueling trip and was a hard experience physically, but a very rewarding experience spiritually and emotionally. We were blessed in many ways with travel mercies, good health while eating and drinking food that our digestive tracts were not sensitized for, and operating on very little sleep for several days in a row, yet learning to know many wonderful people and seeing how differently much of rural poor of Central America lives and the hardships they endure. We were doing a debriefing with Angela, the MCC Representative, after our return to Managua with the MCC Country Rep and we all got choked up relating the things we had seen and learned.
- here is a link to the photos, un-edited and not completely captioned, if you want to browse.

We had one last item on the agenda before leaving Nicaragua. On the last day we met with representatives of CAE, the emergency committee of the Mennonite churches. CAE is made of of representatives of the three Mennonite/Anabaptist groups (consilios) in the country. The three groups are very independent and don't really do much together – however, when there is a disaster or other emergency, they band together with the leadership of this joint committee to respond. CAE was primarily responsible for the response to Hurricane Felix in Grayton. After having been in Grayton to see that work firsthand, it was a gratifying experience to meet with the persons who provided the leadership.

We are pleased that our meetings with the church agencies and partners here in Managua have gone really well. Language is not being a big problem and we have been welcomed and very well received as we explain our roles and ask about their roles and their stories.