11:30a.m. – “Adios.” We shake hands with Nelson then head out. Felix will be our tour guide for the day. We jump in his truck and head to a community called San Jose; the community chose the name.
As we drive through the countryside of Nicaragua he points out the mountains that he hopes to climb, explains that he is involved with the program because he has children he hopes to benefit from it. He has a lot of dreams – he wants to visit the states and hopefully attend school, but the system is making it difficult for him to apply for a student visa. He wants to travel the world to expose his children to other cultures. He desires to show his kids a future not guaranteed in Nicaragua. He yearns to provide great hope to his kids. He would also like to see a Marlins game and, my personal favorite, eat Texas food.
12:15p.m. – We’re coming to the end of a long dirt path that has only been made a drivable road because Felix has driven down it so much. His car has become the community taxi. As he drives by he slows down or people raise their arm and jump in. By the time we will have gotten to San Jose our truck bed will have been filled and we will have been slowed to a stop by a herd of cattle again.
He stops. He slowly turns his car up a steep path the slants slightly down to create an uneven surface. We drive up a hill nestled behind a well-built adobe house to what looks like the top of nothing. We break through some brush and weathered trees. We get to the top of the mountain and see a small neighborhood of ten houses. A water well that goes 20 meters underground sits near the front with a ten-year-old boy holding a bucket as his mom pumps water for the day. The city overlooks the hills of Dario. Men and women stand on their front porch knitting hammocks with supplies purchased from the Networks microloan programs. We meet Hector who runs a pulperia, a house market. He’s one of the community leaders and has encouraged the use of the microloan programs.
“They’ve provided us with a way to provide for ourselves,” Hector says (in Spanish). He shows us pictures of his daughter who is at the literacy school at the front of the community. He then points us to Rosa, who organizes community meetings and focus groups.
Once these communities open, the Rainbow Network encourages them to be as autonomous as possible. They encourage communities to take responsibility for sustainability and growth so that they aren’t dependent on a third party to influence or control its development. Rosa has taken this responsibility heavily.
“My hope is that kids will go off to university. I want them to come back and show other kids here that it’s possible. Not too many believe it can be done because they haven’t seen it. But my hope is to send some to university,” Rosa says (in Spanish).
1:00p.m. – As we wrap up our meeting with Rosa, Felix tells us we have an opportunity to see one community before heading back on the bus. This community has a medical center and some land open for purchase. It’s a little newer than San Jose but still growing just as quickly with similar characteristics. It’s off the beaten path, hard to get to, but still beating strong.
1:30p.m. – We pull into the parking lot of the school to see kids lined up outside one of the classes. I find this strange because classes should already be out by now. As we approach the door I see a lady wearing a white coat. Their school doubles as their medical clinic.
Although it’s not preferable, it’s nice to have a space for basic checkups the 29-year-old nurse tells us. She says she’s in her final year of training and when she’s done would like to continue her work with Rainbow Network. Although paid, she doesn’t get much and this is only half her work. She works the mornings in another community and the afternoons in this one. With the help of the Rainbow Network and her knowledge of basic care she’s seen the community take more of a responsibility with health. The nurse’s presence has also empowered one of the local boys to head to high school, a journey that no one else has taken in his young village’s history.
“I hope to eventually go to university, then come back to help my community,” the boy tells me.
2:00p.m. – We jump into Felix’s truck, which once again doubles as a taxi and head to the bus stop to go back to where we’re staying for the month. As we so easily get dropped off at our needed stop, we can’t help but appreciate the crazy journey we went on today. We see the ways in which the Lord showed up, the ways in which the enemy tried to deter us, and how the Lord showed us what the enemy tried to prevent us from seeing.
*This blog series pertains only to our unsung hero adventure for the day. If you want to read about another crazy adventure that occurred that evening, go check out Jessica’s blog
