Debrief had just ended so we packed up our things to head to our new ministry. We had no idea where we were going or doing. We loaded into a truck and drove towards the bus station. We crammed into a bus with (smelly) locals and plugged in our iPods. An hour later we arrived in Leon, Nicaragua – a university town! There were restaurants and tiendas on every corner. “Wow, we lucked out,” I thought to myself. We then loaded into another truck which, I assumed would take us to our contact’s home or some sort of church/hostel. But instead we take a right turn onto a small road headed towards, what seemed to resemble, the Nicaraguan jungle. We kept driving and driving, deeper into this jungle; no idea where we were headed. After 25 minutes of nervous laughter, we pulled into a small “house” filled with tools and cement. We set up our tents and mentally prepared for the hard, physical labor that awaited us. “Please, Lord, give us strength, endurance, energy and compassion towards this ministry,” I prayed silently. “Please protect us as we work in the middle of nowhere.”
Then our contacts, Howard, Lester, Darwin and Moses (great names, huh?), gave us a “tour” of the community which consisted of us walking through people’s homes while they worked/slept, petting livestock, declining dancing/discoteca proposals, eating bamboo, chasing after large iguanas, then, praying that once they’re caught that they are NOT dinner, and finally, realizing that the trees (and our bathroom) are infested with bats and other living creatures you see on the TV. Oh, Nicaraguan jungle, how you never fail to provide us with entertainment!
Over the next few days, we built cement water filters with, basically our bare hands. Here is a step-by-step photo montage of how it works:
First, you must separate the rocks from the sand, like so:
Then you must create a volcano like structure with said shifted sand, water and cement mixture:
Then you use every muscle in your body to make “cement patties”:
Then fill filter molds with said cement patties (takes quite a bit of cement per mold (9 molds total):
Push cement patties up and down in mold (great upper arm workout):
Bang molds with mallet to flatten cement down (don’t want air bubbles!):
Once completely filled, move on to the next one.
They dry overnight, then require a nice coat of royal blue paint:
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But let me tell you, it’s a workout – a workout that saves lives! Totally worth every second of our time and every drop of our sweat. Families lose children due to the water conditions here. So if you’re poor, with no access to clean water, what are you to do? Come visit us of course! That’s the ticket! Families come and work with us for two days building filters, sit through three bible lessons, then take home a water filter for free! Pretty cool, huh? For more information on this ministry, (it’s a partnership between Fiemca- Nicaragua and Samaritan’s Purse) visit their site here.
