Development

This past week we went on a “Community Development” trip for our Worldview and Development class. We left from our houses on Monday morning at 6 to go to the Nehemiah Center. We had a history class in the morning, and in the afternoon we had our worldview class. We spent the night at the Nehemiah Center and on Tuesday morning had another worldview class. On Tuesday afternoon, we were scheduled to leave for our trip. We had a few hours of time in between class and our trip, so Maynor took us to what he calls the “Gringo Grocery Store”. We got Dr. Pepper. We were very excited about it. You can’t find anything but Coke, Pepsi, or Fanta anywhere in this country. We drove for three or four hours to get to Omotillo, a town in Northern Nicaragua very close to the Honduran border. Maynor, Jim (one of our Worldview Professors) and Roger (an employee of the Nehemiah Center) went with us.

The point of community development is to change the community and not just get stuck in a rut. Often there is conflict in the community and they are not making any sort of progress. Because of this, people are unhappy. On Wednesday morning we visited 2 communities, one that had developed a lot over the past several years and one that was in the middle of their development. In both communities we were able to meet with the leaders and speak about their development. It was interesting. In the afternoon we visited a community that hadn’t yet developed. They were having their first meeting with a group of people who were going to try to help them with development. The people there obviously had issues with one another, and were sitting on opposite sides of the area we were meeting. There were two leaders there and they were on opposing sides. It was really interesting to watch them try to come to an agreement. At the end they wanted to know what we were going to give them. Lisa kindly explained that we were just students and observing. That all we could really give them was encouragement. I’m not sure how much they liked that. On Thursday we visited 2 other communities, both were communities of people who had relocated after Hurricane Mitch. The first talked about bettering the health of their community and jobs for people. The most common job there was digging through the dump and finding things that they then sell. The ladies we talked to were well respected in the community. Later, we talked to a group of ladies at a school. I don’t really remember what exactly we talked about there because we were all busy watching the kids play. They were adorable. We managed to get some pictures of them too, which was good.

It was an interesting trip and we learned a lot. It was good to observe the differences between the communities and listen to their stories of how things had changed and what things they were trying to change. It was also very different than anything I had seen before in the states, so I think it was a good learning experience to actually be able to see these things in person, not just read about them or see pictures. We’re going on another trip to Rural Nicaragua next week. Hopefully we will learn just as much while there.