More Pictures from the Orfa

It's All Good

The tropical storm passed over us yesterday, but the center of it hit to the north of us.  There is only some minor flooding along the rivers that pass through town; other than that, everything is back to normal today.  Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers,

Austin

Continued Preparation

We have been working late into the night preparing for the projected hurricane; it is expected to hit tomorrow evening, beginning in Puerto Cabezas.  A few of the high school guys and I went around and put plastic over the computers in the school, the windows in the orphanage, the bags of beans, rice, and sugar, and a few areas of the church.  Many people are very worried, and driving around town tonight I saw a lot of people boarding up their windows.  There is a full moon tonight, but it disappears from time to time due to the dense cloud cover and frequent heavy rain; when it is clear enough to see the moon there is a massive ring around it, this only adds to the suspension and heightened sense of alertness.

Again, please keep me and this already suffering community in your prayers.

Austin

Better Safe Than Sorry

We are preparing for the coming tropical storm right now at the orphanage.  A warning has been issued for this part of the Atlantic Coast; from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua to Limon, Honduras.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers,

Austin

More Pictures of the Discipulado and Orpha

Baseball Field Project

Pastor Earl is still in Managua and has been for over a week now.  The latest plan was for him to come back today, but once again it got pushed back to Saturday.  Yesterday he was able to buy fertilizer, but I have no idea what he got, where he got it, or how much he got; I told him to try to get something similar to 16.16.16, so hopefully he was able to do that.

I hope to begin working on the baseball field project today; the first step will be bringing in a grader to break up the extremely hard and rocky soil, hopefully we don't have to pay too much for this, because the Baptist mission owns it; next we will buy truckloads of "black soil" to lay out as top soil, I think we will need around five truck loads, and they cost $70 per load, so I am going to have to try to come up with that; after this I plan on spreading the soil out in the areas we want to plant, and then we will let it sit for two weeks (and pray for rain), because I am afraid the "black soil" may be full of weed seed; we will then clean up whatever weeds sprout, and then prepare for planting the Paspalum seed.

You quickly learn that when you are working in a third world country, especially in an isolated part of the country, things do not get done at the time you expect them too, and usually the goal is to get it functioning, not to get it the way you want it.  I guess it is all part of the experience, I am learning to be more and more patient each day.

Austin

Funeral

Yesterday I went to the funeral of a woman who was a member of the church.  She died of cancer, and was still in her 30's; she has two sons, one is 17 and the other is only 10 months old.  The high school kids and I helped bring the supplies over so they could seal the tomb.  As the funeral was ending a taxi drove up with a baby sized coffin in the trunk.

The Betania Project

On Friday I went to Betania (aka Bataña, I have seen it spelled both ways) for the first time since my arrival in Puerto Cabezas.  Betania is a small Miskito village (around 300 people) about 45 minutes outside of Puerto Cabezas on the road that goes to Managua (when the roads are fixed the trip takes less than 20 minutes).  The goal of the trip to Betania was to meet the leaders of the community, and evaluate their current crop production system.  Unfortunately the leader was not there when we arrived, but a man who had a very good understanding of what goes on in the town was able to show us around.

They have a very large portion of land; the way they described the size was, “it takes an hour to walk to the end of it.”  The problem they have is that the free range cattle will eat the crops if they plant near the village, so they travel by canoe down the river until they get to a portion of land that the cows cannot reach.  The fertility in this portion of land is better, because it is near the flood plain of the river, so this is an added benefit to farming where they do.  The trip to the “finca” or farm, takes about 40 minutes, so every day when they go to work on the farm, they leave at 5:00 am.  They typically spend all day there, so of course they bring fishing poles, in order to pass the down time.

The cropping system, at least as far as I understand it at this moment, goes something like this: First, beans are planted in November, and then harvested in April; then cassava or some other root crop is planted; after they harvest this crop they put in banana trees.  The other rotation uses rice instead of beans, but basically follows the same strategy.  The banana trees are obviously a long term crop, so every year they are moving to a new plot of land to start the process over again.  They are subsistence cropping with the rice, beans, cassava, and for the time being bananas; long term, however, they plan on selling their bananas to Puerto Cabezas, which currently imports the majority of its bananas from Managua.

The first problem with their plan is that they don’t currently produce enough staple food crops to be sustainable.  They make an effort to set aside seed for next year’s planting, but usually the set aside seed gets eaten, due to the insufficient amount of food.  I hope to help them with this problem by getting improved lines of corn, beans, and rive from CIAT, a non-profit organization that does plant breeding in an effort to reduce global poverty and hunger.  I am still in the process of contacting this group, but they are part of the same organization as CIMMYT, so I have a few different potential contacts.

The next problem that they have with their plan is that the bananas they are planting are not a good variety, and most people will not eat them.  They say that they can buy banana trees from a nursery that sells good varieties, but they do not have the money to do so.

Today (Sunday the 19^th) I will be meeting with the leaders from Betania after church, because Pastor Earl sends a bus to Betania every Sunday so they have an opportunity to attend a service.  I hope to learn more about the details of their system, so I can fully grasp the situation.  I have decided that Betania will be perfect for me to do my thesis research on, so that will save me the time and money of having to travel up the Rio Coco to visit the Miskito farmers in Krin Krin.

Nicaraguan Independence Day at the Stadium

Life in Puerto Cabezas

I have not written anything on the blog for a while, so I figured it was time for an update.  Since my arrival in Puerto Cabezas I have been fairly busy all the time.  I have been settling in, spending a lot of time with the kids in the orphanage, especially the high school guys.  Many of them remember me, and there are a lot of new kids as well.  Most of the kids that I remember from my last visit are still here.  We play soccer almost every day, and there is something going on at the church almost every day. 

Yesterday, Tuesday, was the Nicaraguan Independence day, so I went to “el estadio” to see the festivities with five of the high school aged girls.  All of the schools in Puerto Cabezas had bands and dancers, and the stadium (it is a baseball stadium) and the field were both packed.  People were climbing on top of the stadium and outfield walls in order to see the performances.  Verbo (the school at the orphanage) was the second to last to perform out of about thirty schools, so I was there from 8 am until 2 pm.  It was a great experience, and I have some pictures and videos that I can hopefully load onto the blog so you can all see what a Nicaraguan Independence day celebration is like.

Pastor Earl left for Managua on Monday, and I am hoping that while he is there he will be able to get some seed and fertilizer so we can begin to do some work around the orphanage.  I have a spot picked out to plant some trials, and we are also going to plant the outfield of the new baseball field with some Seaspray Paspalum that Scotts donated.  Next week I will begin the project in Batana, and once that begins I will be going there every day for a couple of weeks.

If anyone wants to donate money to these projects, the easiest way is to write a check to me and give it to my mom or dad; the money will be used to buy materials for the Batana agricultural project and the baseball field project.  If anyone has questions about specific things, they can either email me at fricker01@hotmail.com or comment on the blog posts.

Con mucho amor,

Austin

CIMMYT

I had a great day yesterday at CIMMYT; I went on a few tours and established a lot of new contacts both in El Batan and Nicaragua.  Carolina Saint Pierre was my host while I was there, and she was absolutely amazing.  I met with the socioeconomics department, and they gave me a lot of information on creating a questionnaire for the sort of project I will be doing with the Miskito people.
The guy in charge of the conservation program in El Batan gave me a hand planter which should be extremely helpful in furthering the development of the agriculture in Batana, the site where I will be spending a lot of my time working while I am in Nicaragua.  It does not require tillage, and turns planting and fertilizing into an easy one step process.  One issue is that crop residue must be left on the field after harvest in order for this system to work, and I do no think I will be in Nicaragua when the time comes for that step of the program (The crop residue is useful as a fodder for cattle as well, so it may be difficult to convince the people to leave it on the field).  Hopefully everything goes smoothly in the next couple of weeks, if so I should be able to plant a few trial crops in multiple locations throughout the North Eastern coast of Nicaragua.
I have contact information for CIMMYT/CIAT people in Nicaragua, and if I can coordinate it correctly, I should be able to get some good quality corn and bean seed; a two crop rotation will probably be the easiest and most successful in the situation that I am going to encounter.  If I could just find a way to access fertilizer for a reasonable price, everything might just fall into place (as long as the soil is halfway decent).

Greetings from the Houston airport,

Austin

Arrival in Mexico

After numerous flight delays and a missed connection due to the hurrican weather, I have finally made it to the CIMMYT headquarters in El Batan, Mexico.  My corn seeds that I was trying to take to Nicaragua was taken away at the customs in Mexico City; I declared them, which was a mistake looking back, but I plan on buying more seed while I am at CIMMYT, so we will see how that goes. 
Tomorrow I go on my tour of the campus here and I will be hearing a few lectures that are hopefuly extremely beneficial to my future attempts at crop production in Nicaragua. 
I am going to get some rest now, and I feel pretty good about the room I am staying in, so far the score is Cockroaches 0 me 2.

Greetings,

Austin

About the Trip

In case anyone doesn't know what my trip is all about, here is an explanation:

I have been to Nicaragua twice on mission trips with Rolling Hills Community Church, and after returning from the most recent trip this past summer, I was determined to get back.  After investigating a few options at Oregon State with the help of my advisor, Dr. Tom Chastain, I found the International Degree Program (INTL), which turned out to be a perfect fit for everything I wanted.

With the INTL program I will receive a second degree, write a thesis, study Spanish through the 400 level, and spend three months abroad, which is why I will be in Nicaragua.  I am also going to be receiving a few research credits on my trip, because my thesis topic is related to the farming techniques and socioeconomics of the indigenous Miskito tribe, which is located on the east coast of Nicaragua. 

I will be taking three online classes; Spanish, technical writing, and cultural diversity study abroad.  These classes will help me to remain a full time student so I do not lose my scholarships.  On the way down I will be stopping at CIMMYT, which is a research station that does work on farming in rural areas with limited resources.  I hope to use this information to help the development of agriculture in the area of Nicaragua that I will be living for a few months.

I will be staying at a compound in Puerto Cabezas that contains the house of Pastor Earl Bowie, the man in charge of the compound, an orphanage, a church, a school, and a medical clinic.  Pastor Earl is an amazing man with great vision; he has been a blessing to the Puerto Cabezas community, and I am happy to be able to help him with whatever projects he may have me working on.

Please be praying for me, as I gather up the final items I will be needing before I take of on this excellent adventure.

Thank you for your support,

Austin

Departure

I will be leaving September 7th to begin my trip to Puerto Cabezas Nicaragua.  I will be spending two days at the CIMMYT location in El Batan, Mexico, which is just north of Mexico City.  After my visit I will return to Houston, fly to Managua, stay the night in Managua, then fly to Puerto Cabezas on the morning of the 10th of September.