Last Tuesday I went to Betania early in the morning with my translator John and we met up with the leader of the community Nestor. We traveled out in the small canoe like boats with our machetes and rubber boots, this time they trusted me enough to let me sit in front and paddles, Nestor said he was impressed with my paddling ability haha. The first stop was an area where he is going to plant beans at the end of this month; right now it is purely thick jungle, so we made a trail into it and then started clearing a little bit. It is amazing how much work they do to clear one field, and they do it every two to three years because they don't return enough organic matter to the soil to keep the fertility up. After we hacked at the jungle for a while we headed up the river to another field where he has bananas, plantanes, grapefruit, oranges and cassava (yucca). He harvested some cassava and then planted it right back after he did so; using this practice they have cassava all year round. We took a bunch of grapefruit back with us and we found one cacao fruit (cocoa bean). They do not burn the area they clear in the jungle before planting beans, and when I asked why not Nestor told me "because that is how it has always been done." There is a ridiculous amount of brush and garbage left on the ground after the clearings, and I have no idea how the beans are able to grow at all. I told him it might be a good idea to burn a section to see if it made a positive difference, and he said he is going to do that. I plan on going back this week to continue helping with the clearing, and then the following week should be time for planting the beans, so that should be an exciting time.
This last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Jeff Allison, a full time guy from the US, and I went to go visit the family of a couple of the guys who used to live in the Discipulado at Verbo (Walsted 20, and Waldyman 16). They are Mayangna, and so we traveled to Awastingni, one of the few Mayangna areas left in Nicaragua. There are only 10,000 Mayangna left in the world, and they were only discovered by western society in the last 100 years. It is about a three hour drive to get there, but there community is pretty far off the main road, which allows them to be more isolated. The Miskito people do not like the Mayangna, and are therefore called Sumos (stinky people) in the Miskito language. The people are not very well understood and there are a lot of rumors about them, such as that they are antisocial.
We arrived late Friday night with the two boys who lived in the Discipulado; we pulled up to their fathers house and the car was immediately surrounded by all of their little cousins, brothers and sisters. We unloaded a few things and then they introduced us to their family. The father, Ciprillano, has ten kids, five boys and five girls. They live in a three bedroom house and have an extra building for their kitchen. The houses were much bigger than the ones in Miskito communities, and the additional kitchen building was also impressive. We went around and met the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and everyone else that Ciprillano wanted us to meet. We ate some rice and cassava for dinner and then he told us some stories about his life. He was in the war in the 80's, as were almost all of the men in the community, so they spoke Spanish for the most part. They also speak Mayangna and Miskito; the story goes that when the Miskito and Mayangna first came into contact, they couldn't understand each other, so the Mayangna turned the Miskito away and there has been animosity ever since. They also said that the Miskito resent them in modern times because they Mayangna can speak Miskito, but the Miskito can't speak Mayangna. We went to bed around 10:00 after hearing a bunch of stories and talking about religion and the United States.
We woke up around 4:30 the next morning, ate rice and eggs, then loaded up on a boat with a motor and began heading up the rio Wawa, which is the same river than Betania farms, just much higher up (they say they live in the mountains). We went to Ciprillano's farm and ate bananas, oranges, lemons (which I haven't seen anywhere else), limes, and cocoa. We loaded up a bunch of bananas and then headed up the river some more. Ciprillano told us that he used to live at the farm when Walsted was a baby; this shows a dedication and care for the farm that I have not seen in Miskito culture. As we traveled up the river we saw multiple alligators (which Walsted shot at), iguanas (which we killed and took back as food), monkeys, tropical birds, and chameleons. After traveling for about three hours we came to a waterfall that had a sandy beach below it, so we stopped to fish and make lunch. We got little crawdad type things for bait, and then they used the hand lines and hooks to catch the fish. We got two, one looked like a bluegill, and the other looked like a deformed striped bass. Ciprillano also made Wabul, which is a traditional dish of mashed up plantanes (not sweet bananas), and broth, which we didn't have, so we used water. The WabulBoboon bird. From there we cruised straight back, arriving in Awastingni just before dark. We ate some more fish and rice for dinner, and a little bit later we had some of that Baboon bird, After dinner I began showing the younger kids pictures and videos on my camera, they thought it was the greatest thing to see videos. I started taking pictures of them and then showing them, and they though it was hilarious. We went to bed around 8:00 that night and then got up around 5:30, to a loud bell tolling repeatedly for about fifteen minutes.
On Sunday morning Walsted gave us a tour of the entire town, which has roughly 2,000 people living in it. It is surround by the Wawa river and the Awastingni river. The community is much cleaner than most of the Miskito villages, the houses are larger, and they give themselves more space in between the houses. There are a lot of projects going on there, most of them by the world bank, and what you see is that they take pride in the things that have been done for them, and they take care of them. They have solar panels with which they can charge a battery and then have lights for a few hours at night, they have a large dirt soccer field that was being cleared by a tractor while we were there, and the coolest thing, a well developed farm with chicken coups where they feed the chickens, pig troughs and cages, flood irrigation, test trials, tons of different plants and vegetables, furrowed land, and a supervisor who lives on the farm full time. This project is a group effort with a few different relief programs, so we are going to try to get into contact with them in order to at least get the model.
We went to the Moravian church service, which was very interesting; they were worried because we weren't understand the message, which was in Mayangna, Miskito, and a little bit of Spanish (the Spanish was only for Jeff and I). They called us in front of the congregation to say something, so Jeff told them that God understands all languages, your community is beautiful, and he also said that we were with Cirprillano and his family (this was before we knew they had been worried about us not understand the message).
Shortly after the church service we began the trip back to Puerto Cabezas; traveling back was Jeff, Waldyman, the Pastor, and one other man from the community; whenever you drive into a community you always end up with at least one person to take back to Puerto Cabezas.
It was an excellent trip, and I am so glad to have been able to have that experience. Today I planted some different plants that might be cash crops in the future, finished clearing the rocks off the baseball field and found out a way to pump water out there, played with the kids for a few hours, and then painted all of the lines on the basketball court.
Ai sa ve (goodbye in Miskito)
