Trip up the Rio Coco and Managua

Last week I had the opportunity to travel up the Rio Coco with a group of guys from Colorado and Pastor Earl.  We started the six hour drive to Waspam, where the boats to travel up river are, at 6:00 am.  Before leaving Puerto Cabezas, we picked up an old sick lady and her son, because she wanted to go to her home in Waspam to die.  One of the leaf springs broke on Pastor Earls truck a few hours into the trip, so we had to stop in a small community and tie it up with a piece of rubber tubing.  The rest of the trip went pretty well, but slower than we had hoped, so we arrived in Waspam around 2:00, had lunch, and then loaded up on the Panga to head up river. 

We drove for about four hours on the Panga in the Rio Coco until we reached the community of Krin Krin; Pastor Earl and Verbo ministries have built a church and school in Krin Krin, and many of the kids in the orphanage are from this community.  There are very few people speak English there, so I had to use my limited Miskito language skills to communicate; it was cool to be able to interact with the people, and it was amazing how clear Spanish sounded when I finally found one of the older boys the town that used to live in the Discipulado at Pastor Earls compound.  I talked with Benito, the boy from the Discipulado, for a few hours about his stories from the time he spent on the Verbo campus, and what he was doing back in Krin Krin.  He works on the farms full time; it was really cool to hear how hard he is working, and some of the things he is doing to differentiate himself, like planting fruit trees for the future (planning for the future is almost nonexistent in Miskito culture).  He has a sister in the orphanage, so he wrote her a message which I delivered when I got back; she was very excited to hear from him.  I found out that he was going to be planting corn the next day, and he had just finished harvesting rice and some yucca.

The next morning we went out on the Panga and headed up a smaller river deep into the jungle.  We went for an hour or so until we reached a waterfall, at which point we hiked through the jungle, up above the waterfall and loaded into a smaller log boat.  We then traveled for a couple more hours, and we started to see less and less villages along the river.  Just when it seemed like we had left all civilization behind, we reached a really nice looking village, and found out that at this site they have a gold mine.  The people trade the gold for all of the goods they have, and it was probably the nicest looking community we saw on that river.  We traveled for another hour, and then set up camp to spend the night. 

Originally the plan was to go a little bit farther to another gold mine site, but some of the older guys were ready to go back, so the next morning we loaded up and began the trip back to Krin Krin.  It was much quicker going down the river, and we saw a lot more wild life; there were multiple crocodiles, tons of turtles, tropical birds, and monkeys.  When we got back to Krin Krin we spent a couple hours hanging out while Pastor Earl went around the town talking to all the people who needed to see him.  We loaded up on the Panga to head back to Waspam around 2:00, arrived around 4:00, ate dinner, and then began driving back to Puerto Cabezas around 6:00.  I got to drive back, following Pastor Earl (we drove two vehicles), and the trip began right about sundown, which makes driving the terrible roads twice as difficult.  We made really good time and made it home safely without any car troubles, which was an absolute miracle, because almost any trip of that length results in at least one break down.

I made another trip out to Betania in the past week, and was able to learn a lot more interesting information about their farming systems.  I will be going back sometime next week to help prepare the fields for bean planting, which will occur later this month.  I am very excited for this experience, because I believe it will be a giant step in building my relationship with the people.

I am currently in Managua, staying with Pastor Earl’s son Ariel, because there is a group here from Oregon working on a small aquaponics system; Pastor Earl has been interested in starting some kind of small scale specialty farming system at his house, so I thought it would be a good idea to come.  We went out and visited a small farm that is run by a missions group called “Amigos for Christ.”  It was a very interesting farming system, and it was good to visit Chinandega, which is the agricultural capitol of Nicaragua.  Tomorrow I will be going into La Chureca (the dump in Managua that has a large community of extremely poor people living in it) with the same group of guys.  I am very excited to return to La Chureca, because on my first mission trip to Nicaragua in 2008, we were able to spend a day at the school in the dump.

I will be returning to Puerto Cabezas on Thursday, and then will be very busy with all of my projects back there, but I will do my best to keep the blog updated.

Thanks again,

Austin