In spite of the fact that the number of displaced persons decreased from 222 to 63, the mayor’s office of San Juan de Limay lost economic and logistical control of the situation, and therefore felt obliged to declare the red alert.

Colonel Mario Perezcasser, head of Civil Defense, announced that the mayor’s offices of Somotillo and Chinandega are also studying the possibility of raising their state of alert from green to red, because of the many damages reported from precipitation.

In Somotillo there are 330 persons in two temporary shelters. In El Realejo there are 225 displaced persons, and in Managua 150 persons needed to be evacuated from the Manchester neighborhood.

ROADS CUT OFF

Perezcassar said that up until 11 a.m. there were 785 displaced persons taking refuge in eight temporary shelters.

Besides this, damaged roads were also reported. In Leon [department] there are eight incommunicado population areas. The highway that links Leon with Poneloya is impassable. Other cut-off roads are La Dalia-Waslala, Waslala-Siuna, Siuna-Rosita and Rosita-Bilwi.

The Civil Defense head believes that the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure will need twice the 100 million cordobas that it had requested, in order to repair the damage caused by the rains of September and October.

The green alert is being maintained across the country. Tropical Depression 16 was lowered to a low pressure center, but in the west [of Nicaragua] it has allowed an entire week’s worth of rain to fall in one day.

Hello, Barbara!

Well, what can I tell you? The rains have been constant, until today when no rain fell. But according to information on TV, a storm is approaching from the Pacific with hurricane predictions, which will affect the countries of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, according to experts.

In our case, if this phenomenon occurs, it would affect a large part of the western part of the country, specifically Chinandega and Leon, and if so, we would find ourselves involved as that zone is a neighbor to us and it always falls on us when it affects that zone.

In truth, we are almost incommunicado. The river is passing across the Gualilica bridge, that is, the entrance to the municipality. The Los Quesos River that passes through La Naranja can’t be crossed, and the bus from San Francisco [Norte] isn’t coming. More than that, the Mosquito stream, that is at the exit from Limay in the same direction, damaged the bridge, and it’s not known when it will be repaired.

There’s a lot of concern, according to what they told me this morning, that the Health Department is holding meetings with different sectors that work in the locality, in order to take measures, now that cases of leptospirosis are suspected in some communities, and they want to prepare against a situation of epidemic which could occur.

For the moment the harvests of basic grains have not been lost, but if the rains persist, it is probable that they will be. Anyway, we’ll keep in touch.

Present on the call: Marilyn Carlisle, Barbara Larcom, Tranquilino Garmendia, Olidia Corea, Leonidas Silva

Next phone call May 20th at 7:00 pm EDT

PERCEPTIONS OF EFFECTS OF NATIONAL CONDITIONS ON LIMAY

Education: Teachers’ strike described as limited in spite of reports from Nicaragua Network Hotline; doesn’t seem to have affected Limay. Also there is now free Saturday high school in Limay, because of support for education from the national government. (The private school still functions as an
alternative.)

Health: More medications are available in the hospital.

Agriculture: Help for cattle ranchers and farmers of basic grains expected (acc. to TV) soon — probably May. For example, co-ops may be able to buy tractors at good rates.

Energy: No more electricity cut-offs; it’s normal now. Main reason given for this was the agreement with Venezuela to provide oil for energy generation.
Also agreed, when asked, that Daniel Ortega’s threat didn’t hurt either, to cut off the contract with Union Fenosa (the Spanish company distributing electricity), if it didn’t shape up.

CONDITIONS IN LIMAY

Weather very hot, a little rain, people preparing ground for planting when real rain begins. This is the hottest time of year, right before the rains start in May.

The Asociacion Padre Cesar Jerez (located in the same office as our Limay
committee) now has Internet access. Leonardo Silva has already used it to send us some email.

WORK OF THE LIMAY COMMITTEE

Homes: They’ve built 3 new homes and repaired 7 others. Leonidas made a tour yesterday and saw the new and repaired homes. The doors are purchased but waiting to be hung on the new houses; he will take pictures as soon as doors are on…hopefully by Thursday, April 26. Will use Berta’s digital camera.
Leonidas’s question: Should they spend on more repairs? Our response: “Yes!”
Tree nurseries: Scholarship students are still working on these.

Solidarity Conference in Managua: We urged them to get involved with the planning within Nicaragua toward this conference to take place in July 2007.
We gave them the contact information for the group coordinating the planning (Kairos)—urged them to call or e-mail. They asked if people not involved in CB/L could help in planning, we said absolutely yes! We also read off the 5 categories of topics for workshops, plenaries, and forums at the conference.
They will choose 5 or 6 people to go to conference—Tranquilino cannot go because of the health of his mother, who’s staying with him.

Delegation: Told them our delegation would probably arrive in Limay around July 6. Said right now we have three people definitely coming, with others considering. After visiting Limay, we can all travel together from Limay to the conference in Managua.

We also told them about our upcoming May 4 event, to try to raise more funds for their projects.

I can’t even know the names of everyone who deserves thanks, and I don’t have
contact information for all of you. Here is a partial list of those who
contributed to the success of the delegation (listing is based on a
chronological timeline of events):

Marilyn Carlisle
Tom Hyatt, Colleen McCahill and family
Ted Klitzke
Cliff DuRand
Zekeh Gbotokuma and other staff, Center for Global Studies at Morgan State
Simon Fitzgerald
John Grace, Judith Davis and family
Charles Curtiss and other members of Heathcote community
Rainier Rodriguez and his DJ friend Julian
Carol Berman
Maureen Daly
Maurice Morales
Jessica Kim
Barbara Crain
Joan Parr
Peter Grimes
Virginia Rodino
Rev. Ann Gordon and congregations of St. John’s of Baltimore City UMC and
Rodgers Forge UMC
Carrie Frias
Fr. Peter Daly and parishioners of St. John Vianney Catholic church in Prince
Frederick
Joe Duncan and Spanish teachers at Gilman School
Sonia Quezada, SECO Head Start
Bill Harvey, John Ryan and other staff of Heart’s Place shelter
Susan Kadota, Carlos Sanchez, and other staff at Catholic Relief Services
Jessica Contreras and other staff at Casey Family Services
Lisa Knickmeyer and Blanca Picazo of St. Michael’s Outreach Center
Alan Tibbles and other staff at New Song/ Habitat for Humanity in
Sandtown-Winchester area
Mark Chalkley
Fr. Dick Lawrence and many parishioners of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic
congregation
Rev. Dr. Mary Kraus, Floyd Starnes, Joan Countryman, and others from Dumbarton
United Methodist Church in DC
Howdy Burns
Joanne Capizzi
Rick Ullrich
Carol Angelozzi
Tom Ward, Loyola College
Cristina Saenz de Tejada, Viki Zavales and other Spanish professors at Goucher
College
Helene Woessner
Kristen Walsh and other staff of the Children’s Center at Rodgers Forge United
Methodist Church
Nancy, Julie and Alex McAleer
Mitch Klein and others at ACORN
Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, Maryann Young, Elizabeth Weiblen, Lorena
Beltran, Rafael Gonzalez, Susie Lang and others at Baltimore City Hall
Anne George
Wayne Cogswell
Bob Reuter

If I failed to list someone who should have been listed, please forgive the
oversight. You are all much appreciated!

Barbara Larcom
For Casa Baltimore/Limay

…we want to tell you about our church. It is looking very good. The roof and ceiling have been changed and repaired, it has been painted inside and outside. Later, I will send you photos of the church. We give thanks to Casa Baltimore and to St Vincents church for the money to enable us to do this.

The Bus.
The bus, an old American school bus, yellow, large. Along the road, Nicaragua is green and beautiful, calm and empty, almost treeless. A scttering of towns, houses, farms, people walking along the road. We stop at a village, a single woman gets on with a bag of some sort of bread. She walks down the aisle selling her goods as the bus moves on. With no takers, she goes to the front, comes back again with bottles of drinks. The driver’s helper later walks down the aisle collecting money from the passengers. It costs 45 Cordobas, about $2.70 for the 80 mile express bus trip from Managua to Esteli. Everyone we talk to, when we tell them we are going to Limay, they say “Ohhhhh….es lejo” as if we are traveling off to Antartica.

Esteli
Sitting at the bus station in Esteli. With our massive amount of luggage, we are an object of curiosity from the folks sitting on benches waiting for their buses to arrive. The 24 large suitcases and duffle bags of aid that we brought along with the bags of our own are all stacked like a small mountain in the middle of the outdoor waiting area. I talk to an old man sitting on the bench near us who looks at the heap with questioning eyes. “No son ropas”, I tell him to assuage my own fear that he thinks we are rich tourists loaded up with a change of clothing for every day.

Everyone here is friendly. Folks say Limay is a poor village and that they have many needs. A man gives me a pat on the shoulder and says, “I don’t know who you are but you are a good man for doing this.”

Limay

… we walk back to the SIR, toward the place where we left our 24 bags. The smell, the sounds, the dirt road, houses open to the air, sky, mountains, all full of that bizarre mix of old and new, modern and ancient. Crude mud and stick houses with a TV glowing inside, an outhouse sitting next to an old Russian jeep, oxen pulling wooden carts, a Pepsi sign high above an old pulperia, bicycles, pigs, cows, chickens, school children in blue uniforms, cowboys and children on horseback, a cell tower seeming to hover over the town.

…. it is hot here – hot like a constant kitchen cooking the land. Rain, sun returning, wet air, then dust, smoke, all against a backdrop of green hills – but the green only makes it seem hotter, as if it should be as cool as the color of those far off mountains.

…. the fiesta at the Cabana was so different than I expected. So much loud music, young people dancing under strobe lights, throbbing city music in the middle of the pueblo. It was, as many things have been, such a wild contrast, making it hard to comprehend, this small town making so much noise that it can still be heard now, floating and bouncing eight dark blocks across the town to the closed door of my bedroom.

…. two little boys play “toro” in the streets. One has two sticks that he holds up to his ears, a stick in each hand, like the horns of an underfed bull. The other, with a torn piece of cloth, plays the matador. They move gracefully in the rocky street, one boy crouching low and ominous, moving in circles, while the other swooshes his cloth and spins around, avoiding the thrust. Over and over they play. It seems like a game they play often.

…. I talk to a young boy and his sister sitting atop a horse. He tells me he knows how to speak some English. He begins to tell me what he knows but after several attempts at working to make me understand, I finally ask him to tell me in Spanish what he is trying to say. “Don’t put water in the car.” he tells me.

…. everyone here smiles. I have never seen so many people have such a spontaneous smile as folks in this town. Walking past the adults, there is a little bit of question in their eyes, but as soon as you say hello or smile, they light up and say “Adios” or Buenos” and give out with a big smile.

…. we headed toward the river, toward “La Bruja” on the Rio Queso. Almost everyone ended up in the wonderful water. It was a spectacular location – a broad river with a grand vista toward the green, green mountain, the water rushing through the huge rocks forming huge pools and rivers of churning water. Ancient Indian carvings were visible on the rocks, left undisturbed, as they have been for centuries. Kids from Limay were sliding down the waterfall, into the deep pool of water at the bottom. They showed me how to do it. Molly and I went over to where the mayor was, in her bright yellow shirt, sitting under the falls. We all lay under the forceful water laughing and frolicking….

Evening in Limay
Sunday night. Writing in the dark in my bed. The lights have been out in the town all evening. We ate our meal at Don Rafael’s El Preferido by candlelight. Eggs, fried bologna, cheese, gallo pinto, eaten in the soft light bouncing around the painted walls. Hard to describe how wonderful, how different this place is.

On the walk back home, fireflies high in the sky looking like small shooting stars, flickering off and on in the absolute dark. The world is inky black. Sounds from doorways of people we could not see. “Buenos….”, we offer to the shadowy shapes. Low voices, an occasional candle, shoes thumping against dark rock, puddled water, the rich smell of evening, the billiards bar the only light in town, the noise of their generator interrupting the town’s dark quiet.

Now, suddenly the lights come back on. A little cheer rings out along the street. Jose turns on the light in the front room. A cool wind passes through, blowing the curtains. Smoke smells waft in.

El Zapote
Rain comes and goes here. A little, a lot. So far never a downpour, but enough. Especially when you are riding in the back of a pick-up truck. Our umbrellas make a cover of sorts. Olidia with hers open, mine, Fred’s, a canopy only a wind away from destruction. Crammed in the back of that truck, then hiking on the path through the coffee fields, past bananas trees with bunches hanging down, past the young boy, bandana tied around his face, machete in hand, crossing streams, past huge cedar trees, the valley stretching out below the mountain, on and on, up and up, until we reached the village.

Dozens of people came to meet us. We sat in the house of what seemed like the head of the village. We talked about the coffee harvest, the need for the latrenas, about the needs of families living in houses made of plastic bags or ancient wooden planks, mud as cement. We are fed muscular chicken, wonderful rice, rich sweet coffee. We leave the food we brought with us for lunch as a gift to the villagers. This dark house, dirt floor, the power of being here, the deep eyes of the people, the music of the brothers with their huge guitar, the sound of their singing as we walk along this mountaintop…..

Leaving
Our last night in Limay. …We polished off a big Brahva, Barbara, Anne, John and I. It was a night of some sadness. Almost all of the families came to wish us a farewell. Leonardo’s wife made a pineapple upside down cake. Such wonderful things said by everyone. All of the delegation stood up and said some words of thanks to the families. There were many tears shed. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave.

So much need here. The problems in some ways so obvious, so much on the surface. Other needs perhaps more complicated, deeper. What to do with all this…..?

The 1988 delegation was the first official delegation to Central America from the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. Casa Baltimore cooperated with that delegation by coordinating the visit of the Archdiocesan delegation to Nicaragua and Limay.

In contrast, the January 1986 group was the first delegation organized by Casa Baltimore of St. Johns UMC at 27th & St. Paul Sts in Balt City. It is important that you realize that St. Johns was the center of most Central American peace efforts in Baltimore City at that time. As I was very deeply involved in most of those efforts, I was also involved in the formation of Casa Baltimore at St. John’s, and thus became an integral part of its first delegation.

But I was also working hard within my own parish — St. V’s — to establish a parish to parish connection between St. V’s and San Juan de Limay Parish.

NOTE WELL that St. V’s, including me, Dan Gage, Chuck Frascati, Barbara Vanden Bosche, Anne George, Kay Donahoe, and others, had chosen San Juan de Limay completely independantly of Nan & Phil and St. John’s efforts that led them to make the same choice.

So, when I went with Casa Baltimore’s first delegation, I had a separate mission to establish contact between St. Vincent’s and the parish of San Juan de Limay. To do do, Dick and our Peace Committee thought it best that we establish official communications between St. Vincent’s and the local, presiding Bishop. And so I did, I think with the help of Paul Fitzpatrick, a priest who I met as part of the Casa Baltimore delegation.

Anyway, in 1988 a lot of the delegates’ notes were typed up because we wanted to submit a formal report to the Archdiocese. Whereas the only notes of mine from the 1986 delegation that were transcribed were those of the meeting with the Bishop so that I could submit them for the review of the Parish Counsel.

The river has risen significantly, over the bridge, and the buses aren’t running to Esteli. That’s why Leonardo didn’t send the email on Tuesday. There has been a good bit of rain in Limay, although it has stopped now. It is much better there than in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, they said. As a result of too much rain, some of the harvest has been lost, but some remains. Everyone is safe and well. But Leonidas did go to the bank in Esteli on Monday and paid for the US visa applications. All of their interview appointments (except Maria Gilma) are on November 3 at 8 am. Leonidas reports that Maria Gilma, the mayor, would very much like to come to Baltimore. Her travel plans to Spain changed somewhat. She leaves for Spain on November 5 and returns on November 15. She’s willing to travel immediately to the United States as part of the delegation. Her interview for the US visa is scheduled for October 28. Leonidas and l discussed the possibility of changing the delegation dates to Wednesday, Nov. 16, through Wednesday, Nov. 30. She explained that we have a meeting this evening, and she would bring these dates to the group for their consideration. Marilyn has scheduled a phone call to the Limay committee for this Sunday, October 23, so she can share our decision at that time and make other arrangements. She promised to fax a revised letter of invitation, with the new dates and the modified list of delegation members.