Progress continues

Things are still moving forward in 'Aulo' since I left there about a
month ago. I've had updates from Maria Ines that the roof is almost
on and that work is underway to build the sidewalks and latrines.

I've had reports that the community participation has lowered and that
the work is going slower because of this. The same thing happened
last year about two and a half months into the project and we had
taken steps this year to work to avoid this problem. We hired a
promotor to work intensely with the community to keep participation up
throughout the project. There have been meetings and Maria Ines has
been in close contact with the community. We are considering what to
do with the situation as well as how to improve our participation
model for the next project. One idea is to require a cash deposit
from the community that would cover the cost of hiring additional
workers if they do not fulfill their promise to provide labor. This
would be difficult for cash poor communities to provide, but on the
other hand, they would get the money back if they showed up to build
their school. The other side of the equation would be to offer
incentives for participation in the project. There are perhaps ways
to do both, but I'm more inclined to go for the cash deposit
alternative. The concept there being that if they have money in the
game their motivation would be higher than if they are simply
fulfilling a handshake promise to help out. The idea here is to truly
partner with the community and I'm realizing that the degree of
partnership has not been high enough in these two project so far. We
are learning, yes we are.

We are considering taking a break from the construction for about a
week or so, a kind of bluff to the community to let them know that
they shouldn't take this project for granted. We'll see if they
organize to continue. I do know that we will finish the project no
matter what eventually, but we have to keep searching for solutions to
keep the community involved simply because that is the most central
implementory aspect of entire project. I recognize this issue as
normal and common. This will always be a tendency with projects like
this. The energy is high at the beginning, but then when the project
goes on for three or four months, the enthusiasm wanes and what needs
to be established is the dedication on the part of the community to
labor on to finish. I am confident that we will improve our community
participation model to the point where we do maintain this
participation throughout the project.

Maria Ines called me on Tuesday to suggest that we should take a break
for the moment to let the community breathe and think for a little
while about whether or not they do in fact want to build a school. We
proposed a week, while letting them know that if they didn't
reorganize we wouldn't be back. It is a bluff I hope they don't call.

I have found grassroots projects like this to be a delicate thing to
keep on track in communities without developed power structures and a
loose social network. These communities are not ancient
civilizations, but rather are rural collections of farmers who have
moved pioneerlike into the furthest reaches of the jungle to find
cheaper land and new opportunities. In some cases, the communities
are less than 10 years old and the families there haven't developed
long reaching social ties. In last year's project, building the
school was the first community endeavor they had undertaken and the
difference in the organization from before and after was visible.
When we went back this year to add in the permanent water installation
it was much easier to organize a workforce around those individuals
who had already worked together the previous year.

I am anxious to see how these next few weeks turn out in Aulo. What
happens here will definitely affect how we manage our projects in the
future.

We have walls!

I just returned from a week at the construction site and just wanted to report that walls are up and we are getting ready to start working on the roof. A few details need to be put into place, like the concrete columns that go in between the sections of concrete block, but estimates are that by March 19th, the roof will start to go on. From that point it should be withina month and a half. My fingers are crossed.

The community continues to support the project well. I had a great conversation with one of the local volunteers and he informed me that he had been working almost four days a week because other community members who couldn´t make their shifts had been paying him to cover them. This news was great to receive simply because it let me know that the community volunteers valued their committment highly enough to put out cash to keep their part going.

In fact, one of the great pleasures of this project is getting to know the community and this year has been no exception. The small community of Aulo is scattered along the road and numbers only about 25 families with children in the school. The children are always a pleasure to get to know and have been busy painting drawing all over their previous school with the paints and chalks we have brought down. The sudden emergence of visible outside art rather surprised everyone and this wave of creative drawing was overpowering. we had to point flashlights at the wall as they wanted to keep working past daylight.

The project is moving forward in so many ways. More news soon.

Tab

The new school is underway!

I´m very pleased to report that the new school under construction in
El Aulo, Nicaragua is underway and ahead of schedule. The community
is pulling together nicely in fulfillment of their responsibility to
donate manual labor to the project. The excavation is complete and
the foundation was finished a couple weeks ago. By now the walls are
up and work is beginning on preparing for the roof to go on. The
photo here shows two walls up to the first mid point. The windows
will go up on this level of the blocks. We are perhaps a third of the
way done with the construction and at this pace we should be done by
early May.

In the pictures you can see the school underway and the two concrete
block walls in place. The other photos shows the existing school that
is being replaced. Made of bamboo and palm fronds, the structure has
a mud floor, leaks profusely, and doesn´t provide any security,
protection from the elements.

School supplies delivered

One of the priorities of the trip was to deliver a bag of donated
school supplies to the recipient community. We did that on Monday Feb
25. It is always a pleasure to deliver such needed items. The few
markers, crayond, scissors, rulers, etc that we could carry dwn were
excitedly recieved by the children. you can see them holding their
new items up in the air in the picture here. I´m in the middle of the
other photo. There were also the children throughout the week that
were upset that they didn´t get their stuff because they weren´t there
that week. I told them that was why they needed to go to school
everyday. We also had left a quantity of things with the teacher just
for that inevitability.

Delivering materials box by box is rewarding but doesn´t really
address the overall problem of the lack of supplies in these schools.
I´m hoping to begin sending things in larger quantities in 2008. In
fact, every link in the chain of distribution of donated new items is
in place except for the actual donation of the items. We have
committments to free shipping of 5000 lbs per month, free passage
through customs, trucking, warehousing, and distribution in Nicaragua.
All we need is the stuff to send. If anyone has any ideas on how to
get ahold of new school supplies and get them to Miami please notify
me.

you can get ahold of me at tabulation@gmail.com

Heading into the community on Monday

My plans are to head into the community on Monday to spend some time
working on the school and getting to know the community. The process
of making friends with an entire rural community is one that i enjoy
and that represents a large part of why these projects are important
to me.

I'll be taking with me a shipment of food for our paid builders, four
new wheelbarrow wheels, a bag of school supplies donated by the AISD
(Austin Independant School District) and a bunch of calculators
donated by a random person who just mailed them to me last year out of
the blue.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in a hamock for a few days after the
uncomfortable bed i've had here in Rio Blanco lately. I'm sure in a
few days i'll be looking forward to the bed in Rio Blanco again.

I hope to get some pictures of the new school up here soon.

El Aulo, San Andres, Kiwaska

El Aulo is a small community located right on the road to San Andres
(about 10 minutes away). With houses scattered along both sides of
the road there really isn't a community center other than the school.
The previous school is in total disrepair and desperately in need of
replacement. Built from bamboo and palm fronds, it barely held out
any rain and was constantly wet and muddy inside. it really was
desperate situation. Project Schoolhouse hadn't been planning on
replacing this school this year, but after adament encouragement from
the local Mayor of Rio Blanco and the department of education, we
agreed that the school in El Aulo should be a priority.

The community of San Andres, 10 minutes down the way, is the last town
on the road, which stops at the Tuma River. San Andres has about 500
inhabitants and feels alot like Dodge City 100 years ago. Mule,
horses, and stray dogs outnumber the vehicles by at least 20 to 1.
Stores and houses line the main street just like a city from the old
west. the rest of the community is traversed by footpaths and
horsetrails. They have a two room schoolhouse that struggles to house
the 160 students that end up scattered through a number of private
homes and open air shelters. Adding 4 classrooms to the school in San
Andres is one of our upcoming projects.

Across the Tuma River, either by horse or dugout canoe, and walking 2
kilomters is Kiwaska, where last year's school is located. On
saturday i traveled there to see the completed school for the first
time. Rounding the last bend as the school came into view i was
struck by it's sheer size compared to everything around it. I'm
honestly not sure how it actually got built. No wonder this year's
project seems so easy and is coming along so quickly. We didn't have
to bring water or build 2 kilometers of road across two rivers with
picks and shovels.
The school is beautiful and spacious and makes a wonderful addition to
the community. It is famous in the region and perhaps that example is
also making this year's project go quickly because the recipient
community now understands better how this model works.

my new cell phone

My new cell phone number is 011-505-936-4642, if anyone needs to get
ahold of me here. i had to change it when i arrived in the country
this time.

Rio Blanco

The first jumping off spot after leaving managua is Rio Blanco. On
the road to Puerto cabezas on the atlantic, Rio Blanco is a gateway to
the autonomous part of nicaragua. A city of 10,000 or so, the people
here have electricity most of the time and running water part of time
and are glad to get it. The city is growing and it is hard to find
lower wage employees i am told. in the city center, the major three
or four streets are paved with cobblestones and the rest are gravel,
dirt, and mud. The river the town gets its name from runs down the
middle of the city and a number of bridges cross over. a few miles
upstream there are a number of beautiful waterfalls that are hard to
find but worth the effort. The river is famous for its freezing
water, as compared to the lumbering giant the Tuma River we have to
cross on the way to Kiwaska and last year's project

The basic cuisine here is grilled meat (chicken, beef, or pork) with
eithe rice beans and a little salad or rice and french fries and a
little salad. they also make a nice dish with fried green plantains
and a sharp salty cheese called cuajada that i find delicious. The
local beers are Toña or Victoria, two different brands made by the
same company and they taste the same. you would be surprised though
at the avid fans of both, and the adamant debates over which is
better.

The travel to the next point of interest, El Aulo, where the newest
school project is under construction is either three hours by bus or
two hours on a motorcyle. In general, the bus trip is much safer and
easier on various parts of the anatomy.

Arrival and mucho line waiting

Well, the first little piece of this journey has begun and i´ve
boarded planes and passed through nicaragua customs. Every time i´ve
ever traveled here, i´m always the last one through customs,
regardless of which line i´m in. this time was no different and i´m
been practicing patient line waiting for a few hours now. The first
hiccup was that my nicaraguan cell phone seems to have become
disfunctional in the year since I was last here. An entire kiosk
staff is now trying to fix the little thing, but it seems that the
cell phone number i so confidently gave out to everyone will not be
working and i´ll have to get a new one.

Other than that things are going swimmingly and i´m looking foward to
getting on the bus to Rio Blanco and moving onward to the school
projects.

Welcome to my Project Schoolhouse blog site

On Thursday i'm heading down to Nicaragua to help with the new
elementary school already under construction in 'El Aulo' Nicaragua.
Underway since mid-January the recipient community has finished the
excavation and has begun building the foundation. I'm eager to get a
glimpse of this project and the progress that has been made.

There will be more to come soon.