Post #2
After four and half days of work throughout the village of Silvio Mayorga, my trip to Nicaragua with Tufts Engineers without Borders concluded with a town meeting. Just before our return to Managua, we brought everyone together, from the community water board to neighborhood children. In plastic chairs outside the church, trying to stay out of the sun, we set to talking about the trip’s results and what they showed us about the future.
The town meeting demonstrated the united drive of the community, as families with different resources and needs spoke for the common goal of better quality water. It also demonstrated a certain need for explanations. During our assessment trip, we spent much of our time gathering information, sometimes through means unfamiliar to community members. Water quality tests, for coliforms and for calcium, had to be explained. The surveying we did – to better understand why water pressure was sometimes failing in their distribution system – also required clarification. Presenting real data to the community was satisfying. For the first time on the trip, I felt like we were contributing in a way that they could not have accomplished on their own.
Talking about our project and its goals also meant talking about the timeframe – a delicate topic with the community. It was exciting to work with such determined people and help them to fulfill such a clear need, but the urgency was worrying. As students, we have a strict schedule, with travel only possible during academic breaks. Paperwork and preparation required for trip approval from Engineers without Borders also slow down our work. Community members wanted us back as soon as possible, but we can’t travel again until we have a completed design and all the paperwork is squared away, which takes more time than they (or we) would like. Time is precious and I understand that well after meeting this community – the sooner the project is completed, the sooner their lives improve markedly – but I worry that time will get away from us.
What cannot get away from us, however, is the connection to the community built during this trip. Toward the end of the town meeting, we asked for questions of the people we were serving. The first question was a profound one – what if we returned to the United States and forgot about all of them? The looks on the faces around us said that the woman who had asked was speaking for many of them. For me, it was an easy question to answer. In awkward Spanish, I told the woman that there was no way we would forget this village. Our trip introduced us to the men, women, and children who benefit or suffer if we do or do not complete this project. How could we forget them when we’ve seen for ourselves how much we can help, even with just one project in their community? It feels sentimental to say it, but travelling to the community was, for me, life-changing. For all of us, it represents a significant change in our work.
This trip was my first foray into how international development looks in the context of the communities it serves. Those communities, though, look different from the lists of facts and goals and plans we make at home, on campus, in meetings or standing in front of a whiteboard. They are bound together by common desires and they want information – they want to educate themselves, so that they may improve their lives even before a structure is repaired or a new system built. They have needs as a community, the urgency of which is much more apparent when you speak to them face-to-face across the dirt courtyard of a cinderblock church.
As our meeting drew to a close, the village pastor stood, opening a well-used Bible and reading a line from the first book of John – “Amémonos unos a otros; porque el amor es de Dios; cualquiera que ama, es nacido de Dios, y conoce a Dios.” Let us love one another, for love comes from God; everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. I am not Christian, but that didn’t matter. It was the meaning behind his words that resonated with me. As the pastor spoke, I felt a knot of purpose and drive forming within me, a connection to this community I’d gotten to know so briefly. We are partnered with them for a real, concrete project, but we are all humans. Our trip taught me that serving people should mean loving them too.