ACD en El Sauce

2/16/15

4/22/14

Cuarta visita: Don André's house

This is part of the group that came with Amy and Matt Rieck last week. (The little guy in the striped shirt is a Nica kid.)

Amy teaches Spanish in Fairport. Her son is a student at Harley. Amy and Matt brought their son, Malcolm, and three of his friends to Nicaragua for a different kind of spring break. They worked on 4Walls houses for three days, then toured around, went to the beach, and had a more normal kind of vacation.

Their comment? They should have stayed longer to work on the house. It was the most fun.

4/20/14

Cuarta visita: Cleaning up the swimming hole

Click on the photos to see them full-screen.

Click on photos to see them full-screen.

4/12/14

Cuarta visita: Earthquakes

President Daniel Ortega declared a "red alert" following a powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake along the same fault line that caused the 1972 quake that leveled Managua.

There have been several temblores (minor tremors) since I arrived, here in El Sauce. But Managua is having real earthquakes. Everyone is on edge, especially people who remember the 1972 quake. Sandra, the señora in my house, lived in Managua in 1972. Her house was near the cemetery. Her nightmare recollection is of trucks full of bodies arriving all day long for many weeks. More than 20,000 people died.

Managua has been damaged several times by earthquakes.
There were a number of quakes in the 19th century, including a particularly destructive one in April 1881.
In March 1931, a magnitude 6.0 quake caused 1500 deaths and 3500 injuries and destroyed 75% of the city, which at the time had 90,000 inhabitants.
The December 1972 quake was of 6.2 magnitude. It caused 20,000 deaths and destroyed most of Managua, including all its hospitals, fire stations, and police stations. At that time the city had about half a million people.
Based on this history, people here believe that Managua will suffer a big earthquake every 40 to 50 years.
The population of Managua now is around 1.5 million, depending on where you draw the lines.

Cuarta visita: Pliers, phone, and a chicken

4/8/14

Cuarta visita: This. And no electricity.

4/6/14

Cuarta visita: They say it's my birthday

So I get a cake and a serenade.

Cuarta visita: Roughhousing

Cuarta visita: Assorted views: inside and outside

drug store

a spider on my knee

mango

4/2/14

Cuarta visita: Elesier's new shoes

3/29/14

Cuarta visita: To the beach

Doña Leoncia

3/20/14

Cuarta visita: Witching a well

So one of the things you have to prove if you want a 4Walls house is that you have title to your land.

Last month a family who thought they had title found out they did not. Their little plastic house was actually on land that was dedicated as a road. They got evicted. Now they have moved to a new plot, where they have title but do not have water. To dig a well, their friend, who must have some kind of electrical weirdness in his body, witched the well. He walked with a wire until the wire twisted. The twisting was a sign that water was below. They are digging now.

Check out the PBS video about water witching here.

3/18/14

Cuarta visita: A new baby

His name is Liam Yakeni Sevilla Lopez. His mom heard the name Liam once and liked how it sounded. She was delighted to learn that it is an Irish name. Someday he will go to Ireland, she said.