Population Control

Controlling the population is a controversial topic for many.  Why?•    It touches on religion, especially those who think the reason for sexual relationships is for procreation only.
•    It touches on Rich Nations vs Poor Nations…people in rich nations tell the poor nations they are over populating the earth…poor nations tell rich nations it is all about consumption in which the rich are exploiting all the resources.
•    And it very much also touches on women’s rights to decide when and if they choose to have children.

China has had massive problems with their overpopulation and decided to “fix” it by passing a one child law, which means that the State will support only one child per family except for parents of the under populated different racial groups.  What has this meant?  People with money have more children, and girls are being aborted or left to die at birth…because sons can take better care of the aging parents…and now there are 35 million men with no available female mates.In poverty stricken countries people still have lots of children to ensure some will reach adulthood…can you even imagine?  In wealthier countries when a child dies before a parent as that being the unnatural way…the wrong way of life but in poor countries many parents have buried their children…it is the norm, not the oddity.

As we noted on Mother's Day, in Nicaragua the birth rate is dropping but teenage pregnancy is higher here than any other country in the Western Hemisphere and we have to ask, Why?  Birth control is available and though the Catholic Church is strong here, religion plays some role but not much.*

What seems to be the largest factor for teen girls is hopelessness.  They see no future, so they look for their future in older men and a baby. 

Iran faced overpopulation and seemed to reduce their population by the most sensible way possible…the government and the religious leaders stressed family planning.   Family planning is free…ALL types of modern family planning.  MEN and women have to go to family planning classes BEFORE they are issued a marriage license.  Women are encouraged to stay in school and that includes graduate school.   Iran…is lauded for getting its population back under control and they did it through education and giving hope.Becca and Jessenia, our health promoter, have started a group of teen girls with donations from the Mother’s Day alternative gift.  They took the group last week to see the movie, Godzilla, and the horror of the afternoon was not the movie but hearing their stories as they traveled and had snacks…one is one of 12 children in a very poor family…one is part of the family that had 2 children to die a few years ago from pneumonia and the mother miscarried from grief because they were “saving” the medicine, thinking they might need it more later.  A movie was a great way to get the group started, to get out, see more, see different possibilities, and have some long-awaited fun.
 Free family planning, education for all, and above all hope for women…and girls…if you want to have a world less populated, that is what you work for. 
-Kathleen
 
*The Church does play a heavy role in policy on abortion, which has always been illegal in Nicaragua and in recent years therapeutic abortions (when the mother's life is in danger) have also become illegal.

May Matching A Wild Success!

The response that we got from the May Matching Gift Challenge went far beyond what we had imagined.  Over $120,000!  Thank you to all who gave! This money will give us a boost to begin in earnest needed programs.  The donor who issued the challenge is giving his part in installments, which is also good because it help the work continue.*

Besides the actual cash, these gifts are encouragement to us as well.  Sarah had many of her Spring speaking engagements cancelled due to weather and then we were told not to apply for a grant to help women with cervical cancer, she and I – at least – were bummed.  This feels like an answer to prayer.

I have been in the States with my parents for the last week.  Daddy and I listened to a televised Bible study.  It was on tithing.  The message repeated over and over was “tithe and God will bless you beyond your wildest dreams…maybe not now but later.”  The reality is that if I did not see the poor day in and day out, I might agree with him, because I grew up with Mama teaching me that we were to give 10% to those in need and then we were not to worry because God would take care of our needs….and the Matching Challenge and the response certainly feels like this.
 
The problem is that I see desperately poor people sharing their meager resources with others.  Taking people into their home and sharing the little food they have is a common occurrence; in fact, poor Nicaraguans do not understand in the U.S., the land of plenty, there can be homeless people…homeless! Because here in Nicaragua, people take in those with nowhere else to go.
 
The poor know that in order to survive, they have to depend on each other…they have to share.  And they share even though it might mean that the next day they do not have enough to eat.  Unlike the Bible lesson for that day, the poor give more than 10% and they continue to worry because they are not taken care of…they are not blessed beyond their wildest dreams…they remain poor, hungry, desperate.
   
But I believe that, for whatever it is worth, they are held close to the heart of the Divine and are loved tenderly, deeply and…

The rest of us are called to relieve their pain…it is the right thing…the humane thing to do…and our blessing?  Well, doing the right thing is power in and of itself. -Kathleen

*Next week we will write about plans for this money.

Teaching in Health

Our public health component is a crucial part of our work in the clinic…teaching people how to care for themselves. 
We currently have 32 lay health promoters in Nueva Vida and the  three surrounding rural communities.  Our goal is to up that number to 50, but we are looking for dedicated people because we have much to teach:

• Young women need to learn that annual visits are crucial…in order to check their health and look for signs of diseases that progress like silent killers.

• One in 4 women die of complications due to diabetes because 1) they do not know they have diabetes, 2) they do not eat well, 3) they have organ failures because they are not taking the medications consistently, or 4) they get sores and do not treat them immediately.  Teaching poor people how to feed their children well is difficult because they do not have many resources, but will reduce the cases of diabetes in the future.

• Cervical cancer kills more Nicaraguan women of reproductive age than any other cause of death.  Cervical cancer is easily treatable if detected early.  We have a goal to have a See and Treat program started in the next few months that will allow the doctors to see the cervix clearly and treat any abnormalities right away.

• Nicaragua has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the Western Hemisphere, though the overall birth rate has dropped considerably in recent years.  There are many issues around this, and I will write about them in our next blog, but one issue is lack of access to birth control.  Although technically birth control is provided by the government and is free, government clinics do not always have the medications.  We are working with teens who are already mothers, teens who are not yet mothers, and older women who do not want to have more children or any at all.

• Women who stay at home to raise the children (often because they do not have a choice) are the fastest growing HIV positive population, mainly because the government tests most pregnant women.  We have started HIV testing patients of both sexes in our clinic and are trying to expand our testing of other STIs.  We also give out free condoms.  Teaching about sexual health is important for the health of the teens, parents, and women.

You will note that most of our focus is on women…we have learned that they are the most amenable to learning about their health and the health of their children.  Also most of the care-giving in this country are done by women.  BUT…we hope to include more men and male-specific issues as well.

You can see though how many of these topics need privacy and a free flow of ideas from the students attending the classes…this is hard to do with a space that other patients walk through…which is why we need that third building. -Kathleen

Send Lawyers, Computers & Money

By now if your have been reading about our 2014 goals , you can see one of our major obstacles…money.

We had a volunteer from a March delegation who asked us, “What are the greatest challenges you face both as an organization and personally?”

Becca was quick to answer, “Money.”

If every volunteer who had worked with us here gave $10/month we would receive about $30,000 each month!  If everyone on our mailing list gave us only $10/month we would have $120,000/month!  And even that is not enough...but it would be a good start!

Like most non-profits, we scramble for donations.  Unlike many non-profits, an enormous amount of our budget comes from individuals, churches, meetings, and groups  which gives us the flexibility to adjust to do what is needed rather than doing what is perceived to be needed by outsiders…those who are not on the ground, and, more importantly, who are not the local people in the communities.

This year we want to increase our operating receipts by 25% and increase donations from former volunteers by 50%...that will help a great deal.  We also want to expand more globally…to figure out a way to raise funds from people within Nicaragua and in Europe (we now have a way to donate online via credit card in euros!)

20 years on...our computers haven't modernized much!

On a different note:  recently we received word that Microsoft was no longer going to support XP, which is the operating system that most of our computers were using.  Our stop-gap computer guru Sarah was in the States on her speaking tour and Becca was ready to tear her hair out trying to get work done before she left for Ireland while computer technicians in Managua moved all our computers over to Windows 7.  We realized yet again what an invaluable help an IT volunteer would be for us…so please help us find one! Find out more here.   So much of our work involves computers and for most of us they are like magic until they don’t work, and then they are a plague!

With all the work we do, the hassles, the successes, the day-in and day-out trying to make a difference and the constant looking for funds, you would think that lawsuits would not be something we would need to deal with…but we have paid out so much money that could have been used to do so much good (buy medicines, pay our Nicaraguan staff)…where has that money gone? To lawyers because of one Nicaraguan woman who is trying to take our land, and one South Carolina equipment dealer who didn't fulfill his contract.

Yelba Carvajal

Yelba Carvajal sued us many years ago to get the title to the property where the CDCA and the industrial park are located (not the clinic).  She lost, then appealed and again lost in the Managua courts.  Thousands of dollars and much time later we thought we were finally done.  Last year she filed suit in the Ciudad Sandino courts (surprisingly true, one can do that) resulting in more and more money going to lawyers and more and more energy spent on this.  This is just flat out disgusting! 

Jack Coker

Jack Coker, the South Carolina equipment dealer, accepted $150,000 as earnest money for cotton yarn spinning machinery – money we had borrowed – and he never delivered the machinery.  This led to the dissolution of the spinning cooperative, much heartache, and us paying back a loan for nothing!  We are suing him and he is counter suing us.  Fortunately we have the services of the Wake Forest Law Center who working pro bono, trying to help us get our money back so that we can pay off the loan.

Our final goals of 2014 are to have both suits resolved to the CDCA’s benefit.

We hope sharing our goals with you will help you become more intimate with this work and with the all the projects. -Kathleen

Get Together & Tell Bob Stories

Our friend, Bob Hanafin, died on the 11th of May.  He was the most unique and interesting person I have ever met.  He was part and - yet not “of” - our community for 8 years.    

We met Bob at a peace encampment in Aiken, SC, protesting nuclear weapons.  He had a weekend pass from the VA hospital where he had earlier checked himself in for post traumatic stress disorder (or as George Carlin so aptly called PTSD by its original name, “shell shock”).  He came to be a part of the encampment because Bob was antiwar.  We ended up getting to know each other as he kept our campfire going in the rain.  When he decided the VA had done all they could for him, he moved in with us while we were running 3 shelters in NC.

JHC Community 1984

In 1987 Bob came with Mike and me to Nicaragua when we jointly led a Witness for Peace delegation with a Methodist pastor during the contra war.  We went into the war zones.  It took a great deal of courage for Bob to come with his PTSD.

At 16 years of age he had joined the military and went to Vietnam before the US admitted they were involved in Vietnam.  His job was to balance the helicopters or planes with the dead and wounded.  He started buying morphine on the black market to give to the wounded to ease the pain of the trip.  On our Nicaraguan trip he was terrified something would happen to us and he would be once again helpless to protect others especially us…but he came none-the-less, understanding the risks more than any of us.

Kathy, Mike & Bob planning trip to Central America, 1992

Bob also came in 1992 on our first trip to Central America to explore where the Jubilee House Community might settle.  He represented what we might be able to offer people in the area of appropriate technology.  His knowledge of appropriate technology was vast even though he had dropped out of school in the 10th grade.

Bob in Nicaragua with Henry & others building the solar latrine, circa 1996

  
Bob was one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever known and it came from reading books constantly and on many, many topics.  He decided he wanted to know more about appropriate technology and went to see Buckminster Fuller and asked to learn from him…and he did.

JHC Community Christmas circa 1989

 Bob was unique…he was the baby of his family born in a ditch during a tornado in Kansas.  His family was fairly dysfunctional.  He said that his teacher in a one-room school house saved his life.  Every Friday she would load all the school children in her wagon and take them to the library.  Books opened his world, and he in turn opened the world for others. 

He introduced us and our children to so many authors, music, ideas…he insisted that we take a day off each week, something we had not done in the 4 years when we ran shelters.  He loved the Waffle House and would spend hours chatting with the staff...the Waffle House was his "office."  His birthdays were celebrations in which we were to do something fun for ourselves…he believed in the “hobbit” way of celebrating.    As he was dying, he told his “adoptive” son that if people wanted a ceremony after he died then people should get together and tell Bob stories…this is my start.

Bob at the Waffle House

One of my fondest memories of Bob was talking to him about a sermon I was preparing on the passage that says “If you do not love your brother (sister) whom you have seen, then how can you say you love God whom you have not seen.”
 

I lamented to Bob, “What is there to say about this?  It says it all…how can I talk about this for 15 minutes?”

JHC Community 1990

Bob said, “Then why don’t you say, ‘if you don’t love your brothers and sister then just get out’ and then you sit down?”

Unlike Bob, I am a bit of a coward…though I did start the 15 minute sermon that way.  

 But Oh!  What a message that would have been!   We will miss Bob as will many, many others.  -Kathleen