Water: the Gift of Life

Staying in California during last year's drought, I experience a concerted effort on the part of the state government to limit people's use of water.  Lawns were drying up and in Sacramento the city government was asking people to water their trees not their grass, because trees help hold in water and if the trees died...well, you get the picture.

Currently, 1.6 billion people live in countries and regions with absolute water scarcity and the number is expected to rise to 2.8 billion people by 2025.

One of Nicaragua's richest resources is its aquifer, the largest in Central America.  During the neo-liberal years when the government was trying to privatize everything (public schools, health care, electricity, etc.) they also tried to privatize water.  There was even talk of selling Nicaragua's water to the west coast of the  United States.  Fortunately the Nicaraguans rose up, hit the streets and blocked the privatization of its water.

Thankfully-- they did because after the last two years of drought, Nicaragua lost 60% of its surface water and 50% of its underground water.

With climate change, droughts are going to be a greater and greater threat to life in larger and larger areas of the world.  Our bodies are made up of 72% of water.  Polluting water and wasting water seems to me to be counter-productive to life.

And yet many U.S. politicians want to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency, while here in Nicaragua the two largest polluters of water, sugar production and gold mining, go unchecked.

I heard a college student talk about trying to make the campus more environmentally conscious by asking students to limit their showers to 20 minutes!  While I am not like one of our early volunteers when we ran shelters in NC who, I decided, could take a shower with a thimble of water; 20 minutes is a lot of water going down the drain.

What is it going to take for us to learn and change our ways?

-Kathleen

Food, the Hungry and Our Ozone

Mike peeling apples for the shelters

When we ran shelters in the U.S., people would clean out their freezers and pantries and give the contents to us.  I remember pulling out a package of meat labeled "Betsy" and REALLY hoping it was beef!

Over time, though, the food would get so freezer-burned that it was time for even us to toss it BUT we had to wait until Mike went on a trip, because Mike hates food waste...he is not wrong.

The facts given in this blog come from an article in The Guardian.   I strongly urge you to take the time and read the whole thing... here are highlights:

Half... HALF of all food produced in the United States is now thrown away!

Globally 1/3 of all food is wasted.  If all the food tossed in the world for a year were stacked in 20 meter dumpsters.  It would take 80 million dumpsters.  Piled on top of each other, the bins would be so high and long that they would go to the moon and encircle it! 

This is wrong.  In a world of hungry people, this is just plain wrong.

Why the extreme amount of waste? 

Farmers, merchants, and researchers report that we now demand flawless fruits and vegetables; therefore:

• farmers leave food rotting in their fields or haul imperfect food to a land fill if they cannot find cattle that will eat it;
• grocery stores throw away tons of good food because it will not sell;
• grocery stores also lock their dumpster bins to keep out people who would eat the food;
• restaurants throw food away when they could donate at least some of the uneaten food to shelters or just serve smaller servings;
• people at home throw mind boggling amounts of food away instead of figuring out ways to use left-overs in cooking or refreshing food that might have gone stale.

Old food in land fills causes methane gas that contributes to the depletion of our ozone... and heats up the planet.  Methane gas is more harmful to our ozone than the carbon monoxide created by transporting the food and all the garbage.  Dealing with garbage is getting to a crisis level... polluting water and air.

How is food dealt with here in Nicaragua? 

Most grocery stores, markets, and restaurants sell their bad food to pig farmers.  Most people who shop in markets or grocery stores know that food is not perfect and will buy blemished fruits and vegetables.  

Long ago I learned how to use leftovers creatively, cooking for shelter guests on next to nothing for a food budget .  It became a contest for me... how to take 5 servings of chicken cordon blue from Davidson College, 2 frozen chicken legs, 50 ears of cattle corn, and 60 pounds of almost rotten tomatoes to make one yummy casserole for 70 people.

Photo of Nicaraguan market by Jay Mock

Here I have learned that almost any vegetable when looking limp and sad will perk right up in water.  Slice lettuce, cabbage, carrots, etc.  put them in cool water and in an hour they are good as new and a wonderful salad is served!

We frequently end up with  leftovers, because when we have delegations it is a crap shoot as to how much they will eat... sometimes even I cannot use them all.  When that happens we give food to our staff, to neighbors in the village, and IF it goes bad then into the compost pile it goes.  None of our food goes into a land fill.

There is no reason for the amount of food that is wasted and with the number of hungry growing and the ozone shrinking... the only right action is to change our food habits and advocate for better food policies.

-Kathleen

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...

I have a very fond memory of the celebration of my parent's 45th wedding anniversary.  We had a family reunion with my aunt, uncle, and cousins.  Mama had bought plastic throw-away plates, cups and utensils for all the folks there.  After eating I asked her if we were going to recycle them... in front of one of my more environmentally conscious family members.

Ron said, "You can't recycle these, they don't have a 1 on them." (It was almost 18 years ago and only "1"s could be recycled in South Carolina then.)  I looked puzzled and said, "Oh.  No.  I meant, are we going to wash them and use them again?"  Ron smiled and responded with, "Different culture."  

Yep... throwing away all those good plates, cups, and utensils seemed a HUGE waste to me, coming from a country where a family might have only 3 to 4 plates and cups for 10 family members!  

Thankfully, in the U.S. recycling seems to have caught on... but reducing and reusing are still foreign concepts. 

In our International Training Center (or The Dorm) we have a cooler  filled with sodas and beer in reusable bottles with the labels painted on... like the old bottles of my childhood.  It was a sad day when plastic bottles and cans  hit Nicaragua and the landfills became over-run.

In the U.S. the masses only reuse houses and cars which means our land fills grow and grow. People throw or give away clothes, shoes, and accessories at an alarming rate!  Food is tossed.  Paper goes into the recycle bin and new notepads are bought.  Furniture winds up on the curb.  Leaves and grass clippings are bagged and thrown away.  The amount of waste is mind-boggling.

A sign at a Managua park says "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Reevaluate, Restructure, Redistribute

For the next month we are going to focus on reducing and reusing ...practical ways...things we've learned from the staff and the people we serve.  The poor HAVE to reuse and reduce to survive.  We will also focus on WHY reducing and reusing is important on so many levels .  So stay tuned!

-Kathleen

Do or Do Not. There is No Try.

"Do or do not.  There is no try," said Yoda in Star Wars.  At this point in history when it comes to climate change, it is now survive or not survive.  Those are our options.

Scientists say we are hurtling towards a future that will mean life will alter dramatically...not to mention the fact and not many of us will survive.  

I'm 62 years old...MY future is winding down, but as a mother of three, stepmother of two, and grandmother of two with one on the way...we HAVE to change our ways and start pouring money into slowing the speed of our world rushing headlong into disaster and actually start reversing what damage we can reverse.

We have all heard that as the globe warms:

• sea levels will rise; 
• hurricanes, typhoons,and  tornadoes will become even more powerful, larger, and more destructive;
• droughts will increase thus greatly limiting food supply;
• glaziers will increasingly melt at an alarming rate further raising the over-all temperatures;
• trees will die altering the amount of oxygen in the air;
• and on and on.

The human race has grown and survived many disasters because we adapt, but there is great concern that any and all of the above can happen so quickly that we do not have time to adapt.  Plus poorer nations do not have the resources to adapt.  

Most religions call us to care for the poor.

Most religions call us to care for the earth.

And yet some of the strongest environmentally conscious people I know are atheists and agnostics while some of the most abusive people to the environment call themselves Christians.

Most of us act like we are on a space craft that never needs fixing, cleaning, or adjusting our life style to accommodate all occupants. 

Adaptation does not include negligence.  We HAVE to pull our heads out of the sand.

History has told us that The Divine is not going to come sweeping down and save the "faithful" by cleaning up this mess.  After predicting for more than 2,000 years that The Divine will save the faithful by sweeping them up en masse in an Apocalyptic glory, I think, it is time that that we all wake up and understand that:

• WE were given guardianship over this beautiful home of ours; 
• WE were given the task of caring for this earth and all beings living on it; 
• and WE were given the task of caring for the those with the least power.

Hypothetically let's say the Divine DOES come sweeping down...what do YOU think the Divine will say to us defiling one of the most beautiful gifts created and given to us by the Creator?  

-Kathleen

Hot, Hot, Hot...Climate Change Part 2

As many of you are sweating outside in these summer months, you may actually be thinking about climate change.  But when the A/C is going in your home, work place, gym, or car, the heat slips to the back of your mind. 

In Nicaragua, April and May were miserable, it was so hot.  In the last 137 years of recorded temperatures, the last 12 months worldwide...every single month has been the hottest on record.  What does that mean for Nicaraguans?

The vast majority of the population can never get away from the heat.  The buses are hot.  The work place - often outside - is hot.  Their little, tiny homes are hot...and at night homes are closed up and the heat builds with many sleeping in one room.*  

People are exhausted because the heat zaps their energy and hardly anyone can keep enough water in them.  They are also exhausted because they don't sleep well in the heat, rising several times to just go outside and try to cool off.  People are cranky and road rage is more common (Thank God that guns are banned!).  Children are irritable and parents are short-tempered.

Josefa, our clinic administrator, walked around the clinic with a wet towel on her head when our pitiful air conditioner was broken.  She was trying to lower her temperature to lower her blood pressure.  

As the humidity and the heat built, the air coming in and out of my and Mike's lungs got heavier and heavier...both of us then move to the air conditioned office.  Two years running I ended up in the hospital with asthma attacks during these hot, humid months...now I have the luxury of spending them in our bedroom or office with A/C.

We hear people from the North talk about how Nicaraguans have adapted to hotter weather -  and they have to some extent  - but when the heat and the humidity rises, it is dangerous for the body.  The advice given in the States of going into air conditioned areas OR getting in tubs of water does not work here.  Again, the vast majority do not have those options.

Climate change is ever-present for the poor.  The reason many in the States can deny climate change is that...well, they can.  It does not affect them now.  They can move within their climate controlled temperatures and stupidly stick their heads in their air-conditioned sand, but denying something does not make it untrue.

*Even most middle class families do not have air conditioning in their home because electricity here costs about 3 times more than it does in the States.

-Kathleen