Water from El Porvenir

Today's guest post is courtesy of Chris Berg. Enjoy this beautiful description of life in a Nicaraguan community.

A long but thin stretch of road winds along cornfields and cane.  Somewhere along its stretch one can find a small concrete bridge some 10 miles or so outside of Leon, Nicaragua.  The place is not marked, but with a closer look one can see that to either side of the bridge dirt ramps drop at a steep grade and connect to a one lane dirt road below.  Full-size busses slowly emerge from the ramps as though disgorged from the earth itself followed by plumes of black diesel exhaust.  This is not the edge of the world, but where it begins.

The road is soft and at times cuts through the earth with 20 feet up on either side.  Trees lounge along the road side and in places grow in a straight line where some farmer had used green wood for fencing.  Green wood sprouts roots in the black volcanic earth.  Nicaraguan’s have a “dicho” or saying that if you spit in the soil something will grow.

Forty-five minutes in, the road disappears down a three foot bank into a dry river bed.  In the distance young boys are leading cattle in the middle of the day.  No shirt, shorts and flip-flops.  Each carries a thin stick for poking and prodding.  They smile broadly and wave as the dust cloud forming behind the 4x4 engulfs them and the herd.

At some point, the flatness of the land stops in front of a volcano sitting like a lumbering giant.  The road passes through a gate welcoming visitors to El Porvenir.  Somewhere along the way several people were picked up and stand in the back of the truck--children, mothers, workers, bags of cement and coke bottles filled with gasoline.  The vehicles slow and lurch as they engage low four-wheel-drive and start whining their way up an impossible grade.

Near the top of the mountain vistas unfold.  The temperature drops.  Large trees shade the road and beds of shiny coffee plants.  In other places the crops turn to beans, corn and plàtano.  Almost fifty families live on this mountain together.  After the Sandinista revolution, ex-fighters from all sides brought their families here and mixed with locals to form a coffee farming cooperative.  It’s not perfect and at times disturbing; however, they live together eating from the land and sharing work.

In the middle of the main compound is a big house.  Terracotta tiles neatly form a gentle slope down to a network of canals that lead to a cistern.  When the rains come, there is water for all—plants, people, and livestock.  In the dry season, each family rations to 5 gallons a day.  Plastic containers make the pilgrimage easier, but everyone carries what they can handle.  Usually it’s the women and children making the water run.  Gathering at the cistern is a central part of the community.  Some of them say it’s what binds them together—telling stories, seeing faces and getting recent news.

Outsiders that stay more than a day, also make their way to the cistern for bathing.  A bucket is filled with deep cold water and scrubbing commences.  It may be brief, but most emerge refreshed, clean and changed.  It is said that bathing in the water from El Porvenir  binds you to the community in untold ways.   Once done, you will never forget them.