So Much!!

Just half a day here and I have so much to share... I couldn't find an internet cafe so I using a neighbors computer so I am not sure how much time I have...Quickly though, Managua is already unlike anywhere I have every been. You can still see and feel the devastation of the 1972 earthquake, which leveled the city. Interestingly so many similarities to New Orleans can be made.

I am staying with a small family in a lower middle class area a few miles out from the center of the town. The community is surrounded by a community center called Centro Cultural Bataholas. I have an interview of Laura Hopps (the daughter of Professor Hopps, the director of the TCNJ WILL program) explaining the agency, which I will post when I get to a cyber with a better connection. But in short the agency is a remarkable success story of two Americans who were at first ignored in there attempt to start a knitting club (to spark community organizing) but after much persistence it turned from a knitting club to a full community center that does from local advocacy work to job training, literacy tutoring...

Check out their website: http://www.centrobatahola.org/
Also their blog at: http://bataholavolunteers.blogspot.com/ (the picture of the two girls on the right side are Laura and Christine, who have been helping me immensely already).

At arrival the temperature was 94 degrees and it is pretty humid. Roads are more insane then I have ever experienced. Zero signs, mostly all dirt roads, no street names, no house numbers, and potholes that get as deep 3 meters! and a hole 1/3 of the road! Extreme poverty was everywhere on the ride from the airport. Dozens of groups of children begging for anything. The sheer feeling of a desire to survive I experienced in South America is magnified here.

So much much more to add but I got to go...