Chronicle of a ONE Member Abroad: One Week in Nicaragua, 2008

January 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm

Nothing like starting the New Year with a good load of travel. In a perfectly coordinated travel plan, I left the Power 100 Summit in Washington DC to spend one week in Managua, Nicaragua, Latin America’s second poorest country. I went from sleeping under 600 thread-count luxury bedsheets at a Hilton Hotel to sleeping on a wood-board bed frame over a cement floor.

Could there be a better follow up to the Summit?

Now, I’ve never been to a developing country before, so I thought I would take it upon myself to make the effort and take a trip. A few months beforehand, I received an email advertising a one-week winter break trip to Managua thought CEPAD Nicaragua, a Christian, non-profit, non-partisan organization with a focus on social issues. The trip will encircle 7 days of touring Nicaragua with an emphasis on women’s issues in the country. Sign me up.

A few facts on Nicaragua: The Republic of Nicaragua is a small country bordered by Honduras and Costa Rica in beautiful Central America. As mentioned before, it is the second poorest country in Latin America (behind Haiti), with a GDP of $3,100 per capita and a growth rate of 3.7% (2006 est.). The economy has not faired well due to a civil war in the 1970s and two Category 5 hurricanes, Mitch (1998) and Felix (2007). The main currency used is the Nicaraguan Cordoba, and about 18.96 Cordobas make 1 US dollar. MDG-wise, Nicaragua signed a 5-year contract with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in July, 2005 for $175 million dollars

Luckily, the trip squeezed in just perfectly after the Summit, so there was no conflict of schedule.

I arrived at Augusto C. Sandino International Airport on Sunday morning, and the group was picked up and driven from to CEPAD headquarters. Driving through the urban streets of Managua was an early adventure on its own. My first impressions were, quite frankly, somewhat familiar. It reminded when I went to Mexico D.F. when I was little, and the view driving from the airport to my Grandma’s village: clumped commercial streets splashed with vibrant, uncoordinated colors, grass growing wildly through every cement crack in the streets, freshly discarded paper waste on the sidewalks, product advertisement on everything from billboards to bus-sides to home walls…actually, it kind of sounds like a description of most mega-urban cities.

Nothing beyond a simple tour of the main tourist sites is on schedule for today, which is great because jetlag can really get you. The schedule for the rest of the week seems very promising. We will be visiting a variety of organizations focused on women’s issues in Nicaragua, from health clinics to advertisement centers.

I also decided it would be interesting to have on blog post per day of travel. A mini-series, if you will, to a relevant topic from a new point of view. Stay posted! 

Read the entire blogpost at the ONE@USC blog! http://oneatusc.blogspot.com

Staying Positive in Kibera

November 27th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

In honor of World Aids Day on Saturday, I thought I would honor a couple of VERY special people I’ve met in the past year.

Over the summer, I went on a study abroad program to Kenya. While we were there, we had the opportunity to spend some time in Kibera in Nairobi. Kibera is the largest slum in East Africa and some people estimate over 1,000,000 people living in a little over 1 sq. mile.

Aids is pretty rampant in this part of Kenya. And the close living conditions make a lot of other diseases, like TB and malaria, much easier to catch than in more sparsely-populated areas.

While the Aids rate is high, those that are HIV remain extremely positive. Carolina for Kibera is a nongovernmental organization that works with the inhabitants of Kibera. CFK has a women’s health organization, called Binti Pamoja, that deals with HIV/AIDS, violence against women, sexual abuse and other women’s health issues. While I was there, they sold us beadwork, which contributed to the health costs of the women involved in the group.

Many people aren’t quite sure what living conditions in a place like Kibera looks like. I’ve included a couple of photos from our trip so you can really get the visual.

Check out Carolina for Kibera and the amazing people there for yourself at http://cfk.unc.edu/.