ESP Students

Hello from Costa Rica! For those of you who don’t already know, I am
studying abroad this semester with the School For Field Studies at the
Centro Estudios sobre Desarrollo Sostenible (Center for Sustainable
Development Studies), in Atenas Costa Rica. I just have two weeks left,
but I thought I would share a reflection I wrote after returning from our
recent trip to Nicaragua.

I am feeling now, as I have many times since having chosen to major in
Environmental Studies, the incredible weight of responsibility that comes
with knowledge.  The more things you know, the more things you have seen,
the more responsibility you have to act in some way upon that knowledge.

Our trip to Nicaragua was a five day whirlwind through a country with of
extreme contrasts. Our days were packed full from 5:45 am to 11:00pm
some nights, and moving from one activity to the next in rapid
succession left my brain exhausted and overwhelmed.

After about five hours of driving through Costa Rica we passed through
La Cruz, and I began to observe what I could from the window of the bus.
 As I was doing so, I spent a lot of time wondering how representative
this roadside snapshot actually was of all of Nicaragua. After 2 hours
at the border, we arrived at the shore of Lake Nicaragua and bordered a
ferry to Ometepe Island. The 2 hour bus ride from the port to the
biological field station where were staying took us past miles and miles
of extreme poverty, people living in open shacks, farm animals running
around everywhere, trash piles burning. When we arrived to the field
station we found beautiful maintained lawns, hammocks, clean rooms with
tiled floors and a delicious dinner. What a contrast.

Granada
A large, colorful colonial city with many cathedrals, red tile roofs, and
pastel painted buildings. I realized most of us loved it because it
reminded us of something we would see in Europe.  We stayed here for the
last three days of our trip, right in the glitzy historic center of the
city. None of us ventured out far from the 5 block radius of the central
park and main strip of businesses because it was...well...sketchy, and
dark. We didn’t feel safe going there, away from the lights, into the
unknown, into the less developed areas of the city. So we didn’t. Our
discomfort prevented us from really understanding the city.
The next morning we went to La Chureca, the largest trash dump in the
country. This huge dump is actually the home of 1,500 people, who live off
of, and work for the dump. I felt ridiculous as the 38 of us filed down
the road through the thick smoke of burning trash, trying not to gawk at
the shacks, literally built out of trash, that were strewn about on top of
the dump. The neighborhoods went on and on. I learned later that the life
expectancy for people living there is 30 years. Our purpose there was to
visit the school, give some donations in terms of supplies, but for the
most part just to play with the kids. As soon as we walked in the door,
every one of had at least one child attached, some had four or five. These
children just wanted some love, and I was amazed at the forwardness with
which my attachment, Elissa, jumped into my arms and nuzzled into my neck,
from which position she did not leave until I had to pry her off, 2 hours
later, when it came time for us to leave.
We left covered in grimy handprints, sweat, and grime collected just from
walking through the air. As we all reached for the hand sanitizer once we
clambered back onto the bus, it was impossible to internalize what kind of
feelings the experience had invoked in me. I didn't know whether to feel
pity, disgust, appreciation for having had my eyes opened, or just a lot
of guilt. I felt mostly guilt, and a deep sense of profound helplessness
at the bigness of the problem and my inability to do anything real about
it.

We immediately drove to a huge artisans market where we were thrust in
for two hours of touristic consumerism. I was so thrown off by the
contrast of the two experiences that I mostly just wandered around
aimlessly, feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the knowledge of the fact
that this was an excellent place to purchase quality, locally made
souvenirs for people at home, but in the end only ended up making a
couple of purchases.
 The Parks
We visited three different parks in Nicaragua, Maderas, Masaya, and
Mambacho. The main attraction of these parks was the impressive volcanoes.
Each park had a different management system. Maderas was not much more
than a ‘paper’ park.  Little management is actually done to enforce any
rules that go along with being a protected area.   I talked to our tour
guide in Mombacho about the differences between a publicly and privately
managed park. This is what he told me. Masaya is a publicly owned and
managed park.  The road to get there was long, sufficiently isolating it
from any practical community interaction.  Because of its public status,
the government can choose to hire guides from anywhere they want, and the
money gained is all reabsorbed into the government budget, not necessarily
benefiting surrounding communities. Our guide favored Mambacho because it
is public land, but it is privately managed. Because of this they are much
more connected to the community.  All the guides that work there are hired
from the local high school and put through a job training program on park
management. All of the extra profit that the park makes from tourism goes
back to 8 local schools.  Coffee farms are located all around the park,
which adds local economic value to the area. For this reason, this
co-management arrangement seems to be far more beneficial to the community
than what we saw at Masaya. The management plans are similar to those we
have seen at parks in Costa Rica, such as Poas, La Fortuna, and
Monteverde. The main difference I have noticed is that there are usually
Costa Ricans in their parks. Educational groups, families, etc. There are
still less locals than tourists, but in Nicaragua, I didn’t see any locals
at all.

These places are constructed for tourists. We didn’t see a single
Nicaraguan at either of the regulated parks, aside from the employees.
The only place we saw Nicaraguans was at Maderas, where rules are not
regulated. Parks are invested in primarily to attract tourist dollars.
This observation really made me think about whether tourism is actually
good or bad for Nicaragua. It brings money to the economy, and gives them
a practical incentive to protect the environment, but if it is all for
tourists, is it taking away from cultural value? Looking out the window
of the bus as we drove to and from the parks, observing the extreme
poverty, the "real nicaragua", just made me confused for the most part. I
felt out of place to be a tourist there, like I had no right.
To me it seems that the impacts of tourism for Nicaragua are only really
taken advantage of by those who are less poor.  The government, and
private interests who have the money to invest in creating tourist
services are the only ones that seemed to really be benefiting. As we
drove from one touristic site to the next, what I saw was poverty. I did
not see a people who were benefiting from the presence of our touristic
presence in their country.

I don't know what conclusions I can really draw from the experience- or
if there are even any conclusions to be drawn. The world is a big place,
a lot happens in it, and all I know definitely from this experience is
that now I know about more of those things that are happening.
 I know that a certain responsibility comes with this knowledge. A
responsibility to do something, to change something, or at least to care.
I don't really know where I fit into all of that, but I do know that this
trip to Nicaragua was an eye opening experience, one that was essential
in grounding the idealism that exists in our isolated academic world
firmly into reality.

Hi everyone.  If you can read this, then the blog is working.  Please try it out!  --Susanne