The Apanás Project

12 Julio 2003

Life in Apanas

By Lidian Mejía Palacios

We were happy to receive your letter and to hear that your are well and healthy with your family and friends.

With respect to the climatalogical situation I'll tell you that here we distinguish only two seasons (winter and summer). Here centigrade degrees are used, the climate is warm and only when natural disasters occur (hurricanes), are there abrupt changes and it is very cold and even many poor families have died in our country. But speaking just of Apanás the crops in all the valley have been lost on several occasions leaving us victims. Also, the fishing has become difficult because of the dirty water and the fishermen lose their work fishing to guarantee sustenance to their children. Thanks for the dollars that you sent us in your letter. They arrived for us at a good time, since the economic situation is so dismal.

Life in Apanás is very dismal and difficult in regard to work opportunities and options for training for women and young people, so that they have had to move to the city to look for work as domestics. Also, we are discriminated against a lot for selling fish. I tell you, it has made us happy - the idea that we have the opportunity to express how life is in our country, Nicaragua, especially in a small town like Apanás.

Thanks for offering us the opportunity to have a place on the Internet to publish our writings.

Also, we'll take this opportunity to tell you that we would really like to know a lot about the Internet, because we no not have any knowledge about it, we don't even know how to get our work on the Internet. We are sending detailed information about our efforts, because here we believe we are excluded, and that only the people from the city and those that have money to train themselves are the ones who know about this technology of current, modern communication. Here you could say that we grow up with a bad health system, poor nutrition, since the basic, traditional food is rice and beans. With respect to education, it is deficient because we have a fair education but the poorest of us, like Juana Marta Lopez, seller of fish, Inés, Carmen, and others only managed to study until the third grade of primary school.

How is Apanás? That's the question you asked. It is a beautiful place in the middle of a green and beautiful mountain range named 'Cordillera Isabelia'. It's a cloak of hills and slopes crossed by a river, a lovely lake of an inexplicable beauty, its plains green and the vegetation with a silver-blue sky reflected in the waters of the lake of Apanás; its the maximum tourist attraction which is why each day thousands of people visit this place, to nourish their imagination. Its a small valley without more than 100 families all of humble origin and campesina roots, of which the men dedicate themselves to agriculture and fishing, the women to domestic labors, laundry washing, sellers of fish, and others that travel to the city in search of jobs and better cultural resources, very few reaching beyond elementary studies because of lack of money. It is a place with fertile lands, its inhabitants are very hard working, but we have always remained marginalized by all the governments our country has had.

The dawn is very beautiful, when in the east the sun begins to rise and the warble of the birds blesses us each day with a melody of hope or prayer.

Our children grow up without a place to play or an adequate environment and at times are exposed to the danger of the streets or in the neighborhood when their parents leave them alone to go to work in the country or to sell their fish in the market of our city. Here the children at a very early age have to learn to work, but I tell you that in my experience that at exactly five years already they work honorably next to their family members to earn their food or a place to live.

Telephone service does not exist. As for services to the public in case of emergency or death, life is very sad, but it is a very productive little valley, although marginalized. The streets are wretched. Here some cattle is raised, although not much. Milk is very expensive. Agriculture is the principal area of work, economic hope, and food.

What are the houses like in the valley of Apanás and how are they constructed? The houses are constructed in the form of rows on both sides of the road with some dispersed elsewhere. The majority are constructed from cement blocks or from brick, and for the poorest people their houses are of wood, zinc, and the roofs of zinc and at times they have a roof of black plastic.

We have terrible water service. The hygienic services are inadequate since they only add to the contamination because during winter the water inundates these places. We also find ourselves affected by diseases of the skin, like fungus, athlete's foot, scabies, bad colds, fevers, and colds that sometimes for lack of medicine worsen and give us bronchitis, bronchial pneumonia, and these diseases commonly attack the children from eight months to nine years old.

In Apanás the majority of the poor families use common (traditional) treatments for lack of money.

We would like in the not very distant future to have a small school in Apanás, a health center - all without governmental aid because here in Apanás 100% of us, the inhabitants, are single mothers with more than two children, the majority between 0 months and 5 years, nursing babies. The rest are of secondary school age taking into account that 80% don't manage to take technical or professional courses because of lack or money. And although we are like family we cannot help them continue their studies because our income is way less than the expenses, which means the majority of us remain permanent laborers such as fishermen, farmers, vendors paid by the day or the month and earning super low, very low wages.

We feel very grateful for offering the opportunity to open for us a way to extend our cultural connections with other parts of the world. In the next letter we will send photos of Apanás and we'll include other photos of the truly poorest families.

A poor girl of the third grade of primary school sends you a picture drawn and painted with watercolors really showing the geographic location and the population of Apanás, but in a humble and simple way. Watercolor of Apanás

I'll say that the eight participants we now have love this work. They will be sending you their own work, through me, or perhaps some will send it themselves. Enclosed, one of them sends the following poem dedicated to poverty. (Add link here)