Hola! I made it to Nicaragua safely with my 7 traveling companions. I´m leading a work trip and we are here to build houses and work on a water project. We traveled Saturday to Managua, the capital, and yesterday took a microbus to our project site in Jinotega. I´ve been here six times now with this NGO and still fall head over heels in love with this sleepy little Latin town. I swear Jinotega, with its high, lush green jungle mountains, water falls, fields of calla lillies and hydrangeas and geraniums, was exactly what Gabriel Garcia Marquez had in mind when he wrote his ¨Love in the Time of Cholera¨and“One Hundred Years of Solitude.“
The people are equally remarkable. Nicaraguans are just kind to their very core. They are welcoming, generous and sweet people. I feel safe here, and there is nothing better when traveling with a random group of very foreign Americans.
My group is basically entirely strangers. The eight of us include 5 folk I´d never met before our flight to Houson. Thankfully, we seem to be melding well. These are donors who have decided to spend their summer vacations working hard labor in the humid heat. Color me impressed with their dedication to improve the world. I get paid for this. I don´t necessarily know that I´d want to spend my vacation working as hard as we did today.
It is 6 pm and the group is finally rousing from their naps. We are about to head out the door to a small sandwich shop for dinner. We spent the morning and most of the afternoon working on the housing project with the most rudimentary of tools. My work team includes and engineer from Chicago, a former professional football player from California and a man who owns a construction company in Phoenix. Needless to say, I spent a good bit of time today soothing ruffled feathers that there simply isn´t any other way to get this work done. No, in fact, we cannot rent a tractor. No, there aren´t any other tools. No, I can´t do anything abou the giant puddles we are trucking through — it rained all afternoon.
So, we are dirty and tired and slowly making progress on these houses. It is a great project and I´m happy to be a part of it. I´ll post photos soon — when I briefly return home to Phoenix on Sunday — and in the meantime post travel details as I can.
The shirts haven´t yet been distributed. We will go to the orphanage to work on Friday and surprise the kids with goodies then. Thank you again for your kindess and well wishes.

Cheers,
Kelli

p.s. foreign keyboard = wonky punctuation.

p.p.s. One thing I love about this country — they don´t wake you up with calls to your room. Instead a hotel worker comes and gently taps on the door and wishes you a good morning. It is so much more peaceful than a phone ringing off the hook next to your head, don´t you think?