To help or not to help...

Creole family

Back from holidays on the west coast (maybe for another article) and back to work...
Right now, we have some kind of situation at work: one of our funder is willing to give us a good amount of money to install a lot of illumination systems in houses in some communities. The number of installations we can do with this money is really susbstantial, so much actually that there are not enougth houses in the 2 main communities we are working with at the moment. In order to use the fund in the best manner, some clever people in bE thought of teaming up with an other non-profit organization working in the same area but with other communities to go and equip the house of the communities this second organization is working with.
The idea is good but of course as always here, it's not that simple. This other non-profit organization is working with mistisos comunities, that is white people descendant from the Spanish "invador" and coming from the west coast. There are poor communities and have been living there for one or 2 generations and they need help too. So what is the problem? Mistisos are know on the East coast for their really unsustainable way of farming by deforesting big area to grow their crop and feed their herd. In the south, they are also known to have threaten Creoles and Ramas communities.
On the other hand, the Creoles and Ramas are 2 ethnies that have been living around here for at least 400 years. They are trying to keep on living their traditional life, sustainably cultivating their lands (or at least trying as much of this knowledge got lost during the civil wars in the 80s) and living within a strong community spirit. Creoles and Ramas have now their own independent government, the GTRK (Govierno Teritorial Rama y Kriollo) which is the entity we are mostly working with in order to help the Creole and Rama communities. The GTRK is trying to push away the "invadors" of their ancestral land, that are the mistiso communities for them.
In the middle of all this complexity, that's just where we are... What should we do, help any community in need to devellop or discard some of them because the way they got in the area was not a proper way? Should we refuse to help these very poor Mistisos in order to try and preserve the traditional way of living of the Rama and Creole communities? But if we do so, how can we be sure that bringing electricity to Rama and Creole communities is not going to actually affect their traditional way of life negatively (it's been seen in numerous communities, access to electricity for many is going with access to television leading slowly to a weakening of the comunity spirit...)? By discarding Mistiso communities, are we somehow segregating them? Is our goal to preserve a traditional way of living or is it to provide light and electricity to a greater number?
Personally, I hope for the first one. Can we really help on that, us foreigners? that's another question....

¿Te gusta tu país?

C'est décidé, je vais me contenter de n'écrire qu'un blog (déjà pas si mal) et il sera soit en francais, soit en anglais, soit en espagnol... avec des fautes quelque soit le language, désolée...Et donc voici le premier post en espagnol...

Ayer fue el jueves de la semana santa, feriado por aqui y día de paseo al mar para una buena parte de la población Nica.
En Léon, todos se van a las Peñitas, bonita playa de la costa Pacifica. Se puede ir aya en bus (muy lleno) siguiendo una mala carratera llena de oyos y polvo.
En ese bus, mire muchos Nica (y tal vez extranjeros también) botar sus bolsas plasticas, o sus vasos desechables o cualquier otra basura, simplamente por la ventana del bus... Ese actitud esta incromprehensible para mi. De lo que sé, los Nica son orgullosos de sus país y tienen razon, es un país bien bonito... Pero de mis amigos que vinieron por aquí o de mi mama con quien estoy viajando esos días, unos de los primeros comentarios que tengo es que este país esta sucio. Y bueno, me pone triste pero el problema es que es cierto, se puede ver basura en todo lados...
Esta playa de las Peñitas es como unas de las mas bonitas que he visto, grande, arena negra, agua azul oscura... Pero ahora con toda la gente que viene a pasear, la arena se esta cubriendo de vasos de plastico, de latas de gaseaosas, de platos de papel, de bolsas de agua... Y las Peñitas son solamente un ejamplo. Durante el viaje en bus ayer, mi mama pudo admirar no solamente el paysage bonito pero también toda la basura cerca de la carretera.
Por eso, si tenía bastante valor, le preguntaría a todos los que botan salvajamente "¿Te gustas tu propio país? ¿Realmente quieres que los turistos le ven como una basura gigante?". Sé que la repuesta es no entonces porque lo hacen... eso unos de los misterios Nica...