Partnering in La Solera moves ahead

A program beneficiary stands behind her new well. The hole has been cemented over, and is awaiting the rope mechanism. Photo by the author.

Two years ago, the Richland Center-Santa Teresa Sister City Project (SCP) suggested that WCCN try an adopt-a-village experiment. In 2008, WCCN agreed to sponsor projects in La Solera, one of Santa Teresa’s rural communities in the buffer zone of Chacocente Wildlife Refuge, in Nicaragua.

Unlike the communities within the refuge, La Solera is accessible by public transportation. A daily bus (a large truck with benches) connects La Solera with Santa Teresa. La Solera has the Chacocente area’s only store, a small co-op grocery. It also boasts a new public health clinic, built a few years ago by a battalion of U.S. soldiers. (Somehow the clinic key went home with the troops, and the community was locked out until late 2008.) It serves eight communities and is staffed by a nurse, with a doctor coming once a week from Santa Teresa.

Last year, WCCN granted our SCP $4000 to begin work in La Solera. With the help of the SCP’s Nicaraguan facilitator, Alma Susana Chavez, materials for twelve latrines, five wells, fifteen well lids, and one rope pump were delivered to the village. The SCP’s policy is that we fund the materials and the community members provide the labor for construction projects they have chosen.

Villagers dig the wells by hand. A man at the bottom of the hole shovels dirt into a pail which is pulled up on a rope and emptied by people at the top. The upper part of the hole is wider than that below, and a ledge is left at the transition point, ten to fifteen feet down, as the footing for the masonry well casing and above-ground well enclosure.

This January, SCP board member Linda Stadler and I met with La Solera community members in their health clinic. They thanked us for our help providing materials for the ongoing well and latrine construction. When it was her turn to speak, Juana Cano was ecstatic. “They finally hit water in my well!”

Later we all walked through the hilly forest, crossing creeks on slippery stones, to see the new projects at individual homesteads. After seeing two well excavations, and several new concrete well covers, we headed for Juana Cano’s small cabin, sitting on a perilously steep incline. The deep well hole was flimsily covered with a few loose boards. Juana removed them, showing us why she was worried that children might fall in – a real danger on the precipitous slope.

The next step, which may be completed before you read this, will be reinforcing the recently dug well holes and building the brick-and-cement well enclosures. After Alma Susana priced bricks for the project, some community members decided to make the bricks themselves, charging us half what they would have cost elsewhere. The project was slowed by 2008’s severe, interminable rainy season. The wood needed to fire the bricks didn’t dry out until the end of December.

With the 5000 bricks, the community can soon complete the wells and latrines. In the style of Nicaragua’s NGOs, the outhouse doors will be stenciled with our Santa Teresa nickname “Hermanamiento Wisconsin” (Wisconsin Brother/Sisterhood), giving equal credit to both the SCP and WCCN, our partner for 22 years.

Richland Center, Wisconsin, and Santa Teresa, Nicaragua, have been sister cities since 1987, when WCCN helped them get together.

by Jane Furchgott
Member of the Richland Center-Santa Teresa Sister City Project