Estelí

Estelí

It took me a long time to get used to living in Managua but after a month and a bit in Estelí, I already feel really at home. This is the city, nestled between mountains. It's quite flat so on almost any street you can see the mountains, it's comforting in a strange way. This is the north central highlands, and feels a million miles away from Managua, but it's only a bit more than 2 hours on the express bus.

There's a husky puppy (six months and giant) in the house I live in, we go wandering the streets at around 6pm most evenings when it's quite cool and the light is turning orange and red over the hills, it's my favourite time of day. People have their doors open and sit on their doorsteps chatting or in rocking chairs on the patio watching the world go by. It feels really safe here. Until a ferocious dog throws itself at the gate of a house and scares me and Saskia to death. 

Estelí was where a lot of the fighting took place during the revolution in the 1970s, there are lots of murals around town supporting the revolution and remembering many of the compañeros from here who died. This is a more recent one showing the current president who is from the Sandinista party that led the revolution. 

Jumping to another subject, here are a couple of photos from a nature reserve nearby, Tisey-Estanzuela. This mirador (viewpoint) was just ten minutes walk from the cabin on a farm that we stayed in for a night. We were told sometimes you can see over the border to Honduras and to the coast the other way, but it was a bit hazy while we were there. Still, not too bad a view. We could see a few different volcanoes as well.

This one was taken from the bus on the way up. The coating against the sun on the windows gave it the sepia kind of effect, a nice surprise! There's lots of cattle farms along the Panamerican highway and you often see the cowboys herding them along the side of the road.

The project

I'll try and explain a bit about what I'm doing here, apart from hanging out with a husky and improving my Spanish by drinking beer and chatting to people.

There is a non-profit social enterprise here that uses funds from a hostel and (very nice) café to run projects in the Miraflor Protected Area, which is about 45 minutes. It's been going for quite a few years and does micro-loans for house-building/improving, an organic gardens project, a library bus for children in the reserve which is just about to start running next week, and eco-tourism with families in the reserve who take in tourists to stay with them for some extra income. It works directly with the communities in the reserve and only employs local people. They want to start using some money raised from the tourism office and homestays to do conservation, as Miraflor has been downgraded from reserve to protected area and has been heavily deforested. So my job, and another volunteer who has just joined me, is to help plan this and work with the employees here to get trees planted in May/June when the rainy season has begun. We want this to become a sustainable, ongoing activity for the communities involved so we're planning a program of environmental education for the children at school to get them interested and enthusiastic about the benefits of reforestation.

I'm learning lots about tropical tree species and traditional agriculture techniques where selecting certain species of trees can help improve your crops and even cattle in so many ways, it's incredible! Need to get myself a big garden to practice for myself in.

There's a LOT to do but there's loads of people, local and foreign around here who can help us, and want to. I'll put more information and photos on here, as it happens, hopefully sooner rather than later!

This photo is taken from one of the two tree nursery sites, we're looking forward to spending some time up there after working a lot from computers here! This one is in the lower, dry zone, and the other nursery is in the high, humid zone which is cooler and a lot more green.

Ariel, on the left in the photo below, works in the tourism office and took me for a visit to the site this week on his motorbike. His family have land all around the site and we dropped in on his grandparents because he needed to help his grandad brand three calves. I definitely learned something new watching that! I wasn't sure I wanted to watch the actual branding but his grandma kept telling me to come over, she was pretty excited for me to see so I went and watched with her.

 This is the cafe where I spend a lot of time, mostly working on the plans and fundraising, but plenty of relaxing too :-)
There was live music on this night and I got lots of salsa lessons, didn't learn much though due to all the nervous giggling I was doing. Loads of fun though, and much looser after a couple of mojitos.

Peñas Blancas

A few weeks ago, I finally saw the place that Frederic has spent/will be spending a lot of his time. Two buses, half a day, and some terrible roads brings you there, in the Northern highlands of Nicaragua, coffee growing country. Its the sort of place where you don't mind things like ice cold water for the shower, bigger-than-acceptable bugs in the bedroom at night, HEAVY food (like rice and cheese 3 times a day), and sporadic electricity cuts, because this is what you see from the doorway of your cabin:

It's also a special place when at dusk a gang of toucans arrive and you can wander from tree to tree following them in their evening routine and listening to their strange, toad-like sounds. No decent photos of the toucans but this is the species, photo taken from the internet, a keel-billed toucan  

The sunset, as seen from a spot five minutes walk up the hill, each range of hills a different shade of pinky grey and changing faster than I could take pictures as the sun disappeared

One of the ladies who lives on the farm cooking our tea over a wood fire. Cheese is freshly made each morning, coffee beans from the farm are ground in the kitchen and Don Chico occasionally gets out his battered mandolin and plays old Nicaraguan songs with a grin on his face. At the same time the younger men compare their motorbikes and everyone knows the best spot to leave your mobile phone to have a chance of receiving some signal, its always a blend of old and new 

Fried plantain banana, rice, beans, freshly made cheese and tortillas

Playing cards after lunch 

Some residents of the farm. The calf was three days old and probably still hasn't grown into her ears now

The Macizo de Peñas Blancas

The area is named after the white rock formation which dominates the community living below it. I felt like it was watching us, most of the time in a friendly way. 

The macizo de Peñas Blancas

The first morning there we had a big breakfast that I later regretted slightly as we dragged ourselves up the mountain (well, I dragged, Frederic clambered, and Arturo, the farmer acting as our guide, skipped up without breaking a sweat. I pointed out my shorter legs while they waited for me, then sheepishly realised that Arturo is the same height, if not shorter than me). 

We went up towards the right of the picture, almost vertically,hoping not to grab on to a spiky tree trunk for support as we slipped, and trusting the 3 or 4 wooden ladders not to lose their grip on the rock and send us toppling back down the mountain.

All of a sudden we hit the ledge, and found ourselves on the almost-flat plateau where there is a icy cold stream running into an incredibly inviting pool and then a waterfall .. swimming will be for next time though because Arturo seemed keen to get back to the farm. Although he didn't actually say this, being the strong (well, small) and silent type. We didn't see much wildlife at the top, a couple of times a hummingbird flashed in front of me, an iridescent blur, and every now and again we would hear the song of the oropéndola, which sounds to me a bit like a xylophone being played. When we go back we might spend the night at the top sleeping in hammocks, and could see much more wildlife, though that probably includes much more mosquitoes too. 

Then we crossed the plateau from the right to the left, and stumbled down at only a slightly lower gradient than the way up.

It was all worth it for these views.

Frederic on red alert for interesting birds, while Arturo leads on through one of his coffee fields. The plants here are around one year old I think, and need 2 more before they're ready to bear fruit 

So, Frederic will be back soon to start interviewing the farmers in the area and I'll be back to visit one day. The 5 hours of bus journeys to get there only builds the anticipation 

Monkeys and more of the Monkey Hut

Monkeys.. lots of them

A couple of weeks ago we stayed a night in a hotel, only half an hour from Managua but couldn't have felt more different. It's tucked into the forest away from the road and is much much cooler than here. The best things about this: I could wear one of the many surplus jumpers I brought, and we slept with 2 layers of sheets (still no duvet) and no fan on all night! Luxury, although probably not what you want to hear whilst freezing your socks off in England and Belgium. We had a cheese fondue for tea, the only vegetarian thing on the menu, but it was delicious, apart from the gherkins which had been inexplicably pickled with a massive amount of cinnamon. Not a good surprise. The next day we went for a walk after breakfast having been told there were trails, and arrived at a viewpoint at the top where we could see a volcano in the distance (not sure which one). We thought 'oh we'll go back down a different way, the other paths must lead down to the hotel. WRONG. After at least half an hour of walking down quite steeply we finally admitted we weren't on a proper trail anymore, we were just wandering through coffee plants getting deeper and deeper into the forest. So we went back up in the heat of midday, already nearly late for lunch. I had a minor tantrum but Frederic handled it well. We did see some really nice birds on the way back up so that made up for it, and for the first time this trip I actually had my binoculars with me when we needed them. 

We had a good dinner and then I heard howler monkeys, like Frederic during the night. I walked a bit away from the hotel and they were suddenly above me, no-one else around! Special moment! I watched for a couple of minutes and then ran like mad to get Frederic but by the time I got to him they were in the trees right next to the hotel, where they stayed for the next hour! So I had to share them then, but I got a few photos, and realised that I want a longer lens for my camera! There was a couple of big males, younger ones and a mother with a baby. It was sooo nice to just lie on the grass and watch them for an hour through the binocs, but I paid for it with a nice bit of sunburn. 

View from the top before we strayed from the route and got lost .. it's cloudy but spot the volcano in the background

Moon rising over the lake 

We were at the Monkey Hut last weekend and it was a full moon, the most orange moon I've ever seen! You can see the moon come up every night, it appears on the edge of the crater and then really quickly its up. We weren't quick enough with the camera to get a picture while it was just appearing but we got this one. It was more orange in real life! Couldn't see many stars though, it was so bright! 

Christmassy Nicaragua

We weren’t dreaming of a white Christmas, as we kind of realised that it would be in vain. However, the Christmas decorations that have been visible everywhere in Nicaragua since we arrived here mid-november are definitely helping to get some of the Christmassy feeling. We have been doing some shopping and Laura made a wonderful traditional roast diner on Friday, which we had with Pierre and Xitlali. There was some exchanging of gifts already, as Pierre, Xitlali and Mathías will be in León this week; and we’re happy to help them out by looking after the dogs (Puma and Idéfix; and we'll be acting as nurse for one of them who had to go to the vet's today with a wound on his back) as well as the house for that time. 

Christmas eve was spent with some of my (Frédéric) Nicaraguan 'family', and the 25th we went to the monkey hut again with some friends. 

X-mas decorations in the house; with the angels bringing the gifts (in Nicaragua, it is not santa but 'el niño dios' who brings the gifts). 

Preparing apple crumble for Christmas dinner. (I (Frédéric) must admit I wasn't really as involved as it looks here.... Thanks again Laura for a great roast!) 

Cringe! :) 

Fieldwork (Frédéric)

With this entire blog referring to the ‘touristy’ things we’ve been doing so far, people might wonder if I have forgotten that I came here with the main objective to conduct research. Actually it’s time to tell most of you a bit more about what I’m doing here (as well as last year, and the three years to come). I’m not sure I’ll manage to do it in just a few sentences and in a comprehensible way, but what follows is an attempt to write a short introduction to my research topic. 

I will be working in a sub-part of the biosphere reserve Bosawás in Nicaragua, where there are a number of regulations/projects going on to try to limit the pressure on the forest. A number of people and organisations are interested in preserving this forest, because it holds a lot of biodiversity, stocks a lot of carbon and – most importantly for the local people – has a role in the regulation of the microclimate and the water quantity and quality of the region. What I will be focusing on, is the decision-making of the local farmers (what crops do they produce, what is the economic and social aspect of the different trade-offs, and how much do they take the impact on nature into account). The aim is to understand better the impact of some of the regulations and policies that have been implemented to try to conserve the nature – with a specific focus on a popular policy instrument (Payments for Environmental Services) – through their impact on the decision-making of the key actors.  

A slightly more elaborate version goes as follows: (note: if you already felt bored reading the previous paragraph, you can also just skip to the part with the pictures; no hard feelings :))

Since October last year I’ve been a PhD student in Development Studies at the Institute of Development Policy and Management from the University of Antwerp. The title of my research project is “Green microfinance and payments for environmental services: from market-based panaceas towards an integrated approach to sustainable  rural development. Case studies from Nicaragua”; but that might not make much sense until I’ve explained a few of the key elements of that title. 

First, I assume you might already have heard of the idea of ‘sustainable development’. The concept became most popular in a big international conference of the United Nations in Río de Janeiro in 1992; of which the 20th anniversary was ‘celebrated’ this year with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable development, also called ‘Rio+20’ (www.uncsd2012.org). The most cited definition of sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (this definition was made at an earlier conference, which is sometimes considered the cradle of the ‘sustainable development’ term, the WCED in 1987). This concept of development comes from the confrontation with our past and current ways of seeking development, which seem to fail to deliver in terms of the reduction of poverty and inequality, and which are absolutely overshooting the limits set by the global and local ecosystems we live in.

So to do something about it, all sorts of organisations and governments are searching for and implementing policies and governance structures that are expected to change the current course of action. One of the most popular suggestions of the moment is to have ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services’ (PES). The ‘ecosystem services’ refer to benefits that people obtain from nature. This can go from services that we know quite well – such as agricultural produce – to e.g. the regulation of water quantity and quality by forests. In the context in which I’ll be working, the idea underlying the payments is twofold: 

i) as people obtain benefits of those services, they are willing to pay for it to safeguard their supply  

ii) if farmers are paid money when they apply the land uses that help provide these services (such as shade coffee, primary or secondary forests,…) they’ll adopt the environmentally more beneficial practices instead of the degrading activities that were affecting the environment and reduced the environmental services.

So you can see there is the idea of ‘putting a price on nature’, making it exchangeable on a market (you might have heard from the carbon market e.g.). The policy instrument of Payments for Ecosystem Services is very widespread, and links to the wider idea of ‘the Green Economy’. In microfinance (where small loans are given to people with no access to credit or financial services), the idea has started to come in gradually, with e.g. programmes where the interest rates are lowered when some environmental conditions are being fulfilled by the farmer (what I call ‘green microfinance’ in the title). 

The policy is very popular, but actually there is very little proof that it is really as efficient and effective as so often proclaimed. More and more researchers, citizens, farmers organisations,… are starting to question the idea of PES. You can do so on a huge number of fronts: in terms of fairness (how are the payments locally distributed? who gets the benefits and who bears the costs?), unequal development (is it a way for the developed countries to just continue to consume and pollute?), the natural science element of it (can you really measure the services that you trade?), and so on. I think I should say I mostly focus on the idea of effectiveness, which I relate in part to fairness. More precisely, I will look more closely at the assumption that you can solve the problem by merely changing some monetary trade-off in the economic decision-making of individual farmers. 

I believe that Payments for Environmental Services and the underlying economics are overlooking the importance of context in which the policies are implemented. Whether or not the policy can be successful, depends on the interaction of the payments or the conditions of the microfinance with the decision-making of the individual actors. These people are in turn influenced by and influence their social, ecological and economic environment. 

To make it slightly more tangible, I’ll say a bit more about the specific case study I’m working on for the moment, and how I’ll be trying to analyse it. There’s a project in Nicaragua that is called ‘Proyecto Cambio’. It is a line of credit that (some) farmers can access, and they get a premium (a percentage of the loan) as a payment if they comply with some of the set conditions. I will be taking a look at who gets what payment for what, and how that changes their own practices as well as that of their neighbours. I will then look at it in the light of the more general resource management structures of the area, to consider whether it is making or can make significant contributions to the conservation of the natural resources in the area. 

In a nutshell, that’s it…

Picture time

Pictures from a workshop

Meeting from the municipal environmental commission

 

Research area

My first ever coffee harvest

An interesting way to cross the river to a cocoa plantation 

Learning about coffee farming with Don Marcial

On our way to Bartola, a community ecotourism project in Bartola, Río San Juan, part of Pierre's research area

Talking to a community member of Bilampí, Rio Blanco; yet another zone which taught me a lot about different projects and different settings

Signs of slash and burn techniques on the top of the hills

León and Las Peñitas

We went to León on the 7th to attend the ‘Gritería’, which is a tradition in honour of the holy Virgin María’s ‘concepción’. Technically comparable to a halloween ‘trick or treat’, or the singing of ‘drie koningen’ on the 6th of January in Belgium, people of all ages and classes run around in the streets. They go from door to door, ‘shouting’ (gritar) at the houses where there are altars: “Quién causa tanta alegría?”; which gets the reply from inside: “La concepción de María!” and then a handful of treats comes your way. It can be anything: sweets, soap, pens, salt, beans, cake, fruit,… We don’t have any pictures as we had been warned more than once about the masses in the streets, and how the event does not only attract people with good intentions. With hindsight it was less crowded than expected; but after all the saying goes ‘better safe than sorry…’
To give you an idea of the activity, we've included some pictures from the internet. The source is mentioned.

http://simonrach.blogspot.com/2010/01/griteria-in-leon.html

http://www.elnuevodiario.com.ni/nacionales/260849

People construct the altars in their living rooms and open the doors, leaving the bars closed, and hand the gifts out through the bars. Some of them are really amazing, with fairy lights, flowers, curtains, and are as high as the ceiling. There's also fireworks at 6pm and midnight, but the attitude to health and safety doesn't really exist.. going back to our hostel at midnight we had to wait because men were setting them off in the street just by lighting them in their hands and throwing them up in the air! They were going all over the place, sideways, up and down. We didn't see anybody get hurt so they must have some skills or just be very lucky!

Las Peñitas

The next day we went to the Pacific coast which is only 20 minutes from León. We ate fresh, delicious fish and had a dip in the sea while the sun went down. The water is the perfect temperature and the colours at sunset were beautiful. The only downer was the black clams which didn't agree with me and meant that Frédéric had to eat tea on his own, but the next day we had to be up early for a trip so we needed an early night anyway. 

The trip was a tour by boat of the protected reserve of the Isla de San Venado, which is an area around a river which runs parallel to the sea and has mangrove habitat on either side. We saw so many different birds that I can't even remember them all but there were the royal heron, white heron, blue heron, tricolour heron, ibis, kingfishers and vultures. Also, a big green iguana resting on a log, and crocodiles which we had given up seeing and only just saw on the way back. First a baby one, then an older one and they stood their ground for a while posing for photos before they slipped into the water! 

Blue heron

The mangroves

Royal heron

Vulture

Kingfisher

Our guide was brilliant, he was a local fisherman with no shoes on who was really enthusiastic and spotted things that blended into the background that we never would have noticed. We were out for 4 1/2 hours on a tour that was supposed to be only 3 hours. That's also my excuse as to why my sunburn was so bad as anyone who saw me (Laura) on skype after will understand.

He took us to the beach at one point to look at a nest a crocodile had used to lay her eggs and then to a turtle hatching project, where baby turtles had just hatched that morning and were waiting to go off into the big wide ocean at night. A bucket full of baby turtles.. SO CUTE! 

The area on the beach where they re-bury the eggs after digging them up from where the turtles lay them. They do this because racoons, dogs and sometimes people eat them. They are experimenting with using the bags full of sand in the picture because they can put several lots in one bag and they seem to have a better rate of hatching in those.

So we'll probably being seeing Felipe again, he told us about a trip on the ocean we could do, spear fishing and then cooking the fish on a fire on the beach, I think it's got your name written all over it dad! 

Felipe strolling casually over thorns that went through Frédéric's flip-flop to show us the crocodile's nest