Home Stays, Part II - Reflection on Life at "13.5"

For four days I went nowhere without being encompassed by a tangled mass of arms and legs and hugs and kisses and shouts of children ranging from 3 to 14 years old. Welcome to 13.5! I stayed with Tatiana, Gerald, and Maycol, three precious children from my English class. Everyday, they play with their extended family members who happen to ALL live in barrio 13.5, so my homestay brought back memories of growing up around my very large and noisy and wonderful extended family. Every morning the children walked to the local Catholic school while I stayed home with their mothers. In the afternoons, madness ensued upon the chavalos return. These children play with an unmatched enthusiasm.

From tree-climbing and mandarina-picking to pickup games of baseball and soccer, these kids don't stop. I was especially touched when they wanted to play Memory with Spanish and English words, something we often do in Kid’s English to practice vocabulary. Tatiana cut out squares of paper and wrote the spanish vocabulary while I wrote the english...pretty soon, all the cousins were learning how to say gecko, shark, dog, and duck (we're studying animals in kid's english). I can't claim that keeping the pace with such a lively bunch of youngsters didn't absolutely wear me out, but I will say that being around so much joy and energy perked up my mood and helped me focus on the good in life. For a week, it was like I could go back to being a kid again, surrounded by family and laughter and silly arguments and lots of gallo pinto.

In addition to taking me back, this week was a chance to get an inner look into the daily life of members of the local community. From sunrise to bedtime, I experienced life through the eyes of 13.5, a life which entailed cousins, playtime, clothes washing on the pila, singing our respective national anthems, and very cold bucket showers when the water ran low.

Jan Margaret Rogers

Program Director

Home Stays, Part II - Reflection

Sometimes we whine about the Manna House, which is actually palatial compared to the way most people live. We miss hot water, air conditioning, bug-free living, dryers, dish-washers, TV, and our own rooms. We spent the last week sharing houses the size of our rooms… much of our community lives with dirt floors, latrines shared by twenty people, bucket showers, and cooks over fires. I think homestays have been the best thing we have done yet, we solidified already close and solid relationships and also just had a really good time. The people in the community have become family and friends over the past few months.


We really were challenged by much of the homestay, the dichotomy between how we live and how they live is impossible to convey. As we discussed and wrestled with this I think we came to the ultimate realization that the critical difference between me living a more sparse life and the lives of our community members: For me, it’s a choice. For me, I choose whether or not to buy a new dress in order to save more money for sponsorship funds. For me, I choose whether or not to go to dinner out or eat more cheaply in my house. For these families, such a choice does not exist. No matter how much I restrict myself I will never understand what it is to live like these families. No matter how long we stay we will never fully understand the reality.


It was a great week, for many of us the end of homestays came too soon. I really do believe both we and our homestay families enjoyed the experience. It was great to spend day-in and day-out with the people who have become our families here.

Lauren Page Black

Program Director

Highlight: Chureca - Nica HOPE

Manna Project is proud to have built and to continue strong relationships with other non-profits active in La Chureca. These partnerships increase MPI's awareness of needs in the community and allow us to refer community members and interest to the appropriate organization. Love Light & Melody once again gives a view of life in Chureca and area NGOs with a number of videos highlighting the activities of a few of those organizations. The following video highlights Nica HOPE, an organization founded by former Manna Program Director Deanna Ford, which supports education and runs vocational training initiatives for women and children living in La Chureca.

Nica HOPE from Love Light & Melody on Vimeo.

For further information on Nica HOPE visit www.nicahope.org

Community Home Stays, Part I

Though the manna house is a valuable asset, living apart from Cedro Galan does prevent the Program Directors from fully understanding daily life in the community. In an attempt to further enlighten our team regarding the intricacies of life in Cedro, each of the ten PDs will, this week or next, live as those we are here to serve. The purposes of these community home stays are as follows:

1. To provide a cultural experience for the PDs, increasing their knowledge and understanding of life in the community.
2. To further understand the assets and needs of the community in order to better serve them.
3. To further connect the community of Cedro Galan and Manna Project, building deeper and more personal relationships.
4. To give families in Cedro Galan an opportunity to support Manna Project.

In order to further these goals, the PDs will be treated as part of the family rather than as guests, complete with household chores, and will continue to prepare and run programs as usual. While the home stay will doubtless bring its challenges, we know it will be a tremendously enlightening experience.

Highlight: Kid's English

Children’s English is a bi-weekly class led by PDs Leah and Jan Margaret with a great deal of support from Anina. The attendance has remained fairly constant and catered to our neighbors from 13.5 (“thirteen-five” - the folks who live right down the road at kilometer 13.5) and Chiquilistagua, the neighborhood surrounding El Salero. The rambunctious 10-or-so year olds always bring a lot of energy and sass to every class in the El Salero library. After completing units on the City and Transportation, Children’s English courses during the month of October focused on learning Animals. From zoo creatures to common ones such as dogs, cats, and geckos, we’ve introduced the children to the wild wonderful world of animals in English. The children seem to enjoy the fun activities that accompany classes such as Bingo or Memory, while as a teacher, I enjoy the interesting things we discover such as the fact that one student can do a perfect imitation of a cow moo. Moreover, the children have taken to yelling out the names of the animals we pass every day on the way to and from class: “Dog! Dog!” “Cow!” “Horse! Horse! Horse!” Little moments like this, when we catch them using and practicing what they’ve learned in class, always bring a smile to my face.

After a few months of transitioning, Leah and I have been able to make this class our own with an established structure for each day. We begin every course with the reading of the rules. Although our chavalos continually fight over who gets to read each rule (the “última” or last one being the class favorite), it seems like the constant repetition of classroom expectations helps the children focus and know what is to be asked of them. We continue by practicing introductions, common questions, and pronunciation. After our introduction, we introduce new words and review the old. An appropriate worksheet follows, and finally, the hour concludes with a game of some sort to captivate their attentions and engage their minds and memories. Provided that each child is well behaved and participates, they receive a sticker for good attendance - a prized item counted towards the attendance party held at the end of each unit/month. This month, we are also hoping to surprise the children with a trip to the local zoo in order to practice what they have learned thus far: city, transportation, and animal vocabulary.

Jan Margaret Rogers

Program Director

MPI Nicaragua

Highlight: Creative Arts - World Tour

Literacy's (Cedro) weekly trip to the library at El Salero has brought with it exposure to a certain learning device that, while regarded as a typical school wall decoration, is sadly lacking in many Nicaraguan classrooms. That tool is... a world map. I had been very grateful for it and the other Central American and Nicaraguan maps that hang in the August's library, and smiled to see that our students often gazed at them. However, I became slightly less hopeful when at one point I walked up to two of our 14 year-old girls and asked them to show me where Nicaragua was.

After a full minute of moving through Asia, Europe, and Africa with their index fingers, glancing expectantly back at me for my withheld affirmation, I laughed and pointed to Nicaragua for them.

Manna has both Literacy and Mathematics classes to address illiteracy and innumeracy, but an oft forgotten basic functionality is map literacy. In an attempt to meet the needs presented by map illiteracy, and with the added bonus of expanding our students' exposure to world cultures, Kelly and I have incorporated a world tour into MPI's Creative Arts program in Cedro Galan. To help in this venture, Manna has purchased its own world map that now hangs in El Farito, our classroom building.

Kelly's Continent Showdown has been a hit with the kids

In an introduction into geography in which we colored our own maps by continent and made paper machê globes. Our study of art around the world first took us to France, where we painted in the styles of Van Gogh and Monet, and also built our own Eiffel Towers from marshmallows and toothpicks. Our next stop was the U.S., where we studied Native (North) Americans, making headdresses and dancing along with a pow wow video.

Ulises concentrates on painting the continents on his globe

The United States also presented the opportunity to introduce our class to abstract art, something Kelly and I had been looking forward to, because what better way to express creativity and originality? After a slide show of paintings by Rothko and Pollock, we followed the style of the latter to create our own action art.

Samuel and Geral took a particular liking to the new style of painting

Our world tour through art will next take us to Spain, which will see our Creative Arts class act our bull fighting, the running of the bulls, and bring us to draw our dreams like Dalí and our self-portraits in the cubist style of Picasso.

Highlight: Chureca - Love Light & Melody

Manna Project is relieved to know that it is not the only organization working to dampen the harsh effects of life within Chureca's grip. Among them is Love Light & Melody, an NGO seeking to spread awareness of Managua's city dump and its residents. Their most recent video showcases Dia de Luz, or "Day of Light," a March concert organized by the organization and put on in the community. The video is a telling view, or as telling as a digital stopover can provide, of one of MPI Nicaragua's focus communities.

Day of Light from Love Light & Melody on Vimeo.