The main issues



Although my experience in Nicaragua was truly enjoyable, there are many issues about their living conditions that really stuck me that we can hopefully improve by our work.

Personally, what I think the biggest issue is women's and children's health and education. When we were in the village, we saw that very young children were running around, touching animals such as chicken and pigs, playing with toys that they were rolling around in the dirt, and then put their hands and even the toys into their mouths. Furthermore, the adults seemed to condone this behavior. Also, the villagers barely drank any water in the ninety-degree weather, which leads me to believe that do not know how much water they should be drinking per day, so many

of them probably suffer from dehydration, even though they do have clean drinking water. Also, the relationship between the men and the women really affected me. In the village, the women do all the cooking and cleaning while the men are seen lying around and not helping at all. For example, in the house we were working on, I witnessed a young, strong man holding a huge jug of water however, the grandma of the house came and took it from him, because it is the woman's duty to do the work around the house. I also met a nineteen year old girl (the same age as me) and her two year old son. This young girl not only cooked and cleaned, but she also took care of her son while her "partner" stood around and did not speak to any of us. When we visited the schools with the book mobile, we learned that the children are only in school for about four hours a day, and that only about 1/3 of the children in a village actually even attend school.

This is a 3 year old girl holding her 3 month year old brother at the local elementary school

All these are serious issues that can be fixed through education. If women were to receive a better education, they would be able to reduce many health issues by simply learning the importance of washing their hands. Eventually, it would be ideal to even educate the men and motivate them to help the women with their household chores. 

Our trip!


I returned home from Nicaragua last Friday and since then I have had time to reflect on my trip. In this post I will write about what we did on our trip, and in my next post I will discuss what the next step of our project will be.

Our first day in Nicaragua we went to visit Volcano Masaya, which is an active volcano. It was beautiful, but the drive there took much longer than expected, so it took the entire day.

The next day, we visited the rural village in which we would be fixing the bio sand water filtration systems and installing eco-stoves. Since I am not an engineer, there was not much I could do to help with the installation of the stoves, so I painted the water filtration systems that had already been installed in the homes.

There were two other non-engineers in my group, and together we determined that it would be much more beneficial for us to turn our focus elsewhere, rather than on the technical aspects of the project.  We rode on a mobile library, called the "book mobile", which is a car that travels to the multiple rural schools so the children can check out books. I really enjoyed this experience, because the children were truly grateful to be given the opportunity to read.

The next day we returned to the rural village to finish installing the eco-stoves. The installation was successful and the home owners were excited to have a more efficient way of cooking.

Here are some pictures of our trip!

Global Warming



Since I was a child I have been concerned about the environment.  However, as I grew older, I forgot about everything I had learned about global warming as a child because it was something I never learned about in school.  However, in class, we read an article from Rolling Stone magazine called "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math", which made me remember why I had always been so concerned about the environment. The article states the facts about the true dangers of global warming.

To me, the most concerning part about global warming is how unconcerned politicians are about this extremely pressing matter. Understandable, politicians have important concerns, such as the economy and wars to focus on, but if the issue of global warming is not addressed, there will soon be no point caring about anything else, because the world will be on its way to destruction. The article states that "Barack Obama didn't even attend" an extremely important environmental summit. If government officials are unwilling to show their concern about global warming, average citizens will never understand how severe the problem actually is. Without the support of politicians to change the amount of pollution we are emitting into the environment, average citizens will continue to pollute as much as they already do and no one will be motivated to research efficient ways to solve the problem.

Personally, I think global warming is one of the most concerning problems affecting society. If the issue is not fixed, the human population will begin to die out due to severe heat and lack of water. Politicians need to begin focusing more on global warming if they want to save the world from destruction. Furthermore, without their strong support for global warming research, people will never know the damage they are doing to the world just by living their every day lives. Humans are literally destroying the word and no one is doing anything to stop it.