by Jane Furchgott

I love the typical Nicaraguan cheese. It's white, crumbly, and salty. It is not aged. It seems easy to make. When I visited La Poma and the home of Juana Cano and Ramiro Medrano, who often make it, I asked for instructions.

With a twinkle in his eye, Ramiro mentioned the "suero" or serum needed for coagulation. He wasn't sure how I'd get the active ingredient – armadillo stomach! He showed me a bottle of this starter at his mom's house: sour milk with pieces of the stomach floating around in it. Well, maybe I can try their recipe using rennet, which comes from a calf's stomach.
Ramiro had a deep cut on one of his finger, which was very infected and swollen. He had been to the Santa Teresa Health Center and gotten some antibiotics. Luckily, nurse Linda Stadler was with us. She looked at his finger and decided it was time to operate! Ramiro broke some long sharp thorns off a bush in the yard and sterilized them in alcohol. After asking Linda, "Don't you have any local anesthetic?" he bravely let her poke holes in his painful finger so the pus could start to drain. She also gave him good advice about care, including taking all his antibiotics. By the end of the trip, his finger was healing well.

Serious injuries with infection are a major problem for Chacocente people. With very little cash income, purchase of antibiotics is a major expense. When a severe medical condition arrises and cash is needed, a family in poverty may make choices that dramatically change or destroy their lives
When we met with the health promotoras in the La Palma-El Papalon Center, I could see that one of them was feeling very sad. Usually smart and outgoing, she now sat out on the porch and didn't even come into the meeting. She later told me that her father, a patriarch of El Papalon, was very sick, perhaps dying. In order to pay the bills for his expensive medical treatments, which so far had done no good, the family had decided to sell their 50-acre homestead to a U.S. purchaser who has been buying up land from Chacocente campesinos with the intention of developing it in the future. The money will allow the promotora's family to relocate, but joylessly, with an uncertain future, far from their home and community in the Chacocente forest.

This trip was the first time I visited Chacocente before the dry season was underway, before the trees began losing their leaves. Coming, as Linda and I did, at the end of a very wet rainy season, we found the foliage very green and lushly tropical, and the arroyos in this mountainous area flowing with water.

By January, the bed of the Rio Escalante, Chacocente's major river, would be nearly dry, but in late November it was beautiful and wet. When we reached our crossing to the village of Escalante, children were diving into the inviting blue river water and a woman was standing knee deep near the edge, doing her laundry. A highlight of our work-focused trip was the half hour Linda and I spent bathing and swimming in the river, with egrets fishing upstream and a large shrub with flame-like orange flowers on the opposite bank. Just that bit of relaxation was rejuvenating!

Another Rio Escalante episode was less enjoyable. Our consultant, Francisco Barquero, drove from Masaya in his 4-wheel drive SUV to the Commission meeting at the school in Escalante. After the meeting, Linda and I plus several other people asked for a ride out of Chacocente. We had to ford the Rio Escalante about ten times in the overloaded vehicle, each time a local man, José Antonio, calling out the the best way to approach the crossing. At one ford, Franciso didn't hear José Antonio's directions and the car got stuck in the river gravel down to its rear axle. Our pushing, digging, and jacking just got the car in deeper.

We had passed a team of oxen earlier on the road. Now they caught up with us and the animals and drivers stood on the bank above observing our futile efforts. Luckily they had some rope which was quickly used to hitch the oxen to the car and, without much apparent effort on their part, pull it out of the river and up onto the bank.

Being at Chacocente a little earlier in the growing season than usual enabled us to see more of the crops. As usual, the weather had a big effect on their success. The first growing season of the year (May-August) produced good yields of corn and beans, the main staples. But the second growing season (August-December) had been characterized by unusually intense and persistent rains, to the point that most of the gardens washed out and the roads were impassable for a couple of months. As a result, the second bean crop was poor and much of the corn either showing spotty germination or small because of late planting. However, the wet weather favored two other crops, rice and grain sorghum. Some of the sorghum plants were twelve feet high. This millet-like grain is used for animal feed and for tortillas when there is no corn.

This was the first time I realized that rice, a Nicaraguan staple, could be grown in "dry" Chacocente. Given level ground and enough rain, it is possible. As we neared La Poma on our hike, we saw Marcial Chavez drying his rice crop on a tarp in front of his house.

Visiting several of the plots in our ecological agriculture program meant a lot to me. Seeing the green manures and living erosion barriers intermingled with crops convinced me that the new techniques taught by our agriculture technicians have made a difference. Farmers spoke about learning to mark contour curves, about preserving sloping soil with the living barriers, and about how the yields after green manuring were just as good as after using urea. The participants greatly value this program.
2005 was the final year of the 3-year trial ecological agriculture program. Now the participants will evaluate the results. They are working with agronomist Marlon Palacio to reorganize the seed bank and make long-term plans for their farms.