ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 3, 1997 TAG: 9702050026
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REBEKAH MARTIN TURK
Last summer I went to Nicaragua with my Mom and Dad to visit the New River Bocay Project which my parents have supported for a long time. The Bocay Project tries to help the Sumo and Mosquito Indians who live along the Bocay River in northern Nicaragua in Central America.
The Indians need help because they don't have good drinking water or medicine, and they don't have money to afford good houses or enough food.
My Dad's friend, Gary Hicks, was our guide. He is an American who started the project in 1986 and lives most of the time in Nicaragua.
When we first came to Nicaragua, our airplane landed in Managua, which is the capital. I felt nervous and scared because it was so different. I didn't know the language, the people acted different, everything was open, and it was very polluted.
There was trash everywhere, the water was dirty, and the cars and buildings looked broken down. People were standing around everywhere and lots of people carried big guns. Every time we stopped at a stoplight, kids were begging for food or money or trying to sell things.
When we visited people, they only had a couple of pairs of clothes and not much else. The kids didn't have any toys or shoes. When I saw how poor everybody was, I felt like I was being selfish and unfair because I have so many nice things.
When we were traveling to the town of Bocay, we were on a bus where instead of keeping your things inside the bus, you put your things on top of the bus. Every time the bus stopped, people were either walking around the bus trying to sell things or getting on the bus trying to sell things, although I couldn't understand what they were saying. We stayed on that bus for three hours.
Then we came to a city called Matagalpa and took a taxi to another bus station. The bus station was a dirt yard filled with old broken down trucks. At that bus station we took an open-air transport. An open-air transport is a big old truck with metal bars over the back and a piece of canvas hung over some of the bars close to the engine and a wooden bench on each side. We stayed on that truck for six hours on a dirt road into the mountains with no bridges over streams.
Our transport had to drive right through the rivers and streams, and went around very sharp turns with steep banks. After a while I climbed up on top with my Dad, who hung on to me to make sure I wouldn't fall off. We had to duck down now and then to keep tree branches from knocking us off.
We got off the transport in the center of Bocay and walked the rest of the way to the main house. The town was mainly a muddy dirt road with no cars, only donkeys, pigs, chickens, horses, oxen and people. On all the animals you could see their ribs, except the chickens and pigs.
About twice a day a transport would come through the town blowing its horn and spewing black smoke. We put our stuff in our room. Then Gary showed us around and introduced us to the people.
Then Dad, Gary and I went to the Five Star Restaurant while Mom stayed at the project house to sleep. The Five Star had baby chicks roosting in chairs and running around. There was also a deer at the Five Star that tried to eat my shirt. These animals were not pets. They were dinner when they got fat enough.
The house that we stayed at in the town and the house next to it are owned by the project. The houses are used for storage and a place to stay when the Indians that live down the river come to town.
That house and all the houses looked very different from the houses in Virginia. The houses were all open with no screens or glass in the windows or doors. They were made out of cement and old boards or sometimes just old boards. They were small and didn't have a bathroom but an outhouse in the back yard. There were no bedrooms. Everyone slept in the loft or in bunk beds. And there were huge spiders and cockroaches that lived everywhere!
We stayed in Bocay for a week, and lived with the Sumo Indians who run the project when Gary is not there. It was very noisy with all those people and animals around and the roosters crowing all day long. There was a green macaw that could talk and when it learned how to say "Rebekah," it drove me crazy saying "hola, Rebekah."
And there was a pet monkey that the other kids and I liked to play with. The kids only spoke Spanish and I speak English, but I had fun playing with them just the same.
On our last day we took an open-air transport to the country to visit some of Gary's friends. After getting off the transport we walked on a foot path for a long way to get to their house.
They lived in a house that was made of some boards nailed together and a banana leaf roof with a dirt floor. They had two pigs and three chickens with lots of baby chicks. They had bushes for the bathroom and a stream for washing, laundry, and everything else.
We stayed with them a long time because it was the 18-year-old girl's birthday. She is the first one in her family to go to school, and she is now in the third grade. She didn't get any presents, but my Dad and Gary walked a mile to a country store to get some sodas and decorations so she could have a birthday party. We all did square dancing in the clearing in front of their house. And when we were leaving they gave me a chicken.
I want to go back some time but not right away because I still remember how scary it was. I want to go back because now I know some of the people, and I've been there so I wouldn't be so nervous.
In January I became 10 years old. For my party, instead of presents we asked people to bring old summer clothes so when my Dad goes back to Nicaragua next summer he can bring the clothes for the people there. They need clothes a lot more than I need presents.
Rebekah Martin Turk, 10, lives in Radford and is in the fourth grade at Tall Oaks Montessori School in Blacksburg.
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. In the Nicaraguan town of San Jose de Bocay (above),by CNBeven the main roads are dirt, and there are no cars, only animals
and people. 2. Rebekah (right) cuddles a baby chick as a young
Nicaraguan boy looks on. color.