The Lyman Zoo: We fell in love with the people and the country of Nicaragua

We learned to love the Nicaraguan people. They are a happy, loving people. As we spent time there, we were amazed at how hard working, happy, friendly and genuine they were.

They love to celebrate for any reason. This little parade was before a sporting event. They started at one end of San Juan del Sur and all the different sports teams walked through town to the beach on the other side of town. They were greeted with cheers along the way. There were bands playing and horns honking!!

They celebrate Halloween with dressing in costumes, trick-or-treating and of course, a few different parades.

We learned that you don't have to have a lot of worldly possessions to be happy. Most of the people there, lived in the humblest of conditions. Many of the homes are made of wood, tin or cinderblock. Many have only one or two rooms. But the people were carefree and happy. They took pride in their businesses and homes and kept them clean. The children were always dressed in clean clothes and had their hair brushed and fixed cute.

They are hard working people and many of them work out of their humble, little homes. There were quite a few of these home laundries that we saw. They wash the clothes by hand and then hang them outside to dry.

This is a little bakery that is in the lower level of a home. The conditions were very primitive but they make delicious bread!!

This is the wood burning oven where they bake the bread. How do you regulate the heat and so it cooks evenly? Somehow they did.

They were out working hard on the roads to keep them in good condition.

They are a spiritual people. This family was happy to have the missionaries visit with them.

This is a statue of Christ that is high on a hill and can be seen from miles around.

This is Alvero's house before the project to build he and his family a new house.

These are pictures of the house as it is being built. They were so excited and looking forward to moving into this new home. Alvero expressed his gratitude for all who had made this possible. They had budgeted for the bare minimum. They had not included windows, doors or paint at first but there was enough donations that had come in, that they were able to purchase windows, doors and paint. There had been a bathroom included in the plans, but Alvero and Suzanna, his wife, decided they would like to have the outside bathroom, that the whole family shared, fixed up.

When we were in Nicaragua, we had the opportunity to go to a “soup kitchen” two different times to help serve food to kids. We were told that, for a lot of these kids, this was the only meal they got each day. We learned a little bit about the lady who was providing this service. Her name is Anita. She is from Nicaragua and is quite young, probably in later 20s. She had spent time in other countries on service missions, helping out where she could. She came to realize that there was plenty of need in Nicaragua and she could do a lot of good there.

We learned that a lot of the time, in Nicaragua, the people who are hungry and do not have homes, food, shelter, etc., will live right by the city dump. That is how they survive. They scavenger through the dump to find something to eat and to find items they can use or sell. We drove by the dump, close to Anita’s, and saw a couple of families there, with rakes, going through the piles. It was heart wrenching.

We were told that when Anita started feeding these kids, she would take food to them a few times a week. She would just deliver it to them on the streets. After doing this for awhile, she came in contact with a religious group from the United States, who wanted to help her. They found out the need and were able to raise enough money to buy a house and some land for her to prepare and serve the food to these children. She now provides one meal a day. She also gathers the children before the meals and teaches them a little gospel lesson and a few basics of an education. She is also teaching the mothers some life skills. She teaches them how to bake bread and is teaching them how to grow a garden etc. She is an amazing lady. She provides this service on donations that she receives.

The children were very polite and very grateful!!

We thought it was very inconvenient to not have a car during the time we didn't have a rental car. As we waited at the grocery store for the shuttle from Palermo to pick us up, we looked around and this is what we saw....

A lot of the people had come to the store on bikes or motorcycles.

When the shuttle came, we were grateful for the ride!

Here are a few pictures of their different modes of transportation. This one is actually of two men on a motorcycle. The passenger is holding a mattress on one side and some chairs on the other side.

There are many, many bikes. They are the main means of transportation. Many have carts to carry whatever needs to be transported.

Some of these are bike taxis and actually taxi people from place to place.

There were horse drawn carts everywhere we looked. Even when we went between towns, we saw people walking, riding bikes, in a horse drawn carts. It appeared that a very small minority of the people there actually owned cars.

There are a lot of different animals in Nicaragua. We met up with a snake in our villa one evening. The Palermo guards came and got rid of him really fast!!!