Nicaragua

Naomi Moore will be starting her second year at the University Of Northern Iowa, in preparation for a degree to teach special education.  She was part of a group from UNI to spend two weeks in Nicaragua studying their culture and education system. 

Naomi gave her presentation in a slide show.  Her first slide was a picture of the Managua, Nicaragua landfill, with a cow eating.  She said people lived at the dump.  It did not fill the reports visions from the song, “Managua Nicaragua is a Wonderful place”.

Nicaragua is in Central America, between Honduras and Costa Rica, is a little smaller than New York state, and has a population of nearly 6 million.  Managua is the capitol city with a population of nearly 2 million people.  Naomi said there were animals walking everywhere, the dogs were starving.  Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Caribbean right above Haiti.  The native Indian population speaks Spanish and is Catholic dating back to Spanish Conquerors in the 1600’s. 

They have no mandatory education system.  Some of the elementary classes have as many as 60 students.  Many of the girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution and have babies with no way to take care of them.  Naomi and her group visited The House of Hope which works on getting the girls out of prostitution and taking care of the babies.  Naomi helped take care of the babies when she visited. 

They visited The Center for Development in Central America (CDCA) a non-profit organization seeking to address human needs created by poverty in hopes helping communities become self-sufficient, sustainable, democratic entities. They provided dental, pediatric, OBGYN, and other medical care.

Naomi said she enjoyed trip, saw a lot about poverty, which made her realize how fortunate we are in the United States.