[su_carousel source=”media: 37322,37326,37324,37327″ limit=”65″ link=”lightbox” width=”800″ height=”540″ responsive=”no” items=”1″]<\/p>\n
When the men of Wawa Bar\u2014an indigenous Miskitu community located in the remote North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) of Nicaragua\u2014sized up Shana Zamora Dixon, they doubted she would last.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a perception in our community that this work is for men,\u201d said Dixon, who began building rainwater harvesting tanks in 2015 as a means of providing clean drinking water to her community. \u201cThey questioned my capacity, my aptitude \u2026 they said I would only last two or three days.\u201d<\/p>\n
But like her Miskitu people, who are regularly targeted by outsiders and profiteers for their natural resources, Dixon has persevered.<\/p>\n
A married 25-year-old mother of two, Dixon has lived her whole life in Wawa Bar, which is only accessible by boat. Each day, a single boat departs from Wawa Bar at 5 a.m., bringing passengers to Bilwi, the region\u2019s capital, and doesn\u2019t return until noon. For her interview with El Tecolote, Dixon\u2014who doesn\u2019t speak Spanish but who communicated through an interpreter\u2014travelled to Bilwi. It\u2019s a trek that winds through rivers and lakes and can take anywhere between one and two hours, depending on the weight and passengers of the boat. And it\u2019s the nearest place with a decent enough internet connection.<\/p>\n
There are no roads in Wawa Bar. There is little infrastructure or steady work, and only one part-time nurse who can leave for days at a time. The Nicaraguan government, located 220 miles away on the opposite side of the country in the capital of Managua, offers virtually no help to these indigenous communities. And access to clean drinking water is scarce.<\/p>\n
WaterAid<\/b><\/p>\n
Dixon works with WaterAid, an international nonprofit founded in 1981 to provide clean drinking water and sanitation to some of the poorest regions in the world, which began working in Nicaragua\u2019s Caribbean coast in 2011. With the region\u2019s heavy rainfall during rainy seasons, WaterAid embarked on a project to build rainwater harvesting tanks to catch precipitation free of contamination.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Miskitu communities, there is not a lot of flow in the economy. And if there is any type of movement, it\u2019s usually coming from the men, whether they be fishermen or farmers,\u201d said Nathalie Fernandes, who works out of the WaterAid offices in both Nicaragua and Colombia. \u201cAnd the women kind of don\u2019t really have opportunities within communities. So it was done with that intention, to empower them and to allow them to also grow professionally.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first rainwater harvesting tank in Wawa Bar was built in 2015. Dixon became involved in the project after WaterAid recruited 24 people from the Miskitu community to train and teach others to build tanks. She heard about WaterAid from friends of hers who were working on the project and approached WaterAid and expressed interest in learning the craft.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe identified her as one of the women with the most potential to work in this field,\u201d said Eduardo Rodriguez, who is Miskitu and who works with WaterAid in Nicaragua. \u201cShe\u2019s active and interested in this type of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of December 2017, 107 rainwater harvesting tanks have been built in Wawa Bar\u2014104 for residents, and the other three for the clinic, military base and school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve changed the lives of people in this community,\u201d Dixon said, describing how children used to routinely fall ill. \u201cBefore the construction of the tanks, we would drink from wells. And those weren\u2019t protected from contamination, and it would cause diarrhea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dixon, who left school in the fifth grade, is a veteran, having worked on a total of 10 water systems. Today she trains others (mostly women) to build rainwater harvesting tanks when needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we come to the community, we identify people who have the need to learn how to do this work,\u201d said Rodriguez. \u201cWe don\u2019t require these people to be engineers. We train people who haven\u2019t even completed elementary school. We don\u2019t require our recruits to have a great education, all we ask is that they have a need to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last tank Dixon built was for the Women\u2019s Movement Nidia White organization\u2019s Casa Albergue, a home for young girls who are survivors of sexual violence. Before the construction of the tank, Casa Albergue also relied on wells for its water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is very little help,\u201d said Rodriguez. \u201cThere are communities where we\u2019ve intervened where we\u2019re the only project that\u2019s taken place in that community, they are forgotten, so to speak. They are communities with a lot of necessities, but other organizations and even their own government haven\u2019t initiated any programs that create jobs in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disputed lands<\/b><\/p>\n
While there seems to be little interest in the Miskitu people, there is plenty of interest in the land where they live.<\/p>\n
For years, the Miskitu throughout the coast have been involved in bloody land disputes, the result of outsiders encroaching on Miskitu land in search for timber, gold and cattle grazing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of killings over land. The victims are mainly the indigenous Miskito people in the region,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
The Miskitu call these outsiders \u201ccolonos\u201d (colonists). Rodriguez describes them as ranchers in search for land for their cattle to graze. When laws prohibit them from buying land, they lease it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when they graze the land, they destroy the forest entirely,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cThat\u2019s why there is conflict. There is a lot of bloodshed here in this region. And it\u2019s over land.\u201d<\/p>\n
These conflicts have lead to many Miskitu communities taking up arms in self defense. But that defense has also hurt efforts to expand the rainwater harvesting tank project from to indigenous communities like Esperanza and Tikiamp.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat whole sector we couldn\u2019t go in and continue our projects, even though we had started them, because of safety concerns for our people,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
Back in Wawa Bar, there is one person who is especially thankful for the project. Dixon, in addition to the many tanks she constructed,\u00a0 <\/span>was able to build one for her mother.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother needed to have a tank,\u201d Dixon said. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of that. And my mom is really proud of me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [su_carousel source=”media: 37322,37326,37324,37327″ limit=”65″ link=”lightbox” width=”800″ height=”540″ responsive=”no” items=”1″] When the men of Wawa Bar\u2014an indigenous Miskitu community located in the remote North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region (RACCN) of Nicaragua\u2014sized up Shana Zamora Dixon, they doubted she would last. \u201cThere\u2019s a perception in our community that this work is for men,\u201d said Dixon, who began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":37322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3929],"tags":[16362,16368,16372,4723,16364,16366,16360,16370],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-37321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","tag-bilwi","tag-casa-albergue","tag-miskitu-en","tag-nicaragua-en","tag-shana-zamora-dixon","tag-wateraid","tag-wawa-bar","tag-womens-movement-nidia-white","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n