Thursday, January 24, 2013

Roads as Freedom



I had a conversation with Doña Melba and Doña Selfida a couple of weeks ago which gave me a new appreciation for the importance of road building in rural communities.   Melba and Selfida are both elderly women from El Ojochal del Listón.  Melba had come to visit Selfida for the morning and they were lamenting about the difficulties of getting older: how they had lost their confidence in riding horses, which made it difficult to get down to town, and how their legs ached when hiking up the mountain and so they didn’t like leaving their homes much anymore.


Rural road improvements won’t address the hardships of aging, but Melba and Selfida’s conversation reminded me of talks I’ve had with my own grandparents about the difficulties of getting around and how they sometimes felt isolated or penned in or worried about what would happen if they were hurt and no one was around.  Among the rural poor Nicaragua, without a decent road to their home, even the young and healthy can feel this way.  Remembering the people I’ve known from home who have felt this way, like my grandparents or immigrant families I worked with who couldn’t afford a car to get to work, it made me appreciate more how freeing it must feel to finally have a decent road. 


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2 comments:

  1. Joshua LohnesJanuary 24, 2013 at 7:14 PM

    i think about roads quite a bit and how the very concept of a 'decent road' has evolved over time along with what we use them for, and how the concept of what a good road is changes from place to place. What do you think Melda and Selfida expectations of 'decent' would be? In other words, what is their perfect road for these morning visits? And also what would they lament once the road brought the baggage that roads often do? Just thoughts I liked your post. And the photo. Who built that road?

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    1. UnknownFebruary 10, 2013 at 2:21 PM

      Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

      From their complaints, I would guess that Melba and Selfida would now appreciate a one lane, graded road that would allow for a comfortable cart ride. When they were younger I imagine a good horse track would have been fine for personal transport, but they feel less confident on horses than they once did and long hikes have become more painful as they have gotten older. (The track NE built to the community allows vehicle and cart access, and makes for a good horse track, but it's still quite a jarring ride in a truck or cart.)

      I can imagine them lamenting about being bothered by "misbehaving" outsiders as more people visit the community, but given the improved access to town - markets, church, family, emergency care, etc. - I can't imagine them regretting better roads on the whole.

      The photo is of the new road to El Ñajo, which NE just finished building with the community last November. Now that we've got a couple of road building projects completed, it will be interesting to see what the long-term impacts are.

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