Sunday, February 7, 2010

A Small Insight about Miskito Culture


Here are a few pictures of what Francia looks like on the walk from the mission hill to the clinic:


The SDA church.
One of the hundreds of chickens that roam free.


The rickety bridge just down the hill from the mission.



Dan just talked to Jeff about community outreach stuff and he gave an interesting insight about Miskito culture. Several of us are interested in taking time to go into the community and helping out. The Miskito culture, however, is very community based; most of the livestock are community owned and aren't fenced. This community mindset leads to a situation where help offered to particular member of the community would be viewed negatively. Since everything is owned by everyone help to one person can make other people wonder why they haven't been helped. Also since everyone has ownership of the community if one member receives free help its considered stealing from the community. Why stealing? Because it takes away an opportunity of a job for other members of the community to have. The only way to do something that would help the people and be viewed in a positive way would be if it was project that they Miskito couldn't accomplish on their own.

So our challenge is to find projects that we can work on that are culturally acceptable to the Miskito. A few of us are planning on talking with the doctor to figure out if there are any infrastructure needs that we can contribute too while we are here. My hope is that our impact won't be confined to TRAM.




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