La Chureca Landfill

It's been a while since I first set foot on that landfill. One of the largest landfills in Nicaragua. The moment I entered, my world was transformed and awareness never left my side again. It was on that day that I witnessed true abandonment, despair and poverty inconceivable to many.A vivid canvas of humans, animals and trash became engraved into my heart where despite living under deplorable circumstances, the human spirit still remained. And if you ever doubt there is a hell, La Chureca could serve as a model: the stentch of putrefaction, hills of trash towering to the sky, burning trash and human consumed decomposed fodder.

It is now Christmas and I only wish for the despair of these people to end someday and for the world to become more frugal and conscious of the fragility of life. Value each day as if it was your last and keep the less fortunate in mind.

The courage to tell a story!

My life and that of my family have been guided by courage and perhaps a destiny to tell a story. I must now shower with courage in an effort to tell an untold story. The type that burns within but refuses to come out. I know the courage will come, for only then will I be able to smile and say "I did it." I did what I could to help save whatever is left of our precious rain forests. Only then, would I have kept the promise I made to a starving child, who lived under less than human conditions in one of the biggest landfills of my native country of Nicaragua. "Every one tells me they're going to help, but all I really want is for people to know that I exist."

With this blog, I take the first step of courage and begin to walk without turning back towards a world unknown to many but dearly engraved within my soul.