Arrived in Nicaragua

Jenny, Keila, Annika and I arrived in Nicaragua last night around 8:30. Jenny's younger brother, Michael came to pick us up with one other car, and incredibly, the two drivers were able to get all our luggage, and us, in the two cars and make it in one trip.

It was a long trip yesterday. My brother, Keith, his wife, Priscilla and their son, Keegan, came to see us off. So did my sister Nancy, her daughter, Leah and two sons, Zachary and Seth. Mom and Dad drove up from Amesville to spend the night near the airport and came to see us off as well. It was a huge help to get all our luggage, a boxed up bike, strollers, car seats and, oh yes, Keila and Annika, to the ticket counter. They allowed Keith to go through security to help us get settled at the gate, with all our carry on. When I asked American Airlines for help, an American Airlines authority told us we should only be taking on the plane what we could actually carry ourselves. I pointed out that we had two very young children who can't carry on their own carry on.

In any case, we made it. We were delayed in Miami due to heavy rains and we arrived in Nicargua over an hour late, but we made it. Keila fell asleep last night immediately after her bath. Annika took longer to settle into a new house with new noises.

Word has it that a piece of luggage that didn't quite make it last night will be delivered to the Bent's house today.

It is a great privilege to be able to move from family in Ohio to family here in Managua. Thank you to all of you who have also become part of our family, who hold us in your thoughts and prayers. Please keep us in those prayers as we continue to transition from the States to Nicaragua and from one job to another. We are still waiting final word for what comes next in 2012. I will be returning to Haiti the second week of October to finish out the year with MPP's Road to Life Yard project. Jenny and the girls will stay with Jenny's family here in Managua.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika

Note: Cisterns Blog

Please note, on August 24th, there is a blog explaining the type of cisterns we are using in MPP's Road to Life Yard project. The blog is an ongoing project, so check it out periodically to see the new additions. My next step will be to add captions to the pictures to explain the process.

I have finished, I believe, listing all of the tools and materials. Anyone who has worked with this system that has some critique, please feel completely free to make observations.

To see all of the blogs mentioning the cisterns in the blog, do a search of the blog site using the key words "cisterns rainwater" I've been checking and there are at least four blogs that refer to the cisterns.

Annika Estela Hare's Baptism

Sunday, August 14th family and friends gathered at the New England Presbyterian Church, in the rural community of New England six miles from Amesville, to celebrate Hymn Sunday, and to join with Jenny, Keila and me in baptizing our second daughter, Annika.

It was a very special time. All of my brothers and sisters and wives and husband were present and most of my nephews, along with friends and neighbors. Jenny's brother, Norman, came from Detroit, with his frirnd Marifer and Marifer's daughter, Henrietta. All told, over sixty people attended the service and the coffee hour afterwards. We were very concious of our Creator's presence with us that Sunday, God's grace present and accounted for.


Arriving at New England Presbyterian Church Sunday AM. From left to right, Rachel and Zachary, two of my sister Nancy's children. Nancy is holding Keila, and my niece Emily, one of my brother Keith's two daughters, is right behind us.

The Baptism. My father, Rev Frank Hare (second from right), officiated. Gary Gould (far right) represented the New England session. Marcia Burchby (far left), our long time friend and supporter, agreed to become Annika's Godmother. Norman (second from left) became Annika's Godfather.

Presenting the new member of the church Family

COSECHA-style cisterns in Haiti

COSECHA is a grassroots development organization working in southwester Honduras. One of the techniques they've developed is a ferro-cement type below ground-level cistern which we have been using extensively as part of MPP's Road to Life Yard project. MPP (Mouvement Paysan Papaye, or Farmer's Movement of Papay) where Jenny and I have been serving, also does a more traditional above-ground type of ferro-cement cistern. I'll try to describe that system in another blog.

The COSECHA-style cistern, as we generally promote it, requires the following materials:

1) A well-dug hole. We usually recommend that folks do 3 meters by 3 meters. The depth should be not much more than 1 m deep.

2) 3 lengths of 3/4" rebar. I have no idea if this is the world-wide standard, but what we purchase in Haiti and in Nicaragua are always 20' long.

3) Six to seven pounds of #18 "smooth" wire. In Haiti I've only ever seen is galvanized wire, but our teachers from COSECHA taught us with non-galvanized which is cheaper. The wire if for weaving the mesh for plastering the cement.

4) Three to four wheelbarrows of stones for the border.

5) Ten to twelve wheelbarrows of clean river sand. The sand available to families where we work in Haiti is rarely particularly clean. We do what we can with what people have available.

6) Ten to twelve bags of cement. When everything works out nicely, you can do the work with less.

7) Between seven and eight 1/4" rebar, also purchased in 20' lengths in Haiti and Nicargua. These are for making hooks that hold the rebar in place and help peg the mesh to the sides of the dirt walls.

8) At least four lengths of 4" drainage PVC for making the gutters.

9) Two 55-gallon drums of water. You may need just over one drum.

10) A medium sieve to remove pebbles from the sand.

11) A fine sieve for sifting the sand that will be used in the fine plastering of the cistern walls.

12) Shovels, picks, 18-20 liter buckets for measuring the sand and cement and carrying water, two to three cement trowels.

13) Mason-quality string for marking out the cistern and helping check levels and twelve stakes (cut from whatever tree is most common in the area).

14) A string level and a carpenter's level are helpful.


I need to go get breakfast for Keila and finish getting ready to leave the US. We head to Nicaragua tomorrow morning. I will continue to work on this blog entry to explain the pictures below. As you will note from the materials and the pictures, this is not an exact science. Folks who work with these cisterns are constantly adapting them and sometimes improving the technique. The beauty of the technique is it is easily learned and applied, and they are a very cheap and durable way to collect rainwater and they use materials that are available in most localities.

Annika Estela Hare

Keila came for a quick visit this afternoon, with our niece, Rachel, who has been watching Keila for us since around midnight, Friday July 8th.

Jenny's and my new daughter, Annika Estela Hare, was born this morning at 9:28, weighing 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Labor began Friday morninga round 3:30 and was more or less continuous until the final pushing that brought Annika into this side of the world.

We will be headed home to Amesville, Ohio in two days. We were blessed by an excellent team at the Marietta Memorial Birthing Center. A wonderful place, truly.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika

Jenny, Mark and Annika




Grandmas Hare, Mark and Annika

By the way! I have been pretty active on this blog recently, so check out the recent blogs below!

Altene Estelot's House

A full view of one of Saintville's home gardens--Altene Estelot's yard. Tires to the left and to the right, including several with red worms. The cistern is on the other side of the house. Moringa is planted throughout the area in front of the house. Mata has passion fruit and several other fruit species planted in the yard, as well.

Saintville Home Garden and Rainwater Catchment Project

October 20th, 2010. Agronomist Alexander Placide (center, by the table) leads APS in a reflection on the value of good yard stewardship.


On October 20th, 2010, the farmer's association APS (Asosyasyon Peyizan Senvil--Farmer's Association of Saintville) met to mark the start of a new project to improve production in their home gardens. The project, which they titled Home Gardens--Cistern Construction, was put together by members of the community, with technical assistance from crew members of MPP's Road to Life and Moringa project. APS's project was approved by the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) and funds came from three church communities--Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, Ohio, the 2010 Vacation Bible School of the Amesville-New England Cooperative Parish (Amesville, Ohio) and White Memorial Presbyterian Church (Raleigh, North Carolina).

The project was originally inspired by Agame Elfraïs. Agame is a member of MPP and works on the crew responsible for the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project. Agame began growing vegetables in his own yard in 2006. In 2007 and 2008, Agame began working with community members who saw what he was accomplishing, and wanted to try some of the techniques out themselves.

Most of the community members had already received training from MPP in vegetable production, and many were producing vegetables during the dry season in small plots of irrigated land located below an artificial lake. Working in their yards was a way to take what they'd learned already and apply it together with new techniques that could increase their total production. They asked for more training in March 2010, and that workshop led to them developing the current project, which they submitted in August 2010.

Walter Estelot, Chrisla Felix and Agame (left to right), three of the leaders in APS, Saintville's community group.

The project that the group designed included funds for more training, and for tools. The group purchased watering cans, one for each family. They purchased five sets of tools, one set for each of six families. Each set of six families is helping each other build their cisterns and install their gutters.


Agame and other group leaders take advantage of a work day to hand out the watering cans to a member from each of the families.

When I visited Saintville on June 11th, this year, fifteen of the cisterns had been completed and were full of water. The project is changing people's lives. People have more tires in their yards, and the tires are producing more. Several families have begun working with red worms, to produce their own high quality compost. The most impressive changes are in Chrisla Felix's yard.


Agame and Chrisla work on her cistern. One huge advantage of this type of cistern is it is very easy to learn. Home owners can learn the process from building their own rainwater catchment system, which means they can take responsibility for repairing the cistern as needed.


I remember three years ago, when I first visited Chrislat's yard with Agame, she had three or four tires with some scrawny hot pepper plants surrounded by thorns stuck in the soil to try and keep the chickens out. Now Chrisla's yard is an abundance of food growing all around. Tires in the front with vegetable beds in between, and a separate patch of eggplants behind the house, with Moringa trees scattered throughout her corn field.

Chrisla with her completed cistern and gutters, and a bench of five brand new vegetable tires that weren't there six months ago when Jenny and Keila and I left Haiti. (Photo by Agame Elfraïs)


During my visit, I purchased a handfull of peppers and parsley from Chrisla, a total of HTG 50.00 (about $1.25).Walter, who was visiting houses with Agame and me, noted that it would have taken selling 14 pounds of corn to earn the same amount of money. Walter said it was time for the farmers to focus on crops like vegetables for selling in the market, instead of depending on corn.

Agame and Altene Estelot, Agame's associate in providing technical expertise, are working hard together with the families to get the next fifteen cisterns built before the dry season starts in October or November. With some luck and a good deal of sweat, all thirty families will start out this dry season with between 2000 and 2300 gallons of water for their yard production systems.


Chrisla with her original vegetable tires, filled with sweet peppers, parsely, garlic chives and radishes.

Chrisla with tires, and egglplant growing in a vegetable bed she prepared underneath. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

Agame (in front) and Walter (at right), checking out the cistern at Walter's son, Altene Estelot's house. Altene and Agame together are providing the technical expertise for building the cisterns, as well as providing advice on problems with the production.

Orimène Cadet, another member of the Association of Farmers of Saintville, dipping out water from her cistern to water her vegetable tires. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

Jean Rony and me checking out his cistern behind his house. Jean Rony is also starting to work very productively with red worms. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

If you would like to help communities like Saintville continue to improve their lives through good yard stewardship, here are some things you can do:

First, continue to read this blog and contact me if you want more information. I do eventually always read comments on the blog. If you want to leave me an e-mail address, but don't want the address published online, you can let me know that. I monitor all comments before publishing them.

Second, keep the work of MPP, and specifically the Road to Life Yard crew, in your prayers.

Finally, if you want to help financially, here is what you or your congregation can do:

1. Make out a check payable to: Presbyterian Church (USA).

2. On the subject line of the check, please write the account number: H000007 (H, five zero’s, 7).

3. Include a memo or short note that the donation is for the “MPP Road to Life/Cisterns, Tools and Training” in Haiti.

4. Address the envelope to PC(USA), Individual Remittance Processing, PO Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700.

5. Send a copy of the memo to: Eileen Schuhmann at 100 Witherspoon Street,
Louisville KY 40202.

6. Leave a note on this blog to let me know about the donation so that I can help provide follow up.

Thanks for checking us out!