Finding out how our poor neighbours are

"I don't think we can get through here," I said as our car hit another huge pothole. Indeed, what had once been a road was now more like one enormous pothole linked with a zig-zag ribbon of crumbling stones, about the width of one car tyre. This was my gap-year adventure. At the age of 53, I had packed my belongings into a rucksack and travelled halfway across the world to spend a six-month sabbatical as a volunteer teaching English in Miraflor, a remote part of Nicaragua.

The reality was almost as romantic as the idea. Breathtaking scenery and peace and quiet away from the sound of constantly-ringing phones, computers and all the rush and bustle of modern life. There was also the vague idea of doing good my husband George and I were teaching English to guides in an eco-tourism project designed to generate income in a poor area of cloudforest, in the hope of dissuading the locals from chopping down more trees.

We were living with the delightful Romero family, who had borrowed the money from a co-operative credit scheme to build an extra room on to their breeze-block home. The idea was that our rent of $2 a night would allow them to repay the loan. At the end of our teaching stint, they would be left with a room to rent out to tourists, boosting the family income, and possibly allowing one or more of their four daughters Dora, Gabriela, Maria Luisa and Karla to attend secondary school.

Nicaragua is the poorest country in Latin America, and the gap between rich and poor is one of the largest in the world. It has been riven by war and natural disasters.

From Miraflor on a fine day you could see a string of volcanoes stretching across the plain just north of Leon, Nicaragua's only university town and twinned with Oxford since 1986. Everywhere you go there are temporary homes put up to house people left destitute by volcanic eruptions or hurricanes.

Almost all the roads to Leon were destroyed by Hurricane Mitch in 1999. A huge international appeal raised enough money to repair the main roads, but six years later, many communities are still virtually cut off. We had headed for the mountains above Leon for a weekend of rest and recreation or at least, that was my plan. My husband had other ideas.

The tourist accommodation in Miraflor is described in the guide books as "basic". Like the rest of the inhabitants, we were living with no running water or electricity, which meant no hot showers. For me, the focus of a weekend was a night in a modest hotel a possibility which was looking more and more unlikely as we headed into the wilds.

But George had embarked on a mission, and was not to be dissuaded. We were clutching a battered cutting from The Oxford Times's sister newspaper, the Oxford Star. The article, written in 1985, was publicising an exhibition of photographs by Glen Williams, of the Oxford-based world development magazine New Internationalist, at the Old Fire Station in Oxford. He described his visit to a community which had suffered six deaths during a bitter war against the then Sandinista Government.

In 1985, the US, under President Ronald Reagan, was covertly and illegally funding rebel fighters, known as Contras, who were staging raids to destroy villages known to be Sandinista strongholds. In his article, Mr Williams had quoted a co-operative farmer called Arnancio Perez, describing one of the raids.

"At that time, there were no soldiers stationed here," he had said. "There were only two 14-year-old boys and ten adults. In the attack, both the boys, three men and a 20-year-old girl were killed. The girl's name was Maria Zunilda she was my niece. My brother, Jos Angel, was also killed."

The community which Mr Williams had visited near Achuapa was as remote as the area where we were living, and not easily accessible by public transport. We had squeezed on to our usual bumpy two-hour bus into the town of Esteli, but then abandoned public transport in favour of a very smart 4x4 hire car, which I had imagined would be more comfortable, particularly since Achuapa was not in the cloudforest and had a dryish climate. I had reckoned without the Nicaraguan roads.

Eventually, we manoeuvred our way around a ravine and across a rickety bridge pockmarked with alarming holes to arrive in the village of Rio Grande a collection of tumbledown shacks, interwoven with what had once been substantial Spanish colonial buildings, but were now crumbling ruins. Bizarrely, they included a former railway station, since this was the terminus of a steam train which ran here from Leon until 1977.

We spotted a pulperia, or local shop always the font of local knowledge and asked the whereabouts of the co-operative named in the article, Santiago Arauz. "It doesn't exist any more," said our informant. "It's now the Arauz farm." Had they heard of Anancio Perez? After a rapid-fire conversation in incomprehensible local dialect, they fetched another villager who said: "He went to Leon to join the police. I don't know where he is now, but if you go back to Leon, the police will tell you." They pointed out the road to the co-ooperative, waving their hands to say that we couldn't possibly take a car up it and that we should go back to Leon.

There was something not quite right about all this, especially since the direction was the opposite to what we had worked out from our map. Perez was obviously a very common name, and perhaps there were dozens of Anancios in this area. We decided to stay in the car and continue up into the hills.

The roads were not much better, but we soon arrived in Achuapa itself. Much bigger than any of the surrounding villages, it had an attractive central square and a look of being slightly more cared for undoubtedly due to the fact that it had a Sandinista local council with no aversion to public spending. A question at the town hall produced several people who claimed to know Anancio Perez. They pointed further up the mountains to the village where we could find him. I was sceptical, but my husband offered a lift to two teenage boys who said they could show us the way.

On we went, up and up. We left the teenage boys at their farm and drove on along the road they had indicated, asking random passers-by if they knew Anancio Perez. Stangely, everyone seemed to know him. When the road finally gave up completely, we continued on foot, knocking on doors. "Oh yes," one villager finally said. "That house there."

And there he was. His daughter recognised his photograph and dragged him out of the shower to meet us. The reason why everyone had known him was that he is a person of some standing in the community. The family got very excited, and fetched another person featured in the article. Rita Salgado turned out to be Esther Salgado, but she was delighted to see the photo of her nine-year-old self fetching water from a standpipe.

So what has happened since 1985? We knew that the Nicaraguan people had decisively voted the Sandinistas out of power in 1990, and that the current government was obeying an International Monetary Fund directive to implement the latest in a series of swingeing cuts to health and education, despite large protests in the capital, Managua. The co-operative in Santiago Arauz had disbanded, along with its dreams of a socialist future. However, Anancio Perez was reluctant to talk politics. He said: "Things are much better here now. We have rebuilt the school and several charities have helped us with housing. We have a better water supply."

Like our students in Miraflor, the villagers were not keen to talk about the war, preferring to forget the traumas of 20 years ago. The main message they wanted to convey was one of friendship and deep gratitude to the "internationalistas" from all over the world who had made their way to this remote area to help rebuild the community destroyed by the fighting.

After Hurricane Mitch in 1999, Oxford citizens raised £10,000 to provide wells for 400 refugees in Leon. But last December the Leon Link dispensed with the services of its co-ordinator, Gioconda Arostegui, because it had too little money. It has been left to a few dynamic individuals and churches in Oxford to continue supporting its poor neighbour.

We visited a community library in a poor suburb of Leon, supported by former Oxford resident Martin Rogers and the Wesley Memorial Church in New Inn Hall Street.

It is attended by children like 11-year-old Aurelio Medinas. Bright as a button, he was doing his maths homework in the library. He said: "There isn't a table or chair at home where I could do this."

Aurelio boosts the family income of about £1 a day by selling tortillas, so has to negotiate with his parents for time to go to school and attend the library. It helps 400 children from homes where chairs are a rarity and books, paper and writing materials are unknown.

Hungry for knowledge, these children learnt more during a half-hour impromptu English lesson than many of their counterparts in Oxford would learn in a whole term of French lessons.

Another project supported by Oxford churchgoers is run by Andrew Longley, who has left his home in Oxford to head a charity in Leon called New Hope, which is supported by St Aldate's church.

It has provided rainwater storage for 12 homes, a school and a health clinic in San Jacinto, just outside Leon. Among the 12 recipients, chosen by lottery, was Lubyz Vallejos Valestra, who said that last year, in the dry season, she faced a one-hour journey on horseback to fetch water.

Andrew said: "You can see the impact on individuals, but we could do more with a bigger budget." He would like to see the Oxford-Leon link revived, but fears that only a major disaster will prompt more fundraising.

Last year's hurricane season, which ended on November 30, produced a new record of 23 named storms more than any year since records started in 1851.

None was bad enough to reach the world's TV screens, but the rains left more than half of Leon's roads damaged, and hundreds of families destitute.