An Oasis in the desert

Ayda Martínez Alina is a year younger than me, and has four children that I am missing. She lives in a community of El viejo Chinandega, where erosion has made it almost impossible to agriculture and water shortage due to multiple reasons, but the hope that comes when the light is darker is what keep them firm and persevering.

Every day she wakes up at four o'clock to help her husband Juan to get ready for a day of work at the sawmill. "We save a part of the money we make for food and sometimes, we have enough, we buy clothes," says Ayda with a nervous smile while preparing the last cup of beans of the family.

Living in Waspante is not easy. The people must search as many jobs as they can. While their wives are devoted to take care of the house.For Ayda things are not different. At her 24 years is already a mother of four children between the ages of one and thirteen years old and is engaged to the domestic tasks since she left school when she discovered she was pregnant.

She is part of the 70 families who received the blessing that each month the organization Convoy of Hope gives to families of the poorest communities in Nicaragua.

It was eight o'clock when a neighbor came to tell Ayda that she had just received a call confirming that the group had left Managua at 5 in the morning with a truck full of stuff to share on the community “. "They say they are on their wait and that the group is full of teenagers," - said excitedly, as she asked her oldest daughter to help her dress the little ones with the best clothes they had.

Thirty minutes passed since herneighbor came to her house. Marito, the youngest of her kids asked her insistently to began to walk to avoid the sun and be the first ones to arrive at church. So once the children were all dressed and presentable, she decided to go where hours later would become the oasis in the desert for 75 families.

The road to the evangelical church is paved and dusty and the fruit trees that decorate it are the tangible evidence that some time this was an extremely fertile soil. “"Here was once beautiful, I remember that when I was younger and we didn´t have anything to eat we use to climb the trees and have lunch there, now these are the only healthy trees we have"- express Ayda while she cleans the sweat of her forhead.

Thirty minutes after traveling a dusty road, Ayda and her children arrived at the church, a temple made of old pilars and an improvised wooden roof and walls where aprox. 20 families attend. When she got there the only sit available was an old brown beanch. Marito was the first to sit while his mother got on her knees and began a prayer that lasted over half an hour.

The clock marked the half minutes after ten, from June 23th ,2009.

To the amazement of many a white truck parked in fornt of the temple, behind it, another gray truck stopped and a mand with a latino look got down and with a "God bless you " gretted the groupd and , almost inmediately, ordered 10 young Americans to get off the vehicles and help downloading a 150 white bags with the logo of two hands entwined where the name "Convoy of Hope" can be read.

"Hopefully they are toys," said Ayda´s oldest son, "no boy , I hope it is food" - his mother contradicted while they were watching the group get organized.

The bags loaded with soups, pasta, beans, dried fruits and shoes were located in one side of the building. The pastor approached the group and with a "God bless you brothers and friends" started the meeting.

After a 20 minutes service, a young woman with a high resemblance to the Mexican accent, as the inhabitants of the place said, stood before the bags and started to call one by one of the audience. Six names later she heard "Ayda Martínez Alina ...". With a smile on her face and the ID on her hands she stood up, and laid the baby in the arms of her sister, and running to the front she received two white bags, the first one with food and the other with clothes and shoes that for your surprise were of the size of her children.

"With this food my kids will not starve" said weeping."This is as they say, an oasis in the desert, although I have never seen one," she said, while she placed a bag on her head and lifted up the youngest of her daughters.