For the City Link Den Haag- Juigalpa: how water experts support their colleagues
1986: Comalapa - a village in Nicaragua
With Hans van Heijningen: describing every day life in a war torn province.
This book was undertaken because both Hans and me wanted to show how life goes on in a war zone - or how also normal life comes to an abrupt end.....
As Bismarc Nunez Jiron (14 years old then) says in his interview: "The last weeks I go around in my uniform and I'm armed, because they can come here. May be that we can stop the contras. because it's dangerous now I carry arms, to defend my village. Without talking to anyone I went with my brother in law, Bertoldo, to the village command post, when we came back from the cooperative. In the command post they gave me my fire arm...
Because of the revolution our life has become better. Before then we were always afraid at home. In earlier days there were often party's of the liberals of Somoza. My father and brothers never went there... Later my brothers Aldo and Ronaldo joined the Sandinistas...
My place is at the river with Adonis and my cousin Hugo... What will happen if the contra's manage to enter the village? I don't know... Perhaps they will kill the revolutionary people..."
And indeed during the months we worked on this book 68 people in and around Comalapa were killed, including several we interviewed. At that time we dedicated our book to them, and although this is now over 20 years ago, they are still engraved in our minds.
Bismarc himself now lives in Miami: he managed to get smuggled into the United States and is a succesful builder there, keeping alive economically a large part of his family that stayed in Nicaragua...
1989: Rama, Nicaragua - The art of survival
A city in war and nature disasters: for the City Link Maastricht - Rama.
With Hans van Heijningen and Joost Hartog.
1988 : Water - Juigalpa, Nicaragua
For the City Link Den Haag- Juigalpa: how water experts support their colleagues,
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