EWB Trip cancelled due to political unrest

By Sarah Rutledge     5/15/08 7:00pm

The rising costs of fuel on the international market may seem more than a slight annoyance when shelling out $3.50 per gallon of gasoline, but a group of Rice students experienced the global effects firsthand when they had to cancel a trip to Central America. The team, comprised of seven students from Rice's chapter of Engineers Without Borders, had to cancel their Nicaragua trip which was scheduled to start last Monday, because of transportation strikes in the country that have recently escalated in violence.EWB Project Leaders Matt Wesley and Amy Liu directed the team, which had chosen Nicaragua for its service project last December. Wesley, a Baker College sophomore, said the team planned to construct a system to deliver fresh water to inhabitants of the area, which is two kilometers from the Costa Rican border. EWB projects involve several stages: Background research of the area; gathering data; implementation, when members construct and complete the project and a post assessment, when members will evaluate their project. Wesley said these projects take four different trips to the area to complete, and implementation alone often demands multiple trips.

The EWB team planned its trip to Nicaragua this semester and submitted its project proposal to the EWB-USA Committee, the organization's national committee, for review. The committee approved the trip this month and remained in touch with the group to warn them of potential travel dangers.

Hanszen College senior Eric Max, who was going to serve as a mentor on the trip, said the recent strikes in Nicaragua boycotting gas prices had earlier targeted commercial vehicles like taxis and buses. The strikes started a few weeks ago and originally did not target tourists. Strikers began to block all vehicles and had violent demonstrations even with tourists' vehicles last week, Wesley said. Because traffic is severely impeded, Nicaragua is currently facing food shortages, as supply trucks cannot deliver goods, Wesley said. He said the problem does not just lie with rising gas prices.

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"There's also political unrest, with strikers calling for Venezuela's current president [Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías] to step down, and it's kind of nasty," Wesley said.

Wesley said EWB has not had to cancel a trip before because of potential danger.

EWB had allotted $8,000 of its budget for each member's transportation and lodging costs for the trip. When the team canceled the trip last Saturday, the airline with which it had booked the flight, Continental Airlines, charged each of the seven members a $100 rebooking fee. Wesley said this fee will also be paid for from the EWB budget. He said canceling the trip two days before the expected date of departure was inconvenient for the group members who are not from Houston who had to buy last-minute plane tickets back home.

Wesley said EWB plans to reschedule the two-week trip for August and will check with the committee periodically to see if the situation clears up.

"It's frustrating, but I feel perfectly comfortable postponing [the trip] so we don't risk safety problems," Wesley said.

Max said he hopes to go in August but will be working at his job at that time, which might make it difficult to go on the trip.

"It's frustrating to work with this community and have this whole thing delayed based on something that we had no control over," Max said.

Wesley said if the situation in Nicaragua does not die down by August, the group will have to cancel its trip completely.

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