Empty Nesters on a Green Global Trek

There are lots of cultural differences, some of them amusing, some confusing and others are just plain annoying.

Let me illustrate my point. Nicaraguans, it seems, do not like or value tall mature trees. Once they grow really big (and healthy), there is a certain determination to chop them down. I came out of our house one day to find that the beautiful tree which grows next door on the sidewalk and showers the street with a lovely yellow carpet of flowers had been “attacked.’ Not gently pruned, but had all the branches ripped off and a mere stub of a trunk left. Why? what happened to the tree? I ask my neighbor, thinking maybe it was the same vandals that stole the sidewalk. The answer was that the tree was encroaching on the street and the wires above. A lengthy discussion finally convinces her that we will get the second tree trimmed, not hacked. Whew… lost one, saved one.

Score: two trees lost, two trees saved.

Then, yesterday… I hear a loud chopping sound and look up to see that the huge, I mean enormous, twenty year old palm tree just behind our house is under siege. There is a man with a rope around his waist and he is way up there with his machette, looking as though he was trimming the palm tree. Then it quickly dawned on me “would this guy climb twenty feet to give this tree a slight trim? unlikely!”. And yes, soon I am watching in dismay although no longer in disbelief, as he starts to cut and then chop the whole tree down. There for twenty years, a majestic resting spot for all the birds that fly our neighborhood, and gone in half an hour!

This micro- event on our street gives us a reminder of the challenge that CO2 Bambu faces – deforestation is taking place in Nicaragua at the clip of 70,000 Hectares per year. That’s a whole lot of trees being chopped down at a national level.