Deb Bruns, Maestra
Gaby Valenzuela, and Teacher Emma Clancy in Nicaragua
It takes a community to raise a child, and it takes a strong
community like Peregrine to create a sister school. Since most Peregrine families have already
contributed to the sister school project in Nicaragua through Gaby, Emma, and
Megan’s fundraisers, and all will participate in learning from this project in
the classroom, I thought that our community might appreciate blog reports, sent
periodically, about this trip. Please
join us in Nicaragua and see what exciting work you are helping to support!
It is Thursday night, almost midnight, at our own Sacramento
airport. See Gaby and Emma straining
under the shared weight of a black duffel bag.
This bag is stuffed with art supplies, and is in fact overweight, so a
ream of paper needs to be traded out for some of the 200 toothbrushes and paste
in the big red suitcase at the United Airlines check in. (Art supplies were bought from Peregrine
fundraising (gracias a todos!) and the toothbrushes and paste were generously
donated from parent Ana Antoniu, dentist.)
Soon four of us -- Gaby Valenzuela,
Emma Clancy, Deb Bruns (Peregrine International’s organizer and Yolo County’s
Science and Environmental Education Coordinator) and I, Lorie Hammond -- are
ready to wait for an hour or two in the fluorescent lit airport, in order to
board the night flight to Houston and then Nicaragua. By noon the next day, we arrive sleepy but
excited in Managua, where we quickly board a cab to exit the hot capital city
and approach the northern Segovia Mountains and Esteli, the third largest city
in Nicaragua and the unofficial capital of the North. Our destination, after a short rest and
sightseeing in Esteli, is Sabana Grande, a village in Nicaragua’s formerly war
torn northern mountains, near the Honduran border.
Sabana Grande combines many elements that make it a great
partner for Peregrine School. For
several years, this town has developed a solar project, Projecto Fenix, which
helps villagers to develop the skills to create electricity and environmentally
friendly cooking and coffee drying through solar energy. Susan Kinne, an engineering professor at the
Engineering University in Managua, has developed this project with a spunky and
creative group of women, Las Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa, who wanted to make
their lives better and avoid having to go to the city to work as maids or to do
agricultural work for others on farms, by creating work for themselves and self
sufficient industries in their own valley.
(Sabana Grande means “the great savanna”, and is a farmable flat
grassland in the mountains.)
The Mujeres Solares, now assisted by many men, a youth group,
and many internationals, are creating equipment which harnesses clean power for
people like themselves who have never had electricity or running water, and
selling this equipment to other towns who can learn from their example. They are also reforesting a hillside, growing
local fruits, drying coffee with solar, and many other things. Peregrine School has sponsored DaVinci high
school physics, and now biology, students from Davis to come to this village
annually to share an alternative energy project they have designed. This year it is a bicycle driven water pump;
last year, bicycle driven generators for cell phones and the like. Deb Bruns has been leading this project,
which has now spread to a group of vet students, who are working with the
village on more efficient animal husbandry.
Our goal is to establish a sister school relationship
between our two Peregrine Schools and the small school in this village, San
Miguel de Archangel, which parallels us in size. Their school has a preschool of 10 kids and
two classrooms, one 1-3 grade and one 4-6 grade. About 70 kids total. We will work with these kids to photograph,
draw, and write about their lives, and to create a book about it to share with
our kids. We will also have them write
letters to establish pen pals with our kids.
This will hopefully be the beginning of an ongoing exchange, which can
help our kids to learn what life is like for children in the developing world,
while they share their own lives. It
will also reinforce the importance of our Spanish program, as a means of
expanding our horizons through communication.
Today, as an introduction to the country before we arrive in
the village, we will tour this city of
Esteli, a city famous for youth mural painting.
We will also continue to explore the beautiful, green countryside here,
and to familiarize ourselves with the contrasts between traditional and modern,
rich and poor, which so characterize developing countries. We began this process on the way from the
airport, when we watched horse drawn carriages carrying people, wood, and
agricultural goods driving alongside semi trucks and taxis like ours. We also saw creatively designed shelters of
rough wood, metal sheeting and bricks creating housing and small highway shops,
selling papayas, watermelons, hammocks, and a great variety of other
things. These shops stand alongside
modern gas stations with 7-11 type packaged food and sodas, creating a
bricolage of possibilities in a kind of “real time” which represents many times
and realities at once.
Bienvenidos a Nicaragua!
A typical Nicaraguan
dinner: fish (or meat), gallo-pinto (a mix of rice and beans), home-made salty
cheese, fried plantains, and avocado
