Peregrinos @ Yosemite

Peregrinos @ Yosemite
Peregrine elementary students during a study field trip to Yosemite

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Peregrinos arrive in Nicaragua! Sister school trip to Nicaragua - Entry 1


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

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