Eckerd College 2006 delegation

by Lillian Hall, Managua coordinator

In January 2006 an Eckerd College delegation, led by Professor Olivier Debure, brought 13 students studying a variety of majors for an intensive trip to Nicaragua. We were also joined by a friend from Provence, France and three Nicaraguans from the Martin Luther King School, a ProNica supported project in a poor, violence-ridden neighborhood of Managua. Our group of 21 spoke three languages and formed our own little community.

Quaker House was our base from which we explored Managua. Days were packed with guest speakers and work at Los Quinchos projects. After hearing about harsh sweatshop conditions in which our clothes are made, we 2006 Eckerd College delegation sign painting visited a women-owned fair trade sewing cooperative which makes organic and conventional cotton T-shirts to export to the U.S. We visited the Managua dump, where nearly one thousand people eke out a living digging through other people’s waste. The students painted the walls surrounding the Quinchos compound with bright, cheery colors. They learned about the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by a Nicaraguan expert who warned of the devastating consequences on impoverished countries, such as Nicaragua.

On a lighter side, the group met with and listened to the music some of Nicaragua’s most famous singers, Salvador Cardenal and Philip Montalbán. Both singers have a great deal of social and ecological content in their music and sing songs full of hope, love for humanity, and living in harmony with nature.

After a two-hour public bus ride to the highland city of Estelí, students learned about the impact of both the 1970s war to overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship and the 1980s U.S.-backed Contra war. One hundred thousand lives were lost in a country of only four million people at that time. We visited the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs, a small under-funded museum full of the photos of those who died. The small museum is operated by the mothers whose children were killed in those wars. The gallery of photos display young faces from early adolescents to university students; it is rare to see an older face there.

Doña Guillermina, one of the mothers and founders of the Galería, sat in the shade of the porch and told the story of her son’s death and her participation in the overthrow of Somoza. It was a heart-wrenching testimony and put a human face on many of the facts and figures the students had read. I believe that even for the Nicaraguan students, Anielka and Francisco, it was a sobering learning experience because in Nicaraguan schools and homes the wars are seldom discussed. There is a self-imposed censorship about all that suffering and death. Either it hurts too much to talk about or people are too engaged in the daily struggle to survive economically.

We also visited local origami and orchid expert Aldo Marcell Velasquez and the nearby community of El Limón. We were treated to a healthy soybean lunch by villagers and a concert on the porch of a rustic house by Don Felipe y Sus Cachorros. Don Felipe, an octogenarian recently heralded in a national tribute at the Ruben Darío Theatre in Managua for his rescue and preservation of the folkloric music of northern Nicaragua, played his guitar and accompanied his sons and grandsons in several folkloric songs.

From Estelí the students rode the “chicken bus,” an old Bluebird school bus now used for local transportation, up the mountain into the cloud forest reserve of Miraflor. For four days they lived with peasant families in the community of La Fortuna and worked on a community eco-tourism project known as Pájaro Rancho. Students painted fence posts and educational signs with the scientific names of trees, collected biological specimens, re-fenced the area around the new museum. María de los Angeles of the Martín Luther King School organized activities with the local children and held a piñata. On the last day, when the work was done, the students rode horses through the organic coffee and vegetable farms and orchid-laden forests of La Fortuna.

In Achuapa students visited local projects, such as the Tienda Campesina, the acupuncture and natural medicine clinic, the local library and the veterinary project. They also worked in the community of Los Hornos, high on the hill overlooking the town of the Achuapa.

It is impossible to cover everything we did and saw. There are so many stories to tell. For me—despite the challenge of driving rough mountain roads, translating, buying provisions, arranging the talks, checking the tires, and everything else a three week long delegation in two languages entails—it is always fulfilling. It is one aspect I love most: showing people Nicaragua and helping them learn her story. With each experience, each presentation, each story, we are planting seeds of change in these young people. I have great hope that these seeds shall one day grow and bear fruits for a better and more socially and economically just world.

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Eckerd College 2006 delegation

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