When I was fifteen years old I participated in Trek Nicaragua 2011. I had the opportunity to visit Nicaragua, with a non-profit charity called buildOn. There, we built a school for the children who otherwise wouldn't have had one; this is my account of the experience.
(This is a photo of my Trek roommate Jamilla, my two host Brothers Janer and Didier, and me).
Here's What buildOn is about:
Let me take you into the village in Nicaragua I visited:
Dirt floors, tin bucket showers and outdoor latrines. There I stood a foreigner to a La Chimpanilla, Nicaragua, a microcosm of the truth about worldwide poverty - a village with beautiful faces, anxious smiles, and welcoming arms. Each moment assimilated in my eyes: mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, elders, children, and babies; a family and a community as one. Each and every one of them looked up to us, and we knew we couldn’t disappoint them.
Cerulean skies down to mountain peaks, banana trees to sugar cane, coffee plants and black beans; evanescent beauty swallowed me whole, as one small village became an entire new world to me. I had come to La Chimpanilla with my fellow “buildOn” members to give a future to those children - a future each and every one of them rightfully deserves regardless of gender or age. A future no amount of money can buy, education - priceless. This community was now my family, no matter the color of their skin or the language they spoke, I adapted. A family of assorted colors, accents, and origins – yet a family all the same. Together we put forth our most astounding effort to build La Chimpanilla a school. Love introduced me to an intrinsic source of passion, pleasure, and valued work. In return that love challenged my strength and perseverance; but soon it granted me the power to change lives. This school held the key that unlocked the poverty that chained them, and we had to help set them free.
However, I didn't give them nearly as much as they gave me. My host family welcomed me, a stranger, into their home. Selflessly giving me food to eat, a place to sleep, and ultimately they gave me their culture, something I could never give them in return.
La Chimpanilla transformed me to have a new outlook on the world, outside the boundaries of the USA. Acculturation defined me; I was limitless – a place that had once only been a dot on the map to me became an entire macrocosm. Nicaragua gave me a second mother, another grandmother, and three brothers who loved me unconditionally as their own. Nicaragua is a piece of me that no one can ever take away; the value of love. Love that formed its own entity, and allowed me to understand that no matter the language, communication is beyond words.
Nicaragua became a second home to me. Today, an airplane ride separates me from that home, but my heart has never left.
To this day, buildOn has built 159 schools in Nicaragua.
Not many will ever see the conditions of a country suffering in poverty. For us, people who have seen only a limited amount of impoverishment--we are sheltered from the truth about the true power of money. What saddens me so, is that money was the very thing separating these children from an education. Nothing, certainly not paper, should inhibit a child's access to knowledge--there is no greater vice. There are beautiful minds all across our globe, regardless of where they are born they deserve to to learn, to grow, beyond the currency that binds them. Though we may not realize it we have been blessed beyond measure to be born to a country that allows us to access clean drinking water, education, and countless opportunities that only money can buy. I mean that in the humblest nature, we need to appreciate what we have, and help those who have less. We can only imagine what it would be like to live in a country other than our own, where inequalities are much greater. I challenge us all to look beyond the spectrum and walls we have engaged around our existence, this world is a largely beautiful place--but not everyone has it so easy.
