A summer in Nicaragua

Savanna Lim, a junior at The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, spent eight weeks in Nicaragua with Amigos de las Americas.

Nothing screams culture shock like, well, the screams of a pig being gutted at 4 a.m. Picture this: You’re in Nicaragua sleeping on a foldable cot, surrounded by a pop-up mosquito net. Your host family is making tortillas. You decide you will take a shower at the well today, but not before you lather yourself in DEET-based insect repellent. This was my life for two months. 

I went on an 8-week adventure in the mountains of Madriz with Amigos de las Americas. My host family made a living by selling eggs, tomatoes and bananas. I lived with Gwen, a participant from Oregon. Our goals were to develop youth leadership within the community, immerse ourselves in the culture, improve our Spanish and develop a community-based project.

Ultimately, we decided to divert resources toward making a soccer field. We found a youth leader who worked with us to fill out a project packet, detail prices of materials, and write about the project’s benefits. Previously, there was no place to play soccer. The teenagers used to play on a major road and were disrupted constantly because of oncoming traffic. The idea of a place to play soccer made everyone excited.

After weeks of waiting, our soccer field was flattened! Word got around, and people from other communities started coming to our field. It became the “it” place to be. Girls would even dress up since all the boys were at the field. All the work was worth it. The project was a huge success.

Gwen and I also facilitated camps for kids for two hours a day. We’d have different themed campamentos each week. For example, when we had health, we played “agua, agua, jabón” (water, water, soap) instead of “duck, duck, goose”. 

All in all, I had an incredible time. The people I met were welcoming, kind, selfless and hardworking. My Spanish improved considerably, and my love for Latin American culture proliferated. Travel is humbling; you realize how small a place you occupy in this world, how many cultures and people you have yet to befriend and how we are all part of one complex, ever-changing world.

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