This is a special guest blog post from David Green. Here, he details his adventure in Nicaragua installing an off-grid solar system on a school.
"Dear friends, I am the teacher from Santa Maria Zapatera. In this moment I am in the school, we have internet - is incredible but true, thank you for to be good people, receive our greeting, good luck with you, God bless you."
- Lazaro Eden Garcia
This email was awaiting me upon my return to the U.S. after traveling to Nicaragua to participate in a project to install an off-grid solar power system on a school in a remote community. It nicely bookended the heart-touching experience of our arrival to the community, where we were welcomed by singing, smiling school children. As our “lancha” (boat) full of volunteers approached the island after a delightful ride across the lake, we came around a point and were greeted with the beautiful sight below, along with song. It was unexpectedly stirring, and there were more than a few eyes that teared up which could be attributed to more than just the breeze that day.
It is always rewarding to work with children, and to witness their blossoming and becoming empowered. The warm and fuzzy feeling of this goal pervaded the entirety of this trip. From the initial planning stages in the U.S. to the actual implementation, it always felt good to know that the fruits of our labor were directed towards this positive end. Actually spending time with these children in their community, playing with them, sharing meals and lodging with them and their families, working alongside some of the older ones - this made the abstract feeling palpable to me.
Although I had done a fair amount of reading and research about Nicaragua while back home, of course it was an entirely different experience to actually be there. It was very eye-opening to compare and contrast how I live in the U.S. to how the majority live in this country, the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere. It made me appreciate the bounty of resources and opportunities and comforts that I enjoy in the rich country that I was lucky enough to be born in, and rekindled an intention to maintain this perspective of gratitude and relativity upon my return home, and to put effort towards assisting some of the many others that live in such challenging circumstances.
Even more striking to me was how kind, generous, and open-hearted these people were to us, and to each other, even though they had so little material comforts, and lived in dirt-floored homes. It has led me to reflect upon and to try to tease apart the differences between “material poverty” and “social poverty”. I realized that these understandings would inevitably dull with time back home, immersed in our U.S. culture and I set a further intention - to make it a point to get out of my cocoon of comfort, materialism and rat-race mindset more often, by regularly visiting different, more challenged peoples; abroad or at home. I can’t wait for my next experience.