This “semester” we at MPI have all been trying out something a little different in place of what used to be our Art class. It’s called La hora tuani, cool hour. Basically, this is a time where the PDs on a rotating schedule can take an hour and teach the kids anything that they find particularly cool. So far, there’s been guitar, kids’ yoga, popular dance, pancake-making, and science, among other things. This has been a cool time (ha - literally) to expose the Farito kids to a wide variety of topics and ideas, experiences and experiments.
So...what do I find super tuani? So super tuani that I’d want to spend not one Tuani Hour, but two playing around with the subject at hand? The environment! Conveniently enough, today is Earth Day, and with the whole world in celebration, the Farito kids, some fellow PDs, and I joined in this week with some pretty tuani activities.
To get them in the spirit, we spent Tuesday making posters to advertise Earth Day and talked a little bit about why the Earth is important. We also talked about how we can take care of the planet, with the kids offering some helpful suggestions (Plant trees! Put your trash in the proper place!). We spent the second half of class making that classic kid pleasing dessert, dirt, except instead of combining oreos, pudding, and gummy worms, we used oreos, flan, and sour gummy worms. It was festive! It was very real looking, but I have a feeling that with so many deviations from the normal recipe, it was unfortunately very real tasting as well.
"Dirt" cups...a little too real
The main event, however, surpassed all expectation. Thursday’s class was completely dedicated to a community clean-up. We showed up today to see over twenty chavalos ready to don gloves and bag trash! They quickly scampered about the dirt roads of Cedro Galán looking for trash, even asking for more bags to fill. In the end, we bagged 26 bags of trash in less than an hour! It was so much fun and so successful that I hope we do it again soon. After all, every day is a great day to take care of the Earth!
little hands, big help!
Do something great for the Earth today!
- Jan Maggi
Lately I’ve been pretty depressed with the world news. 21 people were killed in Thailand’s red shirt anti-government protester movement. Colombia’s using child informants in a civil war they deny exists (i.e. “If we’re not in a civil war, we can’t possibly have child soldiers”). A former human rights lawyer and judge in Moscow was recently murdered by Russian nationalists. Poland’s President and other officials died in a plane crash. Rio de Janeiro is literally underwater with 229 killed by the recent flood and countless buried in mudslides. Sex abuses scandals rock the Church while earthquakes rock the lands of Haiti and Chile.
It’s so easy to remain isolated from these events, for these places to seem remote, for these people to be only numbers. I’m thankful to be living abroad because I am constantly reminded that there is more to life than my comfy, cozy, little world at home.
There’s more than sipping Starbucks while reading the NYTimes, jogging through the park, studying all day, lunch on the go, dinner with friends, studying in the library, and repeat. To put it in perspective, even here in Nicaragua, there’s more to life than Elena’s delicious meals, driving in the Micro to programs, Chureca, Cedro Galan, Chiquilistagua, dinner with the PDs, reading NYTimes online, Skyping sessions, watching the sunset, and some version of repeating this day after day. Yes, these are the little routines that make life, life. But there’s always something more, and for some reason, living abroad helps me focus on that more that’s out there, even if that something more is the depressing news that makes you wake up and realize that life isn’t always what it should be. At home and abroad, people are dealing with the same problems: domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, lack of infrastructure, poverty, homelessness, racism, sexism...
If that’s the “bad news,” what’s the good news? The good news comes in the form of people and institutions who say no to the problems of the world. I am impressed with the work of friends in the Peace Corps and USAID. I am impressed with what my friends are doing abroad and at home and even in the Vanderbilt/Nashville community. Those stories encourage me to seek solutions and to keep hope. This year I have discovered that a life dedicated to service doesn’t necessarily mean a career dedicated to nonprofit or humanitarian work. Everyone can act out service and social justice. Advocacy comes through awareness, and that is something everyone can and should seek.
