Work and live in Nicaragua with the Newton-San Juan del Sur (Nicaragua) Sister City Project

For years the Newton/San Juan Sister City Project has been assisting North Americans who want to volunteer their energies in nonprofit activities in San Juan (from a month to a year). We facilitate their living with (non-English-speaking) families, learning Spanish formally in one of the two language schools if they wish , and helping in some form of community work. In the past this has involved public health, adult literacy, building schools in rural communities, and teaching English. Volunteers have ranged from 17 to 60.

We also encourage parents with children to volunteer; house rentals are possible and there are good pre-schools and primary schools. One couple (a pediatrician and an internist) with two children spent a month working for Communal Medical Services. We especially encourage volunteers who come in January/February, to work with visiting American dentists, optometrists and Newton/SJ Project Managers. These Americans are welcomed. They do important work and they often find their lives changed by the experience. You could be one of them.

American visitors have often worked with Communal Medical Services, an NGO that has been working directly with rural and poor urban women since 1990. It provides basic health care, reproductive services, and preventive medical care, primarily to women, pregnant women, new-borns, and malnourished children through a network of 30 voluntary rural health workers (brigadistas de salud), including midwives. We also currently need people to teach English and computer skills.

I arrived in San Juan del Sur in early May 2005 and began teaching my six-week photography course at a brand new one-room schoolhouse in rural Cebadilla, built by the Sister City Project. The children's homes do not have running water and few have electricity. I had enough Polaroid cameras and supplies for seven students and amazingly exactly seven hands shot up.

The next day I started meeting with Lievis, Guadalupe, Nieve Maria, Fatima, Erika, Yader and Norlan twice a week for the six weeks. The oldest was twelve. I soon realized that my ideas and high expectations needed to be altered. The children exploded with enthusiasm and curiosity but when directly asked for their input–"Do you like this image better or worse than this?" they responded with lost looks of embarrassment masked in nervous giggles. They were capable of imaginative thought and numerical estimates, but they lacked the confidence to give their opinions or execute the guidelines about lighting, composition, etc. My goals for the class were redirected to simply giving them more self-confidence. I can say with pride that I think we achieved that goal even if momentarily.

The assignments began with photographing inanimate objects. For several assignments I forbade their photographing people in an effort to prevent them from taking repetitive snapshots. They could include people but only without their faces.

For me (and I think for the students) the best class was the day of our field trip to San Juan. They were now ready for taking portraits. I told them they needed at least two photos of strangers. While they were very excited they became increasingly nervous. To ease the tension I explained our intentions to the market vendors and asked if Guadalupe, the youngest (seven years old), could take a portrait. Guadalupe nervously but skillfully produced a simple headshot of the woman selling limes. The vendor gasped and began to show all the other women "the beautiful picture this girl made of me." From that moment, my students began to approach other eager volunteers who all realized with disbelief that "those kids could make pictures."

We also spent time writing. While they often complained bitterly about this, throughout the weeks the level of opinion required for each assignment increased. They worked up towards writing about what they liked and did not like about their communities, and what they wanted to be when they grew up (two wrote they wanted to be photographers). For our final project each student wrote a short story based on their dreams and then illustrated the story with photographs. We mounted the series on poster boards and the Youth Center in San Juan displayed their work.

Here's a letter from Rachel Ross (MPH 2005) about her work at Community Medical Services in San Juan and its long-term effects on her life.

My time at the San Juan clinic of Community Medical Services was the single largest contributing factor to my decision to work in public health.

My friends Rachel and Leah and I arrived in San Juan del Sur for the first time just as the sun was setting. As we watched it dip dramatically beneath the horizon, none of us had any idea at that moment that San Juan and the people who lived there would change the course of our lives both professionally and personally.

At Community Medical Services, where we had volunteered for the duration of our stay in San Juan, director Rosa Elena Bello sat us down on our first day and in very rapid Spanish announced that because there were two Rachels, one of us would be called Raquelita Chiquita, and the other would be known from there on out as Raquelita Grande. Six years later, I am still "little Rachel little" and the other Rachel remains "little Rachel big".

The next three months were filled with long days at the clinic where we helped in the pharmacy, taught (only somewhat successfully) sex education classes to community teenagers and (somewhat more successfully) English to community members of all ages.

We also spent hours on Rosa Elena's home computer formatting a workbook that had been developed for the second-year students in the adult literacy program. And we helped a group of optometrists who had come to give free eye exams to the San Juan community.

Rosa Elena and her assistants--Teresita, Patricia, and Maria Eugenia--and as well as their families were our constant companions and teachers. They explained Nicaraguan history and culture to us (often multiple times as our ears slowly acclimated to the Nica accents and colloquialisms) as well as the many health and educational challenges facing the poor, primarily rural, population they were serving.

By the time we boarded a bus that would take us to Costa Rica and the next chapter of our adventure, our Spanish had improved ten-fold, we were deeply tanned, and we had an entirely new understanding of the way that medical care, education, and housing conditions affected people's health. The people who had taught us those things were among the kindest, most generous, determined and intelligent we had ever met, and we were sadder than we expected to say goodbye to them. I have returned several times over the subsequent years to continue to work at the clinic, and to do research on the Nicaraguan health care system.

Three years after that first visit, I sat down at my computer in Oakland, California and tried to articulate why I wanted a Masters in Public Health to the admissions committees of the best Schools of Public Health in the country. I explained that before going to Nicaragua, I'd thought that I wanted my contribution to the world to be as a teacher. Since living and working there, however I'd realized that working on issues pertaining to population health, and understanding the policies and infrastructure that were necessary to improving health among poor populations was what I wanted to do, My me at the San Juan clinic was the single largest contributing factor to my decision to work in public health. The choice seems such a clear one now that I can't imagine what my life would be like had Rachel, Leah and I not shown up at Rosa Elena's doorstep sweating through our tank tops, stumbling over that ever elusive Spanish "rr", wanting desperately to contribute somehow to the work she and her staff were doing.

When I received my MPH in May 2005, I owed a debt of gratitude to many people. At the top of that list is Rosa Elena Bello, the women at CMS, and the whole San Juan community. I think the only way I can possibly reay them is to continue the work that began with them: to increase justice and equality through a commitment to health and education. And to do it with passion, dedication, and a full, open heart.

Here are excerpts from a report by Jason Schweitzer, Brandeis '99, about his stay.

In the winter after my high school graduation I went to San Juan. Under the auspices of the Newton-San Juan Sister City program I prearranged room, board, and a position teaching English at the local high school.

It is now that I assess how I grew and how my experience affected my course in life. San Juan molded my college experience by setting standards of reality, by provoking me to consider the inner workings of culture, and by reminding me of a social context in which people work pragmatically to improve the welfare of people in need. My academic endeavors in anthropology, my current work in public health and service, and knowledge of the Spanish language and Latino culture find their roots in San Juan del Sur. Beyond that, I can only say that it was the most fun and exciting six months of my life.

In San Juan del Sur:
Carlos Guzman (for work in the schools or on construction projects) cguzman@ibw.com.ni, 011-505-4582-381. (Spanish only)

Rosa Elena Bello (for work in public health or women's literacy) rosaebel@ibw.com.ni, 011-505-4582-370. (Spanish only)